West End Mansion

Chapter 1 (week 50 – 2018): The arrival

October of ‘07

The terror that would slowly seep into their lives wasn’t on either of their minds. It was more like it was the extreme opposite: for all of them life was ascending and for the first time they had cash to splash. After they graduated from high school in ‘00 they had made a pact to meet for a get together back on Rokset Island at the end of every stretch of their lives – no matter where in life they were. That summer Frankie had graduated as the last of them.

Their pack, their unit, or as they described themselves when they were younger: the gang, consisted of Jep, Frankie, Jim, Tony and Phyllis. They had grown up together on Rokset Island and looking back all of them agreed that none of it had been too bad: they could do pretty much as they pleased and they grew up in one of the safest places on earth. Until they were about 13 all of that had been enough: they would spend the weekends fishing, or hunting up in the hills and they had their clubhouse near the beach.

When they were a little older, safe equaled boring though, but the boredom that they had experienced when they were young was something that they thought back on as just another element of the island life. It wasn’t just an island though: it was paradise as well, since their island was close enough to the equator to have the summer year round. The weather changed slightly over the year, with January being the coolest, stretching to March and then slowly it would get hotter, until it peaked in September. The storms that had defined and thickened their skin usually rolled in during that month and at the end of October both the heat and the threat of any storms would be gone.

As it was right now they had all lived in some area of The West at one time or other, all of them except for Tony. Jep and Frankie still live in Europe. Jim lives in The States. Phyllis had recently returned to the island, mostly because she didn’t know where else to go. She had left Rokset Island for five years and during all that time she had felt as if her heart wasn’t in that place: she missed the island. They all had good memories of their youth on the island and most of the boring parts they had forgotten. Most of the bad and of the terror they had also forgotten, and in fact it was as if the terror that had taken place many years ago had never happened.

“What are you all caught up in?” Sylvia asks.

“My youth,” Jep says, “My island.”

“That thing again,” she says, “Always with that magical island.”

“It was, I guess,” Jep says, “In a way at least. I find myself thinking back at it more these days.”

“Going back home,” she says, “When will you take me there?”

“I don’t know,” Jep says, maybe some day. In the back of his mind he thinks someday, maybe. The thing is that Sylvia is a nice girl and all, but she doesn’t have what the island girls have. How do I explain that?

“You sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah,” he says, not sure how to break the news that he will most likely be gone in December and his mind isn’t much on taking her with him, “I have some things to figure out, that’s all.”

Jep waited until she was gone before opening his mail. He responds to the one that Phyllis had send. She proposed for them to meet back on the island: she got air of the fact that Frankie graduated. The part that she didn’t tell was that she had already inquired if West End Mansion had been booked for the holidays. It wasn’t and in a way that wasn’t to be unexpected, since the word on the island was that the place is haunted. For that reason it was usually rented to foreigners who didn’t know and who wanted to spend the holidays in style. They were always bound to experience some chilly nights. The caretaker had gotten older though and this year he hadn’t gone out of his way to advertise the place online.

Phyllis was the one that kept all of them together, although it was in a kind of dormant state: she would send an e-mail to them once or twice a year to tell the others how she was doing, how she missed the island and how she missed the kind friendship that they had had when they were growing up. All of them could relate to that and she always put in words how they felt in more than one way.

On some level it had to do with the fact that they had always been Outsiders: when they grew up most of their parents hadn’t been from the island, they all had pretty good jobs, but more importantly they never quite fit in, because they were kind of geeky and they weren’t that much into athletics. The exception was Frankie: his family had lived on the island for generations and he was good at any sport, but he also had this geeky side, which for some reason must have been more dominant all those years.

In The West it hadn’t been much different though, as to how they fit in with everyone else. Over there they weren’t Outsiders because of their geekiness, but there they were Outsiders because they had come from far away, which caused a very subtle disconnect. There was the accent, but more importantly there had been the history that had just been very different.

Frankie was the last of the gang to graduate and that meant that this phase of studying overseas was kind of behind them.

“You in?” Jep texts Frankie, “In dec on RI?”

“Yeah,” he texts back.

“Good, me too,” Jep texts, still not sure how to break the news to Sylvia.

“You heard anything from the others?”

“I believe they will come,” Frankie texts, “It’s going to be good times.”

“Will you bring anyone?”

“My lady, if I can,” he texts, “You?”

“Not sure yet.”

Jep gets ready to go to work at the place where he kind of got stuck after an internship. The work is more mind-numbing than he expected when he was a student. He figured that a double degree in both AI and psychology would give him some kind of edge, but until now it seems to be either one or the other.

AI meant coding, which paid a shitload of money, psychology meant a lot less pay, but possibly it was something that’s much more rewarding. Jep had been coding for a year now and he wasn’t sure how long he would manage to keep it up. The two weeks in December are something to look forward to.

Frankie finished his music studies and the big difference between him and Jep is that he’s passionate about what he gets paid for, but it’s just that it isn’t much – to put it mildly.

He recently met a girl by the name of Lisa that very well might be The One. He doesn’t know yet though how he will get the cash for the trip back to the island.

Jim still lives and studies in Miami. He completed a degree in computer science a year ago and since then he has made a lot of money.

Toni had stayed in the region, hopping from island to island trying to make a quick buck. The best job that he had had over the recent years was as a guard at an oil refinery. The work itself was mind-numbing, especially the night shift, but the pay had been good. The worst had been at the back of a garbage truck. The stench of waste never really left, no matter how many showers he took.

The most interesting had been washing dishes in a restaurant. It wasn’t too bad in itself, but since he worked in the back, he got air of the way a restaurant operates. There was more planning involved than he expected at first and for most dishes the rice or potatoes just need to be hot up, just like the vegetables and it was just the meat that was prepared on the spot.

That job had ended a few months ago and since then he had been back on Rokset Island. He had this strong feeling that he wanted to be back home. It wasn’t all that easy being back though, because the jobs had been thin. He had this idea though of starting his own restaurant, but as it was, it was just an idea, since he didn’t have the money or the connections to start anything as such.

Phyllis had been back since the summer. For the six years that she had been away from the island, she dreamt of the day that she would return. Somehow, when she finally did it seemed too soon and people didn’t really expect her to come back that early. There were a few that told her that she should have tried to make a living over there, because the island would always be there in case things didn’t work out. Most people welcomed her back with open arms, but somehow that feeling that she should have tried harder over there stayed with her. In a way she felt that there was some truth in it.

She had started teaching at the local high school and at 25 she was the youngest teacher by far. It wasn’t always easy, but there were enough fun moments to balance any hardship.

November of ‘07

The gang has decided to reunite.

Frankie got family to pay part of the ticket. He didn’t have the money to take his girl though.

Jep ended things with the girl.

December of ‘07

On Friday the 21^st of December of ‘07 they all came circling in one after the other. With the wind generally coming from the east, which was also the relative direction of The West, the planes always circle around half of the island before touching ground. That whole circling is its own magic, even though it only takes about ten or fifteen minutes.

After hours of clouds and the constant roar the plane dips under the clouds and then there’s the endless ocean and the large and very green rock formation that somehow just lays there in the middle of the wide ocean. It’s always this dark green and usually there’s a large cloud hanging over the mountains. Then there are the beaches that are sparkly white and at that moment you realize that this is really where it’s at.

Jep and Frankie came in on the same flight, they were the first ones to arrive, early in the morning. Phyllis was already off for the holidays and since she had taken the initiative for the get together, she also felt like she should be the one to pick up her friends from long ago. When she drove down to the airport she doubted whether she shouldn’t let their families pick them up; she had already asked them about it, but they had both assured her that they preferred it this way.

It was a large crowd coming off the plane of over a hundred people and Phyllis was struggling to see if she could pick Jep and Frankie from the crowd. She was on the short side, which wasn’t bad for a woman, but sometimes she wished that she was taller.

“Phyllis….” Frankie whispers, while Jep and Frankie close in on her from both sides.

“I keep looking and looking not to miss you guys,” she says, “You have been here all along?”

“Not really,” Frankie says, “Just wanted to surprise you a little.”

“It seems to have worked,” Jep says, and as their eyes meet it’s obvious to both of them that the spark is still there. Frankie notices it too, and he never really understood why she preferred Jep over him: he had the better looks, he was stronger, better at sports, better at games and better in most academic areas.

“The car is outside,” Phyllis says, “You guys must be pretty tired.”

“Just glad to be here,” Frankie says.

“You mailed something about West End Mansion,” Jep says, “How did you pull that off?”

“I guess I just got lucky,” Phyllis says, “I called and it was available.”

“I remember we snuck into that place once when we were kids,” Frankie says, “I don’t know whether it’s the scary stories or that old geezer that chased us out, but I had nightmares for weeks.”

“I remember that,” Jep says, “I also remember that your mom kept pressing my mom about what happened out there in the woods.”

“You didn’t have nightmares?” Phyllis asks.

“Of course I did,” Jep says, “As far as I know: we all did.”

“In a time far, far away,” Frankie says, “You saw the place recently?”

“I did,” Phyllis says, “It looks old, but the basics look to be in order.”

“The basics?” Frankie asks.

“Most of the furniture isn’t too old, there’s internet, no ac though.”

“And the old geezer?” Jep asks.

“The guy that I spoke with told me that the last person who lived there had died of old age about ten years ago,” Phyllis says, “It had been unused for a few years and then the family pulled together and invested in the place to make it into a vacation home.”

“Then the dead guy must have chased us out….” Frankie says conspiring, “Maybe he was dead already back in the days and it was his ghost that chased us off the premises….”

They all laugh, “It’s just stories,” Phyllis says, “That place is like a castle and I can’t think of any other place where I’d rather spend these two weeks.”

Phyllis didn’t exaggerate: in their memories this place was this old abandoned house that was supposedly haunted. They had told each other stories about ghosts in armor that would attack them with rusty swords, vampires and bats that would fly over and spit some deadly poison.

The right word to describe the place was grand. The driveway alone was a few hundred yards and it ended in front of the house where a wide stairs led up to the first floor. The front was ten feet wide and it led into a hallway that was ornamented with paintings on the walls and chandeliers with thousands of glittering pieces of glass.

The hallway ended in the ballroom, which was also the largest room of the house.

“Where are the rooms?” Frankie asks.

