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It’s a message from Elias.
> What time you get off? Don’t eat. I snuck out to the store earlier. You have no food here, weirdo. Promise not to burn down your house when I cook us some late night grub. Not that there’s much to burn down. You need to paint these walls or hang a picture. Bleak in here. Sorry, long message. Bored AF. Later.
Strange that Elias texts now. Kyle was just wondering what he’s up to. He assumed he would be sleeping. Or playing notes on that old, out-of-tune piano. Cooking was last on the list.
Is it too soon to enlighten his housemate about his diet?
Kyle prepares to type a reply, then stops, senses prickling.
He glances over his shoulder, heeding an instinct.
At the end of the alley stands a figure.
Only a silhouette, nothing at all but shadow. No face and no discernable features. Entirely soundless. Entirely motionless.
Kyle stares at the figure, arrested at once by the sight. For a moment, he considers that his eyes are playing tricks on him. Is that even a person? Or an illusion? But the longer he looks, the more certain he becomes that a person is standing at the end of the alley, staring at him. A person who doesn’t move. Doesn’t even seem to breathe.
Kyle draws air to speak.
And the figure is gone at once.
He blinks, astonished at the abrupt disappearance. “Hello?” he calls out, confused. With no sense of self-preservation, Kyle races to the end of the alley where it spills onto the main road. He looks to the left, then the right, then the left again. No one is there. He listens as well as he can with his ears, straining for sounds beyond what any normal person can sense, despite it being a long while since he’s used such skills. It doesn’t help at all. He hears and sees nothing.
Who was that? What was that?
Kyle is in a daze when he reenters the bar from the front. He goes to the sink behind the counter, washes his hands, and tries to convince himself he wasn’t just hallucinating. The song persists from the jukebox, looping on and on, and Kyle tries to identify anything at all from that shadowed figure he saw.
It felt hollow. Like a void. An absence of light, sound, and matter. As if the person existed in a vacuum, not really there.
“Did my dad come by?”
Kyle nearly jumps out of his skin. His eyes find a teenager in front of him. Oh, it’s the police chief’s son. Short, bleached hair, spiky all over. Same russet complexion as his dad. A small loop earring in both ears. Pert lips. Big, kind eyes that defy his father’s perpetual grumpiness. His small frame always drowned in black oversized clothes, the t-shirt sporting some metal band. His name is Jeremy, but some people in town call him—
“Jer Bear!” greets Leland, emerging from the kitchen. “Did you do your homework, dude? What’re you doing out so late?”
“First off, it’s Friday, there is no homework. Second, I go out at night all the time because it’s the best time to take pics of weird stuff. Third and finally, I’m looking for my dad.” He eyes Leland. “Did you burn yourself again?”
Leland swiftly hides his bandaged hand. “Nope. You didn’t see a thing. Don’t tell Cade.”
Jeremy pops a peanut into his mouth from a nearby bowl, then makes a face. “These are awful.”
“They’re there to make customers thirstier and order more drinks, it’s all a scam,” says Leland with a chortle. Then he eyes Kyle. “Hey, you went out the back to take the trash. Why’d you go all the way around the building and come in the front?”
Kyle glances at the windows of the bar, looking out onto the street. “Thought I saw something.”
“Like a coyote?”
Kyle shakes his head. “Forget it.”
Jeremy hops onto one of the stools. “Do you think it’s the weird guy hanging around town?”
Kyle snaps his gaze to Jeremy. “Weird guy?”
“Overheard my dad talking on the phone this morning,” Jeremy goes on. “He hates when I do that, but I was just about to head to school when I overheard him say something about a weird guy. Doesn’t live here, not a resident. Doing weird stuff. I think he was spotted walking around at night. I don’t know.”
Leland scoots right up next to Kyle at the front counter, shoulder-to-shoulder. “Walking around at night?”
“I heard he loitered around the pawnshop,” says Jeremy. “A few nights ago. When Georgina came out to ask him what he wanted, he took off.”
“Huh. I don’t like the sound of that,” Leland decides with a curt shake of his head.
“That’s not all. Ricardo had complained about missing stuff from his vegetable stand, thinks he has a thief on his hands. But maybe it’s the same guy. My dad’s trying to figure it out.”
