by Mara Webb
Miller wandered up the hill towards me and took a seat on the grass.
“Kate says you didn’t know your cousin very well,” he said. “It still must be a lot to process.”
“I didn’t know her at all. I didn’t know she existed. As far as I knew my family tree was a family twig,” I said.
“Let me just give you as much as I have so far, because I think you are in shock and I want to help,” he smiled. “Your cousin, Greta, was missing and presumed dead. She disappeared recently but we found her car. It was up in the mountains wrapped around a tree.
“And Greta?” I asked.
“No sign of her. To make matters worse the conditions up there are unpredictable and sometimes deadly, no one ever went up there as much as she did. When a week passed it became clear that she wasn’t coming back. No planes had flown off the island during that time and no boats had shuttled out either. She was missing on the island. Obviously now we find her all the way down here in the lower ground so that’s where I come in and try to figure out what on earth caused that to happen.”
“I just think there has been a mistake. I don’t have any other family. How can Kate possibly know that Greta is my cousin? Where is she getting that idea from?” I said. It seemed like such a bizarre lie to tell, not that I was suggesting Kate was lying on purpose. She must be in shock too; the sight of a dead body must have caused confusion.
“Greta owned the café before you did,” Miller replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “She said it was a family run business and that unless she had any kids any time soon, the café would go to you.”
“But I didn’t inherit this place from a relative, I bought it. I paid for the café out of my own pocket. I...” I was faltering. One of my pet peeves was when someone downplayed my achievements or dismissed the hard work that I’ve put in. My ex, Justin, used to do it all the time and it drove me crazy.
“Sadie, I’m not saying that you didn’t. What I’m saying is, well, Effie set up the ad for the café sale and made sure that you saw it. She guided you to this place,” he explained. I rolled my eyes. Miller had been so attractive when we’d first met that a small part of me thought, if I played my cards right, that we could go on a date at some point.
His weird response to the situation was casting serious doubt in my mind. Was I projecting my fantasy romance onto the first attractive guy that spoke to me? Absolutely. Now I was just imagining him sat at home with his crystals and windchimes listening to whale music as he lined up his chakras. She guided me here? Give me a break.
“Okay, well... alright then,” I stumbled. There really was nothing to say to him. “Do you need a statement or whatever? I haven’t been involved in something like this before, never gotten so much as a speeding ticket. This is the most I’ve ever spoken to a cop actually.”
“You should head home,” he said. He stood up but didn’t offer his hand to help me to my feet. Not that weird, I guess. “I’ll come find you tomorrow and get a statement then. Would you like an escort back to the café?”
I wanted to gain independence on this island as quickly as possible. I had one stranger claiming to have found a fictional relative of mine in the water, this guy talking about weird, targeted business adverts and I was still baffled by the speed at which the storm had come and gone. I needed to look out for myself. The obvious problem was that I still didn’t know my way around too well.
“I’ll take her back, at ease Miller,” Kate said as she joined us. Miller gave me a slight nod, another for Kate, then walked back down to the cemetery. “Jeez, never seen the guy flirting so hard,” she laughed.
“He’s flirting?”
“Look, I know that you just found your dead cousin and it’s super distressing and all, but the silver lining here is that the Sheriff is hot for teacher.”
“Doesn’t that only work if I’m actually a teacher?” I laughed.
“Words are tricky, don’t get caught up on it.” She began walking back up the slope towards the main street and soon I was able to see the sign for the pizza place that she worked at and the corner where the donut truck had been earlier. “Vest please,” she said holding out her hand after taking off her own bright orange accessory. “No need to wear that hideous thing anymore.”
I pulled the Velcro apart and slipped the vest off my arms. Once I handed it to her, she screwed up my vest with her own, like a tangled fabric ball, and threw them over her shoulder. I looked back and they hadn’t landed on the street, or on her head, or anywhere at all. They were both gone.
I was clearly suffering from my long trip to get to the island, the experience of being rushed into a storm shelter and the shock of finding a dead body. My eyes were playing tricks on me.
“So, what have you got planned for tonight?” Kate asked.
“I don’t know, probably unpack and see if I get any good channels on the TV. Will there be a TV in the house?” I hadn’t even stepped foot into my new home and had to hope that Effie had made good on her word to find the key. I would be sleeping on a table in the café otherwise.
“I’m playing GPS roulette again, feel free to join,” she smiled. “It’s an app that we just got here in Hallow Haven a few months back and it is just ruining my life, but in the best way. You open it up and it gives you random co-ordinates for a location nearby and you go and film what you find. There’s never anything good at the end, just sand usually, but one day there might be something exciting and... I’ve lost you haven’t I.”
“Sorry, I can’t stop thinking about that woman we found,” I confessed. More than anything I wanted to be able to push the memory aside, but with everyone saying I was related to her it felt like a face I couldn’t risk forgetting. If I was about to move into her old house, then maybe there would be some clues to clear up this confusion.
“It’s okay, I know how you feel. I tend to go for a big hike when I have a lot on my mind, I find the fresh air healing. I’ve tried to get Effie to play GPS roulette and she doesn’t have an interest either,” Kate complained.
