Chapter Three: Staying

They got to the motel just before twilight. It was in good condition - better than what both of them had expected - with a small pool and a restaurant beside the reception. Tim left his cousin in the car while he checked in, and then returned to drive the car up to the door of room 3. They unloaded their bags and went inside.

Two single beds were pushed against opposite sides of the room, and a small ensuite was tucked into a small room in the corner. A kitchenette complete with a small bar fridge and a stovetop stretched across the other wall near the door, but ended at the side of a TV cabinet where a small box television was housed.

"Well, its clean," Tim commented as he placed his bags down on his bed. "We even have free cable TV."

Kaianna sniffed haughtily. "The motels in Australia were better. We got Austar and free tea and coffee."

Tim didn't reply; he opened his bag and pulled out some fresh clothes before moving towards the door of the ensuite. "I'm going for a shower, unless you want to go first."

His cousin shook her head. "No, you go. I have to check that my camera's OK."

Tim stopped. "Camera?"

"Yeah, it's an Instax. Y'know, the Polaroid ones." She pulled out a small mint-coloured case from her suitcase and opened it to reveal a small camera of the same colour and a plastic wallet album full of small Polaroid pictures. Most of them, Tim noticed, were of trees.

"You … like trees?" he asked.

"I like climbing them … but not when they're full of ants and other bugs."

"That's good. Excuse me, I need to go shower."

It unnerved Tim how much Kaianna loved photos.

Jay was more of the video guy, Tim thought before he could stop himself.

He exited the ensuite, towelling his hair dry, to find that Kaianna and her camera were gone. On her bed, countless Polaroids were scattered across the sheets. Some were of birds, most were of trees and some were of animals. They were all of nature and clearly labelled in neatly printed handwriting with names of what they depicted and the date they were taken (which Tim noticed were all written in a non-American way). Sulphur Crested Cockatoo 14/6/15. Oak Tree 23/3/14. American Possum 10/2/16.

However, Tim noticed one wasn't like the others. A single photo was pushed away from the others on the bed, and it was completely black. The label read: ? 1/18/11.

1/18/11. January 18 2011, by American dates. However, Kaianna had written all her other dates in the day/month/year format, so this date read the first day of the eighteenth month 2011 - a date that didn't exist.

Something about the photo made him shiver, so Tim dropped it and threw his towel on his bed before walking outside the room and into the parking lot. Kaianna wasn't far away, perched in a tree in the pool area trying to take a picture of a bird. It was almost dark and Tim couldn't understand why she was taking photos in such bad lighting, but he moved towards her. He was barely twenty feet away when he saw the person watching her from the edge of the fence.

They stood quietly, not moving a muscle. Kaianna didn't seem to know they were there, and she went ahead and snapped a few pictures of the bird before it flew away. The person wore old worn sneakers with faded jeans and a brown hoodie and cap. Their huge tired eyes were nothing but white, and blood slowly stained the fabric of their shirt as it leaked from a bullet wound in the side of their abdomen. Tim couldn't stop fast enough, so the person heard him coming and turned to face him.

It was Jay.

Tim couldn't remember what happened after that. The next thing he recalled was sitting on his bed in the motel room feeling very confused.

Slowly, he got up and opened the curtains. No one was in the parking lot, and Kaianna was making her way towards the room. She walked through the door, her camera hanging around her neck and some polaroids in her hand.

"Are you OK?" she asked when she saw him.

Tim flicked his eyes over to her. "Yeah, I'm … I'm fine. I was just looking for you."

"You don't look fine. You look like you saw a ghost."

I think I did, Tim thought to himself.

"I'm going for a shower," Kaianna said and placed her camera and the photos on her bed. She scanned them, and then picked up the black photo once she saw it was out of place. "Did you touch my pictures?"

"I … I was looking at them," Tim replied.

Kaianna sighed impatiently and stuffed the polaroids into their plastic wallet, with the black one going towards the very back. "That's OK, just … ask next time, will you?"

"Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you."

She turned to face Tim. "You know, sometimes you might get more than you bargained for if you go looking through people's things."

Tim didn't respond, so Kaianna picked up her things for her shower and headed into the ensuite. She left him standing there, wondering what she could have possibly meant by that statement.