Chapter 10

10

The next morning, I shuffled down that same basement passage to the bathroom in my rubbery slides. A few hours had vanquished the bad vibes completely. It had returned to being a benign space, kind of pleasant on a summer day. The showers were as basic as they came—a cheap showerhead in a concrete stall with a drain on the floor and a plastic curtain. The first shock of warmish water came tinkling from the showerhead with all the urgency of a sleepy toddler. Then it suddenly became alert and power washed me, sending me flying against the vinyl curtain with a yelp.

"Showers are weird here," I heard a voice say.

I did a quick body wash while dancing against the tips of the spray. I wrapped a towel around myself and peered out to see Liani standing outside, wearing a short blue terry cloth robe.

"It takes a minute," she said, putting her caddy down on the floor of the next stall. "But the pressure is pretty strong once it builds up."

I hadn't thought to bring a robe. It had never occurred to me that the bathroom would be so far from where I slept. I only had the slightly too-short towel to cover me as I gave her an embarrassed nod and then hustled, wet-footed, through the basement, the tunnel, back up the stairs, and to my room under the magical tree.

I had been issued three maroon Morning House polo shirts and one fleece. I pulled one polo out of the plastic packaging. It hung loose. I'd been told to bring some kind of bottoms in khaki or gray. I'd gone with gray shorts.

When I got to the breakfast table, April, Tom, and Liani were already there. (Liani was obviously quicker than I was at showering—and probably most things.) Tom was working his way through his Froot Loops with the determination of a marathon runner who'd just passed the twenty-sixth-mile mark. Riki floated into the room, dressed in black, her headphones on her head, blocking out any possible conversation. She opened the fridge, removed a bowl, and was gone.

"Morning," Liani mumbled, smirking in the direction of Riki's retreating figure.

"We'll show you around outside this morning," Tom said. "Get you familiar with the grounds."

When I stepped outside, I understood why they called it Morning House. The eerie, toothy building of the night before was transformed. In the afternoon, it was imposing. At night, disturbing. In the morning, it had a glow. Light seemed to drip down the facade. The red peaks and spikes of the roof had a cheerful tone, like jaunty little caps.

Tom showed me along the dock area, where I had come in the day before. There were sections we didn't have to think about, like the ticket booths, the refreshment stand, and the landing dock for the big tourist boats. He walked like a determined Muppet, as if there was a string coming from his sternum, pulling his chest toward an unseen hand in the sky, his legs bobbing in strides that were just a few inches longer than they should have been. It wasn't the walk of someone going places as much as it was the walk of someone who watched some videos of someone going places and was attempting to replicate it at home.

"Is it strange to be here?" he asked. "On the island for the summer?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just got here."

"But it must be really different for you. You're from near Syracuse, right?"

It was and I was, and clearly Tom wanted me to acknowledge that it was going to be maybe a little weird for me. I nodded, and he seemed satisfied.

"My family has lived around here for over a hundred years. Boating, fishing. My uncle was the mayor of Clement Bay until the last election. So, we're pretty..."

I waited for the rest of the sentence, but it never came. I was left to imagine what Tom and his family were "pretty" like. Pretty powerful. Pretty well-off. Pretty good at fishing. Pretty close to Canada. Or maybe they were just all very pretty.

He pointed at the concessions stand at the dock and the small booth with border control.

"They got a company to do all the tickets and food," he said. "I guess the government sent the guy who does border control for Canadian boats."

Border control for this little island seemed grand and silly, like three kids in a trench coat.

"This is technically America," he went on, "so Canadians have to pass through border control, but there's nothing to it because all they do is walk around the island and leave. The line between Canada and America is just somewhere in the water. Boats cross it all day long."

I had noticed this on my ride out, when my phone kept telling me I was in Canada, then that I was back in America.

"Anyway, we basically have nothing to do with the things that happen on this part of the dock. We never even talk to the people who work here very much. They come in for the day, go home. They often don't even come up to the house. I do this bit over here where the private boats come in."

