 
### Mist

Book One of the Campground Series

A Novel By JD Jones

Copyright 2013 by JD Jones

Smashwords Edition

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All characters, events and places in this novel are fictitious. This is purely a work of fiction, and as such, any resemblance to actual living persons or real places is unintentional.

Chapter One

My name is John Allen Corwin. My mother says I am the spitting image of my father at my age. She says he was a handsome man with dark hair, dark eyes and medium complexion. Not overly tall but better than average in height. He also had an air of authority about him and a mature spirit that guided him in all things with a sense of humility that bordered on meekness. She says I am like him in almost every way. I guess that helps her deal with the fact that he is now deceased. A man worn out by a thankless job, consumed of endless tasks. He was a minister in a small church.

I grew up in a minister's house and learned the ways of the Christian life. They have always governed my decisions and in some ways driven me to succeed. But when I graduated college and started my new life as a man on his own, I was in for a surprise. All I knew. All I believed, was about to change with the appearance of the figure of a man walking in the mist of the night.

The first time I saw him I was taking out the garbage. That was a Friday night. I had to walk up a small incline to the dumpster and I noticed the figure standing in the roadway ahead of me on the second rise. The moon was out and a slight fog had rolled in but still he was easily visible, outlined against the night sky as he was. I say he because the figure seemed tall and the shape suggested that of a man more than a woman. I was about to call out and ask which one of my workers had returned when a swirling, rush of wind blew through the figure and dispersed it in a million pieces until nothingness stared down on me from the rise. Surprised at the disappearance of the man I thought I saw, I started to question whether I had actually seen anything to begin with. After all, the figure had not spoken or moved. Maybe it had been a strange collection of dust particles moving on the breeze.

I moved over the rise in the road and saw a thick mist rolling in from the rise on the other side of the worker's campers. It moved fast and rolled into its place, filling the little valley created by the two small rises cutting across my property. Thick and shimmering in the moonlight, the mist or fog or whatever it was settled in place like it was covering something from my view. I could not shake the idea that the fog was for my sake. An obstruction. An unnatural cover to hide something. I had seen fog before, but never anything like this. It moved and swirled in the moonlight in a pattern that suggested air currents different from that of any breeze blowing through.

By the time I tossed my bag of garbage into the dumpster I had almost convinced myself that I had not seen anything. Maybe some shadows thrown by the trees near the roadway. Still, if one of my workers had returned it was unusual for them not to check in with me. They knew I liked to keep track of who was on the property. One of my quirks. Protect what's yours.

With my trash disposed of, I decided to walk down to the worker's campers I had placed on the other side of the campground. We had pulled in two campers not so much so that the workers could stay there as to provide a place for them to get out of the cold occasionally and to use the bathroom in a warm environment. A couple of them had stayed a night or two, but mostly they went home each night because it was not that far to drive back into town.

It was two weeks from Christmas and there was a definite chill in the night air that made me wish I had grabbed my coat rather than just a sweater. I was not dressed for exploring. The moonlight provided more than enough light for me to navigate the dirt roads across the camp. Still, I picked my way carefully through the many roots which we still had yet to remove in this area. The shadows made by the trees gave me more than one start as they swayed with the wind. I was not afraid of the dark. Neither was I totally comfortable with it, believing as I now did, that someone else might be on the property. It's an eerie thing to be wandering in the dark, not totally seeing everything clearly, glimpsing movement in the shadows around me and believing I was not alone.

I had purchased the campground property only three months before after graduating college with a degree in business. I had no illusions that my degree made me an expert in business and my personal opinion was that a campground was not the best business investment anyway. I had bought the place because the price of the land was right and I had always wanted to own and manage a campground. No other reason.

Ever since I was a child and my parents had taken me camping, I had been enamored of the camping lifestyle. My father was usually so busy he did not have time for family things. Camping was something I related to good family memories. I remember thinking that the owners of the campground where we stayed were the luckiest people on earth. They got to go camping every day. That thought had stayed in my head in one form or another over the years. When my aunt, my mother's unmarried sister, passed away and left me a bit of money because she said I was always her favorite, I told myself that a man with a business degree should be able to make a business out of anything he loved. I knew I was going against everything I had learned in business school but for once in my life, I was going to follow my heart.

As with most things in life, my dreams and reality were at odds with each other. I was discovering the world of politics by way of zoning laws and arbitrary, local inspectors who always seemed to be stepping on each others toes and taking it out on me in the process. Every time I got one part of my campground within proper specs for one inspector another one comes by and makes further demands that always seem to require backtracking over the first one. I was learning to deal with frustration at a whole new level.

The property I had purchased was a large wooded section along a deserted stretch of road only two miles from the main road into town. From the front gate of the campground I could be on Main St. in town in less than ten minutes. The realtor had gotten me all the permits for a campground necessary to begin the construction process even before I had signed the papers. She had told me the town was eager to help any business prosper and breathe new life into the community. I guess the easy entry I had in getting started had lulled me into thinking the rest of the process would follow suit. The realtor's help had made me believe the town really wanted me to build this campground. Like I was doing them a favor. The reality was a little more harsh. Like buying a used car. Everything to get you into it but when it breaks down or needs something it's your car, deal with it.

I had asked the realtor several times about the price of the place, which seemed very low to me, even in a depressed economy. She explained that most of the construction in the area was on the other side of town, closer to the shopping areas and the beaches. No one wanted to build out my way until they had first used up all the land on the other side of town. The other side of town being the "place to be." She also disclosed that someone had died on the property a few years back and the locals did not want anything to do with the place. Local superstition, she called it. It made sense in a way that allowed me to justify the low cost so, I bought the place and made plans to realize my dream.

I bought a camper and placed it on the west side of the property so I could get started creating my campground. I then bought a tractor and spent the first month laying out roadways and clearing off about one hundred and thirty lots on the east side of the campground about five hundred yards back from the roadway. At the front gates, which were two telephone pole sized logs buried upright in the ground with another pole across the top, I placed a mobile office where I had a telephone and internet brought in. It was also hooked to the town water and sewer system that went by on the road. At the suggestion of the realtor, I also installed a full sized shower in the mobile office so I could clean up in the days before there was water running around the campground. It turned out to be a good suggestion.

The second month I spent haggling with the town officials about what I could and could not do on my own property. At one point I threatened to enlist the aid of a lawyer because I felt the town had issued me permits to build a campground and were now purposefully stalling the process in order to elicit more money from me after getting me invested in the community. While they assured me nothing could be further from the truth they did little to relieve my frustrations except make some phone calls to the local and regional inspectors with which I had to deal. Far from being helpful, I became somewhat convinced that their phone calls served more to anger the inspectors than to sway them into making the process go quicker or with less obstruction. Hence, all the delays and demands I was experiencing.

To begin December I hired three men to help me as I actually began to lay the water lines, sewer lines and electrical lines throughout the campground. Two weeks into the work and we were finally making good progress with minimal delays from the inspectors who helpfully suggested their choices for the skilled professionals I needed to wire my electrical equipment and properly sign off on my water and sewer lines. Interestingly, they all seemed to have similar last names to the inspectors. I was fast learning the peccadillos and intrigues of a small town.

Now, with the frustrations of a slow start still lingering in my head and the frigid wind stirring the darkness, I walked down to the worker's campers on what we had come to call the lower side, I wondered which of the three men the figure on the hill had looked more like. Enrico Torres was too small to have been the man I saw. He was a hard working Mexican who I had come to trust because of his extensive work laying water lines for a local landscaper. He had come to work for me because I was paying a dollar an hour more. When I had suggested that the landscaper would be there later and that my work would end someday, he just smiled at me and said he believed I would always need him for something. He knew a little bit about everything including maintenance on the tractor, which I was totally ignorant of. He had spent the first Saturday he worked for me going over the tractor reversing all the neglect I had been giving it for my first two months.

Enrico had a friend named Juan Sanchez who was just as hard a worker if not as well versed in all the things that Enrico could do. He was taller than Enrico but still his build was not as large as the man I saw looking down on me from the rise. But I knew that light could play tricks on the eyes at night. The figure did have that solid, immovable stance that I had often noted about Juan. Still, it wasn't quite a Juan stance.

Dave Morgan was an out of work construction laborer who had a problem working with my two Mexican employees at first but had quickly come around when he saw that they did their part. He had proven to be a great asset when the electrician was here because he got the man to allow us to do more of the work before he came in and signed off on it. I had no idea that I could do most of the electrical work myself and then just allow the electrician to actually hook the power up. That really cut my costs as far as the electrician's time. Dave is plenty big like the man I saw on the hill but something about the figure I saw on the hill did not remind me totally of Dave, either. The way he stood was all wrong. I never saw Dave stand with such a front lean to him that he seemed almost ready to topple over. The figure seemed older, too, somehow. I just couldn't explain the things I thought I saw in the brief encounter. But I saw something that was different. Of that I was sure.

By the time I got down to the lower side, I was convinced I had an intruder on the property. Nothing else made sense. But why had the man stood and watched me and not tried to hide? That made no sense. Suddenly I had my first sense of being totally alone out here in the woods. I walked the last few yards to the worker's campers looking over my shoulder and behind every tree for someone who did not belong there. The blackness of the night hindered my vision any deeper than a few feet off the roadway, through the trees. A whole army could have been hiding in those trees for all I could see.

I checked the campers but they were dark and empty. I turned on the lights in each as I checked it just so I could feel the assurance of light in all the darkness around me. I was getting spooked by the darkness and being alone out here in the woods. Thinking I had seen someone who was also hiding from me for some reason was not helping at all.

As I turned off the lights in the last camper, I closed the door and thought I heard a sound in the woods back towards my camper. I wondered if maybe a homeless man had found my campground and was trying to take up residence when I wasn't looking. As I walked back to my camper, I had to smile to myself at all the thoughts of intruders that floated across my imagination. I was getting paranoid, I told myself. Still, I pulled the sleeves of my sweater down further onto my hands against the cold of the night air aware that it was not only the night air that sent that chill up my spine.

Back in my camper, I turned up the electric heater and poured myself another cup of coffee. The workers would not be back until Monday morning and I planned on catching up on some reading I had been putting off. I told myself that with all the work I needed to do, reading was unproductive. Well, this weekend I was going to be very unproductive. All I planned to do was read, eat and drink coffee to ward off the cold. I knew I would wander the campground a couple times, but I was determined to not do any work this weekend. It was time I stopped making excuses for working and get back to assembling a normal life for myself. I had not really relaxed since I got here.

My dad had passed away while I was in college. A hard working minister in our local church, what I remember most about him was how he was always doing something for someone else. My mom, afraid that I would become rootless after college and because my dad was not around anymore, now saw it as her duty to find me a wife to spend my life with and put down roots of my own. She kept quoting the scripture that it is not good for man to be alone. Like that was all that needed to be said. It was another of the reasons I moved to my current location, to distance myself from my mother's overshadowing presence. She means well but sometimes a man just wants some freedom. I lived at home with my parents and then I lived in a dorm with a hundred other guys. I wanted a little time to live by myself. I had that now.

I had gone to a religious university because my dad was a minister and the costs were lower for minister's kids. The education was first rate but I had purposely gotten a degree in business to separate myself from any thought of a ministerial line of work. I was not going to be a preacher. I had seen how my dad had struggled year after year. I was not going to give my life to people who just kept taking more and more until there is nothing left.

That's how I viewed my dad's death. It wasn't the cancer that got him. It was the giving of himself. In the end he gave away so much of himself that he had nothing left for himself. So he died. He had been a big man but every year I had watched as his minister's life ate away at him. Between the cancer and the ministry, he barely weighed a hundred pounds when he died. Every time I thought of my dad, I remembered the scripture that said, 'no greater love could a man show than to give his life for another.' Well, he loved them to death. His.

I sipped my coffee and opened my book putting the paranoid adventure of my evening out of my mind as best I could. If it was a homeless guy, I hoped he had the sense to turn the heater on in the camper. I had left them unlocked. We never locked them. It was too cold out tonight for anyone to sleep outside.

As I read my book, I thought someone else was in the room but when I looked up I saw nothing. It was not anything solid that I saw. No shape on the periphery of my vision. Just a sense that I was not alone. I began wondering if my senses were getting jammed with all my paranoia. Maybe I had heard something that made me think I was not alone. I put the book down and went to the door. I threw the door wide despite the escaping heat and looked around outside but could see nothing in the darkness. The moon had gone behind some clouds and everything was dark and black now. I turned on the camper outside lights and walked around the camper. When I completed my circuit I climbed back up on my deck. That was when I noticed it.

There at the edge of the deck was a definite lump of something just far enough from the light to make it indistinguishable. It was small and blob like. No real form. Just a blob. I half expected it to get up and run away. I have no idea what I was thinking because my brain had stopped processing rational information. My deck had been clean earlier. I had not left anything on it. I could not remember anything I did that might have left something on it. Something in my brain told me that the thing on my deck had no reason for being there. Like the figure in the roadway that had no reason for being there and then suddenly blowing away with the wind, this blob on my deck had no reason for being there and I expected it to blow away any minute, too.

But it didn't. It just sat there. I moved toward it and stared at it. The dim light from my camper's outside lighting system barely pierced the darkness and made it hard to see anything more than its outline. As I approached it, my shadow obscured it even more. When I was sure it was inanimate, I reached down to touch it. Tentatively at first. In case it was an animal or something. When it didn't move I allowed more of my fingers to make contact with whatever it was. It was cold and damp. I felt something adhere to my fingers like sticky mud. I was becoming more and more confused by the minute. There was no reason for this cold, wet lump of whatever to be on my deck. I would certainly never have left anything like it there. Someone had to have put it there. I remembered the feeling moments before that I was not alone.

I looked around me again, looking for a figure through the trees but there was not enough light to see anything, let alone a person who might be hiding. I thought again of that whole regiment of soldiers who could have been hiding in the woods just fifty feet from my camper and I would not have known it. I returned my attention to whatever it was someone had left.

As I picked up the wet, sticky lump from my deck, I realized I had already come to the conclusion I was not alone and whoever was out there had left this thing for me. I was curious and confused. Who would be out here and what was this thing they had left for me. Why? It didn't make sense. The logic of my mind could not wrap itself around the events of my evening.

That was the first time I felt worry seep into my thoughts. Logic. Maybe whoever was out there did not operate on logic. Maybe their mind was warped or damaged somehow. My mind raced into hyper drive and I started imagining some deranged killer stalking me in my woods. I grabbed the thing on the deck and hurried back into my camper, all the while telling myself I was being unreasonable, yet hurrying all the more, like when I turned off the light and jumped into bed when I was a kid.

I closed the door but did not lock it to prove to myself that I did not believe a deranged killer was stalking me. But I kept my eye on the door nonetheless. Once in the light, I could see that the thing I had retrieved was cloth of some kind. It was dirty and crusted over with black mud and leaves stuck to it. As I brushed away the mud and leaves I saw that it was a sock. Someone had left a dirty sock on my deck. Now I was sure that it was not something I had inadvertently left there. I was just as sure that I had not imagined a figure on the rise but had actually seen someone. And that someone had felt it necessary to leave a dirty sock on my deck. Now I knew that whoever was out there was not thinking in any rational way. A dirty sock is not a proper calling card. But obviously it meant something to someone.

I threw the sock into my trash and washed my hands in the sink. The mud washed off easily enough with a faint trace of red in it as the residue rinsed away down the drain. I imagined that under all that dirt was probably a red sock.

I gave the area around my camper another quick look and then retired for the night, locking my door this time. I turned off all the lights except the one I was reading by. I read until close to midnight and finally drifted off to sleep where I sat. Around two in the morning I woke up with a slight chill and undressed, climbing into my bed and under the warm comforter. I passed the rest of the night without incident or dreams.

Chapter Two

Saturday came and I woke to a slight measure of sunlight trying to force its way around the dark curtains in my front window. A small ray of that bright light found its way through a crack in the material. It was warm and cheery, especially after the night I had. I laid in the thin beam of warm light for several minutes before giving in to the desire to get up and start another day. I groaned and stretched and admitted to myself that digging ditches was a far cry from my cushy gig at the university. I laughed as I asked myself how I was succeeding when it felt like I was going backward. The boss was not supposed to work this hard.

In the light of the new day I had to check my trash to see if I had actually been given a dirty sock the night before. It seemed more like a bad dream than anything else. Looking into the bottom of my newly emptied can liner, I saw the muddy lump resting where I had thrown it last evening. Even in the warm light of the day I felt a chill as I remembered how sure I was that someone had been there last night.

Someone had really placed a dirty sock on my deck. They had stole their way quietly in the dark and left this unusual calling card for me to find. I could not fathom the meaning behind this bizarre behavior. Nothing in my collection of life experiences had prepared me to understand this. Why? was the question that kept coming to my mind. More than the who was the need to know why. What could a dirty sock mean? And what importance could it hold as a gift to me? I was getting nowhere questioning myself about an aberrant behavior that I was not familiar with. My one semester in Psychology 101 qualified me to know a few terms of the mental processes, nothing more.

I had forgotten to set the coffee maker up last night so I had to make coffee. I got it ready to brew and then got dressed. By the time I poured the first cup, I was feeling better about everything. Okay! So I had a crazy, homeless guy running around my property. It could be worse. I half expected the guy to be outside when I stepped out onto my deck and I wouldn't have minded it. Knowing is better than guessing and wondering.

I had situated the camper so that the sun would always be on my deck during the day, rising at the front of the camper and setting at the back. I had an awning attached to the back part of the camper that covered twenty feet of the thirty five foot deck, leaving the rest of the deck in full sun all day long. The only thing on the deck was a gas grill and four chairs that me and the guys used for lunch each day. One of my rules. Work in the cold, eat hot meals for lunch. The sun was warm on my face. I pulled a chair into the sun and sat down with my coffee cup to enjoy the morning and a brief reprieve from the forced activity I had endured of late.

It felt good to rest this morning. There had been too few of these moments since I had started this project. I knew that more of them awaited me once the work was finished but still I savored each chance I got to stop and reflect on how everything was going.

I was still getting used to the idea that all this was mine. I stole a glance up the road toward the rise where I had seen the man last night. There was nothing there now. Bright sunshine bathed the road and pushed into the trees on either side. Nothing to suggest that anyone had been there last night or anything to explain the figure I saw. I watched the dust swirling in a soft breeze on a beam of sunlight cutting through a thick set of branches and it reminded me of how the figure had disintegrated from my view. A homeless man with a mental illness might explain the dirty sock. But what was going to explain the disintegrating guy? I still could not answer that.

I finished my coffee and got another cup. And then a third. For an entire hour I sat and thought about my visitor as I soaked up the warmth of the sun and the caffeine of my coffee. I came to no conclusions and I searched for none. I was content that it was a one time thing and did not expect a repeat. If there was a repeat, I told myself, then I would have to take some kind of action. After all, I could not have a homeless guy disrupting my new business. I found myself wondering how far from town the police came out. Maybe I would have to call the Sheriff's department. I had not met any of them yet.

I got my fourth cup of coffee and decided to take a walk. It was inevitable. I had to be sure. My mind refused to let go of the events of the night before. Maybe the guy was sleeping in. If he was we could talk about it and then he could move on. I was not a disagreeable kind of person. I had a heart. I understood the problems of a society that did not take care of those who were slightly behind the curve on creating success. At least I felt reasonably sure that I understood enough to be compassionate even as I asked the guy to move along and let me get on with my own ventures.

I found the campers empty and wondered if the guy had gotten up early and moved on down the road. I could sense no warmth from the heater in either camper and guessed that he had either not used the heat or had not slept in the campers. Maybe he felt confined by society's restrictive presence and he was protesting physical shelters. I let my mind wander as I looked around for any sign that he was there. Not only was he a silent intruder but he was a neat one, too. I did not find a single footprint except the boot tracks from me and my three workers.

Not that I was some kind of Indian scout or anything but unless this guy was some kind of Indian himself, he should have at least left a footprint somewhere on all the soft ground where I had seen him or imagined he might have gone. I found nothing. Only my own footprints from the night before and the localized boot tracks that marked yesterday's work. There was absolutely no sign that anyone but me had been here last night. I could almost make myself believe I had imagined the whole thing except for the dirty sock.

I returned to my camper and poured the last cup from my coffee maker. I debated making another pot but decided against it. If I made it then I would sit and drink it. A reasonable assumption but not what I really wanted to accomplish at the moment. If I had a homeless man wandering my property I needed to know. Maybe there was more than one. I had seen more than one area where the homeless people had created their own small community. I wondered if maybe something like that was nearby me. After all, the realtor said no one wanted to come out this way from town. Maybe the homeless knew that and figured this area was a good place to set up for the winter.

I got dressed to go into town, meaning, I changed my shirt. I figured a visit to the police station would not be out of order. I also wanted to find out whether I was in the town's patrol area or the county's. It wasn't the reading I had planned to do but it wasn't actually working on the camp either.

I had driven past the police station before so I had no trouble finding it. It was a small, white building with a sign in front of it announcing the fact that this was the police station. Strictly perfunctory. No color. Just a white, plastic sign with small black letters that was lighted at night. A stark, but efficient looking place. An unobtrusive police station hidden from the main thoroughfare and most of the tourist traffic. Perfect for a small town that wanted to seem inviting and open for business and fun when the season started. No oppressive police presence.

Inside the building the atmosphere did not change. The walls were white and the counter that separated the public from the police work was a smooth, black, fake looking stone made out of plastic. Cheap was the idea that came to my mind as I looked around. Bored was the thought when the officer got up from her chair to see what I wanted. I saw and heard no other activity in the building.

For all her bored outward appearance the officer smiled kindly as she approached the counter and her beauty was not wasted on me either. Underneath the less than flattering police uniform was a shapely, beautiful, young woman about my own age. I had been away at college for four years and looking for pretty women had become like a minor for me. Not that I ever did anything about the ones I saw. It was strictly a looking around policy on my behalf. Too many things to do before settling down. Other than a few party dates, I had not really had time for more than just looking.

"Can I help you?" Her smile was genuine. One of those people who was always friendly.

"Uh – yes." I had rehearsed what I wanted to say on my way into town but now, looking at this young and pretty female police officer in the light of day, my misgivings of the night before seemed silly. I was taken back by the situation. The fact that I was a man about to make a silly complaint of paranoia was not lost on me, either. Something inside me railed against the idea I was about to label myself as someone scared of the dark. I had to rethink my words quickly.

She seemed amused at my hesitation. Whether she was used to it because people stared at her beauty or whether it was some cop thing that she understood a person's reticence when coming into a police station, I had no idea. But her smile was more of an irritation than a comfort at the moment. It said that she knew I was a bumbling idiot. She probably didn't think that way but it sure made me feel like I was acting that way.

"I – uh – wanted to ask a question," I finally managed to blurt out. My excellent change of mental direction. Kind of like an untrained driver shifting a manual transmission taking off from an intersection. A lot of grinding but not much progress and damn little smoothness.

"Sure. I'll answer it if I can." She seemed totally unperturbed by my stumbling opening. I wasn't sure if I liked her for overlooking my ineptitude or if I was mad at being made a fool of.

"Well," I stalled. I was not as sure that I wanted to report my adventure of last night to this young woman as I was when I came in. I took another look at her smile and decided to push on. "I was wondering – uh – if there was a homeless problem around here."

Her smile never wavered.

"Not as far as we are aware." She spoke of herself and the entire police department.

I was trying to think how to continue, my whole speech that I had thought up on the way in now totally forgotten, when she went on herself.

"We get the occasional homeless person passing through every once once in a while but they don't hang out here. There are much warmer places for them to go." She held that smile even as she talked. She also had the straightest teeth I had ever seen.

Her blond hair, probably some regulation length, was still very fashionable and feminine though barely reaching her shoulders. The slight upturn on her nose gave her face a classic look of youth that would never end. The twinkle in her eye spoke of a mischievous side that came out only when she let it. She carried herself with an air of authority. Not just the badge and uniform. She was someone who was used to being in charge. A leader at heart. At five foot three, maybe four, she was a full head smaller in height than I but she seemed every bit my equal, standing there taking my complaint.

Suddenly, I was not as interested in my homeless guy problem as I was in the woman who stood before me. She had pulled her hair behind her ears adding to the girlish image she cast. The uniform did not hide her shapely, almost athletic form nor did it cover up her femininity in any way. She made that uniform look good, as the saying goes. Probably not what the designer intended. After all, police uniforms are designed to convey a sense of authority and efficiency. But here was a woman who could not be hidden in any kind of clothing.

She had the brightest set of blue eyes I had ever seen. Her nose gave her an impish look but that was quickly overcome by the fullness of lips that continually pushed her cheek bones higher with that smile of hers. She had that pretty, young woman look but she also had a mature confidence about her that said she could handle whatever came her way. Something in her eyes said that she understood life at its deepest sources.

"I – uh – I," I tried to get my mind back on my original business. "I thought maybe I had seen one out at my place last night."

"And you wanted us to go and make the guy move on?" She asked like it was an every day request.

"Uh – no. I mean – well – maybe. I mean I'm not sure if I really saw a homeless guy or not but someone was there and prowling around my place."

"Trespassing is still illegal whether it was a homeless person or not." She offered me a chance to look legitimate.

"I mean I'm pretty sure it was someone but I am just not sure who or why they would be wandering around my place."

She reached under her counter and retrieved a piece of paper. Some kind of form.

"What's your name, Sir?" She smiled a little sweeter each time she talked.

"Oh – uh – I don't want to file a complaint or anything. I just wanted to know if I should be aware of anything. Maybe wandering homeless populations or something."

She pushed the paper aside and stared at me blankly. Now I felt stupid again. She was ready for action and I was just hunting information.

"As far as we know there is no homeless population in this area." She repeated the corporate stance of the community. Tourist areas do not allow homeless populations to take up residence. Homeless people scare the tourists away. No tourists, no business. No business, no community. Simple equations.

"Okay. I guess." I just didn't know what else to say. I was starting to wonder what I was hoping they could do. I didn't want to get anyone arrested. I guess I just wanted to not be alone out there with a half-crazed homeless guy. But I couldn't tell her that.

"Did something happen?" she asked.

"I thought I saw someone on my property." I volunteered.

"Which is where?" She smiled some more.

