Adermoor Cove Part 2: Love Hurts - 4. Chapter 4

Nurse Audrey gave Lane no time to grab hold of his surroundings. She led him straight up the staircase, a beckoning smile on her lips.

An eye catching crystal chandelier hovered above their heads; as they ascended the stairs Lane grabbed glimpses of the framed pictures lining the walls. The photographs, formally taken judging from the way everyone stood shoulder to shoulder, followed a vague timeline, going from black-and-white to color.

They reached the landing and came to a long hallway with a door on the left and another at the end of the hall. From one of the rooms he could hear music playing: something with a piano and a violin, soft and beautiful. Lane didn't dare try to guess what it was.

Floorboards creaked underneath their feet. Audrey stopped at the first door which was half ajar. “Vanessa, you have a visitor.”

There was a hiss of air from inside the room, and the same raspy voice he’d heard on the phone at The Mountaintop Inn said, “Thank you...Audrey. Show him in.”

Lane slowly peeked around the corner of the doorway, both curious and strangely afraid. The person lying in the big four poster bed, head propped up on pillows, looked like a newborn child and an old woman trapped in the same body.

Her hair, a mane of thick silver, hung down to her shoulders. Her skin was surprisingly free of lines and wrinkles except for around the eyes and mouth. Her hands were folded on top of the blankets; her fingers were long. A sapphire ring sat on the middle finger of her right hand.

Lane sensed a quiet power and determination around her, though it was greatly diminished by the cancer growing within her - and it wouldn't be long before it took her from this world.

Beside her was an air tank. She wore a breathing mask which helped pump oxygen into her lungs. Something about the air tank being next to her seemed insidious. On the bedside table a vinyl record, from which the sadly beautiful music came from, spun.

Vanessa removed her mask, lifting it up so it pointed up at the ceiling, and said, “I knew you’d come.”

“I almost didn’t,” he said.

“Audrey...dear, this conversation...is not for your ears,” said Vanessa. “I’ll be fine for the rest of the evening.”

“Are you sure?” Audrey said, looking doubtful. “I can wait downstairs.”

“I’m sure, dear.” Vanessa waited until the nurse was gone before she lifted a finger at the chair next to the bed. “Please, Lane, have a seat...you must be exhausted from your travels.”

Lane hesitated at first, wanting to demand answers, but found himself moving towards the chair. It creaked slightly when he sat down. For the longest time they just watched each other; the record player kept playing its sad music. After a moment Lane realized Vanessa’s eyes were the same shade of blue and there was something vaguely familiar about her face. At the moment he couldn’t say for sure what it was.

“You look exactly how I dreamed,” she said after a moment. Her voice was softened by the mask strapped to her face.

Lane didn't know what to say so he kept silent; it wasn’t like him to not know what to say.

“I imagine you want answers,” Vanessa Stanton said.

“Yes,” he said.

“I don't know much.” She went silent for a few moments, long enough to catch her breath. She said something else but her words were made unintelligible by the mask. The chair Lane was sitting on creaked again as he leaned forward so he could hear her better. “And what little I do know there's too much to tell in one sitting.”

“On the phone you said it’s from here, did I hear that correctly?” Lane asked.

She nodded slowly; the simple movement of her head seemed to take great effort.

“What the hell is it?”

She shrugged her shoulders. He saw a hint of the white silk nightgown she was wearing beneath the covers and the bony cup of her shoulder. “I don’t know what it is exactly...Virus...and plague comes to mind. Parasite would be more like it. It takes over whoever it comes in contact with...and spreads...and I think you know the basics...”

“If it’s from here how does it travel? How does it know where to find me?”

“It’s attracted to people like you and me...people who are special. It fears us for some reason. It wants to destroy us. All the people who know why, are dead.”

“How old is it?”

Vanessa chuckled. The sound was bitter, like the sound of dead leaves. “Who can say? There’s no definite answer. But it’s been around for a long time... since this island was nothing more than pine trees and forest... since before people settled here. My family, the Stantons, were among the first. They’ve been here ever since... but our family has died out. Killed by the darkness in this place. I am the second to last Stanton left. After that, our bloodline will be extinct.”