“Take that hallway to the right of the ballroom,” Phyllis says, while they face the main hallway with their backs, “This place has four large suits in that wing and one master suite.”

“And the other hallway?” Jep asks.

“Kitchen, pantry and two apartments for caretakers.”

“That’s where the guy lives that you rented this place from?” Frankie asks.

“He might have heard the same scary stories that you did,” Phyllis says, “He told me that he didn’t want to live in this place for anything.”

“I don’t believe that,” Jep says, “A place like this? I bet it even has a private swimming pool or a tennis yard.”

“Or both,” Frankie says.

“I don’t know,” Phyllis says, “I didn’t much get it either.”

“Anyone got dips on the master suite?” Frankie asks.

“We got one lady in our midst,” Jep says.

“Well thank you,” Phyllis says.

Frankie throws Jep a look like why, but he doesn’t mind handing it over to Phyllis.

“No additional guests?” Frankie asks.

“As far as I know everyone still flies solo,” Phyllis says, “Or at least they came by themselves,” she adds, remembering that Frankie didn’t have the cash to pay for two tickets.

“I can live with that,” Frankie says, “I need some peace and quiet.”

“Grand pa,” Jep says.

“We’re gonna through a big party though,” Phyllis says.

“I think we can easily fit a hundred guests in here,” Jep says, while sizing up the ball room with it’s high ceiling and narrow windows all around. And more paintings. And more chandeliers. And both furniture that might come right out of the era of knights in armor, but also a large corner with a large sofa in front of a big screen tv.

Frankie also sized up the room, but his eye was caught by something else: the stage.

“You can book me for that night,” he says, “I’ll play my guitar, sing some songs, have some nice ladies dancing around me. This shit is going down.”

“Well then,” Phyllis says, “I’ll let you guys settle in. Jim will fly in at three. You can join me if you feel like it.”

“No problem.”

“I’m going to relax a bit outside by the pool….” she says, teasing, “If you need me….”

“We’ll know where to find you….” Jep says, o yes I will crosses his mind. Frankie’s thoughts are with his girl, but besides that he’s too tired to think much of anything.

At three in the afternoon Jim was scheduled to come in, but it turned out that there was a delay. Phyllis was kind of aware that this flight was known to come in late and she had figured out how to spot the plane when it came circling in. It was easy enough though, because it would be the only large one to come in that afternoon.

At two in the afternoon Jep had joined Phyllis by the pool where they could be on the lookout.

“What’s up with Frankie?” Phyllis asks, when Jep sat down.

“Sleeping, I guess,” Jep says, “That guy has a busy life.”

“Performing at night.”

Jep nods, “I can pull maybe two nights in a row, but the third night I will simply fall asleep.”

“Same here.”

“He has always been more of a die-hard,” Phyllis says, “In one way or other, I think we all are.”

“You mean growing up in this climate?”

“Exactly,” she says, “It’s like this climate here toughens you up.”

“The heat can take its toll,” Jep says, “I mean when you’re relaxing by the pool with a cold drink it’s okay.”

“But when you need to get something done….” she says.

“How is Tony by the way?” Jep asks.

“Good,” she says, “I see him sometimes, but not as often as you’d think.”

“….”

“Different lives, I guess,” she says, “He hasn’t found his way yet, I mean, he’s still moving from job to job.”

“I heard he lived all over the place,” Jep says, “From what he told me, he had a pretty good time.”

“I’m sure he did,” she says, laughing, “But it’s not really something that will help you build something like a future….”

Jep starts laughing, since this remark isn’t like anything that he remembers of her when they went their separate ways seven years ago. Back then she was all about living wild and doing all kinds of crazy things.

“What happened girl?” he asks, “When did you become so serious and all that?”

Phyllis starts laughing as well.

“Jesus,” she says, “Is it that bad?”

“I know we need to grow up at some point….”

By this time Frankie joins them by the pool.

“You know what I missed about this place most of all?” he asks.

“The heat?”

“The air and the quiet,” he says, “Isn’t that strange?”

“I never have any problems sleeping,” Phyllis says, “That’s what you mean, right?”

“Exactly,” he says, “It’s like…. I don’t know, I just sleep good over here.”

“No ghosts troubling you?” Jep asks.

“I thought that those only come out at night….” Frankie offers.

“Look,” Phyllis says, while pointing up in the sky, “That’s Jim coming in.”

It would take the plane about fifteen minutes to land and it would take them about thirty minutes to get to the airport.

“It already feels like old times,” Frankie says, “Driving over to the airport to pick up people.”

“You two stayed in contact with Jim over the years?” Phyllis asks.

“Not really,” Jep says, “To be completely honest I didn’t stay in contact with much of anyone.”

“Family, but not much besides that,” Frankie says, “I’m having too much fun in the city.”

“And the two of you together?” Phyllis asks.

“Not really,” Frankie says, “Maybe we did move in different circles after all.”

“More like different cities,” Jep says.

“Well,” Phyllis says, “The last I heard is that Jim was struggling to keep his act together.”

“What do you mean?” Jep asks.

“You know that melancholy music that we listened too when we were like sixteen?” Phyllis asks.

“Nirvana,” Frankie says, “Legendary darkness.”

“He kind of stayed in that vibe,” Phyllis says.

“You mean like – how it was just a phase of adolescence for us, but he took it into adulthood?” Jep asks, “You mean that he stayed under in some sort of dark and moody cave system.”

“It’s what I heard,” she says, “I don’t know how much of it is true, but if it is, then I think it’s our duty to pull him out.”

“Of course,” Frankie says, “Anything for one of our own.”

Jep nods, “Glad you two agree,” she says, “I think that’s him.”

If there was any truth to what Phyllis told them about Jim, it certainly didn’t show. He wore an expensive suit and shiny shoes and he looked well groomed.

“I thought you sit behind a computer screen all day,” Frankie says when Jim is within sight, and he gives the guy a hug, “Good to see you, man.”

“I heard that one before,” he says.

“You look more like a lawyer than a programmer,” Jep says, while he also gives him a hug, “You’re making good money…. A shitload I assume.”

“Good one, Brains.”

Jim turns to Phyllis, “Still as beautiful as seven years ago.”

“You actually look better than seven years ago,” she says, “You really look good.” She thinks: but I know what’s underneath.

“We got our own mansion at our disposal,” Frankie says.

“For real?” Jim asks, “What place is that?”

“West End Mansion,” Phyllis says.

After the name, Jim didn’t register much, “This is a joke, right?”

“No joke,” Phyllis says, “It has been turned into a vacation rental.”

“You mean it’s the same West End Mansion that we talked about as the Haunted House?” Jim asks, “You know how many nightmares I had about that place when I was a kid?”

“We all did,” Phyllis says, “Which makes it more interesting.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Frankie mumbles, adding, “If I don’t like it I will move into a hotel.”

“You’ll like it,” Jep says, “It’s a huge place and it’s only going to be us staying there.”

“Well,” Jim says, after some moments, “I never actually spend the night in a mansion.”

“It has all the amenities that you may think of,” Phyllis says, “Besides: how much do you really need when you’re in paradise?”

“Now that’s true,” Jim says.

In November Phyllis had met with the caretaker by the name of Harry Brunt and he had given the tour to Phyllis and her best friend.

They were back in front of the wide steps leading in. He already handed Phyllis the set of spare keys to the place and it was then that he insisted that the pantry be fully stocked by the time they checked in.

“Why would you do that?” Shane asked and the thought that she had since the moment they came in became more persistent. More precisely, the thought had entered her mind the moment Phyllis had told her about West End Mansion: this place is creepy, this guy is creepy and now it’s even getting weird: who would stock an entire pantry?

“A courtesy of the Johnson family,” Harry Brunt said, and he got this feeling that Phyllis hadn’t informed her best friend about everything. He couldn’t resist throwing some oil on the fire, “Your best friend didn’t mention that she will be filling my spot for a month?”

Shane looks at Phyllis, like what?

“No, she didn’t,” she says, “She did not.”

“I meant to tell you,” Phyllis says, “I’ll explain later.”

“Now if you’ll follow me,” Harry Brunt says, and he’s already off. Shane is mouthing what’s going on, Phyllis mouths back later.

Since they had arrived about half an hour ago, Harry Brunt had this way about him that he’s the kind of guy who’s used to given orders. The thing is just that, as far as any of them know, this place has been mostly vacant.

“It gets busy around here?” Phyllis asks, “I mean, it seems that you’re well routined in operating this place.”

“This shed is where we keep the emergency generator,” Brunt explains, “It can keep the place running for up to two months. In case of the need for clearing debris, we have got a few chainsaws, a few axes. And to the back there we have a tractor that can be used to haul trees out of the way.”

“You want us to mow the lawn while we’re at it?” Shane asks.

“That’s the other tractor, right there,” Brunt says, “It takes me two hours every other week. Cutting things back and composting takes another three.”

“Why do we need to know all this for only two weeks?” Shane asks.

“A month, Miss Shane,” Brunt says briskly.

“A month,” Phyllis says.

“I have been caretaker for almost thirty years,” Brunt says, “My experience is: you’ll never know.”

“Never know how?” Shane asks, “You plan for my best friend to stay here for more than two weeks?”

“Your best friend signed for one month, miss.”

“It’s ok,” Phyllis says trying to calm her down, “When was the last time that someone actually lived in this place – if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Fifteen years ago the last of the Johnson’s left the residence,” Brunt says, “After that it has been mostly vacant, except for short stints.”

“But the place looks lived in,” Shane says.

“Mr. Johnson’s son likes to keep it that way.”

“Then he’s the one who stays here for short stints?”

“That has seemed to be the case, miss.”

“I thought you told me that this place has been a vacation rental for about ten years,” Shane says, addressing Phyllis.

“That’s clearly a misunderstanding,” Brunt says, “West End Mansion has only been used to accommodate family and friends.”

Phyllis smiles, but Shane isn’t impressed.

“Let me show you one last thing,” Brunt says and he’s off again.

He opens the door of another shed, “This four wheel drive is to be used strictly in the case of emergency,” he says, “It’s an original land rover. It’s my personal pride and joy. I maintain it myself.”

“And there’s a bike for motor cross and even a boat,” Shane says, “This place is prepped for anything. You guys got an underground shelter?”

“There is,” Brunt says, coolly, “But I never stepped foot in that place. I heard that the first occupants used it to keep prisoners.”