Tom walked me down a small rocky strip that formed a tip off the end of the island, to a stone arching bridge. Ahead of us was another stone building, nowhere near as large as Morning House, but easily as big as the playhouse. Probably bigger.

"This is the boathouse," he said as we crossed over the tiny bridge. "It's technically on a different island. The big one is Ralston Island. This one is Sunbeam Island. But it's all one property."

The boathouse door opened onto a large area that stretched out over the water. The walls were covered in what home renovation shows call shiplap. I guess the whole ship part of that is real. It was rustic and serious-looking, with ropes and tools and a stack of canoes on one side. There were two large docking slips, but only one was occupied, and barely at that. A single Jet Ski bobbed there sheepishly.

"This is our Jet Ski," he said. "Life vests are in here."

He swung open the cabinet doors and revealed a stack of wearable orange life vests, then swung it closed again just as quickly.

"And over here..." He indicated a small padlock box hanging from a bolt in the wall. "... is the box for the keys. The passcode is 1932."

"The year everyone died here?"

"Well," he said, "seemed easy to remember."

He punched in the code and the box swung open, revealing a key on a long piece of red retractable cord.

"Everything you need for the ski is in this box under here." He pulled out a plastic box from a shelf. "Everything is in here—flares, PLBs..."

"What's a PLB?"

"Personal locator beacon."

A big rule for me is this: never go anywhere where you need to bring your own beacon. Pro tip.

"Key's on a lanyard," he said. "Put it around your wrist when you're on the ski. Most important thing. If you come off the ski, the key will pull out and the engine will cut off."

He demonstrated attaching the lanyard to my wrist using a Velcro band. Tom seemed to genuinely believe I'd be coming here often for all those Jet Ski rides I loved to take.

"You ever ridden one?"

I shook my head.

"They're basically our cars," Tom explained. "Or our bikes."

Well, the joke was on them because I don't like bikes either. This Marlowe likes to move around on land in the safety of her tiny Smart Car. She likes her water shallow and not full of five million shipwrecks.

"It's easy. I'll show you later. We have to put out the cushions now, though. That's the first job of the day. We store them overnight in the living room."

I followed Tom around Morning House, to the rubble pile that had once been a patio. He stepped across this and opened the double doors, pulling out a blue tarp stacked high with cushions. We carried these around and put them on chairs, tying them in place.

"By the way," he said, "see the big island in front of us? That rock face right there."

He pointed at another island, with a cliff face cutting out of the water.

"That's Mulligan Island," he said, pointing at the closer of the two nearest islands. "That's where it happened."

"Where what happened?"

"Chris," he said simply. Just like that. Oh, that's just where Chris fell to his death. I think he was trying to be casual about it to make it less weird, but it had the opposite effect. Either that or he was a sociopath. But I'm bad with people too sometimes, so I tried to ride along.

"Oh," I said. "Right."

"I thought we should tell you," he said, turning back to the cushions and tarp. "But it affects me less than the others. Liani dated Chris. And Van was dating him. I think April too, at some point. I was the only one who didn't."

Riki was not included in the list, I noted, but seemed to be swept into the group.

"It's... so close to here."

"Yeah. Some people were saying we should have the party here, on this island, but—it's an illegal party. We're not supposed to have it, but everyone turns a blind eye. It's a tradition. If we had it here and messed the place up, that would be huge trouble for the people who need this place for tourism money this summer. So we decided to do it over there, on Mulligan."

"He was drunk?" I said. "He fell?"

"I guess. Maybe he jumped. We all know that spot has rocks right under it. He would have known that if he was sober, but who knows? Fell, jumped, it ended up the same." He had put the last of the cushions on and began folding up the tarp. "The thing is, Liani is still having a hard time. So are the others, but Liani... I'm just saying."

