I reach for the dog tags around my neck. I wish I could figure out what my gut is telling me to do past the stomachache.
The sun hangs low behind the trees, casting long shadows across the yard. I take another drink, letting the alcohol blur the edges of everything that happened today.
I frown at the gravel driveway, following it with my eyes past the iron gate as it carves through the trees, further and further until it bends out of sight. If my past self showed up right now, stomach churning from that super pleasant cocktail of ectoplasm, fear, and excitement—would I stop her?
Would she listen to me?
Probably not when I’m swaying on the porch with a bottle in my hand.
Movement beyond the fence catches my eye at the tree line alongside the driveway. The trees are thick. Dense enough that anything could be hiding out of sight. I squint into the shadows between the trunks. Maybe it was Peggy, hoping for more fish.
I raise the bottle to my lips again when the shadows shift.
There’s something between two oak trees about fifty yards out. It’s not moving.
And it’s watching me.
I blink hard, trying to get my eyes to focus, and when I open them, the figure is gone. All I can see are trees and shadows and the dying light. My eyes track along the tree line sluggishly, waiting for something to materialize—a big raccoon, maybe, following the road toward the house and looking for garbage to eat.
Nothing appears. No trash panda. Nothing.
It’s the Jim Beam playing tricks on me. Has to be. I take another drink, trying to steady my nerves, but the whiskey tastes like copper now.
Then I see it again.
It’s still following the road from the safety of the trees, but it’s closer. Maybe thirty yards out.
On my side of the fence.
The bottle falls from my hands. I launch myself up the steps as fast as I can and stumble toward the house. The porch sways under my feet. I can’t get a grip on the door handle. The metal keeps slipping until it finally turns and I fall inside, slamming it behind me so hard the frame shudders. I lock the knob and deadbolt the door.
“Donny!” My voice comes out sounding strangled. “Donny!”
Footsteps shuffle down the hallway, and then he’s there, still wearing his reading glasses.
“Eden?” Donny asks. “What’s wrong?”
“There’s someone outside,” I say, pointing toward the front door. “Watching the house.”
Donny moves to the window, pulling the curtain aside enough to peer out. “I don’t see anybody.”
“Someone was there.” My voice rises, teetering on the edge of hysteria. “I saw him. On the inside of the fence. He was standing there, watching me.”
But even as I say it, doubt creeps in. The whiskey is making everything feel like it’s happening to someone else. Am I sure the figure was on the inside of the fence? What if I imagined it?
Donny yells for Nico. I hear a door opening upstairs, and I press my back harder against the door.
Nico rounds the corner.
He looks nothing like the man who was yelling at me in the library hours ago. He’s in clean clothes. His face is calm and so neutral that it makes me feel like seeing him shouting was a dream I had.
He narrows his eyes. He must be able to tell how fucked up I am right now. I’d bet he can smell the whiskey from across the room.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“Eden saw someone watching the house from the tree line,” Donny says. “I need you to do a perimeter check.”
Nico nods, already moving toward the back of the house, clearly glad to do something that doesn’t require him to stand in the same room as me.