"The Tall Pines Campground." I used the name of my campground mostly because I wanted people around town to get to know it.

"And where is that?" Her smile stayed right in place. Not an outlandish, silly smile. Just a friendly, go-ahead-and-talk-to-me smile.

"Um – about ten minutes out of town. North, up the River road."

"Oh." Her eyes narrowed slightly and her smile wavered for the briefest of moments. Something of recognition flickered behind the glow of her face for just an instant.

"I know where you mean." The musical tones had definitely drained out of her voice, now. Whatever memory my campground dredged up for her, it was not good.

"I heard they were building a campground out there. Didn't know what it was called, though." She was not acknowledging meeting the owner of the property as much as she was repeating facts she had heard.

"Tall Pines." I repeated.

"And you think you saw someone on your property out there?"

"Yes, last night."

"Did they damage something or destroy anything?"

"No, I just thought I saw someone walking on my property."

"So you saw someone walking on your property way out of town? And they didn't break anything? They did no damage to your property? And you don't want to file a report?" She looked hopefully at me for some help understanding what I wanted.

"That's about the size of it," I tried to smile and seem witty. It wasn't working. I felt stupid and petty taking up the time of a police officer with my story.

"I don't mean any disrespect," she started. Meaning she meant all kinds of disrespect but did not want to be labeled as disrespectful.

"What exactly is it that you want us to do about this...wandering, homeless guy problem you seem to think you have?"

Her smile took on an evil twist at the corners of her mouth like she was holding back a laugh while watching a small child wrestle with something new. I got the feeling that my situation amused her almost as much as my inability to fully explain what I was doing there. Quite possibly, she was one of those people who enjoyed being in control while everyone around her was out of control or under her control.

"I know it seems a bit – uh – maybe confusing." I tried to explain.

"A bit." She repeated my words.

"I'm – uh – just trying to ascertain whether or not I need to be on the lookout for homeless people wandering through my place." I tried to justify my ride into town.

"Like I said, Sir. We do not know of any homeless problem in our area. But if you start to have one, let us know and we'll do what we can to protect your property." I had the sense she was getting bored with my story, distancing herself from it. I had brought her nothing that the police could take action on.

"Uh – very good." I smiled my best smile back at her. She increased hers knowing that her smile was better than mine. Better than anyone's.

"If there's ever anything we can do for you, let us know." She was giving me her good bye smile.

"Thanks," I answered her. "If you're ever out my way, stop in and say, hi." I offered.

"Don't get out that way much." She smiled her best good bye smile.

"Uh – right." I waved a tentative good bye and turned toward the door.

"Oh," I remembered something.

"Is my property within the jurisdiction of the town or the county?" I felt I had finally asked a question that made my visit legitimate. Thereby I had redeemed myself and become legitimate, also.

"The town," she smiled. She didn't even think about it. She knew. Beauty and brains. Good thing my mom was not here right now.

"Thanks," I repeated.

"Any time, Sir," I was not so sure she meant that.

Outside, back in the sunshine I felt like a total fool. Not only had I complained about something that meant nothing, I had made an idiot out of myself in front of a pretty girl. Wouldn't mom be proud of me, now? Maybe it was good for this man to be alone. I had always believed that some people should never reproduce. Right now, I was thinking that maybe I was one of them.

I drove down the street to the hardware store and picked a up a few things I knew we were going to need come Monday. I also ordered some more PVC pipe for the water lines. They told me it would be delivered on Tuesday. They had two big orders going out on Monday. I loaded up my supplies and noticed it was lunch time.

Instead of one of the fast food restaurants, I opted for one of the local diners. Although I had been in there several times over the last few months, they all turned to stare at me as I entered and took a booth near the back. I was the new guy in town and they were the locals. Because it was a tourist town they were used to treating outsiders as outsiders. They just weren't used to having one around all winter. I wondered how long I was going to have to live here before I was not an outsider any longer, but I was afraid I already knew the answer to that as they watched me invade their lunch time haven once again.

The waitress had asked my name the first time I had come in and she remembered it ever since. She also remembered that I was the guy building the campground way out of town. Funny how ten minutes away was way out of town. Or maybe she was referring to how close I was to being a local.

"Hello, John." She smiled as she came up to the booth.

"A hamburger all the way with fries and a coke," I gave her my order. I liked the fries in this place. They left the skins on and let them cook until they turned golden brown with a crispy exterior.

I watched as she took her time writing out my order on her pad. She did not use short hand. She wrote out every word and placed them exactly on each line of her pad. I didn't know whether she was just that anal or her boss was. Later when the ticket was given to me to pay, each price would be neatly added to the right column and then added up at the bottom with tax and everything.

She was a pretty woman of sorts. Not like the police officer I had met earlier. But not so plain as to go unnoticed in a crowd either. She was tall and had an angular jaw that kept her smile from being truly heartwarming. More of a sexy taunt than charming. Her dark hair was always put up behind her head so I had no idea what she looked like outside of work. She didn't wear a ring so I assumed she wasn't married. But who knew today?

I ate my meal, paid the check including a handsome tip, waved at the locals and got back into my truck. I was trying to be the new guy that added something to their community without being an invader. As I started the engine a man approached. He was tall and built like a football player. His face showed he was an outdoor person. Tanned and leathery, but not in an ugly way. More like a tough outdoorsman look. He was obviously headed toward me so I shut off the ignition as he extended his hand to shake through my slowly lowering window.

"The name's Ike" he offered.

"John," I replied.

"Hear you're building something out the River Road."

"A campground. Tall Pines."

"You're the fella, then. That's great. Thought you'd be older though."

I just smiled. It was nice to have someone talk to me who I wasn't paying. For a tourist town this was not the friendliest place on earth. I was beginning to think I had put my campground in the wrong place.

"Well, I just wanted to welcome you to the community. Don't get many people moving in here. Just a lot of tourists and such. Hope you get settled in just fine and enjoy living here." Ike went on.

"I think I'll like it just fine," I hoped as much as he did.

"Hey, if you're a church goer, we meet down at the Baptist Commons Sunday morning at 11:00. Love to see you there. We're a good congregation. Lot of the local merchants are in our church, too." Ike wasn't pushy. His offer felt like an honest to goodness real invite. A welcome to the community invite.

"Well, I might just see you there," I answered his offer. "I've been thinking about finding a church to attend since I got here. Just been so busy out at the camp and fighting with inspectors and such."

He smiled.

"Know all about that. I own the campground over on the water, other side of town. Gave me a real hard time, twenty years ago. Still do."

"You own Sea Vision?" I asked.

"Yep. That's my place. Got a boat ramp and restaurant and everything."

"I looked your place over before I moved here," I explained.

"Well, there's always room for more campers around here. I have a waiting list a mile long. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Your waiting list?"

"Yep. The word is you'll be open and ready for business by April. Season starts in May."

I nodded my head in agreement.

"Wondering if you would mind my steering my overflow your way? People don't like being told, no. It would give me an alternative to saying, no."

"Sure." I know my face must have brightened a lot as my smile spread wide.

"Well, I just wanted to meet you and make sure I wasn't misinformed. I've got people calling for places already. You got a number I can give them?"

I reached across the seat and opened the small box that held my supply of business cards. It was still full. I handed a small handful to Ike and he smiled back at me. He nodded his head like I had done him a favor.

"I really appreciate this." I told him.

"No problem, John. We stick together in this town. Everyone helps everyone. When the tourists show up, there's plenty of everything to go around. No need to horde anything here. I'd rather keep the tourists here than have them go to the beaches further down the coast."

"Well, I can't begin to thank you enough for the help, Ike."

"Don't think nothing of it. Glad to help you out and not have to send tourists somewhere else. It'll be nice to have another campground here to keep more of them here."

"I'm kind of glad to hear you say that. I wasn't so sure that the town wasn't giving me a hard time because I was competing with one of their own."

Ike smiled a wide smile that made his face seem even more friendlier. He reached out his hand to shake again. I grabbed it. This time he pumped it a little harder. More of a friend to friend shake than a man meeting another man in public shake.

"Don't worry about people in this town, John. They have to get used to you and then you won't be able to get rid of them. It won't be no time you'll be wishing they'd get out of your business like the rest of us."

He laughed and moved off toward a large, white truck at the other end of the parking lot. Looked like he could pull houses down the road with that truck. I was impressed. It made my little half ton pick up look like a toy.

On the way home I stopped at the market and got some bologna and cheese and some more bread. I didn't feel like cooking tonight so I was going to have a sandwich. I grabbed another pack of Gatorade to drink and headed for home.

Back in my camper, I settled in to enjoy the rest of my afternoon with my book. The temperature had risen to fifty five so I put on a sweater and sat on the deck for a while reading. The sun felt good and the peacefulness of the campground made me forget the events of last night. My talk with Ike had also lifted my spirits.

Referrals would be welcomed. Especially until people knew I was here. It's hard to advertise with tourists. They come from everywhere. There were a few organizations that advertised in select places around the country, places where people there might be likely to come here, but there was no sure way to target the people who would come and use my campground until I had built up a client list. Building the business would take time. But Ike's referrals might just help it take a lot less time. I made a mental note to check out Ike's place a little more thoroughly so that what I was offering was up to his standards. If he sent me referrals who were used to his place, I wanted them happy about coming here. And I wasn't on the water, either. I was going to have to compensate for that.`

I was feeling pretty good about things as I slipped into my book and let the warm, winter sun soak into my body. The progress at the camp was going the way I planned. At least one of the townies accepted me into the community. And I had been invited to church. I don't know why, but being invited seemed a lot better than just showing up and running the gauntlet of prying eyes and questioning glances. I knew how church people could be. They were always so suspicious until they got to know you. Almost like they expected the devil to sneak into the church if they didn't keep a good eye out for him. That was the way I saw most churches. A whole lot of people who were better at looking for bad things than they were at enjoying the good.

I concentrated on my book as I let the pleasant thoughts of my new community membership drift through my head. It felt good. I felt like I belonged finally. Funny how one guy talking to me could make me feel like I belonged. But it did. I had even forgotten the fiasco at the police station.

The afternoon went by fast and as darkness settled in, I ate my supper and turned the heater up higher to get the camper warm enough to sleep comfortably. I had turned it down during the day because I was fully dressed and in a coat or sweater during the day. No need to have it up high.

I thought about taking the trash up and decided it could wait until tomorrow. It was only half full anyway. I read until bedtime half expecting my visitor to return and leave something else on my deck. I looked outside a couple times when I got up to stretch but I never got that sense that someone else was there like I had before. Feeling silly about needless fears, I finally drifted off to sleep a little before midnight.

Chapter Three

"Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!"

The screeching, ear splitting scream woke me from a sound sleep. I shot up from beneath my comforter and wiped my eyes trying to get a bearing on what had awakened me.

"Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!" It sounded out again.

This was no dream. This was a real scream in the middle of the night. It sounded far away but at the same time it was so loud that it sounded like it was all around me, too.

"Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!" The scream came again like someone was in mortal travail over something. There was a mournful ring to the yell. Like someone was lamenting something.

I got out of bed and opened the front door. It was freezing outside after being in my warm bed. I peered through the darkness up the road where I had seen the figure the night before. Nothing. I looked around as best I could with the door opening the wrong way to see in the direction I felt sure the tormented voice was coming from. I wasn't really sure. But I had to focus somewhere.

"Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!" Again the voice sounded far away but still very loud. Maybe it was over by the worker's campers. Again I thought there must be a reasonable answer for this disturbance. But for the life of me I could not come up with a rational answer. The voice sounded human and then again – not human. Or maybe a human in such a state of terror and pain that I had never heard such before. My mind was racing a hundred miles and hour.

"Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!"

I shut the door and hurriedly got dressed. I grabbed my coat this time and a flashlight with a strong beam. I had placed it by my chair the night before in case I needed a good flashlight for some reason.

I closed the door and climbed off the deck into the darkness of a moonless night. I clicked on the flashlight and followed my first idea of the sound's direction over the hill. There was a deathly stillness to the night. No bug sounds which was common in winter, but also no animal sounds at all either. That was not common. Everything in the woods had stopped moving to determine the nature of the grisly yelling.

"Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!" The sound permeated the night.

It seemed to be all around me and yet not around me. It echoed off the trees and filled the woods with its agony. That was the only way I could describe its effect. Agonizing. Like someone was dying or lamenting the death of a loved one. I don't know where I got the idea but it stuck in my head that I was hearing the agonizing call of someone dealing with a horrible death.

That realization made me increase my step to find this unfortunate soul before matters got worse. I had no idea what worse could be but I felt like I had to help somehow. I moved over the ground as fast as my feet and the rough terrain would allow me to go in the glare of the flashlight.

I reached the campers on the lower side and tried to get my direction again. I was unsure which way to go so I stopped and stared into the darkness as far as my light could penetrate. I was not thinking of earlier fears. All I wanted to do was stop the anguish I heard in that voice. Something inside me said I had to stop it. Somehow I believed I could. Irrational but unmistakable.

I shone the light around but the sound did not repeat itself. For ten minutes I stood still and listened. Nothing came to me. Either I had scared them off or they had finished whatever they were doing. That thought chilled my backbone for some reason. What were they doing on my property? What could possibly create such a howl of anguish?

I checked the campers again and again found nothing. I closed them up and headed back up over the hill to my camper. At the top of the hill I shined the light down to my camper as a way of clearing my path all the way there before retraining the light on the ground immediately in front of me. In the passing flash of light across my camper and the deck, I thought I saw a flash of red light. Like one of those laser pointers. It startled me and I moved my light back over the camper.

I thought I saw a figure by the deck on the second pass but as I tried to get a better look, I tripped over a root on the ground and went down hard. The flashlight flew from my hand and I saw the light wink out about ten feet from me. I scrambled up as soon as I went down and quickly searched and found the flashlight.

As I bent down to pick it up I tripped over another root and fell beside the light. I was blindly patting the ground trying to locate the light again. That was when I heard the breathing. Like someone was running, only not running, just breathing hard. And they were close to me. My adrenaline was now racing through my entire body. Every inch of me screamed, "Run." Something or someone was very close in the darkness.

I found the light and turned it so I could grasp it by the handle. Picking it up, I banged the light to make it come back on. I flicked the switch several times, but the bulb was broken in the fall. Panic was overtaking my senses and the need to take flight was so overpowering that the adrenaline surge pushing through my legs was having just the opposite effect on my body. I felt weak instead of strong enough to run.

Suddenly, I could smell something like wet leaves and the sound of that heavy breathing on top of it was really unnerving me. I looked around in the darkness but saw nothing. I turned one way and then another. Nothing. A lot of darkness. Not so dark I could not make out the forms of tress close by but too dark to see much further than a few feet away.

I pushed myself up and stood brushing myself off, trying to regain my composure. I could not see if anything was adhering to me from the roadway but I brushed at my clothes out of habit. Fall down. Brush off. I was trying to give my legs time to get their control back. The sound of that breathing was keeping my adrenaline level high. I could not shake the thought that someone was really close to me. But I could see nothing in the darkness close by. If they were there, they had to be in the darkness of the trees further away, off the road. That thought did not bring me any more comfort either.

I half expected to be attacked at any moment. I wasn't calm. I was scared to death. But I was resigned. If my legs could work then going back toward my camper was my only choice. If I was going to be attacked then it was going to happen. Running might get me away, but the fuzzy feeling of control I had running up and down my legs was not very reassuring. Slow and steady was my pace. I had no choice. The raging flow of adrenaline had reduced me to an invalid.

I turned to get my bearings on the camper and realized I could not see it. Instead I had to determine the slope of the road which would point me back to my camper. I wondered why I had not turned the outside light on. Hindsight is such a great thing.

Once I had the slope figured out I knew which direction would take me to my camper. I made one step and then the figure was directly in front of me. A shape. A greater darkness in the darkness. Like staring into the heart of darkness. Every hair on my body stood up and a fear shot through me like I had never known before. What little strength I had left in my legs immediately dissipated. I thought I was going to faint but there was no such mercy. Fully conscious, I realized my legs were frozen in place and my body had failed to respond to anything but fear. My mind kept sending signals to run but the body, filled with the adrenaline flow, only interpreted the messages as some kind of garbled command to wait and see. My brain was screaming, run, but my body was asking, huh?

Like a collection of very dim lights, the figure's shape outlined itself before me. Not solid, like one of the shadowed trees nearby. Not gaseous like a fog. Just something that was there. And the smell of wet leaves was overpowering. I noticed the heavy breathing was also hot. He was that close.

Then he was gone. He didn't walk away. He just vaporized or something. There, then not there. I don't know what scared me more, his being there when I started to walk or his disappearing a few seconds later. A cold chill ran up my spine. My feet were stuck and it took some effort to make my legs work again. My mind told me I was in a race to escape before he came back. I never saw the face, just an outline of a head, but I knew it was a he. It was a he. And he was not one of my workers.

Limping on both legs, feeling like I had been running for hours, I hurried back down the hill to my camper, found the deck and climbed up on it, reaching the door knob in its familiar place. Then I was inside and I turned the lights on. It was then I realized I had dropped the flashlight on the hill again. Well, it could wait until morning. Nothing was going to get me to go back up that hill tonight.

I sat in my chair and tried to bring my breathing back under control. It took some time before I could convince my mind to calm down. I had no idea what had just happened but whatever it was, it was way beyond my scope of experience. People did not appear and disappear in my world. And what did that strange smelling figure have to do with the screams I had heard just previous to our encounter? I had lots of questions but not one answer.

I do not know what time I had been awakened and I do not know when I once again slipped off to sleep. It never occurred to me to consult the clock. I woke the next morning with the sun streaming in my window beckoning me into another day. I was still sitting on the couch and I looked around as though I expected to see my visitor close by.

Nothing in my life had prepared me for anything like this. I believed in good and evil but I was not so sure about spiritual things like demonic forces and angels and all that. I liked to think that my life was my own and the idea that there were unseen spiritual forces at work around me, fighting battles over my soul, did not reassure me that I had any control.

But last night's events had convinced me that I did not know everything. I had encountered something. Good. Bad. I had no idea. But something was out there. I was convinced it was not a someone, now. It was a some-thing. The words of the pretty officer in town came back to me.

"We'll do what we can to protect your property." She had said.

I wondered if that meant from things like this as well as people. Somehow, I didn't believe the officer had anything like this in mind.

All day Sunday my encounter was the only thing on my mind. No other thought could wedge itself in for very long. Everything in my life suddenly hinged on this strange apparition that kept accosting me. When I thought about the campground, my thoughts invariably returned to ponder what this figure showing up now meant to my new business. When I thought about sleeping I also thought about being awakened again by that agonizing howl. When I thought about going into town and staying there, it only reminded me that tomorrow morning I had to be right back here to get on with the work that needed to be done. I was scared to go and scared to leave and just plain scared. But of what?

Somewhere around noon time I dozed in my chair inside the camper. Suddenly I was awakened by the camper rocking back and forth as though a great wind had it in its clutches. It shook and shuddered and shook some more. I grabbed the arms of the chair and tried to hold on as the swaying, bucking camper threw me almost onto the floor. Things from the counter and my bookshelf were flying through the air. My adrenaline was racing again and I determined to hold on if nothing else. Then there was a tapping sound. The sound grew louder and became a knocking, pounding, thudding sound. I thought I heard a woman's muffled voice in the racket of the shaking camper, behind the thudding pounding. Or maybe a young child.

Then the camper was still and I was awake and the pounding sound was coming from my door. A woman's voice was calling out. She was asking if anyone was in there. I looked around the camper. Everything was still in its place. Nothing was thrown about by the shaking. It had all been a dream.

Still a little shaky myself, I got up and answered the door. Outside stood the officer from town. She had on a bulky, dark blue coat with a huge radio stuck to one hip and a large gun on the other hip. She looked very official. Very daunting.

She smiled her smile at me and instantly I felt better. I wiped at the perspiration on my forehead and pushed the door open further, inviting her in. She accepted the invitation and scooted in quickly, turning sideways through the door to keep the equipment on her hips from banging the doorway. She pulled the door closed behind her but not before a gust of wind pulled the door away from the camper and I saw her police car parked just in front of the deck.

"To what do I owe this honor?" I tried to sound gallant. It struck me that I had a desire to please this woman. Not just because she carried a gun either.

"Just out for a ride, patrolling the town and decided to include your place in my zone. Any more vagrants wandering your property?" She answered nonchalantly.

Not wanting to show my fear to her, I decided not to tell her about the thing that had scared me in the woods last night.

"No. All quiet here."

I hoped she could not see through my thin charade of being brave about this whole thing. It didn't matter that she knew nothing of what had scared me. It was enough that I knew and that I was scared of it. It made no sense not to tell her and ask for her help accept that it also made no sense to tell her and ask for her help.

She looked around my camper taking in my bachelor quarters, no doubt. It was not a cursory glance. Not just a quick look around. It was more like an inventory. I got the feeling she was checking me out and part of that was seeing how I lived.

"Pretty neat in here," she smiled at me.

"I like things in order." I answered.

"Thought maybe a man living alone out here for months might need a cleaning service or something," she laughed. I liked the sound of her laugh.

"No, I'm pretty good about picking up after myself," I admitted.

"Quite the reader, too." She motioned toward my book shelves.

"When I can."

"Well, just wanted to make sure you were okay out here and to let you know I'll take a pass by whenever I'm out on patrol." She put her hand on the doorknob to leave.

"Well, I sure appreciate the effort, officer."

"Kathy," she volunteered. "We're pretty informal out here, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Been too busy fending off the stares to notice," I tried to make a joke but it came out more like an attack.

"Yeah, well, just remember. You're the stranger here. We already know each other. It'll take some time for us to get to know you."

"That's where we're different," I smiled warmly. She gave me a strange look.

"How?"

"I accept people first and make them prove they are unworthy of my friendship. Long as they treat me right I'm their friend," I explained.

"Nice way to look at things," she smiled. She hadn't turned the doorknob yet.

"One way."

"Well, the police are your friend, Mr. - uh..."

"Corwin. John." I supplied.

She smiled at me with a wider smile than I had seen yet.

"Okay, John. I'll be your friend. Don't be surprised to see me checking on you often."

"Why's that?"

"Cause I take good care of my friends."

Was she flirting with me? I couldn't tell. I was never any good at those things.

"I appreciate that." It was all I could think to say.

For an awkward moment we just stared at each other saying nothing. Then she gave me another smile and turned the knob. The door popped open and the winter wind swirled in around us. I followed her out onto the deck. Out of reflex, I closed the door behind me to keep the heat inside.

She moved to her car and got in. I waved as she backed up and drove out the road she had come in. I saw her taillights brighten briefly at the top of the rise and then the car was gone. I felt alone again. Alone scared me now.

Monday morning the guys returned and we got back into our routine of digging ditches, laying water lines, sewer lines and electrical lines. The morning was cold but we worked up a sweat by lunch time when we were ready to stop and rest a bit. I felt an urgent need to finish so we had worked a little harder or faster. If asked about it then, I could not have explained it. Now, I think I sensed someone or something trying to stop me from building my campground. Silly, maybe. Or maybe I just needed the extra activity to put the strange figure out of my mind. Whatever it was, I felt the strange figure in the dark meant me no good.

The afternoon passed and I let up on pushing so hard. With each passing moment I felt more in charge of my property again. We made good progress in a patch of sandy ground devoid of any tree roots. By the time the men were ready to go home, I was feeling good about my campground. It was getting done. Things seemed normal again, back on course.

With the men gone and darkness settling in, I felt a familiar sense of foreboding return to my mind. Alone again. Alone yet not alone. Like I expected another appearance of the strange visitor. Part of me dreaded it. Part of me expected it. I even entertained thoughts of what would happen if potential campers got wind of him. Would it make my campground more popular to have a ghost on the grounds?

There I said it to myself, finally. A ghost. I believed with every part of my being that this strange figure did not mean to increase my business. Something told me he was not here to draw campers but to frighten me away. Or worse.

I awoke several times during the night, each time listening intently for sounds that didn't belong. But the night passed uneventfully. I, on the other hand, had not slept near as well as I needed to for the work ahead of me.

Tuesday morning I dragged myself out to the work just as the men arrived. Like a train, they followed each other down the road to park near the worker's campers. I set them to digging more ditches and laying more lines while I concentrated on attaching the electrical meters to the posts we had set yesterday. Hopefully we would have these last two sections complete by the end of the week so the electrician could power up the next phase of the camp. I was anxious to get lights around the road ways. But I dared not to let on to the guys about my strange visitor.

By late afternoon we had reached a section of ground laced with tree roots of all sizes. It slowed us down to almost a stop. My little tractor was not strong enough to rip the roots out, so we were reduced to digging and cutting through the flexible, underground latticework of wooden obstacles. It took all of us working in short shifts to keep moving. For the final two hours of our day we only made about ten feet of progress. And it looked like another thirty feet before we would be out of it tomorrow.

I patted the guys on the back and thanked them for the hard work, telling each of them I would see them tomorrow. As they loaded back into their vehicles and made their dusty ways back over the rise I felt strangely alone again. The sun was low on the horizon as I topped the rise back to my camper. All I was thinking about was a long, hot shower and a good supper. I had thawed out a steak to go with a baked potato.

As I approached my camper, I saw something on the edge of the deck. The shadows were already lying heavy across the area so I could not readily identify what was there. It was small and dark. That was all I could tell. I wondered what one of the guys had left behind at lunch.

When I got close enough to see the object clearly, I recognized the outline of a small shoe. An old, dirty, sneaker that someone had left for me. It was not lost on me that the sneaker sat exactly where the old, dirty sock had a few nights previous. Slowly I allowed my head to turn left and right and look hard into the woods surrounding my camper. Someone had left an old, dirty sneaker on my deck. I wondered if somehow it belonged with the dirty sock.

Satisfied that no one was in my immediate vicinity, I climbed the steps and approached my door. I felt the hairs on my neck raise up before I registered anything else. Someone was there again. I could not see them but I could feel them. As quickly as it happened it stopped. Then I was alone again.

I heard a noise on the road and recognized the crunch of gravel under the wheels of a vehicle. One of the guys returning. When the vehicle came in sight I could see it was the Sheriff's car again. Once the car started down the hill, I could see Kathy smiling from behind the steering wheel. I stood motionless at my door watching the welcome visitor come to a stop, park and exit her vehicle.