“So,” Lane said, “you’re special?”

“Yes, perhaps not as special as you, but special enough. I have dreams… I dreamt of you. I’ve been dreaming of you for a long time. Traveling from place to place, running... I know what happened to your lover... I’m very sorry about what happened to him. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for a long time. At first I didn’t know how... but then the answer came to me in a dream. And I can feel the darkness... when it’s awake, when it’s coming... and it’s awake now. You see it isn’t always awake...it sleeps... it’ll be active for half a century and then sleep for half a century...”

Vanessa’s eyes grew wide, frantic.

“Hey,” Lane said, taking her hand, “slow down. Catch your breath.”

“You... don’t... understand...” Tears oozed from the corners of her eyes. “There’s so little time... and I’ve been waiting for this moment for a very long time... It’s awakened again... and this town has forgotten...”

Lane’s eyes narrowed. “You mean other people know about this?”

She nodded. “But they cover it up - they don’t want people to know about it, so they cover it up. They don’t want people to know about it.” She let out another bitter chuckle. “Because then there wouldn’t be any tourists and without the tourists this town would have no money.”

Lane sighed, rubbed his face with his hands. “This is too much.”

Her face softened. “I know. I wish I could ease you into this, my dear. But there's no time. I have only a few days left to live - that’s not a lot of time.”

“How do you know when you’re going to die?”

“I just know. I can literally feel the cancer eating me alive...and there’s nothing left for it to eat. Too many years chewing tobacco. Can you do me a favor? Get in the drawer of this table beside my bed - inside you’ll find a big black photo album.”

Lane got up from the chair and walked around the bed. Indeed he found a photo album in the drawer of the table. He went back to the chair and set it on the edge of the bed.

“Flip through it,” said Vanessa.

He opened to the first page of photographs. “What am I looking for?”

“Open your mind. You’ll know when you find it.”

The pictures were of the Stanton family. He recognized some of the pictures from the framed copies hanging above the stairs, but was now able to get a better look at them. The first picture was of a young couple - a man and a woman - standing in front of the lighthouse. The picture was in black and white. The faces of the couple looked at the camera solemnly, their mouths set in a permanent frown. The lighthouse, standing tall behind them, looked exactly as it did now.

“That is Jed and Coralina Stanton,” said Vanessa. “My mother and father.”

Lane looked up at Vanessa and back down at the photos. Again, there was a vague yet overwhelming sense of familiarity. He flipped the page.

The family in the photos grew bigger, as aunt and uncles, nephews and cousins, mothers and fathers, and their children gathered before the lighthouse, their faces always solemn. But where are the grandparents? Lane thought, and felt a shiver go up his spine.

He looked up, eyes wide. “There’s no one that grows up to be real…” He hesitated, trying to find the right word.

“Old.”

He nodded.

“Most weren’t fortunate enough to live long enough to reach my age...I’ve been very lucky to almost reach my seventies. Keep searching.”

He flipped to the next page, and the next, looking over the pictures. With each page the family seemed to grow smaller and smaller, yet the expressions on faces and the lighthouse remained the same.

Finally he reached the last photo in the album. The last of the photos was of a young woman. She was pretty, young, maybe younger than him at the start. She was slight with shoulder-length raven black hair and dark blue eyes. She stood in front of the lighthouse next to a younger Vanessa. Though neither one of them were smiling, the girl’s eyes twinkled mischievously. Out of everyone in the album she was somehow the most familiar to Lane. Her hands were placed almost lovingly on her swollen belly.

She looks like me - or I look her.

Lane held up the photo album and tapped the photo. “Who is she?”

“Elise, my niece. She died giving birth to her child, her son.”

“Her son? What happened to him?”

Vanessa’s eyes gleamed with tears. “After Elise died I put him up for adoption, hoping he might escape the darkness of this island - but he didn't.”

Lane’s head dropped back down towards the photo album. Elise’s eyes seemed to stare back, using the photo album as a window between the world of the living and the world of the dead, claiming him.

The walls of the bedroom were closing in on him. “No fucking way,” he said.

Vanessa nodded. “It’s true. You’re my great nephew.”