Chapter Eight

Walking to my grandfather’s house early the next morning I wondered again if I was making too big a deal about the photos. Based on my parents’ reactions I was sure they would say that I was if I actually tried to explain my fears and theories, but they didn’t know about my dreams. Without the dreams, I probably would have agreed.

Maybe it would all turn out to be nothing, stress from moving or something like that. But if I did not at least try to answer the nagging call I felt when I looked at the pictures of Katie and Maera or thought about the dreams, I would never be rid of the suspicion that had enveloped me.

I took a deep breath and knocked on my grandpa’s door. I really hoped I was not about to make a fool of myself as I watched the door knob turn. Grandpa Alden opened the door, and seeing who was calling on him lit up with joy. He ushered me into his cozy home with hugs and promises of treats regardless of the fact that I had just finished breakfast.

“Arrabella,” he cried, “how are you, darling? I’m so glad you’ve come to visit me. I get lonely around this old house.” Even when talking about his loneliness, my grandpa had a sweet and excited smile on his wizened face. I was sorry that I had not made the effort to come see him before.

Explaining that he had been in the process of making himself some hot chocolate when I arrived, he hurried back into the kitchen. He was always in the process of making hot chocolate. I could not pull up a single memory of my grandfather’s house when I had not been offered hot chocolate and cookies.

“How did your doctor’s appointment go, Grandpa?” I asked from the living room.

“Oh it was fine. The old heart is still pumping away, even if my cholesterol is still too high.”

I heard the tinkling of coffee mugs being taken out of the cupboard. “Grandpa, you have to take care of yourself,” I chided, filling in for my mom. Every memory of hot chocolate at my grandpa’s house was always followed by the memory of my mom’s troubled frown. It wasn’t just her children she worried about.

“Don’t you worry about me, honey. I’m just fine.”

He returned from the kitchen with two mugs brimming with hot chocolate and little white marshmallows. I smiled at the colorful mugs as I took one and remembered the story he had told about buying them at the end of a long hike in the mountains of Chile. Everything in his house had a story behind it.

My grandpa sat down across from me with his own mug and a smile that matched my own. Even now in the middle of a hot summer, he warmed his hands against his mug of hot chocolate. If this was how you got to be seventy something years old and still active and happy, everyone should drink hot chocolate of every day.

"So what brought you to my house? Do you want to hear a story?" he asked hopefully.

"Actually, I do," I said, but paused before making my request. Would he really tell me about Katie and Maera, I wondered? Foolish or not, there was no turning back for me. I needed to know. "I wanted to hear about Katie…and Maera," I said. My grandpa's face saddened and he lowered his eyes to his cup of hot chocolate.

"I didn't even know that you knew about either of them. Did your dad tell you about them?" he asked.

"Not really. I was helping mom sort photos and I came across some pictures of them. Dad did tell me that they both died, but not much else. What happened to Maera?" I asked as I carefully laid the photos out on the coffee table.

"Your mother has so many pictures. She's quite the genealogist actually. She has all the names of our family written down for generations,” he said. A deep sigh escaped his lips before saying, “But she doesn't know the stories.” He looked back into his mug of dark liquid. "Maera, my beautiful twin sister, I still miss her, even after so long."

"Maera was your twin? Dad didn't tell me that," I said. The grief that still showed in his face made me wonder if I had made a mistake in assuming my grandpa would tell me what I wanted to know. My mom might have made a mistake in assuming that my dad would overcome his grief one day, too.

"Yes, we were best friends.” My grandpa looked up and regained some of the jovial attitude he'd had earlier. "You want to know how she died don't you," he said, managing a meager smile. I nodded guiltily. "Well, for her sixteenth birthday, I mean our sixteenth birthday, our whole family went on a trip to the beach. Maera loved the beach. She spent every spare minute she had there.” He paused again, stirring his hot chocolate and looking at the photos Arra had brought. He picked one up and said, “This is a picture of her that very day.”

His eyes became teary and he put the photo back down when his hand started to shake. I picked it up immediately. It was one of the pictures I had found early that morning before coming to see him. A beautiful girl with midnight black pig tails and a boyishly old fashioned bathing suit smiled and waved at the camera. I was stunned to know I was holding a photo of Maera taken on the very day she died. The young woman’s smile haunted me, and I too set it back down on the table.

“Maera and I decided to race each other to a buoy that was a dozen or so yards from the shore. I'm not sure how far it really was, but she was way ahead of me, laughing while she swam.” He smiled as he remembered the day.

“I was swimming hard, trying to catch up to her. I slowed a little and glanced at her to see if I was gaining any ground. But when I looked up, I saw her splashing around and yelling for me to help her. I still remember how scared she looked. I tried to get to her, but I couldn't swim fast enough. I was almost there, when she suddenly went under, pulled under it seemed.” He shook his head, as if he had just said something ridiculous. “When I finally pulled her back to the surface she wasn’t breathing."

The memories I forced him to recall drained him of his usual cheer and warmth. He blinked his eyes furiously to keep the tears back. Looking into my mug, I regretted the pain I was causing him. I wanted to crawl home and slip back into the comfort of my bed, but something pushed me on, telling me that I needed to know what really happened to these girls.

The fact that both Katie and Maera died on their sixteenth birthdays could merely be coincidence, but because of the dreams and the strange urgency I felt, I sensed something more serious was happening. My own sixteenth birthday was only days away and its approach was rapidly losing its normal appeal.

