Anissa didn't immediately carry the dress back into the warmth of the cabin. Instead, she remained rooted on the frosty balcony, the once-bright gown now a heavy, lifeless bundle in her grasp, its sparkle muted by a thin, glittering layer of ice. The biting cold seeped through her exposed skin, chilling her feet, and climbed steadily up her arms, yet she felt strangely immobile. Around her, the earlier howling wind had dropped to a mere sigh, almost as if the day itself was holding its breath, patiently observing her struggle to determine the next necessary action. The weight in her arms wasn't just the dress; it felt like the burden of a choice she wasn't ready to make. Seconds stretched into a silent, frigid minute where her only movement was the faint cloud of her breath hanging in the air. Finally, the sheer physical discomfort broke through her hesitation, forcing a decision she couldn't resist even if she wanted to deep down.
She pivoted stiffly, pushing the balcony door open and stepping back into the marginally warmer room, closing the door firmly against the encroaching cold. Crossing to the bed, she placed the frozen dress down with extreme caution, treating it as if it were ancient, brittle parchment that could crumble at the slightest careless touch. Her eyes instinctively avoided the embroidered pomegranate symbol, its presence feeling like an unwanted, watchful eye. Turning her back deliberately on both the dress and its unsettling emblem, she walked purposefully towards her satchel resting on a chair. Her fingers, still stiff from the cold, fumbled slightly before finding the zipper’s pull. She slid it open, the sound sharp in the quiet room, and plunged her hand deep inside the bag’s interior.
Beneath a small, soft velvet pouch holding her everyday makeup and a round compact mirror, her searching fingers brushed against leather. She pulled out the journal, its black cover softened by age and constant pressure, the spine permanently flattened from countless nights spent hidden beneath her pillow for safekeeping. A frayed, dark blue silk ribbon held it closed, tied not for decoration but out of sheer, practical need to keep the fragile pages contained. Anissa had retied that ribbon so frequently over the years that its silk threads held the intimate memory of her touch far more deeply than most acquaintances ever knew her. The ribbon felt like an old, silent companion in the solitary ritual she’d long developed.
She held the book carefully in both hands, cradling it against her chest as though it were infinitely precious, despite the confusing and often disturbing nature of the words trapped within its covers. This wasn't exactly a diary for recording daily events or confessing private feelings and hopes. This specific journal served as a locked vault for
the other things – the intrusive flashes of places she’d never wanted to visit, the fractured images of unknown faces that invaded her mind without warning, and the sorrowful, puzzling messages she felt compelled to untangle. It was a burial ground for meanings only partially uncovered, graves dug shallow in understanding. Many pages were marred by angry ink blots and smears where frustrated or grief-stricken tears had fallen, while others were meticulously organized with dates and numbers, arranged like evidence from mysteries she was forced to investigate alone.
Walking back to the bed, she settled onto the edge, tucking her legs beneath her. Taking a steadying breath, she finally opened the book’s soft cover. The worn leather spine yielded easily, bending without protest, and the silk ribbon slid away from its marked page without a sound. Instantly, her own chaotic handwriting confronted her, the dark ink sprawling wildly across the paper in uneven, frantic lines; the tangled sentences looked like scattered, broken pieces of something larger. A powerful urge to slam the book shut surged through her. A familiar knot of dread tightened in her stomach; she recognized this particular entry instantly, needing only the first few words to know exactly which troubling ghost had risen from these pages:
Journal Entry — Undated and Untitled
Okay so new one today. Whispered to me on my way home and in my left ear while I was brushing my teeth.
Which is awesome. Not at all terrifying.
“She's buried under the magnolia.”
Cool. Super chill. Except! What the fuck does that even mean?
Magnolia what??
Magnolia why??
Magnolia who??
Do we mean a tree? A street? A person?
Also, hi?? If it's a thing, there are like five magnolia trees between here and the pharmacy. What am I supposed to do, start exhuming flower beds?
(I could probably get away with it if I dressed like one of those gardening YouTubers.)
Anyway. It sounded serious. Kind of sad, actually. Not like the usual noise or the “turn left, here’s a dead bird” type thing.
I thought about ignoring it. Just for a second. But then I walked past Mrs. Pence’s place and felt it again, like pressure in my chest and that metallic taste in my mouth. Same as before. The magnolia in her yard is practically ancient. Gnarled. Weird looking roots. No idea what’s actually under there, but... something is. I think.
