Giles had been right to be wary.
That much was obvious a short time after he and his handpicked staff returned to the Avondale Resort after their month off. The eleven of them disembarked from the ferry around noon the day before the arrival of the guests. Mike was supposed to already have been there, but he was nowhere to be found inside the mansion or anywhere on the resort.
Giles assigned the staff members their tasks and they set about preparing the resort for the corporate retreat. Each person had plenty to do. The maids had to prepare and clean the guest rooms; the kitchen staff needed to wait for the weekly food delivery and inventory the items to ensure they would be prepared to accommodate the set retreat menu. Everyone had a job, multiple jobs actually, to keep them busy for the entirety of the day.
It was later that evening, the resort finally ready for the guests’ arrival, when Giles finally found Mike. Giles had gone to the booking manager’s office just off the mansion’s grand foyer, and adjacent to the other administrative offices, in order to double-check some details. The door was locked just as it had been earlier when Giles had looked for Mike upon his arrival. But this time he’d brought the spare key Mike had given him in case he ever needed to get inside while Mike was away on vacation. Giles knew the details of the guests’ arrival were in Mike’s office, and he merely wanted to consult them one final time before the next day.
Giles unlocked the door and stepped inside, and that’s when he saw Mike. He was sitting in his chair behind his desk, leaned back with his feet resting on top of it as Giles had so often seen him do. But this time Mike didn’t swing them down and put them back under the desk the way he usually did when Giles came to speak to him.
This time Mike didn’t move at all when Giles entered his office. This time he just stayed in his chair, motionless—with the metal rod of a speargun harpoon sticking out of the center of his forehead. His lifeless eyes were open and almost seemed crossed in an attempt to see the harpoon that had killed him.
Giles gasped and took a quick step back and out of the office.
“Not again,” he told himself in the hallway.
This couldn’t possibly be happening again, could it? Not a third time. But Giles knew then that it could be and actually was, indeed, happening again. The curse Jacqueline Bossart had placed on him had been real. As ridiculous as that seemed, he knew it to be true.
Just the same, Giles stepped back inside his boss’s office. If this was the start of another game, then surely there’d be a message waiting for him. He walked slowly toward the desk, trying not to look into Mike’s empty eyes. It was cluttered with all sorts of paperwork and a half-eaten, moldy sandwich.
Giles noticed a white envelope underneath Mike’s feet. He grabbed it and pulled, trying not to disturb the body too much. His hands shook as he opened the envelope. It contained a two-page letter. As Giles began reading, all the feeling seemed to drain out of him.
Mr. Giles,
Please accept my apologies for the somewhat messy nature in which this letter was delivered. But, as I’m sure you’ll understand, I needed to be certain that you’d know I was serious.
I am aware of your past, so I feel there is no need to waste too much time explaining what will happen here on Avondale Island over the next week. I’m sure you’re already quite well acquainted with how this game is played. This game of murder.
The contestants, as you may have guessed, will be the eleven guests arriving tomorrow for their corporate retreat. I will be among them. The format of the game will be the same as those you’ve administered before, first on the Westlake Estate, and then later on Rue Manor. As each of the guests is murdered, the rest will have to piece together how the murder occurred if they wish to survive. I’ve researched those incidents extensively, and I wish to follow the format of terror the killers introduced as closely as possible.
While you were all away, I had this resort fitted, repurposed, and rigged with cameras and booby traps to my liking. The Internet and phone service have already been discontinued, as some of your staff are no doubt already discovering.
You are now cut off from the outside world, Mr. Giles.
You will need to gather the staff immediately and explain the game at hand to them. You know as well as I do, Mr. Giles, that their best chance of survival is to follow the rules and stay on task. Please make that clear to them. Perhaps it might help to show them Mike’s speared face? But I will leave that decision up to you.
Escape is impossible. Any attempts will be met with death. If you attempt to notify the driver of the weekly ferry tomorrow, he will die, as will the rest of your staff and all the guests. You know this is not an empty threat.
So, please, gather your staff and prepare them for the game. You’ll find guest dossiers and instructions in Mike’s top desk drawer. More directions will be delivered sometime tomorrow after we all arrive. You will know when the game begins. It’s going to start with a real bang this time.
Yours, anonymously.
Because does it really even matter who I am?
Giles had to grab the edge of the desk to keep from falling to his knees. It just didn’t seem possible that this could be happening to him yet again, for a third time. But he steadied himself and then collected his straying thoughts. He knew from experience that his best chance of survival was to play along.
