A fine mist slowly trailed past my throbbing face as I tried to catch my breath. It was lighter here and the mist meant I was somewhere near the coast. I followed the direction of the airy fingers and saw that I was by a smaller eastern cove that Dex and I had passed by earlier.
I knew all I had to do was walk up and I’d be back at the campsite. If I could get there, maybe everything would be OK.
I was about to head in the direction when something inside made me look back at the cove.
On the tiny beach, there was someone sitting on a log. It was the girl, sitting like a statue, staring at the roaring waves, the wind ruffling her hair. I blinked a few times, trying to make sure she really was there. By the last blink she was looking up at me, or at least in my direction, but she made no effort to move nor made any indication that I was someone to run from.
I didn’t feel like yelling at her. The only thing to do was find out what the fuck was going on. I held my knife up as much as I could, steadied my flaming, fiery nerves and made my way down the steep and crumbling cliffside until I was on the beach with her.
She still didn’t move. She went back to looking at the ocean.
I approached her slowly, carefully, trying to make sure I was at least in her peripheral vision the whole time, kind of like how you would approach a horse. I kept walking, painfully aware of how loud the pebbles were beneath my shoes.
I stopped five feet off of her left and stood there. My knife was ready but I tried to look non–threatening. There was something so mousy and downtrodden about this person that any threat I had previously felt was gone. This was all just curiosity. Who was she? Where had she come from?
It felt like I stood there for a really long time before she finally turned her head towards me.
She had wire–rim glasses on, something I hadn’t noticed earlier. One of the lenses had a giant crack in it. It was the really old kind, the type that modern hipsters would wear out of irony. Her eyes were dusty blue and seemed to pulse in a twitchy way. Her skin was dry, pale and ruddy, her lips chapped and peeling, her hair black. The dress she wore was as plain looking as she was and looked like something out of the turn of the century. That realization alone brought a fling of apprehension across my chest. She was non–threatening if she was alive. Dead, that was always a different story.
“Who are you?” I asked. I tried to sound authoritative and confident but given we were about the same age and she was taller, I didn’t know if I had a lot of clout.
“Mary,” she said simply. “He switched the markers on you.”
“Who did?”
“What’s your name?” she asked. Her voice was clipped, reminded me of the way high society types talked in classic films.
“Perry,” I said.
“I knew that,” she said. “It’s a funny name for a girl. I prefer Madeleine.”
“What are you doing here? Are you visiting?”
“I live here,” she said looking back at the ocean. I looked down at her hands. They looked like they were caked in blood. The rain was falling steadily on us but they weren’t diluting the red mess on her hands.
I took a step backward. She didn’t notice. I tried to keep focused, keep calm. Act like all of this wasn’t a big deal at all.
“Who switched the markers?” I asked again.
“John did.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s my…friend. He was my friend.”
“Do you both live on the island?”
She looked at me and smiled. Her teeth were yellow, and a few bottom teeth were gone.
“We both live here. We are here to help people. Do the work of the Lord.”
And then it clicked. She couldn’t have been Mary Stewart, the missionary?
“John, is that the Reverend John Barrett?”
“You’ve heard of him?”
How did I answer that? Yes, I’ve heard of both of you. In a book. A book that was written a hundred years after your death.
I swallowed hard. The fear was pricking at my skin and at the back of my head. Maybe I was crazy. It didn’t matter how many times I had seen the impossible; the impossible still wasn’t acceptable.
As redundant as it was to say, I couldn’t help but squeak out, “You’re dead.”
Mary locked her eye on mine through that one good lens. To have her look at me so poignantly, so real, it made what I said seem stupid and crazy.
But she casually said, “I died on my 23rd birthday.”
My hands started shaking, the knife was coming loose in my fingers. She eyed it warily.
“Were you hunting something out there? Deer?”
“Uh,” I tried to say, my voice thick and trapped. “It’s for protection.”
“You’re a wise woman,” she said. She patted the space beside her on the log. “Come sit down. You look tired.”
I hesitated. It was the most absurd invitation.
“I won’t harm you, if that is what you are pondering,” she said.
I gave her a quick smile and gingerly took my seat on the log, careful not to sit too close to her. Now that I was sitting right beside her, I could get a better look at her. She was a good couple of inches taller than me, maybe 5’8”, and looked like she’d be quite frail under her dirty, billowing dress. She smelled, too, which I found remarkable. It was the stench of body odor and mold and made my eyes water slightly.
“You must forgive my appearance. I haven’t had a bath for awhile. Sometimes the bog seems more dirty than clean.”