Don’t know if I’m supposed to do anything.
Don’t know if I can.
But it’s stuck in my head now.
What to do, what to do....
Besides the frantic writing, Anissa had drawn a magnolia blossom in the journal's margin. The petals were messy and blurred, sketched with rough, impatient strokes that clearly showed her irritation, both with the elusive clue and with herself for focusing on the wrong thing. Later, she had angrily crossed it out with a heavy black X, a futile attempt to erase the wasted time spent drawing flowers instead of uncovering the truth she desperately needed.
She let out a slow, controlled breath, her fingers trembling slightly as they hovered just above the paper, not quite touching the painful memory but feeling it just the same.
Even now, years later, Anissa could recall that particular night with unwelcome clarity. She had been only fourteen, standing alone under the weak yellow light of a streetlamp near her apartment, shivering violently in the damp night air. Cold mud streaked her bare wrists and ankles; the knees of her thin pyjama pants were soaked through from kneeling on dew-heavy grass in the Pences’ front yard. She had wandered several blocks in a daze after that had been a bust before the chilling realization hit her: she had absolutely no idea where she was supposed to go or how to find the grave the unseen presence implied. Back then, her protective satin gloves were still pristine, smooth and unmarked, not yet bearing the scars of frantic ironing or the deep creases from being clenched in terrified fists during countless sleepless nights.
She had finally crept back home, hands empty and heart numb with failure, relieved to find her mother still deeply asleep, completely unaware of her daughter's strange, muddy midnight expedition. Immediately afterward, trembling and desperate to make sense of everything in her head, she had grabbed her journal and poured out this very entry, the ink shaky and uneven across the page as she tried to capture everything she’d felt.
Now, years older, it remained just another frustrating mystery, unresolved and taunting her. It was nothing more than a collection of frantic questions and a ruined sketch, useless words on a page. She flipped the page over quickly, almost violently, as though remaining on it for too long might physically pull her back into that cold, lost fourteen-year-old body, forcing her to relive the crushing sense of defeat that had stubbornly clung to her ever since.
The next blank page opened easily beneath her thumb, the paper smoother, inviting something new. Something fresh.
Without meaning to, Anissa’s gaze drifted sideways towards the bed, settling on the lilac dress lying rumpled on the thick duvet, its colour soft in the lamplight. The embroidered symbol, that impossible pomegranate, flashed vividly in her mind's eye, its threads burning bright red against the darkness every time she blinked. She chewed nervously on the inside of her lip, pressed the tip of the pen firmly against the welcoming blankness of the new page, and released another slow, steadying breath, bracing herself.
Then, she began to write. The words emerged laboriously, as if each one had to be dragged up from some deep, resistant place within her, one reluctant syllable following another:
December 31st. Camp Athens. Lilac dress.
I found the symbol again. It’s here. Again. Why is it always a pomegranate? It wasn't enough to invade my dreams. Now it has to invade my wardrobe, too. (Still kind of cruel, but I'll give him points for presentation, I guess).
Anissa paused, the nib hovering uncertainly over the page. Her facial expression shifted between annoyance and deep puzzlement with something more painful stirring underneath both feelings – a dull ache she fiercely pushed away, refusing to acknowledge its source or give it a name. This internal struggle held her still for several silent moments before she finally lowered the pen again. With careful strokes, she added the words directly below her last sentence:
I didn’t destroy it. Should have. Wanted to. Didn't. Couldn't. It feels important somehow, even if I don’t know why yet.
What does it mean?
She let her eyes rest heavily on that final question, her focus narrowing as she stared at the words. The simplicity of “What does it mean?” felt huge and impossible. To break the tense silence pressing in on her, and perhaps mock her own confusion, she quickly scrawled in the right margin:
And why lilac?? Seriously, of all colours to use against me.
Anissa leaned back, pen poised between her fingers, and reread what she’d written. A nagging sensation told her she’d missed something crucial, something else from today that clawed at the edge of her thoughts. But how could she possibly capture
that? She had no framework, no language for it.
