El's Chronicles: Shadow Island // Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Morning arrived with the kind of begrudging light that seemed to apologize for waking you up at all. The pale glow seeped through the thin curtains as if it didn’t want to commit to the day. 

I sat on the edge of the bed, groggy and frustrated, with my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold. I had barely slept. Again.

Twice, I’d jolted awake to a woman screaming somewhere in the woods. Even through sleep, the sound was unmistakable. But each time I lay there, numb with fear and listening, the sound vanished as quickly as it came, leaving only the silence and the feeling that I’d imagined it, or worse, that I hadn’t.

Then the wind howled outside, rattling the old windows in their frames with relentless force. It felt like someone was inside the house, walking slowly, as though testing each step. At times, it sounded like heels thudding faintly on the wooden floor as if someone was walking down the hallway. Other times, it seemed like they were at the windows, tapping lightly, as if to get my attention, asking to come in. 

What if it was the same woman I’d heard screaming in the woods? Or was the house haunted? Was it just my imagination, spinning stories in the dark? Or something worse? Someone real, someone local, someone who’d taken an interest in my arrival and decided to get a closer look?

The thought of one of them lurking in the shadows of this house, trying to figure out what I was up to, sent a shiver down my spine.

Whether it was the howling wind or my own imagination, the house felt alive with an energy I couldn’t explain. Either way, the unease kept me awake until the first pale streaks of morning light began to creep through the rattling windows. 

My eyes wandered to the journal on the nightstand. “If someone went through the trouble of hiding this in a chimney,” I said aloud to no one, “then what else could they have hidden?”

The rumors suggested Harrington had found a rare artifact connected to his research, something he might have stashed before he died. What if it was still here, somewhere in the house, waiting to be discovered?

The idea clung to me, growing more insistent with every passing moment. By the time I’d drained my coffee, I knew exactly what I needed to do. 

Yes, I spent the rest of the day tearing through the house.

I pulled out every drawer, emptied every cabinet, and checked every floorboard. I ran my fingers along wooden seams, pressed against walls that felt just uneven enough to raise questions, peered behind radiators, inside vents, beneath shelves. If there was a loose plank or hollow space to be found, I found it. And then found nothing.

The attic offered dust. The closets offered disappointment. The cellar, an empty stone-lined basement, offered only one oddity: a small arched section of wall that didn’t quite belong. I pressed on every stone, checked everything for movement, but nothing was loose or out of place.

The silence of the house pressed in heavier with each room I cleared, like it knew I was searching and had already decided not to help. 

By midday, I moved outside. I scoured the porch, checking every plank of wood for a secret compartment. I wandered through the garden, lifting stones and brushing aside overgrown weeds. 

Still nothing.

By the time the sun started to dip below the horizon, I was back in the living room, pacing in circles. My hands were covered in dust, and my nails were chipped from hours of prying at wood and stone. The walls seemed to mock me with their stubborn silence, and the creaking floorboards offered no secrets. Frustration sat heavy on my shoulders as the last rays of sunlight faded, leaving the house steeped in shadow once more.

I was no closer to a revelation than when I started, just dustier, more irritated, and quietly convinced that if there was something left to find, it was hiding not out of reach but out of spite.

By night, the wind outside softened, and the house settled into an unusual stillness. For the first time in days, I slept deeply and without dreams, as if the house itself had finally decided to grant me some peace.

When I woke up, the journal was still on the nightstand, and I was no closer to making sense of it. An entire day of searching had brought me back to the one thing I’d already found.

I thought that someone who had studied marine archaeology might have been useful. Preferably someone who knew the island inside out, had known all the victims, and had a personal stake in the very events I was trying to understand. It was an oddly specific list of qualifications, and I wished it hadn’t brought someone quite so readily to mind.

I sighed. I needed Alexander Blackwoods.

My mounting curiosity about the strange man who kept showing up at the house, along with his remark about owing it to Betty to keep an eye on her guests, gave me a good reason to call her and ask a few questions.

In her typical breezy manner, she said, "Oh, Zan? You’ve got nothing to worry about. He’s like a son to me! Such a kind soul! If you ever need anything, just ask him. He’ll be delighted to help." 