“What about tomorrow night? I’ll be up for it after some proper sleep,” I said. Ever the people pleaser. I can’t honestly claim that the thought of it sounded like something I would choose to do. I’d already tried one short explore of the island and ended up wading through a flooded cemetery, but I was determined to try new things and come out of my negative shell.
“You’re on!” she said, clapping with excitement. I was over a thousand miles from my old life and knew nobody, if this was what I needed to do to make friends then I was willing to give it a go. Kate continued to share tales of her anticlimactic findings on previous adventures with the app, and I continued to seem enthusiastic about our trip out tomorrow. We were soon back at the cafe and Effie was waiting.
“Kate? Can a girl get a text back? I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours, I thought you’d gotten Sadie killed in the storm or something,” Effie complained. She punched her sister in the arm in a playful way and then the two of them smiled.
“Sadie found Greta,” Kate explained.
“That’s awesome! I wouldn’t have expected things to kick in so fast, but this—” Effie said before being cut off by an elbow to the ribs from Kate.
“Her body was washed up in the cemetery,” Kate finished.
“Ah.” The two of them took their eyes off each other to look at me. What had Effie been talking about? Miller said they had already declared Greta officially dead. Hadn’t that been the reason Effie put the café up for sale? Why would she think that it was ‘awesome’ that I had found her?
“I think you should get started with your TV night, or whatever,” Kate suggested.
“Yeah, I’ve stocked your refrigerator and tried to shift some of Greta’s stuff out of the way so you can just crawl into bed. She’s awesome, and I love her, but sometimes her house was like a tornado hit a landfill,” Effie smiled. She handed me the keys to the house, and I walked through the kitchen to reach
the door to my new home.
Effie and Kate shouted goodnight and I heard the lock turn in the café door. I was all alone now. I pushed my way through into the house and locked myself in. Effie must have left the hallway light on so that I could see where things were. The hall was a long, straight corridor through to another door at the other end. Based on the amount of light coming through the glass in that door, it must lead to outside.
It was cute. Nothing like my interior design preferences which were all shades of white and grey, but colorful and lively. It was as if a toddler with a crayon box had planned the paint and wallpaper and I was surprised by how much I loved it. I reached into one room and found the light switch; this was the living room. A brightly patterned couch stretched out around the corner of the room and faced a TV attached to the wall. Perfect.
Even if the rest of the house was a disaster, I had a place to relax and put my feet up, a way to keep up to date with all my soap operas and, if the bedroom was awful, a place to sleep. I smiled at the thought of collapsing onto the cushions and turned to look for the kitchen.
I stepped into a dining room first, each chair looked as if it had been made by a different person, nothing matched. There was a plastic chair as if from a children’s school, a red wooden chair with intricate spindles, a jet-black armchair that was barely able to tuck underneath the table, and about nine more chairs that were equally unique.
It was then that I first spotted it. I assumed I had seen something in the corner of my eye and my brain had tried to make sense of it, but my first thoughts were right. On the largest wall in the dining room was a painting of a sprawling tree, faces adorning the branches. I recognized two of the people depicted; one was Greta and the other was me.
5
I paused in the doorway. The faces were a mixture of printed photographs and small paintings, one was a pencil drawing, and another was carved into a small stone oval. My picture was a printout of a photo I had put out on social media about a month ago.
The photo I had taken was one of those with a whole story behind it. I had been home alone and had spent most of the day watching a TV show about choosing wedding dresses, I’d cried and eaten a whole box of expensive chocolates. In a weird, ‘it’s MY special day too’ moment, I had gotten off the sofa and put on a full face of makeup, curled my hair and tried to take pictures at attractive angles.
Obviously, most of the moments captured on film had my puffy, cried-all-day eyes on full display, but I’d managed to get one photo that I was proud of and put it online as my new profile picture. I had also planned to use it on a profile for a dating website, but I got too scared and didn’t do it in the end.
Staring at the picture of my own face hanging on the wall I felt a strange mix of, ‘yeah, I look great’ and ‘why is this here?’. This picture was new. I tried to think about when I had digitally signed all the papers for the café sale, or when all the payments had gone across. Maybe Effie had been checking out the person taking over their business, that was normal, right?
It’s the new thing that employers do, they score your social media presence for reasons not to hire you. You just have to assume that everything you say and do on the internet will come back to bite you in the butt if you aren’t careful. Still, it’s weird to stalk me and print off that picture.
I wanted to keep exploring the house. This was my place now and when I had more energy, I could take the weird picture wall of strangers down and put up a nice painting of some pebbles or something, you know, a more neutral image that wouldn’t give me chills while I was eating at the table.
I backed out into the corridor and entered the kitchen. Stepping onto the tiles I was reminded that I still had my shoes on. I slipped them off my feet and walked barefoot over to the refrigerator hoping that when Effie told me that she had stocked it, she had included something that I could just throw in a microwave.
