“Some people think that the jewelry store just invented Shell’s Day as a cash grab, which they did, but honestly it’s great and even single people love it,” Effie nodded.
“Don’t wait for him to ask you, you should make the first move!” Kate shrieked. “Oh, I’m getting all fired up at the thought of it. You are gonna march in there and tell him that you want him to accompany you to the Shell’s Day parade and that you wanna run your hands through his shaggy hair and—”
“Okay, I get the idea,” I interrupted.
“Yeah, women can make the first move now, Sadie. We hold all the power,” Effie said. “Time waits for no man, and neither do you.”
“Right, at some point tomorrow I will ask him and if he says no, I will buy a small house on this island and stay in hiding for three to four months until the humiliation blows over,” I grinned.
“Good plan,” Kate nodded. “If you two kiss at that parade, I want to hear every detail, do you hear me? My history with boyfriends is dark and twisted, so you are my only hope. I may never date again! I mean, I have a date tomorrow night with a guy called Eric, but what if he is a serial killer?”
“Can I show you my pictures now?” Effie said. “Otherwise, we will get sucked into the vortex of Kate complaining about her love life.”
“Please,” I begged, making my eyes wide with urgency as Kate quietly complained.
Effie opened up her laptop and connected her camera to it with a small cable. I pulled my chair closer and squinted at the screen as she scrolled through the folder filled with pictures. She must have taken thousands of photos in the short time she was out on the hunt for the elusive water monster.
“Well, where’s your prize-winning shot of the Loch Ness Monster?” I asked.
“I know you are trying to poke fun at me,” Effie said. “But if I had an actual photograph of the Loch Ness Monster then I wouldn’t be hanging around with you guys, I’d be on a yacht with Tom Hanks and Oprah drinking martinis out of a diamond glass.”
“I think you are massively over-estimating how much money you could get for one picture,” I muttered.
I watched the laptop screen as Effie flicked between one murky blue photo and another. Some pictures had strange green ribbons across the bottom, which I quickly realized was just seaweed.
“What is it exactly that you wanted me to see?” I asked.
“Just wait,” Effie replied. “You’ll know it when you see it.”
All of a sudden, she stopped clicking. The picture on the screen was no longer just a blue rectangle. There were two figures in the water, their arms wrapped around each other. Effie had taken these pictures today, but I couldn’t believe my eyes. Both of the figures were facing the camera, and I recognized one of them; Robert Barton.
14
After twenty minutes of staring at the photograph, we had all decided to go to bed. It wasn’t an easy decision as we were all energized with adrenaline, but tomorrow promised to be a hectic day. I needed to be prepared.
Effie had recited the opening part of her acceptance speech for the ‘greatest photograph of all time’ award, and Kate had started looking online for the different ways in which she could get involved in the stock market. They were both convinced they had captured something special, and I agreed.
There was a dead man in the water. Or at least it looked like the dead man I had discovered in a bunker. Miller had been told by the police station that they had successfully recovered Robert’s body and taken it back to the main island. How could he appear in this photograph in the water? Who was the other person in the picture?
Effie and Kate had gone to their rooms and I had wandered out to the corridor and stared at Miller’s door. He was probably sleeping. He had walked away from the dining room so that he could get the rest he needed to carry on with the investigation tomorrow. I didn’t want to wake him up to tell him about a creepy picture that Effie had taken.
What if it was just a trick of the light? I thought about the possibility that Effie had taken the photo at a strange angle and that it was just some coral, or a few fish close together. That would be impossible though. There was just no way to accidentally get a picture that looked so much like Robert Barton hugging another human being under water. I had to trust my gut, and my gut was telling me that something freaky was going on.
I walked up the stairs to my own room and lay down on the bed. Even in the dim light from the lamp on the nightstand I was able to see the magnolia color of the paint on the ceiling. Beyond the bedroom window there was probably at least forty feet of grass before the tree line, yet I could hear birds loudly calling to each other. How had I even managed to get any sleep last night?
There was a fan on the ceiling that was spinning slowly. It didn’t feel like it was cooling the room down any, but just pushing warm air around. There was an air conditioning unit on the far side of the room; unplugged. If I didn’t get up and turn it on, then I would wake up in a sweaty puddle tomorrow and feel gross. Laziness was stopping me from getting off the mattress and I knew if I tried to use my magic to turn on the AC, I would probably end up blowing the unit into a million pieces and starting a fire.
A strange ticking sound caught my attention. A lifetime
