All That Remains

 

“Sandra, why can’t we go to a nice beach instead?” I said, trying to keep the whining tone to a minimum. “It’s our last semester. I’d like to get a tan, maybe have a chance to catch up on my reading—”

“You can catch up on your reading at night!” she said enthusiastically. “My God, Tina, you’d think you had no imagination whatsoever!”

“Going to a creepy old resort on the edge of some lake doesn’t sound relaxing. I want to relax, not hunt ghosts.”

“You’ll have fun, I promise,” she said, her eyes sparkling. “Now come on. We’re going to be late getting there as it is.”

I followed her reluctantly to the waiting car. She was right. We were already an hour behind schedule. Besides, I’d already agreed to her idea back last winter when we planned this trip. When she’d related it to me while sipping cocoa in front of a warm cheery fire at my parents’ house, the idea had sounded interesting. Now, I had a feeling it was something I was going to come to regret.

 

We arrived a few days later at the town of Cairn Isle. Originally, I’d thought that was the name of the place, as that’s what Sandy had called it. However, the real name according to the welcome sign was Latham’s Landing.

Over lunch at the local diner, Sandy explained. “Cairn is really only a nickname the locals use.”

“Go on. You’ve got a captive audience here. Tell the whole tale.”

“A local man was very rich. And he was a good man—”

“And he was called Latham?”

“Bear with me, Tina. The locals around here are close-mouthed about the island. They don’t like to talk about the disappearances. Even the owner of the bed and breakfast where we’re staying tried to downplay it. But there’s bound to be more real life historical info we can find out when we get there. There’s a small museum there that’s run by the local historical society.”

“Okay. Go on.”

“The man’s name was Hans Latham. He got rich in the ship business somehow, but as the years passed, he retired and moved inland, selling his business. But he missed the water, and so he built a house, Latham’s Landing.”

I took a sip of my coffee. “And that’s where we’re staying?”

“No. We’re staying at a bed and breakfast associated with the local historical society chapter, like I just told you. Stop interrupting.”

“Okay, okay. Go on.”

“The rest can wait until we get there. Come on.”

“So why are we going there, again?” I asked as I grabbed a few dollars from my purse for a tip.

“A relative of mine disappeared there twenty years ago. They never found his body. It’s something like an old family mystery—”

Sounded like something to avoid to me, but I didn’t say that.

“—and I asked my Aunt Red about it, and she told me the story, as much as she knew. I told her I’d come here, as no one else from my family ever has.”

I followed her out dubiously.

We arrived at the bed and breakfast later that evening. It was black as pitch when we arrived, so there wasn’t much chance to look at anything. We resolved to get a good night’s sleep, and start out the next morning after breakfast.

 

About eleven, we wandered outside and then down to the docks. The informative but brusque woman at the front desk of the bed and breakfast had tried to dissuade us. But when Sandra had been adamant about going to the island, she relented and told us to go and see Fred that he would ‘set us up.’

After a few minutes of calling his name, we located a grizzled but friendly looking guy with a greasy brown cap and a day’s growth of grey beard. He was dressed in coveralls with a nametag that said Fred.

When Sandra asked to rent a boat, Fred was incredulous, to say the least. “Why you girls wanna go out there to that old crypt?” he asked, his words threaded with worry. “There’s nothing out there but ghosts and dust.”

“Can you tell us anything?” Sandra asked eagerly, relating the story of her relative.

Two decades ago, her cousin Henry had come out here with a group of tourists, intending to be the first to spend the night on Latham’s Landing in the New Year. They had bunked down in the main hall, and then realized they had no plates to eat the food they’d brought with them. Henry had gone to the kitchen, saying he would look for some. After a few minutes of searching for something else to use, one of the friends had located some plastic plates, and they began eating. It was halfway through the meal when one of them realized Henry hadn’t returned.

They went to look for him and found the kitchen. They found his footprints in the dust, as he’d looked in a few cabinets, and drawers. They found a small stack of mismatched plates he’d collected to bring back. Then his footprints abruptly stopped.

“Stopped how?” I interjected.

“I mean, it looked like he was walking, and then, he just wasn’t there.”

I already was having second, third, and fourth thoughts about this, and I hadn’t even gotten to the house yet. “You think he fell through some kind of trapdoor?”

“The friends looked in all the nearby rooms. The house isn’t that big, really. They found nothing. And the only footprints they saw were the ones they were making.”

“Did they stay there that night?” Fuck me, I couldn’t have.

“They were the last group that did,” Fred replied darkly. “I remember that now. The Historical Society cracked down after that fiasco, saying it was too risky to let tourists stay there overnight unsupervised. Final report was he fell into the lake, drowned, and the tide carried his body to the far side, where wolves carried it off.” He paused. “There are no documented cases of people dying there since Latham’s time. Don’t you gals be the first.”

“There were no wolves here twenty years ago,” Sandy snorted. “And Henry could swim. They weren’t allowed to bring alcohol, even then, and none of them were drinkers. They were here just to have fun.”

