Island of Bones (Haunted Florida Book 1) Read online

  EIGHTEEN

  The good news was that there seemed to be a draft coming from the hole in the wall. The hole behind the safe where I’d found my grandmother’s photos. The space probably led deep enough that Bacon used it as a passageway to get through the property, but the bad news was that I wasn’t cat-sized and would never fit.

  More bad news…

  If I couldn’t find the tools to help me chip away at this wall, then I’d definitely never be able to bust open Bacon’s hidden space. I stood in the middle of the room, taking stock, trying to figure out what to do. It all felt so helpless, and my doom-and-gloom brain wasn’t helping. Thoughts attacked me—I would die in here, this was my own fault, I was here because of how stupid I was…

  “Stop, Ellie, stop!” I chastised myself.

  Outside, the wind picked up, wooing and whistling all over the house. Loose debris flying around scraped the walls and windows, while I tried not to think about how much worse it would soon get.

  I took inventory of what I had—not much.

  But there was a bed, and the bed had a metal frame. With the screw Luis and I had used earlier before he was so freakishly killed by happenstance, I worked to unscrew the bolts holding the frame together. I didn’t need to take the whole thing apart, only one long side and that meant five screws, two on either end, and one in the middle bolting down the crossbar.

  Just loosening those screws took up two or so hours, and in that time, I cut my fingers into bloody shreds. During that time, what little light filtered into the boarded up house lessened even more, and I turned on the lamp to keep from being in total darkness. Whatever I meant to accomplish, I had little time to do it before the power eventually cut. Pulling out the last screw from the bed frame, I pulled apart the metal piece and held it up.

  Like a spear or javelin, it felt weighty and solid in my hand. I wanted to wield it, smash everything in the room—smash Syndia’s face if I had to. It was my only weapon in case I needed it. For the moment, however, I rammed it against the wall, over and over again, until the plaster began falling off in chunks, exposing more and more of the colored tile.

  As I chipped away, building a rhythm, I fell into a trance.

  With little light, all this repetitive motion served to put me in an altered state of mind. Soon, I was hearing voices, as I chipped away plaster. I heard my grandfather’s deep voice talking to my grandmother. I heard her laughing and felt him taking her into his arms and kissing her.

  Today’s the day, Leanne, I can feel it.

  Don’t go, I heard her thoughts. Something terrible’s going to happen.

  “What happened, guys? Tell me what happened,” I muttered.

  Light blue tiles turned to medium blues and dark blues. Sometimes, I’d expose a green tile, sometimes white. Sometimes I’d accidentally chip a piece of tile and curse out loud for having damaged it. Eventually, at what might’ve been one or two in the morning, the entire Florida Straits came into view on the wall. The keys were represented by their own green tiles, and Cuba was comprised of a large dark and light green shape that resembled a hammerhead shark.

  Why would my grandfather make his map this way? Why not draw or paint it on paper or canvas like a normal person would? Why make a map at all? Wasn’t the information safer locked away in his head?

  To manifest…

  It was Mayai’s voice, echoing from a faraway place.

  “Manifest? What does that mean?” I asked but got no response. Only more whistling wind and shaking shutters. A darkness seeped into the room that enveloped me like tangled arms of energy. “I hate ghosts,” I muttered.

  On the map, Northwest of Havana, between Key West and Cuba, was a swirl of white mosaic tiles. It almost looked like a little hurricane right in the middle, but I understood the symbolism. X marked the spot. Bill hadn’t made it obvious with a big red X like in pirate movies, but the swirl got tighter with smaller, tinier bits of glass tile, and I knew this was his sweet spot.

  The location of the Spanish galleon.

  Grabbing my makeup brushes from my suitcase, I used the blush brush to clean away plaster dust from the tiles. The piece was extraordinarily beautiful, and when I put the little table next to it, I saw what he’d done. The table was a closer version of the swirl design, like someone had zoomed in by pinching out on their phone. Watery swirls, fish, and sharks appeared in on the table version. Details, closer-up.

