Trying not to blame myself for my entire family's deaths isn't really going great right now. After Ava's vocalisation of her theory, I sort of just clammed up, while everyone else started questioning the whole thing. I can't say it didn't make sense. She reassured me that it was just one of many possible theories, but children are more easily manipulated by dark influences than adults, which seems pretty textbook. If I'd come into contact with one that saw how rare, and potentially useful, the opportunity of having me on their side was, it wouldn't have hesitated to try and influence me. And I'm not exactly known for my strong, stable mind.

The next ferry off this island isn't until eleven forty-five tomorrow night, so we find another hotel to stay in. This whole trip must be costing Ava's parents a fortune, and a few of us have offered to pay towards our keep, but we've been shot down every time. My offer would be on behalf of the government anyway, considering the only money I have is a student loan.

I'm stuck in a room with Tom and Jamie again tonight, which sounds like my worst nightmare right now, so I'm sitting in the small hotel's reception area. I'm trying to catch up on the lectures and seminars I've missed over the past week or so, but despite the fact lectures are recorded and uploaded online, all materials and notes are available with one click, and a fair few of my lecturers respond to emails all hours of the day, all I can do is stare at my laptop screen.

What if I couldn't see spirits? Would my dad not have been so estranged from the rest of my family? Would my aunt's panicked phone calls to Mary never have been a thing? Would she, and everyone else, still be alive? I imagine myself as Mary had assumed me, a silly little kid who can do nothing of any significance whatsoever, and it really makes me want to hit something. I can't get back into that headspace. I can't. I know I can't. Not now. I'm useless if I'm like that. I realise I'm digging my nails into my leg, so take a breath, and lean my head back against the hard armchair I'm sitting in.

Don't go there, I tell myself, just don't go there.

Once I lower my head back down, sitting on the chair opposite me is Lucy. One thing I've come to appreciate about her is she rarely scares the crap out of me. Annabel loves to randomly shout in my ear about something or other, or stand behind me and wait for me to turn around and have the fright of my life. Lucy looks much like she did the night we first met, a bored expression on her pale face as she twirls a bit of hair around her finger.

"You look more dead than me," she comments before dropping her hair and leaning forward slightly. "Do you have Instagram? I had eight-thousand followers, you know. Crazy, right? Could've made a career out of that. Mum was about to buy me a new phone too."

I laugh a little. "You should probably miss your mum more than your phone, kiddo." I pick my own phone up from the table beside me. "I do have it. Barely use it, but I'll follow you if it makes you feel better. Give you eight-thousand and one."

"Ugh, no point now. It's not the same." She manifests herself beside me so she's peering over my shoulder. "Lemme see your feed, I bet it's shit."

"Definitely not seeing it after that unholy language," I say with a smirk as I put my phone in my pocket.

"You swear all the time!" Lucy pouts.

"Who? Me? I would never," I reply as she manifests herself back onto the chair opposite. "You youngsters and your foul language. When I was your age, I was singing hymns and feeding the homeless."

"I'm fourteen, not four," Lucy mumbles with her arms crossed.

I know I have more important things to do than wind up my sister's dead teenage friend right now, but it's a good excuse to not do uni work or think about the enormity of my family's fate. We're using our free time tomorrow to delve into figuring out what happened to Lucy, and I'm pretty sure her bugging me is to do with the fact she doesn't want to wait that long. I'm a bit concerned she's more focused on her phone than how the hell she ended up dead, but hey, I'm ignoring the fact I feel wholly responsible for my entire bloodline being wiped out, so who am I to judge?

"I'll try and sneak into your room to steal it if we visit your folks at any point," I say, returning my attention back to the conversation at hand.

"Oh c'mon," She rolls her eyes. "No way would I have left the house without it. That's gone forever now. It wasn't even that good of a phone, so whatever. Dad always complained about how ungrateful I was, but he had an iPhone so a bit rich, right? Mine was fine, a smartphone at least. It's just parents never get..."

Lucy keeps on talking--well, complaining, but I've stopped listening. Her phone. Her phone would've been with her when whatever happened to her happened. If not on her, at least close to her. And you can track phones. I would call myself an idiot for not thinking of this before, but I've been too distracted by my own personal shitstorm to think about Lucy's situation beyond any kind of surface level, so I'll let myself off.