“Having fun usually involves lots of alcohol, in my book,” Fred said with a grin. “But let’s get you gals fixed up. If you’re determined to go there, I want you to be back here in plenty of time before night falls.”

“We’ve got nine hours,” I said, checking my watch. “I doubt that we’ll be that long.”

“Time passes differently over there,” Fred cautioned. “You just be sure to head back when the sun’s still overhead, not on the horizon. Got me?”

“Sure,” I said quickly. “We aren’t packing a lunch, figuring to have an early dinner. So we’ll be back early.”

Sandra nodded.

A few minutes later, I was helping to load the raft and shaking my head. “I can’t believe I agreed to this.”

“Come on, it’s an adventure.”

“You didn’t tell me before that the only way to reach the house was by boat. I thought we were renting the boat to get a scenic view or something. The pictures in the bed and breakfast showed some kind of bridge. Did it fall down?”

Sandra narrowed her eyes. “You didn’t seem worried about this last winter when we planned to come here. Besides, it’s not as if we have to be a great navigator. The house is less than a mile away, at the most. The raft is made for ten people, and it’s got a heavy-duty motor. It’s a navy issue raft.”

I grimaced at her, even as I nodded that was a good thing.

We loaded in oars, some life vests, some water to drink we’d brought with us. As we went to push off, Fred handed us a large spotlight.

“You said to be back before dark? Why would we need this?”

“Take it,” he said ominously. “Better to have it and not need it, then need it and not have it.”

 

The trip to Latham’s Landing was exhilarating. The waves on the lake were a little rough because of the strong wind, but the boat cut through them like nothing. The strong August sun was out, and the sky was blue and cloudless. Moreover, looking back at the bed and breakfast from out on the water, I discovered something compelling.

“That stonework’s amazing!” I exclaimed over the roar of the motor.

To reach the dock from the bed and breakfast, Sandy and I had walked down a paved path leading to a small boathouse near the water. An uncannily pretty stone fence ran near the path composed mainly of granite that was almost brick red, with a few whitish and blacker colored pieces mixed in the topmost stones. Looking back from this distance, this granite fence was revealed to be part of a massive stonework. Another fence led up from the boathouse on the other side, and there was a higher fence above that, near what would be the bed and breakfast’s cellar. It looked as if the cellar was open on one side, and that it, too, was made from that same unusual granite.

Sandy lowered the throttle to make her reply heard. “There was a bigger boathouse there once, back when Latham lived here. Over time, it weathered, as it wasn’t made of stone, and a bad storm eventually washed it away. So Latham built another boathouse completely out of stone, saying at least he could make that one last. It burned about forty years ago, and most of the stonework was ruined. New owners bought it with the plan to make a bed and breakfast, but they couldn’t afford to use stone, much less granite. They rebuilt a new house out of wood, but used the remains of the house he built as a basement.”

Weird. “The granite is pretty.”

“No one knows where he got that. Several geologists theorized that he somehow dyed or painted the granite to make it that red color. But no one’s ever found out how he managed it.”

“Granite comes in colors, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Sandy said, laughing. “I’m not rich enough to have granite countertops in my kitchen. I’d say he had a rich friend who sold him a load of it for a song, and so that’s where it came from.” She pointed suddenly. “Look! You can see the house.”

I faced front again, and sure enough, there it was, Latham’s Landing.

It was unimpressive, at first glance. There was more of that stonework fence, this one right on the water. Sandy gunned the motor, and we glided right up into a little landing made of the stuff. Despite that the house was over fifty years old, the stonework looked in good condition. Maybe the Historical Society kept it up?

Sandy and I took off our shoes and stepped into the water. It was cool, but not cold. The brown sand felt nice between my toes.

We walked the raft up on shore and tied it to one of the stone columns—there were six—leading up toward the house. There was enough wind that I worried it might blow back onto the water and drift away, even though Sandy said that was ludicrous.

As I strapped on my backpack, I thought to myself that it seemed darker here, despite the sun was still shining. But maybe that was just the cold breeze. It was coming around the edge of the house like a blast.

I hurried up the stone steps after Sandy. When we got to the front door, Sandy used a key to unlock the small padlock, and we went inside.

She shut the door behind us, and we both looked around, though the electric lights she tried to turn on didn’t seem to work. But this was an old house, one built when daylight was used to light the house during the day, and so there were many windows, enough to see well enough through most of the room. I expected there to be some kind of furniture, maybe the decayed remains of some of the elegant stuffed chairs I’d seen in framed pictures this morning on the walls of the bed and breakfast. The décor in those pictures had been extravagant and opulent. These many years later, all of that furniture was gone. There were darker spots on the walls where pictures had once hung, some of the faded wallpaper peeling.

We walked through the foyer and up the wide main staircase. Our feet made tracks in the dust, kicking up so many particles I sneezed.

