Freelance and Fishmaids is a supernatural novella, serialized in twelve episodes. This is Episode Five. Start Here.
Previously, Caroline and Reyville were roped into a strange—and dangerous—rescue mission.
In this episode, Andy enlists Caroline and Reyville’s help with a strange nocturnal intruder in the Clinic’s garden.
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For more tales set on Ferris Island, check out the Ferris Island Index.
The timer on the old industrial double-oven buzzed, and Caroline flipped it open, pulling five fragrant apple pies out carefully with oven-mitted hands. Noah, sitting on a stool at the other end of the kitchen, looked up from his phone for the first time in twenty minutes, as though coming up for air.
“Looks good,” he said, with the teenage version of understated approval. His permanently-bored expression never wavered. “You can let those cool, and we’ll get started making the coffee, next.”
He slouched off the stool, and Caroline stepped back from her handiwork with pride. The pies were beautiful, if she did say so herself. She checked the clock on the wall: 6:46am. Just shy of fifteen minutes until opening-time.
“Did you check the shelves?” Noah asked, from just outside the kitchen door, preparing the coffee machine.
“Yep,” Caroline replied. “Checked and restocked.”
“Cool.” Noah yawned loudly in the stillness of the General Store. “You learn fast.”
Caroline laughed, bringing a tray of clean mugs out of the kitchen to stack beside the coffee machine. “I’ve lived a few lives before this one, Noah. This isn’t my first time in food service. I was probably your age when I got my first cafe job.”
That felt like centuries ago. But then again, everything in Denver felt like centuries ago.
Noah grunted, pressed the button to start the machine, the hiss and bubble of the hot water springing to life, and Caroline wandered over to give the tables one more wipe with a clean wet rag. At the usual corner booth where she and the Captain would often sit she paused, straightened, pulled her phone out of her back pocket.
She opened up her texts and tapped on Reyville’s name. Nothing new, but she wasn’t sure what she expected. He had been respectfully quiet over the last two weeks, letting her get on with the business of breaking her lease, negotiating the rental of the cottage behind the General Store, moving, and starting a new job. She hadn’t asked for his help, and he hadn’t offered. Despite it all, the idea of being “friends” with Reyville always felt tentative.
Tough to feel truly connected to someone when you don’t even know their first name, or anything tangible about them.
She deliberated for a moment, then typed:
Working today until 11:30am. Training shift. Just checking in.
Caroline looked up through the window at the Seavend marina. No sign of the Princess of the Weathers in its usual slip. She pressed send, then continued on cleaning tables.
*******
Despite his outward show of apathy, Noah Banfield was a passable mentor, and Caroline was a quick study. It helped that the regulars at the General Store were a patient bunch; as long as they got their coffee, their pie, their muffins, their pastries, their sandwiches, or their chowder, they didn’t much mind who brought it to the table.
At around eleven, Mr. Banfield—the owner, and Noah’s father—arrived to handle the store’s operations in the afternoon. The kitchen would be shut down by one-thirty, and for the rest of the day you could only purchase pastries or ice cream from the case.
At the end of her shift, Caroline was in the middle of taking off her apron and hanging it on the hook in the kitchen, when Noah poked his head in.
“Some guy is here looking for you,” he said, then disappeared again.
Caroline’s heart leapt, for a reason she couldn’t put a name to. She looked at her phone; no texts. But she quickly smoothed out her clothes, readjusted her curls, and left the kitchen, looking first over at the usual corner booth. It was empty.
“Miss Phelan?”
She turned, and smiled in pleasant surprise. It was Andy Yun.
“Oh! Andy, hi.” She reached out, shook his hand, amazed to see what a transformation had taken place in the young man over the last few weeks since the incident with the laundry room ghost. There was a lightness in his step and a shine in his eye. His black hair was washed and styled, there was color in his cheeks. He looked happy. Significantly less haunted. Or, perhaps, at peace with whatever clung to him.
He took her hand graciously, firmly. “Sorry to approach you at work,” he said, “but Agnes Candle told me you had moved, and were working here, and I, uh…I have a bit of an issue that I think you could help me with.”