"How's it going, John?"

Her voice seemed a bit too cheerful for what I had felt only moments before. It threw me into a quandary of how to answer. My mind was still battling suspicion. I also realized I was in fight or flight mode. Her cheerful greeting pulled me back to a world I had vacated for a moment without realizing it.

"Uh – hi, officer." I managed.

"Kathy," she reminded me.

"Kathy."

"Everything still okay?" She gave me her smile and all my previous thoughts melted away.

"Just finishing up another day." I announced.

"Saw your workers at the end of the road." She motioned back toward the front gate.

"Yeah. I thought one of them was coming back for something when I heard your vehicle."

She smiled at me. I was sure she was flirting with me. At least I wanted it to be that way. Her eyes danced around and twinkled like she had a secret. Either that or she was checking out my dirty, sweaty exterior as I stood scared and motionless on my deck. Maybe she was turned on by sweaty guys. I had read somewhere that some women liked that sort of thing.

"What's that you got there?"

"A shoe or something that someone left on my deck. One of the guys must have dug it up and tossed it here."

"Why not throw it away?" She walked closer, climbing the steps up to me.

"Don't know. Was kind of thinking the same thing myself. Seemed strange to walk it all the way over here when they could have tossed it in the dumpsters down where we were digging."

"You never know about people," was all she said about it. Good. I did not want to have to talk long enough to explain my thoughts about it.

"So what brings you out here, Kathy?" I liked saying her name.

"Just checking on you. I've got the late shift, tonight. So, I thought I would swing through here and let you know I'll be around this evening if you need me."

"Well, the police certainly are being very friendly. I feel more at home now than ever." She smiled at my inference to friendly police.

"I am making it my personal task to see to it that you enjoy being part of our community here."

"You are doing an admirable job of it, too," I tried to smile back without seeming like an idiot. For some reason I always felt like an idiot around her.

"I'm glad to see that you are okay and that you have completed another day of building your campground. I hope it was a good day."

"Pretty good until we ran into that section of tree roots where we were digging at the end."

"Have to expect tree roots in the ground when you dig in the woods," she laughed.

"And junk, too," I held up the dirty shoe.

"Probably," she laughed again.

I laughed too. Just to be doing something with her. It felt strange to be laughing in that campground atmosphere. Like it was out of place. Like laughter did not belong here or something. Well, the children of the soon to come tourists would change that, I thought.

"Well, I gotta go. I'll probably be passing by here on patrol again around eleven or so," she volunteered.

"Stop in for some coffee, if you like." I offered. "I'm usually still up. The lights will be on if I'm up."

"Maybe I will."

She stepped backwards off the deck, like she had something else to say, then said nothing. She headed for her car. I watched her walk away feeling pretty sure she was flirting with me. She backed in a tight turn and pointed her car up the road. I continued staring after her until her taillights disappeared over the hill in a swirl of dust from the road. Again I felt the shroud of being alone envelope me. I was beginning to not like being alone as much as I once had. I was trying to decide if Kathy had anything to do with my feeling that way when a stiff, cold breeze blew across the deck and drove me inside. Quickly, I stepped inside and closed the door. I tossed the dirty sneaker in the trash where I had thrown the dirty sock only a few nights before.

Chapter Four

After dinner I sat reading and listening to some piano music on CD. It was a relaxing time for me. I had forgotten my broken sleep the night before, so I was more tired than I expected. Around nine or so, I drifted off to sleep in my chair with my book still in my hand.

When I awoke, the book was gone. The chair was gone. The camper was gone. I was outside somewhere and it was pitch dark. I tried to find the moon and there was none to find. Not that it was behind the clouds or something. There was no moon. Blackness engulfed me. Wherever I was was almost totally dark. No sight and no sound. Quiet. Dark. Totally alone.

Quickly, I determined I was dreaming. It had to be. I had fallen asleep in my chair with my book in my camper. That was gone now. So, this had to be a dream.

It was so dark I could not get my bearings. I felt solid ground beneath me. Dirt. Not concrete or flooring or anything man made. Maybe even a little spongy, like it hadn't been trod in a long time or many seasons of leaves or pine needles had built up.

I put my hands out in front of me and immediately touched what felt like tree bark. Smooth, cold, rough in small places. A pine tree from the feel. I slipped to the side of the tree and continued on, not knowing what else I was supposed to do. Several steps later, I encountered another tree. Maneuvering around it I stumbled over a root. I assumed it was a root because it was on the ground among the trees. I caught myself and continued on.

Another couple steps and I could feel a cool breeze. Seemed like a cool breeze mixed with a slight, misty effect. It was slightly damp and tingled against my skin where I was bared to the elements. The breeze carried a very salty almost metallic flavor on it as it swirled around me. And it was swirling. Not drifting. Not lifting, but swirling. Back and forth and side to side. Not a normal pattern of mist moving on the evening breeze. Almost as if the mist was creating the breeze and not the other way around.

It struck me that it was cool here but not wintery cold. If I was outside my camper, it would have been very cold. I was wearing indoor clothes, no coat or even a sweater. Once again I was unsure of where I was. This was not like any dream I had ever had before. I took another step and I fell.

My hands landed on something softer than the ground, but just as cold as the trees I had touched. I pushed myself upright immediately. The dark was starting to unnerve me. That was when I smelled it. A foul smell that reeked of death. Something dead was obviously close by. Maybe a deer or some other animal. And it had been dead a while from that awful smell.

I skirted the tree roots and made another few steps before I stumbled again. I didn't fall this time. I caught myself with my hands and pushed myself back up to my feet. Standing, I considered the roots I had just tripped over. They were huge. Maybe I was having a dream about big roots because they had given us so many problems recently in our digging around the campground. It seemed a normal occurrence to me. I was dreaming about what was on my mind. Roots. Now the roots were my nemesis as I tried to navigate around them. Satisfied with my conclusions, I calmly moved on in the darkness surrounded by that putrid stench of decaying flesh.

"I wish I had some light." I spoke out loud to myself.

I felt the sound would bolster my nerve. Like a scared man backing down a bully by trying to make a louder noise. My words came out strained and dry. My throat was parched like a hot, dry wind had scorched it. That was when I noticed the air was cool and misty but not damp or humid like the ocean breezes I had become accustomed to since moving to the coast. The misty feeling was not so much a dampness as it was an electrical stimulation on the nerves of the bared skin. A light tickling of the senses approaching what I could only classify as dampness. Mist. But without water in it. At least it was not dampening my skin. Just making me tingle.

A few more steps and a stumble or two. I tripped again and landed wholly on something very soft and it rolled slightly beneath me with my shifting of weight to get back to my feet. The stench of rotting flesh was overwhelming. Something was stuck to my hands. Thick and oily feeling. I must have stumbled into the dead thing whatever it was. The thought unnerved me and the disgust I felt rolled deeply in my most inward parts. I felt my stomach heaving and then I threw up. My supper blasted out of my throat and into the darkness.

I pushed myself up, embarrassed that I had lost my dinner in such a way. But the stench seemed to be closing in all around me. It was awful. Standing there in the darkness I wished again for some light.

Then there was a sound that made my blood run cold. An evil, chilling wail that split the night like a siren building in both volume and pitch as it assaulted my ears. I had never heard any sound like it before in my life. A sad sound and yet a mad sound. Both at once. Like someone who has suffered a great loss and has now lost it themselves. Angry at the whole world for something and screaming their refusal to submit. All that flashed through my head as I tried to get a bearing on the scream.

It came from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. There was a stirring in the breeze and it seemed to swirl the sound around me like a speaker was being flown around me and confusing me with its placement. I tried to peer through the darkness but only blackness met my stare. No matter how hard I tried, I could not see anything around me. All I had was the soft ground beneath me and the occasional roots and a dead carcass that smelled really bad. This was the weirdest dream I had ever had. Not a nightmare. Not a fantasy. Just a really weird dream. The kind that when you remembered it later you would try and figure out what it meant.

Standing still, I already figured the roots represented the hard work and trials of building the camp. What was the darkness and the dead carcass and the screaming? Weird. Really weird.

A few more steps and I felt the ground grow harder, more rocks and gravel than forest debris. I knew that feeling beneath my feet. One of my roads. Or at least, a road of some kind. I still had no idea where I was. As I walked further into what I considered a road, the wailing noise subsided and then dissipated altogether. Silence flooded back in.

That was when I noticed no sounds at all. Complete silence. Like a sound vacuum or something. No light. No sound. That probably meant something in my dream world, too. But I had no idea what.

I used my feet to define the edges of the road and determine which direction it went. Not that knowing where a road in the darkness went was any consolation. It was just something productive to do. Then I stood in the middle of the blackness in the middle of the road. I could hear my mother's gentle chiding in my head. Don't stand in the middle of the road, child. Well, if mom was here right now, she would stand in the middle of the road, too. Not being able to see anything, the road held a sort of comfort for me. A familiar feel. At least it was identifiable compared to the nothingness of the soft earth I had traveled over. Being able to identify something was a comfort.

I told myself it was one of my roads. Since the roots represented my work issues, I figured the road represented my campground roads. Psychology was never my best subject but logic was. Since one part of my dream dealt with the campground it was logical the rest of the dream did too.

Suddenly there was a glow coming over a rise in the hill. I could see the rise framed in the glow of a strong, white light building behind it. The darkness around me was not retreating but my eyes were focusing better and better on the only light available over that rise. Judging from the direction of the road I had assessed and the direction the light was seemingly coming from, I decided that something was coming over the rise in front of me on the road.

Suddenly I had a feeling of deep dread. Darkness. Silence. Dead carcass. It all spelled out death in my mind. Death or dying or dead. What if what was coming over the rise was death itself? Or something coming to make me dead? A large lump formed up in my already parched throat. It was as though I knew that whatever was about to make its appearance was coming for me.

The lights seemed to be flickering and moving back and forth as they mounted the rise from the other side. Then sound returned. Not a good sound either. A crunching, grinding, pulverizing sound assailed my ears. Made louder by the absence of other sounds, I'm sure. Something big was climbing the hill from the other side. And it was heading straight for me.

Thought of flight danced through my head. I had no fight or flight instincts. Only flight. But where? And how? It was too dark. If I ran I would surely slam into a tree. Maybe not the first one but a tree all the same eventually. I had visions of the broken lower tree branches, hardened by weather and drying over the years, ripping my flesh as I passed by. Maybe skewering me if I ran dead on to it. Dead on. Maybe that was what this dream was all about. Some kind of new wave nightmare. A harbinger of things to come. All my hard work and commitment making me dread the coming of death.

And I was dreading it too. The light was brighter on the rise and getting brighter all the time. The crunching sound of whatever it was pulverizing the ground as it advanced like a shriek in my ears. I searched the darkness. There was no avenue of escape available. Too dark.

Resigned to my fate, I turned to face the advancing death that was hunting me. I would face it like a man. Since I could not run, I would die standing still. Bracing myself for what would show itself on the rise, I calculated I had maybe a hundred feet of space between me and where the light was cresting the rise. I couldn't be sure but I felt it was an accurate calculation. The best I could come up with in such darkness.

The light continued to grow brighter. The noise continued to get louder. My imagination was running away with thoughts of huge monstrous creatures. Bulky, shapeless, full of teeth and bad attitudes. Maybe not just one but a whole herd of them coming to pulverize me into the earth before leaving me to become part of the landscape I had been tearing up. That was my impression. This dream was all about me tearing up the woods and building a campground. The woods did not like it. Now they were sending the carriers of death to exact a revenge for my meddling, human impudence.

In my mind, as I awaited sure death, it made perfect sense. I didn't need reality to know that my dream was making me aware that I had forgotten my own conscience in all this. I was digging up mother nature for the sake of some money. While I was in school I would have never thought like that. Green was my way to go. Natural. Nature's way. Digging up the earth and burying plastic lines and pipes was not nature's way. I felt a pang of guilt even as I sensed the imminent showcase of nature's death squad.

The light blasted through the darkness and blinded me. I put my eyes down to ward off the shock and pain of the bright light. The lights swirled and bounced around me and the sound of its advancement was a thundering grind now. I thought about running again now that the light would show me a path through the trees. But that was fantasy. As soon as I got away from the light, I would be in complete darkness again. I needed the light but could not afford to have it. Death had found me and it had found me wanting. Unworthy of dignity. Unworthy of explanation. Death in the darkness. The ultimate silence in a place of deafening silence. I accepted it. I cringed but I accepted it. I had brought it on myself.

Then the light swerved and a sliding, crunching, grinding sound filled the night. The light stopped moving. The noise stopped, too. I reasoned that whatever creature had been dispatched to kill me, it had stopped when it reached me. I hoped for a reprieve. I hoped for a second chance to do good. My mind was not functioning properly. Fear had reduced me to nothing more advanced than an eight year old wanting his mommy. There was a brief moment when I thought of all the horror movies I had ever seen and wondered how all those heroes and heroines ever got their feet moving. I didn't know what to think. I had come to the end of my thinking and found I was dumb. I had no answers and resented the fact I ever believed I had any. I was disgusted with myself as surely the whole world was now viewing my disgusting life in its entire, faked existence.

"John?"

A woman's voice called out to me. But it had direction. Not like the other sounds I had been plagued with. This one was coming from somewhere. In front of me. I lifted my eyes into the light. I heard that old joke in my head. "Don't go towards the light, John." It made me smile.

I wondered if that was how your mind flashed back through your life just before death. Not pictures so much as memories. I could see a smiling, satisfied face clearly in my mind as the eyes of the creature bored into my head.

"John. You all right?" The woman's voice again. Familiar. Far away. A long ways behind the light.

I tried to see through the blinding stare of the creature that called my name. My legs were shaking and my adrenaline was pumping full force. I could not have run if I wanted to. It was taking everything in me to keep my bowels from voiding. I was determined not to embarrass myself further.

"John! What's the matter?"

The voice was more adamant. Why did it not attack? Why call my name? The words seemed familiar in a strange context. The voice seemed familiar but out of place on the monster. Why was I still alive? Was the creature toying with me? My mind was racing but going nowhere. I thought that now would be a good time to jump. My mind had strayed to the many times I had jumped into my bed to keep whoever lived under it from grabbing my feet. I was losing it. Tears were coming now. I could not stop them. I tried to stand firm but I was reduced to a sniveling blob of jelly and I slid down on the road to prove it.

"John! John!" A sound of smaller crunching and pulverizing.

So it would start. I would maybe feel it. Maybe not. I was not sure of anything at that moment. I could not think. I could only fear. Fear was my life right then.

It touched me. I fainted. Mercy was with me.

I awoke in the hospital. I know it was a hospital because everything was white. Nobody decorated in white any more except hospitals and rental properties. There was no reason for me to be in a rental property with beeping machines around me. Hence, my opinion I was in a hospital.

Slowly, I did an inventory of my body by moving each part in succession. All accounted for and present. I had survived my dream and somehow made it to a hospital. I tried to remember but there was no memory to access. Or that link had been erased in my mind.

It was quiet. Not like my dream. Normal quiet. There were sounds. Beeping from machines. A phone ringing far away. The sound of a windy day beating against the window. The noise of a heater fan circulating air.

It was daylight, too. The sun was streaming in through a parted, lacy curtain, also white. There was a TV mounted up in one corner of the room and a large. Wooden door off to my left.

I was alive. I was in a hospital but had no idea how I got there. The dream. The creature. They came roaring back to me and I cringed even though I was safely in a bed inside a hospital room with plenty of light around me. I immediately felt embarrassed. A grown man afraid of his own nightmare.

Still, I was in a hospital. How did that happen?

"Hello, there," The voice sounded happy to see me awake.

I turned toward the voice and saw a nurse in a white smock with little colored chickens on it approaching. Nurses were good. Nurses were safe. I felt safe immediately. The creature from my dream was chased away by her presence. Reality always triumphed over dreams. I breathed a sigh of relief as she neared.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

"Than what?" I managed with a crusty screech from a very dry throat. I remembered the dryness in my dream.

"Better than you were two days ago." She said it like it was a matter of fact. No cause for concern. Something she dealt with all the time.

"Two days?" It was the only thing my mind would latch onto. Two days? Since when? Starting when?

"Almost," she laughed. "Brought you in about three in the morning. This is the second sunrise since then. Two days."

"Who brought me in?"

"Police."

"Police?"

"That's right, Sweetie."

She set about taking my pulse and all those other things nurses do.

"She's been back several times, too, to check on you."

The nurse leaned closer and gave me a conspiratorial wink and said, "I think she kind of likes you a little bit."

"She who?" My mind was spinning again. Hospital. Police. She. What happened? Was I in an accident?

"Was I in an accident?" I did not know what else to ask. I was grabbing at anything to make sense of my situation.

"We don't know, Sweetie." She pulled my arm out and wrapped one of those blood pressure bands around it. "Just found you wandering out in the woods the way I heard it. You were covered with blood and smelled like you had been rolling in road kill. Couldn't find any drugs in your system, though."

"Drugs?"

"Why else would you be out in the middle of the night, roaming the woods, blathering like an idiot about some creature coming to kill you?"

"Blood? My blood?" I resumed a frantic search of my visible body parts for signs of injury. I must have missed it.

"Not that we could tell, Hon." She was pumping air into the collar around my arm.

I was embarrassed. Apparently I had told my dream, or part of it, to someone. I could see how my dream would draw attention to myself and cause people to think drugs. It kind of tickled my funny bone a little. My dream must have been something for them to hear. Now everyone in town was thinking the new guy is doing crazy drugs out there in the woods. As Ricky Ricardo often told Lucy, I had some big 'splaining to do.

But blood? Where had the blood come from? Who or what had the blood come from? My head was spinning. Too much mental activity just after waking up. Or maybe there really was something wrong with me. Drugs? I didn't do any drugs. I barely ever took an aspirin.

The nurse finished her tasks and left me alone with a friendly smile and an admonition to just rest and let nature take its course. I laid back on the stiff hospital pillow but rest was the last thing I could command my mind to do. If my mind had been a race car it was doing a hundred miles an hour on an oval track trying to figure out all the turns.

An hour later Kathy came by. When I saw her I put two and two together. The nurse said a cop had brought me in and then she had come back by to check on me. Kathy. Well, at least something was making sense. A puzzle piece placed. I was slightly embarrassed I had not put it together before she came in. Too many factors and variables for my mind to travel the logical path. Too many irrational fears filling my mind.

She looked great. Not just her beauty, although she was something of a sight dressed in her civilian jeans and t-shirt. There was just something about her that made me realize that the real world, the world where she was, was where I was too. She drew me into her world like a flame beckoning a moth. And I would go willingly.

"How you feeling, John?" She seemed genuinely interested. Almost a worried concern written in her face.

"Okay."

I was not sure how to answer that. I didn't know what had gotten me here yet so I was not sure what answer made it sound like I was okay now. I just know I wanted to sound okay.

"You scared me pretty good out there," she told me and her hand squeezed mine like we had been touching all our lives. It felt good. Right, somehow. I wondered if she had been holding my hand while I was out for two days.

I gave her a quizzical look. She removed her hand and stepped back. I shook my head slowly and gently, like I was trying to clear my mind somehow. I was sorry she had taken her hand away. I liked it.

"What?" she asked.

I looked down at the space between her hand and mine like she was.

"Not that," I reached out but she was too far away for me to reach her now. But I could see she understood my gesture.

"Then what?" She stood still, watching me. Assessing.

"What happened?"

"Don't you remember?" She moved closer. She kept her hand to herself.

"Not really. I remember going to sleep while reading and waking up in a dream that was all about darkness and silence and rotting carcasses. Then some bright lights came to kill me and the next thing I remember is waking up in here."

"Well, you weren't dreaming when I saw you. You were standing in the road as I came over the hill. I had to slam on my brakes to keep from hitting you. When I called out to you, you just stood there and acted like you couldn't hear me. Then all of a sudden you collapsed on the road. I tried to lift you into the car but I couldn't do it. I called for back up and they helped get you into the car. You were covered in blood and I thought you were somehow injured. You smelled awful and were acting strange, not responding to questions and such. Just babbling about monsters and strangers and bad smells. We thought maybe something had happened. You know, poisoning or something."

"You mean drugs?" I tried to smile.

"Well, yeah. That's an option, too." She gave me one of her best smiles. If she was interested in me like the nurse and I believed, Kathy was probably very glad to hear that my drug tests had come back negative. I returned her smile.

"What happened?" She still wanted to know.

"I don't know. One minute I was sleeping comfortably in my chair. The next I'm in a dream trying to find my way through the woods."

"You sure it was a dream? Maybe it was an hallucination," she suggested.

"Maybe. I never had one before, though."

She laughed and wrapped her warm fingers around my hand again. It felt so good to be in contact with her. Like we were together and belonging. I felt ten times better now. Dream or no dream. Like things were right again. I had met very few people that made me feel like their presence was making my life better. This woman was one of them.

"Leave it to us to get a new member of our community and he turns out to be full of surprises."

"That's not the kind of surprise I like, though," I admitted.

"What kind do you like?" She was beaming with happiness and enthusiasm. What a smile. I could imagine myself perfectly content to gaze a that smile the rest of my life. I was fully conscious of where my mind was taking me.

I grabbed her hand with my other hand, the one with tubes still attached. She looked down at my gesture. I smiled up at her.

"I like the kind where you agree to go to dinner with me."

"That's not a surprise." She laughed at me. I started to feel rejected. "That's a done deal." She laughed again. "Whole town's been talking talking about it. Seems my radio call for help sounded like I was too involved to be rational to a lot of them. People put two and two together and come up with whatever they want to all the time. We're no different here in this town."

"Will you?" I asked again.

"Sure. Long as we can go somewhere out of town. Enough people in our business already."

I laughed and nodded my head affirmatively. We had business – together. That was better than a vitamin shot during flu season.

"Besides, we've got to figure out what you were doing out there on that road. And where did all that blood come from. It wasn't yours. Doc says you're all whole. No cuts. Nothing."

"I thought I was dying."

I let the thought out. I had been hiding it in the back of my head. Scared of it. I felt she deserved to know whatever I knew. She had found me. She was involved. Or maybe I just wanted to make sure she was.

"What?" Her surprise was expected.

"I thought something was coming for me. To kill me. I smelled something dead in the woods. I think I touched it, or fell on it or something. I thought I was going to die, too."

"Maybe that's where the blood came from. That explains the funky smell on you, too. But how'd you get out there in the first place? Sleepwalking?"

"Never did it before." I answered her.

"First time for everything," she quipped. "Starting a new business is stressful. Maybe all that stress is causing you to sleepwalk."

I remembered thinking that my dream was all about my campground. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was stressing out too much. It was possible. I shook my head. I didn't know. It bothered me that I didn't know. If the dream was all about the campground and the stress I was feeling, then what part did that awful wailing play? Where did it fit in? Maybe a subconscious part of me was screaming to get out or something.

"I don't know what happened. I am glad you were there to rescue me, though."

"I did, didn't I?" She smiled more to herself than me.

"Did what?"

"Rescued you." She looked pleased with herself. Like she had not thought about it before.

"My rescuer." I breathed it out as a sigh of relief.

Kathy leaned down and hugged me. Her perfume wafted around me and her warm skin felt good against my face. It was an unexpected piece of heaven at a time when I needed a little bit, too. Before she lifted back up she whispered in my ear.

"That's not the only service I can perform for you."

She stood back up and squeezed my hand. Her eyes told me that she was serious. Fun loving, yes. But serious about life and her relationships. She had chosen me to protect. She had chosen me. And I was going to choose her. I knew it now. It was not some wishful thinking. It was a full on desire that I had to quench. That I would quench. An unexplainable joining of two souls over an insignificant meeting, but unmistakably real. And solidly joined. A miracle, to be sure. But my miracle all the same.

As she held my hand I wanted to pull her down to me and kiss her. I wanted to show her that everything in me was just as protective of her. I don't know why but I felt that I had to protect her. She had rescued me in my time of need. I determined in my heart right then that I would always be there for her. I had to be. I felt it was my destiny. All of life had worked its ways to get me to this point. And now I was going to reach out and grab the golden ring. Kathy was my golden ring.

All of my life I had been working to get to this one place. I had arrived.

Chapter Five

The next day the doctor released me and I said good bye to my nurses. Kathy came by to give me a ride home. The nurses got a kick out of that. She wasn't in her police cruiser. She had her personal vehicle. A Jeep. She said, if I was well enough to leave the hospital, I should be well enough to climb up into her Jeep. I passed the test. She drove me home to my camper.

She helped me inside and told me she had asked the guys not to come to work until Monday. That gave me another weekend to rest. I thanked her for her help and suggested she didn't have to go to all that trouble. She said it was no trouble and then she kissed me. A long, full kiss. Like in the movies. Not just for dramatics sake, but to release a passion that had been flirting with breaking the surface. I returned her kiss with the same passion and desire and she responded by holding me all the tighter.

Nothing. Nothing had ever felt so good in my entire life. If my life ended at that exact moment, I would go to heaven feeling I had done everything in life worth doing. Love had sprung. It had exploded. And we tore at each others clothes like teenagers in the back seat of a car, parked in the dark along some deserted lane. She matched my fervor move for move. We were already one in thought before we became one in body.

Kathy stayed that night and took the next day off to spend it with me. We stayed in the camper. Sometimes we talked about my episode. Little by little I shared every detail I could remember about it. I left out the previous encounters with the strange figure, my ghost. She seemed intensely interested in helping me decipher what was going on in my head. But she always suggested a little energy releasing recreation in between our talks, which I was totally in favor of.

Premarital sex might not get me closer to God but it sure brought us closer to each other. Not just in body. Our talks grew out of our shared moments of blissful coupling. We were sharing everything about our lives with each other and compacting years of getting to know each other into a couple days. It had started in the hospital. We were taking it to its logical conclusion now that we were alone. She wanted it. I wanted it. We wanted each other. Wholly and fully. Forever. We didn't say it. We just knew.

Unexpected. A new life. I never expected to be including someone else in my life this soon. I thought it would take more time. More practice. But here she was. A woman who not only captured my attention but also wanted me to capture hers. Mutual.

