Hello everyone! I conceived the concept for this story on Monday (24th Oct) and I am trying to publish a chapter every day from this point until Halloween (31st Oct). This may be completely insane and go terribly on my part but I want to give it a go. Also, I love trying my hand at writing creepy things but never know if I am actually successful at creeping anyone out besides myself so I am giving it a whirl too. (I have tried a little bit of creepy writing for the 2020 Nancy Drew TV show however so hopefully this won't be horrifically bad).
I really hope you enjoy this fic!
The storm had come out of nowhere. It seemed to suddenly consume the Sleuth and the Napoli, turning the boats into the carriages on a roller coaster as they were tossed about in the waves.
Fifteen-year-old Frank Hardy was forcing back his panic. It was the weekend and he and his friends had convinced their parents to let them take advantage of the good weather and go camping out on one of the islands. After all, they all knew the islands off Bayport well and Chet Morton had just turned sixteen.
No one had been expecting such a storm.
"Life jackets on!" Frank ordered from the controls.
Despite the buffeting wind and torrential rain, Frank had already sensed movement behind him. He could imagine his younger brother, fourteen-year-old Joe, rushing around to collect life jackets and distribute them amongst their friends. The Sleuth had taken the majority of the passengers. While the Napoli had Tony at the controls and Biff as a passenger, Frank was piloting a ship carrying his brother, the Morton siblings and Callie Shaw, the last three not being experienced enough to handle such a storm.
"Joe!" Iola suddenly yelped.
Frank looked over his shoulder to see his brother, blond hair slicked to his forehead by the rain, gripping hold of a slippery railing to stop the wave they were riding from throwing him overboard.
"Life jacket!" Frank shouted back, seeing Joe had been far too focused on helping their friends to pull his own one on.
If Joe responded, the words were stolen by the wind. Frank turned back, knuckles white as he fought with the controls. The Sleuth was not made to handle such a storm and nor was the Napoli. He couldn't imagine they were going to make it to their destination but they were too far out from land to turn back.
Frank scanned the horizon, using every lightning flash to look for land. The rain blurred his vision. It pelted against his skin painfully.
The crackle of the radio was almost missed. Frank scrambled to grab it.
"Frank?" Tony's voice came through, distorted by static.
"Tony? You managing?"
"Barely! I am not sure how much more of this the Napoli can take."
Frank was thinking the same about the Sleuth.
"We need to find land!"
"Dead Rock should be off to starboard," Tony replied.
Frank's insides jumped for joy. Land. And likely close. He skillfully began to push the Sleuth starboard, cautious of putting them at an angle that would cause the waves to flip the small vessel.
Joe noticed the boat deliberately changing its trajectory. He stared at his brother, forced to shield his eyes so he could make out his figure in the gloom and rain.
"Where are we going?" he shouted.
"Dead Rock!" Frank returned.
There was a watery gulp from Chet.
"Dead Rock? But it's haunted!"
"Better than here!" his sister bellowed.
Despite the ghost stories, Frank felt a wave of relief pass through him when he saw the terrible shape of Dead Rock, illuminated by a bolt of lightning. It loomed out of the darkness, looking almost like a tombstone with a single large house resting atop it.
Frank was nervous as he neared the island. It was almost entirely steep cliffs with a small beach on the southern side and a narrow path leading to its flat top. The last thing they needed was to have successfully navigated the storm only to be slammed up against the cliffs of the island they had turned to for refuge.
Even when the beach was in sight, Frank was nervous to let himself feel any sort of excitement. It would be so easy to let down his guard and smash the boat against some rock hidden by the swollen sea.
As they neared the beach, Joe and Biff leapt over the sides of the boats. They battled through the water, dragging the Sleuth and the Napoli out of the water. Normally the boys would have bothered to have taken off their shoes, rolled up their trousers. They didn't bother in the storm. They were already completely soaked through.
"Come on, let's get out of this storm!" Joe shouted.
