Island of Bones (Haunted Florida Book 1) Read online

  Syndia paused. Her feet paused. She took a few steps toward the cat door, while I shrank back. Don’t let her hear me in here.

  “Know what I mean, Nottie?”

  Syndia would share the findings with a metal-detecting crew before she’d share it with her mother’s faithful nurse? She crept closer to the fireplace. I held my breath and tried not to make a noise. A shadow came near the door and slowly, a woman’s hand pushed its way in.

  Syndia deposited something on the ground then pulled her hand back. The fleshy piece of meat she’d apparently given Bacon was bloody and made my stomach heave. Was that a tongue? It certainly looked like a human tongue.

  Oh, God…

  The bile in my stomach rose into my throat. What was more, Bacon actually sniffed it and licked the drops of blood, and for a moment, I changed my mind about the cat entirely and hated him with a passion, but then he turned his nose up and refused the fleshy lump.

  I couldn’t calm my heart anymore than I could stop my insides from recoiling. What was Syndia doing out there? I imagined a family where getting rid of human evidence was so prominent, such a way of life to them, it just didn’t matter anymore what you did to anybody. There were no consequences when you got away with everything. No remorse when one could easily dispose of flesh in the inlet then grind the bones with your rock-pulping machine.

  How sick were these people?

  Murderers.

  When she headed back to the dining room, I again pressed my eye against the crack in the cat door to see what else I could see. A metal bucket by one of the table’s legs, and Syndia kept throwing something into it. Whatever it was sounded dull and fleshy. Then, I heard a thwack of something hitting the wooden table, and a hand, black and blue and indistinguishable, fell into the bucket.

  I turned right around in the crawl space and threw up close to the ground. Fucking great. Now she would hear me heaving, and I’d be next on her table. Was that Nottie’s hand? What had that poor woman done to deserve this?

  “Unfortunately, you heard that man mention the energy around the fountain, too, and that’s why I had to yell at you. I’m so sorry.” Another fleshy body part hit the bucket, and again, my stomach heaved. This time, I couldn’t keep it quiet, and a gagging sound escaped my throat.

  Bacon sniffed the vomit and recoiled like today was leftovers day at Camp La Concha. He pushed through the cat door and into the house in search of better fare.

  Meanwhile, Syndia got down on her hands and knees, and I knew I was shit out of luck. Pushing her cheek close to the cat door so she could take a peek inside, I thought about punching her in the eye, but then she’d know for sure I was in here, and a shit show would ensue.

  Apparently, she already knew because the next thing that happened was the butt end of the hammer smashed its way through the wall, opening up two gashes. Two slashes of light filtered in. I screamed and covered my mouth, but of course, that was a moot point.

  “I know you’re in there, little rat. Not taking what’s mine. You hear? You’ll die in there eventually.” The hammer smashed through the wall again, but this time I took a chance and reached for it, clinging to it with my thumb and forefinger, pulling on it as hard as I could.

  I’d pulled in the blunt side and was yanking on it with all my might, while Syndia pulled on the wooden handle with both hands. Our strengths were pretty even, but with my foot firmly pressed up against the wall, I was able to wrestle it away from her slippery, sweaty hands.

  “Damn it,” she said.

  Great, I’d gotten her hammer. Not sure what I could do with a fucking hammer, but at least I could go back to Room 3 and push nails out the opposite way with it. “You didn’t have to go this far, Syndia,” I told her. “We could’ve come to an agreement.”

  “There’s nothing to agree on, Whitaker. Nobody takes what’s ours. Whoever tries to becomes part of the masonry. It’s that simple. This place is built on the souls of all who’ve trespassed here.”

  “Too bad I’m not a trespasser,” I said, crawling back on my butt and hands. “I’m the one person who actually belongs here.”

  “Good, because you’ll die here.”

  Grabbing something off the fireplace mantel, she pushed it into the crawl space and dumped it—a bottle of liquid onto the floor. I grabbed the notebook and papers and turned around to book it out of there. Then, striking a match, she tossed it inside and the whole puddle caught fire.