“This is the main floor. Come on, let’s look for the kitchen.” Sandy flashed a smile, boldly walking toward a door near the staircase.

I followed warily. The house was interesting enough, though dated from the turn of the century when it had been built. The workmanship was amazing. The wood trim was all carved, the ceilings were high, and despite the dust, it was easy to see that some care and a lot of money had gone into constructing the house.

We looked for a room resembling a kitchen, but didn’t see one, though we did find a room with cabinets that might have been a larder once.

“Why is there so much dust on everything?” I asked, making tracks in the dust on a shelf with my fingers. “Doesn’t the society maintain this? Frankly, I expected something more like a museum.”

“It’s off the beaten path,” Sandy replied, looking into a closet. “There’s nothing around here for miles, really. The locals know about it, but there’s barely a mention of it on the Internet, mostly because of it being private property.”

“I thought the historical society owned it,” I replied, confused. “And I didn’t want to ask in front of Fred, but how did you get permission to come here? It’s obvious that this isn’t the tourist trap you originally sold me on.”

Sandra turned to me, obviously irritated. “The Society enforces the house being off limits, which is why they keep it locked. But there’s nowhere near enough money to restore it to its glory days, not to mention all the furniture was sold off to pay Latham’s debts—”

“You said he was rich.”

“He was. But he went a little crazy in his old age and spent a lot of his money on weird stuff. Then the Crash happened in 1929, and he lost everything. He died here.”

I turned to her, creeped out even though I wasn’t surprised. “How?”

“Hung himself. They say it was from one of the balconies.”

I shivered. “Let’s not go there then.”

“Just come on.”

We finally made it to the third floor, at the top of the house. There was a balcony there, and the view from it was spectacular, almost panoramic. Visible were the surrounding hills of the right side of the lake, a field of sheep grazing in the sun off to our far left. In spite of my earlier vow, I stood drinking in the view at the railing as the minutes passed, entranced.

“Let’s sit for a while,” Sandra offered, sinking down into a weathered wrought iron chair. “This is so beautiful, and the sun’s perfect.”

We watched the lambs playing with their mothers for a little while, laughing at their antics. After, we pretended this was our house, that we were great ladies, and that we were taking our afternoon repose in anticipation of a grand ball tonight. With hot sun on my face and Tina beside me, it was impossible to believe that this balcony had ever been witness to a suicide.

The sun and air was so amazing we both fell asleep, dozing just a little. When we woke up, it was almost five. I panicked a little, but told myself it wasn’t a big deal. Sunset wasn’t for hours yet.

“Should we think about getting back?” I asked, wincing at my slight sunburn.

Sandra was at the northern end of the balcony. “We haven’t seen everything yet, Tina. Look out there.”

I looked where she was pointing and saw a long bridge leading out from the base of the house to what looked like another island. Ah, this was the one I’d seen pictures of…

“There’s the bridge I saw in the pictures. What’s that at the end?”

“That’s the infamous Sea Room. Latham had it built for his bride, because she said this house was too large, too far up in the air, and complained she wanted to be closer to the water.”

“It’s a bedroom?”

“It’s a bedroom, and nothing else, really, but there’s nothing written about it. Just that she asked him to build it for her, and he did. I added that in about how she wanted to be closer to the water.”

“Well, doesn’t the lake flood that place when the snow melts in spring? It seems like it would be underwater, not just close to it. The bridge can’t be more than five feet above the water.”

“This is a man-made lake, made by Latham. And he made sure it wasn’t going to flood, not unless he wanted it to.”

Before I could ask her what she meant by that, she got to her feet. “Come on, let’s go. It’s way past lunch.” Her tone turned teasing. “And we wouldn’t want to worry Fred!”

I laughed with her, following her back through the door.

That’s where the trouble began.

When we went back inside, we were faced with a hallway with one door. When we followed it and went through the door, we came out on another balcony, instead of back to the main bedroom and central staircase. This balcony had a view of the left side of the lake. I was surprised to see a few trees near the base of the house, but otherwise only water, gently lapping a foot below the house’s base

We both laughed, and went back the way we’d come, saying we’d been idiots to pick the wrong way. This time we climbed a flight of stairs, then descended one, and ended up on the northern end of the house, on a very small balcony. This one showed us a slightly closer version of the sheep we’d been admiring. What it did not do was lead us back the way we’d come.

I was starting to panic again, but Sandra retraced our steps until finally we were standing on the original balcony.

“My fault,” she said apologetically. “I went in the wrong door. There are doors on either end of this main balcony. It should’ve been the left one, not the right one.”

We went through the left door, on the left side of the balcony, and sure enough, we came out where we were supposed to be. Whew.

We went downstairs to the main floor. Again, something was different.

“I don’t remember there being a door over there,” Sandy said curiously.

Before I could stop her, she was through it. I bolted after her, and then smacked into her, stopped only a step inside.

“This is the kitchen,” she whispered. “This is where it happened!”