There weren't many places to tie them up. The beach was almost completely surrounded by wave-smoothed rocks, slick with green seaweed. Even the beach itself was more stone than sand. The only place to secure it was a rotten wooden post at the base of the steep, zigzagging path up the cliff face. The sea constantly battling to drag the Sleuth from his grip, Joe battled to drag the boat far enough up the beach that he could secure it around the post. He supposed the post had been added for visitors to the island back when the place had been inhabited. It didn't look as secure as it had once done but it was the best they had and Joe made sure his knot was impeccable despite the way the wet rope threatened to tear the skin from his palms.
As soon as they were done, Joe and Biff raced down the stony beach, helping their friends out of their boats.
"Do we bring the gear?" Tony asked. "It'll all be soaked."
"Better to have it all the same," Frank told him.
Even as close as they were, they were forced to shout to be heard above the roaring wind. The boys worked to unload soaked bundles of supplies and sleeping bags from the boat while Callie began riffling around in the compartment where the Hardy stowed their maps.
"What is the name of this island?" she shouted.
"We won't have a map of Dead Rock," Frank replied.
Callie frowned, asking why not.
"Because no one is stupid enough to come here," Chet moaned. "At least, no one but us."
Tony's muttered agreement was entirely snatched away by the storm.
"We'll have to go to the house," Iola said with a no-nonsense tone.
"The house?" Chet spluttered, incredulous.
Callie's brow furrowed. She asked if a house meant people. Tony shook his head, saying the house had been abandoned for ninety years.
"At least we will be out of the storm!" Iola said. "We'll catch our deaths out here."
She didn't bother waiting for anyone to respond. Instead, she took one of the bundles of supplies from her brother and began to make her way along the narrow path.
The path up the cliff face was treacherous. The path was itself made of rock, slick from the pounding rain, narrow enough that they had to shuffle along single file. More than once a misplaced step sent rocks skittering down toward the beach.
The storm seemed determined to pull them off it. They were blinded by it, almost toppled by the wind. More than once all seven of the group were forced to come to a dead stop, put every ounce of their focus onto keeping balanced.
Things were not much better when they reached the top of the cliff. Although it had not felt like it, the cliff face the path had hugged had protected them from the elements to some degree. The moment they lost that protection, the storm gave them everything they had.
"Get away from the edge immediately!" Frank shouted up to Chet who was leading the group.
Even with that warning, Chet almost didn't move fast enough. He was hit with a strong gust, dropping his supplies to his feet as he battled to right himself. Biff abandoned his own supplies to drag their friend back toward the cliff, shoving Chet onto the grassy plateau on which the house stood. Soon the others were joining Chet, hurrying away from the edge so the wind could not throw them off.
For a second they could make out nothing at all. It felt like they were completely alone in the world, the seven of them on an isolated platform of grass, oblivion on all sides of them. The flashlights they gripped in shaking hands did little against the oppressive gloom.
But then a bolt of lightning raced across the sky. They watched as the entire top of Dead Rock became visible. It was mostly a grassy scrubland, its sides jagged and irregular like the world had suddenly dropped away from it. But, at the end of a rough shingle path, was a house. It was a strange house. Rooftops jutted out at strange angles, all settled on different levels. A tower rose two stories higher than the rest of the building and they could make out a row of basement windows beside the steps leading up to the front door. It was made of stone although there were wooden embellishments that seemed to have been devastated by the elements. Ivy clung to the walls, twisting around columns and fencing like leafy boa constrictors.
On one side, connected to the building was a walled garden, the plaster of the walls was falling down, the gate to it seeming securely locked.
"We're seriously going in there?" Chet asked.
He was answered by Frank and Joe beginning to make their way down the path. He looked toward his remaining friends and sister incredulously and was forced to watch and Callie, Iola and Biff began to follow the brothers.
"Why are we friends with these people?" Chet asked.
"We'd get bored otherwise."