  Searing heat engulfed the tunnel, and I bustled away on my hands and knees, avoiding flames which spread quickly, thanks to the airy draft coming from the hole in the wall. They licked at my feet and ignited the corners of my grandfather’s papers.

  I smacked them against the floor to put the fire out, but Syndia threw another bottle into the passageway and the whole thing began sizzling. Mosquito spray. She’d thrown a whole can of bug spray. Was there no end to this woman’s insanity? As soon as the container began bubbling, I knew I only had seconds before it exploded.

  I ran all the way to the end of the corridor, to the opening to Room 3 and jumped through with all the papers I could carry close to my chest. An explosion propelled me out and into the intense winds of Hurricane Mara. I gaped at the totally broken room. The roof had been completely torn off, only three walls left standing, leaving me with the challenge of holding onto something or risk being whisked away.

  And another prospect entirely—no need for the hammer. I was free. Bad news—I had no shelter.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I was at the mercy of the elements.

  The winds had died down, but they were still strong enough to flail me like a paper bag. Rain settled in, its windblown spiky drops piercing my face. Inside the naked shell of Room 3, I reached for a plastic bag that had blown in from somewhere and put my grandparents’ papers and book of shadows in it. My nana’s photos were in my purse, but I was sure that had blown out of the room hours ago.

  Now I understood journalistic photos of hurricane victims after the storm, walking around, picking at the ground, looking for evidence of their lives in the strewn debris. I moved around the room, reaching for the next corner of the wall or armoire to hold onto. Opening a drawer to the armoire, I placed the plastic bag inside to protect it.

  My next milestone would be the big center tree up ahead. If I could reach it without getting blown away, I could hold onto it. Sprinting towards it, I miscalculated the distance the wind would push me and ended up holding onto a palm tree instead. The palm tree was better, actually, not as wide a trunk and easier to wrap my arms around.

  Standing outside during a hurricane, hugging a tree, I contemplated my existence. How had I ended up here? Stubbornness, that’s how. I had finally gotten outdoors, where tropical storm force winds were the better option over being anywhere near that psycho bitch and her house fire. The smoke carried away quickly, and the flames were dying down, but there was no doubt that the west half of La Concha Inn, my grandparents’ half, would sustain significant damage.

  From here, I could keep an eye on the back door in case Syndia came outside for me. Now that she’d killed Nottie, there was nothing to stop her from killing me too. Right now, I had to make it over to Luis somehow. If my dream was right, and he had the missing key, I had to take that back. I couldn’t risk anyone—Syndia, the police, whoever would find this mess after the storm—getting it. It might not have opened anything important, but it had been important enough to steal.

  I reached for the next palm tree, but it was just out of arm’s reach. Taking the hammer hanging from my shorts, I used the butt end to reach it and claw the tree to pull myself forward. I did this for several more trees until I’d reached the far corner of the McCardle’s yard. The remaining plywood left over the pool had blown away and the empty hole had filled with blown branches and vegetation.

  Luis wasn’t there.

  I had to ignore the deep red stains mixed with the greenery and get down there to look for him.

&n
bsp; The pool’s depth worried me. Once I reached the bottom, how would I get back up? Luckily, many fallen branches served as bulk on which I could get leverage. The winds were still cranking but the lower I went into the pool, the less I felt the effects due to the pool walls blocking it. My hair whipped around my face, making it difficult to see what I was doing. After tossing several branches aside, I finally uncovered the bottom.

  Still no Luis.

  “Come on, come on…” I searched everywhere for a body and also the cement for a fallen key. “Damn it.” Where had he gone? It wasn’t like his wound was one he could’ve recovered from. The man had definitely been dead.

  Frustrated, I climbed the tangled mess of branches and fallen tree trunks back out of the pool and crawled to the nearest palm tree to hold on. Had that key been for the shed, like in my dream, then I didn’t need it when I had a hammer. Running over to the shed, I used the wall to block the winds blowing from the opposite side. The shed was more like a small concrete building at the end of the seawall on a solid, concrete foundation. Filled with dead bodies or not, it’d be a good shelter.