“Let’s sit,” she said. “What kind of issue are we talking about?”
She steered him toward a table—the empty corner booth felt wrong, somehow—and they sat. He still had a bit of a nervous energy about him, wringing his hands on the tabletop, but he very quickly recovered and said, “When you and the Captain came to the Clinic to help me, it was…it changed everything. Realizing that I had done something kind enough for someone that they wanted to reach out beyond the grave to let me know. That’s…huge. Like, that’s a big deal. For me. I’ve spent a long time feeling useless and cowardly, and it turns out I just hadn’t found my role, yet.”
He smiled. “So, I started paying closer attention to Doc Mulligan and what they do. Taking care of people. And they’ve started teaching me all about the island’s…idiosyncracies. And how to fix them. I’m kind of their protege now, I guess.”
Caroline tapped the table with an approving hand. “Andy, that’s fantastic. I’m genuinely happy for you.”
“Thank you. It’s a lot to learn, but I love it.” He winced, ever so slightly. “Which is…what I’m here to talk to you about. I, uh…part of my job as a student is to help Mr. Weaver take care of the Clinic’s herb garden. Doc Mulligan are all about making sure that if you’re going to use a medicine, you better understand it root to leaf. In the winter there’s not a whole lot to do but just observe the plants and how they change from season to season, but um…lately, something weird has been happening in the garden. About a week ago, something started digging up the plants.”
Caroline cocked her head. “I mean, there are plenty of things on this island that eat plants, Andy. Deer. Rabbits. It’s probably just an animal.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought at first. But it was too neat and clean. Something was coming into the garden at night, digging up patches of plants in neat circles and squares, leaving everything else undamaged, and then disappearing.”
“A person, then? Stealing plants?”
Andy pulled out a short stack of five or six photos from his coat pocket. “That was my next guess, and I really had to know. It was becoming a real problem. So I set up a trail cam two nights ago to see if I could catch whatever it was in the act. Last night, this is what I got.”
He handed the photos across the table to Caroline.
They were fuzzy and unclear in that way unique to trail cams, ghostly nightvision green, but Caroline could make out the line of the woods alongside the Clinic, the path through the garden. And…something…making its way to a patch of plants at the edge of the garden beds.
Caroline stared hard at the images. The something wasn’t large, but it was furred and indistinct and awkward.
It definitely was not human.
The camera snapped stills of the progress of the mysterious creature as it emerged from the woods, into the garden where it camped out to dig up whatever plant it had targeted, then back again into the trees with its prize. The timestamp on the photos placed the strange intruder in the garden just after midnight.
“Huh,” Caroline said. “Now that’s…odd.”
“It is, right?” Andy shrugged. “Doc Mulligan definitely wants this thing handled, and you and the Captain were the first people I thought of to help. You guys do…weird.”
Caroline smirked, nodded. “Yeah, weird is certainly what we do.”
*******
Even though there was still plenty of fixing-up and unpacking to do, the little one-bedroom cottage behind the Seavend General Store made a perfectly serviceable—if slightly cramped—living space. What once had been an outbuilding had been converted into a mother-in-law apartment back in the seventies, and then had fallen back into being a storage space in the nineties. Despite its provenance it still carried a rustic charm, with a big window in the bedroom that looked out over the marina, paneled walls, and a bare-beam ceiling.
There were still carefully-piled cardboard moving boxes stacked in corners, and a distinct lack of frills, but Caroline had carved a path through the tumble to follow the circle of her daily routine: bed, bathroom, kitchen, desk.
After saying goodbye to Andy, she had changed out of her work clothes into one of the clean outfits already unpacked, and was just about to sit down at her desk with a fresh cup of coffee when there was a knock at the door.
Assuming it would be Mr. Banfield with a question, she was not prepared to see Reyville standing on her doorstep.
“Captain,” she said.
He tapped the brim of his fisherman’s cap, the fresh savor of the sea clinging to his coat. “Miss Phelan. Sorry to drop in…is this a bad time?”
“I mean…it’s a mess, but…come on in and leave your judgment outside.”
Reyville stepped through the doorway, taking the measure of the cottage with a soft smile. “Looks cozy enough. Homely.”