The door to the house was locked but the Hardys had no trouble tricking it open by combining their penknives.
"How come the detective's sons know how to pick locks?" Callie asked as they moved into the hallway of the house.
The air around them was stale, the wooden floor creaking and decaying. Puddles formed around them as they stood in the hallway, taking in their first glimpses of the house. The plaster was falling away from the walls, the paint peeling away. Furniture had been covered over but left abandoned, no one interested in taking care of it.
"People try to kidnap us because of what our dad does," Joe explained. "We are also very good at getting out of ropes."
Callie nodded, drinking in the information. She had not lived in Bayport very long and had been nervous about whether or not she would ever find friends she would be as close to as the friends she had had growing up. The moment she had met the Hardys, the Mortons, Biff and Tony, she had known she had found a group of friends she felt like she belonged in. Even if they were all a little… weird. But it was a good weird, the exciting sort of unusual that made people even more fun to be around. After all, she would have never imagined going camping on an uninhabited island with her old friends, let alone taking shelter from a storm in an abandoned house.
"We're sure this place is empty, right?" Iola said, peering into the gloom.
"Well, we can never be sure sure," Joe teased.
Iola rolled her eyes fondly at him. She searched around in the pack of things she was holding, pulling out a flashlight. Soon she was playing it about the lobby the hallway opened out into a set of stairs that rose up against one wall. All the furniture around them was draped in fabric sheets. Old landscape paintings hung on the walls, ruined by neglect. The fireplace still had the ash from a fire that had burnt decades before anyone in the room had been born.
"Do we make camp first or check around?"
"There's no one here," Frank asserted, moving into the room. "People would have noticed signs of life from this place and the ghost story would have made a comeback."
Joe nodded, saying they could find a room with a fireplace, light it and get warm. After all, the house seemed pretty sturdy. Their biggest danger was the fact they were completely soaked, liable to catch a bad illness.
The group settled into the sitting room, emptying out their supplies to allow them to dry.
The room was large, full of grand chairs and various collected knickknacks. Books crowded a large bookshelf, each one looking far too technical for the friends to even begin to understand. Ceramic figurines crowded the countertops, seemed to be gathering around the clock on the mantelpiece like they were guarding it. As Tony searched around the room for phone signal (finding none), the others tidied the room up to give them space to sleep. They moved the furniture to the sides. The mouldy rug on the floor that they rolled up and tucked off to one side. Iola removed the dust covers, turning them over and spreading them out on the floor to offer them some protection from the cold floor.
They managed to find coal to act as fuel and lit the fireplace, the seven huddling close around it, wrapped tightly in their blankets. They'd changed into dry clothes in the next room, hung their soaked clothes up to dry near the fire, closed the curtains to conserve as much of the heat as possible.
Soon, Chet's stomach got the better of his nerves and he was insisting they make a start on their supplies. They used the fire to cook the food which only succeeded in making them all hungrier as the smell wafted about the room.
Every stomach was rumbling loudly by the time Tony declared their meal was ready. It was hardly much of a meal, just a few tins of heated beans but they all ate greedily.
Soon seven plates were piled up in front of the fire.
"You know what we need," Joe said, reaching into his bag. "Smores."
He began passing around the marshmallows as Frank provided the kebab sticks for them to toast them on.
"So what is the story of this place?" Callie asked as she trapped her toasted marshmallow between two biscuits.
"You don't know the tale of Dead Rock?" Joe gasped, incredulously.
Callie reminded him she wasn't local to the area.
The Hardys, the Mortons and Biff were all Bayport natives who couldn't remember the first time they had heard the tale of Dead Rock. It seemed to be an innate part of being from Bayport, like a love of swimming and bonfires on the beach.
But they could remember telling Tony. Or at least, Chet, Biff and the Hardys could. They had been having a 'boys camp out' on the Morton farmland (Iola had been away with an aunt picking out a bridesmaid's dress) and the conversation had turned to ghost stories. Between them, the boys had had more than enough to make it through the entire night without a wink of sleep.
