Chapter 9

9

It wasn't lost on me that this was something interesting I could message Akilah about. At least, it seemed like an interesting idea at first glance. But what would that message look like? Hey, guess what? I'm subbing for a dead guy. He fell off a cliff. How's the Cheesecake Factory?

No. I couldn't be the one who just started a fire and now had random dead guy stories. You can have one of those, but not both. Not in a matter of under two weeks.

I returned to my room for the rest of the night, shuffling around and rearranging things, listening for noises, voices in the fairy-tale house. The walls were thick but the floorboards sang. I heard Liani and April walking up the steps. I went online and searched the name Chris Nelson . I got five hits from local sites.

CLEMENT BAY TEEN DIES IN ACCIDENT

A local teenager has died after falling from a rocky point on Mulligan Island last night, authorities say.

Christopher Nelson, 18, of Clement Bay, was at a party with many other students from Roosevelt High School. Somewhere around 5:00 a.m., he fell from a sixteen-foot cliff into the rocky bottom of the shallow waters below. His body was recovered by a fellow classmate, Liani Harris, who swam out to provide aid. A rescue boat arrived soon after, but Nelson was pronounced dead at the scene....

ALCOHOL AND DRUGS INVOLVED IN LOCAL TEEN'S DEATH

The autopsy of local teen Christopher Nelson revealed that he had a blood alcohol level of 0.12 and traces of marijuana in his system, which potentially led to his fall....

I searched socials and found Chris's accounts were still open, though there had been no activity since the second of May. I looked at pictures of Chris at the prom with the others. There was Van, tall and dapper. Liani, simply gorgeous. April, adorable in a cobalt-blue dress, her hair swirled into a flaming red updo studded with pearl accent pins. I scrolled back through Christopher Nelson's life. I saw him posing with dogs wearing RESCUE ME! jackets. I saw him with his arm around Van, kissing him on the cheek, Van smirking goofily, eyes squinted shut. I rolled back through the year, watching him pose, seeing his impassioned posts about the river and the environment. He took several shots of wildlife, of the river itself, with long captions about how it needed to be protected and preserved.

When I look at the river, I realize how lucky I am to live here, and how important it is to do everything in my power to protect this place for my generation and for generations to come. We aren't the only ones who live here either. All the life that depends on this river needs to be protected as well.

Lots of likes on that one. April left a caption with a dozen hearts. Van wrote: Look at my sexy wildlife warrior. More hearts.

I went back in time through the winter and saw April, Van, and Chris flopped down in the snow. Liani appeared in the feed as I moved back into the fall. The pictures were more romantic—so many studies of Liani. Liani with longer hair in Bantu knots, puckering her mouth for the camera with shimmering copper lipstick on her lips. And there was Riki, sliding into the group shots in October, smiling, her smudgy kohl eyes staring down the camera. Riki always seemed to wear oversized black T-shirts. She went through a deep-blue lipstick phase, which I found very attractive on her. She always seemed to be in the middle of saying or doing something when the picture was taken, never posing.

I kept scrolling, watching them all grow younger. I saw them doing tricks on Jet Skis, playing for the camera. I saw Van shrink in height, Tom in muscle. Liani was gangly. April had chipmunk cheeks. Riki sometimes wore blue. I went all the way to the end, to a picture of a puppy in a laundry basket, then refreshed to go back to that final photo, the group shot at the prom. The last night Chris Nelson was alive.

Then I switched over and started scrolling through Akilah's feed. I did this most nights. Wiggle that tooth. Salt that wound. Make sure it hurts. I knew every photo on there by heart, and I studied new ones like they were the Voynich manuscript. No new ones of her, just one of her big orange tabby, Scrambles. So I did my other new painful hobby—I scrolled the Cheesecake Factory menu. I replayed our date. I imagined Akilah taking orders for avocado tacos and grilled chicken salads.

