“It just got here,” she said. “This time.”
“You mean it comes and goes?” Joe asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“You mentioned seeing the woman on it,” Joe said. “Do you know who she is?”
Grace shrugged.
Conor’s mind was racing with a line of questions, but he held back from asking them—he wasn’t officially here, and he was trying to stay on his side of the line. He exchanged a glance with Joe, and Joe ran with it.
“Are there other people with her?” Joe asked.
“A man. Well, sometimes more than one. And the girls. They come for the parties.”
“Tell me about the parties,” Joe said.
“They’re up there,” she said, gesturing up the hill. “They’re the real reason I call the police.”
“Because they’re loud? Disturbing your peace?” Joe asked.
“No, they’re quiet. The whole point is for no one to know they’re celebrating. They all arrive in boats—in yachts. Or sometimes in a plane. But you can never hear music. Silent parties. Silent nights.”
“Okay,” Joe said. “Who are they?”
“The girls are like me,” she said, gazing into the distance. “Except they’re not like me. They’re Ghost Girls.”
“Ghost girls?” Conor asked. She didn’t reply. She gazed into the distance, as if seeing specters of the girls who had visited the island.
“It’s a riddle,” she said. “I don’t mean they’re like me now. They’re like the way I was. We’re ghosts of how we used to be.”
Conor and Joe waited for her to go on.
“I was one of the first.” She paused, and her chin began to wobble. “Poor things, they’ve been sick too. Like me. They’ve been in treatment. They are frail. They’re not ready for parties, or for seeing those people.”
“What kind of treatment?” Joe asked.
“Maybe they just don’t want anyone to see them at night,” she said, ignoring his question.
“At night?” Conor asked.
“That’s when they get here,” she said. “Just after dark, and they stay until midnight. They wear white dresses and float up the hill like spirits. Ghost Girls can go anywhere and be almost invisible. Like me.” She frowned. “Do you think they are real?”
Conor watched her clasp and unclasp her hands. She was drifting in and out of reality; he sensed that the treatment she’d spoken of referred to some sort of mental health intervention.
“Maybe they’re dead. Maybe the girls reallyareghosts. They leave no footprints. Why is it that I survived when some of them don’t? Iget a bad feeling from them. Some of the dead are good, and some are not,” she said.
“Which ones aren’t good?” Joe asked.
She frowned and looked away.
“Do you ever hear any sounds coming from the boat?” Joe asked. “Voices?”
She nodded. “Just like the wind,” she said.
“The sound of the wind comes from the boat?” Conor asked.
“Oh yes,” she said. “A terrible wailing, you know, the way the wind sounds when we’re having a real nor’easter, or even a hurricane before the eye passes over, when the barometer falls. Just that ungodly shriek. Makes you think your house is going to come apart. But oh, that wind on the boat. It’s the same thing. Howling.”