"Do we have to talk about it?" Chet asked. "I mean we're right in the house."
Chet had never been as keen as his friends when it came to ghost stories. He was brilliant at telling them but, listening to them, caused his imagination to run rampant.
"Chet's right, Callie," Biff said. "Last thing we need to do is freak ourselves out and start seeing things while we wait out this storm."
"But I'm the oldest," Chet tried to reason. "I'm meant to be in charge here."
Joe sent his brother a smirk. Both could remember the last thing their father said to them before they set out on the Sleuth.
Chet is the one in charge. No mutinies.
They had, of course, had every intention of behaving when they had been on the mainland but both had been conscious of how things were different when they were having an adventure. There were some opportunities they simply couldn't pass up on. And telling the Dead Rock ghost story while on Dead Rock itself…
"Oh, come on," Callie said. "You're all already thinking about it. I'm literally the only one of you who doesn't know what happened."
"You don't want to know," Chet told her.
"I think you will find I do," Callie said. "Plus ghosts aren't real and telling the story will help us pass the time until we can get rescued."
Chet shook his head. Iola shrugged, saying if Callie was eager to hear the story they might as well just tell her. It wasn't fair that Callie was the only one who didn't know.
"And we're sure ghosts aren't real?" Chet clarified.
"Surely we would have conclusive proof of the existence of ghosts if they existed given how many people go out looking for them," Frank pointed out. "The haunting of Dead Rock House is just a story, albeit one that is based in fact."
Frank looked around the group expectantly, as if hoping someone would take responsibility for the tale from him. No one did so Frank drew in a deep breath. He shifted his position slightly so he could easily run his eyes over his companions.
"This house was built in the late 1920s by an eccentric, intelligent couple called James and Henrietta Offord. Henrietta was an eccentric, an inventor who longed for space to invent without judgement. James was a quiet man from a rich family who was devoted to his wife. Seeing how she felt rejected by society, he built the house on Dead Rock for them to live in."
Callie wrinkled her nose in disgust as she pointed out that Dead Rock wasn't the most appealingly named place. Joe shook his head.
"It wasn't called Dead Rock back then," Joe said. "Apparently the place actually made a few people jealous. They said it was like the two were king and queen of their own little kingdom."
"They lived on the island for several years, never having many visitors," Frank said. "There were no phones or other way for word to get off the island so the man who managed James' money and sold Henrietta's inventions would journey over by boat to discuss their finances."
"October 1932 and people in Bayport began to get concerned. They hadn't seen any sign of the two on their island for most of the month. No lights or anything," Joe continued.
A loud roll of thunder interrupted the story. Joe glanced toward the windows, smirking.
"It was on a night like this-"
"It wasn't on a night like this, Joe," Frank interrupted. "Stick to the facts."
"It's a ghost story," Joe protested. "There are no facts."
"It's a ghost story based on real events," Frank sighed. "They never say what the weather was like in the story, which probably means it was a normal day, especially considering the guy managing the Offords' wealth willingly took a boat out to this place to check on them."
Joe grumbled under his breath that Frank was ruining the story. Frank didn't respond. Anywhere else and he would have let his brother twist the story however he wanted, make it as scary as he could. But they were actually on Dead Rock and if the storm got worse or something else went wrong, they needed everyone to be thinking clearly, and that meant he didn't want or need his friends jumping at every shadow.
"He came to the island, looking for the couple," Frank said, taking back the reins of the story fully. "He found James Offord first. He was tangled up in seaweed just off the beach we landed on. Drowned. The man cut his body free, brought it ashore and found, to his horror, bruises on his back and neck, like someone had held him in the water, made sure he drowned. It likely was left on the beach and washed out, getting tangled in the seaweed."
"And Henrietta?" Callie said, her voice a lot tighter than she had hoped.
