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The three of us huddled, bringing our heads together to plot our course of action. One way or another, we were going to have to brave a big open space.
The field itself was no more than fifty yards away, but that field had been mowed to a knee-high state of grassy uniformity. It was a giant rectangle several acres across, one side marked by the road, and the other sealed off by a dark strip of trees. Another crop of dense woods topped off the short side closest to us. The side farthest away was difficult to discern, and it was only when we tried to see it and failed that we realized the fog was rolling in.
“What is it about that damn fog?” Jamie swore, following the misting boil with a suspicious squint.
Benny and I did too, shaking our heads in time. The fog was a creepy and inscrutable sign; it was often said to mean that strange things and ghostly happenings were afoot. I knew it really only meant that we were stuck in a low-lying cloud, but hey, whatever makes you quiver around a campfire.
From a more practical standpoint, it meant we needed to stay close together or risk getting lost.
“Well,” I said, lifting the camera and popping the lens cap into my back pocket. “If we wait a few minutes, it might make for good cover. ”
Jamie did a terrible job of trying to hide the fact that he thought I was crazy. “You want to hang around until the fog gets thicker?”
“Yes. Yes I do. ”
Benny made a noise that was just short of a sigh and a whimper. “It makes sense. I guess. But it’s not thick enough yet. Let’s hang out over here for a while. Hey, does that camera have a good zoom?”
“Good enough, I bet. ” I crouched down and balanced my elbow on my upper thigh, sighting the camera through the trunks. “Let’s get a little closer to the edge and see if we can’t catch anything before it gets too cloudy down here. Turn off the light, darling, would you please?”
Together we crept as quiet as we could closer to the road and the end of the trees. All of us went down into a crouch or a kneel. I pulled the camera up again and watched the field across the road, scanning the cabin, the tree line, the grass. I wanted to bring the view closer, but I’d have to settle for the magnification I had on hand.
I reached my finger around to the shutter, but a faint hum made me change my mind. The flash was warming up. I flicked it off and aimed the camera back across the road again, feeling stupid—but not so stupid as I would have if it’d actually gone off.
Over by the cabin I thought I saw a smudge of motion. I snapped a picture. The click seemed unnaturally loud, though I knew it wasn’t.
“Did you get something?” Jamie’s lips were almost touching my ears, but he was speaking so quietly I barely heard him.
“Not sure,” I said back. “Move. Give me room. ”
Benny had been crowding in too. Both of the boys backed up.
The second time I was certain I’d seen honest-to-God movement. I snapped another couple of pictures, then moved my focus. I swayed the lens to the left by short degrees, pausing to take more pictures of any hint of activity. I couldn’t tell if I was seeing tendrils of fog or tatters of old uniforms; it might have been wind waving the grass, or it could have been something else. I was too far away to judge, and even as I peered through the lens the battlefield cloud was gathering itself into a cottony mass.
I clicked another three or four pictures before deciding the cause was lost, then reached into my pocket to nab the lens cap.
“Hey, look. ” Jamie knocked his arm against mine.
I followed his gaze to the far side of the field, across the street and down at the bottom end of the rectangle.
Several distinct shapes moved through the soupy air, without a lot of caution but plenty of purpose. At a distance it looked like they were carrying things between them, but it was hard to be sure. They were definitely not hiding, though. They stomped along the shoulder of the paved strip, loud and careless, talking among themselves in ordinary voices. It reminded me of a Girl Scout excursion I’d taken as a kid, when our leader had told us to go ahead and make all the noise we could, in order to scare away snakes.
They’re more afraid of you than you are of them, after all.
But I didn’t think the party on the other end of the field was trying to scare off snakes. They had bigger worries to nurse.
“Do they want to draw the attention of every armed lunatic on the battlefield?” Benny asked. “Didn’t they learn their lesson losing a cameraman?”
“Yeah, I think they did,” I said. “Look at them. They’re announcing their presence—making a point of not sneaking up on anybody. ”
“Oh, I get it. They’re giving the crazies time to get out of their way. ”
“Exactly. ”
Jamie raised an eyebrow. “I guess they’re not worried about chasing off the ghosts. ”
I shook my head. “I doubt it. If anything, they probably think the noise might draw them out. They’re killing two birds with one stone. ”
“Why aren’t we doing that?” Benny demanded, louder than before.