I looked around, seeing a large table in the center, an old cast iron stove, and a ton of cabinets. On the table was a small pile of plates, all mismatched.

The table was covered with a heavy layer of dust, as was the floor. The plates were not covered with any dust at all.

I looked at her, she looked at me, and we ran for the exit. We both slipped in the dust, tripping over our own feet, and made it out the front door, shrieking to each other to move faster.

“We should lock the front door!” I yelled as we ran across the lawn.

“Fuck it, we’ll be back tomorrow!” she yelled, not looking back. “I want to get out of here before it gets dark!”

I slowed to a walk and cracked a smile, about to tell her that it was only six at most. When I glanced down at my watch, my mouth fell open. It was eight-thirty. In addition, by the gloom falling over everything, darkness was almost on us.

We made it to the raft, and waded into the water, forgetting to take our shoes off. The water was ice cold. Sandra and I jumped in quickly. She started the engine, and we roared out of the harbor breathing sighs of relief.

The journey back seemed to take forever. We had the boat motor at full throttle, but it seemed as if no matter how far we went, we weren’t getting any closer to land. The sun dipped lower and lower on the horizon. We gave each other panicked looks in the deepening darkness, wondering if we’d be able to see the dock or if we’d run aground on the rocks. I remembered Fred’s spotlight and brought it out, though it wasn’t full dark yet. We made it to the dock just as the sun dipped below the horizon. Fred was there to greet us.

“Damn fool women! Didn’t I tell you to start for home before dark?”

“We did,” Sandy replied grumpily. “It took us over an hour to get back. It took only a half-hour to get there this morning.”

“The tides are like that,” Fred said, nodding as he stowed the raft. “You can’t trust ‘em.”

“Thanks for waiting for us,” I said with relief.

“All I could do,” Fred said, with a shrug. “I don’t go on that island except in the daytime. So if you hadn’t come back, I‘d have waited as long as I could and then left a light on here for you.”

Sandy and I walked wearily up to the bed and breakfast. Of course, the kitchen was closed for the night.

So we drove into the nearest town, about fifteen minutes away. The diner there was closed, too. But there was a bar there that was alive, if not hopping.

“God, it’s good to eat!” I said, stuffing my mouth with French fries. “I’m starving!”

“I don’t get how we lost track of time so badly,” Sandy said musingly, sipping her beer. “Sure, we mixed up the doors. But that took us what, a half-hour at most to find the right one? We lost three hours somehow, Tina!”

I knew one thing. “It’s a sign,” I said with surety. “We’ve seen enough, Sandy. Let’s cut this trip short and head back upstate. We can find a place with a pool near a mall and shop, watch movies, and lay in the sun for the rest of the week. Let’s have a real holiday vacation. Enough ghost hunting.”

“I’m not hunting ghosts,” She said irritably. “I wanted to see with my own eyes what was out here. And I’m not going until we’ve seen that other island, the sea room.”

“Fine, but that’s it, one more day,” I said vehemently. “I’ll go out with you tomorrow morning, and we’ll check it out. But I want to be on the road before dinner, okay? We can stop somewhere on the way.”

Sandy looked at me for a moment and then nodded. “Sounds good to me.”

 

About ten am, we again got in the raft. Fred left us a note to be careful, that he’d be gone for the day, but just to leave the raft when we got back, and he’d stow it that night.

Soon, we were back near Latham’s Landing. This time we continued around the house, not stopping at the harbor. As we motored past, it was easy to see that part of the house was actually submerged. The lower floor had a row of windows that were right above the water, and the bottom part of the house was under lapping waves.

“Did the water rise overnight?” I said in wonder to Sandy. “What the hell?”

“Latham did it,” Sandy replied. “His wife died somehow, but I gathered it was some kind of tragic accident.”

“Did he kill her?” If she said yes, I wouldn’t be surprised.

“No, because he went crazy afterward with grief. Then he raised the water in his lake and flooded the house’s first floor, most of it just guest bedrooms and sitting rooms. Yet he continued to live here. Some said that he would go out to his little island place and meet with her ghost at night. Lights were seen sometimes through the years at night at his main house by locals. And the Sea Room sometimes was said to be so bright it looked like it was burning—”

I turned to her, suddenly angry. “Sandra, out with it. You seem to know a hell of a lot more about this house than I saw in the short blurb in the picture book we both looked at yesterday morning. And that museum that was supposed to give us info closed down more than a year ago. So how do you know all this?”

“My aunt told me a lot. She said she hired a private investigator, after my cousin disappeared. He talked to a lot of the locals, and after more than a little money he came back to her with no explanation, just a lot of these old stories.”

Great. “Have other people disappeared here?”

“Henry’s the only one that’s documented. But a lot of people died here, Tina.”

I gaped at her. “Who? Fred said no one has died out here—”

“Latham killed himself here. His wife died somewhere in or on her way to the sea room—”

“What happened?”

