Page 18 of Haunted Ever After

She opened her mouth to reply but closed it immediately, feeling herself floundering. “I mean…you’re talking about ghost stories here. I get all this—” She waved a hand around, encompassing the shops they passed, all closed up tight for the evening. “But it’s a touristy thing, isn’t it? Something that sells T-shirts and ghost tours and whatever. I mean, if I go to Weeki Wachee to see the mermaids, I can get caught up in the fantasy they’re selling. I can say, ‘Oooh look at the mermaids!’ I can let myself ignore the hoses they’re holding so they can breathe. I know deep down that the tails they’re wearing are costumes. I’m not expecting the mermaids to be real.”

“This isn’t Weeki Wachee, though.” He thrust his hands into the front pockets of his jeans again and lengthened his stride to catch up to the group. Their one-on-one conversation was over as quickly as it had started. Cassie picked up the pace, practically trotting to match his steps. Great job, Cass, she scolded herself. If there was any notion of this being a date, you just killed it in record time.

By the time they were back in earshot of Sophie and her spiel, the group was in front of I Scream Ice Cream, where Sophie was winding down her story.

“So the good news is that if the freezers go down, the ice cream still stays cold!” She grinned while the rest of the group chuckled at her joke. Cassie hazarded a glance at Nick, who was mid–eye roll. He froze for a second as his gaze caught hers, then his expression softened.

“Okay, that one’s bullshit.” His voice was little more than a breath in her ear, his tone amused. He shot her a shy grin when she looked over at him.

“Yeah?” Her heart surged with hope. He was bringing her in on the joke, like a peace offering. Maybe she hadn’t ruined things after all.

The tour group moved on, and he bumped her shoulder with his as they fell into step with the rest. “Sometimes an ice cream shop is just an ice cream shop.”

“Okay then, Freud.” They continued down the sidewalk that led them around a bend toward the fishing pier. Cassie glanced across the street at her house as they passed it, but quickly turned her attention back to Sophie and her account of the town’s history. There would be time for her own personal (hopefully not really) haunted house later in the tour.

“There are lots of theories about what makes Boneyard Key so special. If you’re familiar with Cassadaga, which is in Central Florida on the way to Daytona, it was founded largely because of its psychic energy. Something to do with ley lines that I don’t even pretend to understand.” She pulled a face and the group laughed in response. “Some people think Boneyard Key is the same way. Something to do with the thinning of the veil…” She made spooky jazz hands to emphasize these last words. “But the general consensus comes from the town’s ominous past. We’ve had our share of tragedies here. Tragedy begets death, which of course begets ghosts.”

“Tragedy?” The middle-aged wife glanced around, and Cassie could see her point. The streetlights—wrought iron and made to look like old-fashioned gas lanterns—had begun to pop on as the sky darkened around them. Their warm, cozy light bounced off the closed-up kayak rental and bait shop, painted in cheerful shades of blue and green and orange. It looked like a postcard, or an art print titled Florida at Night, not like the kind of setting that tragedy could touch.

“Well, not recently,” Sophie clarified. “Boneyard Key was founded in the 1840s, but not here.” She led the group across the street and onto the darkened fishing pier, their footsteps clomping hollowly across the wooden slats. “We don’t have a great moon tonight”—Sophie peered up as though the crescent in the sky had disappointed her personally—“but if you come back during the day, you can look across the water and see the site of the original settlement. It’s called Cemetery Island now, because that’s all that’s left over there.”

Cassie stared as hard as she could, but all she could see in the darkness was a lump of slightly deeper darkness. She’d take Sophie’s word for it.

“It’s a small barrier island,” Sophie continued. “And when people lived there it wasn’t much, mostly a fishing and clamming community, but it was settled and thriving. Until the Great Storm of 1897.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound good.” Cassie had mostly been talking to herself, but beside her Nick made a grunt of agreement.

