“Never mind. Let’s get out of here,” Coco whispered.
“Hang on,” said Brian. He turned his light onto the rest of the room—anything to look away from the skeleton’s empty eye sockets—and caught sight of a pile of firewood, bone dry, neatly cut and stacked, lying near the door. Not sticks. Logs. Logs that would keep a fire going all night. That would keep Mr. Adler warm until help arrived.
“We should take the wood with us,” he said.
“No way!” said Phil. He stood on the threshold, as though he were on the edge of bolting. “This doesn’t belong to us. It’s—it belongs to whoever died here. That guy.” He didn’t look at the skeleton. Besides the bed and its occupant, there wasn’t much in the cabin at all. Some old, rotten fabric, some bits of rusty metal, a coil of old rope. Leaves and dust blown in from the crooked front door.
Coco was staring at the bed as though she couldn’t look away. But she took a deep breath and said, “Phil, Brian’s right. The wood isn’t helping—whoever that is on the bed—but it might help us.”
Phil didn’t say anything. Brian said, “Okay, okay, Phil—maybe just keep watch? I’ll use this rope and make up some bundles of firewood. We’ll be out of here in a sec. We don’t need to spend the night. It might be hard for Mr. Adler to move, anyway . . .”
Talking, half babbling, anything to keep his mind off the shadows and the dust and the bones in the small musty bed, Brian bent and began to separate the wood into piles.
While Brian worked, Coco drifted nearer to the bed. Phil said, “What are you doing?”
Coco said, “He’s probably lonely. Was.” She looked down at the skeleton, and she seemed more sad than scared. “I wonder what happened to him?” She reached out to touch the book atop the blanket. Gently, she picked it up.
Brian said, “Coco, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Me either,” said Coco. “But I think this is some kind of journal. Maybe we’ll find out what happened to him. Maybe we can find out who he was and find his family and get him buried properly!”
“I’d worry more about getting off this island ourselves than about what comes after that,” said Brian, tying a neat knot on the second bundle. He started to make a third, using his pocketknife to cut the rope.
“Fair,” said Coco. “But still.” She slipped the black book into her big jacket pocket. “I’ll bring it back,” she said gently to the bones. “And maybe I’ll find your people, okay?”
Brian shivered. A thick, endless silence seemed to lie on the cabin. He thought about the bones lying here for—how long?—through rain, snow, heat . . .
He didn’t want to think about it. They needed to get Mr. Adler to a hospital. That was the most important thing. Not old cabins and old secrets.
“Here,” he said, handing Coco a bundle of firewood. “Phil, we’re going.”
“Hang on,” said Phil. He’d gone back to the cabin door. “Did you hear that?”
“What?” said Brian, trying to hand off the second bundle of firewood.
“Listen,” said Phil.
They all stopped. They all listened. “I don’t hear anything,” said Brian, after a moment. “Phil, we need to get back. Let’s go back and get the others—” He fell silent. He’d heard it too.
Someone was whistling. Ordinary, uncomplicated whistling, the way Mr. Adler liked to do when he was baking. But this wasn’t Mr. Adler. After a minute, the whistling turned, full-voiced, into song, and it was a deep voice that Brian had never heard in his life.
“She started with his hair,” sang the strange voice. “And then she ate his eyes.”
There was the swish of footsteps in leaf mold. Coming closer.
“And as he sang his last sweet tune / She—”
The song broke off. “What’s this?” said the voice. “What’s this here? Footprints? Footprints?” The voice was a man’s: deep and rather cracked, as though the speaker had a cold or had screamed himself hoarse. “Tommy, is that you?”
Phil had his mouth open, as though to call to the unknown singer. Coco grabbed his arm, pinching. Brian thought she was right. If they were behind the mist, if they were in another of the smiling man’s games, you couldn’t trust anyone. They’d trusted a ghost once and nearly lost Ollie because of it.
“Allen?” asked the voice, sounding eager. “Jimmy?”
The voice was coming closer. The cabin was small. The cabin only had one door, and no windows. The footsteps were right outside. There was nowhere to go.
And now there wasn’t time. The door flew open and slammed against the far wall, with a scream of hinges and a shower of dust. A stranger stood in the gap. He ha
d a rusty axe slung over one shoulder.