Sunday morning we awoke in each others arms. I was definitely feeling like I was in some happily ever after storybook. But I didn't care. She was here with me and that was all that mattered at the moment. I could not imagine moving on with my life in any way that did not include her. It was like she had become part of me overnight and now I could not believe in any existence that did not have her by my side.

I had heard of love at first sight but never placed much stock in it. And this was not that. It was more like we had come to a particular crossroads in life at the same juncture of time and then decided to travel onward together. She wanted to go the same direction I was going and I wanted to go with her. It was not magic but choice. Suddenly I wanted my choice and her choice to be the same. And it was.

We had breakfast, some eggs and toast. She was a pretty good cook. Not just anyone can cook an egg over easy without breaking the yolk. I thought mom would approve of that. My mom judged women according to age old guidelines that included being able to cook a good meal for her man.

After breakfast we ventured out of the camper for the first time in two days. I wanted to see the area where she found me. Actually, I wanted to find the dead thing in the woods I thought I had fallen on. It had to go. I said nothing to her about it and just suggested a walk and maybe seeing where she had found me. She thought it might help if I returned to the scene, too.

We walked out past the worker's campers and topped a rise beyond. At the top she pointed down the road and said I was standing in the middle of the road about halfway down the hill. I remembered again my mother's warning to never stand in the road. When we arrived at the spot, Kathy pointed back up the hill and explained that she barely got her car stopped when she came over the hill. She had driven in to my camper but the door was wide open with the light on and I had not answered when she called out and sounded her horn. That was why she was proceeding further into the campground where she came upon me in the roadway.

I thought back to that night and the lights coming over the hill toward me. A shiver grew up my spine and I could not shake the feeling that more than just a car had been approaching. Somehow Kathy had scared off what was initially coming for me. I knew it but I could not share it. It was unreasonable. It seemed silly in the light of day. But the sunlight did nothing to change how sure I was that I was supposed to die that night. I could sense the displeasure of the campground around me. Its plans had somehow been diverted. I don't know why. There is nothing solid to hang my knowledge on. I just know that somehow, Kathy managed to change what was supposed to happen that night. Her being there changed something.

I recalled what details I could of my dream and checked my position. Kathy watched me as I went through the motions of rebuilding the events from that night. It was five days ago but the adrenaline trying to spurt through my veins was reminding me how close it really was. This was the place of my dream. But it was not a dream. I had actually been here. That meant...

Something dead was just off to my right somewhere. That was the way I had come in my dream. I stepped off the road and headed into the woods. Kathy followed. Something in me wanted to ask her to stay behind but I could not justify it to my own sense of logic. I continued on about the number of steps I remembered taking in my dream. I couldn't tell anyone what I had for supper that night but I remembered how many steps I had taken in the woods in a dream.

I arrived at the place where I remembered falling on the whatever it was. The stench of decaying flesh was overwhelming in the closed in confines of the trees and undergrowth around us. We both looked at each other and wrinkled our noses at the stink that assailed our olfactory senses.

I rounded a tree and found the source of the smell. Immediately my head started to reel. I felt like my knees were going out from under me and wondered if I was going to wake up in a hospital again. Kathy's gasp as she joined me drew me back to reality and a sense that I needed to regain my composure to protect her from the grizzly sight before us. I fought back to gain a grip on my own sense of reality and forced my mind to focus. Not on the ground but on Kathy. I would not leave her out here alone with that...that...whatever it was.

We grabbed at each other and made our way back to the road. We didn't speak. We just walked. Fast and away. Distance was what felt right. Every step further away felt better and better. She shared my feeling and we helped each other get further away. It was a need that welled up from the deepest recesses of our psyches. The living did not want to be around death. We were living out that need.

We had to walk to the front office to get to a phone. Neither of us had cell phones and my only phone was there. Kathy made the call. She talked to whoever it was she had called and gave them the pertinent information. Then she hung up the phone. She turned to me.

Silence felt awkward and deathly but it also felt necessary, somehow.

"I wonder who it was?"

Her words hung in the air as we both stared at each other.

For two days the detectives from the Sheriff's Department grilled us over and over about the events leading up to the discovery. They did not suspect us of any wrong doing. Yet. They were confused by my story and how all these events led up to finding a dead body in the woods. They were looking for details I could not give them and finding my story hard to believe. Join the club.

After telling it so many times I was finding it hard to believe myself. Kathy and I discussed it at length and came to believe amongst ourselves that something strange was happening but we had no idea what it was. I was impressed that she handled the uncertain aspects of my mysterious story so easily. A week ago I would have run screaming into the night to get away from anyone spouting such drivel. But, whatever was happening, it was messing up our ability to get on with our lives. We needed to solve this. I needed to know. Still, I could not believe Kathy was not running away as hard and fast as she could. She kept telling me she was in this for the long haul. We barely knew each other but we knew one thing. This was not going to defeat us. As much as we both wanted to be together and figure out where our relationship would go, we also refused to be deterred by this strange situation. Our combined passions for each other and not being thwarted by circumstances held us together in a bond that was half love, half mystery and all youthful stubbornness.

Day three of the investigation was a day of interesting and traumatic events. In the morning the two detectives came back with an identification of the body I had fallen on. They wanted to know if I had ever heard of the child. Of course, I had not.

He was a thirteen year old missing boy. He had been missing for three months. He had been dead for about a week. He had died from exsanguination. His blood had leaked out until he had died. It had been murder. A long, slow, painful torture that had ended with his throat being cut among other things.

Someone had been murdered on my property. Or at least dumped there after being murdered.

The thought chilled me. Not just that someone had been murdered on my property but that someone else was murdering on my property. A murderer. A killer. On my property. And somehow they were drawing me into their atmosphere of death. I could feel it. It was not just a murder. It was something more. That figure I had been trying so hard to get out of my mind had something to do with the murder. It was pulling me in. Maybe the campground was not trying to kill me. Maybe it was drawing me into its secret. Whatever that was. My sense of logic was failing me. Nothing was making sense any more.

Day four, the two detectives searching for answers, were back. Kathy had gone back to work. I had called the guys who worked for me and told them work was postponed until the police finished their investigation. Their responses made me wonder if any of them would be back.

The questioning this time dealt with the dirty sock and old shoe I had found on my deck. They questioned me several times about how the items got there. They asked me over and over if I had ever seen them before or knew who they belonged to. They came at me from so many angles that I was beginning to understand how good a person had to be to stand up under interrogation and not spill the beans. I was not so sure I would make a good spy. Patience was not my virtue.

They left without telling me why they were questioning me about the items on my deck. I asked but they avoided the question with more questions of their own. "We are asking the questions," was their predominant answer.

Kathy swung by after work and told me why. The old sock and shoe were encrusted with dried blood. Neither sample matched the other and neither of them matched the dead boy we had discovered. My logic kicked in. Two new blood traces. A second and third possible dead body. An unmistakable chain of evidence leading to three bleeding victims with at least one of them dead. Evidence found in my trash can and a story that defied plausibility as my explanation. They had questioned my workers who told them I was very adamant about knowing when they came and went. Like maybe I was hiding something I did not want them to see or discover.

If I was a cop, I would arrest me.

"Why have they not arrested me, yet?" I asked her.

"No proof?

"Well, in that case I will stay free. Can't find proof where there is none."

"Don't be so sure," Kathy smiled worriedly. "Circumstantial evidence has a way of bending to whatever story or scenario the investigator uses."

"But I am innocent."

"Of course you are. But innocence does not mean evidence can not point at you. As long as it does and there is no better scenario available, then the obvious conclusion is they have the right guy."

"Me?"

"Stranger things have happened."

"Thanks for cheering me up," I tried to laugh but it came out more like a strangled giggle.

"Look," she pulled me closer. We had not known each other long enough for any closeness to be old, familiar ground. I immediately felt a stirring at being so close. "The best way to prove your innocence is to get to the bottom of this."

"How?" She always smelled so good.

"With my help." She smiled one of her good smiles.

"Thanks." I meant it.

She snuggled up close to me and nuzzled her face up under my chin.

"I'm off tonight," she offered.

"And I don't want to be alone." I smiled down at her.

"A match made in heaven." She spoke for both of us.

It was four in the morning according to the clock on the shelf in the living room area. I had heard a sound outside. It woke me up or at least got my attention if I was not quite asleep. I could not be sure. I had been dozing in and out of sleep, not really sleeping. I had spent an hour watching Kathy sleep, envying her for her peace and thankful that my unrest was not affecting her.

I checked the windows. Nothing in the darkness. The sound did not repeat itself, whatever it had been. I was not sure what I had heard, only that it was not part of the normal nighttime sounds of my campground.

My campground. Seemed a hollow phrasing, now. Obviously it was someone else dumping ground or killing ground first. I was struggling with the three month thing about the boy who was missing three months. Dead a week. Was he here for the entire three months? Or had he been dumped here after the killing?

My head still swooned with the idea that there was a dead body on my land. What if they found more dead bodies? What if my land has been a dumping ground for a serial killer or something? Wild thoughts raced through my head as I looked out my windows. No logic or real reasoning. Worst case scenarios maybe. Definitely the strangest scenarios my mind could conjure up. Briefly I wondered if my mind was really conjuring up strange ideas or had I read about them somewhere. I wondered if I was capable of having such forbidden and destructive thoughts about murdered people or had they been planted in me by something I had come into contact with. Then I thought about the strange figure I had been in contact with. Had he planted something in my mind? Was he the one who planted the dead boy in my woods?

A clicking, scraping sound flashed quickly through the relative silence of the night. That was it! That was the noise I had heard. It had gotten my attention and pulled me to full wakefulness. I listened without moving. I could not discern the direction of the sound. It had been too brief. I was not as focused then as I was now.

Clicking, clacking, scraping, grinding, clicking.

There it was again. Loud but quite a distance away. The worker's campers, I assessed.

I looked in on Kathy sleeping soundly and began to dress. I was quiet. Part of me wanted her to wake and stop me, or go with me. Part of me wanted to keep her as far away from whatever was happening as possible. She did not even stir as I finished dressing, grabbed my coat and headed for the door.

Silently I turned the knob and unlatched the door. Out side, I was just as careful latching and locking the door in silence. The cold, darkness surrounded me. I regretted not turning on the outside light but was comforted when my flashlight with its new batteries and bulb sent a beam of bright light across the campground landscape. A bright light to scare off the darkness. At least I hoped it would. I hoped it scared off other things too.

I tramped down the steps and up the road towards the place I assumed the sound had come from. The gravel crunched beneath my feet. My steps felt quick and purposeful. My breathing was regular and smooth. My heartbeat was normal. I felt good. Physically, I was happy with my approach to this fear that had gripped me. Emotionally the jury was still out on whether or not I was handling anything.

I topped the rise and stared down the length of my flashlight beam to the campers beyond where we had been digging. I played the light back and forth a couple times seeing nothing out of the ordinary. Then the beam landed on a dark figure at the left of the campers and against the blackness of the woods close by. Not a form really. A flash of darkness, if such a thing can exist. There one second and then moving away the next. Not disintegrating but actually moving with direction. Into the woods.

I followed the figure with my light but he disappeared into the woods all the same. The darkness beyond the roadway swallowed up the light and returned nothing but more blackness. As quickly as I had seen something, it was gone.

Steeling myself for what I knew was not going to be one of my better choices in life, I walked the trail of the flashlight beam down the hill to the very spot I had seen the figure only moments before. There was nothing. No sign of anyone having been there. Like before, no footprints. Nothing.

I shone the light into the trees. A few feet and then deep blackness. Even the tree trunks became blackness inside the woods off the roadway. I was lamenting the fact that it was not day. Daylight would have made a search of the woods easy. The darkness, on the other hand, made finding anyone in there almost impossible. And if they did not want to be found the darkness was the perfect ally. I could not even find the flashlight beam after a few feet.

Then an anger boiled up from some deep place in me where I had never been before. Born of injustice and bred of deep resentment of those who tried to manipulate others, I suddenly knew a crushing truth. No one was going to take this land from me. No one. Not even a dark figure that I could not even describe, let alone identify. This was my campground. And it was going to become a campground, too. No one or no thing was going to stop me. God help whoever or whatever got in my way.

"John!" I heard Kathy yelling my name. Sounded like she was back at the camper still.

"John!" Louder. More worried.

I figured I had about five minutes before she got dressed and came running or driving over that hill. Five minutes to solve this thing. That figure, he had the answers. The answers I needed. The answers Kathy would want. The answers that made the police know that I had not killed anyone.

"John?" It was almost like a question. A plea maybe.

I turned and trudged back over the slight hill of the roadway toward the camper. Kathy had gone back inside. Dressing, I assumed. I made my way hurriedly back to the camper, checking the trail behind me every so often as I walked.

Stepping up on the first step to the deck, I noticed a shovel leaning against the deck. I was pretty sure it was not there when I came out. I had followed the figure away from the camper. So, who had put the shovel against the deck? Why?

I picked it up. The blade was still damp with clinging dirt. More muddy sand than actual dirt. Nothing any decent farmer would try to plant in. The same clinging, damp mixture of leafy debris and sandy mud the boys and I had been digging through for months, now. Unmistakable. Someone had just recently been digging in the dirt around here.

I opened the camper door and stepped in.

"Were you just digging outside?" I asked Kathy.

"Digging?" She looked up from tucking her shirt into her jeans. She already had her shoes on.

""Yeah, there is a shovel against the deck with wet dirt on the blade."

"Wet dirt?" She was not following my train of thought.

She finished tucking in her shirt despite my arrival. Once started. She stared at me like she had forgotten what she was doing.

"You went outside to get a shovel?" She asked.

"No." I laughed. She gave me her, it's-too-early look. I was glad to recognize it. I had never had anyone since my mom who gave me looks I could recognize. It meant we were getting closer. I wanted that. I found I really needed that. As much as I tried to tell myself I needed my alone time, I was a product of my raising. I had never been alone before. Mom was right. It is not good for man to be alone. Alone is a compromise with circumstance. If I have no one, then I convince myself that I must need no one.

"Where'd you go?"

"I heard a noise and went out to see what was up." I debated telling her, a police officer, that I saw someone down by the worker's campers.

"Find anything?" She asked.

Easy question to sidestep. She didn't ask if I saw anything. The word FIND denotes seeing something I could touch. I was being as literal as I could without lying. I did not want her to leave. I did not want her to call the police.

"Didn't find anything." I chose my words carefully. "Except that shovel leaning against the deck when I got back."

"Shovel?" Her words sounded like before, but her eyes were brighter this time.

"Against the deck as you climb the steps."

"I was just out there. I don't remember a shovel. I must really be groggy with sleep."

She went to the door and poked her head out to see the shovel. She pulled her head back in and closed the door.

"No way." She shook her head at me.

"What?" I smiled.

"No way that shovel was right there when I was outside. I stood right there and looked up over the hill yelling for you. There is no way I do that and not notice a shovel handle in my face." She was adamant and shaking her head, too.

I smiled. She looked at me.

"You put that shovel there?"

"Why would I do that?" Surely she didn't believe I would do that.

"I'm telling you. That shovel was not there. I might have been half asleep yelling for you in the dark, but I am not nuts. A shovel handle sticking up in my face would have been annoying as well as out of place. Remember? I am the one always teasing you about how all your tools are always in their places after a days work?"

She was right. She had teased me many times about my almost obsessional need to put the tools in their storage places after each day's work. When she did find something out of place, once, she made a big deal out of how I had missed one. A shovel leaning against the deck would have been like a red cape to a bull. She being the bull.

"Where'd it come from?" I asked no one in particular.

"Careful." She moved to my side and wrapped her arms around my waist pulling me close for warmth as much as protection. Opening the door had let a lot of cold in. The little heater would need a few minutes to catch back up.

"Careful?" I asked, kissing the top of her head affectionately.

"Yeah. When you ask a question like that knowing I do not know the answer, you ought to be careful you're not inviting someone else around here to answer it." She giggled, making fun of my ghostly form in the darkness.

I thought again of the black shadowy figure I had been following just a few minutes ago.

"We're the only ones out here," I tried to sound certain. I think it came out more like a question.

"As Sherlock Homes would say, That is a question that is entirely still within the confines of the unanswered, seeing as how a shovel has moved and the two people known to be here did not touch it."

I feared she was making sense. Worse, I feared the timing because I believed her when she said the shovel was not there when she was outside. That left only a couple of minutes between her being on the deck and my coming back to the camper for someone to have put it there.

"Given the timing of the event," she continued in her best Sherlock Homes impersonation. "If the shovel was not there when you descended the deck and made your nocturnal visit to inspect things down by the worker's campers, and the thing was not present when moments later I stood practically on top of it, yet it was surely in its present placement by the time that you returned from your inspection walk, it can only be assumed that whoever moved the shovel there did so in the span of only a few brief minutes between my being on the deck and your returning to it."

She summed up the situation in as long winded an explanation as I had ever heard.

I stretched and yawned in mock animation of someone waking up.

"You finally get through that explanation?" I joked. "I was," fake yawn, "about to go to sleep trying to follow you, there detective."

She punched me in the side good naturedly.

"The point is," She returned to her own voice and demeanor. "Whoever did this had to have been out there watching me on the deck when I was out there."

That thought sent a shiver through our backbones that had nothing to do with the cold. She was right. It was not just about me having a visitor or, as I now was thinking, maybe more than one. It was about our safety. Her safety. What if the person out there had attacked her with that shovel? Maybe she needed to know.

"I thought I saw a shadow down by the worker's campers."

She looked at me with a suspicious gleam in her eye.

"Thought you said you didn't find anything?" Her question was more an accusation.

My not lying was more like a lie when she said it than when I said it. Funny how that works.

"I didn't." I knew I was on thin ice. "I thought I saw a shadow." I hedged.

"Thought?" She was in full interrogation mode. Damn police training.

"I saw something." I admitted. "Everything I see now becomes a shadowy figure in the dark." I tried to reason away my sighting.

"Down by the worker's campers?" She searched for details.

"Yes."

"Just before I called you? When?"

"Just before you yelled."

"So, whoever put that shovel there could not have been whoever you saw out there?" She was not asking me to answer her.

"There has to be two people out here." She looked questioningly at me, defying me to come to a different conclusion. I could not.

"Or two somethings," I added.

Whatever, whoever it was, the reasoning was clear. It was the motive that was still murky. A sock. A shoe. Now a shovel. What was going on?

Chapter Six

Detective Mercer arrived early Thursday morning. He was the second detective from the Sheriff's Department to question us. We never saw the first one after his first round of questions at the hospital. They gave us no explanation. Mercer had been assigned. He had been back several times.

He was an older detective than the first. His hair was graying at the temples and he kept it cut short, close to his head. His suit, while tasteful and well fitting was not an expensive one. He was a simple man with simple tastes doing a distasteful job. He was about an inch taller than my own five feet eleven and he looked to be in good physical form. He definitely did not have the usual paunch of the other gentlemen his age around town. Detective Mercer was a man who cared about how he looked.

He arrived unannounced like he was gong to catch us digging some new graves for bodies. I was walking along the road where I had seen the figure the night before. I was looking into the woods, trying to decide whether I wanted to investigate or not. Well, I did. But I am not exactly the initiator type. Kathy would have been in there in a minute. That was the only reason I was even considering it. If not for her, I would be happy to leave this whole thing up to the police. Except it was my land.

Even in the bright light of day, I was not thrilled about whatever might be going on in the woods around me. Maybe a killer was hiding in there. Maybe something worse. I was okay with confronting a killer. I believed things would work out for the best in the natural world. It was that nagging suspicion that this was not something natural we were dealing with here.

Detective Mercer was never rude. But he was never overly polite, either. A job borne of too many contacts with the wrong elements of society and not enough practice working with the good people, like myself and Kathy.

He did not bring happy news. That was how he greeted us.

"I've not got good news for you." He shook my hand out of obligation rather than friendly greeting.

Kathy gave me one of her frowns that said this was a guy who chose to be just what he was, official and somewhat officious.

"I've got a team of forensic specialists coming out to go through your woods."

"What for?" I asked innocently.

"Why? Afraid we'll find something?"

"No." I answered immediately. "I've got nothing to hide."

"Good." He was still eying me suspiciously.

Kathy always said she thought he just looked mean that way to discourage people from lying to him. Well, I was not lying. Maybe I was not revealing my suspicions about things outside of the natural, but that was because I did not want to be labeled crazy. Besides, why say something I do not know for sure. He's the detective. I just tell him what I know. He does the rest. Whatever that may be.

The forensics team scoured the woods for two hours before the yelling started. Someone had found something of interest and everyone else was apparently agreeing with them. We chose not to tell them about the shovel being leaned against the deck last night, waiting to see what transpired. I was still hoping I was dealing with a simple homeless guy problem. But I was also starting to admit to myself that something seemed really strange about the dealings from the woods. Too strange for me to just go on without some answers myself.

"What do you think they found?" Kathy asked me.

"Not a clue," I was honest. I had no idea what made forensic people get excited.

"There's a lot of yelling out there." Kathy observed.

"Maybe another body," I conjectured.

"Why would you say that?"

I pointed to the detective walking quickly down the road toward us. He was signaling the officer who stayed with us to do something off to his left. The officer moved from his post next to my deck and stood between us and the vehicles.

"We're going to have to talk some more," Detective Mercer was smiling now. That could not mean anything good for me.

As he neared the deck, he waved to the officer again.

"Handcuff him." The detective directed the officer.

"You have the right to remain silent..."

I didn't hear any more. I was trying to figure out what was wrong. Kathy was trying to maintain her composure. I could see her struggling with the fact they were arresting me and the fact she was an officer of the law. There was nothing she could do. She worked for the local police. This was in the hands of the County Sheriff, now. I was in the hands of the Sheriff.

"Don't worry," Kathy instructed me. "We'll figure this out."

I already had it figured out. I was being arrested and hauled off to jail. I had done nothing wrong and I was going to jail.

"This ain't right," Kathy protested.

"Please stay out of this, Ma'am," I heard the detective tell her.

"The hell I will," Kathy made her intentions known while backpedaling to ensure she showed them no aggression, staying out of their way. "I will use every channel and avenue I can find to get this straightened out. You've got no reason to be arresting him. He has not done anything."

"When word gets out what we found out there in his woods, he will most likely need our protection from the local citizenry, Ma'am. I'm doing him a favor by locking him up." The detective explained to her as he helped the officer load me in the back of his cruiser.

Kathy was still talking to the detective as the cruiser started up and drove me away.

"You're not under arrest, any more" Detective Mercer was joined by another man.

I was sitting in a stark, cold room with a metal table with two chairs on each side of it. There was a window/mirror in one wall but the others were solid, white slabs of barrier to the outside world. I had no idea if anyone was on the other side of the mirror viewing my not-under-arrest questioning. A very functional room without being appealing in the least. The metal chair I was sitting in was very uncomfortable.

"This is special Agent in Charge, Hunter." Mercer introduced the man.

Hunter was an FBI agent. His suit said so. His demeanor and haircut and the sunglasses sticking out of his shirt looked like life imitating TV. Agent Hunter had seen too many TV shows when he was younger. He was younger than Mercer by about fifteen years unless I missed my guess. The fact the FBI was here probably meant something but I would have to wait for them to explain it to me.

It was about five o'clock in the evening. I had already had one meal here at the station. I was not looking forward to another. I was not under arrest, they had not booked me, but I was not free to get up and leave either. The uniformed officer standing by the door was testimony to that fact. He never said anything, he just watched me.

"If I am not under arrest, then why am I still here?" I asked innocently enough.

"Sorry. We will be the ones asking the questions here."

The Agent needed to work on his voice inflection. He didn't sound sorry at all. Robotic responses rarely do. Nor do they inspire confidence in my ability to discern his agenda. Without which, I am hardly able to feel comfortable answering any questions. Unless I know what they want, I am unable to give it to them. Maybe they relied on that. Maybe I was being paranoid because I knew I was withholding information about the strange figure. The ghost or whatever. Maybe I felt like they could see through me and knew I was lying about something.

Damn! I was getting paranoid with all these people staring at me all the time. And who was kidding who? There were no maybes here. They were talking to me because they felt like there was something I was not telling them. They were trained to sniff things like that out. But I could not let them in on my secret. Not yet. Not until I knew what I was talking about.

Then the agent spoke.

"I don't mean to sound calloused or hard but what we have here is serious enough to drain the humor out of any situation. Excuse me for coming off too brusque." He smiled at me and offered a hand to shake.

I shook it.

"I do not count you as a suspect," he apprised me.

"Then why am I here?"

There was a long pause and both men looked uneasily at each other. When they looked back to me I saw the FBI agent nod slightly to the detective.

We have a problem," Detective Mercer stated it flatly.

FBI nodded.

How much do you know about the land you are living on?" Mercer asked.

"Not much," I admitted. "Just what the realtor told me when I bought the place."

"Do you know about the murder that took place on the property?" FBI guy.

"The realtor mentioned someone had died on the property and made it a bad place to the locals, which is why I got it cheap."

The two men smiled at each other.

"It was a murder," Detective Mercer told me.

"Okay. I still do not see what that has to do with me. It was a long time before I got here."

"True." Agent Hunter nodded. "That's the main reason you are not a suspect. You would have been a child then. What do you know about the man who committed the murder?"

"Didn't know it was a murder. I thought someone dying on the property meant that an old person had passed away, jinxing the place for locals. The realtor left out the part about it being a murder."

I tried to sound put out about it but it actually made no difference to me, still. The place was mine, pure and simple. I was developing it as a campground and nothing was going to stop me. In my mind I even thought a murder on the property might generate ghost stories which was always good for business in a place where people came to stay from far away.

"It's a little more complicated than that." Detective Mercer sounded serious.

"I am the National Agent in Charge of a task group whose job it is to track down serial killers and bring them to justice."

I nodded. Good to know. So what? I didn't say what I was thinking.

"Do you know the name of the man believed to have committed the killing on your property?" The agent asked.

"No."

I was honest. Until a minute ago I had no idea there was a murder. It was a trick question, I was sure. Still trying to catch me knowing more than I should and implicating myself in something.

