He walked a yard away from the trajectory someone would have to take from the house to the fence, and he went slowly, looking for anything out of place. He felt his shoe depress into the soft wet ground, and he stopped, crouching low. There it was. A footprint. Tom pulled his phone out, snapped a picture, and stretched his fingers out in the least scientific manner to find the shoe print’s length. He made a mark on his pinky with a pencil, stretched up – his vertebrae popping as he did so – and walked for the fence.
It was wooden and only waist-high. Three logs ran one above the other, one and a half feet between them. It was a simple fence, more to keep an animal from wandering away than for any real security. It was muddy here, and Tom thought he could see more prints further out. He had a feeling he’d be able to follow them from the house to the orchard.
He’d bet his reputation on it.
Thirteen
Trevor Hayes moved up to the edge of the bed, letting his feet hang until they hit the white tile floor. Taylor was a foot away, and they turned toward each other, knees almost touching.
“Tell me everything,” Taylor said again. “Don’t leave anything out.” She was getting excited, but not in a happy way. She could tell she was about to learn some important information about the shadow creature.
The boy ran a hand through his hair before speaking. “My dad left us high and dry a few years ago. He ran an accounting firm in Ohio where we lived, and Mom says he had sex with an employee. When he got caught, he tried to make it right. He spoiled me, bought me things to buy my love back, but I thought he was an asshole.
“Mom didn’t deserve that. She worked hard her whole life, but she was scared to do it on her own. I’m the only kid they had.” Trevor paused and looked up to the light, squinting his eyes. “He fired the woman he cheated with, and she sued his ass off. He lost everything, and Mom left him after finding out the affair had gone on for over two years.”
“That sucks. I’m sorry, Trevor,” Taylor said.
He shrugged and kept sharing his story. “It’s okay. They were never very happy.” He laughed now, as if he’d told a really funny joke. “My mom must be beside herself. She used to come visit me, you know. Every week. She never believed me either. She kept telling me how this place would make me better, how I’d stop seeing things that weren’t there.”
“It must be hard.” Taylor wasn’t sure if telling Trevor what he saw was real would help in any way, but she knew it was the right course of action.
“It isn’t easy. I’ve been here for two years. At first they put me in a normal room with a ceiling light fixture. It still came.” Trevor was shaking now.
Taylor wanted every part of the story. “Go back to the start.”
He sighed again, blinking quickly. “Dad screwed us over, and Mom took what she had hidden away in a separate bank and came out this way, looking for work. She got a job at the dealership in Gilden as a receptionist.” Trevor smiled at this. “She was so happy to get that phone call. She told me we were going to be fine, and that we didn’t need Dad anymore. I’d be able to graduate locally and go to college, and become a lawyer.” He laughed again.
“You still can,” Taylor assured him, and he stopped chuckling to himself.
“She wanted to live in Gilden, close to work, but there wasn’t much out there that she could afford. Only crappy apartments, and she didn’t want us to live in a box, she said. We needed a house and a yard. Maybe we’d get a dog.” He had such hopeful eyes. Taylor didn’t have to ask if they ever got that dog.
He continued after a brief moment. “She found the house in Red Creek cheap. Cheaper than the apartments in Gilden, so we had no choice. I was so happy when we moved there. It was a little crappy, and only days after we moved in, I heard rumors about the town, even our house. Strange sightings around it. The local kids thought it was haunted, and the previous families living there had left after only months, breaking the lease.”
“Who owned it?” Taylor asked.
“We’re not sure. A management company from Gilden oversaw everything, so the owner was anonymous,” Trevor said.
Taylor found that a little fishy. “What happened next?” she asked.
“Nothing. It was great for two or three months. I started school, and at first, it was strange going to such a small place like Red Creek School, but I began to like it. I made some friends, and eighth grade was shaping up to be a wonderful year. Then I started to see it.”
“The shadow?”
“I liked to ride my bike down the path at the end of the block.” Trevor must have seen Taylor’s eyes go wide, because he stopped. “What?”
She wondered how much to tell him. “My dad said bad things happen there. It’s where he was taken. It’s where Jason Benning’s son was abducted. It seems to be a gateway or something.”
“That makes sense, because the first time I rode my bike out there, it was a fall evening. My friends refused to go further out. They said it was cursed by some witches. I didn’t believe any of the crap I heard about Red Creek. It was the stuff from horror movies or books, not real life. It was dusk, the sun low in the horizon, and it was fighting to peek through the sparsely-leafed trees. It’s funny,” Trevor said, “I can still taste the air that night. Does that make sense?”
Taylor thought about
