He adjusts the bag on his shoulder and opens the door, ready to forgive her.
But Ava isn’t there.
“Hello?” he calls out, the wind making his voice sound thin and frightened, even though he’s not.
No one answers. Holden frowns.
“Hello? Ava?”
He can’t see beyond the light of the doorway, which only reaches five or six feet before ending in a wall of black and—
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
The sound of boots on the gravel walk. Holden’s always loved when writers do that, the simple efficiency of sounds in place of long description, but now it sends a shiver down his spine because his eyes, which have always been sharp, are beginning to adjust, and there’s a man trudging toward him.
Holden Merriweather has never believed in ghosts.
He may be gullible, but he doesn’t have a whole lot of imagination. Plenty of guys tried to haze him back at Yale, make him go down into the crypts, and it was fine because all he ever found down there were cobwebs. But he once heard someone say that it’s hard to believe in ghosts until you meet one, and then it’s pretty easy.
So when the figure in the dark comes stomping up the path, when it grazes the edge of the cottage’s light, and Holden finds himself looking at Arthur Fletch, in his famous trench coat and wide-brimmed hat, he becomes a believer.
Holden feels his knees go a little weak. But then he remembers that ghosts aren’t flesh and blood; they’re notthere, in the technical sense. The figure stops, and Holden steps forward, out of the doorway.
“You can’t hurt me!” he calls to the spirit in the dark. “You aren’t real.”
And he’s feeling pretty smug about that until the wind whips the blood-red hat from the specter’s head and it tumbles up the path toward Holden, coming to a rest against his shoes with a weight that’s undeniably real.
Holden looks up again and sees a flurry of gray hair caught in the wind, twisting like wet weeds across the dead man’s face.
“Screw this,” he says, right as the wind changes direction with a sucking force and the door slams shut behind him, knocking him off balance. He spins, clawing at the door, but it’s jammed, somehow it’s jammed, and Holden can hear the boots crunching again, the dead man moving almost certainly toward him, but when he spins around, there’s no one there.
And somehow, that’s worse.
“Screw this, screw this, screw this,” pants Holden, taking off into the near-perfect dark, away from the castle and the cottage and the ghost.
The bag bounces on his shoulder, and his nice shoes sink into mud and wild grass as he angles himself across the green toward the steep stone steps that run from the clifftop down to the dock and the yacht.
Holden runs, harder than he has in years. He stumbles more than once, the ground unsteady and pitted with rocks, before nearly pitching headfirst down the stone steps.
Somehow he makes it to the dock before he loses his balance and trips, skinning one knee on the weather-warped wood. The tide is up, high enough it’s splashing up over the dock with every swell, ice-cold water soaking into his pant legs as he stumbles towardThe Royalty Check, which sits bobbing in its berth at the end of the short dock.
He hauls himself up, over the side, onto the yacht, heart pounding and head sore as he drops his bag, throws off the anchor, and hurries for the wheelhouse.
Because Holden Merriweather may not be a great actor, or even a great editor, but he knows how to sail a yacht.
Admittedly, it’s been a few years, but he can see the mainland from here, small lights twinkling along the coastline in the distance. How hard can it be?
Harder than he thought. He was hoping the key would just be there, jutting out of the ignition. But it’s not. He groans, bracing himself against the control panel. Blood drips onto the glass. The cut on his head must have opened again. He touches his temple and watches the drop of blood as it slides down the console and onto the mat.
The mat, which is decorated with a pen, and one of Fletch’s slogans.
Starting is the hardest part.
Something tugs in his gut—a hunch—and he kneels and pulls back the mat. There, in a little groove, is the key.
Holden shoves back to his feet, breathless and dizzy but victorious as he slides the key in the ignition and turns.
The yacht sputters but doesn’t start.
