“The Ghost,” I murmured.
"That's the same monster that grabbed me," Roxy confirmed. It was the same for us. It felt like this beast had been terrorizing us for so long, but it had only been a few days. Joseph coughed weakly and scrolled through graphs that I didn't understand. “It has a really sensitive nose—I slashed at it, and it dropped me. That’s how I got away.”
Ah, so that’s where that cut had come from.
"These are recorded sightings and observational data from all the times I had encounters with ‘the Ghost,’ as you call it."
I stared at the screen. "Did you go into the forest often?"
"Every day, but only during daylight. Although there were a few times when I hiked overnight to see if I could find a trail of what happened to the others,” Joseph said. Well, that explained why the other Bureau teams hadn't found him. “I was still hoping to find my colleague, Kevin, and I was afraid to set out into the middle of rural Utah alone with no idea of where I was going. I thought my odds of someone finding me were better if I stayed put, near the supplies. While I waited, I ran experiments on our backup generators until they died. I just kept working… I have theories about its capabilities. Portal work seems to be its most powerful and dangerous ability. When the generators failed, I overtook the other researcher’s work, since it wasn’t on the computer. He had some technology he was fiddling with, some kind of device that he’d experimented with near Moab. All I knew from his background was that he’d gone with the soldiers to help with the meld."
I leaned back in the chair. That thing can definitely make portals, but how and why? And what’s the connection with the other researcher?
Roxy and I told him everything we knew about the Ghost, based on our experiences. Dorian and Bryce occasionally chimed in, since they had also been targets. Joseph listened attentively, focus and clarity showing on his face despite his fatigue.
He rubbed his face. "Everyone who has been targeted, myself included, has connections between multiple planes. I must have become part of that group when I started messing with my old colleague’s work, which had some interplanar qualities. The Black Rock soldiers all helped him transport and build the device. Isn't that interesting?" He began typing excitedly on his computer, making a note. I considered his theory. He was a true scientist, with his ability to spot patterns quickly and determine what had suddenly made him a target like his old colleagues. It was true that most of us had a lot of experience with interplanar travel.
"The ability to portal is huge," Dorian said in awe. "The monster doesn't require a gate like vampires do, though."
Joseph looked thoughtfully at Dorian. "It does appear to have strange capabilities. I set up several of the more high-powered scanners when I still had electricity from the generators. The readings were interesting. Some of my devices also seemed to actually call the beast. I left a few on overnight in the woods, and by the next day they'd either been destroyed or dragged off. I recognized the teeth marks immediately."
"But it was attacking that Jessica and Dan duo." Bryce grunted. "Doesn't that mean something?"
Roxy huffed. "Unfortunately, Jessica and Dan have been lurking around the Leftovers far too much. They had no idea what they were doing. I bet they got lost in the Leftovers, and they clearly stumbled onto an area they shouldn’t have been in. They could’ve had some weird interaction with a spot in the Leftovers where the planes were stronger, some kind of flux area. Or maybe it has something to do with Jessica’s weird ability."
I puzzled over the theories. The memory of the Ghost's first attack made me sit up straight.
"It left the airplane, but came back when our comms went off," I said, recalling the sudden return of the monster that had seemed so strange that night.
"Yes, I think there's something to that. The creature senses things," Joseph mused. "I'd been working with some of the surviving technology to generate theories… There's something about the creature's invisibility that disrupts the electrical field. I have blueprints on my laptop for a device that might be able to keep it visible long enough to fight it."
Blueprints? I would send those over immediately to the nearest tech teams to see if they could take a look at it.
Sike whistled. "You were busy."
"I was lonely… until the beast came for me at last." Joseph sighed. "As you've seen, it has some sort of obsession with abduction. It was odd, though… It didn't seem as if it intended to hurt me." How can he say that? The Ghost had hunted him down and torn his arm off.
I couldn't help the disbelief in my voice. "Your arm."
Joseph shook his head. "No, the creature wasn't actively trying to harm me, from what I can tell. It was carrying me securely in its mouth, but I fought it. My arm was mostly torn off when it tried to keep me from escaping. If it had really wanted to hurt me, it easily could've killed me. Whatever it’s doing, it's desperate to take people to a specific location. It might be trying to balance energies in its own way, identifying sources of interplanar energy and dragging them to the source. But it's stubborn about it; it doesn’t seem to care if it hurts us or itself in the process of ‘cleaning up.’ I don't remember how I moved around in that transparent area after it dropped me." He said the last part as he looked sadly at the new bandages,