  I hadn’t exposed the entire map, only enough to admire it in the feeble lamplight. Why, though? I kept wondering. All I could imagine was that my grandfather had been a visual person, an artist at heart. And like many of my middle graders in math, he had to create art with his visions in order to see concepts better in his mind. Maybe this wall mosaic had been my grandfather’s vision board, a place to see his dreams clearly.

  It humbled me to know that Bill Drudge had stood here some seventy years before and created this masterpiece right in this very room. It pained me to know that Nana couldn’t take any of his art with her, that I had to stand here uncovering what time had so ruthlessly tried to erase.

  “I’m sorry, Nana. You had to leave it all behind. That must’ve been so difficult for you.” What an unfair start at life. I wished she was here so I could hug her and tell her how much I admired her for starting over with my mother, for living out the best remainder of her life as she could. Because of her, I’d had a good life.

  The more I brushed away the debris, the more I could see what was underneath the tile. There was no need to chip the pieces away, since they were made of glass and clear. Right above the tight swirl was faint handwriting on the wall. A set of numbers—N 23º 54’ 27”, W 83º 37’ 54”.

  Latitude and longitude.

  Coordinates?

  Coordinates my grandfather felt would lead him to the location of the Spanish galleon. How did one figure that out in 1951 anyway? With no internet, no computer models to help him? That took serious research skills. Even the Titanic hadn’t been found for another thirty years.

  Quickly, I reached for the photos I’d found earlier and shuffled through them. One was a close-up of this exact spot. Who took these pics? A pang of anxiety hit my chest, and I closed my eyes to try and see past the aggravation building in my body, see the answers in my mind.

  Open up and access my intuition?

  Okay, Mayai, you win.

  I’d try it again. I envisioned it, the very moment in time these photos were taken, but it wasn’t Bill or Nana who’d taken them. It’d been McCardle’s wife—Susannah. Had she broken into their house and taken these photos while they weren’t home? Or had Nana invited her in for a margarita…meanwhile, she’d snuck in to take a photo of their private bedroom wall?

  I hated the uncertainty.

  Bill never saw the gold, because he was cut off at the pass. The next door neighbors had the coordinates to his location. Good ol’ Captain McCardle had gone off course to find the spot the same night my grandfather had headed out. Intercepted at sea.

  Pirates abounded in 1951. And one of them had been Robert McCardle.

  Holy shit, this hadn’t just been a case of them finding my grandfather on the way back from his expedition and stealing his gold. No, this had been pre-meditated from the very beginning. They met him at the site.

  N 23º 54’ 27”, W 83º 37’ 54”

  “Fucking bastard,” I mumbled.

  I shuddered when the windows began wheezing, gasping for breath. Maybe I shouldn’t speak to anger the spirits, considering I was trapped inside a room at the mercy of nature and the paranormal world.

  But why the hatred? All because my grandmother had been different? Because she’d been a saucy woman unlike the pious ones who’d lined up to receive communion every Sunday? Because she thought for herself? Did they really want them out of the neighborhood that badly?

  It was unfair and infuriating. I sat and admired the mosaic a long time, taking it in, imagining myself in their time. As t
he only connection to my grandfather, the piece of art felt like a responsibility for me to absorb. I hated the fact that I couldn’t take a photo of it now that Psycho Bitch had smashed it with her hammer of deceit.

  Outside, the storm had finally arrived.

  All my life, I’d thought hurricanes were like tornadoes, beginning forcefully and suddenly. Instead, they crept in slowly, beginning as sunny days, then raining just a little, then a little more until the winds were howling over the roofs, and the planks of wood stuck to the windows rattled with fury. A slow deterioration.

  Much like my sanity.

  A flash of lightning illuminated the room for a bright moment. I saw the shape of a human shadow in the corner of the room. Someone was in here with me. I scanned the room, waiting for the next flash. On my suitcase, Bacon slept soundly curled up into a ball.

  “How can you sleep through this?” I dropped my head against my knees, willing the spirits away. “Please, stop. Enough for one day.”

  There is nothing in here with me.

  There are no ghosts.

  It’s all in your mind, Ellie.