He picked up the phone on Mike’s desk, just in case. It was dead. Next, Giles moved into the adjacent room where Mike’s assistant worked during the busy season. He knew that an emergency radio and satellite phone were kept in there in the event of a power outage or some other unforeseen loss of Internet and phone service.
Giles opened the cabinet in which both were stored and then slammed it shut in frustration. They had both been smashed. Furthermore, a sticky note had been attached to the shattered carcass of the radio with a very simple message scribbled on it:
I’m not that stupid.
Giles’s next course of action was simply to follow the killer’s instructions. He grabbed the dossiers and staff instruction manuals from Mike’s desk and then gathered up the ten other staff members and led them to the mansion foyer. They followed him reluctantly, tired from a long day of work. Some grumbled aloud, others silently, but they were all universally confused as to what was so urgent that they’d all been rustled from their bedrooms in such a rushed manner. If it was a pre-retreat pep talk, as several of the staff assumed it was, couldn’t it wait until morning?
But they quickly realized, after Giles started talking, that it was far from a cheesy pep talk. Explaining the game to the staff was quite difficult. They mostly just laughed at first, assuming that Giles was kidding. At one point Giles even considered taking them into Mike’s office. Seeing his body would surely convince them all rather quickly that this was no joke.
But he didn’t have to resort to that. Because Hanley, the resort’s nautical engineer, made an even more effective display of just how serious this was.
“What do you mean escape is impossible?” Hanley said after Giles’s third attempt to explain their dire situation. “Even if this was real, which would be just… so dumb, we could still easily escape. I mean, we’ve got several boats parked right down there that have plenty of fuel to get us to the nearest island.”
Hanley pointed in the direction of the beach and neighboring boathouse on the east side of the island.
“I’m sure they’ve all been deactivated somehow while we were away,” Giles said.
“But you don’t know that for sure,” Hanley said.
“Trust me,” Giles said calmly.
“Watch, I’ll show you all how ridiculous this is,” Hanley said as he headed out the mansion’s front door.
Giles rolled his eyes but followed him outside, with the rest of the staff right behind them. There was no point in trying to stop Hanley now. Once the stubborn fool had his mind set on something, he was going to do it. Giles had only worked with him for a month now, but most people figured out how bullheaded Hanley was after spending just forty seconds with the guy.
Besides, if Giles was right, which he was pretty sure he was, a live display of the futility of an escape attempt might be just the thing he needed to convince the others that this was definitely real. They followed Hanley down the smooth path leading toward the large white sand beach east of the mansion.
The resort’s nautical engineer went straight to the boathouse and attached dock. Giles and the other nine employees stopped just short of the docks and waited there, standing in the warm, soft sand. Giles was annoyed that he’d have to clean sand out of his shoes again. Most of the staff wore sandals as much as possible, and on a tropical island, why not? But Giles still preferred his traditional butler suit and black oxford shoes.
Just the same, he was getting anxious to see what would happen when Hanley tried to drive one of the resort’s small boats. Maybe he would succeed. Maybe the killer really had forgotten about the resort’s stable of boats. Of course it was foolish to hope for such oversights. Giles knew better than that.
Hanley hopped into a modest seventeen-foot fishing boat. He untied the moorings attached to the dock and checked on some of the equipment as the boat started drifting slowly down the length of the dock.
“Just watch!” Hanley yelled. “I’ll be able to drive a full lap before you can even finish saying ‘escape is impossible’ again.”
Some of the other staff laughed at this. But Giles tensed, waiting for… well, he still wasn’t sure exactly what would happen. Maybe nothing. Maybe the motor would simply be disabled, the boat’s engine wouldn’t start, and nothing more. But Giles had a feeling that would be far too simple. Too small. If this new killer was anything like the other two who had terrorized him in the past, then he or she would have a certain sick flair for the dramatic.
Hanley grinned smugly at them as he pressed the ignition button.
The rest of the staff tumbled backward onto the sand as the boat exploded, taking a few nearby jet skis with it. Several of the staff gasped as flaming chunks of the boat rained down into the clear Caribbean water. The main portion of the boat’s wreckage, still ablaze, continued to drift away, before eventually starting its descent to the ocean floor.
Giles got back to his feet and helped some of the other shocked staff members do the same. Several of them were having a hard time collecting themselves. Nobody made an effort to swim out to see if Hanley might be okay. He clearly could not have survived an explosion that large.
“As you can all see this is quite serious,” Giles said. “It is not a joke. And I assure you that the sick individual who booby-trapped that boat has done the same to the rest of the water vessels. But I promise that you will all survive as long as you follow my directions precisely. And just remember: escape is indeed impossible, as you have all just witnessed.”