The police would have already thought to do that, no doubt about it, but they don't have the added bonus of the dead girl herself nattering in their ear. Lucy's still talking, which is quite impressive really, as I check the time on my own phone. It's close to eleven o'clock. Screw it, not like I was going to be able to sleep tonight anyway.

Ten minutes later, I'm wandering through the narrow streets of the small village we've made base in, and Lucy is bouncing beside me. It's the most excited I think I've seen her. All she's really done so far is look bored, or giggle and talk with Annabel in the car boot. She's tagging along--Annabel, that is, as she always does.

We checked Lucy's phone's last known location after filling in her account information online, and were literally gobsmacked to find out it was on this island. We'd assumed it would be on the mainland where she lived, but it was right there in black and white. Well, not black and white, the web page was mainly blue and white, and the phone signal had been picked up on some grass, so a bit of green too.

I very lightly commented on how her phone's last location being on the small island her boyfriend lives on was a little suspect, but Lucy's reaction was pure aggression, so I didn't poke that bear any further. There aren't any buses running at this time, but the phone's location is only a half hour walk or so away, so it's no big deal. We're about halfway through our walk when a text from Jamie flashes on my phone screen, questioning where I am. I tell him I'm still doing uni work. I'll only get nagged about wandering off alone otherwise.

As we walk further towards where Lucy's phone might be, the streetlights become more sparse and the road less travelled. Eventually, there is no road, and we're wandering through a footpath hidden by overhanging trees. I've never been afraid of the dark. When you know the thing everyone is afraid of is real, you learn how not to be afraid of it. Very rarely are ghosts even scary anyway.

My mind flashes to the ghost Annabel and I came across when I stropped out of Ava's house a few months ago, and my heartbeat accelerates slightly. We can't come across anything worse than that here. Lucy is bobbing her head about now, clearly trying to recognise something. No luck so far, though. I have to jump over a metal gate, and wander into a farmer's field to keep following the phone signal, and it's in that field that we reach the end of our breadcrumb trail.

"Right, well that was a massive waste of time," I announce.

There's nothing here. Just field and darkness. Well, that's not totally true. I think I see a bit of poo near my feet. I'd guess cow. I go to turn to Lucy, who I assume is beside me, but am met with Annabel. I look over her shoulder to see Lucy further down the field. She's walking towards a forested area, a little off the path we walked down. Shit, maybe she's remembered something. We head over to her, and she's still walking when we reach her.

"No, no... No, here is right." She pauses, mutters something to herself, then suddenly charges forward.

"What are you remembering?" I have to jog a bit to catch up with her.

She stops completely to face me. The white in her eyes is bright. "I was here. I was definitely here. It was dark, like tonight, but I can't... I was with someone, but I don't know who. I can't remember."

"Were they being forceful, or trying--"

She shakes her head. "No, no, I was following them. I think--I think I was holding their hand. I was behind them, but... but yeah, they were leading me by holding my hand."

She starts moving forward again, this time even faster. Yeah, I'm pretty sure her boyfriend murdered her. Probably shouldn't say it out loud though, based on her reaction earlier. Eventually, she steps into a bush, and pushes her way through the leaves and branches to enter a forested area. I follow, only to be scratched by branches and shrubbery, and I know she can't feel pain or anything, but a warning would've been appreciated.

I'm rubbing my bare arms when I emerge into the forest, and instantly regret not bringing a jacket. I have a bad habit for that. Lucy is walking deeper into the trees, so Annabel and I follow her in silence until all of a sudden, she stops dead.

"I don't remember where to go," she says, her voice quiet.

For the first time in ten minutes or so, she looks up at us. She's crying. I think she has been for a while. She glances around manically, as if it will spark the memory and it'll all come flooding back to her.

"You know you were definitely here, right?" I ask, speaking in the same voice I would if reassuring a child that her missing pet hasn't run away to doggy heaven. "Let's look around. You never know."

Lucy doesn't look convinced, nor does Annabel, but she nods and starts to slowly shuffle through the mud and leaves. I do the same, bending down to shove forest debris out the way whenever I spot something remotely out of place. My hope for this mission has gone down the toilet, but I feel bad for Lucy, so I don't want to pack it in quite yet. Besides, I might be right.

I didn't want to say it to her, but the reason her memory of the area suddenly stops at the point she stopped could be because that's where she died. Or was killed. I shudder a little at the thought, as I watch her blonde her move through the trees. It's freezing. While I'm an idiot for not bringing a jacket, doing so would've meant heading to my shared hotel room to fetch it, and explaining why I needed it. I didn't really have much choice.

