I found myself at a loss for how to respond. I just gaped at her, disbelieving, until she turned around and walked away.
My eyes returned to Wes’s. His confusion mirrored my own.
“What a harpy,” Ruby said, who had witnessed what had happened too.
Yeah. That was a really bitchy thing to do. Those four girls had seemed uptight from the start, and likely the jealous sort, but what she’d just done… that seemed out of character even for her.
Out of character.
Like our guides.
“Are you okay?” Wes asked.
“Yeah,” I managed. His skewer of roast seaweed was thoroughly ruined by now. He’d have to start again.
I glanced at Ruby, Julian and Benedict, before addressing Wes. “I’ll, uh, see you in a bit.”
I stood up, and the other three followed my cue to leave the circle around the fire where everyone was eating.
I looked seriously at each of them. “I think we should ask to be taken back to the main island,” I said. “I want to call my parents.”
“I don’t think we are due to return for at least four days,” Ruby said. “What excuse will you give?”
“I’ll say I have a bad headache. Which isn’t even a total lie.”
There was a pause as they thought on it.
“Okay,” Ruby said. “I agree.”
“I agree too,” Julian said.
Benedict nodded at me with his approval.
“It may be that I’m just being paranoid,” I said, glancing back toward the fire. “That I’m seeing things that aren’t there…” That there’s nothing supernatural involved here. “But there’s no harm in getting their opinion. Julian and Ruby could call their parents too. I’m sure they’d all appreciate a call in any case.”
My eyes trained on Peter, I walked to him and sat down next to where he was eating on the sand.
“All right, Hazel?” he asked.
“Um, not really,” I said, raising a hand to my forehead and rubbing it. “I’ve got a pretty bad headache. So have Ruby, Benedict and Julian. I think it’s because we slept so close to the cave’s entrance last night. We’d like to return to the hostel.”
Peter frowned, examining my face. “May I feel your temperature?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if I actually had a temperature. It felt like just a headache.
He pressed his palm against my forehead and tutted. “Hm. You do feel a bit on the warm side actually. Come with me.” He stood up and led me to the cave, where he stopped in front of his bag. He dove into one of its pockets and retrieved a dark green tube. “This is a natural plant-based remedy that works wonders for headaches,” he said. “Hold out your palm.”
Reluctantly, I extended my hand. He squeezed out a blob of green paste into the center of my palm and instructed me to rub it against my temples. I did so and felt a slight tingling over my skin. He called the others over and had them do the same as me. “Now, give it twenty-four hours. If you still feel horrid, we’ll take you back. Does that sound reasonable?”
I supposed it did. “Okay,” I said.
Whether or not his balm did end up solving the headache, I’d have to tell him that it didn’t tomorrow and that we needed to return. For now, I supposed, all we could do was wait.
Hazel
I stuck with Julian, Ruby and Benedict for the rest of the day, avoiding everyone else except for Wes. We continued our scavenger training, which led us across the island as the guides showed all the things that were available to eat and those things that should be avoided.
We then came across a wide mud pit, and were encouraged to leap inside and… muck around. Since this whole trip was supposed to be about pushing your comfort zone, as much as I winced at the thought of getting all that grime in my hair, I was a good sport and entered along with everyone else—including my three comrades. We all stripped to our swimsuits and dove inside, where mud wars ensued. Some of our fellow “adventurers” ended up getting carried away, and a few boys got violent with each other—I was quite taken aback by their aggression. It caused the guides to put an end to the mud fight, which actually came as a disappointment to me.
The mud was unexpectedly pleasant, actually. It was thick and cool, which helped soothe my headache (which still wasn’t showing signs of diminishing).
After climbing out of the pit, we headed to the lake to wash ourselves off and go for a swim.
These activities—in between meals and gathering some more water—took up the rest of the day. We had to leave the lake in good time in order to arrive back at the cave before dark.
“Still have a headache?” I mumbled to Ruby, who walked by my side.
“Yes,” she said. “If anything the sun has made it worse.”
“Me too.”
Peter’s paste hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference.
We had to gather more wood as soon as we reached base, and light a fire for the night. As the guides prepared some dinner, Wes took his usual seat beside me, his friend on the other side of Ruby. He let out a low groan before lying back and stretching his legs and arms. Then he sat up again.
“Doing okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
I looked toward the four girls who sat opposite us. Usually they would be chatting, but now they sat still, just staring into the flames. Listlessly almost.
After we’d all been fed, Charlie told us another ghost story—about a man who, almost a hundred years ago, had been hanged for a crime somebody else had committed. Charlie said that his ghost was sometimes seen haunting the clifftops, which made me reluctant to look up at the one above us while it was dark.
Then it was time to turn in. The day had been tiring, and many were already starting to fall asleep while sitting around the fire. I suggested to Ruby, Benedict and Julian that we didn’t sleep so close to the exit tonight, that we head toward the back of the cave, where the wind was less harsh. I didn’t want our headaches to worsen overnight.