“It was night time, that’s the only thing known for sure. Some stories say she was meeting a lover to run off, and they both drowned when their boat sank in a sudden storm. Some say she was pregnant, and she went into labor and died in childbirth, along with the baby. And the most horrible story says she had already birthed the baby—that it was some kind of monster, and so she killed it and then flung herself off the bridge.”

“Who else died out here?”

“Some tourist had a heart attack here, not long after they first opened it to the public. He died on his way to the mainland. A young girl fell off the docks and almost drowned, but she was saved. But one of the men who jumped in to save her hit his head on a rock and drowned. That’s all.”

That was plenty. “You sure you want to do this?” I said seriously. “We both thought it was weird, what happened yesterday.”

“I’m not going to be scared because I saw some dishes. Come on, Tina.”

We tied up the raft, again getting our feet wet. Today, for some reason, the water was cold again, even though the sun was as bright and hot as yesterday. Must be those tides Fred had mentioned…

We walked up a series of granite steps to a small shed. To my surprise, there was a small car there. I turned to Sandy, who’d produced a key.

“Why is there a car here on this island? There’s not even an acre of land above water.”

“It’s faster than walking to the Sea Room,” she said, as she got in and started the engine. “We’d take two hours walking that stone bridge, round trip. I still don’t know why Latham made it so long. It must have cost a fortune to make.”

“Latham didn’t have a car here, did he?”

“I can’t say. Fred handed me the key last night and told me to be sure to use the car when we went to the Sea Room. I asked him why, when the bridge wasn’t that long.” She paused. “He told me that a round trip to the Sea Room by foot is four hours, repeating that stuff about time passing differently out here.”

“But how did the car get here?” I persisted.

“He asked the historical society to donate one a couple years ago, when he got to be seventy. As he’s the only person that will agree to come out here to check on the place, they caved and got him this little Beetle.” Sandra looked at the bridge and the shed, then out into the water. “A bigger boat must have delivered it and craned it up here somehow.”

I watched her start the car, worried. What if it didn’t start for us on the way back? I wanted more and more to be gone from this place with every passing minute.

She noticed my hesitation. “Get in. The quicker we get there, the sooner we’ll be done.”

I swore but got in the car.

The ride there seemed to take only a few minutes. As we rode, I wondered, again, why a man would build a place for him and his bride so far away from his house. Maybe because rich people were never alone, because they always had servants around? Maybe because they liked the water?

Maybe because he didn’t want anyone to hear her scream? Shudder.

I blinked, then turned to Sandra. “You never answered me yesterday. How did you get permission to come here?”

“I lied,” she said, her eyes on the road.

“Tell,” I said flatly. “Now.”

“I bribed the bed and breakfast woman,” Sandra said defensively. “That’s why she only made a token effort to stop us coming out here. I don’t know what she told Fred—”

“How—?”

“Some money I’d saved for grad school,” Sandra admitted. “The woman didn’t need a lot. She’s desperate. They don’t get a lot of visitors here since the tours stopped, and the island became off limits—”

“Why?”

“I have to know,” Sandra said stubbornly, stopping the car. “Come on.”

As we walked up to the door, I stopped, glancing back at the car. I considered asking Sandy to turn it around, so it was facing back toward the main house, but irrationally feared that we’d come out and find it facing back the other way.

God, I was losing my nerve! Sandy was right. This was just an old house…

“Tina, come on!”

I went through the door. There wasn’t much here, the basement-like first floor composed of a walk-in coat closet, some stored broken furniture and not much else.

I followed Sandra up some stairs, and then saw why Latham’s wife had loved it so much. The Sea Room was made almost entirely of glass and some kind of mirrors, and it was in an oval shape, with a rounded ceiling like a half globe. We were surrounded by water. The sun was shining on the water, making reflections, the wraparound windows holding the light in a prison of prisms. Even on this blustery windy day, the air in here seemed warm and inviting.

“It’s beautiful,” I said in wonder.

“Apparently some mainland kids think so, too,” Sandy said sarcastically. She nudged a bottle of soda with her foot. “Look at this mess!”

She was right. There were two stained mattresses on the floor, and some debris here and there. Some of it was odd debris. Why would anyone leave a flashlight here switched on? Why leave a book that looked almost new, or a pair of shoes and socks?

“I’m calling the bed and breakfast. They should know about this.” Sandy grabbed a wall phone and began dialing.

As I watched her, I realized the phone she held looked familiar. I looked down at my feet. There on the side of one of the mattresses was a similar phone. No, not similar. Identical.

“I’m getting a busy signal,” she said, exasperated. “Damn it, Fred said that the phones out here would work, even if cells didn’t!”

The phone was busy, something not uncommon. Yet my gut was telling me that it was busy because that phone at my feet was off the hook, that someone or several someones had come out here looking to have some fun and found something more than they bargained for. Before they could call for help or use the flashlight to find their way out, something had happened to them. Something bad.