"His name was Berger. Thomas Berger. He spent most of his life here in town and lived what most considered a normal life. Until a child turned up dead. Later, young children started going missing around the county. A massive effort was put into stopping this trend of missing children. Nine in less than a year. That in itself was very disturbing to my group, who became involved after the second child went missing."

"Why is that?" I felt stupid just sitting there.

"The normal course of a serial killer is to start slowly with a desire to feed an abnormal hunger every great once in a while. To have so many abductions and presumed deaths so close together pointed to a killer who had been killing for a long time and was just now coming to our attention."

I nodded. Somehow the FBI felt they were behind the curve on this case back then.

"I was not part of the original task group," The agent told me. I had already figured that out. Too young.

"But I was," Detective Mercer announced. "I was there when the first child went missing and when the twenty seventh and last went missing, too."

Twenty seven? That number seemed huge, even for a serial killer. Not that I knew much about serial killers. Twenty seven dead children. That was disgusting. And no one was stopping this guy? I could sense a little of what I believed the police felt at the time. Even a bad cop could not stand idly by and let children be murdered. I stopped feeling put upon by all their questioning and rudely holding me. My temporary discomfort was nothing compared to the burden I now realized these men were carrying for the victims and their families.

"So, you know the guy who did this? What's the problem?" I could not see where this was going.

"The problem is back then we believed Thomas Berger only committed the one killing and dumped the kid on what is now your property."

"Okay." I was still not following.

"Our discovery today brings us back to your property in relation to all the other disappearances." Agent Hunter said.

"My property?"

"Yes, we are still counting the bodies but it seems upwards of forty three so far."

I lost him as he spoke. Forty three bodies? On my property? Dead children? On my property? This could not be happening. And what did the strange figure coming and going have to do with it?

It was several minutes before I realized where I was again. Detective Mercer was standing over me then and patting my back, offering me a cup of water. The Agent was sitting quietly across from me, watching me intently. The air seemed stifling and close. I had never been claustrophobic but at that instant I had a good idea of what it felt like.

"You okay, Mr. Corwin?" Agent Hunter inquired.

I nodded noncommittally.

"We found a series of graves crossing through the woods. Deep graves, like someone took their time and did the job right."

I suppose that meant something to them.

"Twenty years ago, when Thomas Berger was found to have been involved in the abduction of a young boy named David Ready, we moved in to arrest him on what was then his property. Now it is yours. We found the body of David in a shallow grave a few yards from Berger's cabin which, as best we can figure, was just about where your worker's campers are today. When we moved to arrest him, he ran off into the woods and disappeared. He's never been heard from since."

Detective Mercer replayed the story for me from his memory.

"So, the bad guy got away?" I asked.

"Yes," Hunter answered. "He got away and we have never had another sighting or any word of him anywhere."

I waited. I felt more was coming. I was right.

"But the abductions and presumed killings continued," Mercer went on.

"After he was gone?" I wanted them to think I was following even if I was lost.

"That's the part we need help with."

"But how can I help?"

"You have told your girlfriend that you have seen a person or persons wandering your property."

Now it made sense. Kathy must have told them how we met and peaked their interest. For years they have had no sighting of this man they are hunting and now they think maybe I have seen him. Well, if I did, he's a ghost or moves like one anyway.

"Can you tell us about it? You've not actually been forthcoming about this before, so we were unsure about how to approach it. You could have been in league with the killer as far as we knew." Agent Hunter explained the way they had treated me.

For twenty minutes I explained everything that had happened to me concerning the stranger on my property. I left out my fear of him or any description of his coming and going in a mist or strange way. I explained the items left on my deck and that I had no idea what they meant. They listened and took notes but I could not see how anything I said helped them.

When I was finished Agent Hunter asked me if I had any questions for them.

"Do you believe this guy is still out there killing children?"

"Possibly." Mercer answered.

"But not probable," Hunter added. "Most serial killers burn out and quit after a time and twenty plus years is a long time for a killer to keep killing. Not that we rule it out but it seems more likely that the killer has passed on his torch to another person just as demented as he."

"So you think maybe a second killer is still doing these things and he's operating on my property? Why? I own it now."

"A link maybe. A process. There are lots of reasons to continue in something that has worked for so long." Agent Hunter nodded his head.

"So, am I in danger?"

"We have no idea of knowing for sure." Mercer moved back to his side of the table, assured that I was not going to pass out, I guess.

"Should I find somewhere else to stay?"

"That's up to you," Hunter looked me in the eye. "I would for my own peace of mind and it's going to be quite a zoo out there for the next several days anyway. The forensics people are combing those woods for anything else we can use."

"I can't believe I am connected to such a morbid part of this area's history." I announced.

"More than you know," Hunter gave me a knowing smile.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only that your girlfriend is another attachment to this... history, as you call it."

"How so?"

"Over the last twenty years, we have tracked twenty seven abductions and probable murders involving children in this general area, about a hundred and thirty miles in circumference. Of those exactly one has been recovered. She was seven at the time. Missing for thirty hours and suddenly found wandering the roads by a passing motorist."

"Where?" I had a morbid idea I knew the answer to that question.

"Just down the road from your property. At the time we did not see any connection to the earlier murder and discovery of David Ready's body. Not with your property anyway. Different killer and all. It was searched in a cursory look for evidence but the little girl was unable to help us at all. She could not describe the man or tell us where she had been. She was missing and then just showed up again, like she had left the earth and then was brought back."

"How does this relate to Kathy?"

"She was the little girl."

I was speechless. Kathy was abducted and almost killed when she was seven. The thought chilled my bones and shook my belief in mankind. How could anyone have ever hurt her. She was beautiful. She was precious. I felt an anger building in me over anyone or anything that would hurt her.

"Has she mentioned this to you?" Mercer asked.

"No," I admitted. "We've – uh – had other things to talk about, getting to know one another kind of things. You know, favorite foods, color, things." I had no idea what I was saying. I just wanted to protect her, lead them away from any connection between her and those dead bodies on my property.

"I understand," Hunter said. Whether he did or not I didn't care. I was just glad to move on.

"So, what's next?" I asked.

"The forensics people do their thing and the investigation goes on. We have a lot more information now than we had just a day ago. We have tracked a lot of kids but never found any bodies. Now we have bodies and a better picture of the track of the killer and possibly he left behind some incriminating evidence on the bodies or in the graves or possibly through some connection with the kids we have never seen before."

I nodded, not really understanding all his process but realizing that the agent counted the discovery on my property as a good thing for his investigation. Despite the closure that so many families would get, I could not really see any good coming out of it. But I was willing to let the police do what they do and stay out of the way.

We said our good byes and I left the station with a better opinion of the police than I had when I came in. It's amazing how perspective colors so much of our opinions of people. Coming in I was convinced that the police, especially Mercer, were short sighted, lazy cops who would grasp at any straw to close a case. Now I understood they had a process to undergo and a way of getting to the answers they sought. Still, I was glad to see Kathy waiting for me in her jeep.

Chapter Seven

It took me less than an hour to gather my things from the camper and move myself to Kathy's house. She lived on the edge of town near the beach. A street over actually. Her back yard was mostly beach sand with some scraggly grass popping up occasionally. It was a small house that told a story of a young woman who liked her privacy and pretty things around herself. There was the usual beach paraphernalia and patio furniture that told everyone this was a beach house.

She acted glad to have me come stay with her until I could get back into my property but there was also the reticence of unfamiliarity with having a stranger invading her space. I was no longer the boyfriend that lit up her eyes when I was around. I was now the house guest that interrupted her time alone and shared her every waking moment.

It was late by the time we talked out our immediate relationship and settled in for the night. She had a spare room and I chose to stay in there. She wanted her bed to herself so we designated the couch as the place for sex. We laughed about our arrangement and got comfortable with each other in a totally new setting. It was familiar to her but made strange by my presence. A new place for both of us. Together.

Before we went to our separate rooms to sleep, Kathy had one last thing to say.

"Watch out for my ghost."

"What ghost? I've had quite enough of all ghosts lately." I reminded her.

"Well, I have one that pops up from time to time around here. Been here since I moved in. sometimes moves things around and appears and disappears in the dark spots of the hallway."

"I wish you'd have mentioned this before when I was making a fool of myself telling you about my stranger on the property," I said.

She shrugged.

"Was hoping I'd never have to tell anyone. Just didn't think it would be right after all you've been through to have you get up in the middle of the night to go pee and be scared by my ghost wandering the hallway or something."

"I appreciate your candor, but didn't you think I would rather know you believed me than to save your own reputation for later?"

She smiled and blew me a kiss. The twinkle in her eye said, get used to it. I'm mysterious.

"I liked knowing something about you without having to tell it about me." She giggled like a school girl. I had trouble imagining her being abducted and mistreated and left abandoned on a road.

"Well, just so you know how I feel," I tried to sound irritated.

"I know," she laughed. "And I like the way you feel," she added and left me standing there watching and thinking about her retreating backside. A very nice backside, indeed.

Around three a.m., according to the lighted digital clock on the bedside table, I got up to go pee. A lot of coffee while we talked. I could not help but look around as I walked down the hallway to the small bathroom. I half expected her ghost to jump out at me and shake hands. I turned the light on in the bathroom and relieved myself noting that her small bathroom was still three times the size of my camper bathroom.

Done, I turned off the light and opened the door, stepping back into the dimly lit hallway. There was a night light or something on in the living room which shone a trickle of light part way down the hall. I had taken two steps when I felt the presence. It was just like in the roadway. I knew that presence. It was not her ghost. It was mine. I smelled the wet leaves again and felt hot breath in my face even before I recognized the shape looming menacingly before me.

The black shadow was familiar and the smell was the same. I could hear that same fast, deep breathing like someone had been running. This time there was a prickling of my senses. Little pin pricks dotted my skin up and down my arms and back and chest and spine. It was not a cold chill I felt but a menacing, hot, painful touch that covered me with a small burning sensation.

I had no doubt where the sensation covering my body was coming from. The breathing was close. In my face close. The darkness kept me from seeing anything except a deeper shadow in the shadow of the hallway. I felt my legs filling with adrenaline again. I wanted to run but nothing was moving. I was immobile with fear. I could not explain it. I just didn't have it in me to run away. But I also had no real desire to stay and fight.

Then I heard it. In the darkness of that hallway I heard a low, rumbling growl. It started softly and built into a raging howl that shrieked through my ears and filled every cell of my body with a fear of death like I had never known before. I was never a brave man, not for the sake of being brave. But right then, faced with what I was sure was imminent death, I knew I wanted to live. I did not want to die. I felt like I was suffocating. The air was suddenly hot and scarce. I was clawing at my throat to bring more air in. The fiery darts of burning pain all over my body erupted into flaming shots of heat that threatened to consume me even before I ran out of air. I felt a tightness around my ankles as though someone was holding them and my wrists ached as though they were tied. Fear was my life at the moment. Darkness and fear.

The the growl became a voice. Guttural and close. Almost a snarl in my left ear. I tried to cringe and escape the voice but it held me captive as surely as if I was tied to it.

"You're going to die, young one," it said. "I have you now. You are mine. Do not try and escape. There really is no escape. I have watched you. I have thought about you. I own you. I am going to kill you to make you mine forever. Stay afraid. I love seeing you shake and tremble. You have invaded my space and now I have drawn you to a place of no going back. You must die for me. Eventually you must die. I love watching all of you die. Please, die for me."

The pain around my throat increased and I felt a heat like a searing flesh burn. I screamed out in the darkness and thrashed around trying to escape the heat. The pain was excruciating. The burning sensation was drawing every last bit of my strength to endure. Again and again I screamed out the agony I was feeling in my flesh. I was unable to move as though I had been tied in place. I did not know if I was still in the hallway or someplace else. I kept screaming. It was the only thing I had that worked. My legs would not move. My hands seemed like they were weighted down. I tried wrestling my body out of whatever hold was containing me. A great weight pushed in on my chest and held me motionless. I thought I was standing but I felt like I was lying down the way everything was holding me. I was so confused that all I could do was scream some more.

Suddenly the lights came on. Brightness replaced the darkness and the shadows withdrew immediately. I felt the pressures exerted on my body release. The heat left. The pain subsided. The searing burn at my neck continued but it was no longer increasing in scope of the depth to which it was reaching. I could no longer sense the presence that moments before held me captive and desired my death. The light had freed me.

I turned and saw Kathy standing in the hallway. She was at the end of the hallway with her hand on the light switch. She wore nothing but a worried look on her face. She had heard me screaming and come running without a thought of her nakedness. There was a definite dose of stress lining her face. She just stared at me as I tried to bring my breathing under control. I stood there, in her hallway, rubbing my throat and looking at the woman who had chased away my attacker. Grateful was too small a word for what I felt.

"What happened?" She asked in a voice that told me she had been dead asleep and was still not quite awake.

"The strange figure was here." I gasped while rubbing my stinging throat.

She saw my hand at my throat and she moved towards me with a fear in her eyes I had not seen before.

"What happened to your throat?" She was twisting her head at odd angles trying to get a better look at my throat.

The stinging sensation at my throat hurt like hell. I moved back into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There was a bright red ring across the front of my throat. It looked like a chemical burn. It hurt to touch it, like the salt or oils from my hand were irritating it. I stopped touching it.

Behind me, in the mirror, I saw Kathy holding her hand to her neck also.

"What?" I turned to her.

She fled from the bathroom and I followed her to the living room where we sat on the couch like we had before. There was a new look on her face. Something was wrong and I waited for her to tell me what it was.

"That burn on you neck," she began. "How'd you get it?"

"I don't know. I felt a burning pain and now it is there."

She nodded like she understood. I sure didn't. How the hell did I get this mark on my neck?

"Was there a voice?" she asked in a low almost fading voice.

"Yes. He threatened me..." I started.

"Told you that you could not escape," she finished for me.

"Yes," I answered. "How did you know?"

"I thought my ghost was my imagination from my ordeal. My personal aberration."

"Your ordeal?"

"When I was a little girl I was abducted and then abandoned," she explained. "The authorities believed it was some serial killer but I could not tell them anything about him. All I can ever remember is a shadowy form standing over me, threatening me. They said the trauma of the incident had blanked the experience out of my mind and protected me from it. I always assumed my ghost was my mind trying to let the memory back in."

She rubbed her neck like she had the burn instead of me. Her eyes were tearing up and she was trembling. I moved closer and pulled her into my arms. We laid quietly for several minutes as she cried softly into my chest, letting out whatever it was that she was still holding after all these years. I held her tightly so she would know I was there and protecting her.

"He's real, you know?" her voice startled me. It was strained and hard. Nothing like the sweet Kathy I knew and loved. Still, she was the Kathy I knew and loved.

"He will never go away."

"Who?" I asked. "Do you know who this ghost is?"

"Yes," It was a low, menacing voice that slipped up from her throat and spoke. Bad memory.

"When I was taken as a little girl, I was visiting my uncle. My mom and my aunt were out shopping and my dad and uncle were watching some game on TV. I remember that because I asked about it and they tried to explain it to me but it made no sense to me. It didn't sound like fun so I went outside to play. Outside I met a man who lived in the woods. He told me he lived in the woods. He said he was my guardian angel and that other people were trying to hurt me. He asked me if I wanted to come with him and be safe forever. I followed him into the woods and we walked for a long time. That night we stayed in a cabin and ate hotdogs and danced in a circle. It was fun. He was the first big person to have fun with me.

"When I said I wanted to go back home, he said I could never leave. He held me down and put his knee on my chest and tied my hands and feet and then spent hours telling me how he had helped other kids escape from their mean old parents. I was scared the whole time. I knew he was going to kill me. He kept squeezing my throat until I passed out. I woke up several times and he started scaring me all over again. Sometimes he held a knife and waved it like he was going to cut me. I think he liked scaring me more than anything else.

"One time when I woke up after he had choked me, he was gone. For a long time I laid there and waited for him to come back and kill me. I cried and whimpered a lot. I knew I was going to die. He had told me I had to die for him."

I remembered the voice talking to me in the dark hallway. It could not be a coincidence that my ghostly form and her experience were so similar.

"Somehow, after a really long time, I got my hands loose and untied my feet. When I looked outside the cabin, I could only see the dark. I was scared of the dark but I was more scared of the man coming back. I guess I wandered all the rest of the night until I somehow ended up on a road and a car came by. They took me to the police station. The police called my parents and I was taken home.

"That's when the police came to question me. Lots of different ones. They asked lots of questions but I could remember nothing of what I just told you."

"Nothing?" I asked quietly.

"Nothing. Doctors said I had blocked it out of my memory. I tried to remember but it was just not there. About four years ago, I started remembering little bits and pieces of it. The memories coincided with my buying this house. The night I first noticed the ghostly shape in the hallway I had my first dream of that terrible night so long ago. Since then I have remembered most of what happened while I was sleeping or dozing. Little bits come back to me and eventually they created a bigger picture helping me to remember it all. Somehow the ghost is connected to the memory I had. Still, all I can remember of the man is his shadowy form leaning down over me,"

"Worse," I added. "Your ghost and my ghost are the same one."

"How can that be?" Her voice said that she believed me but was confused by the connection.

"The police told me that a man they believed was a serial killer was found living on my property in a cabin. He owned it before I did."

"Mr. Berger," she said. "He was suspected of killing a young boy. My mom told me about it once when the subject came up. I had no idea he was the previous owner to your property, though. But what does he have to do...with..." a light went on.

"The cabin?" she asked and answered her own question. "You think maybe the guy who walked me through the woods was Mr. Berger?"

I nodded and tried to smile reassuringly.

"Maybe. Seems logical." I calmed her with a stroke of my hand gently down her arm.

"But that was years ago. No one has ever seen or heard of him again. And my experience was years after the police scared him out of town."

"Apparently he had a way in and out or something. Or maybe a hiding place that they never found."

"I suppose." She didn't sound convinced.

"What if, and I'm really stretching here, he didn't leave like they thought. What if he had a hiding place out there in the woods somewhere and just came out to do his killing when he took a notion? That would explain why the police never found him or anyone else ever saw him."

"That's an awful long time to hide from people," Kathy saw a hole in my theory.

"But suppose he came out at night, did all his abducting elsewhere and even stole or bought his supplies somewhere else? Some place where they were not looking so hard for him." I postulated.

"Seems like a lot of trouble to go to."

"Better than going to jail." I reminded her.

"I suppose." She was still thinking it over.

"How did he get around. He would need a car." She threw another wrench into the wheels of my theory.

We sat silently thinking and dealing with our share experiences.

"What if he had a motorcycle instead of a car?" I asked.

"Makes it easier to get in and out of the woods." She admitted. "Harder to abduct children, though."

"Why? Kids love to get a ride on a motorcycle. It would be a great way to draw out the kid that took risks and was maybe alone to begin with."

She nodded her head slowly as she thought over my answers to her questions. We sat again for some time before either of us stirred again. I just held her and felt her warmth against me. It had not occurred to me that she was still naked. Suddenly I was reminded how vulnerable she was by how naked she was. She didn't seem to notice her nakedness so, I was comfortable with it, too. Still, I pulled a blanket she kept on the back of the couch around her. She gladly pulled it closer around her to ward off the coolness in the room.

"We have to go out there," she finally spoke up.

"Out where?" I asked.

"Your property."

"Are you crazy?" I asked. Her look told me I had better take that one back.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'm not saying you're crazy but don't you think that going looking for trouble is a little crazy?"

"That's the source of all this trouble. Your property," she explained. "We have got to get to the bottom of this and end it once and for all."

I thought of the ghostly form menacing me in the hallway a few moments ago.

"How do we end this?" I asked "What is it we're ending?"

"The ghost." She sounded sure of herself.

"How do we end a ghost?" I asked.

"We have to put it to rest."

"Huh?"

"You know, settle the bones. Bury the dead guy who started all this?"

I had no idea what she was talking about. My look must have conveyed my ignorance when she tilted her head up to me. She twisted in my arms and dropped the blanket part way exposing her breasts and giving me more to concentrate on than her suggestion.

"Listen," she explained. "We have got to find the hiding place where all this evil took place from. Then we have to find the body or bones or whatever of the guy who lives in the woods, the abductor and killer of the kids."

She was talking slow like I was having trouble understanding her. I tried to focus on her words but her body was tempting me with other thoughts.

"Ghosts are products of dead people who have unsettled lives and unfinished business." She said it as though it was a known fact the world over.

"Who says?" I asked.

"I don't know who said it," she admitted. "What does it matter? The thing is, we've got to do something to get rid of this thing in our lives."

I could not argue with that. I was not sure I wanted to go through another episode like I had just experienced in the hallway. I was not so sure that I would live through it the next time. What would have happened if Kathy had not turned on the light? Would I have died right there? Did this thing have that kind of power? What kind of malevolent evil were we dealing with? It was a good question but not one I was sure I wanted an answer to.

And she had said, Our lives. Ours. I liked hearing her say that.

We stayed silent for a good while after running out of things to say to each other. With all the lights still on, we drifted back into our independent versions of somewhat peaceful sleep.

The sunlight was streaming through a part in the heavy curtains which covered the sliding doors at the rear of her house. Enough light filtered in around the curtains and through other windows in the kitchen that the place was washed in a cheery bath of warming sunshine. The real value of the sunlight had nothing to do with the warmth it conveyed beyond just making the darkness of the night and our fearful thoughts go away.

As soon as I was awake I realized something was wrong. I could feel it. I sensed it. And immediately I smiled to discover what it was. Kathy had been in my arms when we went to sleep. She was not there when I awoke. I experienced a brief moment of liking the feeling of missing her and then fear washed in like a wave climbing up on a beach.

I sat up quickly and looked around, ready to call out her name. Then I saw her. She was sitting sideways on a chair at the side of the curtains over the sliding door. She had positioned it to look through a sliver of daylight outside. Her head was cocked to one side in thoughtful repose and she seemed to be almost in a dreamlike state. I noticed she was also blanketless and quite naked. Framed in the small splash of sunlight like that, she looked gorgeous and completely edible. The shadows on her body were accented by the brightness of the sunlight building a framework around her, almost as though she were engulfed in a full body halo effect. Glowing. I wished at the moment that I could have gotten a picture of the scene, but I am pretty sure no camera can capture exactly what I was seeing. Not all of it.

I lifted the blanket and carried it to her chair and draped it over her shoulders and down across her lap. She smiled up at me and tilted her head back allowing me to bend down and kiss her. It was a good morning kiss like no other. In it I felt the thankfulness of being together, sharing an evening, knowing one another well enough to bare our souls as well as our bodies, and a full measure of appreciation for whatever providence had brought us together. As our lips met and joined, she moaned a soft hum of pleasure at the contact, making her own small gesture of thankfulness for the moment.

"M-m-m-m."

"Good morning, beautiful." I whispered it so as not to shatter the silence of the moment.

"Good morning." She replied and moved her face back down to the part in the curtain through which she had been staring when I awoke.

I took up a more comfortable chair a few feet away and watched her. I was still amazed at how much I just enjoyed looking at her. Not her body. Her. Just her. Just seeing her close by me. There. Not somewhere else. Kathy was a beautiful woman. She could go anywhere and be with any man she chose. I guess what I was looking at most was the woman who chose me.

"I always hoped my ghost was my dad."

She spoke into the sunlight splashing through the slit in the curtain. She did not turn towards me. It was like she was speaking out her thoughts. I felt honored that she would say them out loud, including me in her thinking. It made her and I into an us. If she was not the perfect woman, then I was sure that meeting the perfect woman would be too much of a sensory overload for me. My entire being was in a whirl just thinking about the moment we were sharing right then. Us and a small beam of sunlight that seemed to announce to the whole world there is greater light coming.

"The first time I saw the ghost was a month after my dad's funeral. There were times when I saw the figure in my hallway and thought it was watching me. Watching over me. Sometimes I felt him watching in my room at night. I thought maybe my dad had come back to watch over me since he was dead. It kind of comforted me to know he felt that way. Sometimes I was not so sure when he was alive."

"Really?" My way of saying, "Go on."

"Really." Now she turned in her seat toward me. The blanket fell partway open around her shoulder giving me my morning breakfast treat of her beauty.

"When I was a child, I remember he always wanted to take me everywhere with him. Then...after the ...incident...that's what we called it, afterward...he kind of got cold toward me. As a child I never really noticed it. We just didn't go places a lot. I figured he was afraid to take me out because I might get kidnapped again. But as I got older I realized he had pulled away from me. I guess I thought maybe he figured I was soiled somehow. I don't know. But I tried to get closer to him every day."

"I'm sure he still loved you." I tried to interject a little positivity to keep her from getting depressed in her stroll down memory lane. "Sometimes parents have a hard time dealing with their own perceptions of how they have failed to protect their children. Maybe he was just feeling like a failure and being with you reminded him of it." I wanted her to know it was not her, but him who had to deal with his own thoughts about her kidnapping.

"Maybe," she offered and shrugged her shoulders. "But for a little girl, daddy is the whole world. Mommas are great when bad things happen or I needed to talk about boys, but daddies are the rulers of the universe. I remember thinking that if daddy was around I was safe. Even when I was wandering out of the woods, I remember thinking that I needed to find my daddy."

A long pause stood in the room between us for several minutes. I gave her time to think about her words. I didn't want to press. I wanted her to go at her own pace. I was in no hurry. I was right where I wanted to be. With her.

"I guess I spent the rest of his life trying to find him again."

"Huh?" I offered up my insightful inquisitor side. What did she mean trying to find him? She was the one who got lost in that kidnapping. He was only the loser, not the losee.

"I mean, it was like he had gone somewhere...in his mind...after the incident. We went places and we were around each other but we were never together again. When mom died he withdrew even further."

"Too bad," I smiled at her. She smiled back.

"Why, too bad?"

"He missed a great woman to be around." I pulled her back to the here and now. Me. Us.

"Think so?"

She was not joking. Something inside her drove her to really want to know. She had questions about herself. Not just from the incident. She was mentally healthy enough to reason out that bad people do bad things and that was none of her fault. But a father who did not respond in a right way damaged a kid who was still trying to determine her self worth. Mom's can tell a child how precious they are. But what a father does speaks volumes in seconds to their heart. Having her father pull back from her when she really needed something substantive to hold onto, was a blow to her own self picture.

"I can not imagine anyone ever being more worthy of my time and attention than you." I offered.

