Grayson nodded toward the clearing behind me. “Not that kind of rain, it hasn’t.”
I turned around and nearly swallowed my tongue. Earl had unzipped his pants and was peeing directly into the center of the blackened patch of earth.
“Earl!” I screeched. “For crying out loud! Stop it! Stop it right now!”
Chapter Seventeen
By the time Earl’s monster truck rolled back into Garth’s compound, it had stopped raining again. Grayson and I jumped out of the truck and headed to the RV. It was time to process the evidence we’d gathered at the mysterious, circular clearing we’d discovered along Whirlwind Trail.
“I’m sorry about Earl,” I apologized again as I unloaded the sample vials from Grayson’s field kit. I laid them on the banquette table and rummaged around for a test-tube stand amid a cardboard box full of science-looking junk Grayson had hauled from a cabinet in the hallway. “I had no idea he was gonna piss all over the evidence.”
“You can’t be held responsible,” Grayson said, plucking the stand from my hand. He dumped the contents of each vial into individual test tubes and stuck them, one by one, into holes in a clear-plastic tray. “It’s not Earl’s fault. He hasn’t been properly trained.”
“I guess you’re right.” I sighed and glanced out the small window above the table. Earl was hosing the mud off Bessie’s huge tires. “You know it took my aunt six years to potty-train him. Teaching him to be a detective could take decades.”
When Grayson didn’t respond, I looked back over him. His face was stone-cold serious as he opened the eyedropper cap on a small, brown bottle and began adding drops to the open test tubes.
“You think that circle we found was made by some kind of electromagnetic force?” I asked.
“Possibly,” Grayson said absently. He picked up one of the test tubes and swirled it around. “Then again, Native Americans believe places exist where the veil between the spirit and man are at their thinnest.”
“What do you mean?”
“Vortexes, Drex,” Grayson said, his eyes darting briefly to me, then back to the test tube. “Doorways to the realms of the Star People.”
I swallowed hard. “Star People?”
“Yes. Ancestors of humanity who brought us here from the stars and continue to visit us today.”
My nose crinkled. “You sound like some New-Age kook, Grayson.”
He shrugged. “I like to keep an open mind.”
“Really? What happened to your ‘swamp gas’ theory from last night?”
“I traded it in for phosphorus.”
My right eyebrow rose. “I’m not following you.”
“See this sample here?” Grayson held up a test tube containing water as blue as Ty d Bol. “It indicates high levels of phosphate.”
“Wow,” I deadpanned. “You discovered phosphate in an old phosphate mining area. Shall I alert the media?”
Grayson blew a breath out his nostrils. “I have a point.”
“Okay,” I said, folding my arms across my chest. “I’m all ears.”
Grayson eyed me skeptically. “Take that pond we saw. It was dug from phosphate rock. Phosphate contains phosphorous. And phosphorous is the key element needed to create phosphorescence—the stuff that makes glow-in-the-dark stickers glow.”
My brow furrowed. “Are you saying that’s what made the glowing ring we saw in the forest last night? Phosphorous? I thought you said it was a portal—made of intergalactic microwave ovens, or something like that.”
Grayson winced as if I’d just pinched his brain. “The two have to be related somehow. I need to take readings of the glowing phenomenon. We should go out again tonight and see if it makes another appearance.”
“And get sucked into another dimension, like that Paulides guy says? Uh ... no thanks.”
“The probability of that happening is extremely unlikely, Drex.”
“Really?” I argued. “You said yourself that thousands of people have disappeared without a trace. Face it, Grayson. You can’t guarantee it won’t happen to us, too.”
“True. But Paulides took the time to map out the major locations of the disappearances. Florida didn’t make the list.”
My arms fell to my sides. “Are you saying there’s finally something crazy going on that isn’t happening here in Florida?”
Grayson nodded. “Yes.”
I smirked. “How’s that possible?”
Grayson shrugged. “We don’t have any quartz.”
I blanched. “What? Is that some kind of cosmic go-juice or something?”
Grayson sighed. “Did you not attend a single science class in school? I’m talking about rocks, Drex. Quartz rocks. According to Paulides, one of the commonalities of the sites where people disappeared was the presence of rocks or boulders with significant quartz content.”
I chewed my lip and tried to look smart. “What’s so special about quartz?”
“It’s a natural conductor.”
I smiled. “You mean like Yo-Yo Ma?”
Grayson shook his head and handed me the tray of test tubes. “Here, empty these and wash them out. There’s nothing remarkable about the soil—unless you count the ash from the cigarettes.”
I took the tray and noticed one of the tubes had turned bright yellow. “What about this one?”
“Oh. That’s just urea.”
“Urea?”
“Earl’s urine.”
“Gross!”
I headed toward the sink. A knock sounded at the door. It cracked open and Garth’s head popped inside.
“Any news about Jimmy?” he asked, then coughed.
“Sorry. No,” I said.
I set the test-tube tray on the counter and my cellphone rang. “Hold on,” I said, and walked over to the banquette table where it lay. I glanced at the display. “Huh. Looks like a local number.”
“That’s Jimmy!” Garth wheezed over my shoulder.
“Put it on speaker,” Grayson said from across the room.
I mashed the button. “Hello?”
“Bobbie?” a man’s voice asked.
“Yes. It’s me. Jimmy? Where are you?”
“No time to talk,” he whispered. “Listen carefully. Whatever you do, don’t—”
“Cough, cough, cough!”
Garth had chosen that exact moment to hack out half a lung.
“What was that?” I said into the phone. “Sorry, Jimmy. Could you repeat that?”
The line clicked off.
“Crap!” I said.
“Hit redial,” Garth sputtered.
I mashed the button and the three of us stared silently at the phone, listening to it ring until it clicked to voicemail. A mechanical voice told us Jimmy’s mailbox was full.
“He’s not picking up,” I said.
Garth looked up with pleading, watery eyes. “What do you think that means?”
“I
