ONE
“Laney,” a voice says in my ear. “Aunt Laney!”
The last one startles me, gasping, out of sleep. Some parents call their kids by their first and middle name when they’re in trouble. My sixteen-year-old niece calls me “Aunt” when I’m doing something to piss her off, and right now what I’m apparently doing is sleeping when she wants to talk to me.
My mumbled “What?” comes out as a groan.
“Your phone?” The offending object appears, waggling back and forth as I struggle to focus on blurred text.
Four missed calls.
I thump back onto the pillow. “It’s the middle of the night,” I mutter. Then I bolt upright in my narrow bed. Four missed calls in the middle of the night. I snatch the phone from Madison.
“It’s not Gran or Gramps,” she says. “It’s the campground at Fox Bay.”
It takes a moment for my sleepy brain to process that. I blink, seeing only Madison’s face hovering in front of me, spiky auburn hair framing a pale oval face so much like my sister’s it makes my heart clench with grief.
“Laney?”
What was she saying? Right. The call came from a campground at—
“Shit!” I blink fast. “Hemlock House.”
I fumble to retrieve my messages. “Please don’t tell me it’s a fire. I told the renters the area’s under a no-open-flame order, and it’s always ‘Oh, but it was just a little fire.’ If they—”
The phone vibrates. FOXY LADY CAMPGROUND flashes on the screen, and I jab the Accept button.
“Hello?” I blurt.
I’m quivering, rocked by visions of Hemlock House in flames. Does insurance cover it if renters light a fire after I warned them? Did I warn them by text? If it was a phone conversation, they can deny—
“What is going on in that house of yours?” The woman’s voice is loud enough that I think I have it on speaker, and when I hit the button to turn it off, I actually switch into speaker mode. I go to flip it back, but Madison swats my hand and leans in to listen.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Is there a problem? I’m not there right now. I’ve rented out the house—”
“I know that,” the woman snaps. “Because you rented it to me.”
“Ms.…” I struggle for the name. “Teller?”
“Abbas. Mrs. Abbas.”
Right. The Tellers were the last renters. Or maybe the ones before that …
“Mrs. Abbas,” I say. “Is there a problem?”
“No, I’m calling to ask how to use the shower … in the middle of the night, after driving that leaky boat five miles to town, and then hunting everywhere for a pay phone because our cell phones won’t work even when we’re not on the island.”
My first impulse is to say that the boat is in better shape than my damn car because I need to keep it that way for guests. Any “leak” was water sloshing over the sides.
But that’s not her point, and so I say, as calmly as I can, “What’s the problem, Mrs. Abbas?”
“There is blood in the green bedroom.”
Madison’s brows shoot up.
“So there seems to be blood—” I begin.
“Not seems to be. Is. My husband is a doctor.” Her voice goes distant, as if she’s moved the pay phone receiver away from her mouth. “Tell her it’s blood.”
“It is blood,” a man says, his accented voice sounding weary.
“Okay, so there is blood in the green bedroom. The last guests weren’t planning on using it, but I presume they did, and the caretaker didn’t realize that and didn’t change the sheets. I’m very sor—”
“The blood isn’t on the sheets. It’s in the closet.”
“In the closet?” That’s Madison. I dimly realize I should shush her, but my gut is clenching too hard for me to follow through.
Not again.
Please, not again.
“Yes, the closet,” Mrs. Abbas says. “I woke up cold. You said not to light any fires, so we couldn’t start the woodstove.”
“I didn’t mean the—” I stop myself. “You woke up cold and…”
“I’d already used the blanket from our closet. I was checking the second bedroom. I opened the closet door, and it was right there.”
“The blan—? The blood?”
“Yes. On the door. All over the door. And scratches, as if someone tried to claw their way out.”
“Holy shit!” Madison whispers as I clap my hand to her mouth.
“Blood and scratches?” I say. “Inside the bedroom closet door?”
There’s a shuffling sound, interspersed with angry words. Then the man’s voice comes on.
“We do not actually believe anyone was confined in that closet, Ms. Kilpatrick. There is no lock, obviously. We believe the last person who rented your house played a practical joke. Your cleaning woman must not have needed to access that closet, and so she did not see the damage. My wife is understandably distraught.”
“Understandably, yes. I am so sorry. I’ll refund the rest of your booking, of course, though you’re welcome to stay for the whole thing. Monday was your check-out day, wasn’t it?”
“You’re refunding all of our booking,” Mrs. Abbas says in the background. “And I’m not spending another minute on that island. There’s no cell service. No telephone. No internet.”
All of which they knew when they rented it. That’s a selling point for most renters, and just in case they miss that heavily bolded part in my listing, I make sure they understand before they rent it.