Men are poor substitutions for dads but it was all I had to offer at the moment. Maybe someday, as a husband, I could offer her more, but right then I had only the perspective and position of a male friend. A good male friend, but still, only a male friend.

"I guess the ghost proved last night he was not my dad." She changed the subject. I let her.

"Or maybe he was and he was warning me off." I half kidded.

"But you said it was the figure from your campground?" she questioned.

"I did. And it was. I was just trying to make the case that your father still loves you, even from the grave."

"Thanks." She gave me her award winning smile again. "Kind of creepy now that I think of it."

"What?"

"My dead father coming back from the grave to protect me from you." As she said it a coldness descended upon the room. I chalked it up to that age old fear that every young man has of the girl's father. Thinking about the old man chasing me off from the grave was not at the top of my cheery subjects list.

"We still have to do it, you know?"

"Do what?"

I knew what she meant. I just hoped that making her say it would make her rethink it. It didn't.

"Go back to the campground and flush this ghost of ours out. Find a way to make it go away. Forever. We can never be happy together with some ghost tramping around on our campground now, can we?"

We. Together. Ours? She was talking and I was sure she was talking about us but the words were so unfamiliar that I was stunned. We were an us. What was mine I wanted to be hers, too. She had called it our campground. Our situation. Our ghost. Not mine. Not hers. Ours. And she said forever. She was obviously thinking long term, way down the relationship road. I was in. That was the moment I knew. She was mine and I was hers. We were an us. My head was spinning with the realization. I needed to call my mom. Well, soon anyways.

"Okay." I agreed. Right then I would have agreed to charge the entire modern, mechanized, ninth cavalry on horseback with a pocket knife for her.

"Let's get showers and stop off at Tammy's for some breakfast."

Tammy's had become our local favorite eating place. We'd been there once before. This whole town had just become my favorite place. For the first time in my life I understood the concept of walking on clouds. I kept looking down to see if my feet were touching the ground.

Chapter Eight

Getting back onto my own property was not as easy as we had imagined. It was two days before the police said we could go back out to the property. I called twice each day and talked with Detective Mercer myself. He never had any information to share with me and always wanted to know if I had thought about anything else that might help them. Then on the third morning, he told me that they were releasing the property back to me that afternoon, unless something significant turned up.

We showered, dressed and visited Tammy's again for a quiet, casual breakfast together. Something for the townsfolk to talk about. Breakfast, three days in a row. By eleven thirty we were back in the campground. It felt strange. Almost like I had disconnected myself from it. I guess I had in a way. There were dead bodies buried on my property. I did not want to be connected to them in any way.

Detective Mercer and Special Agent in Charge Hunter were both there. I thought they might be. When I asked about progress they both clammed up. I thought they were holding back some significant part of the evidence. Kathy thought they were just being jerks.

They admitted they had found no additional bodies and were wrapping up that part of the investigation. Now they were concentrating on combing the woods for anything else that might help them put it all together. That admission caused them both to look at each other.

"What is it?" I asked. "What are you trying so hard not to tell us?" I liked saying us.

They looked at each other again and Detective Mercer shrugged. Agent Hunter nodded.

"Do you know about the area of mist on your property?" Detective Mercer asked me.

I shook my head.

"We get a heavy morning fog every now and then but it's gone by mid morning."

"No, this is definitely a heavy mist and it does not go away all day."

"Huh?" It was Kathy's turn to make with the educated questioning.

"We have found an area of about ten acres that has a thick, sight obscuring mist on it. And it stays misty all day long no matter how high the sun gets or how hot."

"Mist?" I was still having trouble following them.

"Yeah, we send guys in there to look around but they can not see anything and after a couple hours of wandering around they come back out with nothing to report."

"And that's strange?" Kathy asked.

"Well, reporting that they found nothing is not so strange. We are finding nothing all over these woods. What is strange is that they swear they were only gone for a few minutes and came back out because they could not see anything."

"They are gone a couple hours and think they are gone only a few minutes? That is strange," I agreed.

"Yeah, that and I think the mist is scaring them so they don't think too straight, either, if you know what I mean?" Agent Hunter added.

Kathy gave him her 'why-don't-you-shut-up' glare but I'm pretty sure he missed it.

"Anyway," Detective Mercer continued. "We're wrapping things up and should be out of here by lunch time."

"That quick?" I asked. I was prepared for maybe a week's worth of downtime while they figured this thing out. I was also counting on them being around while we poked around looking for a way to roust this ghost problem we had.

"Yeah. We've collected everything we think is pertinent and sent it to the labs. We don't really know anything new that we didn't know coming in. Lots of unexplained, unconnected cases all mashed together in one place with absolutely nothing in common. We're officially stumped as of now. But we'll keep plugging away until something breaks." He added his quick advertisement for official public consumption.

I had been wondering how we were going to get the police to let us traipse around my woods during an investigation, so this turn of events answered that. Now I was curious about the mist. I had not walked the entire of my property even once since buying it. I had relied on the realtor and the deed to tell me what I had. I had actually only explored about a third of it. Just that area where I was planning on putting the campground to start.

"So, where's this mist?" I asked.

An hour later, evidence collection completed and most of the police and lab personnel gone, Detective Mercer led Kathy and I to the place where the mist began. It was incredible.

The sun was high overhead and warm. Not summertime warm, to be sure, but warm for a winter day here, and hot for a winter day anywhere else. Still, there before us was a solid mass of swirling, hovering, thick mist. It's whitish grayness a stark contrast against the evergreens it seemed to swallow up.

As far as I could see to my right and left was mist covered. Where we stood was perfectly clear. Ten feet away a white wall of moving, glistening water particles obscured any observation ahead. I was amazed. I had never heard of anything like this. A mist that stayed during the day and did not burn off? Seemed impossible. Incredible. My mind kept coming back to incredible. And lately the incredible had been accompanied by the wrong.

That's where my mind was stuck. Something was wrong. A mist did not exist in the light and comparable heat of the day. It diffused and disappeared. But here it was. Right in front of me.

"I guess we should explore it." Kathy's voice did not sound any more sure of that than I felt. That did not do much to lift up the coward in me.

Detective Mercer nodded.

"Five people have tried to go in there but none of them could see past their arm." He told us.

"You?" Kathy asked.

Mercer shook his head, no.

"How come?"

"No reason. Got the report that the others were having trouble searching this area. Came out. Looked around. Saw the problem and went to ask the techs about it."

"Did you look inside the mist?" Kathy asked him. She was pressing him for some reason.

"No."

"Why not?" She asked.

"It doesn't feel right. Like an electric shock or something." Mercer was looking around like he wanted to be somewhere else.

"Doesn't seem like a mist should be able to stay together in this sunlight." I said.

"Unless there's some kind of...something or other...going on out there." Kathy pointed to the mist.

"Like what?" Mercer was interested in ideas. I got the feeling he did not like unexplained things around his cases. And this mist was unexplained.

"Maybe some kind of swamp phenomenon or gases underground...I don't know." Kathy was fishing. She was also trying not to tell the detective what we were really looking for.

"Yeah, well, maybe."

Detective Mercer wasn't buying into any swamp phenomenon, though. He'd heard all the usual UFO explanations when he was a kid, too. He wanted better answers than that. So did I. My fear was that the real answers were more than we could understand, or possibly more than what we wanted to understand.

I watched Kathy watching Mercer. She was waiting for something. I didn't know what. But it raised a feeling in me I had never had before. Jealousy. I saw her looking to him for answers and I wanted her looking to me for them. Plain and simple.

"I'm going in," I announced as much to my surprise as theirs.

"In?" Kathy sounded perplexed.

Mercer just looked at me.

"Watch her, will you?" I was trying to sound like I was in control of my sense of self worth, which I wasn't, as I watched Kathy look to another man for answers, and seem the not-jealous type at all, which I was feeling I must now be. I headed towards the mist at a pace that said I meant business but really just kept me from turning back.

"Careful," I heard Kathy call from behind me.

Then I was enveloped by the mist. Twenty feet inside. Maybe Twenty five. Whiteness closed in all around me. It felt wet like that night in the woods. There was that electrical tingle the cops had spoken about too. That was truly unnerving. Again I smelled the saltiness of the mist and almost tasted of the metallic flavoring that hung in the air all around me. I remembered a similar sensation of touch and taste that night I saw the figure on the hill.

I looked back the way I had come into the mist. Nothing. Or maybe it is more correct to say, nothingness. That's what it felt like. I had stepped into an entire realm of nothingness. It was not dark this time, though. I could see swirling shadows in the mist. The sunlight forced its way inside but could do little to enlighten anything but the molecules of water hanging in the air. I was walking through sunlit vapors of water totally cut off from the others.

I started to turn around and remembered how Kathy was looking to Mercer for answers. I pushed on. I could not see the ground clearly but I could feel the pine needles and roots at my feet. I shuffled ahead more than walked. Inching my self forward a few feet at a time. Slowly. No hurry. I had no idea where I was going so I had no interest in making good time. Time for what?

I had gone about fifty more shuffling steps when I stopped to look around and really peer into the whiteness of the mist. Still nothingness. I could see no better here than when I first entered. I took another step and noticed something. The air around me sparkled. I stopped. I took another step. More sparkles. I stopped. Nothing. I took another step. Sparkles. I stopped. Nothing.

Strange.

I waved my arm through the air in front of me and watched as a myriad of sparkling, almost static shock looking, explosions of light traced a path behind my swinging arm. I did it again. Same effect. Little ignitions of electrical sparks tingled against my bare hand as I waved it back and forth very slowly in front of me. I felt like I was caressing the mist or massaging the phenomenon to make the sparks burst into being. For maybe three minutes I experimented with moving my arms and watching the sparks the movement created. I was intrigued. Never saw that in a misty fog before.

Maybe there was some sort of electrical source causing this phenomenon. I had no idea what it could be. I didn't know about such things. But if there was a logical, physical reasoning for this mist, I would be much happier.

Now as I shuffled my feet slowly forward, I noticed the sparks around me. Like my presence was setting off some kind of huge static electricity charge. It corresponded to the tingling I felt on my face and hands as I moved. It actually felt invigorating. A small scale, slightly, stinging attack on the skin that excited it to respond with defensive elements of the body. The blood flowed faster. The heart rate increased. The senses stood at full alert which triggered no small number of glands and other bodily organs to do all those protective things they do. I felt very much alive inside the mist. It struck me that except for sex with Kathy, nothing equated to the sensation of walking through the mist. And that thought caused me to notice my own involuntary erection. I was immediately embarrassed by my own lack of control.

Putting aside my embarrassment, I wandered ahead for a few more minutes and felt I had done nothing to get the answers we sought. I turned and headed back the way I had come. At least I felt I had turned and thought I was going back the way I had come in. I say that because five steps later, I was standing in the clear again. Twenty feet to my right, I could see Detective Mercer. Kathy was no where around. I turned to look in the other direction, like I was hunting Kathy, adjusting myself in my involuntary discomfort.

"Where's Kathy?" I think I was shouting. It was too loud for a few feet away anyway.

"She went in after you when you did not come out."

"When I didn't come out?" I was incredulous. "I've only been gone a few minutes."

He looked at me with a strange glare, like I had called him stupid.

"You've been gone for almost three hours, John."

"Three hours?"

I looked up. The sun couldn't lie. It didn't. Sure enough, the bright orb in the sky was decidedly closer to the horizon. Too close for a little after lunch time, that's for sure. Maybe three hours had passed. I could not tell from the position of the sun. But it was definitely a lot later than it should have been.

"She got worried and told me to wait here for you. We shouted for a while but she figured you were too far inside. She said I should wait a few minutes and begin yelling to help guide the both of you out."

"How long ago?"

"About five minutes, maybe." He checked his watch. "Four."

I started yelling out Kathy's name. He joined me. For the next ten minutes we roamed back and forth in front of that wall of mist yelling for her to hear us. Nothing. Silence. Whiteness and more whiteness. Silence and more silence.

For the next hour I walked back and forth across the front of the mist yelling her name into the wall of whiteness. The sun was approaching the horizon now and I felt a fear rise up in me. The ghost. The fact the ghost had been to Kathy's house before I saw him. The strange wall of mist. The approaching darkness. And now, the disappearance of Kathy. All these things were playing on my mind and causing a dread to fill up my throat. Everything for the past two weeks had been building to this. That strange figure was somehow involved. I sensed it more than knew it.

I was walking back and forth and trying to reason out my life and what it had become. Only one thing mattered now. Kathy. She was what made my life worth while and I was not going to lose her. Everything else came in second place. There was no fear to stop me from confronting this figure or ghost or whatever he was. Kathy was in there. Darkness was coming. I had to do something. We could search for the answers later. First, I had to find Kathy. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.

I wondered if that was what love felt like. Nothing else mattering. Only her. Only her. I could not erase her smile from my mind. It was like a beacon that screamed for me to come find her. Not a distress call. A light that lit my path to her. Keep smiling, Kathy. I'm coming.

I headed back over to join Detective Mercer who was still wandering around at the edge of the mist occasionally calling out her name, too.

"I'm going back in," I told him.

He nodded his head.

"I was thinking of calling out a search party for her," he said. "If you go in there, I may be hunting both of you."

"Impossible to look around in there." I reminded him. "The only way anyone could find someone would be to trip over them."

My words had recalled my experience a few days before of falling onto the dead little boy and getting his blood and body fluids on me. It was a startling moment for my mind. I tried to push it away. Kathy was fine. I would find her and return with her. We had a life to get on with.

"Maybe more people would make it faster but not necessarily. I'll find her and bring her out." I reasoned.

"We should get a flashlight. Maybe not great for this work but better than nothing." He suggested.

Though I hated the thought of leaving Kathy alone in there for even another minute, I wanted to allow the cop to contribute something to this so he would just let me get on with my search. I stayed and kept watch for her while he headed back to his car to get his flashlight. He said he had a real good one. I waited.

By the time he returned the sun was sinking low over the trees. Shadows were fast taking back the woods around us. Like a plague of locust hungry for sustenance, the shadows claimed the crevasses of the terrain and the trees back to the darkness it had only released them from a few hours before. The cycle of life in the woods.

Mercer had a lantern with him, too. He held it up. He said he would light it after it got dark, if it took me that long. That way I would have something to see when I came back out. He said that maybe a light after dark might shine in a way we could not see through the mist. So, he knew that visibility inside the mist stopped any view of the outside, too.

I know he saw me look at him kind of funny. He just looked away. I believed he had gone inside the mist and got scared by the nothingness like the rest of us and was afraid to say so. It reminded me of the look Kathy had given him earlier. She was looking for answers from him all right. She wanted him to admit that he had gone inside and been scared by the experience. I saw things more clearly now without the veil of jealousy. If I'd seen this before maybe Kathy would not be in there now. I wanted to blame myself. Like when she was lost as a little girl. That was not her fault any more than this was. She was wandering around in there somewhere. I would find her. I would rescue her this time.

"I'll be here." Mercer said with a tone that said I could depend on him. I believed I could, too.

"I'll be right back," I said. They sounded like famous last words to me. I hoped they weren't. Last, that is.

Inside the mist I immediately noticed the effect of the setting sun. Although my vision could not penetrate the whiteness of the mist before, the light had made it seem less foreboding than now. It was not dark yet, but darkness was well on the way. And the swirling, shadowy patterns in the mist were more disconcerting now that they had contrast and were easier to see amidst all that vapor. Combined with the events of the past weeks and Kathy missing, my entrance into the mist was anything but a happy occasion. I fought to keep my fear from getting the better of me. Kathy needed me. I would not fail.

Several steps into the mist and the light was progressively growing dimmer. The sparks around my movement seemed to be increasing with the fading light. That seemed normal. The increasing visibility of the sparks. Not the sparks themselves. I was sure I would never be able to think of any of this as normal.

Ten minutes. That's what I reasoned I had left of the light. I didn't have a watch but I knew what time it was because I had asked Mercer when he had returned. Ten minutes to play the hero and get the hell out of here.

"Kathy!" I yelled into the swirling mist.

Nothing. Silence. No sounds of anything. I had not noticed that before. There was no wind in the trees sound. There was no shuffling through the pine needles sounds from my feet. I scratched at the material of my jacket. No sound. I could feel the scratching pressure on my arm and fingers. No sound. I spoke Kathy's name again. My voice made a sound. Nothing else made noise.

A few more steps inside and the sun was going down. Moving my arm in front of me made an almost continual arc of static electrical discharge. It was like a science show for the outdoorsman. See the man walking through the strange mist making electricity. Oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo, says the audience.

I was redirecting my thoughts while looking around. Darkness was coming and I was still not sure I wanted to be out here. I wanted to find Kathy. I was sure of that. But the darkness had not been my friend of late. Neither had being alone. And I was facing both right now.

"Kathy!" I yelled again.

I squinted into the fading light of the mist and searched for any sign of movement that represented something other than swirling patterns of water vapors. Nothing. The harder I peered into the gloom, the more nothing I saw.

A few more steps and the final wisps of light gave up the ghost. Ghost. Funny thought for me right then. The mind has a strange sense of humor sometimes.

Darkness settled around me, covering me as surely as the mist. My only companions as I moved forward were the sparks following my every move. In all my life I had never felt so alone as right then. For the past few days, I had felt so much a part of coupled life that to be facing anything without Kathy at my side was something of a newly framed foreign experience. It was like there never was a life before Kathy. I could not remember what it felt like to not have her around. Inside my chest, my heart was swelling and I could feel the sting of the tears at the corners of my eyes. I just could not lose her now. I had to keep going. I was sensing the worst or imagining it, one.

I wiped at the dampness in my eyes with a sleeve and stepped forward into the now full on darkness of the mist. I could not see. I could barely sense my whereabouts. I could not hear myself moving. Maybe I wasn't. Maybe I was only thinking I was moving. That thought scared me. Not because I was incapacitated. I was scared because I needed to move. Unless I moved, I could not find Kathy. That was my focus. Find her. I needed to move to do that.

My movements took on a more desperate action. I forced myself onward at a greater pace. Not fast. Not even a good walking pace, but faster than the slow shuffle I had been using.

Another step and then I felt the mist recede. It moved away from me in all directions. I hadn't walked out of it. It just pulled back from me. I could not see it but I felt it. The smell was still there. The mist was close. But I was no longer surrounded by it. Well, maybe surrounded by it but it was not touching me right then.

I moved my arm through the air and the sparks were gone. Nothing. Blackness. No sparks. Just me standing there in the darkness. I took a step and then another. Tentative. Unsure. I could smell the mist. It was not gone. I could sense something moving around me but not feel it. The mist had not dispersed. It was still there but no longer touching me for some reason.

I realized I had given the mist a personality. It had provided me with the sparks and had swirled around me and kept me from seeing very far. It had become something of a known quantity in my strangely turning life. Now the known had become the unknown. What had caused me to come to a pocket in the mist? What created the pocket?

I tried the flashlight. The beam played out as far as the edge of the wall of the mist only about ten feet away. I spun slowly around and discovered the pocket in the mist was equally as far away behind me as in front or on the side. I had only stepped into the pocket and stopped. I had not advanced to the middle of it so, I should have been closer to the mist behind me if it was indeed a pocket I had walked into. It was not. Something had happened and a pocket had formed around me with about ten feet of clear space in all directions.

Peering into the darkness, I strained to see anything that might explain this phenomenon. It was not lost on me that I could not explain the mist in the first place so, explaining the pocket in the mist was a mystery of frustrating proportions on top of my already full load of things to be frustrated at.

Chapter Nine

Suddenly a lightness formed in the darkness in front of me. A shadow became a glow that became a walking person. A small person. A child. Her form flickered and was not quite solid. She was human and yet, not human. She was there and then, not there. As she exited the wall of the mist, walking into the comparatively clear air of the pocket, the sparks of her passing through the mist fell behind her.

She had an impish smile and a dark look of calculation about her. Her hair was stringy, like she had been sweating badly and it had not been combed in a long time. And her clothes were an assortment of tattered rags that stuck to her body in places without really seeming to be attached to each other. It was her eyes that required the most attention from a person, though. Deep, dark and almost endless in their depths. I say almost because they somehow beckoned me to jump into those dark pools and try and discover the bottom. There was an allure to her that belied the scruffy, tattered exterior and obvious fact that she was not human, or at least, no longer human.

She scared me. She also excited me to see her. Not just because I was alone in the dark. That was a part of it, I'll admit. The dark was bringing me down, seriously. But there was something about her that drew me to look at her. She had taken only a few steps before her image blew up and increased in size almost half again her original size. I was surprised by this inflation factor and it took me a minute to notice that she was no longer the little girl. In her place now stood a beautiful, young woman, maybe in her late twenties, early thirties. She had long, dirty blond hair and big, mesmerizing eyes hidden behind that same, unmistakable, impish grin. She wore no clothes, naked to the flesh. She was well rounded and everything a red blooded American man wanted in a woman. She moved with a delicate grace to finish her steps to stand a few feet in front of me. Then as quickly as she had become a woman, the flickering figure slipped back down to the little girl's size and the face and body of the little girl beamed up at me, if those dark, incipient eyes could ever be defined as beaming.

That was what held my attention. Those eyes. Their coming into being nature, the almost virgin existence of them as though they were a promise of something greater to come, called out to my soul to delve into and uncover its every surprise. The very nature of her being was contained in those eyes. Every part of her existence screamed out that she was ready to evolve and become whatever surprise was hidden in those eyes. She was a child in form and stature, to be sure. Even in their seeming new birth existence, her eyes held a depth of knowledge that women the world over desired to capture. She knew things and her eyes begged a person to seek out what she knew. She was a child and more than a child. She was not of this world and yet, so much a part of this world that she could not be separated from it. She was the opposite of her own parallels. She was the yin to her own yang. She was the answer to her own questions and every other question on the face of the planet. And he could see it all as he stared into her eyes. Then she flickered back to the taller, naked woman with the same grin still in place.

I saw it then. In the eyes of the older woman, I saw the one thing I did not see in the eyes of the young child. A hunger. Passion. The child had a passion about her disposition but not in her eyes. What the woman was letting me see was an unveiled passion of such design and intensity that no little girl could possibly imagine it or example it in fleshly form. At least I could not imagine a little girl having such thoughts.

The flickering continued and the form shifted back to that of the little girl again. Over the last few seconds the form had become more solid. I was considering running away but really had no idea how that would work. It was dark. There was the mist. I had no idea which way I had come or which way was out. I was not standing and waiting out of any form of bravery. It was more a matter of practicality. It simply was not a practical answer to run right now. Give me an opening and point the way, though, and I would show this apparition how I could run. Funny, that other ghostly visitor I had caused me to be unable to run. Maybe I was more adept at running from women. Freud probably had a whole chapter he wrote about this phenomenon.

I waited.

The figure flickered and shifted and glowed, changing from the child to the woman again and back to the child a little later. The show was becoming familiar but never boring. Each time the form shifted shapes, I noticed something different about the figures standing before me. The child had a sad, almost beaten look of distress written all over her face. The woman seemed idyllic, almost a dream of the perfect woman. She was no Barbie Doll but she was more than any Miss America. Outwardly the woman extolled all the virtues of the perfect woman. Inwardly the child exhibited all the fears and damage of an abused individual. Two opposites. One alternating form shifting perpetually before me and becoming more solid by the second.

When she was totally solid looking, she spoke.

"Why have you come into our Mist?"

Our mist, not our midst. So, the mist was theirs, whoever they were. She was unnatural so therefore the mist was unnatural. I started to answer but she cut me off.

"You search for the child." The form of the child spoke.

"I search for Kathy." I answered, feeling a dryness in my throat I had not realized had formed there.

"That is the name of the child."

"She's a woman, but yes, I search for Kathy." Anxiety choked my throat.

"It is too late." The woman flickered back and had a husky, feminine voice that matched her form.

The dryness in my throat caught a lump and threatened to choke me to death right there.

"It can't be. Where has she gone?"

"He has taken her." The woman still.

"Where? Who?" My mind was racing a hundred miles an hour and the clutch was not engaged. I felt like I was going to throw up or burn up or something.

"The Keeper has taken her." The child was back now.

"The Keeper?"

"The Keeper of the Cabin." The Child spoke like everyone knew.

"What cabin?"

"The Cabin in the woods." She gestured with a pointed finger that was crooked with some kind of injury to it. Her direction was precise. I took note.

"What's the cabin?"

"His place." The shape flickered and the woman came back.

"The place where he takes all his victims."

The woman's smile was disarmingly brilliant and inviting. She had the ability to mesmerize, excite and mystify all in the same glance. She was like a brilliantly colored package, sitting beneath an exquisitely decorated Christmas tree on Christmas Day, just begging me to unwrap it.

"Someone's taken Kathy?"

"Yes." Her voice was a mixture of prom date and barroom pick up. Her sexuality oozed forth from her like a tangible cloud, enfolding and entangling me in her web of desires.

"Why?"

"He's been waiting for her." The little girl with the deep, dark eyes was back. She carried herself like she was a woman but she was obviously a child. It brought to mind those times I had heard parents identify their children as thirteen going on thirty. This little girl was all of that. A child standing like a woman of the world yet not really having lived much of the world.

"Waiting for her?"

"Yes. It has been a long wait. He knew she would come. He always said so."

"Said so? Knew she'd come back. I do not understand."

"That is correct." The little girl admonished him. "You do not understand. And yet, you dare to come here and try to take what is not yours."

"Not mine? Kathy?" I was getting mad. "Kathy is her own person. She does not belong to anyone." Not yet, I was thinking. As soon as I get her out of here I am going to ask her to marry me, though.

"He possessed her for a moment many years ago and then she escaped. He has waited for her ever since." The little girl's voice sounded far away and tired, like she was hurting from trying to do something, or maybe too exhausted to get the words out easily.

The form flickered and shifted and became the woman again. She was much easier on the eyes, I had to admit.

"Now that he has her, he will finish what he started all those years ago." The husky voice of the woman filled the air like a sweet perfume that enchanted the mind of the listener. She was a sweet temptress, no doubt.

"Finish what?"

"Bringing her in."

"In? In where?"

"Into the Cabin."

"The Cabin? You mean where he has taken her?"