I looked over at the edge of the mattress. There was something there…

“Tina, I’m going to check outside. Maybe a wire came loose—”

I picked up the object. What was it? It was so familiar, yet my mind wasn’t giving me any information.

“Wait here, okay?” Sandy said.

Oh shit, this was a…

“Let’s go!” I said loudly, letting the cool piece of metal fall from my hands. I ran over to her and began propelling her toward the door. “Forget the damned phone!”

We went back to the car, me shoving her and her protesting. When we were on route back, I told her.

“You can’t have found a filling, Tina. The windows in there were soldered together, some of them. It must have been a bit of lead—”

“I know solder and lead, and this was neither, this was silver. And there was a little tooth chunk stuck to it!”

“So some kids were fighting, and one of them got in a lucky punch. It’s nothing.”

“I don’t care!” I shot back. “I’m leaving!”

We rode the next half-hour in silence back to the landing, relief washing through me when the little house of glass faded from view. When Sandy pulled up to the garage, I hopped out, and opened the overhead door, hurrying down to the raft. I began untying it, as Sandy parked the car and shut the garage door.

She was just walking down the granite steps to me, and I was imagining how good a hamburger was going to taste when she stopped.

“I heard something,” she said, turning to look back at the main house.

“I heard nothing, Sandy. Let’s get going.”

“Hey, what if some of those kids are here, Tina? That soda bottle wasn’t that old. This is a historical site.”

“They can wander around then!” I shouted. “I’m not going to chase after them!”

“We left the door open yesterday!” she shouted back. “What if the kids light the house on fire or something? It’ll be my fault! I had to sign a paper to get the key!”

“We’ll go back and get Fred! He can come look for them!”

“He’s gone until tonight! He won’t be able to look until morning! And we’re right here.”

“Fuck it, I’m leaving! You can stay here if you want!”

“After all Fred’s done for us, I’m not going to leave here without checking it out.”

She turned and bolted up the stairs, running for the entrance.

Fuck! I retied the boat and ran after her. When I got to the entrance, Sandy was nowhere in sight.

I got inside and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. By my watch, either we’d lost time again, or the time we’d spent at the Sea Room had taken longer than I’d thought. It was about two pm.

I walked the first floor, the second floor, and the third floor, following Sandy’s steps and my own from yesterday. I didn’t see anyone or any signs of anyone being there but us.

I walked back downstairs, wondering if I should check outside, when I heard a noise. I turned, and out of the corner of my eye, reflected in a broken hall mirror, I swore I got a glimpse of a young man in a red plaid shirt and jeans, his arms flailing wildly as he shouted soundlessly. But when I whipped around, there was no one there. Darting a look back at the mirror, I expected to see nothing. Instead, I saw the man there, looking back at me from the mirror, grinning at me, his eyes tinted yellow.

I let out a shriek and ran for the front door. I got as far as the stairs, then stopped with a whimper.

There was a young boy on the stairs in front of me.

“Father, I’m so glad to see you,” he said gratefully, his innocent face breaking into a smile. “I looked for you, and couldn’t find you!”

“I’m not your father,” I whispered.

The boy came closer, his light blue eyes shining. “I’m so glad you’re here. It seemed like such a long time I’ve been looking for you.”

“Where is my friend?” I grated out, making myself get closer. “What are you?”

The boy tilted his head and studied me, but didn’t reply.

I took another step closer. “Get out of my way.”

“Stay,” the boy said, his voice no longer grateful.

I lost it. I grabbed hold of him, expecting him to fade into smoke or disappear, but instead it was like reaching into ice water. I gasped in shock as my hands clasped onto bony arms, and the boy let loose a snarl, his eyes narrowing to red pinpricks as he bared his teeth and tried to sink them into my hand.

I began to pray desperately to God, and the boy shrieked, trying harder to bite me. I threw him from me, out of my way, and he slammed into the wall and vanished, raising a puff of dust.

I ran for the front door, threw it open, and let out another scream. A girl stood there who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She was swaying, her eyes crazy.

“They’re gone,” she said in a singsong voice. “They’re all gone.”

I led her outside, shut the door, and sat her down on the stairs. “Who are you? Who’s gone?”

“They’re all gone.”

“Who’s gone?”

She didn’t answer.

Try something else. “Can you show me where they went?”

“They went into the house. And now they’re gone.”

I let her go and looked toward the sun. It was still high, but clouds were rolling in now, and the waves were beginning to be choppy.

“Can you show me where they went?”

“They’re gone!” she shrieked loudly.

I hauled off and slapped her hard, knocking her to the ground. “If anyone’s having hysterics, it’s going to be me.”

She seemed a bit better after the slap, so I helped her up.

“Now listen,” I said. “We have to go back in because the only boat is on the other side of the house. We’d have to swim otherwise, at least for part of it, and I don’t know how safe that is. If there’s an undertow out here, we’d be goners.”

“I don’t w-w-want to go back in!” she stammered, tears leaking from her eyes.

