━ 𝗹𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗮𝘂.
"𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐇, 𝐍𝐎." 𝐈 𝐔𝐓𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐃.
Standing in front of the dirty brown van, my arms firmly crossed over one another, as the two boys stared at me from the inside. It was bemusing to think that the two teenagers were particularly serious about asking me to hop in their van, with determined hopes of bringing me to the 'Chateau'. It was bad enough to run into them at Lana Grubb's house by chance, but it was much worse to imagine going on with their antics for a second time.
It seemed as though the two boys had shining halos of bad luck floating above their heads, twenty-four seven, call it a constant aura.
"Just get in," John B groaned impatiently from the driver's seat.
"I think it's real funny, that you assume I'm going to listen to you, after everything that just happened," I said firmly, not looking away from him through the glass.
"Don't be silly," he rolled his eyes, "Now, get in before those guys come back."
"They're not coming back." I claimed, sounding sure, even though I wasn't, whatsoever.
"How do you know that," John B looked at me dumbfounded, leaning his arms on the steering wheel.
"I just do." I said back.
"We had a good thing going, Cherry Cola," he rolled his eyes again, "You forget about everything last night? We agreed to be cool,"
"Of course I didn't forget last night— your friend pulled a fuckin' gun," I clapped back, motioning my hand to Jj in the backseat.
John B let out a loud scoff.
"Maybe if you asked her nicely, JB," I heard Jj mumbled distractedly, from the back seat. I tilted to the side to see him rolling a blunt in the back of the van. His hands were trembling, making it hard for him to hold the paper in place, and his voice quivered. I figured by the looks of his distressed face, that he probably needed it.
"Charlotte," John B tried to sound nicer, making his tone of voice more calm. "May you please, enter the van."
"Absolutely not." I shook my head once firmly.
"Alright then," John B pushed open the driver's side door, closing it with a thud. "I see how it is."
I was too busy staring at his dark black eye, that I didn't even realize he was heading straight for me. Before I knew it, my body was being slung over his shoulder, his arm wrapped around my back as he propped me up. He held me over his back with a tight grip, and he trudged right over to the side of the van without another word.
"Let me down!" I punched at his back, and kicked my legs, "You fucking psycho!"
He opened the passenger door with his free hand, and placed me down rather gently. He closed the door before I could escape.
The window was open— in fact, there was no window— and a first thought was to jumping out, figuring my body would fit through it. But I looked down at my blue shorts which already had dirt stains, and my top half-covered. I stayed put, as John B hopped in the driver's seat beside me.
"This is abduction." I stated seriously, looking forward. "Straight up, abduction."
"Relax," he started the van, quickly pulling it away from Lana's house and onto the road. "We're going to my house."
"Yeah, the house that you live in by yourself." I spat out, voice low, "Why are you even taking me there? If you wanted to kill me, you should've done that back at the motel." I looked over at him, my eyes sharply squinting.
"I'd like to know too, John B," Jj hummed from the backseat, still sounding shooked-up to the core. "I mean, of course I don't mind,"
"Shut up, Jj," John B said, before turning his head and looking at me seriously, "You're going to tell me what those men were at Lana's house for."
___
As we pulled up to John B's house, what they called the Chateau, I couldn't sit right in my seat.
I really couldn't figure out why I had stayed the whole time, why I didn't just jump out the window, or at least tried to. I already knew that John B was spontaneous, troublesome, and gave a constant air of bad luck, and it annoyed me that I, yet again, let him take me on an adventure, after I promised myself I wouldn't. The whole ride, it was silent, just each one of us left alone with our thoughts— all still processing what had happened.
After a while of driving down lonely roads, I began to think that maybe I wasn't trying to escape from the van, because I was bored. Bored of living the same boring life, that I brought with me from New York. On the Ferry ride to the island, I had told myself that I was going to be different, spontaneous— if you will— and not sit by my bedroom window like usual, and wish that I was one of the other people. I was starting to do that again, on this island, and I hadn't even noticed it.
So now, as I sat in the front seat of John B's dirty van, with two of the dumbest people I'd ever met, I felt different. Even though the day was most likely going to end with something horrible, per usual, at the least, I wasn't by myself.
"Home sweet home," John B announced, not sounding as proud as I thought he'd be. He turned off the van and pushed open his door, stepping out.
Jj slid the back door open, jumping out and closing it, and walked away unsteadily, towards the back of the house. A cloud of smoke drifted away from his face, evaporating into thin air above him. John B waited for me to exit the vehicle, standing at it's front with his hands rubbing over his mouth stressfully.