I didn't know what he was saying, but now I would certainly be aware of the rock in the distance and Liani in general. And I was heading her way now, to the lagoon, for my next bit of the tour.

The lagoon was on the shallower end of the island. It looked much like the rest of the shoreline, except that there was a low rocky wall that came up about three feet out of the water. This was dotted with ladders, stone benches, and urns. Liani was also putting out cushions, but she did so in a red bathing suit and shorts, a whistle around her neck.

"This is the lagoon," Tom said. "The outdoor natural swimming pool, basically. The Ralstons sank a wall down to the bottom to block this area off from the rest of the river. There are holes in it, too small for people to pass through, that allow the water in, along with some small fish. This is where Liani takes over."

"The shallow part here is four feet deep," she said. "The deepest part is over by that bench on the far right. That's about thirteen feet. The average depth is eight feet. It's a hundred and sixty feet long, so the dimensions of an Olympic pool."

"Phillip Ralston wanted his daughter Clara to be in the Olympics," I said, recalling the piece from Life magazine that had been in the PDF Dr. Henson had sent me.

Liani shrugged, indicating that this was true, but that was then and here we were now, standing in front of it, and only one of us was qualified to take care of anyone swimming in it.

I may have been reading more into her shrug than she intended.

As we stood there, three black swans waddled down the lawn and hopped into the water.

"I've never seen black swans before," I said.

"The Ralstons brought them in here, I guess because they're uncommon and they look cool."

Liani showed me into a small stone building by the lagoon edge. This was sort of a large shed that contained a paddleboard and oar, several pool noodles, a backboard, and a first aid kit.

"And this," she said, dragging out a metal detector. "I've used this almost every day. People drop things constantly. They take off their earrings to swim or whatever and drop them in the grass."

She patted the metal detector like it was her faithful dog.

We stepped back outside, where Liani began to indicate the circular life preservers hanging from posts and fencing.

"If you see anyone fall in the water, throw them one of these and call for me. Don't try to go in yourself."

"Then you'd have two people to get out of the water."

I meant it as a joke, but the expression on her face let me know that I had blown it. No one around here thought there was anything funny about water safety, and knowing what I knew now, I should have remembered not to make that joke.

"Drowning people can take other people down with them," she went on. "That's what makes rescues dangerous."

She turned away, and I noted that she shook her head faintly, like she couldn't believe this is who she had to work with now.

By lunch, I'd learned everything I was apparently ever going to learn about the outside operations. Lunch was a premade sandwich that I ate alone in my room, because I didn't want to face anyone for a few minutes, then Van came to whisk me off on my first proper tour of the house. I followed him down the sloping path to the dock. He was long and lanky; his maroon Morning House polo shirt hung off his frame.

"Like we said at dinner last night, people just like to look at fancy stuff," he said. "That's basically all this is. Show them fancy stuff. Who doesn't like fancy stuff? They also like the death stuff because the house is supposed to be cursed. Mostly fancy stuff, though. It's like Disney World! But real. And bad. And with no rides."

"Disney World is real," I pointed out.

"That's what they want you to think. What I'm saying is that this is like Death Disney World. We're here to give the people what they want. You came here to see expensive shit and places where people died? Then follow me, tourist. Some tip. This is key information. More on that later. We're not supposed to take the tips, but we all take the tips. They go toward the community weed and booze fund, which is operated by me. Dr. Henson does not know about the tips or the fund because we never see her. She's more or less imaginary, for our purposes. She mostly sits in her rooms and works on her book. If we need her, we get her on the radio, but we've never needed her. It's a beautiful situation."

There was something grand about Van—he had the air of recently deposed royalty and now he worked here at Morning House as a tour guide, but he was fine with it. Van seemed fine with everything, and I think by fine with everything, I mean he seemed kind of high. Friendly. Aware. But high. Possibly.

A group was getting off one of Uncle Jim's cruises—at least fifty people were ambling through the gate.

