Page 43 of Dead of Summer

ORLA

Orla’s lungs burn as she follows the flash of David’s shoes, keeping her eyes trained on the white bob of his shirt as he tears up Harbor Street toward the Gallos’ house.

The wind blows up off the water sending the seagrass slicing at her legs.

Insects chirp from the sides of the road.

A rhythmic pulsing. She hears them as a singular voice. You lie you lie you lie .

How David had pleaded with her.

“You can’t say anything about Dad,” David had instructed her, taking her hand and squeezing it. “Please. You can’t ever tell them.”

“What should I say then?” Her body was still buzzing from adrenaline, her head fuzzy from the gin.

“Tell them about Henry,” he’d replied. It was Orla’s flashlight that had discovered him out there in his little boat.

His hair and eyes were wild as she caught him in the beam, a stricken look on his face.

And there in the hull of the boat the bright sparkle of sequins.

She saw them only for a moment, one that she questioned every single day after, but she had thought immediately that the fabric was too flat and empty to contain a body.

“I can’t lie,” she’d said to David before the official questioning, her legs pressing into the plastic chair in the community center. “ I won’t. ”

“But it’s not a lie, it’s what you saw,” David had said, kneeling in front of Orla, begging now.

“She fell into the water. That’s all we know.

You just don’t have to say the other part out loud.

” The other part. She’d looked at him, trying to come to terms with what she’d seen out there.

The flailing arms, the gasping face, the tangle of hair.

The swirl of waves. All in dim flashes beneath the beam of her flashlight.

“She was so scared.” Orla’s eyes began to blur.

He’d leaned in and put his forehead to hers. How long she had craved this kind of closeness with him. His voice was filled with regret. “Orla, listen to me. Alice got herself into this.”

Just over his shoulder, Orla could see through the doorway to where Henry Wright blinked into the press conference cameras. His face looked pale and scared. A cornered creature. I came looking for the girl. I was only trying to help.

“Orla, please. I need you.” David had taken her hands, pressing them together between his like in prayer.

“They’re ready for you,” an officer had said, standing over Orla.

She felt David’s eyes on her as she’d stood up there in the bright lights, waiting to see what she’d do. She’d swallowed as she looked out at the townspeople. They already suspected Henry Wright, she didn’t need to convince them. She only needed to go along with the narrative.

“What were you doing out there?” Orla had blinked into the bright lights the newspeople had set up, looking for David.

“We went to the yacht to just, you know, hang out during the party.” She’d blushed when she said it, knowing how it sounded and feeling suddenly very stupid that her childish crush was being broadcast to the entire island.

“Were you the only ones on the yacht?” the interviewer asked.

Orla finally found David. She could see only the shape of him hanging back next to the doorframe, the broad shoulders and halo of his hair in silhouette.

“No.”

She saw Geoffrey Clarke just then, next to David, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“No, you weren’t the only people on the yacht?”

“No, I mean, it was the three of us. Me and David and Alice.”

She thought of the way Geoffrey had watched Alice drinking with those men. Was David right? Did Alice lead them on?

“When did you notice Alice was missing?”

“I fell asleep, I think we both did. We’d had a lot to drink,” she had explained, looking out at David’s unmoving form. “When we woke up, she was gone. And we started looking for her.”

“What did you see when you looked down into the water?” the newsperson asked gently.

Ed, the police chief, was on the other side of her suddenly. “You don’t have to answer. You can talk to a lawyer if you want,” he whispered. But it was too late. The story was already unspooling behind her, too late to change.

“I saw Henry Wright.” She began to cry, her shoulders convulsing so hard she could no longer speak.

Her lungs burned, unable to fill, as though she were the one drowning.

She felt herself being escorted by one of the officers out of the spotlight over to a bench just outside the room, where she put her head down between her knees and was given a glass of water.

Through the ringing in her ears she could hear David talking to them again.

With his father there he seemed more sure of himself.

“She’d been gone for a while,” he’d said to the interviewer. “We were looking for her on the yacht but then thought she might have fallen overboard. I didn’t realize that he had come on board while we were sleeping and taken her.”

Orla had gasped audibly at the lie. But David’s eyes had snapped toward her, daring her to contradict him. She’d choked back tears.

As Geoffrey Clarke led him away, David had turned back to her mouthing, I’ll call you soon .

But after that she never heard from David Clarke again. And Orla found that the spell was finally broken, because she had already stopped looking for him.

Time passed. Soon it was too much time for a person to survive on their own out in the elements.

The more the story was repeated—talked about at the station and whispered in the aisles of Danny’s—the more it stuck.

Soon the entire island had become convinced.

And nobody questioned that it was Henry Wright who had killed Alice.

Geoffrey Clarke made sure his son’s story was believed by everyone who mattered.

After all, it seemed so plausible that a creepy old man was behind it all, much more plausible than a rich young one, a boy really.

But Geoffrey never managed to fully convince the chief of police.

Even though she repeated the details of what she saw later that night to the police, shivering in a plastic chair in the station while she could see his broad shoulders hovering outside, making sure his son didn’t take the fall.