As I jumped out of the passenger seat with a miserable look on my face, I looked at the house. It was white and small, seeming to be only one floor like my grandparents' home. I could see some of the faded-white paint chipping off from the walls, and dirt stains on the tiles of it. Trees surrounded the house, and near the back, there was the water and a long dock leading to his small fishing boat.
When Jj was already long out of sight and we could hear him talking already, I followed John B around the end of the house. We turned a corner of trees and newly faced a back-porch with screen netting around it's perimeter.
Instantly, I saw Kiara and Pope sitting across from one another on couch-benches, and Jj walking back and forth between them along the wood planks, running his hands through his hair frantically.
"And then we were right outside like this—" Jj was rambling, leaning against a brick wall, as a rooster croaked in the distance.
I turned my head around to see a wooden cage near more trees, and I grimaced at the sight of an animal inside of it.
"And all we hear is bam! Bam! Bam!" Jj was saying, acting out what happened as John B and I stepped up the porch stairs.
Pope looked up at us— or more specifically, me, a look of disbelief on his face. "What is she doing here?" He said with his eyebrows narrowed.
Jj stopped acting out the situation, and Kiara smiled up at me softly.
"She was at Lana's house when the guys showed up," John B told him, while stepping over to stand by a post on the porch. He motioned for me to sit down on the green sofa beside Pope.
"What were you doing there?" Pope asked me, as I sat.
"I was uh," I felt awkward talking, with all of them looking at me, "dropping off a gift from my grandma, she's friends with Lana and... well, Scooter."
"And these guys just... showed up?" John B narrowed his eyebrows, not understanding.
"Yeah," I shrugged, "They came in screaming and just started— like, breaking things," I explained, calmly.
"Yeah, yeah! Knocking paint off the wall, G," Jj pointed to me, as if I gave him a buzzing idea, and continued with his rambling, using his arms to act it out. "From the inside alright, and I'm just looking at him like—," he looked to John B, "Wait, wait, first off, look at this shit," he stopped, and walked over to Pope, shaking his head like a dog.
"That's... dandruff." I mumbled, more to myself.
"Look at all that, all right! That's paint." Jj stated. "At that point, I was just like... I'm waiting for death."
John B glanced to me, his face worried. I kept eye contact for a second, before looking down at my hands, uncomfortably.
"Okay, so you saw the guys that shot at us, right?" Pope rubbed his hands on his forehead. "Did you get, like, a good description of them? What'd they look like,"
"Yeah, anything," Kiara nodded.
"Anything we could bring to a police report," Pope added.
Jj stopped, looking out into the distance for a moment. "Burly," he said.
"Burly." Pope repeated.
"That's not very helpful," Kiara mumbled, before looking up to me, "What did you see, Charlotte?"
All eyes turned to me, and I internally panicked. "They were wearing all black," I answered quietly, my voice delicate as if the subject were touchy. "One of them had a lot of hair."
Pope groaned, placing his head in his hands.
"These boys... these— killers," Jj leaned his back against the brick wall, as he pulled out a vape, taking a long puff, "They're square groupers." He said with full-confidence.
"Square groupers, like, narco square grouper?" Pope tried to comprehend, "like, Pablo Escobar square grouper?"
I didn't know what a square grouper was, but I held my tongue and stayed listening. Jj nodded at his friend, taking another hit.
"So what does this square grouper look like, specifically." Pope persisted. "Because apparently you don't know what to look for!"
"Dude! I wasn't taking little mental polaroids the entire time, man!" Jj's voice rose in pitch, his facial expression frantic, "I was under duress, okay!"
Everyone looked at one another.
"But I can tell you, by the way ms. Lana was screaming," Jj calmed down, talking seriously, "that those guys are serious, serious hombres, man."
"He's right," I whispered out, my voice sounding quiet. "They broke almost everything in her house, even took the door off it's hinges," I looked up to John B. "They wanted your compass, that's all they were screaming about," I said.
He reached into his pocket and took it out. His friends began to bicker against the compass and it's worth, but I stayed staring at John B.
"What else did they say?" He asked me.
"Not much," I breathed out, "They said that it wasn't in the boat, they went um... looking for it... and they couldn't find the compass, I don't know, I was panicking. I was also in the bathroom—"
"The boat..." John B looked away and thought to himself, pacing around the porch, "The office," he looked up, a look of realization over his face.
His friends stopped their talking, looking up at John B as he stepped toward the door, leaving the porch. Then, they looked to me, but I simply shrugged my shoulders upwards, unaware of what he was on about.
"My dad... my dad's office," John B whispered out, "He always kept the office locked because he was worried about his competitors stealing his Royal Merchant research," he explained to everyone, glancing back at us as he entered his house.