"She was found in the master bedroom," Frank told her. "She was lying across the bed, stabbed, the bloodied knife lying on the floor at her feet. The man raced back to the mainland to get some help. By the time he returned, James Offord's body had been washed out to sea by high tide, never to be seen again. They took Henrietta back to the mainland and the house was searched by the police. They couldn't work out who had killed them and soon the case was declared unsolvable. For all they knew, a gang of sailors had done it and taken off aboard, never to be seen again."
"The house passed back to James' family," Chet said.
All were startled, turning to see his brow was crinkled with intense reluctance.
"They sent someone out to evaluate the place so they could sell it. He complained of hearing footsteps, of seeing things move out of the corner of his eyes. Eventually, he turned up on the mainland, babbling."
Chet put on a low, horrific voice.
"Do not sell the house. James and Henrietta are still there. Do not sell it."
He let the words hang over the group for several long seconds.
"The Offord family were furious with him. They fired him immediately. But maybe they believed something was going on because they didn't hire another man to evaluate the property. Instead, they hired a father-and-son company to act as caretakers and security. The father didn't believe in ghosts. Nor did his son, at first. But the son had the bedroom across from the master bedroom and during the night he would hear noises coming from that room."
"What sort of noises?" Callie asked.
"Crying. Whispering. He once heard a voice calling for a 'James'. His father didn't believe him of course. He was furious. Even more so when, one night, the son was working out on the porch and he heard someone coming down the path. He turned, seeing it was a man, dripping wet. He called out to him, thinking it was his father."
Chet paused, casting his eyes across the faces of his friends.
"His father replied, his voice coming from inside the house. The son watched as the figure stumbled toward him, realising in horror that standing before him was James Offord, having clawed his way out of the depths, wanting to know who dared set foot in his home."
The windows rattled loudly in their frames. Iola jumped. She latched into Joe's arm, rushing out an apology when she realised what she had done. Joe brushed it off, assuring her it was okay, even as Chet glowered at the blond Hardy.
"That was the final straw for the boy's father. He vowed to send his son back to the mainland that morning. So he walked his son down to the beach, told him to get into the boat and go. Hours later, the father realised the boat was still there. He went down to the beach to find his son laying face down in the water. He had been drowned."
"The island has been left uninhabited ever since," Frank said. "Occasionally you'd get ghost hunters coming here. They're not supposed to. No one is supposed to come to this island. They'd claim to find things."
"A few years back, some boys dropped their friend off here to spend the night, some bet," Joe added, gleefully. "He did it. But when they found him the next morning he had barricaded himself into one of the bedrooms, kept saying there were things out there, that he'd heard a woman screaming for help all night long."
"Every kid in Bayport has been making up their own additions to the story for years," Biff said. "Most of them never really happened."
"Only most of them? Not all?" Callie questioned.
"Some of it is real," Frank admitted. "The Offords were really murdered here. A boy really drowned off the beach a year or so later. But people get murdered and the boy was an inexperienced sailor who had gotten into his own head with all these ghost stories. Accidents happen. It doesn't mean there are ghosts about."
Chet shook his head, saying this was why he had been against telling the ghost story in the first place. They all had the details fresh in their minds.
"He's right. I don't know if I am going to be able to sleep a wink after that," Tony admitted.
"It's just a story," Joe pointed out. "I don't see what all the fuss is about."
"Nor do I," Frank agreed.
"Yeah, well, you two are the teen adventurers with a detective for a father. The rest of us actually have a sense of self-preservation," Chet pointed out.
Joe quirked up an eyebrow, pointing out that at least part of the reason had to be put down to the fact they simply didn't believe in ghosts.
No sooner had the words left Joe's mouth, a creak sounded from above. Seven sets of eyes turned up the ceiling.
Another creak caused them all to freeze. It took a second for them to collect up their wits once more.
"You know what that sounded like, right?" Iola asked, voice brittle.
"Footsteps."
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