Behind the wheel of the Cherokee, the gas station silent around her, Rebekah thought of what she and Johnny had found in the forest, and then of that last call with Noella. She’d tried to tell Noe where they were – had actually told her where they were – but Noe hadn’t responded. Until now, Rebekah had convinced herself that it was because the signal had dropped out.
But maybe it wasn’t.
Maybe Noella heard just fine. Maybe she –
Click click click.
Rebekah froze.
She stopped thinking about Noella and looked out through the windshield. On the opposite side of the road, the derelict houses were still.
But she’d heard it. She’d definitely heard it.
The same noise as before.
She swivelled around, her door still open, and slid back out of the Jeep, looking across the hood. The noise had come from the direction of the houses, she was certain. She listened hard, trying to ignore the faint hum of the wind coming off the ocean.
Click click click.
It was the same noise she’d heard before, weeks ago, except then it had been pitch black, her sense of direction off.
She walked around the front of the car, keeping her eyes on the houses, her hand tracing the arc of the hood, like a part of her was trying to hold on for safety. Beneath her fingers, she felt sand and grime gather. But there wasn’t anything here. Or anyone. So what was she hearing?
Click click click.
Nerves fired under her skin as she heard it for a third time.
Then: movement.
Out of the corner of her eye.
She whipped around in time to see a shadow dart behind the house on the end. What the hell was that? Her heart felt like it was in her throat.
She wanted to get back into the car and drive away, but she knew she couldn’t do that. Not now. If she wasn’t alone, she needed to know.
But how can there be someone else here?
Rushing around to the trunk, she grabbed a hammer from a toolkit she’d cobbled together as she’d driven around the island, and then – gripping it so hard her fingers blanched – crossed the road towards the houses.
‘Hello?’ she said.
Her voice carried away in the wind. She passed through a broken fence into the long grass at the front of one of the houses.
‘Hello?’
She looked along the narrow gap between two of the houses, into their backyards. Around her, grass swayed and warped.
‘I saw you, so you can come out.’
She sounded small, pathetic.
Taking a breath, she moved slowly along the gap, pushing her way through a tangle of weeds and webs that had fused themselves to the flanks of the houses. When she reached the backyards, she stopped and looked out at the sea of grass, every branch of every tree laden with the gold of fall. Garden furniture littered the place: tables were tipped over, broken chairs, old rusted fire pits. A torn hammock was in the next yard along, only attached at one end so it hung there limply.
‘Hello?’
She moved further in, along the back porches, past a white picket fence that had once separated the properties but was now on its side, chewed up in one of the storms. In places, the grass came all the way up to her waist, opaque and impossible to see through. The further she went, the harder it got to judge her surroundings. The wind was picking up: grass leaned and bowed, leaves snapped, loose doors juddered against their frames, windows rattled.
‘Stop hiding,’ Rebekah said quietly.
She sounded like she was begging now.
She went to one of the porches, perched herself on the edge, and waited. After forty minutes, the colour was gone from the sky and rain clouds were moving in. She’d started to understand the weather on the island in a way she’d never bothered to in the city – had never needed to – and she could tell this was the start of another storm. She could feel it, like a current in the earth.
Was I mistaken? she thought. Am I seeing things? Hearing things? She thought of her conversation with Steve. What if I’m losing my mind?
She looked around her again, but there was no clicking now, nothing except the wind, the muted roar of the ocean, and the slow dance of the grass. Defeated, she headed back to the car.
And that was when she realized she wasn’t losing her mind at all.
She was just seeing a ghost.