“Oh, sure,” he says. “And I’m a natural blond.”
I roll my eyes, and he touches my shoulder, then pulls his goggles over his eyes. “Stick close, okay?”
I nod, wiggling my nose to adjust the way the heavy goggles are sitting on my face. The loading dock stretches out before us, a wide expanse of cracked concrete dimly lit by a single streetlamp. Scraggly bushes press against a chain-link fence at the back, entangled branches rattling in the wind. It’s eerily quiet, save for the distant wail of a siren and the occasional groan of metal as the wind catches the loose corner of a store’s dilapidated awning. The goggles make it feel like I’m wearing sunglasses at night, and I want to turn the brightness up on the world.
My boot comes down in what I thought was a shallow puddle, but the water immediately floods over the top and soaks my sock. I curl my toes to soothe how cold they are and hang back as Griffin and Donny approach the dumpster.
Greg and Rafael were here. Righthere, in this forgotten parking lot that smells like rotten food and something chemical I can’t identify.
I dig my nails into my palms through the latex gloves, then realize I might tear them.
Griffin runs his scanner across the dumpster’s rim just a whisper away from the metal. “DJ, you reading anything on your end?”
“Good ole Officer Henley is still three blocks away.”
Donny crouches, running his scanner over a dark stain on the concrete. The LED remains green.
I wrap my arms around myself, wishing Dad’s smell was still in the fabric instead of my cheap dry shampoo, sweat, and concrete dust.
“Hey there, spirits,” Griffin says, taking one step out of the way. “It’s me. Ya boy.”
I pull my bottom lip between my teeth because any sign of amusement from me is just going to encourage him. Turns out he doesn’t need any encouraging, because he starts hummingDancing Queen, running the device along the base of the dumpster where it meets the asphalt.
A clicking sound comes from Donny’s scanner that escalates in frequency as he touches it against the brick wall. The green LED flickers, then turns yellow.
“Hm.”
Griffin joins him. His device makes the same clicking noise, almost like the two devices are having a conversation. His face hardens in the glow of the warning light.
“Definite activity here,” Donny says. “Recent, too.”
Griffin and Donny continue their sweep. I hang back, trying to be useful by staying out of the way, when something shifts in the air. There’s this sudden heaviness, like the atmospheric pressure just dropped ten points, and my ears need to pop but won’t.
I get an uneasy feeling like someone is behind me, reaching out to touch me, but when I glance over my shoulder, nothing is there. I hear a hissing sound, so faint I almost miss it under the traffic noise and the groaning awning above us.
I take a step toward the edge of the parking lot before I even realize I’m moving.
“Eden?” Donny’s voice sounds far away even though he’s only a few feet away. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, I just—” I just, what? Hear something coming from the woods? That sounds crazy, but my crazy barometer is broken, considering I drank salt water a few minutes ago.
Waving at them to follow me, I walk in the direction of the sound. My boots crunch over loose asphalt and broken glass as I reach the scraggly trees marking the boundary between the strip mall and whatever forgotten patch of woods lies beyond. The streetlights don’t reach here, and the shadows gather so densely between the trees that they look like dark green pools through the goggles.
I stop where the asphalt ends, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Griffin comes to a stop beside me, his voice low and careful. “What’s going on?”
“You don’t hear that?” I ask.
He shakes his head, trying to catch my eyes, but I’m still focused on the woods. “Hear what?”
It’s not static. Too organic for that. More like… whispers? But layered, overlapping, like a dozen people trying to talk at the same time through a bad radio signal.
Donny steps past me into the woods, dragging his scanner across the bark of the closest tree. The LED stays yellow, clicking steadily.
Donny tries another tree. The clicking speeds up until it’s almost a continuous buzz.
The scanner turns red, bathing Donny’s face in crimson.