Still, I get what she’s saying. Yes, she knew Hemlock Island was remote and unreachable, but she’d only been thinking of how nice it’d be not to get work messages on her vacation. She hadn’t considered what that would be like when she needed to contact someone.
“I understand—” I begin.
“No, I don’t think you do,” she says, still in the background. “You’re lucky we don’t contact the police. We will contact the rental agency—”
“No, Charlotte,” her husband says. “This is not Ms. Kilpatrick’s fault. It is the previous guest playing a prank. You will need to file a report on them with the agency, Ms. Kilpatrick. You might also, if I am not being too bold, suggest that your cleaning woman do a more thorough examination of the house after each rental. I can imagine it is not easy when you have such a popular property and a narrow window in which to clean.”
He’s right about that. How many times has Nate—our cleaner—told me that he’s shown up to find the previous guests still in bed? Or had the next guests arrive hours early and grumble when he politely suggests they explore the island while he finishes cleaning?
“I’ll do a thorough examination myself,” I say. “Again, I am so sorry. I’m refunding your money right now.” I open my app. “Then I’ll head out there and see what’s going on.”
* * *
“I bet it was a raccoon,” Madison says when I hang up. “Hopefully not a rat. We haven’t seen rats on the island, right?”
I stare at her as I try to connect her words to what just happened.
“Blood and scratches in the closet?” she says. “Obviously, some poor critter got trapped in there. Maybe a bat. That would make the most sense, right? A bat?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, struggling to collect my thoughts. Then I swing my legs out of bed. I head to the kitchen and flip on the coffee machine.
Madison’s footfalls pad from my room, which is about ten paces from the kitchen. Yes, it’s a tiny house, but it’s all I could afford in Madison’s school district. After my sister died, I couldn’t bear to upend my niece’s life any further. I’d paid Anna’s remaining medical bills with the sale of her heavily mortgaged house and rented the one place I could kinda-sorta afford on the edge of her upscale suburban neighborhood.
“It’s four in the morning, Laney,” Madison says when she comes in the kitchen. “Why are you making coffee?”
“I need to head to Hemlock Island and resolve this before they register a complaint, which Mrs. Abbas absolutely will.”
“Yeah, she’s really freaked.”
“I don’t blame her. I’m sorry, Mads, but I might not be back until late. We’ll need to find you a place to stay the night.”
I brace for her to say she’ll stay here, which will inevitably lead to a fight. She’ll argue she’s old enough to stay alone, and I’ll remind her about what happened last month when some guy peeped at her while I was out late.
I start to put my coffee cup under the brewer, but she gets her travel mug in there first.
“I’m going with you,” she says.
“Uh-uh. I’m not taking you to the island after that.”
“After what? A bat got trapped in the closet?” She peers at me. “There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”
I concentrate on pouring exactly the right amount of cream into my empty cup. “More to what story?”
“You never even thought it might be an animal,” she says. “That guy said it was a prank, and you rolled with it. Now you’re rushing out to investigate.”
“I’m not rushing out.” I fill my mug and settle onto a wobbly kitchen chair. “See?”
“What else has happened?”
Here’s where I always get stuck in this new role as Madison’s legal guardian. I need to be the parent, not the fun aunt, and I’m grappling with that shift. Which is worse? Lying to her? Or sharing something potentially disturbing? Knowing my niece, I cross my fingers and make what I hope is the right choice.
“There have been other things,” I say. “Other … incidents.”
“Incidents?”
I set my mug down on the thrift-shop table. “Nate found charred animal bones in the boathouse. I found a hex circle under the crawlspace rug and then feathers and bones hanging from the gazebo.”
“Ah, Halloween came early this year. Some renter’s kids got bored and staged a house of horrors for the next guests.” She takes a bag of Oreos from the cupboard. “Part of me wants to high-five them for their creativity and part wants to give them shit for scaring innocent people. I blame Mom for the finger-wagging. The high-fives are totally on you.”
“Me?”
“Uh, remember the stories you told me when I was a kid? The haunted houses we set up? The Halloween parties that had parents telling you off for giving their kids nightmares? I always said you’re missing your calling. Mysteries are fine, but you really should be writing horror.” She flips me an Oreo. “So some kids staged…”
She stops, cookie halfway to her mouth. “Wait. How long has this been going on?”
“Nate found the bones in mid-August.”
“And no one has used the green bedroom since? Nate hasn’t opened that closet door since? That’s not possible.”
“The room has been used twice since, and Nate and I thoroughly searched the house after I found the hex circle.”
“Meaning it’s repeated violations. Not a one-time staging.”
Copyright © 2023 by Kelley Armstrong
