Isle of the Dead (Island of the Dead) Port Arthur, Tasmania
Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery Book 5 – The Getaway
Book 5 in the Pine Lake Inn Cozy Mystery Series is going through its final edits right now and will be ready for publishing within the next two weeks.
Dell and James head off to Port Arthur for a little weekend getaway. Here’s a little Sneak Peek. Enjoy!
The rest of the visitor’s center was pretty normal stuff for a tourist attraction. The gift shop sold tea towels with photos of the prison on them, as well as t-shirts and collectible cups and handmade jewelry. Mannequins in period dress were standing in the corners and against the walls for people to take photos of. A map of the grounds caught my attention for a moment behind protective glass, near the entrance. James and I had spent a couple of hours before the tour started looking around and most of the places on the map I’ve already seen.
Until the ghost tour tonight, there wasn’t much more for me to see. The Island of the Dead, sure, and definitely the Memorial Garden for the 1996 massacre. That’s something that everyone living in Tasmania should see at least once in their life. There’s been a lot of tragedy on this little peninsula. Not all of it in the distant past.
I was still debating with myself about going back to the cabin without James as I found my way to the Lady’s Room. One thing was for sure, I wasn’t going to stay here and wander around the visitor’s center for hours while he finished picking his new friend’s brain.
The second stall was empty. So was the first, probably, but I don’t ever use the first stall. That’s the one everybody rushes to when they just can’t hold it and I never know what I’m going to find left behind by the last person to use it. I’ll stick with the next stall down, thanks.
I’d just turned the lock on the swinging door when the lights went out.
There’s a recurring nightmare that I have about dark bathrooms and bad men doing bad things. This is how it starts.
Only, this isn’t a nightmare. The scream from the toilet stall next to mine is very real.
Jumping up and groping for the lock, I banged my fingers against the knob and there’s a very good chance that I cracked a nail at the same time. Hard to tell in the dark.
“Hello?” I said, calling out to whoever was in the room. Was there someone else in here when I came in? I’d been too wrapped up in my own thoughts. I hadn’t noticed.
I could hear noises. Thumping and footsteps, and I don’t know what else.
Carefully, I felt for the lock. I opened the door.
Then the lights came back on.
For a moment I stopped, standing in the stall, feeling completely stupid. There was no one else here. I pushed the stall doors open one at a time. Empty. Empty. Empty. No one at the sinks.
So what did I just hear?
While I stood there wondering what had just happened, wondering if I should go find someone and report a woman screaming in the Lady’s Room one second and then disappearing the next, another noise caught my ear. A hollow sort of squeaking sound.
Turning to see what it was I found myself staring at my own reflection in the long mirror above the sinks. The glass shook as something drew lines along its surface. Lines that traced themselves in sudden condensation, and beads of water.
The lines made letters. The letters made words.
DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.
The words hung there for several heartbeats, then smeared away from end to end as if a ghostly hand had wiped them off. The room rang with a flat echo like that same hand had slammed against the mirror when it was done, to punctuate the importance of what it had just shown me.
Don’t let it happen again.
I don’t know how long I was standing there. The next thing I knew the door between the Lady’s Room and the rest of the building was opening and a mother ushered in her very young daughter ahead of her, urging her to do her business quick so they could get back to their day. The mother smiled at me. I smiled back.
“Did you see someone just leaving?” I asked her.
“Eh?” Her attention was on her daughter, not me. “Sorry. We were in a bit of a rush.”
“No worries. Thanks.”
When I looked back at my reflection a handprint outlined in a thin layer of fogginess was just disappearing.
Written by a ghostly hand. So, there were ghosts here at Port Arthur after all. At least the one. Was that who I just heard screaming? The ghost?
In the short little while that I’ve known I could talk to dead people there’s a few things I’ve learned.
One is that when a ghost takes the time to deliver a message to you, then you should probably listen.
The mom turned to me with an odd look and I realized I’d been staring at myself in the mirror for half a minute or more, just waiting for another message to appear and explain the first one. To cover for my hesitation, I turned the water on and soaped my hands up, washing them again. And again.
Don’t let it happen again. Don’t let what happen?
Port Arthur, Tasmania
The Prison Building, Port Arthur, Tasmania
