“All good,” I went with once I’d collected myself. “Everything’s great.”
There was a long pause. Had she heard the slight hysteria in my voice? “Alright. Well, I’m going to move on to another channel to check for the others before bed. You keep an eye out, and if you need anything, let me know. We can always switch over to this channel so we don’t clog up the feed. It was nice to meet you, Reece. Over.”
“Wait!” I said. “Um. You wouldn’t happen to know how to keep raccoons away, would you?”
She laughed. “Depends on if it’s decided you’re the toilet, or the den.”
I dragged a palm down my face, shuddering at the thought of waking up to find raccoon scat all over the deck. “Great.”
Janine talked me through a few things to try before we signed off for the night. Tying plastic bags to the railing seemed like the most promising start. Hopefully, they’d scare it off for good.
Would that work on ghosts, too?
Braving a chance encounter with the killer raccoon, I trekked downstairs one more time to retrieve my bear spray and use the outhouse. Back in bed, I realized speaking with Janine had made the lookout feel a smidge less scary than before.
Maybe I didn’t want total isolation, after all.
Scritch scratch scritch scratch scritch
Except for that goddamn raccoon. “GO AWAY!” I shouted.
It skittered off again, scolding me as it went.
I dozed, thoughts of predators, ghosts, and serial killers circling round and round. Right before I drifted off, I was struck by something so obvious I should’ve considered it hours ago. I’d spent the day dwelling on whether or notI’d seen the Ghost of Dead Man’s Lookout, but had completely overlooked a question that was even more important.
Whowas the Ghost of Dead Man’s Lookout? Could it be the maybe,probablyserial killer, Charles Randolph?
CHAPTER SIX
He came back two days later.
Despite my wild start, I quickly settled into a work routine. Roll call over the radio started at nine in the morning, and with thirteen towers in commission this season, scattered throughout the park, it took a few minutes for everyone to check in and share their morning precipitation reports.
Thankfully, all were accounted for.
Janine was the most senior lookout and naturally fell into a leadership role. Technically, we all reported to Leonard, but several of us had already asked her to switch to a separate channel to talk through various aspects of the job.
Most of my time consisted of completing full, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sweeps of my viewshed at least once an hour. We checked for signs of smoke, or in the case of inclement weather, lightning strikes. However, we also collected weather data at each lookout, which could be just as important for predicting fire and red flag warnings. When a hazard response team was deployed, we guided them to the correct location and kept an eye on other potential dangers.
I recognized a couple of the lookout’s voices as Forest Service employees who’d lived in Ponderosa for a long time, but most were strangers to me. Everyone seemed nice, though, and radio chatter was polite and succinct.
Technically, our shift ended at six in the evening, but considering we lived in the towers, off-the-clock smoke reports weren’t uncommon. Eventually, I’d like to use the hour I had free over lunch to hike the nearby trail, but truthfully, with all the stairs between me and the bathroom—and the refrigerator—I was already far more active during the day than usual.
I’d never been congratulated more by my FitBit.
So, by my third evening at the tower, I was completely exhausted and tucked into bed by nightfall, far too tired to worry about things like ghosts or bears or annoyingly persistent raccoons.
Or whatever else might be lurking outside my door.
Listening to the now-familiar creaks and groans of the tower shifting in the wind and the rhythmic sound of my breathing, I pulled the duvet up and quickly slipped into that soft, barely lucid place just before sleep.
Thunk.
With a sharp inhale, I bolted upright, yanked awake.
Had something fallen off the counter? Had the raccoon found a way inside? It wasn’t shitting on my deck, nor was it sleeping there. I’d deduced it merely wanted food and would go away once it realized I wasn’t going to feed it.
Not again,I inwardly groaned. Every time I investigated an unknown noise, it turned out to be something harmless.
