Page 25 of Hot Ghost Summer

Panic, pure and clear, overrides everything else.

I check the battery, but it’s not that.

A grunt. Theo’s. Muffled. Distorted.

Gerald’s voice is next. Closer. Threatening. “I need you to take this home with you and wait for me to call. You can do that for me, can’t you, Theodore?”

A sliver of light affords a snatch of something smooth and light brown. Cardboard? I’m too close to focus.

“Sure, but… what’s this?”

“These are his things.”

“Whose things?”

Gerald drops his voice. “Mister Nachtmann’s things. They can’t be here anymore.”

My things? Has Gerald parcelled my entire life into a box and given it to Theo? If I still had a circulatory system, the vein in my forehead would throb at the disrespect.

“Oh. Right.”

More silence.

My gyroscope detects a forward movement a split second before full visual perception is restored.

“I brought you his phone. I found it at the site. You know? After…”

“Best to keep that with you too,” Gerald dismisses.

“I’ve been getting messages on it,” Theo persists. “They’re for Hollis, obviously—”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down, you never know who’s listening.”

Another surge of anger builds within my circuits, and that telltale static hum grows with it. He’s shutting us down. Denying me.

Theo steps back.

“Turn it off, son. No good can come of it now. And don’t tell anyone about this—not a soul.”

“I um… told Brigid.”

“Brigid?” Gerald voices the question that races to the front of my mind.

“She’s a friend. And a cow,” Theo mutters that last part.

Gerald’s sigh is loud, and the memory of his tobacco-scented breath increases the ferocity of my aggravated static discharge. “I wish you hadn’t done that, son. This is dangerous talk, and you know what they used to say: dangerous talk costs lives.”

“She won’t tell anyone,” Theo insists. “She’s a cow.”

“A cow?”

“Yeah. She’s a beautiful British Friesian heifer. She’s a rescue actually, but she wasn’t made for captivity; she was born t’ be free.”

“I um, don’t know what to say to all that. But this Brigid, you’re telling me she’s a cow? Like a dairy farmyard moo cow?”

“Yes.”

“Right. Fine. But don’t tell anyone else. Not even another cow. No one, Theo. Got it?”