  In my heart, I knew it wasn’t true, but I had to tell myself lies if I was going to make it through the night. I crawled into bed, now a mattress on the floor. I collapsed from sheer exhaustion. Each time the lightning flashed, I closed my eyes and imagined the storm going away, imagined the shadows moving to gang up on Syndia instead. But no matter what, I felt them nearby. Someone was haunting me.

  “Leave me alone, leave me alone…” I chanted the mantra.

  From the scraping, creaking noises outside, the sheer force of the hurricane’s winds, and the house trembling with fury, I knew it’d be a while before I saw sunlight again. I may as well try to sleep through it. Perhaps in the morning, it will have passed and all this will have seemed like a dream.

  A fucked-up, OCD-infested dream.

  I flipped over and covered my head with the sheets like I had as a child when the visions attacked me. A moment later, something jumped up onto the bed, and I flinched, but it was only Bacon wanting warmth. I’d never been a cat person, but I could share the bed with him. After all, he’d led me to the photos and come back to keep me company.

  Bacon is my lifeline, I thought.

  Within seconds, I fell asleep and was aware of it. I could hear myself snoring and just didn’t care to move or switch positions, I was so tired. I dreamed of Luis, trying desperately to pry open that shed door, slipping backwards and falling into the pool. I saw the moment he split his neck open in dreadful slow motion. I heard my own scream and told myself to imagine him as happy in heaven instead, if such a thing even existed.

  Lucid, Mayai’s voice slithered in.

  Lucid dreaming, yes. I’m keenly aware of the changes in my psyche now that you’ve made me toss my medication into the ocean, Mayai. Thank you.

  But in my dream, lucid or not, when Luis landed in the pool, he laughed and got back up. He chuckled and fixed his neck long enough to crawl out of the hole without his head snapping off completely. It’s here, he said once he’d crawled out, shaken off the dirty leaves, pointing to the shed.

  “What is?” I was scared to get near the walking, talking dead man.

  The answers. He pointed to the lock, pulled the missing brass key from his pocket, and opened the shed’s lock.

  Wait. Did he have the key all along? Pulling the shed door back, he showed me the inside of the shed. The stains of caked blood on the floor, the flies laying maggots on the piles of flesh. The shed was floor-to-ceiling filled with dead bodies, and the freshest one on top…was me.

  NINETEEN

  The house roared like a freight train.

  I awoke with a start to find the windows and walls shaking. If the house lifted and carried me into the sky right now, it would’ve been just as well. A exciting end to an otherwise boring life. Thank you, Key West.

  Hurricanes weren’t full of rain and lightning like I’d imagined most of my life. They were blasts of wind interrupted by even stronger blasts of wind. Gales piled upon more gales, a constant barrage I thought would never end. For hours, I’d been sleeping. For hours, I’d been hearing the atmospheric train running over the roof in my lucid dreams.

  Luis, the key, the shed out in the back…

  I couldn’t check on any of it.

  Stay inside…

  Yes, I intended to. Thank you, spirits of the Ellieworld.

  Bacon was gone. Probably headed back into his hiding spot. I’d hide there too if I was him. One of the articles I’d read last week mentioned how the safest spots during a hurricane were inside windowless framed rooms, like closets and bathrooms. If worse came to worst, I could hide in the bathroom and put this mattress over my head.

  I would survive this.

  But first, I had to survive my own mind.

  Something sat on the bed with me. Nobody was there, but I could feel it, a female presence. I felt her anguish without having to see her and knew it was my grandmother. Still, I bristled, not liking the feeling of being with someone I couldn’t see. In front of the bed appeared a woman. Angry lines, hair in curlers, a handkerchief tied around them. She spoke through the chain link fence.

  I saw you posing in your little whore’s outfit, Leanne. Through the window last night. Bob saw it too. You go around tempting the whole neighborhood husbands that way? Little tart.

  Susannah, Robert’s wife. My grandmother hated her, yet she couldn’t stop her from harassing on a daily basis. I was pissed for Nana and wanted to tear those curlers out of her head and shove them down her throat.