"These people have just been sailing around for two hours," he said. "At least one will be someone who has a social media channel about tourism. Anyone under twenty is here under duress and wants to take selfies or make content. We let those people be. They don't need us. And there have been five engagements so far. That was exciting. Watch. I'll show you how it's done."

Van had up to this point been the human embodiment of vape smoke and Dorito dust, but when the tours rolled up in front of him, he became a different person. He was a talkative guide, breathlessly describing all the things Phillip bought for his children. There was William's customized B?sendorfer piano from Vienna, a speedboat called the Silver Arrow for Clara, a painting by Dutch still life master Willem Kalf for Benjamin, an antique rolltop desk that had come from Austria for Unity. Van rattled off the prices—ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars here and there. Two kids got things that were harder to store. Edward got controlling stocks in a jute company so he could learn how to manage a business. Victory wanted nothing for herself—instead, she was the namesake of an entire wing of a charity hospital.

Again, I was psyched as hell to get my grandparents' Smart Car.

The playhouse, where we were staying, had been designed and built by a guy who made fantasy-style houses for people in Hollywood. Apparently, that was a thing for a while. Before all the open-plan stuff you see on home renovation shows, somebody was out there building Snow White's castle or fake peasant houses for movie execs.

"And here..." He indicated one of the sunny rooms on the second floor that I knew was used for sitting in the afternoon, because this was the kind of house where you moved around all day to rooms designed to catch the sun. "... is where they used to keep their prized collection of pet pythons. The Ralstons were avid collectors."

"They were?" someone said.

"Kidding! Now, you'll love what we're going to see next..."

Right after touring with Van, I looped around to tour with April. April's tour was bright, with lots of conversations with the tourists. She didn't go into the same level of detail that Van did—she gave the basics and gave people a lot of time to make videos and take pictures, which appeared to be what they really wanted to do. Sometimes people had questions. April did not make up answers. If she didn't know, she said so, which was reassuring. I toured with each of them two more times until the patter started to run through my head and I was tired of hearing about the dome and the furniture.

"At the end of the day," April explained as the last tourists left, "we take sections and clean up a little. We sweep, wipe the glass cabinets down, check the bathrooms. I'll do it. It's your first day. You can walk with me, though. We'll do the bottom floors. Van will do the top two. We'll start with the bathrooms downstairs. That's the worst part."

I followed her to the basement bathrooms. There was a nook full of cleaning supplies next to it. She put on gloves, and I did the same. I couldn't follow her and do nothing. Together we dumped out the trash, swept the floors, and ran a mop over them.

"Don't worry about Liani and Tom," she said as she squirted a ring of bleach gel around the rim of the toilet.

I hadn't been worried, but now I was. "What do you mean?"

"They're just... It's fine."

The more someone tells you that things are fine, the clearer a signal it is that things are not fine but they are not going to tell you what's wrong, and the thing that's wrong will eventually make itself known when it's sneaking up behind you with a baseball bat and a crooked smile.

So we mopped up a bit, and the pungent smell of bleach filled the air. Morning House glowed again in the late afternoon sun. It collected the light, like some kind of mystical temple. It rained down through the thousands of pieces of glass above us in the dome. Light disinfects, I've heard. Obviously, it illuminates. It feels like security and truth, but what Dr. Henson said about bad things often being out in the open—that was gnawing at my thoughts. There was too much light, beaming down through faces leaded to the sky. It was like the house itself was trying to convince you of something, trying to make anyone who managed to get inside understand the straightforward glory of wealth. And yet, almost everyone who lived here burned too bright and fast. I idly wondered about the ethics of capitalism while I looked up whether or not you should wear sunscreen indoors if there are too many windows. The modern world makes us hold a lot of worries in our minds at the same time, and right now, I wanted to know which kind of danger would burn me up first—wealth inequality or UV rays. Which took me back to fire, and candles, and Akilah, and the merry-go-round went on.