Interrupting Orla’s thoughts, David swerves left now, cutting through her yard. He comes to an abrupt stop next to Alice’s house. The flashes of light have stopped. He doubles over and pants for breath, hands on his knees. Alice’s house is a series of vague angles in the moonlight.

“The light was probably a reflection. Look. It’s gone now,” Orla says, comforted by the thought of it.

David’s shirt is soaked through on the back.

Dark patches of fabric stick to his shoulder blades, rising and falling with each labored breath.

He scans the thicket of overgrowth with his phone light.

The vines are knitted together, almost completely shut.

David pushes through them, kicking and stomping everything down with his dress shoes.

Destroying everything until he has made a path.

Sharp branches slice at Orla’s bare legs, anyway, as she stumbles through the darkness behind him.

The light comes on again. One longer flash followed by two short.

Emergency. She looks to see if David noticed but he is making his way up the sagging front steps to the porch.

Orla starts behind him, shining the light from her phone onto the skeletal set of metal chairs and a long bench missing their cushions.

She tilts her head up toward the window.

Does she see someone there in the dark looking down at her?

“I’m going inside,” David says, setting his jaw.

“No! Why?” She reaches for his shoulder to stop him but he ducks away from her grasp and approaches the front door.

Orla hopes it is locked, but the knob turns easily in David’s hand and the door swings in, letting out a rusty groan.

David stops at the threshold, shining his phone into the gloom of the house.

“Are you coming?” David asks impatiently.

Reluctantly she follows him. Of course she does.

They step into the hall. In front of them a staircase splits the house, a spacious living room with a fireplace to one side and a dining room to the other.

The furniture Orla remembers is still there but it is misshapen from humidity, discolored with mildew.

Black mold blooms along the ceiling and across the walls.

That is when she sees the tracks on the dust-coated floor, the unmistakable scuffs of recent footfalls that wind around the house, like someone has been running in circles. The footprints are small and delicate. A woman’s shoe , she thinks, swallowing.

“David,” she calls to his back, her voice thick with fear.

“I see them,” he says. His voice wavers. He is afraid too.

Something scurries behind her. Orla can hear the faint scratch of claws on the hardwood floor.

She keeps her phone’s light trained out in front of her, walking behind David toward the staircase.

He steps forward, placing one foot on the bottom stair.

It creaks dangerously. Orla swings the light up into the stairwell.

The banister is warped, the spindles stretched with a sticky mesh of cobwebs.

She glances back at the open front door, the moonlight spilling across the threshold.

Through the black mass of vines and brush she can see the water moving in the moonlight.

She could turn now and run. She could go back to New York the way she planned.

But then what? Could she ever escape Alice?

“You coming?” David calls from the landing. She looks up at his face in the glow of the phone. Her downfall. She could never say no to David. Not when he wants her there. She starts up the stairs behind him.

“Be careful,” she gasps as his foot almost goes through a rotten board.

“This place is falling apart,” David grumbles. “I don’t know why he never tore it down.”

“He?” There is a creak far above them. They freeze and look up into the stairwell.

“Shh, do you hear that?” His broad shoulders swivel in both directions.

But Orla already knows where the sound is coming from. A strange terror spreads across her skin as David reaches the landing and turns onto the hall.

“Oh my god,” he breathes. When Orla catches up to him, she sees the bright strip of light that shines through the cracks around the door to Alice’s room, causing it to appear to float supernaturally at the end of the hallway. They inch toward it, stepping carefully across the rotten floor.

Orla feels like she is in some sort of dream as David reaches his hand to the doorknob.

He stops and turns back to her. The look in his eyes is familiar.

It’s the same kind of helpless fear she saw back when they were teenagers looking through the yacht’s window.

Orla has the sensation now that she did then, a feeling that things are about to change.

That nothing is going to be the same. Not ever again.

Eyes wide, she nods. David turns the knob and pushes the door. It swings in with a horrible groan. The light from inside spills out into the hall. Orla follows him inside blinking until her eyes adjust.

A lone fishing lantern sits on top of the dresser.

A single white bulb glows through its metal cage.

The walls are black with mold and decay, but Alice’s bed is freshly made in the center of the room.

A suitcase at its foot is swung open to reveal a pile of neatly folded clothing.

Orla’s eyes land on a black coat draped over the side of a chair. Its hood sags toward the ground.

“David,” Orla breathes, her back prickling. He returns the look, his eyes wide and afraid. “Someone is staying here.”

He snatches up the lantern and thrusts it out into the room, illuminating patches of peeling floral wallpaper.

A thick fog of spiderwebs obscures the corners, where the room narrows with the eaves.

But Orla can feel the presence of someone there with them, holding their breath in the dark, trying not to move.

Another low creak vibrates through the fragile floorboards, this time from behind them.

David swings the light toward the sound.

Holding the lantern aloft he plunges it into the corner of the room.

It takes her a moment to make out the shape of the woman there.

Orla lurches back clutching her chest, feeling like her heart might explode.

The woman’s dress shimmers as she steps out of the corner toward them.