“Were you scared, Brunt?” Shane asks, prying for some sort of unscripted response.

“I’m not sure what your getting at,” Brunt replies cooly.

“Neither am I,” Phyllis says, “There’s a green house?” she asks, pointing at the Victorian structure.

“Yes,” Brunt says, “But sadly it has fallen into disarray. There’s a pool in the middle. Mrs. Johnson liked to swim in high humidity.”

“So no one has been in there for like ten or twenty years?” Shane asks.

“Besides the yearly maintenance.”

They don’t enter the structure and they walk back to the main entrance. They had all parked their cars in front of the large steps leading up.

“Take care Ms. Phyllis,” he says, while shaking their hands, “And you too miss.”

Brunt gets into his car and he takes off.

“Now what is going on?” Shane asks, “That guy looks like he packed up for good.”

“He might be a tight old prick, but I don’t think he would pull that one on us,” Phyllis says, “What about that old car: his livelihood.”

“You felt his hands just now?” Shane asks, “You don’t get smooth hands by maintaining cars. I’m sure of it: that guy is hiding something.”

“Let’s just hope you’re wrong,” Phyllis says.

“I’m telling you….”

When Jim stepped through the main entrance he held his breath for a short moment and he looked over at the others, “Boy, this place brings back memories.”

“I know, right,” Jep says.

“You feel the chill crawl down your spine?” Phyllis asks.

“Or see any ghosts?” Frankie asks.

Jim looks frightened for a moment and then they all start laughing.

“You should see your face,” Jep says, “Pure gold.”

“You guys are just messing with me,” Jim says, “The place looks different from what I remember though.”

“Different how?” Phyllis asks.

Jim thinks about it for a moment.

“Somehow I had this memory that most of it had become a ruin and that there was only a part of it in which that old geezer lived,” Jim says, “But by the looks of it, this place is just old.”

“How old?” Frankie asks.

“A few hundred years,” Jep says.

“It’s not that old,” they hear someone reply, coming from a dark corner.

“Tony?” Jim whispers to the others.

They all raise their hands like no say.

Jim is still an easy target.

“Good to see you all,” Tony says, when he steps into the light, “How many years has it been? Five? Six?”

“Seven,” Jep says, “An era has ended.”

“I guess so,” Frankie says, “So everything is good?”

“No complaints,” Tony says.

“So how old is this place?” Jep asks.

“Not as old as you might think,” Tony says, “My dad and uncle are still the local historians. This mansion was build at the end of the 19^th century, around the 1890s.”

“What’s the story?” Frankie asks, “The short version.”

“Well,” Tony says, “The short version is that too many bad things happened at this place. It started when this place was being build over a period of three years: a total of five people died during construction. The first fell off a high ledge, another got hit by a brick that fell off the roof, the third got hit by lightning, the fourth died after a dog with rabbis had bitten him and the last one was shot on the job by a guy who claimed that he had slept with his woman. Then finally when this place was completed after three years, the house was finished, but it wasn’t the end of all the bad things that went down. A year after the first of the Johnson’s moved in, the wife had committed suicide, supposedly because she wasn’t happy in her marriage. The housekeeper became the new Mrs. Johnson, but she was unable to bear strong children. She bore three children in all and all of three died before they had reached their first year. After the third tragedy she wanted to commit suicide as well, but she didn’t have it in her to put the knife on her throat or slice her wrists. What she did was that she baked her favorite pie and she put poison in it. The thing is that their new housekeeper had discovered the pie and served it to everyone in their household. I guess you know what happened to all those people, etc etc.”

“And that’s just the beginning, I suppose,” Jep says.

“What about those stories with ghosts and vampires and werewolves and all that?” Frankie asks, “I mean, those are the stories that were being told when we were young.”

“Of course,” Tony says, “That’s the later history and by that I mean that it’s mostly a complete fiction – although who is to say that it isn’t?”

“Jesus,” Jim says, “And you want me to spend the night in this place?”

“Relax,” Phyllis says, “He’s just messing with you.”

“Am I?”

“Is he?” the others ask.

“Didn’t you say something about a map with all those spots where those people died?” Frankie asks.

“I’ll show you at midnight….” Tony says.

“Let’s just go inside,” Phyllis says.

They all follow Phyllis and it seems that she didn’t say one word too much. For Jep and Frankie it was the second time that they entered the place, but it wasn’t any less impressive. The design was grand and elaborate that it wasn’t hard to imagine yourself living like a rich man in the 19^th century.

Jim and Tony looked around in the ballroom and they were struck by the same things that had struck Jep and Frankie before: the high ceiling with the windows all around, the paintings, the stage and the contrast between a dinner table that looked like it would host a dinner for real knights in real shining armor and there were the areas with more everyday luxury with a large screen tv and all that.

Meanwhile Jep and Frankie went through the kitchen and the liquor room looking for some drinks and cigars.

“You guys want to know something,” Frankie says when they came back in the ballroom with both, “That whole kitchen is packed with food. And I don’t mean just a small amount of food, but literally food for a feast with the whole town.”

“Yeah,” Phyllis says, “I was going to tell you guys about that.”

“So what about it?” Jep asks.

“It’s complementary,” she says, “Just like the liquor and those cigars.”

“How does that work?” Frankie asks, “We haven’t paid anything yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Phyllis says, “I’ll explain later.”

“Fine by me,” Frankie says, “Man, am I glad to be here.”

“I must admit,” Jim says, “This place is impressive.”

“It is, right?” Phyllis says.

“And it’s just the five of us?” Jim asks.

“Yup,” says Jep, “Until we have some people over.”

“We can throw a big ass party around here,” Tony says, “That’s for sure.”

“So you’re past those scary stories and all that?” Frankie asks.

“Yeah, this place is way cool,” Jim says.

It’s then that they hear a door slam shut in the far end of the wing with the kitchen and the liquor cabinet.

“You guys left a door open?” Phyllis asks.

“Must be,” Frankie says, although he wasn’t so sure that he did. Phyllis got the feeling that he wasn’t so sure either and for a split second she thought: what if I was wrong about this place after all.

The others didn’t think much of it, except for Jim: a wicked voice entered his mind Run ro ied. It gave him a violent chill, but it hadn’t been the first time a voice entered his mind. The voice was new though; it had a viciousness that he hadn’t heard before. It didn’t sound like some strange cartoon character or an actor from the movies, but this one sounded like the real deal.

The only problem was that he couldn’t tell anyone and it only left him with one choice: to bottle it up, which was like adding a sweet to a carbonated drink – it would build pressure, until it all came sprouting out. He had never heard of exploding soda bottles, so at least that was something.

“You ok?” Jep asks, “You look pale, man.”

“I think it’s the jet lag,” Jim says, “Or maybe I need to eat something.

Chapter 2 (Week 51 – 2018): History unveiled

Phyllis and Shane didn’t stick around at West End Mansion. Phyllis locked the door and at the end of the driveway she stepped out again to lock the iron gates that went up ten feet with tips that looked like arrows. The fence was by the same design and went in either direction as far as the eye could see.

“It’s like a prison or a mental institute, if you ask me,” Shane says.

“You really find it that spooky?”

“I do,” she says, “There’s just something that gives me the creeps.”

“I think you watch too many scary movies, sis,” Phyllis says, “And even if it was: I think that a past like that makes it more interesting. It’s just stories.”

“And you’re going to tell me that the creep that showed us around is alright to?”

“He was a little creepy indeed,” Phyllis says, “But maybe that’s just what happens if you stay in a place like this for too long….” she says in a conspiring voice and she starts laughing.

“With that demeaning tone in his voice and his Miss this and Miss that?”

“That part about the car was weird though,” Phyllis says, “It didn’t look like he ever did any manual labor.”

“What do you think that guy did over there all day?”

“You mean because there’s little to do?” Phyllis asks, “I think he plays around with dead animals to see if he can bring them back to live….”

Again Phyllis starts laughing and this time Shane starts laughing as well.

That night after dinner Phyllis and Shane sat down with Shane’s aunt Emily on the porch. Her aunt is reputed to know something about everyone on the island. She also has a reputation of running her mouth whenever she can and for that reason they need to be cautious about the information that they relay.

Phyllis had specifically told Shane not to talk about them staying at West End Mansion. It was just that this guy Harry Brunt was something that she would like to know more about as well.

“Do you know a Mr. Brunt?” Shane asks flat out.

“There’s only one Brunt that I know of,” she says, “Harry Brunt. Why do you ask?”

“Shane thinks something is up with that guy,” Phyllis says.

“And why would she think that?”

“He came over to the store today,” Shane says, “To pick up fruits and flowers. We chatted about the island and about him being the caretaker of West End Mansion. Something seemed a little off.”

“Well, a place like West End Mansion will do that to you,” aunt Emily says, “He became caretaker shortly after he returned from abroad where some of us were fortunate enough to study and to spend some time away.”

“He’s your age then?”

“A few years younger, but I used to know him socially,” aunt Emily says, “He was nice, but in a way there was something off about him back then as well. As far as I know he never had a woman.”

“But you don’t think he’s a killer or something like that?” Shane asks.

Aunt Emily starts laughing, “No,” she says after they all quieted down, “It’s not like that. Some people are just a little off, but that’s also where it begins and ends.”

“Then you don’t believe the stories that a place like West End Mansion can change a person,” Shane asks, “In a bad way.”

“Those are just stories,” aunt Emily says in a tired voice, “It’s something that we have carried with us from the past: on these small islands there’s very little to do, so we fabricate all these stories, legends and myths to keep ourselves entertained. Okay, we’re very superstitious here as well, but that’s a separate matter.”

Phyllis and Shane look at each other like maybe.

“Now let me ask you something,” aunt Emily says, “What’s really going on?”

“Why?” Shane asks.

“You’re not asking this for no reason.”

“You’ll promise to keep it to yourself?” Shane asks, realizing that aunt Emily most likely will not.

“I do,” she says, “I always do.”

“We will stay there with friends during the holidays,” Phyllis says, “In return for caretaker duties.”

“She will and it’s for a month,” Shane adds.

“I see,” aunt Emily says, “And Harry?”

“He said he will leave the island for that time.”

“Then it’s more about ghosts than it is about Harry,” aunt Emily says, “Let me tell you this: there are a lot of stories about West End Mansion, but most of them are bogus.”

“Most?” Shane asks.