Most of the space at the back was taken, so we couldn’t sleep all together in a row. We just had to set up in whatever small patch of ground was available and curl up in our sleeping bags.
I realized only as I had spread out my stuff to mark my territory how close I was to Wes. He smiled at me, then winked before he laid his head down for the night.
I let out a deep breath as I pulled my cover high over my chest, so that it covered my neck from the draft. And then, slowly, exhaustion coaxed me to sleep.
Just like the previous night, I woke with a start in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t to something as gentle as sobbing though. It was to the sound of people cussing, shouting, struggling.
I shot bolt upright and gaped around the cave toward the noise. To my shock, the four snotty girls (including the brunette) were on their feet near the entrance and attempting to hit each other with pots and pans they must have taken from the campsite. Another boy—who had arrived on the trip on his own—was also joining in the fight with a stick.
What is going on?
It felt like I had woken up in a dream.
“Stop it!” I shouted across the cave.
This roused others who had been drifting in semi-consciousness. I jumped up and rushed toward the brawl, almost tripping over Wes, who stumbled to his feet and staggered after me.
“Stop!” I called again.
The guides woke up, looking utterly bewildered.
The brawlers moved out of the cave, dropping down on the sand where they continued to fight.
Wes and I were among the first to approach. I dove for one girl, while Wes dove for the boy. I caught sight of the glint of a blade in the moonlight. The boy was holding a knife.
“No!” I screamed.
The boy’s blade plunged into Wes’s shoulder. He let out a deep groan before collapsing.
Peter flung himself at the boy and managed to disarm him, but it was too late. I dropped down to where Wes lay on the sand and stared down in horror at the
stab wound. At least the knife hadn’t driven into his gut, but it chilled me to think that boy might’ve been aiming for his throat, to have cut him so high on his body.
“We need to get back to the mainland!” I cried.
Thankfully, the guides agreed. Some of the stronger boys among Wes’s group helped to restrain the girls involved in the fight, along with the boy who’d stabbed Wes, which freed Peter to hurry back to the cave. He rummaged for his “walkie-talkie” and made an emergency call to the island.
When he returned to us on the sand, he informed us that a boat would arrive as soon as possible—on this very beach—and that, until the guides got to the bottom of what on earth had just happened and why, we should all return to the hostel together.
Thank God.
Everyone shared the same expression as we hurried back to the cave to gather our things. Confusion, shock.
“Well, this trip went down Crazy Lane fast,” Benedict murmured as we rolled up our sleeping bags and stuffed them into our backpacks.
Yeah. We probably would’ve been better off just staying in The Shade for our school break. Going away was overrated.
As soon as we packed up our things, I hurried back to Wes, who was being treated by Suzanne and Gillian. They had applied a compress over his shoulder and given him some kind of medication. His forehead was drenched with sweat, his face pale, eyes tightly closed.
I wanted to ask if he was all right, but he didn’t look like he was in the mood to talk.
“What the hell has gotten into you?” Jamie yelled at the brawlers.
Bizarrely, they responded in much the same way as the brunette had the day before when she’d knocked me. They didn’t really have anything to say for themselves—no semblance of an excuse or reason for why they had lashed out at each other.
“I just want to be back home now,” I whispered to Ruby, Julian and my brother.
There was no way that this trip could be playing out anything like the way my parents had envisioned it.
Something was wrong with Murkbeech Adventures, both the islands and the people.
Relief washed over me as the boat arrived. Wes was carried on first by Jamie and Peter, and then the five culprits were escorted on after, so they could be kept near the back of the boat.
After we had all boarded, the captain propelled us away from the island and back toward the company’s private jetty on Murkbeech Island.
Wes looked like he was starting to drift in and out of consciousness. Two of his friends, who’d been thoughtful enough to pick up Wes’s things for him, hovered over him.
“Hey, you all right, man?” one of them asked.
Wes didn’t respond.
“You’re going to be okay,” Gillian assured him, once again switching to her compassionate, nurturing mood.
Though I couldn’t ignore the way her hands were trembling. So were Suzanne’s as they exchanged glances with their colleagues.
I hurried to the front of the boat and gazed ahead as the dark outline of Murkbeech loomed closer, as if by will alone I could make us travel faster.
Once we reached the jetty, everyone made way for Wes to be carried off first. Then the five violent teens were dragged off. Two buggy vehicles were waiting on the grass, one of which Wes was loaded into, the other reserved for the five offenders. As they sped away toward the hostel, I guessed that Wes would immediately be taken to the doctor’s room (there was supposed to be an experienced one on site at all times due to the various risky activities kids got up to here) and as for the group of five, they’d likely be taken into isolation until their guardians came to collect them from the island, maybe even the police in the case of the boy who had stabbed Wes. There was no way that it had been an accident.
The rest of us were left to use our flashlights to trek our way through the darkness, back to the building.
As soon as we reached the hostel, we rushed to our dorms for our phones. I grabbed mine and was about to dial my parents’ number when I realized there was no signal. There had been just a couple of days ago. Something had happened since we’d been on the other island.