  You’re going to pay for it, Susannah said, plucking weeds from the fence line that had crossed over from my grandparents’ yard. She shook them at Nana. Go to church and be saved, witch. Then, she tossed the weeds back over, as they landed at my grandmother’s feet.

  The woman disappeared, leaving behind a cloud of disappointment on the bed. “You were better off leaving town. Sounds like nobody understood you here anyway.”

  Bill did. Bill understood me like no other.

  When I blinked, it wasn’t my grandmother on the bed with me but Mayai, turning to look at me over his shoulder. Fight for her, he said.

  How could I?

  I broke into tears. I was stuck in a cage, a storm raged on outside, and there was nobody left to help me. The only other person in the house was more insane in the brain than I’d ever imagined, a woman on the brink of losing it all. I’d been there too when I lost my boyfriend and my grandmother in the same night.

  So had my grandmother.

  So had Bill. So had my mother when she went through her divorce.

  We’d all been on that brink before, where the world feels about to end but suddenly the clouds break and a silver lining appears. But not all of us went around with a hammer threatening to take others down with us. Syndia, though, was special. Lucky me.

  The walls shook again, and for the first time since the storm started, I felt nervous and scared for my life. Luis had said that Key West had endured a lot of storms over the years and came out just fine, but no house on the island had looked as dilapidated as this one. I felt the structure was about to be compromised at any moment.

  Maybe I’d overlooked this. Maybe I’d trusted my instincts too deeply, and now it was too late.

  I laid myself down and tried going back to sleep, listening to the winds pummel the house, debris flying all around, windows getting hit with loose projectiles. Something slammed into the wall behind me, and I flinched.

  “God, Universe, whatever you are…I promise to believe if you just get me through this bullshit,” I bargained with anyone who would listen. Reaching over, I tried clicking on the light only to find that the power was out. Must’ve gone out a while ago as I slept.

  The room filled with overpowering energies, like a surge of electricity before a lightning hit.

  Just then, the corner of the ceiling lifted, nails ripped out of
wooden beams.

  “Oh, hell no.” Please tell me the roof wasn’t about to come off. I climbed off the bed and dragged the mattress into the bathroom alcove where the sinks were, taking the metal bar with me just in case. It was my only implement. Crouching under the mattress, I pulled it over my head and thought about my life. About everything it had meant and everything I still wanted to do.

  Nails squeaked, wood creaked until suddenly, there was a pop and the room filled with 140 mph winds. I screamed and held the mattress close to me, using its handle, but the walls around me weren’t close enough to hold it in place, and it yanked out of my hands and through the ceiling. I watched the roof yawn open some more, as the palms outside bent to the wind’s will.

  “Christ…” Using the metal bar, I slammed against the cat’s hideaway opening over and over until big chunks of wall came loose. Enough that I could stick my hands inside and rip off big pieces of drywall. Once I’d exposed a big enough hole, I stepped over the safe bolted into the floor and crawled on my hands and knees, ignoring the spider webs and critters scattering at my presence.

  Inside the space, I felt safer with all the internal structure and beams around me, but the opening I’d carved still gave the wind a place to blow into. That greedy wind. Didn’t it have enough places to invade? The ghosts were nothing now, merely guides and wisps of the past.

  I thought of my mother, of all the times she’d sat on my bed and felt my forehead for fevers. Of all the times she’d driven to school to bring me projects I’d forgotten, lunchboxes left behind. All she’d wanted was for me to come home, but I’d been too stubborn.

  Now here I was with Mother Nature banging on my door and a crazy woman in another room who didn’t care if I lived or died. Who would just as soon leave me outside to rot in a dry concrete pool and threaten anyone who tried getting help for me.

  Somewhere outside this wall space, in Room 3, another piece of roof ripped off. I heard it tear then fly away. The only good thing was that its absence let in the tiniest bit of light. Even during a hurricane, sunrise still came. The sun stopped for nobody, no storm. No rays of sunshine invaded, but a dull, cloudy grayness gave me enough light to see that I wasn’t just in a wall space but a passageway. And not just big enough for a cat but for a crawling human.