I'm internally whining when Annabel's voice makes me turn my head in her direction, about ten feet to the left of me.

"What does your phone look like?" she calls to Lucy, who's ahead of me.

Annabel's bent to the ground, her long hair falling over her face, as she rests one of her hands on the damp mud to keep herself steady. She's not looking at it though; her attention is on Lucy.

"Just a crappy black thing. It was in a case, but that's probably not--"

"With a black marble design on it?"

Lucy's eyes suddenly widen, and before I can even blink, she's charging towards Annabel. I quickly follow, and lying on the ground in front of her is a black smartphone with a plastic, marble-effect case attached. We find out the phone's last known location was on this island, only to realise it's not in the exact location it should be, but then randomly find it in the mud a few minutes later. Holy shit, now this is the kind of luck I need in my own investigation.

I'm checking Lucy's phone screen for any serious damage when a niggling sensation starts pulsing at the back of my head, and I could recognise the feeling in my sleep by this point. I don't lift my eyes. I remember the manor house, remember how these creeps can't hear a thing, can't distinguish between people to know which one it is they want, and feel a huge wave of relief. Then I realise I'm the only living thing here. Shit.

"Felix? Hello? You still alive there?" Annabel.

I don't answer her. Instead, I lift my head and look around until I spot it. No point acting like it's not there. It sees me. It knows who I am. I'm probably the only living, breathing thing for miles. I think part of me was hoping I was imagining it, or that I just had your everyday, bog-standard headache. But nope. Standing underneath one of the trees, looking eerily similar to one, is a Tracker.

"Seriously, stop messing around, why--"

"There's a Tracker," I say dumbly.

Annabel's face drops. Lucy immediately starts questioning us, but I'm too busy staring at the Tracker to hear what she's saying. It's fine, I say to myself. You can banish the thing. You've done it plenty of times before. Annabel is watching me, clearly waiting for me to do just that, and I'm trying but I can't focus on it because all I can think about are my past visions and my mum's panicked face and my dad's blank stare and my sister's corpse on a car bonnet.

What are you doing? It's easy, c'mon.

I'm practically yelling at myself in-between the graphic images. What the hell is wrong with me? Is this thing messing with me? How is it doing this? My chest turns tight, my hands are clammy, and I'm struggling to breathe. I don't think the Tracker's doing this to me, I think I'm doing it to myself.

"We need to get out of here," I manage to mumble through short breaths.

Annabel opens her mouth to say something, to argue back probably, or ask what the hell is wrong with me. For whatever reason, she decides against it, and does as I've said. She takes initiative and charges back in the direction we came, which I'm glad for because I'm not sure I could find our way out of here. My irrational panicked symptoms are beginning to mix with the Tracker symptoms, and I feel a bit sick.

My head is throbbing, and my fingertips are turning numb, while my shortness of breath is blotching my vision. I just want to get out of this damn forest. I see my dad's blank stare again, then Annabel's corpse.

Stop, stop stop.

After what feels like forever, we finally find ourselves back in the open field, and we must have passed through the sharp branches and stingy nettle bushes again, but I don't remember it hurting. My mother's face flashes through my mind. I did this to them, this is all me. I didn't want to turn dark. I don't want to.

"Have you gotten rid of it? Is it gone?" Annabel questions. My response of silence is enough to tell her the answer is no. "You need to get rid of it!" Annabel is almost shouting. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Just chill out, you idiot. This is you. This is all you.

I try to obey my own logic, but it's like my brain isn't listening to itself. Lucy is still questioning what's going on, but Annabel is ignoring her, and I can barely understand a word she says anyway.

"Felix." Annabel is right beside me now. "Felix, relax. Relax. Just breathe, okay? It's alright, just breathe."

She hugs me, and warmth spreads throughout my body, but I see my father's empty eyes again and I still can't breathe. The Tracker symptoms are fading, so I don't think it's followed us, not yet. My headache is easing off. My mind is clearer. My breaths are slower. The face of the stranger who hid me from the dark entities the night of the accident flashes in my mind.

Relax, you idiot.

Annabel still has her arms around me, her head buried into my shoulder.

"Sorry," I manage to finally mutter. "Sorry, I don't--I don't know what the hell that was about. Sorry."

#

A/N: What do you guys think of Lucy so far? Any theories into how she met her grizzly end?