“There were some unfortunate accidents in the past,” aunt Emily says, “Those are historic facts, but other than that it’s just an old building.”

“No ghosts?” Shane asks.

“As far as I know….”

That night Jep, Frankie and Jim were all jet lagged and Phyllis orders them to reside by the pool while she and Tony prepare dinner.

“We will feast, starting tonight,” she says, when she’s in the kitchen with Tony, “The caretaker of this place stocked the pantry before he left.”

“You’re sure all that’s there for us to use?” Frankie asks, “We don’t even know yet what all of this is going to cost us.”

“Well,” Phyllis says, “We’re not students anymore, so we should have some cash – but we’re not rich either – long story short: I got us a deal….”

“A deal?”

“After dinner,” she says.

Phyllis isn’t that much of a cook. When she grew up she wasn’t best friends yet with Shane and she almost always hung out with the boys and she grew up to be more like a boy than a girl. She was raised by her drunk father and older brothers. It was only later when she was around 16/17 that she became more girly and the only part that remained of her boyishness was this competitive streak. She never really mastered cooking though.

Tony was partly raised by his grandmother, who turned out to be more progressive than his own mother. She believed that a man should be able to cook a decent meal. She used to tell him that women have a weakness for men that know their way around a kitchen.

“You have anything in mind?” Tony asks, while going through the pantry, “It’s like this place has everything.”

“Even things that we can’t get in the store,” she says, “What are these vegetables?”

“Rhubarb,” he says, “Tasty as a sauce: that’s the first part of our meal.”

“Lamb?”

“That can work,” he says, “And mashed potatoes.”

“Vegetables?”

“Those green beans look like they’re still fresh from the land,” he says, “You can go into the liquor room to select a wine.”

“Okidoki.”

Phyllis comes back with two bottles of a fruity merlot.

“Good,” Tony says, “You checked on our guests?”

“They’re really tired,” she says.

“You saw any of them since high school?”

“Nope,” Phyllis says, “I send out the email once or twice a year, but other than that: nothing.”

“So you can’t tell me what’s up with Jim?” Tony asks, “The way he turned all pale after that door slammed earlier. Something is off.”

“You know…. something is strange,” Phyllis says, while she leans in, “At that exact same time when good old Jim turned pale – this thought entered my mind something is off about this place. And I felt a cold chill down my back.”

Tony stops cutting for a few seconds, “You’re joking, right?”

“I wish I was,” she says, “It seemed to me like the same thing happened to him.”

“You didn’t freeze,” he says, “Why would he freeze or pale at something like that, I mean, to that extent?”

“He always was the jumpy type.”

“Now that’s true.”

“But you don’t really believe anything is wrong with this place?” she asks.

“It’s an old place,” he says, “Many things happened here over the years and some of them really aren’t pretty. On the other hand: to really believe in scary stories is something for children, I mean, the ghost stuff and all that.”

“You better don’t tell me that you don’t get scared,” Phyllis says, “That would worry me.”

“Let me just put it like this,” Tony says, “I just like the scary stories….”

At eight dinner is ready. They share it at the knight’s table and it’s Phyllis who proposes a toast: “To friendship, to good times and to making new memories.”

“Well spoken,” Jep says in a loud whisper, “Clear and concise.”

“I still need to adjust to this place,” Frankie says, “I still remember us breaking into this place when we were 12 or something like that. I remember that parts of it were still ruins and the jungle was leaning in from outside.”

“It really was different,” Jep says, “I had nightmares for weeks after we visited this place.”

“I remember I got a good spanking when I got home,” Tony says, “At first I thought that it was because I lied about where I went, but then later on I thought it was because my parents really didn’t wanted me to go to this place. At that time I believed that all those stories were actually true.”

“What was the lie?” Jep asks.

“It must have been fishing,” Tony says, “I used that one for pretty much everything.”

“I guess it was a safe lie to tell,” Jep says, “I mean we did fish a lot.”

“And we had our clubhouse next to the beach,” Tony says, “I guess it has been quite a while since you guys went fishing….”

“Not since we left from here,” Frankie says, “And even before then it had been over a year I think.”

“Brains, Big Bones, Jim-jim, Frankie-pankie,” Phyllis says.

“Phillie-pillie,” Jep says.

Phyllis looks like: funny….

“All jokes aside: you guys were the best friends I ever had,” she says.

“Same here,” Jim says.

“Especially when we were young,” Phyllis says, “I remember that you guys helped me sneak out of the house more than once.”

“It did happen more than once,” Frankie says, “You never got a beating when you came back after.”

“In the beginning,” Jim says, “But I guess my mother was also secretly happy for me that I had made some really good friends.”

“In a way we were a group of misfits,” Jep says, “Or Outsiders, or I don’t know what, but somehow we made it work.”

“We were Outsiders,” Tony says, “All except Frankie and Phyllis.”

“I was a misfit as much as you guys,” Phyllis says, “Besides: you guys accepted me for who I was.”

“I was asking myself that same question….” Frankie says, “Naaah just kidding: I figure that the geek in me was stronger than all the rest.”

“Were we geeks?” Tony asks.

“We were pretty geeky,” Jep says in all seriousness, “We were totally geeky.”

Phyllis refills all of their glasses.

“Big Bones,” Frankie says, “You got any more of those scary stories?”

“Big Bones….” Tony repeats, “It has been years since anyone has called me that. Yes I got some more stories. What do you guys want to hear?”

“The beginning,” Jep says, “All the way.”

“Then we will start there,” Tony says.

They all sit back to listen.

“The earliest history that I know of is from around 1800,” Tony says, and he pauses, “Around that time there were still indigenous tribes on this part of the island….” Tony pauses again for a dramatic effect, “The place where West End Mansion was build had originally been a burial and offering ground…. Over the years the natives had carried tons of red sand from the hills to this plot and the reason they chose this plot exactly was because they believed that this was the best piece of land that they could designate for that purpose.”

“Why was that?” Jep asks.

“It was flat,” Tony says, “Most places on Rokset Island are slightly or more than slightly going up or down, but this place is as leveled as it gets.”

“Then what happened?” Phyllis asks.

“The first settlers had left the natives to their own,” Tony says, “That was in the 1750s, because back then they were outnumbered and for a while it seemed that they could live peacefully next to each other. Then another fleet came with another captain and this guy wasn’t so peaceful: he had his men kill every native that they could get their hands on. All that went down in the 1830s and it was the first island governor that had made plans to build a home on this exact spot.”

“What happened to that guy?” Jim asks.

“Killed by the natives,” Frankie says.

“Or poisoned,” Tony says, “The land remained unused for about forty years, until it was bought by the Johnson’s – and well the rest is history.”

“What about the red sand?” Tony asks.

“The natives believed that the red sand was extra-terrestrial,” Tony says, “They believed that by covering their graves in red sand, their ancestors would quicker ascend or reincarnate. The sacrifices were mostly animals from their flock.”

“That’s some bad mojo right there,” Frankie says, “And since this place is build in the middle, I assume that that burial ground is right underneath.”

“When the bad things started happening, the locals immediately said that it had something to do with the fact that they had desecrated a sacred burial ground.”

“That’s really bad,” Phyllis says, “And who in their right mind would want a house on top of that?”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Jep says.

“That first Johnson had never actually seen the burial ground, he had heard about it and dismissed it as some ancient past,” Tony says, “The lot had been cleared all those years before by the governor that had wanted to build there. He also said that ‘these are just stories to scare people off’ and this guy Johnson must have figured that people would tell anything to get him not to build on this land.”

Tony takes a sip of wine.

“Even after the structure was build, there were certain cold spots and weak spots,” Tony says, “I guess you can imagine what those cold spots were about, but those weak spots were something that I never heard about before: when people sat down in those spots for a few minutes, they literally lost all strength in their bodies and they needed assistance to get up. The story has it that in the 1910s a servant who had taken a rest died in a spot like that; she had sat down for too long and couldn’t get back up. There was no one around to hear her cry for help that quickly got softer and weaker, until her heart just gave out and stopped pumping.”

“Wow,” Jep says.

“Yeah,” Tony says.

“Where are those spots?” Frankie asks.

“I guess you should be able to feel it….” Tony says, “As far as I know there’s no map or anything as such.”

“This story creeps me out,” Phyllis says, “I can just see those Indians with their rituals.”

“Wasn’t one of those rituals death by vultures?” Jep asks.

“I don’t want to know….” Phyllis says.

“I guess you don’t….” Jep says, laughing, “But don’t worry they only did this to bad guys and women. Those who had committed a bad crime they left in a far corner on top of a tower to be eaten by vultures. Depending on the severity of the crime they killed the person first, but when it was really bad, they either drugged the person or tied him down and had them eaten alive.”

“On certain nights when there is no moon, you can still hear them scream….” Frankie whispers. They all laugh, but not for long.

They all instantly quiet down, because of a loud banging on the front door. West End Mansion is a very deserted place: the nearest road is a fifteen minute drive. Even on that road you might not pass another car when driving to the big town.

Then the banging continues on one of the windows that had been closed off by hurricane doors.

“Are any of you expecting someone?” Tony whispers.

“Not really,” Jep says, “My family doesn’t even know yet that I’m here….”

“What do we have in terms of protection?” Frankie asks.

“There are rollers and knives in the kitchen,” Phyllis says.

“I saw a baseball bat in the liquor room,” Jep says, “And two of those rods to poke the fire in the fireplace.”

“Go get them now,” Frankie whispers, “But be quiet.”

They walk up to the main entrance in two lines. On the right side is Frankie, followed by Tony. On the left side is Jep, followed by Jim and Phyllis. They hear someone scream: “Open up guys!”

They all freeze and look at each other.

“Wait a minute,” Phyllis says, “I think that’s Shane.”

“What!?” Frankie says, “What’s she doing here after midnight?”

“It does sound like her….” Jep says.

“Who’s there?” Frankie yells in a loud voice.

“I tried calling you to make sure that you’re alright,” Shane says mostly to Phyllis, once she had confirmed that it was her and they were opening the door, “But I didn’t get you. I was worried, so I came down.”

“By yourself?” Frankie asks.

“I took the car and locked all the doors,” she says, “Besides I have my own place now, so it’s not like I left anyone to worry.”

“You’re staying here, at least for the night,” Phyllis says, “I have an extra bed in my room.”

Shane doesn’t protest, “When I was outside just now I saw that there is no cell phone reception here. I forgot about that.”