"Yes. She will become one of his and live forever in the Cabin with him. She brings new blood so they can continue. She brings new fluid so they can enjoy. She brings a new spirit so they can exist." The voice swirled around him like soft fingers caressing his cheek.

"Blood? Fluid? Spirit?"

"Yes, the three elements of life. The energies." The child was back.

I could not correlate the thoughts that arose when the woman was there with the shifted form of the little girl so it was like a shock to my mind each time they exchanged places. The allure of the woman invited me into a relationship of forbidden passions and then the eyes of the child attempted to draw me into a world I was not so sure anyone ever returned from. I could not stop staring into those eyes. They cried out for someone to delve into them and discover who she really was at the most secret place of her being. They begged for someone to want them and need them. I was intrigued at how closely the emotions of lust and love were related. One could live without the other but never achieve the fire of passions that make a relationship boil over. The other could not ever hope to become a fulfilling relationship without the deeper, more intriguing roots of the hidden self being discovered and opened. In the yin and yang relationship of the child and woman that kept fluctuating before me, I saw one other thing. They needed each other to be whole. The intriguing and deep knowledge of the child needed the alluring and fleshly surface passions of the woman. Together they created a package that if, human, would most certainly be the death of every confirmed bachelor. And they would die willingly.

"Blood is the eternal essence of life. Without it, no life can exist. Fluids are the essence of who we are at the core of our being. Our fluids are what we share with one another."

The form flickered into the woman again.

"And Spirit is what excites the blood and fluids into action that makes life worth living in the first place." The husky voice completed.

"What's this got to do with Kathy?"

"She was supposed to join us many years ago. She escaped and did not enter the Mist. He has waited for her to come back and now that she has, he will bring her in. He is no longer of the Mist but he desires to possess her still."

"Bring her in?"

"He will sacrifice her blood to the existence of the Cabin. He will share his fluids with her and she with him in a ritual of accompaniment. Then he will require her to give her spirit to him as they share this plane of existence together. She will become like him. Part of the Cabin."

Then the Little girl was back.

You're a part of this Cabin?" I searched for answers, confused by all this uncertainty and unnatural happenings.

"No. We are Mist."

"You're part of the mist?" I asked

"Yes. Part. We are many."

"You mean like...Legion?" I recalled the old bible story about the demons that possessed a man and called themselves, legion.

The little girl laughed. It actually sounded funny, too. A giggly, girl laugh.

"You humans are so funny. You read your stories and have so little imagination that you can not see beyond the written word. History is about a moment in time but it can not be written down in its entirety by the human words that have such great limitations." Big words for a little girl.

"An event is more than a flash of a picture. It has depth and a myriad plethora of concepts and ideas arranged in an order that makes sense in whatever given plane of existence it is viewed in."

The woman flickered back.

"This event is described by a human for your recorded existence and is decidedly skewed to help you understand your world as the one making the report has viewed it and understood it. This understanding limits you in your perspective and your ability to see past the accepted explanation."

"That's nice, but does not answer my question."

"Yes, we could be described as legion but we are not demonic or anti your god. We just are."

"My God?" I was surprised to hear ghosts or demons or whatever this was talking about God. I had been taught that evil avoided all mention of God and even ran from his name being spoken. But this child-woman was speaking his name and not cringing under threat of hell fire.

"In the beginning everything began. Some in your plane of existence and some in other planes. We exist in many planes due to an ability to join others from those planes to ourselves."

The child was back.

"We are Mist. The sparks you played with is our energy and the salt you smelled is our fluids and the metallic flavor is our blood."

"I was walking through you?"

"Actually, we were swirling around you. We enjoy when a live human walks among us. It is a special treat to share our sensations with one who can still feel them at the level a live human does."

"So that feeling of energized life I felt was you?"

"Sure. You can't have sex with someone without each of us sharing the joy and invigoration of the other, can you?" The child asked and giggled just like a child would do if she were caught talking about sex.

"Sex?" The question shot out of my mouth. I remembered my embarrassment at my involuntary erection.

"Of course, silly." The little girl started. Then she flickered and winked out momentarily and was replaced by the naked woman.

"It was not a consummated act but you did stimulate us with your playful arm movements as you walked through us and we reciprocated with a tingling stimulation to arouse you in return. More like foreplay than sex, actually."

Her husky voice and simple declaration of their intent as I walked through the mist made it seem surreal. But I was on a mission and I needed to continue. My life was already changed enough having Kathy in it. I did not need any sex hungry ghostly, spiritual entities to fulfill me. I needed direction to find Kathy or, at least, for them to get out of my way and allow me to continue my search.

"Well, that's...uh...all very nice and all. But...uh...I really need to get on with my search. Kathy's in here somewhere and I need to find her."

"We told you," the woman started and flickered back to the little girl.

"He has her and he's not likely to let her go until she agrees to become one of the Cabin."

"Agrees?"

"Yes. A person from any plane must agree to be one of us before we will take them in. We do not ever force anyone to be with us. That is wrong."

"But, she will never agree. She wants to be here. With me." I tried to convince myself as much as them.

The woman flickered back to stand before me. This was getting disconcerting. Instead of getting used to the changes, I was getting more and more freaked out by them. My mind was racing to put this entire conversation in perspective and my ability to widen my perspective sufficiently was being sorely taxed. Somewhere inside me I was accepting the existence of otherworldly beings in otherworldly forms but the shifting changing of this girl and woman was unnerving me a little.

"He will convince her to stay with him. He always does. That is what he does. He convinces people from your plane that being with him would be preferable. Sometimes it takes a while but eventually he convinces them." The woman said it like it was an ordinary job that people had.

"But I need to find her. She would rather stay here with me. I've got to go."

"You can not." The woman spoke.

"Why not?" I was starting to feel like the entity before me was sent to delay me or stop me altogether.

"You can not go through the Mist to the cabin."

"Why not?" I felt like a three year old.

"We are the Guardians. It is our job to keep out all those who would harm the Cabin or the Keeper." the woman said and then flickered back to the little girl.

"How can you stop me?" I was not really sure I wanted the answer to that question but it had to be asked.

This little girl ghost, or entity or whatever, was between me and my love. There had to be a way around her. God would not allow me to meet the woman of my dreams and then take her away like that. I was not consciously putting God into my thoughts at the moment. I just found myself falling back on old teachings from my youth.

"It is easy. The Mist is a maze and no one finds their way in the maze. When we tire of playing with you we dump you back outside and let you wonder whatever you will. No one gets through the maze of the Mist unless we allow it. Even the Keeper does not know the way. We change it constantly and all who enter must share a sacrifice to learn the way. That is our way and how we maintain the Mist energies."

"Keeper? Sacrifice? So he is one of you?"

"Not any more. He was once but wandered the way of Dark, Now all that remains between us is his deal with us to protect the Cabin and consequently, him. For this he shares the energies with us."

"So, he sacrifices people?"

"Yes. All of life is about three things. Blood, Fluid and Spirit. The energies. Without a sacrifice of one of those, we can not accept anyone into our Mist."

The woman flickered back before me.

"When you stimulated us with your arm movements and walking, we enjoyed the sensation of contact but that only made us make sure you got back to where you started. Entry to the cabin would require a greater sacrifice."

"You mean I have to die to get to the cabin?"

"No, silly. You must..."

The little girl flickered back into place.

"...offer us a sacrifice of fluids to pass through the Mist."

The little girl giggled again. It was a strangely disconcerting laugh when coupled with those dark, knowing eyes and that tattered, beaten look of hers. I swear I saw her lick her dry, cracked lips, too.

"Fluids?"

"Yes. To pass through the Mist you must first offer up a part of your energies to join us."

"Join you?"

"Yes. That is how you will learn the way. Only we know the way. Only we can share the way. You must share part of you in order to share us. It is the only way."

"And then I will find Kathy?"

"We can only take you as far as the Cabin. We do not go into the Cabin. It is a maze unto itself. Our realm stops at the Cabin. Our job is to keep the Cabin safe from those who would harm it."

The woman flickered back.

"I just want to find Kathy. When I find her, we will go."

"You must pay the price to get through the Mist or you will never find the Cabin. When you find the Cabin you must navigate its dangers to find Kathy. Then you must deal with the Keeper. He will not want to let her go again."

"You keep saying again. When did the Keeper have her before?"

"When she was a little girl. He brought her to these woods back then and then circumstances drew his attention away and she wandered out."

"How did she get through the maze back then?" I was looking for a way in or out. I was trying to process the information that this Keeper was Kathy's original abductor when she was a child. My mind was whirling faster than any super computer looking for the answers to life's questions.

"She made the offering."

"Willingly?"

"Yes. She wandered into the Mist from the Cabin and stimulated us with her walking and her presence. One so young has such a vibrant presence."

"So, you let her through?"

"After she sacrificed herself."

"Sacrificed? How?" She had lived through the experience. What had she sacrificed?

The little girl flickered back.

"She gave up her virginity to pass through. She said she just wanted to go home and did not care what we took from her or how."

"You took her virginity?" I was incredulous.

"Uh...how? You're a ghost and a...female. She was only seven, not yet capable of giving of herself."

"There's more than one of us guarding the Cabin, silly. Aaron, was happy to take her offering and share it with all of us. I remember she was a very sharing child, too. Usually they cry a lot and scream when they are so young. She was quiet and gave freely of her fluids while accepting Aaron's. Sharing the fluids is always important but sometimes we just enjoy being accepted as well."

"So, this Aaron had intercourse with Kathy when she was a child and you let her pass through the mist to get away from the cabin? How? She was just a child, sexually undeveloped."

"In the plane of Mist, we all are who we are destined to be and that was our job." The little girl said. "For your human delicacies, it might help you to understand that when a human child offers to us, they slip into a sleep state and the dream is where the sacrifice takes place. Some humans call it a wet dream. I guess it is easier for you humans to categorize things like that. Small children rarely even remember the sacrifice, later. Their minds do not process the act. They just know they thought something to get something. We bring no harm to the human plane. We protect the coming and goings around the Cabin. Those who know to offer the sacrifice and accept us, do not harm us. They join us."

The little girl flickered back to the woman again.

"Do you wish to make a sacrifice to pass through the Mist?" she asked me.

"A...uh...sacrifice?" My head was spinning. There was too much information being shoved at me all at once. I was learning things about Kathy that she probably did not know herself.

"Sure. I promise it won't hurt and you might even like it." She smiled at me and that sultry smile definitely invited me to try her out.

Then the little girl flickered back.

"I would enjoy having you share your fluids with me," She gave me a mischievous grin. "Would you enjoy sharing your fluids with me?"

Looking down at the little girl, I could not put the words of her mouth with the small frame of the child. I was being propositioned by a child. My mind was in a tormented state from chasing through the mist after Kathy. Now it was being further tormented by a child claiming the only way I had through the mist to find Kathy was to have sex with her. Bad enough it was sex with a child. Granted, judging by the cut of her tattered clothes, a child who was probably older than I was. Still, my mind grappled with the vision of a small child offering me sex. But it was sex with a ghost or whatever they were. There was nothing in my life experiences to prepare me for this. Nothing to even come close to helping me get my head around it.

The form flickered and changed back to the woman.

"It will not be so bad," she cooed at me with her husky voice. "You have only to offer and we will see you through to the other side."

Now she was bargaining with me. I felt like I was discussing prices with a ghostly prostitute, arranging for services. The more I thought about it though, I was the one asking for something for my services. I was asking them to show me the way to the cabin in exchange for my services. I was actually the prostitute here. Another blow to my mind. I was not sure how much more my head could take. The hits just kept coming. If this had been a prize fight, I'm pretty sure this was the opponent's knockout blow. Set me up with all the talk of getting through and explaining their existence and then knock me out with the price.

"What if I don't offer?"

"We will show you the way out."

"I'll come back."

"And we'll show you the way out again."

I was stuck. No way I could go back. There was a major stumbling block to go forward.

"I need to go to the cabin." I wanted my will to make them take me.

"Say the words." The little girl was back. "Say the words. Drop your pants and lay back on the ground. We will do the rest for you. We want you to be comfortable. We want you to enjoy it as much as we will."

"Enjoy?" I could not believe I was talking about having sex with a child who appeared to be no more than eleven or twelve.

"Yes. During the sexual act, we share in your energy level and fluids and all the emotional state of the human condition. We actually like the human sexual act better than all the other entities we encounter. Your God truly gave you humans a special gift for enjoying the act."

She was talking about God again. I was talking about God with a little girl who was asking me to have sex with her. This was crazy. My mind could not grab on. I was slipping away. I could feel it. I was losing control. My mind had decided I did not know what I was doing and was taking control and slipping away. What scared me most was that my mind was not considering Kathy. My mind was only considering me. It wanted me to be safe and in a place where things made sense. This was not that place. I could feel my awareness retreating into a dark, deep place in the back of my mind. It took all my strength of will to force myself to concentrate and reconsider things in the interest of Kathy's position as well.

Kathy had sacrificed herself to this... Aaron once to get home. I would have to make a similar sacrifice to this girl/woman to do the same. It was only right. I could not believe I was calling any of this right. None of this was right. All of it was wrong. It should not be happening to me and Kathy. But it was. I was a practical man for all intents and purposes. The practical thing was to assess the situation and make the best choice at the moment.

I forced my mind back to its preferred way of thinking. Practicality. That was me. Practical.

Kathy was at this cabin. The Keeper had her and I needed to rescue her from him, somehow. The only way to get there was through the mist of this entity. The price for getting through was to have sex with a little girl ghost. The answer was simple to reason out. Making my mind accept it and my mouth offer it was something else.

Chapter Ten

The woman flickered back before me.

"I need to get through."

"Say the words. Offer up your sacrifice freely and willingly."

"I...uh...want to offer up my sacrifice to you...uh...freely and willingly. I'm just...uh..not sure about the little girl."

"I am the little girl." The woman said.

"How?"

"I was killed when I was eleven. My womanly form is the projection of the energy of my thoughts of what I was destined to become when I grew up. I never got to grow up and realize my dream, so the energy of that dream became my womanly presence in my projection among the living. However, because my death was a particularly gruesome affair, I have trouble letting go of the image of my former self and becoming what I was destined to be."

"How did you die?" I asked.

"I do not like to talk about that."

"I'm sorry. It just looked like you took a horrible beating."

"It was before the Keeper came. He is much more gentle with his offerings. Before him there was another who sacrificed screams and pain and other energies that required much injury to the sacrifices before they gave up their blood and spirit. There are different kinds of energies and that one took the harsh energies rather than the quiet, enjoyable ones."

The little girl with the deep, dark eyes was back. She had a trace of a smile on her lips.

"I have been happy since coming here but the trip to get here was not a joyful one. The pain and agony he wreaked over my body have stayed with me despite my ability to enjoy and move on emotionally and intellectually in this new realm."

"I am sorry for your suffering." I did not know what else to say.

"You did not cause it and you are now offering me a chance to enjoy life, so do not fret about it. My grandmother always said that we should only worry about the things we can change. I can not change my past. So, I only consider those things that affect my future. Right now I am considering enjoying your fluids."

The little impish grin and her story did little to make me feel any better about this. I am not a prude. And, truth be known, if I was confronted with a have to case of having sex with a regular human woman to save Kathy, I believe I could do it. But I was having real doubts about this little girl, ghost thing. Even if I wanted to, I was not aroused. I was scared to death.

"For humans, sex is more than just an act." I tried to make a case for extenuating circumstances.

"We know. That is what makes their sex so vital and energized. It's a life event unto itself." This explanation coming from a little girl's mouth made no sense to my brain. Little girls talked about dolls and TV shows, not sex and enjoying the energy from it.

"I mean, it takes more than just a wanting to, to make sex happen for humans."

"Oh, you mean..." the woman flicked back into shape.

"...the arousal." She smiled at me standing there with all her natural womanliness on display.

"I believe I can get you aroused sufficiently to accept your sacrifice." She giggled. A husky, little girl giggle.

I paused. I was out of options. My mind was offering nothing to bring to them. They were asking only one thing. It was time to put up or shut up, as my dad told me quite often. I started unbuckling my belt and unzipping my pants.

"Oh, goodie, goodie, goodie," The little girl was back. I was not the least bit aroused.

By the time I had stripped down and laid back in the pine needles where they asked me to lay, the woman had flickered back into form. Slowly she mounted me and I felt the tingling of her touch upon my skin as she slowly massaged me to a reluctant readiness. She was beautiful, if even a dream of a ghost herself. The little girl had a great destiny. Too bad for some lucky guy the old Keeper had kept her from attaining it.

I felt her electrical contact and I felt a sheepish embarrassment come over me as she smiled down at me and maneuvered herself into position over me. Then there was a warm rush of electrical current unlike anything I had ever felt before. Not a stinging electricity but rather a warm, engulfing, almost human feeling of pleasure.

No sooner was the beautiful dirty blond ghost resting on me than she changed back to the little girl. The grin of the little girl was replaced with a look of serene satisfaction that could only be ascribed to a woman. Those dark, mysterious eyes were now closed and she was absorbing the sensation of our coupling. As amazed as I was at her display of sexual abandon and enjoyment, I was embarrassed to feel myself respond to her. I had feared that I might lose my ability to be aroused when the form shifted back to the little girl, but now I was just as scared that I was some kind of pervert getting off on little girls.

"Enjoy it," She whispered in a voice made hoarse by her desire to put all her energies into her passion.

I watched the little girl change several times from little girl to the woman. Her joy was a child's joy. Her knowledge of the sexual act was a woman's knowledge. She was adept at maintaining arousal of her partner in many ways. Eyes. Smiles. Twists and turns of her body. She was a master at this. And every time I neared finishing, she slowed down, made another move and let me rest while she geared up for another round of ride-the-man-who-wants-to-get-through-the-mist.

I have no idea how long it took her to finish. I was embarrassed and worried about my own abilities and desires after this. I had visions of being ruined forever and wandering around playgrounds looking for sexual partners. I tried to chase the thoughts from my head but my mind had already been fed too much. I was trying to deal with things that were not able to be referenced.

Finally she let ended it. We shared our fluids. As much as I would like to complain about my treatment at the hands of the ghostly little girl, I could not complain about the sensation of utter release that flowed through my body. Her giggles and screams of joy at my ultimate response to her body would have made most men glad that they had caused such joy in a child. I could only feel revulsion. Not at her. Not at what we had done together. I was dealing with the terms of our relationship. It was a business deal, something I had to do to get to Kathy. My revulsion was at my discovery that I could be turned on by the sexual advances of a child.

"There." The little girl spoke as she backed up off. "Now, tell me. Can any little girl do that for you?"

"Uh...no." I responded.

"You're damn right they can't. I may have died a little girl but I have learned a thing or two since entering the Mist."

"You certainly have." I tried to sound macho after losing my Mist virginity to a little girl ghost.

She shifted back to the woman's form.

"I hope that you have enjoyed this as much as we have. You have provided us with a great supply of emotional energy and fluid energy, too." She laughed.

I looked down at the ground. I was embarrassed. It was like lunch time to them. It was like revealing my most embarrassing moment in front of an audience. Hell, this was my most embarrassing moment.

"I need to get to the cabin, quickly," I ended my embarrassment.

"Walk that way," The little girl was back and I followed the direction of her pointed finger.

It was not the same direction she had pointed before.

"That's not the same direction you pointed to before."

"Relative to your position, no. But the Mist is always moving. The maze of the Mist is not dependent upon position but rather fluctuating direction. As you move in one direction, the Mist swirls around you changing that direction for you and keeping you always headed in the direction we want you to go. You may think you are walking straight ahead but as the Mist swirls, you change direction several times."

"Still, I need to get there, now."

"Please, take your leave. Do as you feel a need to do. But remember, you are one of us now. You can come back at any time."

With that the Mist cleared a path toward the cabin for me and the little girl/woman disappeared. I was standing in clear darkness. The light of the stars and a bright moon overhead drifted down through the branches of the large pine trees all around me. I was back in the woods and the Mist was gone. For a second I discounted the experience I just had as some kind of dream. But I still felt that tingle in my pants. I knew I had done what I thought I had done. The Mist had thought it a good thing. The little girl-woman had thought it a good thing. But my staunch, religious upbringing told me I should revile myself.

Later.

Kathy was somewhere straight ahead and in need of my help. I set out in the direction the little girl had indicated. My flashlight worked now that I was in a clearing. I shined it around to see if I could locate the Mist. But it must have been too far away for my light beam to reach it. I continued on toward the place where the cabin was supposed to be.

It was a ramshackle little cabin perched on a small rise in an even smaller clearing. I approached it with the idea that someone would come out to defend the cabin and its prize, Kathy. What I found was an unlocked door that let me inside a dusty, musty, grimy, smelling wooden room with one window on the side. The cobwebs hung thick in every corner. The place had that not-lived-in look. It appeared abandoned. I wondered if I was still on my property or if I had gone far enough to be on the park lands that abutted the back of my property.

On second thought, after my experience with the Mist, I was pretty sure I was not on anyone's land. Except maybe the Keeper's. When I thought about the Keeper before, I had been sure he was a man who prayed on innocent victims and was dangerous, but still a man. Defeatable. Now, looking around the decay and silence of this old cabin, it was plain that no one had been here for a really long time. The thought entered my mind that the Keeper may not be a human. He may be someone from another plane, as they called it. Whatever, he was definitely something I had never dealt with before. I wish I had asked the little girl.

There was nothing to indicate this was anything except an abandoned cabin. Even the dust had not been disturbed. If Kathy had been brought here, she was brought in some way that did not disturb the dust and cobwebs of this old place.

Then the thought hit me. What if the Mist had tricked me? What if it had gotten what it wanted and given me nothing in return? What if Kathy was somewhere else, miles from here? An anger boiled up in me that took a few minutes to calm down. I needed to think this out. Practicality. Maybe the Mist had deceived me. Maybe not. Maybe Kathy was here. Maybe not. The little girl had said the cabin was a maze like the Mist. Maybe I had to find an entrance to the maze. Maybe she had been pulling my leg.

I searched inside and out and found nothing revealed in the glare of my flashlight. To all intensive reasoning, it appeared to be just what it was. An abandoned cabin in the woods. I was starting to feel Kathy slipping away from me.

The mist. A little girl ghost that transformed into a naked woman. A demented killer who is set up in an abandoned cabin in the woods. A time constraint to finding the love of my life before that demented killer can take her from me. A strange ritual to get through the maze to the cabin. A mystery to solve before I could ever hope to get on with my life. I was no match for all this. I felt completely inadequate to the task. Yet, I had to try. I had to move forward. First, I had to find forward.

I found a rock at the front of the cabin and sat down to think this out. I was not going to panic. Not yet anyway. I turned off the flashlight to save the batteries for my walk out. I was trying to fight off the notion that I was going to fail and not find her. I had to fix this. I just had to. Everything told me time was important here.

I went through all that the little girl had told me about the Keeper and his job. Apparently he collected victims to bring here and share their blood, fluids and spirit with the Cabin and sometimes the Mist. Somehow he convinced them to offer themselves to the sacrifice because forced sacrifices were not allowed for some reason. I could not picture that. Judging from the little girl, the Cabin likes young children sacrifices. Vital, she had called it. There was no evidence of anything going on that even slightly resembled sacrificing in the old cabin. So the cabin had to be the outside of the maze. There had to be a way in.

I knew the cabin was the key. I just did not know how to use it. Somehow the cabin opened up and allowed the Keeper to go inside. And inside it was a maze itself. But opening it up was my first problem.

"It's just like the Mist." The little girl's voice.

Startled, I looked around quickly. Nothing. I turned on the flashlight and waved it in all directions. Still nothing. Maybe I had imagined it.

"You didn't imagine anything, John."

"Huh?"

"I said, you didn't imagine anything."

I looked around some more.

"I'm right here. In your head, silly." Her childish giggle had an honest ring of humor to it this time.

"In my head?" I asked out loud.

"Yes. That's where you hear us."

"Us?"

"The entities of the Mist, silly. I told you, you're one of us, now."

"How?"

"By sacrificing your fluids. Don't you remember, silly? Golly, I thought I was more memorable than that. It's only been, what? Thirty minutes? I'm hurt that you don't remember me." Her voice said she was toying with me.

"Okay. Okay. That's not what I asked. How'd you get in my head?"

"You're one of us, now. We're in you and you're in us. As we exist in your plane, you are in connection with us in a small way in our plane because we have shared."

"I'm in you?" Once again, I was not following her very well.

"Yes, John. We are joined at the convergence of our energies. Your distress called out to us in its plaintive state. I answered so as not to startle you more than necessary. But you have the ability to talk to all of us now. Although, I will remain your primary liaison."

"All of you?"

"Yes. There are thousands of us in the Mist currently. From all planes of existence, too. Maybe someday you will join us in the Mist, too."

"Join you?"

"Yes. When you die, you can say the words and give yourself totally over to us and become one of us in the Mist. You will live for eternity in here with us. It is actually quite wonderful. Lots of sex, you know?" She giggled again.

I did not know what to say.

"I called on you?" I asked with a whine that almost held my frustrations in check.

"By stressing out over not finding the doorway, you activated an energy level sufficient to call out. Since we are of you, now, we heard it and I responded. It's pretty simple."

"That's easy for you to say." My head was spinning again. It was bad enough to have a memory of having sex with a child and a ghost, or whatever, on top of that. But now she was in my head to remind me forever of my perversion.

"It was not perverted, John." Her voice was stern and loud inside my head. "I may look like a child in appearance. That is only because of the way in which I died. Torture has a way of stunting the growth, physically and mentally. Spiritually though, I am one hundred and thirty three. I did not seduce you as a child would, did I?"

"No." I admitted.

"Do not think of me as a child. Think of me as the woman birthed from that child murdered all those years ago."

"Okay. Okay." I wanted it to stop. I was getting a headache.

"Actually, it is okay, John. Think of it more like you had sex with a friend of your great grandmother." Her giggles shook the essence of my head like a vibrator. I could physically feel her laughter. She obviously enjoyed messing with my mind.

"Okay. Okay. Stop trying to cheer me up. You're not very good at it."

"Oh, John. You know I'm good at making you feel good."

"Please don't remind me. I'm still trying to get that picture out of my head."

"Come on, John. After the act, memory is all there is. Memory holds a certain energy of its own. Sharing the memory is a way of keeping the act alive."