Her pen stilled completely, pressed lightly against her lower lip while her teeth gently worried the plastic end. She gazed blankly at the page, her vision blurring the words. The challenge felt immense: How do you record something that lacks any form, name, or recognizable feature? How do you describe a profound emptiness that somehow felt tangible, like a physical void you could almost reach out and feel? The sheer impossibility of it was frustrating. Letting out a slow breath, she moved the pen once more, her handwriting becoming smaller, neater, almost hesitant, as it traced a new line:
Something else happened today. Not the dress. Something before.
She stopped again immediately, her lips pressing into a thin line of frustration. She barely believed what she’d experienced herself, making it seem ridiculous to write down. Yet, the urge to record it was strong, driven by a gut feeling that ignoring it would be reckless, like pretending not to smell smoke in a locked room. Gathering her resolve, she began again, the words coming in awkward fits and starts:
It wasn’t a ghost or spirit of any kind. Not that I could really tell. It was just…emptiness? It didn’t say anything. Didn’t even seem to want anything. It was just there, and it was wrong.
Her pen hovered, trembling slightly, as if she might scratch out the inadequate description. Instead, driven by necessity, Anissa forced herself to continue, trying to capture the physical sensation:
I felt it, somehow. Cold like frostbite, but in my chest. It wasn’t angry or sad. It was just… nothing. Like a scar that never healed. There because of something bad, but unexplainable at the same time.
Anissa hesitated once more, rereading the clumsy sentences twice. They felt insufficient, failing to convey the sheer, unnatural
wrongness of the encounter. Still, it was the closest she could get. In the margin, needing to inject some bleak humour into the dread, she scribbled a quick note:
Avoid at all costs. Or poke it with a stick. 50/50.
Beside this flippant warning, she drew a crude stick figure (undoubtedly meant to be herself) warily poking a large, dark scribble labelled “???” with a long stick. A tiny thought bubble floated above the stick figure’s head, containing the words,
Is this how I die? Finally, with a quiet sigh that held both weariness and a bit of dark amusement at her own doodle, Anissa let the pen drop from her fingers. She leaned back, the momentary release of tension short-lived. Then, decisively, she snapped the journal shut with a final snap.
Enough mysteries for one day.
Anissa hadn't anticipated her first day unfolding this way, not even remotely close. She hadn't arrived with grand hopes or detailed expectations, perhaps just envisioning stiff, awkward greetings and a perfunctory walk around the grounds of Camp Tragedy. Yet, reality had delivered something far stranger and more intense. The embroidered pomegranate symbol felt less like a decoration now and more like a hook; it might as well have had an actual thread winding around her wrist, tugging her relentlessly towards unseen complications she hadn't signed up for. The sheer unpredictability of it all left her feeling off-balance, a sensation she deeply disliked.
Her fingers moved unconsciously, rubbing the fabric of her gloves together. They remained firmly in place, a necessary shield, a constant physical barrier separating her skin from the unpredictable world she navigated. Despite the truly bizarre events of the day – the chilling, empty presence she’d encountered upon arrival and the impossible appearance of the lilac dress – the emotion lingering strongest wasn't terror. Instead, it was a demanding curiosity. It was an exhausting, infuriating pull that refused to be ignored, eating away at her despite her better judgment.
What did it all mean?
Why had her father come for her now? Why did he send her here? Why didn’t he meet her more directly?
And most frustratingly, why did a part of her, buried deep beneath layers of resentment and confusion, genuinely want to uncover the answers to these maddening riddles?
Anissa sat motionless for a long moment, fingers lightly gripping the journal as her earlier frenzy faded into quiet exhaustion.
She felt it all catch up to her then—every step she'd taken to get here and the unsettling encounter on her way into camp, all pressing against her like a weight she'd managed to ignore until now. Jetlagged, emotionally drained, and yet still running on stubborn adrenaline, Anissa finally allowed herself the concession she’d been avoiding since landing in Greece.
Rest. She needed rest.
Pushing the journal aside gently, she left it lying half-open on her side table, its unsettling contents temporarily abandoned. Her movements became automatic, detached: the scarf unwound from her neck, socks peeled off her feet. She curled onto the bed, pulling the duvet around her, the simple action feeling monumental. Overwhelming fatigue slammed into her, dragging her eyelids shut almost before her head fully settled onto the pillow. Her breathing deepened, slowing into an even rhythm as sleep rushed up to claim her.
And for once, mercifully so, her mind offered only blank, dreamless darkness.
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