“Cozy is definitely the right word,” Caroline said. “Homely is a little harsh.”
Reyville frowned. “Homely. Like home.”
“You’re thinking of homey. Homely means ugly.”
Reyville shook his head in wonder. “I’ll never get used to the way Americans complicate the language we invented. Any ghosts in your new abode, yet?”
“Not yet,” Caroline said. “Then again, I've been a little too preoccupied to notice.”
“Quite right, too,” Reyville said. “To that end, I have something for you.”
He reached into the pocket of his pea coat and handed the slim plastic case to Caroline.
“That,” he said with a flash, “is a mix of the twelve best Oasis songs.”
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. “You made me a mix CD?”
“It’s a housewarming present. Every home needs good music.”
She read the track list, written carefully in Sharpie on the CD’s reflective top. Hello, Cast No Shadow, The Girl In The Dirty Shirt, The Turning, She’s Electric…
“I don’t recognize any of these,” she said.
“You will soon, once it becomes your favorite CD. And don’t you worry. I put Wonderwall on there, for you, so you’ll feel among friends in no time.” He winked. She wasn’t sure whether she liked that. It felt very…casual. Too familiar.
“Well, thanks,” she said. “We may not be on first-name basis, but we’re on mix CD basis. That’s a shift.”
He caught what she threw, his smile slipping ever so slightly. Guarded. “What if Reyville is my first name?”
“It’s not, though. Is it.” It was not a question. She shrugged. “But keep your secrets, if you want.”
“You don’t have any secrets that you’d prefer to keep from me, Miss Phelan?” he asked, and while his expression was its jaunty, charming self, there was a tone to his voice she didn’t like. Something just shy of accusatory.
The tension in the little cottage tightened around them. A beat, in which whatever ghosts haunted the cottage were the only ones to breathe.
“It’s good timing that you’re here, actually,” Caroline said, changing the subject and setting the CD down on the folding card table she had been using as a dining room table. She picked up the trail cam photos, instead. “We have a job.”
“Oh?”
“Andy Yun, over at the Clinic. He came to see me, asking for our help. Something is digging up plants in the Clinic’s herb garden.”
Reyville arched an eyebrow. “Sounds like animals. Or brush pickers, perhaps.”
Caroline handed him the photos. “No kind of animal I’ve ever seen, and definitely not a brush picker. Look familiar to you?”
Reyville shook his head, studying the image intently. “No. I’m surprised to say that it doesn’t. What’s the plan?”
“This thing is a nocturnal intruder,” she said. “So, how do you feel about a stakeout?”
*******
Hours after night fell, Caroline and Reyville joined Andy at the Clinic and picked their stakeout spot: the old glasshouse at the edge of the garden with a full view of the forest boundary.
There was no light in the glasshouse, to make sure that whatever they were waiting for didn’t get spooked, and the only glow outside was a half-moon and a handful of solar-powered lawn lights lining the garden path. The rest was shrouded in darkness.
Caroline held Scully in her hands. If anything could catch more detail than a trail cam, it was her trusty camera. Reyville had brought a thermos of tea with him and three cups from his galley kitchen. He poured a cup for Andy and handed it across to the young man, who cradled it in his hands.
As he poured a cup for Caroline, Reyville whispered, “Can't have a stakeout without tea and a good story. Tea, we have. So tell us about Scully, Miss Phelan. Where did you get such a marvelous camera? Or is that one of your secrets?”
Caroline took the cup, flicked her gaze at him. He was smiling gently, just visible in the darkness. Disarming. Frustrating.
Andy's eyes were curious in the dark, unaware of the jab.
“Oh, let’s see,” Caroline exhaled, thinking back. “It was on a road-trip, when I moved here from Denver for the final time. Just me and a U-Haul full of stuff. Gave me lots of time to think, get a little bit of space.”
Some ghosts need to be left behind in their haunted houses, she thought, but did not say.
“On the way, I stopped at a little antiques store, somewhere in Eastern Washington. Just a funky little place. And there was this dusty digital camera sitting on a shelf for twenty bucks. Didn’t seem like the kind of place to sell electronics, but Scully was special. I could tell right away. Her electric little heart beat with mine, I like to think.”