By the time I looked up, I realized it had grown dark. It was almost eleven. I'd been scrolling for over two hours, and I really needed to pee. The bathroom was so far away. This was going to be terrible.

I got up and opened my door cautiously. All was dark and quiet in the little fairy-tale house, with the thick walls and the exposed beams that crossed the ceiling with measured haphazardness. It was a hunk of concrete whimsy—a big toy.

I stepped out onto the stone front step and looked up at the wide expanse of sky, scattered with all the stars not visible from Syracuse. The sky had a blue glow, with just a bright curved needle of moon piercing through. Next to me, squatting silently, was Morning House.

I'd never gotten the creeps before. I didn't really know what the creeps were. That night, I got them, and I understood. It's a cold, nervous prickling—an overwhelming sense that something in the environment isn't right. That there is a danger, but the danger is pretending to be something else. There is something that you don't want to be around, and the need to go back to somewhere you understand, that's warm and secure, where you can be away from the thing you can't name.

And yet. There was something about the cold, uneasy feeling that also made me want to look at it a moment longer. Something darted through the sky above me. A bat. Looping, sweeping in circles. I read a book about bats when I was a kid and have always had a lot of affection for them since. Bats are just here to eat insects and use sonar. They don't know we made it weird for them. They've never heard about vampires. (This is sort of the same logic I use when I can't watch animals under threat in movies or on TV. I know they're fine—they're getting a treat for doing something—but animals don't know what acting is . No matter what's going on, they're telling the truth.)

Now I really had to pee, which meant facing that trip through the door under the tree stairs, down the steps, and through the tunnel to the basement. I was going to have to get used to this. I stepped quietly back inside, pulled open the strange little door, and switched on the light. Just an ordinary basement passage. I decided to walk with a confident stride, like I loved walking through dark basements—the fake-it-till-you-make-it approach. The short tunnel was no problem. I got the key on the other side and opened the fire door that led to Morning House's basement.

This was different. In the passage, all was lit; the walls were reachable. I could hear the hiss of water in a pipe, the wind on old walls, the echo of thousands of tons of house above me, shifting in its sleep. Creepy shit, as Riki's socks would say.

There was another light switch that illuminated the way to the bathroom. It dumped industrial, orange-tinted light on the path I needed to take. I hustled, bare feet on cold concrete floor, not caring about what I might be stepping on. I was on a mission. Pee and get out. Maybe this would grow on me in time, but that time was not now.

Mission accomplished, I gave my hands a quick wash and rubbed them dry on my shorts as I hurried back. I was an arm's length from the switch when I heard it, the distinct shuffle of feet on concrete. There was someone else down here, moving through the bowels of the house.

"Hello?" I called.

I heard a soft scrape, then movement stopped. Maybe it was Van, sitting at the bottom of the pool?

"Van?" I said.

Nothing. I stood, arm outstretched toward the light, gulping down the bile that jumped up my throat.

"Okay," I said, "well, I'm going back to the playhouse, so..."

No need to murder me, creeper! Nothing to see here. Marlowe Wexler is not going to get up in your business.

I put my back against the wall and moved along, sideways-crab style, toward the door that led to the passage and the house. I heard it again. A definite movement.

I'm not proud to tell you that I didn't bother to turn off the light. I tore that door open and ran—ran through the passage, ran up the steps, ran back through the little door under the tree, which I slammed shut. I went to my shadowy room and turned on the overhead light. There was nothing there but the bed, my stuff, and a lone moth that was twiddling around the ceiling and banging into the shade.

Every single time I had to pee I was going to have to make that trip, and I did not like that at all.

Someone had been in the basement with me, which was fine . So why hadn't they answered? Unless it was a stranger on the island, someone who snuck on after closing? Or someone who took the tour and hid for the night? Maybe people did that for fun? As a goof? As a dare?

Possibly it was a rat. River rats, actual rats...

But it wasn't. I knew that much. Someone had been down there.