Cassidy used her own phone to try again and again to call someone, anyone. But Daisy never returned either of their calls or even texted, and her phone’s reception seemed to fail whenever Cassidy tried to call someone back home. Apricot dug her phone out of the couch cushions and tried to determine Daisy’s phone’s location, but the app found nothing.
They curled up on the couch together, Apricot’s head in Cassidy’s lap as Cassidy undid her braids and brushed her hair. They waited for the festival to make a statement and announce plans to send the attendees home, but none ever came. Apricot cried herself to sleep just before sunrise, but Cassidy was too anxious to sleep and too tired to drive herself as crazy as Apricot. Besides, one of them needed to stay awake in case one of those shadow people came back. She covered her friend with the comforter from her room and then hooked her phone up to charge and brought her laptop to the breakfast table. She was able to find the accounts of other people who had seen Ryan fall. Other people wanted answers and were calling for the organizers to address the incident, including the guy who started the fight at the waterfall.
Although she found him on Twitter, where he linked to a blog that seemed to talk a lot about conspiracy theories and how the government knew ghosts were real but kept it from us for some reason, it seemed like his main content was on YouTube under UrbEx Mike, where he posted videos of playing video games and exploring abandoned buildings. The video he made about the island was already up, but he’d made two videos about the festival prior to the one posted that morning. Cassidy clicked on the first video of the series. Once it loaded, it opened on Mike in a gaming chair at home.
“Hey all, if you’re new here, I’m UrbEx Mike. I like to explore dangerous places in games and in real life to see if they’re dangerous or just a front for something bigger, and I just got a wild opportunity dropped into my lap. This morning, I got an email inviting me to a music festival. Let me show it to you.”
In the video, Mike showed his desktop in a picture within picture function and Cassidy saw the exact email she’d received only days ago.
“Okay, so this looks like a scam, right? Total Dumpster Fire Fest, right? So, I went to their website.” In the picture in picture, Mike clicked on a tab in his web browser on the festival’s website. “Nothing here to really convince me it’s not a terrible idea. They’ve got pictures and stuff, which could be faked, but then look at this.”
He clicked on a video on the browser, and it began to play. Voices of artists scheduled to play the festival piped through Cassidy’s speakers from Mike’s video, expressing their excitement for the shows.
“I dunno about you guys, but that’s pretty convincing to me. Like, I don’t think Madonna plays unless she’s getting paid—we’ve all seen video of her coming late to her own shows, like, to get her committed to something seems like you’ve worked pretty hard. So, yeah, either this is a deep fake of Madonna and other people who could sue the asses off of these people, or it’s legit. Which, I’m pretty sure it’s legit now. So, then I started digging deeper, and check this out.”
Mike opened up another tab and showed the festival’s Instagram page. He clicked on another video, which Cassidy recognized as the big promo video that all the celebrities were reposting in the days before everyone arrived. It showed the island from above, close up shots of food cooking on grills, and drink glasses toasting above tiki bar tables.
“I used the flyover drone shot to find this island, and get this: They’re calling it Island X, but its official name is Twin Cay of the Bahamas. So, I did some digging on this place to see who owns it now andno one knows.” Mike’s jaw dropped like he was in shock from his own revelation. “There isn’t much information about this place, but I put links below for what I could find on it. For my own personal safety, you guys know I wouldn’t normally link to the places I’m going. But already since I opened this email and started digging, I’ve seen hundreds of people talking about getting the same email, so I think that I actually need to share this in the interest of safety.”
Cassidy scrolled down and opened the articles in separate tabs.
“Basically, though, what I’ve found is that the island has passed through a bunch of owners who have tried to do different things with it, but they’ve all ended in failure. Here’s the thing: Even right now I can’t figure out who owns this island. I can’t figure out who is behind this festival all of my searching has led me to a dead end of shell companies. This does seem pretty legitimate on the surface, but it gets really sketchy the more you look into it. And if you haven’t heard anything about these emails, they’re pretty weird, too. It appears to be an extremely exclusive invite, but not to A- or even B-list celebrities necessarily. Lots of influencers and content creators of different kinds have received them. And I’ll be honest, I think I’m going to go ahead and book a spot on the island, but it’s because I want to do some investigating. If you’ve gotten an email and you’re looking to have a good time, I would be very careful. Online creators are an easy target for scammers, so this whole thing could be an elaborate way to mock or hurt a lot of people. Maybe I’m wrong, and I guess we’ll see. If you haven’t already, hit that subscribe button so you can be notified when I post my next video about this whole Island Xperience thing.”