“Ruby, do you have a signal?” I asked, my heartbeat quickening.
“No,” she said hoarsely.
Crap.
We raced out of the dorm and into the boys’ area. We found Julian and Benedict standing in the hallway, holding their phones at various angles, trying to get a signal.
“Dammit,” Ruby hissed.
What is going on?
“There’s got to be a rational explanation,” Julian said, although he didn’t speak with much conviction.
“Let’s try outside,” I suggested.
We ran to the main entrance and, holding our phones high above our heads, zigzagged across the gravel parking lot, willing our phones to pick up on a signal. Then we hurried to the nearest hillock and climbed to the top. Still no luck.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my calm. “We’ll ask Peter or someone to take us back to the mainland. There we’ll find a signal, or a phone booth if worst comes to worst.”
We sprinted back to the hostel. We were about to go bursting into the sitting room where a map of the facility hung when we caught sight of another fight that had broken out further down the hallway. This was a fight among boys. Wes’s friends.
Then we heard shouting to our left. Our attention switched to the opposite hallway where another fight had broken out among a group of seven girls.
What. The. Heck.
I still hadn’t wrapped my mind around what was happening.
What went wrong? This trip started out like a romance novel.
I hated unexpected switches of genre within books, and much more in real life. My headache felt like it was intensifying from the stress, my forehead feeling close to splitting from the pain.
No longer able to stifle our panic, we hurried into the sitting room, which was empty. We approached the map that hung above the mantelpiece and scanned it. The staff residences were located at the back of the building, behind the kitchens.
We crossed the living room and entered the adjoining dining room. We barged through the door behind the canteen and emerged in the kitchen. We pushed through another door at the back of it, which led us through to another corridor lined with twelve doors—the staff’s apartments.
We knocked loudly on each door and yelled for help. Nobody answered. We even tried to open the doors, but they were locked.
“They’re probably all in the doctor’s building with Wes,” Julian said.
Yes, yes. That would make sense.
We pushed through the fire exit at the end of the hallway and stumbled out into the cool night. The horse stables were directly ahead of us, and to our right was a small brick building hidden from view from the front of the hostel. Small solar-powered lights dug into the grass led the way to the building.
Running along the sidewalk that lined the back wall of the main hostel, we were about to launch onto the grass path when we witnessed yet another fight going on to our right. Outside, in the cold open air.
Ruby swore.
This fight was hard to ignore. There were almost ten teens involved—a mixture of girls and boys throwing punches and kicks and head-butting each other. It was getting bloody fast.
“Stop it!” I roared, my panic channeling into aggression. “STOP BEHAVING LIKE ANIMALS!”
Five of them stopped fighting and turned on us, their faces contorted with anger.
Yelling to them had been a mistake.
I hadn’t thought that this night could get any worse, but the next thing I knew, the entire mob was lurching toward us, their hands balled into fists.
Oh, man.
We galloped across the field toward the doctor’s building, slamming up against its front door as we reached it. I gripped the handle and yanked it down to find that—to my sheer relief—it wasn’t locked. I flung it open and pulled Ruby, Benedict and Julian inside before I hauled it shut. The door vibrated with the force
of our pursuers crashing against it. They began grasping at the handle. Ruby spotted a bolt and pulled it. Still, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving it unguarded.
Julian seemed to be reading my thoughts. “I’ll stay here,” he said.
“I will too,” Ruby said.
“What about the windows?” Benedict croaked.
“Search this floor for windows and make sure they’re all shut,” I told him.
I wasn’t sure if whatever madness had possessed them would cause them to actually start smashing the windows.
In the meantime, I had to get help from the grownups.
To our left was an open doorway leading into a dark sitting room, which Benedict hurried into, while I hurried to the door directly in front of me. A sign displaying the name “Doctor Murdock” hung from it. There was no time to knock. I pushed it open and found myself in a room with thankfully sane-looking people.
Wes was lying on a treatment bed in the center of a sterile medical room; about ten of the island’s staff gathered around him worriedly—including Peter.
“Peter!” I gasped, approaching the edge of the bed. “People have gone… crazy!” I wasn’t even sure how to describe the situation, it was so bizarre. “They’re fighting each other!”
“What?” Peter asked. “Who?”
“Everyone!” I panted, clutching my throbbing head. “They’ve become like animals. All hell’s broken loose in the dorms, and outside. I don’t know what’s gotten—”
I stopped short as the expression of every single adult in the room suddenly distorted. Their faces went from alarmed to disdainful and irritated within the space of three seconds.
Even Wes, who’d been lying on his back, abruptly sat up and glared at me.
I already knew that I had to run. Run where, I had no idea. But I had to get out of this room.
I backed away and slipped out of the door before slamming it shut behind me. Julian and Ruby, who were still manning the increasingly vibrating door, looked at me with utter terror. It seemed they’d already guessed what was happening from the look on my face.
“The adults have switched too!” I breathed. “And Wes!”