The Royal Merchant rang a bell in my mind. As his friends stood up to follow him, I thought about the magazines I'd read on the Ferry ride. There was no service and I couldn't use my phone, so I had had to find comfort in reading the free pamphlets placed outside the entrance for tourists. I couldn't remember much, due to lack of interest, but figured it had something to do with "the shipwreck" stuff Caroline had mentioned briefly, when we were talking about John B's father.
I was the last one to enter his home. When I stepped in, it smelled like stale food, old fish, sea water, and rustic wood. The floors were made from wooden planks, and so were some of the walls, loose and creaking underneath everyone's footsteps. John B was rambling on about his father and the office, but I drowned out his voice and looked around the home.
The kitchen had chipped blue-ish green cupboards and countertops, and the sink was filled with dirty dishes. The surfaces of every countertop was filled with things like garbage, papers, plates, and empty cups. To the left was a futon sofa, already opened, with blankets and pillows on top, and another door. There was also a dining table, made out of wood, with empty beer bottles and cans laying on top, along with small cigarette butts and a few books.
"Now that he's gone, I've just kinda... just left it as he kept it," John B was saying, as he stopped in front of a closed door. He pulled a small set of keys from his pocket, followed by a clinking sound.
"Yeah, for when he gets back," Kiara nodded, smiling lightly.
The boys looked at her oddly, but she only scolded them in return, to keep them quiet. Even I was slightly looking at her oddly, remembering how Caroline told me his dad had gotten lost at sea nine months prior.
The five of us were standing in a clump by the door, me being at the back. I felt like I wasn't apart of what they were talking about, since I had no idea what was going on, so I stayed with my arms crossed as John B unlocked the door and pushed it open. He walked in first, then Kiara, and after Pope and Jj. I stayed in the doorframe, feeling awkward.
"I've slept over here like six-hundred times, and I've never seen this door open." Pope commented, while walking into the messy room.
Kiara looked back to see me standing there uncomfortably, before she used her hand to motion for me to enter. I smiled softly, but still refused, keeping place at the door.
"Here, look— this is the original owner," John B placed a large pin board over a mountain of papers and books on the table. The four of them crowded around the small wooden table.
I listened from the doorway as the teenagers looked at the pictures pinned to the board. John B explained each picture and who was in it, but more importantly— how each recipient died after owning the compass. I created a pattern in my head for fun while they chatted, realizing quickly that the compass held a certain back luck to it. Shocker, I thought, that John B just so happened to obtain the dangerous item too.
"Sounds like there's a reoccurring theme here," Jj said, when they were finished discussing every picture.
"Yeah, you have a death compass," Pope agreed, speaking with attitude. I almost laughed, but kept it in due to the touchy subject. I felt reassured that I wasn't the only one noticing.
"It's cursed and it's made it's way back to you," Jj continued, using his hands as gestures.
John B disagreed and sat down on a wooden chair near the window. He was speaking about the compass and something his dad had told him, but I stopped listening for a second and glanced around the room. Every wall, and every shelf, was either covered with research papers, or filled with binders of notes. I began to think to myself about what Caroline had told me about John B's father, "He was always so involved with the stupid shipwreck research".
"What's that?" Kiara said suddenly, after John B had shook the compass upside down.
"That wasn't there before," he whispered out, in disbelief.
I then stepped into the room, still looking around at all the documents. The mood in the air had shifted suddenly, and I turned to see the four teenagers huddled around John B and the compass.
"Red... Rou, redell..." Jj was standing behind him, trying to read something written on the compass.
"It says Redfield," Kiara corrected.
They discussed what it meant while I stayed quiet, and listened, my arms leaning on the table full of items. They reached for paper and a pen, beginning to write something down. I watched awkwardly.
"Redfield," I said out loud, my eyebrows furrowed, "I passed a lighthouse on the way here that said Redfield," I gave off, nervous that my information wouldn't be helpful.
They looked to me, nodded, and wrote down what I had said. While they continued to talk and shift through ideas, I then stood up and walked over to John B. He barely looked at me, as he searched through a drawer of items and wrote things on a piece of paper.
Suddenly, I noticed a black truck pulling up to the house, outside the window.
"Somebody's here, John B," I said, my voice quivering at the looks of the tinted windows. "Who is that?" I lightly hit his arm to grab his attention. "Do you know who that is,"
"Guys..." he looked out the window as well, realizing what I'd said, "Guys!" shouted at his friends, "Somebody's here!" He said, through gritted teeth. They immediately approached us standing at the window, unaware.
Then, my stomach dropped right to my feet when the two guys dressed in all black, stepped out of the scary truck with guns in their hands.
I stepped away from the window, my hands over my head. "That's it, we are going to die."
༄
𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 !