It took a full three seconds for the name to detonate in my brain. I’d heard it countless times from Betty and the others at the home, always assuming the man they spoke of was her son. Something in my chest folded in on itself as our last exchange replayed, his measured tone and my sharp retort. I felt the color rise in my face, sudden and traitorous. Of all the people to say that to, of all the people to accuse of neglecting her.

“Well, ‘Zan’ doesn’t exactly radiate warm and fuzzy vibes,” I recovered enough to mention, hoping my embarrassment hadn’t carried down the phone line.

Betty chuckled and said, “Well, he does have a soft spot for apple desserts. Doesn’t matter what kind,” as though suggesting the key to unlocking his brooding demeanor. 

I let the advice about apple desserts pass while I tried to collect myself. “Did you tell him I’d be staying here?” I asked, hoping her answer might explain some of the awkwardness between us. “He didn’t seem to know quite what to make of me.”

Betty let out another cheerful laugh. “Of course! I sent Zan a message saying my friend from the home, the one who beats Harold at dominoes, would be staying at the house for a while.”

Another surge of warmth flooded my face, and I wished the ground would open up and swallow me whole. That’s how she introduced me? As the domino-slaying companion from the retirement home? This was mortifying on levels I hadn't thought possible. 

Harold was the undisputed king of grumpy, the loudest complainer in the room, and a man who wore his perpetual dissatisfaction like a badge of honor. He was also fiercely protective of his title as the center’s unbeatable dominoes champion.

That was, until I came along.

Most weekends when Fyo volunteered at the center, I’d hang out there too, playing chess and dominoes with a revolving cast of grandpas who took their games very seriously. 

I love dominoes with an enthusiasm I rarely had occasion to exercise elsewhere, and Harold offered the additional pleasure of being deeply offended whenever I played well. 

He was offended whenever I played badly, too.

I also brought a certain flair to our games, a mix of strategy, bluffing, and the occasional questionable placement of a tile. Harold called it cheating. I usually just laughed. If fives and sevens looked awfully similar under the fluorescent lights and I happened to put the wrong one down, was that really my fault? Harold appealed to whoever happened to be nearby. I presented my defense. Soon enough, people were pulling up chairs.

An audience did very little to improve my behavior. I began placing more doubtful tiles with exaggerated care, giving Harold ample opportunity to inspect them. He would stop my hand, turn the offending tile toward our spectators, and wait for someone to explain how he was supposed to play under these conditions.

Yet whenever I arrived, he already had the tiles out, and if someone was sitting in the chair opposite him, he found a reason for them to move. If I missed a Saturday, he demanded an explanation the following week.

A few times, I brought him a book from a little secondhand bookshop, something I’d spotted and thought he might like. I would slide it across the table before we started and bluntly inform him, “I’m not planning to play by the rules today. This is your bribe.”

He would grumble at length while reaching for the book, inspect the cover, complain about the condition, and then put it carefully beside his chair. By the following weekend, he usually had an opinion on the ending and wanted to know whether the shop had anything else by the same author.

I took this as permission to continue to corrupt him.

One day, I arrived quieter than usual. Harold studied me for a moment, then began turning the tiles facedown.

“Are we playing or attending a funeral?”

“We’re playing.”

“Good. You can tell me what’s wrong when you’ve lost.”

By the second game, I’d forgotten why I was upset and was arguing with him again. He looked considerably more satisfied.

By my seventh weekend, I’d started winning often enough for Harold to take it personally. Whenever I won, he demanded a rematch. Whenever he won, I insisted that he give me a chance to recover. Neither of us had much difficulty persuading the other to stay.

Our games became a regular attraction. People stopped to ask the score, stayed to dispute it, and offered unsolicited advice that Harold and I were briefly united in resenting. The other grandpas took considerable pleasure in his losses, while Harold took equal pleasure in announcing mine to anyone who had missed them. I supplied enough questionable moves to keep everyone involved.

Apparently, holding my own against Harold while giving him something to complain about was a service the community had been waiting for. 

And that’s how I became a local legend. It eclipsed all other facets of my existence and remained my sole identifier. If this wasn’t karma, I didn’t know what was.

Zan must have been expecting a dear old granny with a walker and a fanny pack, only to find me instead. Aw, wasn’t that nice of him, to deliver food to “the sweet old lady” on my first night of arrival? Truly, what a gentleman! 

