Yolo is on edge. His back is up, and I swear he’s watching as closely as I am. He darts one quick glance at me before focusing back on the screen.
We move through the footage. Nothing happens until last night, when the marquee changed again, and the three words were added.
GET TH3M BACK.
The grainy black-and-white image distorts, skips. But I still see something. A ladder, propped up against the marquee. And then a blurry human figure climbing it. Again, I can’t make out the details. But it is definitely a human being, with arms and legs and everything.An actual person.Someone else really is here. Because the footage of the person changing the marquee two days ago—that happened before everyone else disappeared. But this—this happened after.
“Holy crap,” I say to Yolo, right as the image on the screen skips, sputters, disappears.
And that’s it.
That’s the end.
“No, no,no,” I say, trying to move forward. I can’t. There’s no more footage. But.
Someone else is here.
“I’m nottotallycrazy,” I tell Yolo.
I scroll back through the tape, go over the two times when the person is at the marquee. I watch them again, and again, and again.
“Is it the same person?” I ask Yolo. “Can you tell?”
Yolo’s eyes don’t leave the screen. The hair along his spine is standing up.
39.
once
Syd slid open the back window of the Alpha Kappa Sigma fraternity house. It was a hulking redbrick structure from the 1920s, perched at the edge of the Howell University campus along with all the other frat houses. She smiled wickedly over her shoulder.
“Something tells me this isn’t the first time you’ve done this.” Alex looked up at her, wearing a delighted grin he usually saved for me when I’d come up with an especially good idea.
Syd had texted me earlier that night.Hang out with US for a change,she’d written.Me and Alex and Ella. Come on. I have an idea.
The addition of Ella had surprised me. But I thought it was nice.
And I couldn’t deny that I’d been spending a lot of time with Sam lately.
I already told Sam we’d hang out,I’d texted back.Can I bring him?
I expected nothing less,she’d texted back.
“I’ll go in first,” Sam said. “Make sure everything’s okay.”
“I’ve got it,” Alex said, boosting himself up.
“Nice.” Syd put her hands on her hips, tilted her head as if she were checking out his butt.
“I do my best,” Alex said, struggling over the sill, and then we heard himoofas he hit the ground on the other side. “Hold on. Let me see if I can open a door.” His shadowy figure moved away.
“How’d you find out about this place being open?” Ella asked, her voice low and excited.
“I heard my dad talking about it.” Syd’s father ran a construction company. They were renovating the fraternity house, hoping to have it back up and running before school started.
“You’d think they’d set up alarms at a site like this,” Sam said.
“They usually do,” Syd said. “But they had to turn them off because mice and raccoons kept triggering them. The security sign out front is just for show until they can get rid of the animals.”