The comments underneath the video echoed some of what the muscular man was shouting at UrbEx Mike at the waterfall, but Cassidy couldn’t follow the drama.
Of course you’re going to make this into a bigger story than it is, too.
How hard do you think it would be to SWAT this guy while he’s on an island in the Bahamas?
Sketchy, but not spooky. GHOSTS AREN’T REAL.
Mike’s next video was basically just a montage of his travels to the island, a walkthrough of his tent and the surrounding area, and clips from last night’s show. All of it concluded with him saying that so far everything seemed above board but that he hadn’t explored all of the island yet and he wanted to go into the wooded area on the north side of the island.
Cassidy scrubbed through the third video, familiar with most of its contents since she’d seen Mike filming at the waterfall. The footage was dark, and she was glad that she was unable to make out herself or Apricot. Dark figures emerged from the poorly lit scene when the scuffle broke out, and then the shot suddenly cut to Mike speaking to the camera.
“Well, someone just tried to fight me for telling the truth, but that’s how it goes sometimes. I think I might head a little deeper into the woods since I’ve got a flashlight, and I think there’s some buildings on the far side of the island that are worth investigating. There are a ton of people here right now, so I feel safer than usual for explorations, but—”
Screams rose up from off camera and Mike’s face blurred as the phone moved around in the darkness. A chill spread over Cassidy’s arms as she realized that this must have been the moment that Ryan fell. She couldn’t make out anything in the muffled shouts, and then a fast and steady crunching sound suggested that Mike was running with the phone still recording. Abruptly, the shot changed, and Mike once again faced the camera, now sitting in his tent. He was staring off camera with wide eyes, holding his mouth in both of his hands like he was contemplating something.
“I don’t know the right way to say this, so I’ll just say it. Um, someone died tonight.” He shifted, but his eyes avoided the camera. “While I was filming, someone fell from the top of the waterfall. I didn’t see it, but I heard it. I don’t know who it was, and I don’t know what happened but …” he trailed off and let out a long sigh. “I already had a bad feeling about this place, and now this has happened and … I dunno, maybe none of it is related, but maybe it is, and now I’m wondering if coming here was a huge mistake.”
Now, he reached out and adjusted the phone, his fingers scraping the microphone.
“It’s 3:30 in the morning right now and there haven’t been any updates. Some people online seem to think they know who fell but I can’t verify it, and I don’t want to spread rumors. I don’t know if authorities here know about the death. I mean, I guess I don’t even know if anyone actually died, and maybe they’re just hurt, but, yeah. That’s where we are. Stay tuned for my next update, I guess.”
When the video ended, Cassidy opened up the articles Mike linked to and read. As he said, they described past business ventures on Twin Cay and didn’t say much. She searched for “Island X” and “Twin Cay” and found a number of articles written in the past few days.
“If you didn’t get a mysterious email inviting you to party on a private island in the last 48 hours, then you’re like most of us: not worthy, according to the email. In fact, so few people have been invited that it seems like it’s almost not even worth talking about. Probably just some credit card scam, right ...?”
“… But the dorms and villas currently being rented out by the rich and famous this week were not built by the current owners of the island or any current investors. Rather, they were built late last year by land investors who were hoping to develop the island into a fishing community. They were able to get as far as erecting the homes for the neighborhood before all work abruptly ceased after three months and the island was put back on the market. The island exchanged hands a few times before that but was never developed or inhabited for long periods of time, despite the size of the island which is nearly two square miles and quite large to be uninhabited …”
“… A conspiracy theory hatched, fueled by another strange tragedy on Twin Cay. In 2019, a fishing crew was wrecked on the island during Hurricane Dorian. The crew maintained contact with the mainland via radio for a full week while the islands were pummeled with rain. After the clouds parted, a rescue team embarked to save the fishermen. Even a mere twelve hours before the rescue team landed on Twin Cay, they had radio contact with the crew, but once they got to the island, they couldn’t find a single fisherman. All twelve men had completely disappeared …”
“… The simpler answer is that no one has actually disappeared on the island and the reports of the fishing crew have been sensationalized and that the previous owner disappeared from the island by returning to their own home after cutting their losses from the island. But the simpler answer doesn’t allow the rest of us, who are going to be bombarded with sun-dappled island getaway pictures from the influencers we hate-follow, to bitterly tell ourselves that it’s fine we weren’t invited, because we wouldn’t want to go to a haunted island, anyhow.”
“Cassidy?” Apricot called from the couch. The sound of another voice in the villa startled Cassidy so badly she nearly threw her laptop toward the sound.
“Yeah?” Cassidy responded.