Neither me nor my grandfather spoke for several minutes. I could not tear my mind away from the lost girls, and the glazed look in my grandpa’s eyes said he was having the same problem. Neither girl’s death seemed particularly extraordinary. A drowning and a horse riding accident, those could happen to anyone. Only the day held some clue. I considered that I had made a huge mistake in my assumptions, but I knew I was missing something very important.

"Why did Maera drown?" I wondered. “It sounds like she was a strong swimmer.”

"Nobody could be sure. To me, it’s strange, but it almost looked like someone was pulling her under,” he said quietly. “Some said it must have been some kind of riptide, but the waters were very calm that day. And why would it catch Maera and not me? I wasn’t that far away from her.” He sighed deeply. “I just couldn’t understand it. It was a very strange incident, just like Katie.”

"Just like Katie? What do you mean? I thought Katie was thrown from her horse. That’s horrible, but it could happen at any time."

"Oh, the fact that she was thrown from her horse wasn’t strange. It was the why that was strange,” he said knowingly. “There was nothing around that would have spooked that lazy old nag of a horse. And the fall shouldn't have killed her," he said matter-of-factly.

I cocked my head to the side. It was the hint I wanted, but was I just fishing for something to confirm my fears? My grandpa sounded a little too much like he was looking for a connection. I began to wonder whether I was doing the same thing.

"After the accident your father told me something that set me on edge,” he said, leaning toward me seriously. “He said that they had been running the horses and he was ahead, but he heard her scream and looked back. He could see that she was galloping her horse way too hard, as if she was running from something. He said that both she and the horse looked terrified.

“The police looked around for something that might have scared them, but they couldn’t find anything. As Katie’s horse neared your father, the animal reared, throwing Katie right into the tree. When the medical examiner spoke to us about the cause of her death, he didn’t really have an answer. Her skull had been cracked, but as the doctor said, it was a relatively mild injury. In the end he said she must have died of shock.” My grandpa shook his head, his tired hands clenched tightly into weathered fists. “It devastated your father. He won't talk about it now."

I found I was speechless. I had come here secretly hoping that my grandpa would simply pat my head and tell me everything was fine. I wanted to hear something that would finally send the incessant nagging feeling away, but now the feeling seemed to increase, begging me to continue. Balanced on the edge of truth and blissful ignorance I knew which way I would fall.

My grandpa looked up at me with the most serious look I had ever seen on his normally cheery face. “Now Arra, what happened to Maera and Katie can’t be undone. There is nothing you can do to help them now. Take my word on that, please. You just have to worry about yourself now. Just trust me, okay?” he asked.

“Grandpa, what are you talking about? It can’t just be coincidence that Katie and Maera both died so strangely, and on their sixteenth birthdays, no less,” I protested. “I can’t just leave it alone. There is something wrong. Can’t you feel it?”

My grandpa sighed and looked at the hot chocolate he had spilled on the table, "Of course there’s something wrong, Arra, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. But trust me, there’s nothing we can do about what’s already happened. You need to start looking ahead, looking to your own future.” Pausing to wipe up the spill with a neatly folded paper towel, he looked as if he were wrestling with a decision.

I struggled to understand his strange words. I had not expected to resurrect the lost girls, only to find out why they had died under such strange circumstances. Maybe unraveling the mysteries of their deaths would free them from their forgotten prison. Maybe my dad would be able to let it go. Why did he keep telling me to look forward, to take care of myself? What did I have to do with anything? I wanted to know about Katie and Maera. A strange feeling suddenly settled over the room. His words were a warning. He was trying to tell me something, something very difficult. I let my other questions float away and turned back to my grandpa.

Finally he shook his head, and said, “Listen, Arra. Katie and Maera, their deaths weren’t just coincidence. After Maera died, I suspected Katie was next, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it. No, I didn’t do enough to stop it. I didn’t believe. We cannot escape our fate, that’s what everyone told me, but I don’t believe that."

The desperation in my grandfather’s voice began to scare me. He suddenly looked so much more tired and drawn. I had never seen him like this before. The abrupt change brought tears to my eyes and fear to my heart.

Not wanting to upset him any more than I already had, I said, “Look grandpa, I’m just making a big deal about nothing. It must be just a coincidence. You couldn’t know that Katie would die just because Maera died, right? That doesn’t sound reasonable. I’m sure you’re right, there’s nothing mysterious, just a terrible coincidence.”

“I knew Katie would die, Arrabella. Don’t you doubt that,” he said gravely. His intensity increased dramatically, scaring me even more. I reached up and put my arm on his shoulder to comfort him, but he wouldn’t calm down. “Arra, you don’t have to keep going with this if you don’t want to. I will do everything I can to stop it from happening again. But if you’re intent on finding out the truth, go home and find the other pictures. Look in your mother’s genealogy records. If it were only Katie and Maera, then maybe I could believe it was just a coincidence, but it wasn’t.

“There are more Arra, there are a lot more. There is something very wrong with our family. And it is not a coincidence that they’ve all died on their sixteenth birthdays. I don’t know for sure how to stop this, I’ve been trying for so long to figure it out, but I promise you I will not give up.” My grandpa started to stand up, but the panic on my face must have stopped him. He paused and looked down at me sadly.

Suddenly his words started to sink in. The warning to look after myself, to look ahead, a promise to stop it from happening again, dying at sixteen, it all finally came together. He was honestly trying to tell me that whatever had killed Katie and Maera was not finished. It was coming back, for me.

“Grandpa, you can’t mean,” I whispered, unable to finish the thought. “No it can’t be. But…I’m turning sixteen in three days.”

As his eyes started to tear, he set down the empty mug and wrapped me in his shaking arms. “I know you are Arra, but I won’t let them take you. I promise you that. I won’t lose you, too.”