Latham's Landing Read Free Page B

happened?”
    “ It was night time, that’s the only
thing known for sure. Some stories say she was meeting a lover to
run off, and they both drowned when their boat sank in a sudden
storm. Some say she was pregnant, and she went into labor and died
in childbirth, along with the baby. And the most horrible story
says she had already birthed the baby—that it was some kind of
monster, and so she killed it and then flung herself off the
bridge.”
    “ Who else died out here?”
    “ Some tourist had a heart attack here,
not long after they first opened it to the public. He died on his
way to the mainland. A young girl fell off the docks and almost
drowned, but she was saved. But one of the men who jumped in to
save her hit his head on a rock and drowned. That’s
all.”
    That was plenty. “You sure you want to do
this?” I said seriously. “We both thought it was weird, what
happened yesterday.”
    “ I’m not going to be scared because I
saw some dishes. Come on, Tina.”
    We tied up the raft, again getting our feet
wet. Today, for some reason, the water was cold again, even though
the sun was as bright and hot as yesterday. Must be those tides
Fred had mentioned…
    We walked up a series of granite steps to a
small shed. To my surprise, there was a small car there. I turned
to Sandy, who’d produced a key.
    “ Why is there a car here on this
island? There’s not even an acre of land above water.”
    “ It’s faster than walking to the Sea
Room,” she said, as she got in and started the engine. “We’d take
two hours walking that stone bridge, round trip. I still don’t know
why Latham made it so long. It must have cost a fortune to
make.”
    “ Latham didn’t have a car here, did
he?”
    “ I can’t say. Fred handed me the key
last night and told me to be sure to use the car when we went to
the Sea Room. I asked him why, when the bridge wasn’t that long.”
She paused. “He told me that a round trip to the Sea Room by foot
is four hours, repeating that stuff about time passing differently
out here.”
    “ But how did the car get here?” I
persisted.
    “ He asked the historical society to
donate one a couple years ago, when he got to be seventy. As he’s
the only person that will agree to come out here to check on the
place, they caved and got him this little Beetle.” Sandra looked at
the bridge and the shed, then out into the water. “A bigger boat
must have delivered it and craned it up here somehow.”
    I watched her start the car, worried. What if
it didn’t start for us on the way back? I wanted more and more to
be gone from this place with every passing minute.
    She noticed my hesitation. “Get in. The
quicker we get there, the sooner we’ll be done.”
    I swore but got in the car.
    The ride there seemed to take only a few
minutes. As we rode, I wondered, again, why a man would build a
place for him and his bride so far away from his house. Maybe
because rich people were never alone, because they always had
servants around? Maybe because they liked the water?
    Maybe because he didn’t want anyone to hear
her scream? Shudder.
    I blinked, then turned to Sandra. “You never
answered me yesterday. How did you get permission to come
here?”
    “ I lied,” she said, her eyes on the
road.
    “ Tell,” I said flatly.
“Now.”
    “ I bribed the bed and breakfast woman,”
Sandra said defensively. “That’s why she only made a token effort
to stop us coming out here. I don’t know what she told
Fred—”
    “ How—?”
    “ Some money I’d saved for grad school,”
Sandra admitted. “The woman didn’t need a lot. She’s desperate.
They don’t get a lot of visitors here since the tours stopped, and
the island became off limits—”
    “ Why?”
    “ I have to know,” Sandra said
stubbornly, stopping the car. “Come on.”
    As we walked up to the door, I stopped,
glancing back at the car. I considered asking Sandy to turn it
around, so it was facing back toward the main house,