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They open the inn.
First, though, they have to rebuild the inn. But Stede has never held a hammer in his life and Ed had a crew to do the work for years, so they fence some of Ed's leftover loot to pay local workers.
It takes a month and more money than they thought just to get the first few rooms ready. There’s the roof, of course, but the builders insist on adding so many things: a kitchen, two washrooms, a room large enough for laundry tubs.
They run out of the money they have on hand. Ed sends a letter to a contact, and then there's more. Stede doesn't know if it's from another of Ed's stashes or if it's a loan.
They open the inn when three rooms are ready for guests. They decide to rebuild the others later.
Then they wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Ed has trouble sleeping. He says it's odd to sleep in a room that doesn't rock with the waves. He gets up most nights and walks around the inn, up and down the halls over and over, until he gets tired enough to sleep.
Sometimes he walks down to the beach.
Sometimes Stede finds him asleep on the front steps, slumped over and stiff with cold.
Once, he finds him asleep next to Izzy's grave.
They get their first guests: a couple who says they just got married and are trying to "get away from it all" for a while. Stede talks to them about his relationship with Ed, and their desire to do “get away from it all,” as he sets them up in the front room.
They plan to stay for a week as a "honeymoon."
They leave the next morning and avoid eye contact.
They wait for more guests.
The inn always needs something. Towels. Sheets. Liquor. Firewood. Food, to replace the food they bought but went rotten with no guests to eat it. Pillows. More liquor.
They get more guests. A family of four stays in the first two rooms. Ed tries to cook breakfast but sets fire to the toast. Thankfully the mother laughs and takes over, teaching them both how to scramble eggs and properly cook the sausage.
Still, they leave the next morning. The children are pale, the youngest trembling and glancing over his shoulder as he clings to his mother's hand.
Stede goes to the mainland market every week for supplies. He’s made friends with a few of the sellers: Georgina who runs the bakery, Claude who sells the best oranges.
After the family leaves, Georgina pulls him aside and tells him that they said the inn was haunted. Maybe he should think about placing more lanterns in the hallway?
She describes the ghost, and he realizes that she's talking about Ed pacing at night.
The laundry piles up with no money to buy more sheets. Stede tries to wash them first. He fills the laundry tub with steaming water, hauling it kettle by kettle while burning his hands on the handle. The soap he uses for dishes isn't the right kind, but it's what they have.
Ed walks past the laundry room while he's in there, pausing in the doorway to look, though his feet stay in the hall.
"You could help me," Stede snaps, tired and sweating with burned palms.
Ed walks away.
Two days later they hire a maid. Mercy is a small, mousy girl in a modest gray dress with pale hair tucked under a white cap. Stede wracks his brain for what he used to pay his housekeeper. At first, he wants to pay her more -- she has so much work, and she's so thin -- but he looks at their ledger and pays her half.
She accepts it solemnly and they make her a cot in the corner of the kitchen.
Ed paces all night and stops coming to bed entirely.
Stede doesn't sleep well. His dreams are haunted by uneven footfalls: the stomp of a thick-soled boot and then a wooden thunk. Over and over, up and down the hall, all night.
He's not sure Ed sleeps at all.
Ed joins him for breakfast one morning.
Stede stumbles over a warped floorboard and drops the butter crock, shattering it into huge, jagged pieces on the kitchen floor. Ed jumps out of his skin and yells at him to be fucking careful.
Stede yells back that he is being careful, and if Ed thinks he can do any better, then he's welcome to try.
Ed helps him wash the dishes as an apology. His fingernails are ragged and dirty and one is broken in a way that looks painful. He doesn't let Stede look too closely.
Turns out they don't have enough money to replace the crock.
Turns out Ed's last influx of cash -- to buy more towels -- was a loan. A loan they can't pay back right now.
More guests finally arrive, but they leave in the morning. They're angry and complain about a foul smell.
