“My grandmother needs some spare keys made,” she told the clerk at the hardware store. She passed them over, and he cut them without question, making perfect matches. Vi hurried back home—Gran was still downstairs with Iris. She put the originals back on the key ring.
Now, with the duplicate keys tucked into her pocket, she was setting her alarm for one a.m. Gran was usually in bed by eleven. She read for a while and was asleep by midnight.
Iris had showered and was in clean, right-side-out pajamas. She’d told Vi that she and Gran had just played cards down in the basement. And they’d taken out some of the mice and played with them. She told Vi that Gran had hugged her. Afterward, Iris had promised Gran that she was going to try hard to be a normal girl.
“I’m coming with you to the Inn,” Iris said.
“No way,” Vi told her. “It’s too dangerous. Me trying to get in and out of there is hard enough, but two of us? Forget it.”
“I need to come with you,” Iris said. “To see it for myself.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’ll go in, get all the files I can grab, and come right back.”
“If I go with you, we’ll be faster. And we can carry more. I need to go, Vi. I need to see where I came from. And maybe being back there, seeing it, maybe it’ll help me remember.”
Vi sighed and turned out the light.
Iris came and got into bed beside her. “Please,” she said. “I did what you asked. I pretended for Gran. Can’t you do what I’m asking?”
Vi didn’t answer.
“Vi?”
“Yes?”
“Are you afraid of me?” Iris touched Vi’s shoulders, ran her fingers over her neck, pressing gently on her throat.
Vi swallowed. “Should I be?”
“Maybe,” Iris said.
“And maybe,” Vi told her, “you should be afraid of me.”
“Why?” asked Iris.
And Vi hugged her. She held her as tight as she could, pushed her whole body against her, melted into her, until she wasn’t sure where she ended and Iris began.
Lizzy
August 21, 2019
COME IN AND lock the door behind you,” Skink said, his voice cracking a little as he tried to sound like some badass action movie star. He shifted from foot to foot. His eyes were red and bloodshot, like he’d either been crying or hadn’t slept.
“What’s going on, Skink?” I asked in a calm voice as I stepped into the campground office, my eyes on the monster book, the doll, and the gun on the desk.
Had I misjudged this boy?
“That’s just what I want to ask you,” he said, moving around to the chair behind the desk. “Sit.” He nodded at the chair in the corner of the office by the coffeepot. I walked over and lowered myself into it. He put his hand on my gun but didn’t pick it up.
I doubted the kid had ever fired a gun in his life.
“Skink, please be careful. That’s loaded.”
He jerked his hand away as if the gun had shocked him, but said defensively, “You think I don’t know that?”
“Just making sure,” I said in what I hoped was a reassuring tone. “So, you went into my van? Took this stuff?”
He nodded, bit his lip.
“How come?”
“You show up here on the island just after Lauren goes missing, asking about Rattling Jane. I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. I knew you were connected somehow. I just needed proof and now I’ve got it.” He looked very pleased with himself.
Here I was, starting to think that maybe he had something to do with Lauren’s disappearance, and he’d been thinking the same thing about me.
“Did you take the gas out of my van too?” I asked.
“Yeah. I didn’t want you to get away. Not when I had all this evidence.” He reached down, picked up the doll. “This is sick stuff, Lizzy. These are her clothes, her actual clothes, her actual hair! Where is she?”
“I don’t know, Skink.”
He took out his cell phone, held it like a weapon, finger poised over a button. “I’ll call my dad. I probably should have already called him, but I wanted to hear your story first. Maybe it’s better if he and I both hear it together.”
“I’d like the chance to tell you first,” I said, keeping my voice calm, level, friendly. “Then, if you’d like, you can call your dad.”
The dark circles under his eyes were like purple bruises. “So start talking.”
I took in a breath, wondered how little I could get away with saying while still keeping him happy. “I did come here, to the island, to find Lauren. I’m very sure she didn’t run away.”
“She was taken,” Skink said. “But not by Rattling Jane.”
“You’re right,” I said.
“I read the book,” Skink told her.
“This book?” I pointed at the cracked three-ring binder that held The Book of Monsters. A child’s project dragged from a closet.
I heard Neil Diamond again, one of Gran’s crackling records.
I am, I said.
“That’s just something my sister and brother and I made when we were kids—it’s got sentimental value, but that’s it.”
He nodded. “I know. I mean, I figured it out. Also that this… this monster… she isn’t really who she says she is. She’s not Rattling Jane.” He paused, chewed his lip. “It’s your sister. Your sister who calls herself a monster.”
I froze, my body turning to ice.
The truth at last.
“What?” I said. “How do you—”
“It’s all here, in this book.” He gave me a well, duh look. “Haven’t you read it?”
“Not for years,” I admitted. “I went to the tower last night after I left you. I thought… I guess I hoped that maybe I’d find Lauren. But all I found was the book and the doll—left for me.”
“Left by your sister?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“And she’s got Lauren,” he said.
I nodded. “She must.”
Skink rubbed his eyes.
“You want to help Lauren, don’t you?”
He nodded, very slightly.
“I want to help her too. I want to find her and save her. And I think I can.”
He sat up straight, staring at me with glassy eyes.
I knew what I had to do, though I hated to do it. I didn’t want to involve this boy. But it was too late. He was already in deep; no way he was walking away. “I think I can do it with your help. Will you help me, Skink?”
He stared at me, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. He still held the phone in his hand.
“?’Cause here’s the thing: if you call your dad, I think we blow all our chances of finding Lauren. I think… I think I need to be the one to find her. I’m being led there. It’s what the monster wants.”
Skink grimaced. “She’s playing some sick game with you, using Lauren as bait.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But it’s not just Lauren. There have been other girls.”
“Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll help you.” He set the phone down on the table. “But I’m warning you, if you try anything weird, or I find out you’re actually more involved in this, then I’m calling my dad. And I want to know everything. The whole story. Like, is she really some kind of… monster?”
How could I even begin to answer that? “She thinks she is,” I told him. “And that’s what matters.”
“So how do we stop her?” Skink asked.
“First, we have to find her. We know she’s on the island. Or she has been in the last day or two, because she left the book and the doll. And if she’s here, then Lauren’s here. Maybe they’re in the woods somewhere? Or holed up in one of the cottages?”
“I don’t think so,” Skink said.
“Why not?”
“I read the book, remember? She’s added new stuff to it. She wrote a note to you at the end, and I think it says where they went.”
Vi
July 28, 1978
VI AND IRIS held hands as they crossed the lawn to the Inn. The yellow bricks seemed to glow. It felt like the building was waiting for them, watching them as they ran to it.
For as long as she could remember, Vi had thought of the old hospital as part of her home—ghosts and all. She had looked out at it in every season, from her bedroom window or from the front porch. Had seen it covered in a thick blanket of snow, surrounded by the blazing foliage of autumn, watched it come alive with green buds in spring, and seen it seem to waver like a mirage in the heat of summer.