Sure enough, I went downstairs and saw the front door wide open, banging against the wall with every gust of wind. Another gust drove rain onto the floor, wetting the flagstones and the rug, and cold air blasted the house. I cursed myself and went to push the door closed when another blink in the darkness caught my eye. I stood there, framed in the doorway, the house lights all blazing behind me, and stared at the dark lighthouse at the tip of the island. I could hear the crash of the waves and I was getting soaked with rain, and finally I saw it again. A light – a faded, barely visible light, fluttered weakly in the tower. I frowned. I couldn’t understand what kind of light it was. It flickered and was barely bright and seemed to flutter . . .
Wait. Could it be candlelight?
The wind shrieked up around me and almost tore the door from my grasp. I came to my senses and pushed it closed and locked it for good measure, and the cold and the noise abated. I found myself hoping that Ethan had made it back to shore okay.
The steady thrumming from the Stirling heat exchanger in the basement eased my nerves. It sounded comforting and familiar, reminiscent of Bifrost Station, whose mechanical heartbeat was a sign that all was safe and sound.
I shivered in my wet clothes. It was time to change and settle in for the night.
The bathroom steamed up luxuriously, and I stripped out of my wet clothes and stepped into the full tub. I sank back and let my eyes close, enjoying the near sensation of weightlessness that the water gave me.
The bath soothed my aching muscles and bones, so unaccustomed to one-g. Gravity was a burden, something we spacers have to relearn. There had been stories of people just returned who set a cup aside in mid-air and were surprised to see it drop. Worse were the spacers who pushed off of balconies or second stories without a single thought. Some of us have been exiled permanently, unable ever to return to Earth because of bones that have become so fragile that the forces of re-entry would turn them into dust.
I dozed, half-asleep, and ended up in the middle of a dream in which Ethan’s ferry boat was crashing into the station and I was unable to stop it. The impact shuddered me, and the ferry broke apart in a bloom of fire, fed by the explosive decompression of station air.
I woke with a jerk and a splash, gasping as I sent cooled water up my nose. Disoriented, I wondered what had woken me, when I heard it again – a bang, much like the first time. The front door slamming open, and the rising sound of the storm as it wailed around and inside the house.
But I had locked the door.
I got up, heavy and clumsy as a mermaid on land, and fumbled for the big soft towel. I dried off hastily and then, cursing because I had forgotten to get dry clothes from my duffle bag, I struggled back into wet clothing and pulled on my boots once more. All the good the bath had done me vanished in a clammy moment.
At the top of the stairs, I could see the front door banging back and forth again, the storm flinging rain inside onto the red carpet of the hall.
I hurried down and closed it again, locked it again, and let my heartbeat subside as the warmth returned to the house.
“Beatriz Sabatini,” I scolded myself out loud. “Get a hold of yourself. You are an experienced pilot and spacer with millions of miles of vacuum under your belt. Stop acting like a child.”
I needed to change into dry clothes. With deliberation I went to pick up my duffle bag. It wasn’t there.
Confused, I turned all the way around. Nowhere. I certainly hadn’t lugged it around with me when I’d first got in. I had dropped it just inside the entrance.
There was a large wet spot by the front door. A faint trail of wet gleamed across the wood floor where something large had been dragged.
Something steeled inside me. I grew calm, making my heartbeat slow and my breath even. I picked up a fire iron from the hearth, hefted it and followed the wet trail. I held my breath and listened for other breathing sounds, but the only background noise was the rhythmic movement of the Stirling.
The wet trail led to the kitchen, and now I could see small bare footprints. A child? The bag was heavy even if you didn’t have zero-g muscles. How could a child drag it?
You know which child, I told myself. But I still didn’t want to believe it.
The cellar door was open, cold musty wet air flowing up from it like air from an opened grave. Child or no child, I lifted the poker and called out.
“Come on out of there.”
Nothing.
“Listen. You get your ass up those stairs right this instant, or I will call your mother.”
There was a pause and then I heard a small giggle. I swallowed and swore all kinds of curses in my head. My mobile was in my duffle bag, and my duffle bag had been stolen. I eyed the antique phone. If ever there was an emergency, this was it. I didn’t care if Ethan thought I was nuts. Maybe I was nuts. But I wasn’t alone on Tern Island and someone was playing tricks. I picked up the house phone. There was static interference on the line, and then I heard a child sing slyly,“Beaaaa-uh.”
“Who is this? Hello?”
The static increased and I had to move the phone away from my ear. The cellar door swung wildly and then slammed shut, making me jump. The latch fell into place.
Ethan, get me off this island now.
I brought the receiver back to my ear. The static was fainter now, and I could hear the ghost of other transmissions. I was straining to make sense of the words when I heard as clear as anything,“Bea, the lighthouse has the answers.”
Static shrieked in my ear and I jumped back, dropping the phone to dangle by its twisted cord.
This was absurd. Someone was playing a sick joke and I had fallen for it. I looked at the closed cellar door. If there was a child down there – a preternaturally strong and clever child – I should still go down to find him or her. A child should be protected, after all. An uncomfortable memory came to me, of being locked in a dark, cramped place, and I shied away from it. Was it a memory or a nightmare?
I jiggled the latch of the cellar door and it creaked open. I felt for the string of the old-fashioned light unit, but when I tugged on it, nothing happened. The kitchen light barely illuminated the wooden stairs that disappeared into the gloom. The shelves that held my grandfather’s wine and spirits were tucked beneath the stairs. There wasn’t much space for anything else; just a small landing and some room to duck under the staircase and pull out a bottle of some fine ’07 vintage. I couldn’t see my duffle bag at all, so that’s where my unseen adversary had probably hidden it.
Mrs Dawes had kept a flashlight and basic tools in the cupboard next to the sink. I checked it and sure enough there was a handheld torch of the simple wind-up kind that had amused me so much as a child. I wound it and a bluish light gleamed from the torch. I glanced back at the cellar door, uncomfortable at the thought of it slamming closed with me downstairs. Rummaging through the cupboard, I found the power screwdriver I was looking for. It didn’t take long to take the cellar door off of its hinges and set it down on the floor of the kitchen.
“Little children who slam doors don’t deserve to have them,” I announced to the house. The only response was the wind.
The doorway yawned in front of me, and I shone the flashlight at it. The light had grown weaker and I quickly wound it up again.
Six steps into the ground. I walked down quickly, the air growing colder as soon as I left the kitchen.
The thrumming of the Stirling was muffled; the heat exchanger lived on the other side of the house.
My duffle bag was not at the bottom of the stairs. Winding the light, I looked around and under the stairs. No duffle bag. No bottles either. Whoever had taken the duffle hadn’t gone down the stairs. I went to go back up when something hit the back of my head and I pitched forward in a blinding flash of pain.