“We got internet,” Jim says.

Shane purrs like a kitten, “He Jim-jim!” she whispers, and she throws herself at him.

“I guess we can leave those two to themselves,” Jep says in an off-hand remark.

They drank some more wine and talked about the last seven years. At three in the morning they were too tired and one by one they retired.

The next two days went by as you’d expect on an island where the summer never ends. They woke up at 6.30 in the morning when the sun was already up and bright. The morning breeze was smooth and still kind of cool. Jep made a few morning laps in the pool, and afterwards he had a few espresso’s and croissants.

Jim and Shane made their laps together and they went for fruit shakes after. Frankie and Toni came up with a morning workout routine with big rocks, pushups, pull-ups and all that. They both enjoyed a solid breakfast of baked egg, cheese and meat.

Around noon they packed two cars with surf boards, towels, chairs and a cooler filled with drinks and headed for the beach. Rokset Island has about forty beaches to choose from and both days they went to the large beaches with pristine white sand where most of the tourists tend to go. When they were younger they didn’t go to those beaches too much, because back then the prices were already about five times from what they were on the less popular spots. Being back after a few years they felt like being tourists for a few days.

They talked excitedly about going back to the secluded beach where they had spend so much time when they were young. Back then they were either fishing, hunting goats or chickens up in the hills and the forest that was close to the beach. Later on they spend their time over there in the clubhouse. The last few years that they lived on the island they threw a few parties as well.

Back then they didn’t need much, mostly because they didn’t have much either and they would never have imagined spending ten days in West End Mansion. It wasn’t just because it was expensive, but it was more because there were simply too many stories going around to feel anything but a little uncomfortable about the whole place.

From the start there were rumors whether Jep and Phyllis had already rekindled their flame. Jep was up for it, but Phyllis didn’t give in, probably because she didn’t want to play that she was easy to get with. That weekend she managed to hold on, but seeing her best friend jump Jim-jim that Friday night had made it hard for her to keep that appearance up.

That Sunday night when Jep made his move, Phyllis gave in and that Monday morning they were the ones who woke up late. The house was still quiet though when Jep sneaked into the kitchen to fix a breakfast for two at eleven in the morning. Looking outside he understood why: it was going to be a rainy day.

In any other place a rainy day like this would mean that the day would be dreary, but in the tropics these rainy days take on a whole other dimension. On rainy days like these it doesn’t pour and it also doesn’t drizzle, it’s something in between that might just as well be described as a light rain. There’s little wind and if there’s anything more it’s gusty enough to let the big leaves of the palm trees gush violently back and forth.

The wind isn’t the best part: on rainy days like these it’s a few degrees cooler than on other days when it usually hoovers around 30C. A cool day of 24C gives you a break from the heat and it helps to recharge batteries, especially when living here permanently.

“What are you looking so smug about?” Jep asks, before realizing that he can probably guess what it’s all about.

“So the walls finally came down, huh?” Frankie asks.

“It’s like old times again,” Jep says, “Too bad your girl couldn’t come.”

“Well,” Frankie says, “I miss her, but something tells me that it would be less of a reunion like that.”

“You’re probably right,” Jep says, “On the other hand: Shane also wasn’t part of the gang back in the days.”

“Well,” Frankie says, “I heard our Jim had some pretty tough shit to go through these past few years, so it’s probably just good medicine for him.”

“It’s good medicine for any man,” Jep says with a smirk, “I mean, sometimes I really think that we haven’t advanced so much from those cavemen thousands of years ago.”

“I guess you’re referring to the two f’s,” Frankie says, “Food and the other one.”

“Those are the two,” Jep says, “And on occasion the third one.”

“Fishing,” Frankie states, “Well, just look at it like this man: it makes everything nice and simple.”

Jep returns to the bedroom and Jep and Phyllis and they’re all about the two f’s.

“You must have it pretty rough up there in The West,” Phyllis whispers after, “You fuck like you just got out of prison.”

“Right back at ya,” Jep says, “You’re wet like the Niagara.”

At two the rain clears and at three it looks like it has stopped for the day. Tony rounds all the guys up to explore the property.

“Places like these always have hidden rooms,” Tony says when they’re all gathered, “I bet we can find one here.”

“What’s in those rooms?” Phyllis asks.

“There are only three options that I can think of,” Tony says, “It’s either a study, a shame room or a play room.”

“An adult playroom,” Frankie says, and he winks at Jep and Jim.

“What about the shame room?” Phyllis asks.

“That’s where they locked bad offspring,” Tony says, “Retarded or heavily disabled family members.”

“Jesus,” Phyllis says.

“Right back at ya,” Tony says, “Although I wouldn’t be surprised that there were folks who just shot them if they couldn’t afford to keep them.”

“Back in the days….” Jep sighs.

They all look around for a moment and somehow they all attempt to change the subject, but then they don’t.

“You figure it would be in the main building?” Frankie asks.

“Well, I have a feeling that if there’s something hidden here, then it’s either a hidden study or something like that.”

“Alchemy and that stuff?” Jim asks.

“Right on the money, Jim-jim,” Tony says, “No matter how much money those rich guys had back then, they always wanted more. I guess it wasn’t all so different back then after all. It was like one of the more popular pastimes for men with money and books to try to make gold out of lead.”

It took them an hour to explore the whole property, including the building outside and the large greenhouse. It was when Jep told the others that he was going for a drink that he realized that there might be a space between the liquor room and the far wall.

“You’re right,” Tony says, “The entrance should be somewhere in this room.”

It was Frankie who found the entrance: one of the bookcases turned out to be a sliding door and behind it was the door leading to the hidden room. The only thing was that the door was locked. It took them another hour to find in a shallow drawer in what looked to be a small study.

This room looked like it hadn’t been entered for years. It was a little dusty, but not too much, since the only two windows had been meticulously sealed from the outside world. Inside the room they found three distinct setups.

The first seemed to be something about time-travel. On a blackboard there was a drawing of this idea that you can travel to the future by circling in close proximity of a black hole, since it’s theorized that black holes slow down time. The only problem is that a blackhole would probably suck up any space-ship and then there was the more practical problem of the fact that the space-ship should near a speed close to the speed of light, which would require an almost endless amount of energy.

On another blackboard there was a theory about wormholes opening up in the space-time-continuum. This theory lined up with a story that Tony had told them about some other time. This story was that those ancient Indians opened up a wormhole that would give them access to the space-time or the dimension where they believed their gods resided.

From the drawing next to the schematic that laid out this whole design it looked like this entrance wasn’t on a hill, but apparently whoever made this whole design, had located it at the bottom of the pool that was build in the middle of the greenhouse.

“Wow,” Jep says, gasping at the detail and the imagination of all these designs, “Whoever made this was working frantically, but I think I know what his big problem was: he didn’t know the ritual that would open up the wormhole.”

“And that’s probably why he tried to build some sort of generator,” Tony says, “In a way he might have figured that he would be able to give this wormhole shock therapy to open it up.”

“Like a big crank,” Jep says, “Man, this is cool….”

The design for the generator was equally theoretic. It showed a fusion reactor that basically worked by the same principle as the sun: it collides lower elements (for example hydrogen) to create elements that are higher up in the system (the next would be helium). In these collisions redundant energy is released that would basically be enough to power a city for years.

“There’s just one problem:” Jep says, “To get a generator like this started you need immense amounts of energy to begin with.”

“As in more than the island can generate,” Tony says.

“What about all those medicine books here in the corner?” Phyllis asks, “What do all those things have to do with each other?”

“A lot of them are about physiology, origin of diseases and general system failure and ms,” Shane says.

“What does it all mean?” Jep asks, “I mean, I can understand that you’d get interested in the history of this place when you live here…. Maybe a few ghost stories, but I don’t get this whole time-travel quest….”

“I think I noticed something,” Phyllis says, “It’s the same initials all over: AJ.”

“Sounds familiar,” Frankie says, “The J being Johnson.”

“Arthur Johnson was the last of the Johnson’s to live here,” Tony says, and he feels that he knows it, but not quite. After a minute he says, “I remember it now: this guy had a wife who must have gotten sick and died prematurely. I heard about the early death.”

“I remember that,” Shane says, “I mean, the stories from when my mom told them: when she was young the story was that this guy murdered his own wife, because West End Mansion had made him crazy.”

“Talking about one side of a coin….” Frankie says.

“And look at this painting,” Shane says, “Vertical arrows pointing up into the sky with a round sphere up in the clouds.”

“Definitely some kind of meta-physics,” Tony says, “With the circle as some higher power.”

“The sun,” Phyllis says, “Or the extra-terrestrials of the red sand that the Indians hauled up here.”

“I think we can connect the dots here,” Jep says, “This guys wife got very sick and there was no cure, because ms is a degenerative disease. Maybe it can be slowed down, but that would be the most of it.”

“He must have prayed for a cure or a miracle,” Phyllis says.

“And when nothing happened he must have figured that there might be a cure in another time-line or in the future,” Frankie says.

“Just imagine this guy working frantically,” Tony says, “Driving himself to the verge of madness, because any sane person would realize that this would never work – but he had no choice: he needed to do something. And then imagine this: he pulled a few nights through, hoping for a breakthrough and then he would emerge from his study one morning and he would have found that his wife had died on him a few days ago.”

“Jesus,” Phyllis says, “That’s depressing.”

“To say the least,” Jep says.

“It’s just a theory,” Tony says.

“It sounds true enough to me,” Phyllis says.

“I need some air,” Shane says.

“We all do,” Jep says.

It leaves them with an empty feeling: they expected a dark and exciting history about West End Mansion, but instead they found a history of a man whose wife was slipping away and that he couldn’t safe no matter how hard he tried.

That night they’re not much in the mood for scary stories and all that, but instead they light a candle in memory of Mr. Johnson and his wife.

“I can’t shake that image of AJ coming up from his study one day and finding his wife,” Phyllis says after they lit the candle, “I mean, what if all of this happened exactly 20 years ago on Christmas eve. I think that we should take this as a sign: AJ tried to find a cure for something in another time-line or dimension, but I can only imagine that he would have rather spend that time in the company of his wife that he must have loved with all that he had.”

“O man,” Frankie says, “This shit is real.”

“I will visit my family tomorrow, and I think all of you should do the same,” Phyllis says, “If there’s any meaning to that story, it’s that.”