Stede hasn't been to the back two rooms in a while -- the main room, the kitchen, and the room he is supposed to share with Ed are on the other side of the inn -- so he decides to ask Mercy about it.
Mercy says she is cleaning all the rooms but the last one, which Mister Edward told her not to go into.
When he tells her to do it anyway, she goes pale and crosses herself.
She still refuses to go into the room the next day. Stede tells her he will go and takes the key from her.
He goes into the kitchen the next morning to find Mercy gone, her blankets folded neatly and her few possessions taken with her.
Another week passes. He intends to go in the room, and even looks down that way a few times. But every time, he is swept by a wave of foreboding and his eyes skitter away from that end of the hall.
The next guests leave at midnight, arguing about the stench.
By morning, he can smell it in his room.
He waits until daylight. He can't look at the thought directly, but a part of him knows that he will find something awful.
Even before he opens the door, the smell is so foul that he ties a handkerchief over his mouth and nose. He waits for a moment in the hall, listening carefully to see if someone or something is inside. An animal, perhaps.
(He knows it's not an animal.)
The lock fights him, but he forces the door open.
What's left of Izzy sits propped up on the bed. His head lolls to the side, his mouth open to reveal his blackened tongue. His soft parts are going and his joints are giving way, leaving his shoulders slumped and his arms limp and out of place.
Stede gasps in horror and slams the door shut, leaning heavily against it. The stench is overwhelming and he gags, his eyes filling with tears. He bends double with his hands on his knees, struggling to breathe through his mouth.
When he looks up, he has to bite down on a scream. Ed is standing over him. He's haggard, his long hair stringy and dirty. His eyes are glassy like he hasn't slept in days.
They stare at each other for a moment. Stede has no idea what to say -- where to even start. Izzy has haunted them from the beginning.
"Did you know he would die?" Ed asks. His voice is rusty with disuse, and Stede realizes they haven't spoken to each other in at least a week.
"No," he says, which is almost true. He'd known it could happen. He'd just decided not to think about it much.
"Hm." Ed nods. His eyes drift over to the door. "You should leave him alone."
Stede stands in horrified silence for a moment. He wants – expects -- Ed to explain what the fuck is happening, why he would do something so awful to Izzy and to him.
But when he realizes that Ed's not going to, he struggles to take a breath without gagging before demanding, "Why?"
Ed's gaze drifts back from the door. He looks at Stede's face, but he's clearly not seeing him. "I need him here," he mutters distantly, then turns and shuffles away down the hall.
Stede doesn't sleep that night. He sits up in bed with all his lamps lit, trying to chase away the darkness. He sees Izzy in every shadow, hears his uneven footsteps in every creak and groan of the building.
After midnight, he smells smoke. At first he thinks it's just a breeze blowing through the kitchen, picking up the ash from the cold stove.
It gets stronger, and he hears noises in the hall.
When he opens the door, the far end of the inn is ablaze. The smoke is heavy and choking, the fire burning like he always imagined the pits of Hell.
He screams for Ed. He has a horrible feeling that he's trapped in the heart of it. He tries to find him but is quickly overwhelmed by the heat and smoke and has to turn back.
He runs outside screaming for Ed, for help, for anybody who can hear him. When he runs around to the far rooms, he finds the building entirely consumed by flames. The roof, hardly repaired and held together with driftwood and prayer, creaks and groans and threatens to collapse.
"Ed," he screams at the top of his lungs, "Ed, Ed, where are you?"
He looks through the window of the farthest room -- the one Izzy has been haunting -- desperately hoping that he can find a safe way to get to Ed.
Instead, he sees the room ablaze and two figures lying together on the bed.
Stede is still sitting in the yard, stunned and dazed, when the roof collapses.
The inn burns. No one hears, and no one comes to help.
When the Revenge -- rechristened the Adventure, her paint so new it sparkles -- arrives two weeks later for a visit, they find ash, rubble, a freshly turned grave, and not a single living soul.