“Me neither,” I said heartily. “But we have to. So let’s get going before we decide we’re better off killing ourselves trying to walk back on those rocks.”

She grabbed hold of my hand, and I followed her inside. I debated locking the door behind us, but the only lock was the padlock, and I didn’t see a way to do it.

We stood at the base of the stairs. There was no trace of anyone, only my footsteps in the dust, and Sandy’s.

“We came through there,” she whispered, pointing. I saw what seemed to be a porch with many windows off to one side of the house.

“Can we get back that way?”

“We walked over from the glass house,” she sniffled. “We couldn’t find Alice. And we saw a light on at the house—”

“You were here at night—?” I abruptly cut off, remembering that the electric lights here didn’t work. Gulp.

“We rowed over a few boats and a mattress last night. We didn’t know there was one already here. We tied up the boats, but a wind came up, and the ropes snapped. It was dark, and there was nothing we could do until morning. So we partied a little, smoked some grass, had a little sex, and fell asleep.”

“Something woke us around midnight. That’s when we noticed Alice was gone. We were going to have to borrow a boat anyway to get home, or our parents were going to ground us for sure. When we saw the light on here, we figured Alice had gone over to the main house for some reason.”

I gave her an incredulous look. Her lucidity came back instantly, anger flushing her face.

“Don’t look at me like I’m an idiot! I know how that sounds! But we didn’t want to admit to ourselves that something had happened to her. It was even scarier to think someone had grabbed her to lead us to the main house. We couldn’t not look for her! What kind of friends would that make us?”

I felt guilty, thinking of Sandy still in here somewhere. “Let’s look then, but we need to hurry, okay?”

“I’m all for working fast,” she said worriedly.

“What’s your name?”

“Laura.”

“I’m Tina. Let’s go.”

I’d already checked all the rooms, but I checked them again, Laura in tow. There was nothing, except now there were so many footprints I couldn’t be sure which were mine, and which were Sandy’s.

“No one’s here. Come on, Laura. There’s nothing we can do but go get help.”

I walked with her back outside, heading toward the raft. To my relief the raft’s rope was still tied tightly. But my heart skipped a beat as the raft itself looked a little deflated.

I ran down to it. A quick check revealed it was leaking air. The wind had shifted it against the granite rocks, slicing open a small gash in the sturdy rubber.

I grabbed the emergency kit from inside it and took out the duct tape, plastering some over the hole. I didn’t have anything to re-inflate the raft and didn’t want to risk opening the air valve, in case more air got out. For all I knew, I needed a compressor to inflate a raft like this. Laura wasn’t going to be any help…

I checked my watch. It was nearly six. Shit! Where had the day gone?

“Stay here,” I said to her, thinking fast. “We’re going to have to go slowly, with the raft damaged, and we’re not going to get back before dark, most likely. We need some kind of light. I’m going to run up there to where the car is and check the shed.”

“Okay,” she replied docilely, her eyes vacant.

I sat her down near the raft and ran up the stone steps. I reached the garage and shuffled through the car, thankful that Sandy had left the door unlocked. There was no flashlight, but there were some flares and a few light sticks which I grabbed. I shut the door and ran back down to the raft to find Laura gone.

Christ! I looked around and glimpsed her shadow near the rocks. She was near the base of the house, near a door I hadn’t seen before. I screamed out for her to stop, but she opened the door and went inside.

I ran as fast as I could over to where she had been and opened the door.

Water lapped at my feet. This must be the part of the house that had flooded.

I couldn’t see well. I grabbed a light stick from my pocket and cracked it. Light revealed a hallway, maybe the hallway that Laura had showed me the doorway to at the other end of the house. It seemed very long, and there was a heavy gloom at the other end. At the far end, something seemed to move in the blackness.

“Laura?” I called.

There was a faint splash, then another.

I looked to my right and let out a scream. Bodies were drifting in the water. I counted at least five, but it was hard to see, and they were tangled together. There looked to be three young women and two young men. One of the women had long black hair. Black hair like Laura’s.

I ran to her side, splashing through the water and turned her over. “Laura!”

Her eyes were open and unseeing, her mouth open in a scream. There were bruises on her throat from hands.

I turned around and ran for the door, splashing through the water, cursing my stupidity. I got to the door in a few seconds, but it had somehow shut behind me and now it was stuck.

I yanked at it frantically, pulling hard. Again, from behind me, there came a faint splash. And then another.

Something was coming closer. Something from the end of that long hallway of watery darkness.

I didn’t look. I just grabbed the door and pulled, praying to God the fucking thing would open. With a rusty creaking sound, it opened just a few inches.

I wedged my body in the gap and pushed with my feet, sliding partway through. I flailed, pushing and pulling with my arms, still hearing that methodical splashing getting louder and louder. With a tearing of cloth, I shoved free of the door and got out into the sunlight, whimpering with relief.

I turned to shut the door. There was a dark figure walking out of the shadows through the water. It seemed to be a tall man, but I only had a glimpse before I slammed the door shut. I grabbed the nearest rock, wedged it in front of the door and then backed away, breathing hard.