I pulled him towards me by his neck and put a hand over his mouth. “Because we aren’t supposed to be here. They won’t get arrested if anyone finds them here. ”
“Oh, yeah,” he mumbled between my fingers.
“Keep it down,” I reminded them both. “Something funny’s going on over there,” I said, pointing towards the cabin. I was certain, the harder I stared, that someone or something was moving, and when I closed my eyes to open my ears and let the night come in, I caught a faint, intermittent electric bleep.
Jamie shifted and rustled into a more favorable position. I put a hand on his arm and one on Benny’s too, holding them both down and still by pure force of will. I needed to listen. I needed to get a better fix on that sound. It was familiar but not common, coming closer, going farther away in four-or five-second intervals.
I pulled them both in, so that our three heads could have nearly fit together in a shoebox. “Do you hear that?” I breathed, hoping they were close enough to read my lips in the dark, even if they couldn’t hear me.
“Hear what?” they mouthed back, so it must have only been me.
It came and went, rose and fell, but not in an up-and-down motion—it made me think of swaying, of swinging back and forth. Or maybe it was something else. My mind wandered back to a sixth-grade science fair and a classmate’s display of Morse code. Dash, dash. Dot. Beep. Bleep. Hum. Whir.
Similar. But not exactly that. This was slower, and less rhythmic.
I wagged my head. “I can’t place it,” I swore.
“Can’t place what?” Benny pleaded.
I shook my head and lowered it. “Don’t know. Hush. ”
“Holy shit,” Jamie muttered. He lifted his arm and flapped his index finger towards the Marshalls and their crew, then over at the field. “You can hardly see them anymore. ”
He was right. In a matter of minutes, the fog had nearly hit its critical mass. It was heavy enough to touch, to brush aside in a cottony swirl if you reached out for it. The cloud was chilly and wet against our skin. I could practically feel my hair frizzing itself into an atomic black puff of humid rage.
Jamie grumbled something else—“Cold sauna of the damned,” I think it was—and he was closer to the truth than he knew.
The chattering of the Marshall party overwhelmed the barely there electronica I had been hearing before. They were close enough now that if we leaped out and shouted “Boo!” they probably could have spotted us—fog or none. The fuzzy glow of their electric lamps gave them a wide yellow halo, a dome of fuzzy light that both revealed and distorted their location.
I had the distinct and unpleasant sensation of being trapped between a rock and a hard place. There was nothing to be done except hold still and watch.
The mobile bubble stopped. “I don’t think we should go any farther,” a man said in an
ordinary speaking voice.
“Tripp,” Benny blew the word into my ear.
“We’re almost at the field. Or are we at the field? Dammit all, I can’t tell. What crazy weather they get down here. I don’t know how anybody stands it. ”
“It isn’t all the weather,” a woman answered, and I assumed it must be Dana. “This place is positively loaded with activity. I’ve never seen so much energy. I’ve never felt anything like it. ”
A third voice answered her. “I’ve never felt anything like a bullet in my ass, and I’d be happy to keep it that way if it’s all the same to you. I say we stop at the field. ”
“Did you just now realize you’re wearing a red shirt?”
“Yeah. Thanks for reminding me. ”
“Fine, we’re stopping. This is close enough; we can set up our equipment here. I suppose it won’t hurt the dead much to come across the street. Where’s the cabin?”
“I’m not going near the cabin. That’s where Matthew got shot. What if there’s some wacko holing up in there?”
Dana again. “Look, the cabin is barred up—you can’t get into it, okay? They keep it locked all the time these days, and no one but the rangers has keys to it. No one’s hiding inside. Last time was just some fluke. You heard those kids at the camera place; Every nut and his best friend comes out here wanting trouble. ”
“Let’s get off the road and set up over by the picnic tables. ”
“Where?”
“We passed them a minute ago. It’s across the street from the field, and it ought to be close enough. ”
“Honey, the EVP we got said to go to the field—not ‘the picnic tables across the street from the field. ’ I think we should get closer. We could set up in the road alongside it, at least. It’s not like there will be any cars coming. ”
So they’d gotten a message about Dyer’s field too. It couldn’t be coincidence, or at least I didn’t think so. We must be in the right spot. A quick look at my companions told me they had both come to a similar conclusion. But this was the right spot…for what?