Answeringherquestions had been a lot harder. There was someone else on the island, they’d told her, but they couldn’t say who—or why they hadn’t mentioned this other person before.
“It wasn’t until after we ate and showered and had a chance to chill,” Mariana explained, “that we started to remember. Guess we’d blocked out some of our time there. Trauma, you know.”
“It was a blur,” Reyva said.
“Hunger can do that to you,” the park ranger said, a bit doubtfully.
Claire didn’t know if that was true or not, or if the park ranger believed them or not, but they all nodded vigorously.
The park ranger had looked at each of their faces, and Claire didn’t know what she saw. Sincerity? Or desperation. Either way, she had agreed.
Only when they were already on the boat did the park ranger say more. “Always been something off about that island,” she said. “Lots of local stories. Sightings. Odd weather. If you say there’s someone else there... well, it’s not a place anyone should stay.”
Claire wondered if the locals suspected, in the back of their minds, what lurked on the island. She knew from the park ranger that they’d seen the odd weather patterns. Maybe they’d heard the quieting of the birds. Felt the way the island was always watching. As the spray from the lake hit her face, she watched the island draw closer and closer and wished they were headed in any other direction.
“Can’t believe we’re going back,” Reyva muttered.
“Are you sure there’s someone we’ve forgotten?” Mariana asked, low so that the park ranger couldn’t hear her over the thrum of the motor. “I mean, I don’t remember forgetting anyone... which, now that I say it out loud, makes sense.”
“How did I know how to clean that fish?” Claire asked. “And whose satellite phone was that, the one you tried to fix? I know it wasn’t mine or either of yours.” She felt like she had all her memories—she could trace every step from the moment they walked onto the dock—but they didn’t make sense when she strung them together. “Why did we chase the wild man? Think about it. It doesn’t make sense that he’d have a satellite phone. He’d been lost for decades. Whose backpack was that that the phone was in?”
The spirit must have made them forget, with the plan of claiming the body of whomever it was they’d forgotten for itself.It hadn’t counted on them trapping it inside the cave... which meant that he was still somewhere injured and alone.
How did she know the forgotten person was ahe? And why did she think he was injured? She felt certain of that, though she didn’t know why or what injuries.
Mariana was nodding, her lips pressed together. “There was a boy...”
“Yes!” Claire latched onto that. She wasn’t alone in thinking it was a boy. What boy? Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to remember. It felt like the memory was a fish, wriggling away through the water. She reached for it, and it slipped through her fingers.
At the dock, they all jumped off the boat. There was police tape visible in the woods—the police had already been here and had presumably found Mackenzie Williams’s body, or at least begun a search for it. Claire hurried to where their campfire had been. She spotted a shelter in the woods, branches leaning against one another. “He built that,” she said.
“We hid there,” Reyva said, pointing.
It began to come back.
They’d hid. The wild man had come.
Together, they began to hurry up the trail toward the Lake House, with the park ranger following them. Halfway up, Claire caught Mariana’s arm. “No, we didn’t come down the trail. We ran into the woods, beyond the tennis court.” She remembered this part. The dead man had been chasing them... “And then we hid not far from the shore. Not far from where the boat was wrecked. We found it the next day, remember?”
“If we follow the shoreline...,” Reyva began.
As one, they pivoted and backtracked to the lake. Following them, the park ranger asked, “Are you sure you girls know where you’re going?”
“We’re remembering!” Claire said. The memories were coming faster, now that they were back on the island. She began to run along the shore. There was an indent in the pebbles from where they’d pushed the wheelbarrow with the boat engine.
Soon, they found the wrecked boat, where they’d forcibly removed the outboard engine. There was still the impression on the ground where it had thumped down, and Claire could see the wheelbarrow tracks.
The park ranger examined the broken boat, while Claire scanned the edge of the forest. Which way... They’d hidden for the night and left Jack there.
Jack. That’s his name.
She remembered now!
“Jack!” she called.
Mariana and Reyva called too. Leading the way, Mariana plunged into the forest. They watched for anything that looked familiar. They’d hidden themselves with branches beneath an overhang of rocks—
“There!” Mariana cried.