“I was planning to do that anyway,” Jep says, almost off-hand, “But I have to agree with you that that’s probably the message here.”

“Spend time with loved ones,” Tony says, “Christmas.”

Jim looks pale again.

“You’re not feeling well?” Shane asks.

Run ro ied.

Chapter 3 (week 52 of 2018): Terror begins

The terror was a slow roast and it would start in the old part of town; in the shacks that were build on the cheap over old brick floors. For Jep, Phyllis, Frankie, Tony and Jim it all hadn’t begun yet though.That first day of Christmas they would all spend with their families.

Jep went to his mother, sister and his step-dad. They still live in the same house on the ten feet long poles that he grew up in. He had dropped a hint a few weeks ago that he might come by and as he entered the house, he realized that his mother had taken that hint as a certainty. His favorite food was already on the stove and there were gifts for him under the Christmas tree.

It was his mother, Elaine, who greeted him first when he came through the back door. She gave him a big welcome hug.

“I knew you’d come, you know,” Elaine says, “How are you, son?”

“I am good, mom,” he says, “And it’s good to be back. How about you?”

“As good as ever, as they say here,” she says, “You didn’t just fly in? Unless the airlines changed their schedules I don’t believe there’s any big plane coming in today….”

“I didn’t,” he says, “We booked a place with the whole gang for a reunion over the holidays.”

“And so you went there first, before visiting your family?” Elaine says, teasing, but underneath there is a subtle disappointment, “I thought that I raised you better than that….”

“The family is in there somewhere in the whole plan,” he says, “We kind of planned this reunion when we all went our different ways after high school. We made a pact to meet when all of us graduated from college.”

“I see,” Elaine says, about to throw a tantrum, “And where is this place?”

“You’re not going to believe it,” he says, “I’m still not used to the fact that we’re really staying there….”

“….?”

“West End Mansion.”

Elaine needs a minute to process this information, because West End Mansion is upscale, very upscale. And then there’s the history. She’s thinking: what’s up with my boy?

“I heard they turned that place in some sort of vacation rental a few years ago,” she says, but she also wants to hear more of the truth, “So tell me: how can you afford a place like that?”

“It’s not what it seems,” he says, “No debts and no bank was robbed.”

“I still don’t like the sound of this.”

“We made a deal,” he says.

“O, Father.”

“Or to be precise: Phyllis and her friend made a deal,” Jep says, “They will be the caretaker for two months. As compensation they could invite us over for the holidays.”

Elaine thinks it over for a moment.

“And you forgot that place is haunted?” Elaine asks, “But I guess you know the stories as well as the next person…. So I don’t need to tell you about all that….”

“I know some and Tony studied the whole history before we came here,” he says, “You remember Tony, right?”

“How could I forget,” she says, leaning into a deep sigh.

“How about you?” Jep asks, “Any big changes around here?”

“Not really,” she says, “Some new furniture, some new books. Rokset Island is usually nice and quiet.”

“The island life.”

“Life in the slow lane to be precise,” Elaine says, “Take a look around. Emma is in her room, but she might be sleeping still. Bob is doing something in the yard.”

“How is my little sister doing?”

“She’s getting there,” Elaine says, “But I feel that she needs to get away from the island for a while. You should talk to her about that.”

“Experience is good,” he says, “And Bob?”

“Bob is Bob.”

It seemed that there wasn’t that much that had changed indeed: it was the same warm and quiet family that they had always been. That first day of Christmas they chatted as a family during lunch about this and that. Afterwards Emma went back to her room, Bob went back to the yard, Elaine sat down with a book and Jep stretched out in front of the tv, binging on a post-apocalyptic series.

That night they had their family Christmas dinner that was prepared by Elaine, and assisted by Emma. Elaine doesn’t trust her cooking skills too much, since she had almost burned down the kitchen when she had tried to bake an egg about a year ago. Elaine hadn’t bumped her up from assistant yet, for now, the most that she was allowed to do was cutting vegetables and setting the table. Elaine was a sweetheart, but she also has this side to her that makes her kind of impossible to be with.

According to Marty, Jep’s dad, that was most of the reason why she had picked her bags when Jep and Emma were still very young, and she shipped herself and her two kids back to Rokset Island. Back then they lived in Moac, the big capital and the only metropolitan city within a few hundred miles. Elaine had blocked all attempts of Marty to stay in touch with his children and it had caused a lot of friction within their family when Jep reached out to Marty when he was 16. All that time his mother had told him that it was Marty who had deserted them, but at that time he learned that there were always two sides to a coin. He tended to root for Marty on this one.

Subconsciously it might have been some of the reason why Jep didn’t go straight to his family when he landed on Rokset Island, but the fact of the matter was that he was still finding out how to be his own man, and part of that was that he needed a little distance from his past. Elaine felt different though: she felt that he still had not forgiven her for blocking all contact between Marty and his children.

Around that time when Jep was 16, his relationship with Bob deteriorated further, but more so between him and Jep than with Emma. Jep’s character was more like Marty and when he finally met Marty he understood why he had never had more than a superficial bond with Bob: there was no blood between them.

Emma still sided with her mother, even though Elaine no longer blocked the attempts of Marty to reach out to her. In her heart of hearts she still believed her mother, even though the testimony of Jep and Marty proved something very different.

The next day Jep and Emma went for a walk in the woods that began at the far end of their property. They took their dog Dash along with them.

“You took good care of Dash while I was overseas?” Jep asks.

“I did,” Emma says, “But he was always your dog. You don’t see how crazy he gets when you are around?”

“I loved that dog so much when I was young,” Jep says, while petting it, “Grandpa bought it for me when we had just come back. I was ten, now I’m twenty-four.”

“Fourteen years ago,” Emma says, “That’s like a hundred in human years.”

“98,” Jep says, “How is it to be living here without me?”

“Quiet,” she says, “That’s for sure.”

“As in boring?”

“Just quiet,” Emma says and she starts laughing, “You want to go checkout that deserted beach I assume.”

“Definitely,” Jep says, “It was like my zone, you know, me and the gang. I spend so much time there: fishing, hunting, setting traps, hanging out in the clubhouse.”

“It must be a boys thing, or something.”

“Yeah,” Jep says, “I forgot: you’re more like the girly type.”

“So what?”

“So nothing,” he says, “Just different crowds.”

“Now you want to know what I used to do with my friends?” she asks and without waiting for him to reply, “We used to hang out at one of my friends houses. Listening to music. Watching scary movies.”

“Talk about boys….”

“I get it,” she says, “I’m not boyish like that girl in your gang…. What’s her name again?”

“Phyllis.”

“You paused,” Emma says, “He paused and that means that there’s still something going on between the two of you….”

“Maybe,” he says, smirking, “Maybe there is.”

“Good.”

When they reach the beach after half an hour it’s still as deserted as ever. The large sea grape tree at the end of the path from the forest is still there as well.

They take a few minutes to sit in its shade and to drink some water.

“So this is it?” Emma asks.

“And not a soul in a million miles,” Jep says, “Just as I remember it from back in the days.”

“You thought there would be other kids now?”

“Kind of,” Jep says, “I kind of hoped to see a new gang doing all kinds of cool stuff all over again.”

“Rokset Island has also become global.”

“Computer games and tv,” Jep says, “We did exactly the same, but only at night when it was dark. Or when it was raining.”

“You have plans for New Years Eve?” Jep asks.

“Not yet.”

“What if I told you that you can celebrate it in a grand mansion,” Jep says and he adds in a spooky voice, “West End Mansion.”

“I’d say…. Count me in….”

Phyllis also went back home for the first day of Christmas, but she didn’t go home to the kind of warm and loving family unit that was waiting for Jep and Frankie. Going back home always left Phyllis feeling empty and depressed. On the first day of Christmas it wasn’t that much different from the other days that she decided to give it another try. If anything, it made her feel worse.

What had torn up her family many years ago was when her mother had passed away when she was young. It wasn’t that her father Lyle was such a bad head of the family, in a way they definitely were a family unit, but somehow they weren’t complete without a mother at center of all of it.

Her mother Dana had passed away when Phyllis was just two years old and her brothers were only 6 and 10. Dana had been diagnosed with leukemia less than a year before and it had already spread throughout her body at that time. The sickness had progressively deteriorated until there was nothing left of her.

The first few years after Dana’s death had been the hardest, but somehow Phyllis had been spared the worst, because she was still young. When she turned 12 and entered high school she became more aware than ever that her family wasn’t normal. It was at that time that she also became friends with Jep, Tony, Frankie and Jim. They accepted her as she was and looking back she figured that their geekiness and social inadequacies had something to do with it.

When Phyllis got older she more and more realized how much nonsense it was when people told her and her family that she would get over things at some point, referring to the death of her mother. It was obviously a myth people tended to say, because of the very simple reason that they most likely didn’t know what else to say. It sucks, might have been one, but this is something people generally don’t say, because it’s too close to the truth and there’s too little hope in that statement. The sting had become less though as time moved by, but the memory of her mother never faded away. It always flared up around this time of the year, especially now that her friends were here and she had just learned about the tragedy of AJ and his wife.

The impact had been different though for her father. Phyllis and her brothers still had this flexibility that in a way allowed them to recover from the kind of traumatic events that would cripple adults. Their bones were still flexible, but those of her father Lyle were more brittle. The kids were just starting their lives, despite what had happened to their family, but Lyle had felt that his life was over. He started drinking, heavily. Every one around him saw that it was a bad idea, but sometimes a man needs to hit the rock bottom in order to climb back up. The climbing back up hadn’t happened yet though.

There were stretches when Lyle’s sister took his kids in and that had spared them from the worst. After about five years the worst had been over and their family started to attain a degree of normalcy, although it lacked much of the structure daily routines that included religion and healthy food. There were nights when Lyle had his buddies over for poker and during those nights they were left with tv-dinners and unsupervised. It had happened quite a few times that Phyllis literally fell asleep at school and at some point it even looked like she and her brothers would be placed in an orphanage, but for some reason it never actually happened.

Her two brothers always looked out for her though and they provided her with the structure and stability that they had when they lived with Lyle’s sister for a few months at a time. In some ways it hadn’t always been easy as a girl among men, but she had learned from an early age on that men tended to look out for her. In other ways it was easier, because usually they treated her more like a boy than a girl, which also had its perks. When she was young it meant that she had managed to hang out with the gang of Jep, Frankie, Tony and Jim: for some reason they must have believed the boys that she hung out with to be some sort of non-threat. As long as she stuck to the curfew of her father and her brothers there was no real problem there.

