Alice said, “And the thing that took her.”
“You think something took her?” Daniel asked.
She nodded. “Something supernatural.”
I hated that I believed her, but I did. The air had a charge, like a power line about to snap. Daniel tried to shield Alice, but she ducked under his arm and pushed on ahead, deeper into the gloom. She was the smallest of us, but nothing was going to stop her.
Beth and I shared a look.
The trail narrowed. Tree limbs reached for us, sometimes catching in our hair or scratching at our cheeks. I lost all sense of distance and time, my calves burning, knees screaming, but Daniel never let us stop. The only thing that made me keep going was Alice’s straight back and relentless shuffle.
The fog rolled in without warning. I’d grown up in Maine and knew what coastal fog could do, but this was thicker than soup, and cold. My fingers went numb in seconds. I could see my own breath, even though I wore a thermal under my hoodie and a thick scarf.
Daniel stopped again, his silhouette suddenly huge and inhuman in the white. “Don’t move,” he said. The words thudded out of him, heavy as anvils.
The fog pressed close. It bent the world into nothing but the ground at my feet and the back of Daniel’s head. Then a shape loomed. Man-shaped, but not quite. It hovered, just above the leaves, pale and blurry.
“Turn back,” the shape whispered.
Alice was not impressed. “Where’s my grandma?” she demanded. “What did you do to her?”
The shape’s head jerked, as if yanked by a string. It didn’t answer at first. It pulsed, shuddered, then seemed to grow clearer, thejawline sharpening into a face. The lips moved, but the sound came from everywhere at once.
“Turn back before it’s too late. This is not your place.”
“We can’t leave,” I said, forcing my words out slowly, “unless you give us a reason.”
The ghost stared at me, eyes black as creosote. “You want your grandmother. But I want something, too.”
“What?” Alice snapped.
“I want to know.”
“To know what?”
The ghost grimaced, as if it were chewing glass. “I don’t remember. But something happened here, and I can’t leave until I know.”
Beth’s hands shook. “You’re dead,” she said. “You’re a ghost.”
“Died somewhere close, if your ghost is stuck here,” Daniel said, glancing around the trees.
The ghost shimmered, almost as if it were nodding. “My name is Cody, that’s about all I remember, and that I’m buried in the ground. But I never got to rest.”
Alice wiped her nose and said, “Did you take my grandma?”
The ghost’s mouth worked open and closed. “She saw me. I took her. I need her help.”
“Why her?” I asked, stepping forward.
“She can see me. She remembers things. She can help me remember.”
Daniel eyed the ghost, then turned to Alice. “Is this how your grandma’s gifts work?”
Alice nodded, her face set. “She talks to ghosts sometimes. Helps them move on.”
“Will you let her go if we help?” I asked, looking at the shadow thing in the eyes.
The ghost’s hands twisted. “If you solve my death. If you remember for me who ended my life.”