I pinched the bridge of my nose, a mix of embarrassment and exasperation bubbling up. It all made horrifying sense now, the perplexed looks, the cautious demeanor. I could almost see the gears turning in his head during our earlier encounters, trying to reconcile the image of a seasoned dominoes player with the young (and sexy) woman standing before him. 

Well, there was no undoing it now. All I could do was bake, extend an olive branch (or rather, an apple dessert) and hope that perhaps I could redefine myself beyond being the legendary conqueror of Harold.

So I was baking sharlotka, a traditional Russian apple cake that had been a staple in my family for as long as I could remember. It wasn’t the fanciest dessert, but it was comforting and familiar, something that felt like home no matter where I was.

It felt ridiculous, really, trying to butter up the guarded, brooding fisherman with pastry. As if honey and apples could crack through the walls around the Grim Reaper’s younger, hotter brother.

And yet, there I was, measuring out the flour with more care than I’d like to admit, all while questioning whether I could even trust him.

There was something secretive about him that unsettled me. The professor’s death and the disappearance of Zan’s friends had left too many unanswered questions, and it was hard to ignore the possibility that he might have had something to do with it. I knew almost nothing about him, and that left a considerable amount of room for my imagination, which was rarely a good thing.

Archivum hadn’t turned up anything to suggest he’d continued his academic work. As far as I could tell, Zan had traded the prospect of a brilliant career, with its conferences, credentials, and intellectual pageantry, for hauling nets and mending boats. I kept wondering what could make someone walk away from all that, though it didn’t necessarily scream “criminal mastermind” so much as “a man with a very complicated relationship with himself.” 

As I lost myself in the rhythm of peeling apples and the sweet alchemy of honey and sugar, my thoughts drifted back to my conversations with Betty.

It struck me then how many stories I’d heard about this Zan, and not just from her, but from the chorus of voices at the center, each one painting a vivid but incomplete portrait of the man. 

Betty, of course, talked about him constantly, calling him a good-hearted man who’d taken care of her after her husband’s sudden death. I’d always thought Zan was Betty’s actual son, as she managed to weave his name into nearly every story, as if his presence had been stitched into the fabric of her life. 

One of my favorite things about visiting the center was its courtyard. This little garden was  beautiful, serene, almost meditative in its perfection. Tucked between Manhattan’s walls of brick and stone, it held more than its size seemed to allow: small trees, flowering shrubs, beds of flowers, and vines trained over arches. The paths curved between them, opening onto benches set far enough apart that you could have a conversation without sharing it with everyone else.

One of the longtime residents told me that years ago, a late April frost devastated the garden. Then Zan showed up with soil, plants, and tools, spending two days working through the beds, saving what he could and replacing what he couldn’t. 

From that day on, everyone referred to it as "Zan’s garden." Until I heard that story, I had assumed they were calling it the Zen garden, because, honestly, it made sense. Turned out, the name wasn’t about tranquility at all. It was about him.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I murmured to myself as another memory surfaced. 

The dances. Yes, at the retirement center. Yes, that’s a thing. And no, I couldn’t make this up even if I tried. 

At any social event, if anyone needed a dance partner, rumor had it Zan would oblige without hesitation. He was, according to Betty, “the only man left in this godforsaken city who still knows how to lead properly.” She once joked that Zan’s waltz was better than her late husband’s, which earned her a disapproving glare from Harold, who, of course, insisted he had the best footwork. 

The idea of the Grim Reaper’s younger, hotter brother waltzing was so impossible that not even my overactive imagination could stage it. I would have done just about anything short of prayer to witness the spectacle.

I was determined to attend every social event at the center from now on. Strictly for cultural enrichment.

The sharlotka sat cooling on the counter, its golden crust filling the kitchen with a warm, nostalgic aroma. 

I leaned against the counter, my thoughts drifting to everything I’d heard about Zan from the residents of the retirement center. That image of him clashed sharply with the dark, guarded man I’d encountered on the island. It was as if I were piecing together two different people, neither fitting cleanly into the other. 

There was only so much I could learn about him from other people, and I had a cake cooling on the counter.

“Well, Zan,” I mused aloud, “prepare to meet the infamous domino champion.”