“Hurricanes usually aren’t,” he said, and she winced in sympathy. Floridians typically took hurricanes with a grain of salt and more than one margarita, but when they were bad, they were devastating.

“They weren’t measuring hurricanes yet,” Sophie continued, “but they say now that it was probably a Category Four storm, with winds at something close to 145 miles an hour.” She nodded as the group gave various gasps and low whistles. “Yeah, it was a big one. Wiped out the town, and most of the island itself. Many of the survivors of the Great Storm took off for points north after that, but a core group of families stayed—we call them the Founding Fifteen. They moved inland and established a new settlement here. They’re the ones that made Boneyard Key what it is today.”

Cassie leaned into Nick, her voice low. “A tourist town with the most souvenir shops per capita?”

Nick’s snort of laughter caught them both by surprise, and Sophie narrowed her eyes at them in mock censure. “As I was saying, it was about that time that…well, that’s when the hauntings started, for lack of a better term.”

She sounded so matter-of-fact about it that Cassie could almost forget that Sophie was talking about ghosts. “What was I saying about tragedy and trauma? Suddenly the Founding Fifteen—those families who stayed behind—found themselves able to communicate with those who’d been killed in the Great Storm. Most of those spirits didn’t stick around for long; they seemed to want the closure of being able to say goodbye, or seeing that their families were going to be okay. But then, as years went by, some ghosts just started…staying.”

“That had to have been creepy.” The younger tourist in the group aimed his camera toward the water; Cassie couldn’t imagine what he’d be able to capture.

“Maybe.” Sophie’s voice was carefully neutral. “And maybe a little comforting too. Sometimes when we lose someone, it’s like we’d give everything to have one final talk with them, you know? The dead aren’t always scary.

“The original settlement was called Fisherton,” she continued, “but when…well, when the weird things started happening, outsiders started calling it Boneyard Key. As a joke. Eventually it stuck, as people who lived here decided that sharing space with the dead wasn’t such a bad thing to do.” Sophie took a beat to let her words land; she really was a good storyteller. “There’s not much left of the original settlement on Cemetery Island—we’ve had a few more hurricanes over the years that’ve taken care of any remains of structures, things like that. But during the day you can rent a kayak and go over there. It’s an easy trip. There are a couple of foundations of houses, and tucked in the back is the original cemetery.” She paused. “It was oddly spared by all of the storms.”

Sophie let those final words sink in before she led them off the pier and back onto the sidewalk. Cassie leaned into Nick as they headed down the street. “Do I want to see Cemetery Island?”

He shrugged; saying meh with his whole attitude. “If you’re into kayaking. And cemeteries.”

“My two favorite things.” She grinned as Nick was startled into another laugh, interrupting Sophie. She narrowed her eyes at them but was smiling too much to be mad.

“As I was saying, this is one of our most famous landmarks.” She glanced over her shoulder then back at the tour group. “I’m not sure what that says about our town, but there you go. People like to take pictures of it, right?” She gestured to the guy with the camera, and he laughed.

“Guilty,” he said. “I was planning to get up early to shoot it tomorrow during sunrise.”

It was a stilt house built about thirty feet out into the Gulf. Though house was a generous term; the stilts were intact, along with two and a half walls. And some of the floor. A little bit of the roof.

Sophie nodded. “Now I’m going to admit that I have no idea if this place is haunted or not. I don’t have a whole lot of information on its history. The structure itself is abandoned, and as you can see, the Gulf is slowly taking the house, a piece at a time. Whoever once owned it is long gone. Unlike Nick’s friend Elmer, no one dead stuck around, and any descendants moved away decades ago. It’s become part of the scenery here in town. We call it the Starter Home.” She smiled as the group chuckled. “Just needs a little work, right?”

“Sure.” Cassie had to laugh at that. “It’s got good bones.” How many times had she heard that phrase when she’d been house hunting? Though saying it out loud while taking a ghost tour in a haunted town felt very different.

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