Andy asked, “When did you figure out that Scully could see…you know…ghosts and stuff?”
“That was trial and error, once I got here. I would take pictures of normal stuff—landscapes, portraits, whatever—and there would be things in the frame that I only noticed after I took the photo. Faces, in particular. Didn’t take long to realize that it wasn’t a glitch. Scully just sees things in more…detail than other cameras do. It’s a knack. Suits me down to the ground, too, as a journalist. I’m not happy unless I know everything.”
The three of them chuckled at this, quietly, but Caroline glanced at Reyville.
Yes, everything. Every damn detail.
Captain of what, exactly?
It was Andy who threw out a hand for silence, pointing with his other hand—still holding the cup of tea—through the glasshouse wall.
Caroline and Reyville looked at where he was pointing. Sure enough, a ripple of movement in the blackness beside the woods. Something separated itself from the trees and slipped into the garden, purposeful yet strange. From several yards away it was unclear what they were looking at. Smaller than a deer, walking with a shuffling gait that was somehow unnatural.
The thing passed down the garden path, its progress marked by the flicker of the lawn lights. It knew where it was going. At a particular garden bed it hunched and began to work, the actions indistinct, but it was clearly digging something up.
Suddenly, someone on an upper floor of the Clinic closed a window. The sound made the thing freeze, swivel, and Caroline raised Scully.
Snap!
But she didn’t have time to look at the picture she took. The thing—holding the plant it had dug up—began to move away again toward the woods. And fast.
“Dammit,” Caroline said, and she didn’t wait for Andy or Reyville to follow her. Spurred by journalistic impulse she threw Scully’s strap over her neck and slipped out of the glasshouse, following the creature as closely as she could as it retreated, stumbling over roots in the overgrown forest path as she went. Through the treetops the moonlight did not reach, but Caroline could hear the creature moving—a humming, buzzing sound—and kept that in her ears as she pursued, trying not to make too much noise and alert the creature to her presence.
At the edge of a clearing Caroline paused to stay hidden in the trees, allowing her eyes to adjust to the milky winter moonlight seeping down through the skeletal alder crowns, illuminating the creature just slightly as it limped toward a patch of shaggy, low, wild leafy plants, pale and winter-leggy.
As Caroline watched, the thing hunched, dug a hole in the soil beside the patch, and placed its stolen prize into the earth, transplanting it.
Movement beside her in the dark as Andy and Reyville caught up, panting.
“Andy,” Caroline whispered, “what kind of plant is that?”
“From here, it looks like birdmint,” he said, catching his breath. “It’s native to the island; we use it all the time at the Clinic. Why would it take birdmint just to plant it out here? Next to…more birdmint?”
“That’s odd.” Reyville peered hard at it. “I must say, I thought I knew most beasties on this island, but I have no idea what that is. Has it got three legs?”
Caroline realized that he was right. The thing had three thin legs.
“What is that?” she breathed, stepping forward, raising Scully.
Her foot snapped a branch, unseen below her. The thing swiveled again, peering into the dark straight at them, a triangle of bright round eyes staring.
Snap!
Caroline lowered the camera in time to see Andy step into the clearing, hands raised in surrender, speaking in a low, calm voice.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re not going to hurt you. It’s okay.”
The thing watched Andy approach with those strange round eyes, braced to flee. But Andy stopped a generous ten feet from it, and said, “I’m going to have to take that plant back, you know. It belongs in the garden.”
The thing cocked its head like an animal, pointed with an arm at the transplanted birdmint.
“Home. Family,” it said, clear as a bell, in a raspy, breathy, monotone voice.
And then, before anything else could be said, it turned and skittered away into the line of the trees at the other side of the clearing and disappeared.
Andy watched it go, then returned to Caroline’s side, and the three of them leaned in over Scully's glowing screen as she pressed the button to look at the two pictures she had just taken. But none of them could speak. What was there to say?