  The door had an old padlock, but it didn’t seem like the kind that would use such an old key. With the hammer, I struck the padlock several times but it wouldn’t break off. I put my body weight into it, a hard thing to do when I was being slapped around by winds. I struck at the padlock again, over and over again until the hinges on the bolt came loose, then pulled at the door until the wind caught it and slammed it open all by itself. The shed was empty. Well, not totally empty, but it wasn’t piled high with dead bodies.

  Sometimes, dreams were just dreams.

  I stepped in, closed the door and locked it. Inside, the air was stagnant and musty while outside, the wind crooned and whistled all around. In the center of the building was a long six-foot metal table, like a commercial kitchen table for preparing food, with fish scales littering the floor. It was some kind of cleaning station for bringing back the catch of the day and gutting it before taking it into the house. A hose was coiled off to one side, confirming that this was used for cleaning.

  Water still dripped slowly from its valves like it’d been used recently.

  Honestly, I was relieved beyond belief. It’d been the first normal thing I’d seen all day, but the moment I closed my eyes and exhaled a sigh, a vision from another place and time flashed through my mind. A freshly dead body lied on the table. All his clothes removed in a heap on the floor. A woman in older clothing was gutting him from chest to groin, eviscerating him completely, removing his organs one by one and feeding them to the fish through a hole in the corner.

  She paused and looked at me—Syndia.

  I shook my head, gasping for air. “No, no, no…” Why? Why must my brain show me such things? Something in the corner caught my attention. A small closed door in the floor leading to the inlet below. When I removed the latch and tugged on it, the wind whipped up underneath it and slammed it open. Forcefully, I closed it back up.

  My heart pounded. This was where they tossed the flesh of their victims—the skin, the meat, the insides—anything that turtles and fish and alligators might love. The hose washed away all blood and bodily fluids, and right there, along the edge of the room was a gutter. I crouched low to examine it. More fish scales but also traces of hair. Brown hair, long hair, silver hair. Still wet with bits of flesh still attached.

  Recent, not old.

  I felt the rush of my stomach coming up again, but I’d had nothing to eat and dry-heaved instead. This room had been used for de-boning, for cleaning and preparing bodies. Same as butcher shops had done with chickens and fish and livestock all across the world, except with victims over the last seventy years. Human victims.

  When I blinked again, the dead man on the table turned his head to look at me with wide-open blue eyes. “Help me.”

  “No. Stop.”

  I couldn’t stay here another minute. I didn’t care if the wind was still going, I would’ve rather stayed outside than be locked in here with ghosts of a wretched past. It was then that I noticed the walls behind me covered in tools. Knives, some still dirty, some rusted, hand drills, and scoopers, the kind that looked like they were used to scrape the inside of a jack-o-lantern on Halloween.

  A few spots were empty. Missing tools. Syndia was probably using them inside the house. Taking a last look at the room in case I had to answer questions during a homicide detective interview, I left the shed but not without going back in a second to pluck something off the wall—a large sharp boning knife.

  A flash and the walls dripped with blood. I couldn’t stomach anymore and shut my eyes against the vision.

  I closed the door. I shoved the knife into my shorts’ pocket, slicing through the back. The hammer went into the other pocket. Now all I had to do was get the fuck out of here, report this house of violence to the police, and blow this shit wide open. Maybe even get back this house for my grandmother, so she could rest in peace.

  So I could rest in peace.

  But the wind had picked up again, and this time holding onto palm trees wasn’t enough. My body got blown back and slammed into another tree, and while I was counting the stars in my head, a large piece of aluminum siding blew past, gashing my forehead. I cried out but held onto the tree. The reality of getting tossed around by a hurricane hit me hard.

  I was going to die either way.

  “Whitaker, where are you?” Syndia screamed into the wind. “You’ll die out there.”