By the time when she got to know the gang there was only one very big problem that had too big of an impact on her family life. When her dad opened up a bottle of gin it always meant that the kids better look for cover. He basically drank until he passed out, but until he reached that point, he tended to rant and scream, and on occasion he turned violent. It was always about the same thing: how his wife had deserted him with three kids and that he didn’t understand why the Big Man had taken her away from him.

When Phyllis was young she always avoided the topic of her family situation and for the same reason she never brought any kids over to their house. One day, when they were about twelve years old, she had told the whole gang the whole story. It was the first time that she told anyone outside of her family what really went on. One by one they had given her a big hug and told her that it was alright and that they loved her anyway. They hadn’t spoken about it after, except for one time about a month later when she said, “You’re like the family I never had, bff,” she said, “Best friends forever.”

They had stacked hands and repeated the phrase, “Best friends forever.”

It had been about two weeks since Phyllis’ last visit at her dad’s and somehow she still hoped that there would be a day when her family would turn normal again. Instead of normal, it had turned more bizarre. Her oldest brother had started dating a girl named Darlene a few years ago and from time to time she took up the female role in the house.

It wasn’t so much the role that she took, since she literally took over, but it was more the way that she did this and there was something about her that made that Phyllis just didn’t get along with her. Phyllis kept telling herself that she needed to keep on trying to get along with Darlene, for her brother’s sake, but also for her father’s sake.

That first day of Christmas Darlene had already made preparations for the Christmas dinner and she reluctantly accepted the help of Phyllis. She was in full Darlene-mode, as Phyllis liked to call it.

“You know how to cook?” Darlene asks, “No offense, but a woman like you?”

Count to ten Phyllis told herself and instead of flinging out what’s that supposed to mean?, she says: “Here and there.”

“Me, I love to cook,” Darlene says, not registering that Phyllis had said anything, “I think that’s just what a woman should do for her man. Or maybe it’s just me.”

O it’s all you Phyllis thought, “Loves goes through the stomach.”

“Tomorrow night we will go to my parents,” Darlene said, “There I don’t need to cook. I don’t suppose you are with anyone serious like that.”

Not that it’s any of your business, “Unfortunately.”

That night Darlene kept working on Phyllis’ nerves, her older brother saw what was going on, but he had no idea how to smoothen things out between those two. Her dad was liquoring up on gin and in a way it was like old times. Her other brother showed up when they had already started dinner and he was also by himself.

Late that night Phyllis drove back to her house and spend the night there.

The next day Jep and Phyllis were the first to return to West End Mansion.

“He,” Phyllis says.

“He yourself,” Jep says, “We both came back.”

“I thought I could handle it….” Phyllis sighs.

“Yeah,” he says, “Tensions can run up high this time of the year.”

“I’m not much in the mood for anything,” she says, “I’m just going to read my book and that’s it for me.”

“You just do your do, babe,” he says, painfully aware that there’s little that he can do change her family relations, and that in that area not much has changed since they were little kids.

Tony came in shortly after Jep. Jim came in at two. Frankie came in at five.

That night the guys prepared a decent dinner for Phyllis. They were the family that she didn’t have for Christmas Day One.

After nine they went out for a night on the town: they ended up in the rough part by the bay. In this part of town there were no brick and mortar structures, but instead it looks like a congregation of shacks that were pulled up on the cheap.

These were the kind of establishments that served cheap liquor and weren’t too much bent on rules and regulations. From time to time there would be a bar fight or a drug bust by the police. Either one of these might cause the authorities to close some of these bars for a while. These closings never lasted, since in this part of town people tended to pull together: they would block the roads to keep cop cars from rolling in and they would cut the steel chains that blocked the entrances to these bars.

Rokset Island had always had this rough and rugged side to its history: the island had been mined for minerals and metals, stripped for natural blocks that could be used in construction, forests had been cut down for lumber, to name just a few. Besides stripping the land for resources, there had also been an industry around this and it had started at the turn of the twentieth century. There had been shipyards, a refinery, a paint factory, a large meat processing plant.

All those activities had fell into decline when the oil had dried up in the 1950s. Close to a thousand workers left the island almost over night, leaving ghost towns behind. Other businesses collapsed. The price for energy rocketed almost right away, which made harvesting lumber much more expensive, which in turn had effects on the shipyards. In a period of fifteen years all the prosperity had dried up and by the end of that time most people either worked for the government, or they worked the land.

The stories of those times were still around and there were enough landmarks to testify of better times. Not all of those stories had been good though, because back then there were also strange things going on, just like they always had and probably always would on a small isolated island on the tropical side of the Atlantic. It might have had something to do with that unfortunate history where they had eradicated the original inhabitants and brought in new folks.

It was close to midnight when the gang entered one of these bars and Tony starts talking:

“My dad told me more about this rugged part of the history of Rokset Island,” Tony starts, “I always knew that West End Mansion played a bigger part than most people talked about, but it was mostly at the turn of the twentieth century that the extent of the stories about that ancient burial ground on which the mansion had been build had started to become more extreme. In those days the population of Rokset Island grew rapidly, because there was a lot of work and a good deal of those workers came from neighboring Spanish islands. On those islands people are more superstitious than those from The West that initially came here.

“Voodoo and all that,” Phyllis says.

“That’s only a small part of it,” Tony says, “The first story doesn’t start at the Mansion, but it starts here, literally: allegedly when the first ships came from The West in the 1800s, people came out to greet the strangers and welcome them with open arms. The first wave of settlers had been nothing but kind, but the second wave was large and brutal. Those poor people had come out with their whole families and brought gifts and food to those that had come from a far away land, because from what they had experienced before they expected to be greeted kindly.”

“I guess that’s where it turns grim,” Jep says.

“That would be an understatement,” Tony says, “Those sailors that came in at that second batch stormed off those boats with cutlasses and all: it took the natives by surprise and the men were slaughtered and the women held captive. The women were raped over and over, those who refused were killed on the spot. Those killings and the site of the first brothel of Rokset Island had been exactly where we are sitting now and you can still see traces of that history: these stones that you see here were brought from overseas, not so much to trade, but to give their boats more weight in heavy weather and to have building materials in case they had found new land.”

“Wow,” Frankie says, and they all inspect the floor for a while, during which Tony continues talking.

“The first buildings that were constructed here were a warehouse, barracks and a brothel. The captain of the ship named the island Rokset Island, basically because from the distance it had looked like a big rock that came out of the ocean. He made himself into the first governor of the island, and well, the rest of the story you know.”

“He cleared the burial site and wanted to build a house there,” Phyllis says, “But he was killed prematurely.”

“Then I suppose that’s most of the bad mojo of this place here,” Frankie says, “This is like a painful reminder of those first days.”

“Times were cruel,” Tony says, “Not to mention slavery and all that.”

“And all the suffering that must have happened here,” Jep says, “Literally here.”

“That’s also what those workers didn’t much like when they arrived a hundred years later,” Tony says, “A hundred years is long enough for something to be the past, but not long enough for bad things to have been completely forgotten. The story that they came up with is the one of the native killer bats: according to the stories, the night after the first settlers had come in, most of the harbor was turned into a large pool of blood and when the night came it attracted all kinds of animals out of the wild (there were even reports of sharks that got such a blood craze that they jumped out of the water and died on the beach, coked out of their skull because of that strong scent). The story was that during that night a flock of bats came from the mountains and they chased every other animal from the blood pool and they consumed all of it. By consuming the blood of those natives that had been murdered, they had somehow incorporated their anger and lust for revenge. The story was that those bats could kill a man by spitting on him, not immediately, but for sure within ten days.”

“They’re flying rats,” Phyllis says, “Maybe they picked up some kind of disease that the natives carried and that the oppressors weren’t immune to.”

“Who knows,” Tony says, “Some of those people from those other islands also believed in voodoo and that those bats could be summoned to exact a revenge: there was one case of a man that had cheated on his wife had been attacked by a hundred bats and died on the spot.”

“Another story was that the docks and most notably the site of these first structures brought out the bad in people,” Tony says, “It’s said that if you have a fight here, it will turn sour, because this place makes people more paranoid and it somehow amplifies our inert aggressions….”

“Oh my,” Phyllis says.

A man wearing a cowboy hat turns around and faces all of them.

“I don’t mean to intrude you guys or anything,” the man says, “But that’s some nice anecdotes you got there, son.”

“Thanks,” Tony says, “I personally like those kind of stories.”

“You know by any chance how that son of a bitch captain came to his end?”

“He was killed,” Tony says, “But that’s about all that I know about it.”

“He was killed, alright,” the guy says, “But it wasn’t any ordinary killing like it was back in the Wild West, where a man had his honor and dignity even when faced with his own mortality. This guy was lynched.”

“By the natives?” Jep asks, “I can imagine they were pretty pissed off….”

“That’s what you would expect,” the guy says, “They were behind it though.”

“Maybe he was lynched by his own men….” Jim says.

“Kind of,” the guy says, “Those natives, they weren’t all kumbaja and such after what had happened. They were out for revenge and until the last of them was wiped out they hunted those soldiers down. They didn’t have guns, but they had bows and arrows, and, man, were they good.”

“Then what happened,” Frankie asks.

“This is kind of where those two timelines mix,” the guy says, “The 1800s and the 1900s. Like those Spanish’ who came from the other islands, the natives were very superstitious and like the Spanish they also practiced voodoo.”

“I have a feeling I know where this one is going….” Tony says.

“The army of the dead,” the guy says.

“Aha,” Phyllis says, half-believing where this is going.

“The story was that they turned those dead soldiers into zombies,” the guys says, “And supposedly it had happened during Christmas and New Year. So imagine that: there’s this one night when you have all these undead soldiers crawling from their graves, picking up rocks, sticks, machetes and what-not and going after that son of a bitch captain.”

“They might have had a bone to pick with him themselves,” Jim says, “In those days you wouldn’t be captain, unless you had law and order.”

“It were cut-throat times,” the guy says, “If a subordinate saw weakness in their leader, he was expected to kill him at the first opportunity.”

“Much like in the Wild West.”