In the first image, from the garden, the thing they were looking at had three spindly legs, that strange triangle of eyes, and was covered all over with…moss? Lichen? It had one arm, which it had used to dig up the birdmint, and where the other arm should be was just a tangle of branches. Even Scully seemed to struggle to make heads or tails of it.
“What the hell?” Andy said, the first to break the startled silence.
Caroline pressed forward to the second image. It was not much easier to parse, just the same creature in a slightly different pose. But there was one extra detail that Scully had managed to capture, this time. Something that would have been very difficult to see with the naked eye. Something that made the hair on the back of Caroline’s neck prickle.
There, on the creature’s moss-covered torso, was the faint outline of a large, old printed logo. A stylized dragonfly.
“I've seen that before,” Reyville said, distantly.
“Everyone on this island has, at some point or other, if they've driven the highway around enough times,” Caroline replied. “Looks like we have a phone call to make.”
*******
The following afternoon, Dr. Ernie Hawkins looked very out of place in the Seavend General Store, the sort of person who eats, sleeps, and breathes his work and doesn’t rub shoulders with other non-scientist humans, much. Despite wearing what passed for street clothes among the robotics researcher set—a fleece pullover, khakis, and loafers—he was obvious when he walked in from the deer-in-the-headlights gaze behind his glasses. Caroline waved him down to join her, Reyville, and Andy at the corner booth.
“Doctor Hawkins?” she said, extending her hand, which he shook uncertainly. “Caroline Phelan. This is my associate, Reyville, and this is Andy. I’m the one who called RUMOR, this morning. They directed me to leave a message with your office.”
The doctor looked between them with a haunted expression, but sat down at the booth, anyway.
“I was told that…you had some information about one of my projects?” the doctor said.
“Yes, I think we do.” Caroline had printed the two photos of the three-legged beast, slid them across the table to the doctor. “Does that look familiar?”
Magnified by printing Scully’s handiwork, the RUMOR dragonfly logo on the creature’s torso was very pronounced. The doctor’s eyes widened even more behind his glasses, if that was possible. “Where were these taken?”
“First, we would like you to tell us what it is,” Reyville said.
“That's privileged information,” said Dr. Hawkins.
“So is its location,”Caroline rejoined. “Tell us, Doctor. What is it?”
The doctor’s shoulders slumped. “It’s a…a robot,” he said. “It’s a specialized robotic tool, more precisely.”
“RUMOR dabbles in robotics?” Caroline said. She didn’t know much about the shadowy research lab that sat fully-fenced beside the State Park, off the highway on the southwest side of the island, but she certainly didn’t expect anything quite this advanced.
“RUMOR dabbles in everything,” Hawkins said, with a tone of unwitting portent. “Robotics is one of many branches of our research in an ongoing effort to bridge the gap between nature and humanity. Now, please, tell me where this was taken?”
“The robot was found digging up plants and transplanting them,” Andy said, in a quiet voice. “What would possibly make it do that?”
Dr. Hawkins looked down at the table, clearly weighing out how much to say. “I don't know about that behavior. This robot was part of a project called Druid. We designed it to communicate with trees, especially to recognize when a tree is ill, ailing, or damaged, and translate between trees and humans. In some way, it's probably following some latent protocol by digging up plants, though I can't imagine what that would be.”
“Is there much of a market for tree translation robots, Doc?” Reyville asked.
“It was meant for forestry applications, eventually,” Dr. Hawkins replied. “But we never got that far. It…escaped. Somehow. Every time we get close, it slips away, again.”
Caroline found the image of a huge organization like RUMOR struggling to find and recapture one of its creations subtly funny, in a David and Goliath sort of way.
Aunt Ida wagged a disapproving finger. Nothing funny about it; the Bible is full of answers, Cora-girl.
“Is it dangerous?” Caroline asked, shoving the vision aside.
“It’s unpredictable, if that answers your question.” Dr. Hawkins knocked on the table with a pensive fist, then said, “RUMOR will likely pay you. A generous sum, in fact. But the return of this property is essential. This behavior—evading capture, digging up plants—it’s not what the robot was programmed to do, and we need to know what has happened with it. Internally, I mean.”
“So…you’re going to take it apart,” Andy said.