  She hadn’t seen me lying here, but one scan across the property and she spotted me in the grass. Employing the same tree-hugging method, she jumped from palm to palm, bloody knife in her hand, pausing at one to gaze at me, checking to see if I were alive. She wore an apron covered in bloodstained handprints, and her wild hair flew all around her like Medusa.

  “Come back inside,” she said with a laugh then muttered, “before I lose you.”

  So she wasn’t concerned for my safety; she merely didn’t want to misplace my dead body in this tropical typhoon. Didn’t want to miss the chance to add the Drudge granddaughter’s bones to the family garden wall. Huh, Syndia?

  “I can’t move.” I hoped the lie would get her closer to range. I crept my hand into my pocket, fingers at the ready.

  “Good, that makes things easier for me,” she said before charging at me.

  I acted quickly, pulling out the knife and pointing its gleaming end at her, but the winds had shifted, knocking her off course. She landed on top of me. I felt no pain. She must’ve gotten her knife stuck somewhere behind me. My blade, however, penetrated her shoulder near the edge of her skin and pulled off a chunk of flesh. Howling in pain, she screamed obscenities, gray glassy eye bearing down on me.

  For a moment, I almost felt like I’d seen her this way before—a long time ago. In one of my night terrors as a child. Her arched eyebrow and hateful gaze looking down at me in bed. In my dream, I had hid from her. Not anymore.

  “You fucking bitch,” she growled.

  “Right back atcha,” I said, but then she got leverage and, despite Hurricane Mara, despite the flying trees and loose aluminum siding blowing over our heads, despite a million projectiles that could’ve stopped her, she managed to shove her bloody, dirty knife into my back.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Ellie, honey, you can let go.

  It’s alright.

  Nana’s voice.

  I know you’re doing this for me, but I’m happy. I’m back with Bill.

  Thank you, love. Thank you for bringing me home. You can let go now. Come with us.

  She wanted me to release myself of pain, to give into my fate.

  Someone pulled me by the hair. Dragged me across a flooded yard. Water sloshed up my nose, sharp edges dug deeper into my wound, and that damn wind hadn’t stopped yet. The storm. I was outside in the storm, and the pain in my back made me want to end it all.

  But I dared not move.

  She
thought I was dying—Syndia. And maybe I was, which would explain why I faltered in and out of consciousness, why I couldn’t move, even when my mind wanted to get up and fight. She dragged me all across the jagged property. Every so often, I’d crack open my eye and see her struggling, tugging me by both my feet. When she’d hit a rock or a pile of fallen leaves, she’d maneuver me around them. Why wouldn’t she just take me back inside the house and wait for me to die there?

  Because she was insane, that’s why.

  I had to stop trying to make sense of her actions—there were none. Syndia Duarte was an obsessed woman who’d lost it long ago, searching for her precious Holy Grail when there was no one left in life to share it with. A woman who’d lost touch with all reality and consequence. And I was about to become another pile of pebbles in her wall.

  “I told you to leave, but no. Never tell me I didn’t try, Whitaker.” She huffed and heaved my body over more rocks and mini rivers that had formed during the storm. “I tried. I definitely tried to protect you. But you insisted on staying.”

  I groaned.

  My fingers blindly felt around for my knife and hammer, but my pockets were empty. I had no defense. The best thing to do was keep pretending I was dead, keep hearing Nana’s voice comforting me, telling me it was okay to die if dying was what I decided to do. But I wasn’t ready. I still had too much I wanted to do.

  A new career in something, I didn’t know what yet.

  Talk to my mother, ask her all the questions I didn’t get to ask Nana, appreciate her.

  Get married to someone maybe. Have kids of my own and never, ever tell them that their visions weren’t real. I’d tell them their visions were evidence of their power, and the sooner they started learning how to harness it and use it, the better off they’d be. I’d wasted so much time being afraid of mine. The ghosts were awful but they couldn’t hurt me.

  This bitch, however, was a different story.

  I knew where she was taking me—to the cutting machine. I saw them all—Bill, Nana, Robert, Susannah, even Mayai—spirits of the forest, all standing around the clusters of trees in different positions, watching the scene unfold.