It was a double door refrigerator, that was a good start. I pulled open the doors with both hands and leaned into the cool air. The smell of fresh food poured out and I closed my eyes to bask in it, before opening them again to see what was on the shelves. It was a lot of the usual suspects, cartons of milk, eggs, a draw filled with oranges and one shelf was covered in bottled water and nothing else.
There was a note stuck to one of the bottles that read, ‘take on walks!’, and I assumed this was Effie’s reminder to drink more now that I was in a hotter environment. I could have done with water on that weird post-storm hike, so I would make sure to tuck a bottle into my purse tomorrow. I saw a plastic container of ravioli and a tub of sauce and grabbed them both.
“That is probably a bad choice,” a voice spoke out. I dropped the pasta box but kept a tight grip of the sauce as I looked around. Was I about to use this four-cheese as a weapon? This was how I planned to defend myself? “It’s cooled down a little but come on. A hot pasta dish on a night like this? You really are new.”
“Where are you?” I shouted back, thrusting the pasta sauce forward and swinging it like a baseball bat. I spotted a woman leaning against the stove and I staggered backwards a few steps. She looked to be smaller than me, maybe this sauce would be enough to scare her off? Or at the very least I could prize the lid off and throw cheese at her, then she might be carried away by ants, right? Fear was taking my mind to strange places.
“I know there was a storm but come on! It’s not cool enough for Italian food,” she scoffed.
“It... it’s warm in Italy and they eat Italian food for every meal!” Good comeback. Why was I engaging in a conversation with someone that had broken into my house? I had received the keys less than an hour ago and already was dealing with a burglary.
“You’re an odd one, I like that. They’ll love you here,” she smiled. The longer I stared at her, the more familiar her face became. She had been messing with her fingernails, inspecting the cuticle beds or something, and then looked up to make eye contact with me. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer!” she joked.
That was it! Picture. Her face had been one of the photographs on the weird wall in the dining room, Greta’s photo. That was when I dropped the sauce container and it cracked against the tiled floor, cheese leaking slowly from the split plastic like lava trickling from a crack in the earth.
“You know I can’t help you clean that up, you're on your own with that,” she grinned.
“Greta?” I stammered.
“That’s me!” she replied, straightening up and stepping away from the oven. There was a tall table in the center of the kitchen acting as an island, it had storage underneath, a few recipe books and some utensils. Greta walked right through it. I staggered backwards into the fridge which was still open. The force of my collision caused a few of the water bottles to tumble out and roll across the ground.
I side-stepped to get towards the door, never taking my eyes off Greta. The shock of seeing her body was causing havoc in my brain and I just needed to get out of the kitchen, shut the door and go to bed. Once I had a fresh mind, I would be able to process the events of the day, but I was obviously too tired to do that now.
Greta’s smile was the last thing I saw as I backed into the hallway and closed the door.
“You know a door won’t keep me in here, right?” she called. I grabbed hold of the handle and held it firmly, that way she couldn’t pull the door open from her side. She had just walked through that table as if it wasn’t there though. She was right, a door wouldn’t stop her…
I closed my eyes firmly, then opened them again. Nope, it was still happening. I felt scared, but nothing necessarily scary had happened. She wasn’t chasing me or threatening me, she had just spoken suddenly, and I had thought the room was empty, that was all.
Maybe Greta had an identical twin, one that wasn’t dead, one that I hadn’t found floating in the cemetery. That wouldn’t explain her walking through solid objects though.
“Sadie, I know this is a lot, but I don’t have time to waste today,” she called again. I l
ooked left then right, inspecting both exit doors from the corridor. I could either run back through the door into the café or out onto the sand. Either way I would still be far from anyone that could help me. The Greta-like person stepped through the kitchen wall into the corridor beside me.
“No!” I shouted.
“No?” she replied, a sly smile on her face.
“No, I don’t want you to chase me and freak me out and give me a nightmare. Or maybe I’m already in the nightmare. No!” I yelled again. She laughed.
“Sadie, take a breath. I said that I didn’t have time to waste, not that you had to talk at a million words per minute. It’s okay, you’re safe,” she said.
“But you’re a ghost, and they don’t exist, so a blood vessel has burst in my brain or something. I’ve conjured up these images from things that happened today but really I’m lying in a hospital somewhere,” I groaned. I released my grip on the door handle and pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes.
This didn’t seem fair. I was just taking a brave, independent move towards a new life on a picturesque island and now I was having a stroke. I hadn’t even checked if they had a hospital here before I moved, I hadn’t registered with a new physician yet either... urgh this was not good.
“Sadie, for crying out loud, stop it!” she snapped. “Yes, I’m a ghost, but it’s not a problem and if you are freaked out by this then you are going to have a really tough time here.”
I took my hands away from my face and looked at her.
“You found me today in the cemetery, you have my café and my house. This is happening and I need your help,” she declared.
“Greta?”
“Yes, Greta,” she sighed, clearly frustrated with me. “I know that you have been raised away from the island, but you were born here. You are a child of the island and there were reasons that you were sent away and you will learn all about it soon enough. I know you think you have no family, but you do.”