“Not necessarily. But we will definitely have to run some tests,” the doctor replied. “This is not normal. Druid was not designed for this. We don’t know what it’s capable of. Now, please…tell me where these were taken.”
Caroline opened her mouth to speak, but Andy cut in. “We’re not sure,” he said. “But we know the person who saw your robot. We’ll speak to them, and then we’ll contact you in twenty-four hours.”
Reyville—who was sitting beside the doctor—cocked an eyebrow at Caroline across the table, but neither said anything as the doctor slid out of the booth and readjusted his glasses.
“If that’s the way it has to be,” Hawkins said, “I look forward to hearing from you. Please remember…this is very important information. RUMOR appreciates your cooperation.”
And with that, he left.
Reyville and Caroline looked at Andy. He looked down at the table.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I just…it made me sick, all of sudden, thinking about them taking the thing apart. It isn't hurting anything, really.”
“That Druid thing is probably malfunctioning, mate,” Reyville said. “It could be dangerous, for all we know.”
Andy shook his head, his dark eyes uncertain. “It said Family, last night. Did you hear it say that? I wasn’t sure what it meant. But this morning, I went for a walk, and I found other patches of plants throughout the woods, freshly transplanted. Then, I went back to the garden to check. The only plants it took were natives, and it put them back where it felt they belonged. Like with like. You heard what the doctor said: it’s designed to recognize when a plant is ill or damaged. Well. Maybe…it was just trying to return things to where it felt they belonged, so they could heal. With their…family.”
“That seems like a stretch, Andy,” Caroline said, gently. “It could just be a coincidence.”
Andy nodded, his stare absent and thoughtful. “Maybe. But I don’t think so. I know how it feels to be misunderstood. And I know how it feels to finally be given a chance to heal something broken. Maybe all this Druid thing needs is, you know…a job. And someone to let him get on with it, undisturbed.”
“What do you want to do about Hawkins?” Reyville asked.
Andy sighed, shrugged. “Druid has evaded RUMOR for a long while, long enough that they’re willing to pay. Who’s going to prove otherwise if he, you know…slipped away from us, as well?”
Then, the young man said, “Thanks for the help. Both of you. It feels good to…get out. Get to know people, again. That sounds dumb. Is that dumb?”
Caroline and Reyville's eyes met over the table with meaning.
“Not dumb,” Caroline said. “That's what friends are for, Andy.”
*******
Caroline unpacked her old stereo especially for the occasion, slipped the CD in, and settled herself on the bed with her tea as the classic sounds of Oasis filled the little cottage.
It was, to her surprise and chagrin, better music than she remembered.
Scully was sitting on the bedside table, its eye-like lens reflecting the dim light from her lamp. Her electric heart beat with mine, Caroline thought, her mind flitting to the three-legged, moss-covered robot out there in the woods, somewhere, putting like with like, healing the silent ill, setting the world to rights one plant at a time. Making family out of bits and pieces.
Would that we could all do that.
Her phone buzzed beside her and she lifted it to look.
A text from Reyville.
Here’s one less secret among friends, it said. Lucas Reyville, at your service.
Caroline’s mind raced. Lucas Reyville, huh?
She climbed out of bed, sat down at the desk under the big window, booted up her laptop. For the next hour she tried searching for every combination of Lucas Reyville, Lancaster, UK she could think of.
But still, nothing even remotely similar to the Captain showed up in the search results. Not a single hit. Not a single clue. Not a single lead. No photos. No records. Not even a blank social media page.
Caroline looked back over at Scully on the bedside table and sighed.
“Ah, Scully, my dear,” she murmured. “If I pointed you at Captain Lucas Reyville, I wonder what you would see. And…I wonder if I would believe it.”
It was then that for a moment—only a moment—she felt certain that something was reading over her shoulder, a tremor through her spine.
But the moment passed like a thought, and she was alone.
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YAASSSS Our droid is back and making things right in its world! Andy is a hero.
Ahhhh, so that's what the titles are! Nice!
Now I'm wondering about Reyville too honestly. I hadn't much before, but now...
Also, I absolutely agree with Andy taking up for the little robot. I would too if I were him.