I stood there for several minutes, calming myself, telling myself it was okay, I was okay. The sun was out; there wasn’t any wind, really, so…

A splash came from the other side of the door. Slowly, the knob began to turn.

I let out a shriek and ran for the raft. I pushed it out into the water and started the motor, not caring that my socks and shoes were wet. Then I gunned the motor, not caring if I drowned, so long as I didn’t end up on that island as a ghost.

The journey back took me almost two hours. Some of that was because I wasn’t used to the engine or steering a boat, and I couldn’t find a happy medium between stalling and top speed. Some of that was because the duct tape came off, and the air leaked out more and more, the closer I got to land.

When I got a hundred yards out from the dock, I knew I wasn’t going to make it. A wind had come up, and it was forcing me back toward the island, even as my motor tried its best to propel me to shore.

I finally steered into the west outcropping of the lake, where a stream diverted out. As the water finally came over the edges of the boat, I stepped into marshy stagnant water and staggered up on shore. I pulled the mostly deflated boat behind me and collapsed, praising God, and swearing never to set foot on a boat again.

 

Several hours later, Fred found me. I had lit the flares, all of them, and he rode up on an ATV. Headlights had never looked so welcoming.

He deflated and stowed the raft, saying he could fix it, then gave me a ride back to the dock. There in his office, over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, I told him everything.

He just nodded afterwards. “Expected something like that.”

“What should I do?” I said, shivering. “I feel like I should go back there, Fred. I abandoned her.”

“Some people you can’t save,” he said, shrugging and pouring another glass. “You told her not to go back in there. As it is, you barely got out of there, girl.”

“The police will want me to show them where I found the bodies—”

“I’m telling you right now, you go to that island again, you won’t be coming back, no matter who is with you. Understand?”

I swallowed and nodded.

“You’re going to go in and have a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll go out and look for your friend.”

“Why doesn’t it get you?” I asked shakily, taking a gulp of whiskey. “You’ve been going there for years!”

“It needs me to look after it,” Fred said resentfully. “The damned house or whatever it is that lives there knows that, Tina, and so it leaves me alone. But the day I retire, I’ll never set foot there again. And I’m always careful, never going there after dark. It was the damn fool kids who stirred things up, or your friend, looking for her kin.”

For a while, we just sipped our whiskey in silence.

“She was a ghost, wasn’t she?” I whispered finally. “Laura was a ghost.”

“I’d say so,” Fred said, nodding once. “She was sent to stop you long enough to trap you there, long enough for the raft to deflate, or something to sink its claws into your soul. It’s God’s truth I’d not be talking to you now, if you’d stayed there past nightfall.”

 

The rest is a matter of public knowledge. You probably know it all, but I’ll go over the basics.

Fred went out to the island early the next morning. He drove first to the Sea Room and found the mattresses, and other stuff, and hung up the phones, both of which he said were off the hook. But once he did, they worked just fine.

He wasn’t able to find any fillings, he said, but he admitted he didn’t look that hard. He checked outside, and sure enough, there was some frayed rope tied to one of the bridge supports, but no boats.

He drove back to the main house and searched it, top to bottom. There was no sign of Sandy. He said he looked for footprints, but saw only hers and mine.

Last, he went to the bottom door I had told him about. He said that the rock was missing. Yet the place where it had been was obvious. The door bottom was broken, where some powerful force had been used to shove the door open over the rock, shattering the half-rotted wood.

Inside, in the flooded part of the house, he found the bodies. The worst news was that Sandy’s was there, too.

There was an investigation, of course. A team went to the island and went over every inch of it, probably much as they had twenty years ago for Sandy’s cousin Henry. But they found nothing. No fingerprints, except Sandy’s and mine. And the same was true for the Sea Room, except they did find the kids’ fingerprints there. All five of them.

The flooded part of the house was too decayed to risk draining. Divers went in and looked around in the muck, hoping to find Henry, whose body had never been found.

That led to more questions, when they brought out the old skeleton of a young woman. Speculation was that this was Latham’s wife, but nothing could be proven. And that was all they found.

The house was boarded up, all its doors were locked, and notices put up that trespassing was prohibited. There was nothing more that could be done, or so the authorities said.

Sandy’s Aunt Red told me that in a letter she wrote, telling me not to blame myself, that she blamed herself, for telling Sandy all she had of Latham’s Landing. She told me it wasn’t my fault.

But Sandy wasn’t there in the water with Laura, Alice, and the rest, not when I was in that water-filled hallway. She was brought there later or her body was.

I tell myself she was dead when I fled. I tell myself I searched for her the best I could, and I’d just be dead, too, if I’d stayed looking for her any longer.

Yet I know in my guilty heart she wouldn’t have left me behind, if I’d been the one missing. She’d have stayed, even if it meant her life, or that we’d both be ghosts there forever. And that thought eats at my soul.