“Very much so,” the guy says, “I don’t know whether that part about the zombies was true though, probably not, but I do know that that captain suffered a horrible death.”

“Probably lynched by those natives after all,” Tony says, “Maybe they drugged him and hypnotized him or something to get him to believe that he was slaughtered by his own men.”

“It’s all in the past though,” the guy says, “But it always made me think though: could we repeat that given the right circumstances?”

“You mean: are we still capable of cruelty?” Phyllis asks.

“When you’re born here, you must have inherited those same genes,” the guy says, turning grim, “Would you be able to tell which man could turn completely schizo on another?”

The atmosphere turns uncomfortable and for a moment all of them have this feeling that they just walked into the wrong kind of bar. This is a place where the police don’t come and where men tend to turn their back, out of fear, or out of a bribe. The barkeeper looks in their direction and by his looks it seems that he doesn’t think too much of them.

The guy snaps out of it and starts laughing.

“Just messing with you all,” he says, although he doesn’t show much of any emotion, “All I’m saying is this: watch your back.”

The guy picks up his cowboy hat from the counter and leaves a couple of dollars in his empty glass.

“I have had my whiskey for the night,” he says, “I wish you all a pleasant night.”

They all watch him walk out the door. Besides the hat and the jeans, he also has those tackles on his shoes that cowboys use to get their horse back in line when it’s misbehaving.

“What was that all about?” Phyllis asks, the minute the guy is out of the door, “I think he was serious about that turning schizo part.”

“If there’s any truth to that part about this place bringing out the worst in people,” Jep says, “This is it.”

“You mean that guy?” Frankie asks.

“I don’t know,” Tony says, “I can’t place it.”

“You guys don’t think it’s the whiskey talking?” Phyllis asks.

“Either that, or he needed to spill his beans to a couple of strangers,” Jim says.

“You guys think that he knows where we’re staying?” Phyllis asks.

“He was sitting there the minute we came in,” Frankie says, “So, probably.”

“I will pick up my dog at my parents,” Jep says.

“That shitty little thing?” Tony asks.

“Better get my pit bull,” Frankie says, laughing.

They picked up the dog.

It barked the whole night. And the night after. And the night after.

Then they returned it. The thing was though that it refused to go to certain areas in the yard. It was afraid of the swimming pool, the greenhouse and the shed. Not to mention the Mansion itself: it started biting the minute Jep tried to bring it in.

“Dogs know things,” Jim says, “I’m telling you.”

“Maybe it can feel the history of this whole place or maybe there’s something here still.”

“I think it’s something current,” she says, “I think it responds to something that it can feel here and now.”

On Saturday and Sunday they prepared the Mansion for the New Years party. December 31^st was that Monday.

That Monday they had well over a hundred guests to entertain.

At 11.30 Phyllis declared the party a success:

“You see:” Phyllis yells, “Nothing bad has happened.”

“Not yet,” Jep yells back, “You got me thinking on my dog.”

Jep walks Phyllis to a more quiet place.

“Where is everyone of the gang?” he asks.

“It’s all under control,” she says, “Frankie is on the stage, either playing or assisting others to perform. I believe he’s also going to be the DJ for the big count down. Tony resides by the pool, telling more stories. Jim, well, he’s with Shane, and I guess they have spend most of the night in his room. And there’s you and me.”

“Maybe you are right,” Jep says, thinking it over, “I know that you usually are….”

“Don’t say….”

“Can I ask you for one last dance during the old year?” he asks.

“Please….”

After a few songs it’s 11.45. Frankie announces for everyone to come to the dance floor. Jep and Phyllis take a walk around the house to ask everyone to join them.

On the big projector screen they have a stream live from New York City, where it’s the same time, and the last thirty seconds everyone starts counting down until the New Year.

All of a sudden it’s there: The New Year…. A clean slate and all that.

The second the New Year starts, Frankie plays an upbeat track that gets everyone to the dance floor. They keep at it for a good thirty minutes.

Jep is about to tell Phyllis that he needs a break when two girls come running in: STOP! HELP! SUSIE IS DEAD! They can’t hear the girls over the music, so Phyllis takes them to the hallway where she figures out what’s what. She sends Jep outside to confirm what has happened and that it just wasn’t a girl that had gotten stone drunk.

Jep comes back with a pale look on his face and Phyllis immediately understand what that means: the girl is really dead. Phyllis gets Frankie to cut the music.

A girl had been caught in a bear trap. She’s a white girl that has been living on Rokset Island for a few years. Her skin is pale and there’s a small incision in the neck.

A girl who studies medicine runs over and has no difficulty making a preliminary diagnosis: a major artery was cut, causing the girl to bleed dry.

“Then where’s the blood?” her friend asks.

“Good question,” the girl says.

“We need to do something,” Phyllis says, in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear.

“Maybe the guy is still on the premises,” Frankie says, stepping up to the plate next to Phyllis, “We need to scan every square foot, every tree, every room, everything.”

The guests flock around and the fear is getting tangible. More people flock around and it seems that no one really knows what to do. Then there’s one guy among them that yells: “We have to get the fuck out of here!”

As soon as the guy had opened his mouth people had already started storming off the premises.

It’s only the gang and the two friends of the dead girl who stayed behind. The sound of the screaming posse slowly dies in the distance, until the only thing they can hear are crickets, tree frogs and the rustling of the palm trees.

“Even your sister bolted,” Frankie says.

“Yeah,” Jep says, “But she’s with her friends.”

Phyllis tries calling the police, but after the third failed attempt they realize that they’re on their own.

“In a way it might be a good thing that it’s less of us,” Frankie says, “Less people to walk in our way and to destroy evidence.”

“You guys ever expected there to be a bear trap like this?” Jep asks, “I mean what sense does it make to have traps like this on a tropical island.”

“It makes no sense,” Jim says, “I once went hunting for a weekend in Colorado and I know that people might place them around their house for protection, but here there’s no such thing.”

“Absolutely,” Phyllis says, “You might get the occasional spider or centipede in your house, but that’s about it.”

“What about those girls?” Frankie asks, while looking in their direction.

“They’re in shock,” Jep says, “They’re in no condition to help us. The best we can do for them is to just give them some time to process what has just happened.”

“Let’s carry them inside though,” Phyllis says, “If the person who did this is still around, it might be the safest place to be for them.”

“Agreed,” Frankie says.

They all walk them inside and they show the girls how to barricade the door of the spare bedroom. It smells like it recently saw some action.

“We’ll be back,” Frankie says, “I promise.”

Once outside they split up in two teams: Frankie, Jim and Shane take the left side of the premises and cover the area with the sheds that has all the tools. Jep, Phyllis and Tony cover the other side around the large greenhouse. As means of defense they carry the same weaponry that they had used the other night when they believed that Shane was an intruder: a baseball bat, two iron rods to poke the fire and besides they took four swords that they had found the other day when they had explored the premises.

With the moon out it isn’t too hard to navigate the grounds, but it makes no difference in being able to see what was underneath the leaves, since most of the trees had shed their leaves. They stay in touch via two walkie-talkies.

“Wait, I think I see something,” they hear Jim whisper, “Wait here.”

The next thing they hear is a loud whip and they see Jim being flung up in a net and next thing they know is that he’s bungling at ten feet above the ground.

“I’m going to die!” Jim yells, “I’m dead meat.”

“What are you talking about Jim-jim?” Frankie asks in a brisk voice that instantly shuts him up, “You will not die, not tonight.”

Run ro ied Jim thinks, but he doesn’t hear the wicked voice.

“What happened?” Jep asks via the walkie-talkie.

“Should we run over to check it out?” Phyllis asks.

“My guess is that there was another trap, or something like that.”

“You’re right on the money, Big Bones,” they hear Frankie say, “Jim-jim here got caught in a net, so at the moment it’s just me and Shane…. Wait! I see something!”

“What do you see, over,” Jep says, but there’s no response.

“We need to take a chance,” Jep says, “They saw someone or something.”

They run over where they guess Frankie, Jim and Shane are. They find them looking all over.

“Man, I saw someone….” Frankie says, frustrated.

“I think you did,” Tony says, lighting the ground with his phone, “Now what does this look like to you?”

“A square heel, some small thing behind it sticking in the dirt and little profile,” Phyllis says, “What did the guy look like?”

“Don’t tell me that he wore a hat….” Tony says.

“It was too dark to see,” Frankie says, “But come to think of it: a horse would be the perfect get away….”

They all look at each other: “What if it’s that guy that we met in that crummy bar by the bay….” they all say together.

“But how’s that possible?” Phyllis asks.

“You mean: why would he take such a risk?” Jep says.

“I can only think of one thing:” Jim says, walking up to them, “Yeah, cut myself loose,” he adds, continuing, “He’s showing off.”

They all look at Jim, like: what?

“Westerns are kind of a big thing where I’ve lived for the last six years,” Jim says, “That guy is some kind of outlaw who has become very good at what he does. This is his way of showing off.”

“Some kind of honor by looking us straight in the eyes….” Jep says.

“In some twisted way I must say: it makes sense,” Frankie says, “And it was one scary mother-fucker, come to think of it.”

“At least he’s gone,” Phyllis says, “It also looks like it will be one more hour until sunrise.”

They checked up on the girls and they were unharmed. After that they went over to the crummy bar and asked the bar keeper if he knew the guy.

“Never seen him before.”

“You know if he’s from here?” Jep asks.

“No can say if I ain’t know the guy.”

“Come, let’s go,” Frankie says, “This guy really was a pro, besides even if they know something, they will not talk.”

“The fate of the Outsiders,” Phyllis says, “We’re like the special members.”

“We don’t fit in where we grew up and we don’t fit in, out in the outside world,” Jep says, “Unless it’s just perception.”

“Which may just make us easy game,” Jim says and he thinks: I need to get away from here.

On the far end of the island there was a man though, unpacking a backpack in the shed in the back yard of a large mansion. We can’t see his face though, but we can see what’s in the bags: blood. That strangely irony smell is in the air.

The man, he whistles, and it looks like he has a straw of dried grass sticking out of his mouth. What he needs the blood for remains a mystery though. “Run ro ied, fuckers,” the man mumbles, “R-R-I.”

West End Mansion (free story 18k words/65 minutes)

Chapter 1 (week 50 – 2018): The arrival

Chapter 2 (Week 51 – 2018): History unveiled

Chapter 3 (week 52 of 2018): Terror begins

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