"Okay. I get the picture. I'm sorry. I did not totally understand."

"We know. Also, you do not have to talk to us with your mouth any more. I'm in your head. We're in your head. We can hear your every thought. We're personal. We're in you and you're in us."

"How's that work?"

"Concentrate on us and we will come into hearing distance for you. Concentrate real hard and you can actually move among us in the Mist and wherever we of the Mist happen to be."

"Huh?"

"It's simple, silly. Not all the people of the Mist are inside. Like you, some are still in their own bodies on different planes of existence. If you get inside the Mist and meet the people of the Mist, you can meet the people of the Mist who are still alive. That connection will allow you to contact them through the Mist and see and hear what's going on in their lives. It's like a perfect hive of collective information. You access it and browse around enjoying all it has to offer. Then when the time comes for you to pass over, you can choose to come here."

"What about heaven?"

"Your God has created the idea of heaven to help you understand the concept of life after mortal death. The actual embodiment of the theory is displayed in multiple ways at multiple levels of existence. Some of your theologians offer their insight into the levels of hell or heaven like there is a ladder effect of rank and servitude or pleasure involved. Truth is, it's more like planet hopping. Spiritually, you can exist wherever you want after the fleshly shell has been shuffled off. Those in good relation with the Creator of Life get to choose their existence. Some choose to join us. You can also choose to change later. It's a benefit of living right or, in many cases, dying right."

"What about those who are not in good relations with the Creator of Life?" I used her terms.

"Oh, they are sent to the Place of Chains with locks and guards. Theirs is not a pretty end. Eternity without relationship with life is exhausting and interminable. It goes on forever without any pleasure ever entering there. No one wants that."

"But some end up there?"

"Yes. Unfortunately."

"What about the Keeper. Seems that what he is doing is evil. How come he has not been sent to this place of chains?"

"He works the loop holes."

"Loop holes?"

"Yes. There is no law against evil activity, nothing that stops someone from performing an evil action. Just a proper reward for those who practice it. He has not been sent because he created a place for himself in the physical world before he died. He used some of the energy he was supposed to share with us to make himself a hideout of sorts. It is his place and no one else. In it, he makes the rules and he decides the rewards of all who enter. Like a fake plane all in itself. Contained within another plane, where he feeds on the energies from that plane."

"So, the Keeper was one of you but he's gone bad and made a secret place to do his work from."

"Yes. But it is not a secret. We all know about it. And he does share some of the energy with us because of the deal, although lately he does not share the blood or the fluids with us."

"So, he's keeping all the torture, abuse and killing to himself? He's only sharing the emotional energy with the Mist?"

"Yes. He has become more and more secretive about his work in there, too. That is why we allowed you through. He is no longer considered one of us by most of us. He has crossed over and is no longer even benefiting us with his presence. His presence has also brought undue observation to our woods. Although we exist in many planes at the same time, we require a certain amount of anonymity to maintain our existence. Physical life forms do not like being made aware that they are not the ultimate existence."

"Boy, don't I know that." I shook my head. If I was reeling before from all the revelations, I was now officially punch drunk from all the hits I had been taking.

"But you were murdered as a little girl. Does that not qualify for evil?"

"Yes. And the man who did that has since been sent to that Place of Chains and darkness. He was allowed to operate while he was alive, but when he died he fell into the hands of the Creator of Life who judges all things."

"So, when this Keeper dies, he will be similarly judged?"

"No. He is already dead."

"Huh?"

"Let me explain, John."

For a little girl, she sure had lots of patience.

"Again," she huffed in my head. "I am not a little girl. I just appear that way because of the manner of my death." She blew out air with an almost whistle quality to her frustration at my failure to recognize her as anything but a child. Even in my head, I could sense her attitude.

"When bad people do bad things in the many worlds we inhabit, especially to the young in age, there is a calling that goes out, if they have the time to cry out, that calls on us. We respond by going to the distressed ones and inviting them to accept our way and enter the Mist with us. We do not advocate or in any way support the evil of the many planes of existence, but we do try to use it to the best of our ability. We take what was meant for evil and absorb them into our community for their good. They become one of us in their time of distress and release. Once in here, the torment and danger of their lives is over. Happiness can be returned to them and joy can once again be achieved as they embrace the fullness of life as it was meant to be."

Chapter Eleven

"How did the Keeper escape the Creator of Life?"

"He has always been one who took lives in the physical plane he existed in. He killed for the sake of releasing the children from the burden of having to grow up and live in a bad world. Something in his mind crossed over long before he did. We discovered him many years ago and have been offering shelter to those he has killed in your world. Most of his victims accepted our offer to joins us and now reside inside the Mist with us."

"But how did he keep from getting sent to the Place of Chains?"

"Blood, Fluids and Spirit drive all life. Blood and Fluids can not be brought into the Place of Chains. Only a small dose of energy, controlled by the Keeper of the Place, is allowed inside. Those sent there live out eternity never knowing the touch or the energy of blood and fluids ever again. It drives them crazy in their spirit. The Place of Chains is a dark, awful place that scares most of us to even think about.

"The Keeper of the Cabin built a maze underneath the Cabin out of the blood of his victims. By calling upon the elements of Rock and Wood and Air, he assembled a hiding place in the dark beneath the Cabin. Rock and Wood and Air have no life of their own and can only share in a gift offered to them freely, much as we. So they readily made a deal with the Keeper of the Cabin for some life."

"So, he switched sides in order to create this new hiding place?"

"Yes. But more than that. His deal with Rock was to open him a place in the ground for his workshop. In return, he sacrifices his victims upon a slab chosen by Rock which feeds the plane of Rock. With Wood he made a deal to furnish the hidden place and protect it with it's woods and paths of mazes through the woods. Wood is allowed to share in the sacrifices at all stages. With Air he made a deal to exist physically in the plane of air after his death, ensuring he could still walk the planes of existence in physical form snaring victims and keeping a supply of Blood, Fluids and Spirit coming to them all. Air exists all around everything in most planes of existence. Therefore, almost every deal has to include some deal with Air. That is why you could smell the metallic tinge on the air as you walked through the Mist before. We share the Blood, the most potent part of life, with Air."

I was beginning to get a picture of an existence far beyond any of my Sunday School teachings. What's more, I was starting to understand how I fit into it all.

"Exactly." She exclaimed loudly. "Now, you're starting to see the world as it really is. Few people ever really do while they are alive in the human plane. Too easy to accept the easy, simple traditions of the past."

"Yeah, but my image of the Creator of Life does not include illicit sex with ghosts or whatever you are."

"It's not illicit unless you are a human being trying to use sex as a way to control or fashion some kind of joy outside of your required existence. Sex is never bad. Just the way it can be misused. Remember, it's always about life. Every act. Every deal. It's about life. Sex is about life at all levels. As humans you share an ability to create life. Not just procreative life but life at an energy level that draws upon everything good in the universe.

"When you share with another human, on your own plane, there is the inference of commitment. Because you become responsible for creating another life, you inherit that commitment. That is a serious deal in life. Breaking deals is forbidden. The Creator of Life handles all broken deals. Deal breakers in the spiritual planes end up in the Place of Chains. But when you share with someone from another plane, Like passing through the Mist, you are merely creating energy, not procreative life. That is a different deal. A deal of inclusion, not commitment. There's a difference."

"Okay. That's great. And I am trying to accept that we are now... One... as members of the Mist. But I still need to get inside the Cabin and find Kathy. Do you know the way in?"

"Yes. Open the window from the outside. It is a doorway inside. We know Kathy went in but we can not hear anything from her inside."

"Hear from her? You mean she's...dead?"

"No. I mean exactly what I say. We can not hear her inside. Rock and Wood protect her from us. We can not go inside. Only a physical being or Air can go inside. Even Air can not get us inside because of the deal with Rock and Wood."

I understood. It amazed me that I did, but I actually was getting a picture of how this thing worked.

"Careful," she warned. "Get too cocky and Rock or Wood will kill you. Inside, we can not offer you a chance to join us. All there is inside is Air. The Agenda of Air is to spread things around. Pleasure is not one of Air's big priorities. You can change later, after your choice, but not until Air extracts a huge amount of energy and labor from you. Like I said, Air is all about growing and increasing itself and whatever plane it has deals with. Whatever you do, do not join Rock or Wood. They do nothing but utilize energy so, there is no way to work your way out of that deal. The work of Wood to convert Air from one state to another for human consumption is a painstakingly slow process that really uses more energy than it creates. It takes forever for the process to earn you a chance to move. Of course, unless you enjoy the warped, cruel world of the Keeper, don't join him either. The only way to earn a chance to move from his Cabin is to kill, maim and destroy life, which makes all of us others unwilling to take you in any move."

"I see."

I really did. The entities of the Mist did not see my chance of dying as a bad thing. Life is born and life dies. Simple. It's the choices we make that last forever. Especially the choices about life. How many times had I heard my mother say those same words?

"Evelyn? Oh, at least a million times, I would guess," the little girl answered my thoughts.

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"Evelyn is one of us."

"She is?"

"Yes. Do you remember that car accident she had many years ago?"

"Barely. I was only about five at the time. But I remember my dad saying many times how close my mother was to dying from that."

"She was. In her time of crying out, we answered her and she gave of herself for the energy to keep living so she could see you one last time. She gave us of her blood at the time, which was everywhere due to the accident. We can not just take. We have to ask for it. She gave willingly when we explained our deal to her. She gave her sacrifice and asked us to give her enough energy to last until help could arrive and give her the chance to see you. We did. And she lived, too. She's a very strong woman, your mother."

"She is, indeed. Do you know anything of my father? He's dead already."

"No." She answered too fast for my liking.

"That sounded ominous."

"You're dad was a close-minded thinker. He believed he knew all the answers and yet his answers rarely resulted in things going right."

There was a hint of anger in her voice. Dad had a way of ruffling people's feathers. Apparently he could ruffle feathers in the spiritual realm, too.

"You're father died of cancer. In the end his body was making too little blood and releasing too much fluid. His energy was fading fast and when we approached him, he really had little left to offer us. When he heard our offer, he called us wicked, evil creatures sent to sway him from the right path and separate him from his god. He called us demons and worse. He invoked about every evil reference I have ever heard in one long statement of his denial of our offer."

I chuckled out loud. That sounded exactly like dad.

"As far as I know, the only offer he got after that was from the Creator of Life himself. He's probably in the City of Thrones or under it or somewhere, singing or chanting or whatever those people do." Her tone revealed that she thought very little of those people.

"You have a problem with those who choose holiness as a way to live?" I asked.

"No. Holiness is okay, I guess. One way of reconciling this multiple planes of existence after life into a physical and mortal mind. But those that are so exclusively minded to believe that they have to be in the City of Thrones to be in the presence of the Creator of Life, are tiresome to us with a broader scope of existence. Nothing wrong with it. They just think they are better than us. In the religion you were taught, you believe your God is omnipresent, right?"

"Sure."

"Well, how come when you die, you believe you have to be in His sight to be in His presence? If he is able to be everywhere when you are mortal, how can he not be everywhere when you are spiritual?"

"Good question," I answered. "I guess some people are better at being mortal than they are at being spiritual."

"Amen to that," she laughed. "Isn't that what your mother always says when she heartily agrees with someone?"

I laughed. It was exactly what my mother always said.

It was time to go.

"I need to go." I said.

"We understand. We hope Kathy is alright."

"So do I."

I slid the window up on the old cabin. It creaked and groaned and stuck several times before I got it all the way up. Once I felt it slam into place high up in its casing a bright light shone beneath the window and a stair casing downward appeared before me. In the comparative darkness the light was blinding.

"You're on your own, now," I heard the little girl say as I entered the staircase and headed down.

The little girl. I had never asked her name. She knew mine. I tried to think about asking her her name. Nothing. I walked back up a few steps and heard her ask what was wrong.

"Nothing," I thought. "Just wondered what your name was."

"Marcie," She replied immediately, like she was waiting for me to ask. "Short for Marcella."

"Pretty," I told her.

"Thank you. Now that I have shared sex with you, I have a whole new appreciation for Johns."

Shaking my head in amazement and some unbelief at my new friend's status, I turned to head back into the bowels of the Keeper of the Cabin's maze. I chuckled to myself at her statement as I passed out of the hearing of her and the rest of the Mist. I figured she had no idea how her statement sounded. But I had other things to concentrate on.

Before me stretched out a rock and wood braced hallway of large proportions. From the bottom of the stairs, I judged the ceiling height to be about ten feet. The hallway was at least twenty feet wide. I could drive my truck through here. The cabin up above would fit a hundred times over just in the part of the hallway I could see.

I navigated the hallway quickly checking two rooms I passed along the way. No one inside. One was apparently a storage room. There were chemicals and some gasoline in there with a lot of wooden furniture whose usage I did not know and was not sure I wanted to find out about.

The hallway turned left and right and left and right again. Then it split off into three directions. Higher, straight ahead and lower. I chose lower. Something told me the Keeper liked low places. I checked another two rooms as I passed their doors. Still the hallways went downward. I had no real way to measure such things but it felt like about a hundred feet down by the time the hallway leveled out. The lighting changed, too. Everything on this level was red.

Ahead I saw another series or passageways. Straight, left and right. I had no idea which way to go or how much time I had to get to Kathy.

I sent out thoughts like I had thought them with Marcie above in the woods. I was grasping at straws. I had no idea if the people of the Mist could hear me down hear. They seemed to believe they could not. They did not answer me.

Desperately, I searched for Kathy in my mind. She was one of the Mist people, too. We had a connection through the Mist according to Marcie. I was hoping that something would join us together, somehow. I still did not know exactly how all this worked. I was trying everything.

Nothing.

"Hello, John." The low, guttural growl from Kathy's hallway.

Of course!

This was his world. I had entered his world and he controlled everything here, including thoughts.

"Are you the Keeper of the Cabin?" I asked.

"Yes. And you are trespassing."

"Give Kathy back to me and I will leave."

"And if I don't?" There was a sense of humor and confidence in his voice. He was toying with me.

"Then I will search until I find her."

"And then?"

"I will take her out of here. By force if necessary." I gave him my ultimatum.

"Force is always necessary here, John," he said.

"Where is she?"

"Somewhere safe."

"She will not be safe until she is away from you."

"You do not know what you are talking about, John. No child is safer than when she is with her father."

"Father? What makes you think in your perverted, twisted mind that you are her father? Tell me where she is you evil coward, so I can get her and leave. NOW!" I screamed in my head.

"I know I am her father John because I was married to her mother."

"What?"

"That's right, oh slow-to-comprehend-boyfriend. She's my little girl."

I thought of a little girl named Marcie.

"Just like her," the Keeper said in my head. "My little girl was supposed to join me many years ago but I got sidetracked by her uncle coming to hunt for her and me. I escaped by going back to his house through the woods and pretending to be asleep in the hammock out back. I thought Kathy would be alright in the cabin until I could get back. When I did get back, she had already wandered away. The police got to her before I could. In the excitement of the girl showing up and telling her abduction story, they lost track of the location and wrote it off as another victim who got lucky and escaped the clutches of a killer. I could not touch her after that, so I had to let her grow up in this awful world and make her own way."

"You were going to kill your own child?" I could not believe this explanation.

"Still am. In the physical plane." he chuckled.

"Not if I have anything to say about it."

"You have nothing to say about it, John. She's my little girl and I am claiming her."

"She's going to be my wife and I claim her by the love we share."

I have no idea where that came from. I just wanted to have a claim that trumped his.

The Keeper chuckled.

"You are not married yet, John. You have no claim. Besides. It does not matter. Even if you were married, a father's claim trumps any man who comes my daughter's way. You're not her first, you know?"

"Doesn't matter."

"Oh, a player, huh?"

"No. A man in love."

"How sweet. Too bad it isn't enough to save her for you. But I'll tell you what. When she has been sacrificed and chooses to join me, I will allow you to choose the same thing. I have no argument with allowing you to make love to my daughter for all eternity in my world, John. Great energy, that."

The Keeper laughed. A deep, dark laugh that filled me with dread at his meaning. Surely Kathy would never join her crazy father in his world. I wondered if she knew of the Mist world, or remembered it. Was she too young to remember the night she gave her sacrifice to Aaron? The thought of being separated from Kathy for all eternity stung my heart severely. If the Keeper had been within reaching distance I would have attacked him at that moment. I am not a violent man but I have my limits. Kathy was my future. Maybe not totally but enough of a factor that without her my future was starkly different. No one, and I mean no one, was going to take that from me.

"Very good, John." The Keeper let me know he could still hear my thoughts.

"Then show yourself, you coward."

"In my world, I give the commands, John." His voice boomed inside my head.

"You don't like being pushed around, do you?" I taunted.

I had seen pictures of him at Kathy's house. Her father had been a small man with a fragile frame. Not exactly what a cop would be looking for in a killer. He must have hated being pushed around all his life. Somewhere he had transferred all that hatred to the kids he had murdered.

"It was not hatred, John. I saved those kids from the world that would chew them up and spit them out because they were not as strong as the others. I saved them from all that. What I did, I did out of love and concern for them. No one loved those kids as much as I did. No one did for them what only I could. I released them to live in joy and peace. I allowed them to leave behind the world that would only torment them the rest of their natural lives."

"You killed them." I was amazed that he expected me to buy into his demented explanation.

"You are just like all the rest." He shouted in my brain.

"If you mean I am sane and you are crazy, yeah, I am just like all the rest." I taunted.

"I am not crazy, John." He regained his control. His voice lowered in pitch in my head.

I smelled something coming out of the right branch of the hallways before me. Familiar. Disgusting but familiar. Wet leaves and death. That's what I smelled. Like in the woods that night. I started down the hallway.

"Where do you think you are going, John?"

"I am coming to get you and take Kathy out of here."

"Who do you think you are and where do you think you are?" He demanded.

"I am the guy who's going to marry Kathy. Right now I am going to take her out of here with or without your consent. Notice, I am not asking for your permission to marry her. My mother always told me not to talk to crazy people."

Slam!

An invisible wall of something as hard as a rock hit me full in the chest and drove me back about ten feet leaving me sprawled on the rock floor of the hallway. I gasped for breath and choked on my own surprise as I tried over and over to get the air back into my lungs. I struggled for a breath.

Nothing.

I flailed around flinging my arms and legs out like I could stop the invisible whoever or whatever was doing this to me by some accidental attack. Nothing. I was slowly losing energy. My brain was shutting down and slowing down the rest of my body in response to the lack of oxygen. My arms looked like they were moving in slow motion.

Again and again I gasped but no air was coming. I was starting to think about dying right there and having to choose where I would spend eternity. Slowly asphyxiating while scrambling around on a cold, rock floor in a long, dim hallway. Then a thought came to my mind. A long shot, if I understood things correctly.

I called out to Air in my mind, reminding it that I was of the Mist people and Air had a deal with them. If the deal was broken with me then it was broken with all the Mist people because I was of them. Maybe Air could not carry the people of the Mist inside the Cabin. But neither could it deprive air to those of the Mist who were still living. The physical world was allowed inside the Cabin. The Keeper needed to bring in his victims. My physical presence broke no deal. To take air away from me for no reason was a deal breaker.

Air understood my threat. In the spiritual world, Marcie said the Creator of Life dealt with those who broke deals. The Creator of Life oversaw all deals. Break one and you were banished to the Place of Chains. By depriving me of my need for air, Air was breaking a deal with Mist.

Immediately the air flooded back into my lungs. I breathed deeply and savored the effect of full lungs on my psyche. Not being able to breathe was a major downfall to enjoying life. But breathing itself was more pleasure than I had ever remembered before. They say you never realize how important something was until you lose it. I was living proof of that. Thankfully living.

"This is my world, John. I control all things here."

"Not my breathing." I reminded him. "Not the Creator of Life."

"Even He must go by the rules. He has no power here."

"Why? Because you designed it that way?"

"Of course. This is my place, not His."

"His rules still apply and even you can not break those."

"Inside here, they can not touch me. Wood and Rock protect me in here and Air allows me to venture forth."

I was thinking fast. Deals. That was the answer. It had kept me alive so far.

"You just tried to deprive me of air, Keeper."

"So?"

"As I member of Air, through your deal with Air, you are liable for all other deals with Air and the other parties making those deals. In effect, you tried to break Air's deal with the Mist people when you tried to deprive me of my air."

"That is not so. I was only redirecting the air within my own realm." Worry was creeping into his words now.

"No, you purposefully attempted to take the air away from me, thus depriving Air of completing its deal with the Mist people. I have a complaint and as soon as you poke your head out of your kingdom, the Creator of Life will deal with you for your deal breaking effort."

"No. I tell you. That was not my intention."

"Maybe not. But it was what you did. By purposefully depriving me of air, you broke the deal the Mist people have with Air. In fact, if I look closely enough, I am still a living human. I'll bet the Creator of Life has a deal with Air to supply all those living humans, too. You just broke a deal for the Creator of Life. There's no way he's going to let you off. You are definitely headed for the Place of Chains."

I emphasized the Place of Chains to give more weight to my threat. I tried to make it sound ominous. Marcie had said those in the other planes feared the Place of Chains.

"No! It can't be."

"Tell you what. Let's you and I go outside and ask. What do you say? Just you and me. We'll ask and see what happens. Okay?" I chuckled to show my disdain for his predicament.

"No. I control what happens in here."

"Of course you do. But your supply of Blood and Fluids and Spirit, whose energies feed your deals, come from outside. Sooner or later you have to emerge and my complaint will still be valid whenever that is. Kill me and I will join the Air and demand an even more severe sentence as both the victim of your deal breaking and a part of the injured party, Air."

"This is not right." the Keeper stated. "This is my world. I created this. I make the rules in here."

"Sure. Sure, Keeper. You make the rules in here, in your tiny, fake plane of existence. But you are still under the rules of the Creator of Life when you go out there. Break them and there are consequences."

There was a long silence in my head and I got back up and continued walking toward the smell I had first smelled.

"That was a long shot you played." It was another voice. Masculine.

"Who's there?"

"Edward of the Air."

"Oh."

"What if we had not been willing to allow you to use the deal with the Mist people as a lever?"

I would have suffocated.

"Not an ideal outcome."

"No. I agree. But I was serious about asking to join Air upon my death and from there I would have filed a complaint about the way I was killed and the deal being broken would be part of that explanation. Air would never want that on their record, jeopardizing the plane of Air."

"Agreed. But Air is so huge it makes rules for others not the other way around."

"Still, all things answer to the Creator of Life eventually. Air may be greater in existence in many planes..."

"All planes." Edward interjected.

"All planes. But still even Air ultimately responds to the rules of the Creator of Life."

"You have played the game well, Young John."

"Game?"

"Certainly. Did the Mist Folk not explain to you that the game is played at every level and plane of existence?"

"No, they must have forgotten that fact."

"You have done well to reason that out for yourself, then. Physically, you would never have succeeded in your venture into the realm of the Keeper of the Cabin. It is a spiritual game that could only be played with the spiritual rules."

I reached a door with a gold handle. Turning it, I entered and met the Keeper face to face. He snarled at me in the harsh light of his own realm. He growled at the smile on my face. I could see his translucent body absorbing light at times and then letting it pass through at other times. He flickered with the density of a candle flame only he had form and position in his stance. I wasn't sure if he had a real substance of form or whether it was a trick of the light and air to make it appear so.

"I'll make a deal with you, Keeper." I offered.

I saw that Kathy had been tied to a large slab of rock in the center of the room. She was naked and squirming against the ropes that bound her. Little troughs had been cut into the white slab of marble for the blood to flow down during the sacrifice. At the end of each trough was a large wooden bowl. This must be how the Keeper shared his sacrifices with the Rock and Wood. I concentrated on finishing this fight with the Keeper once and for all rather than attending to the distress of my lovely Kathy.

"A deal?"

"Yes, a deal. You want to keep operating, correct?"

"It is my plan, yes."

"Well, I will forgo my complaint about you breaking our deal with Air if you let Kathy and I both go and promise to never bother either one of us again or ever work within a thousand miles of my campground again."

I saw Kathy stop squirming as the Keeper considered my words. I did not meet her eyes, which I'm sure would have been searching for some explanation from me. I needed to concentrate now.

"How about I let you go and keep just her?"

"My terms are non negotiable. All of it or no deal. Me and her. No more attempts to bother us. Move away from my campground. All of it. In return I leave you alone and make no complaint."

"And if I don't make this deal..."

"I get to the Creator of Life as soon as I can and report your deal breaking actions and you lose everything as well as ending up in the Place of Chains the next time you poke your head out of here." I was sure I had him.

The Keeper gave the impression he was mulling over my offer.

Maybe I will just kill you, too and command the Air to not break our deal by doing something that causes my realm to be destroyed."

"Your deal for protection is with Wood and Rock. Your deal with Air is for the ability to move around. Air can not make a new deal with you to break the deal with the Mist entities. And Air is not obligated by its current deal to protect you."

"You believe you are a smart one, don't you, John?"

"Not really. But I will use whatever I have to fight for those I love."

"Then why do you oppose my doing the same? I built this place for Kathy. The world is no good. I wanted her to have a good place to come and live forever."

"I am in that no good world. I love her and I will protect her at all costs."

"But she is my daughter."

A gasp almost shouted itself across the rock confines of that sacrifice room. Obviously Kathy knew nothing of her abductor's identity. The tall, willowy form of the Keeper would not have suggested her small framed, fragile looking father. He had not revealed himself to her yet, either.

Then I realized I was still talking to the Keeper in my mind. Kathy had heard us talking together in our minds. That threw me a little. Kathy was in my head, too.

"If you love your daughter, as you say, give her a chance to be happy in her physical life. Do not take that happiness away from her because of some warped view you have of a better way"

"It is not warped."

"It is not normal to our way of thinking, either."

"Because you do not see what I see. You have never been tormented by them."

"Give me a break. Okay, so, you were small growing up. Maybe you were not the toughest guy in school. But try being the son of a minister who barely makes enough to feed his family. Try being the kid who always had to turn the other cheek and let others run over him to keep the peace. You might have had some bad breaks, but you had choices still. I had no choices. You do what you do because you choose to take the easy way out. I do what I do because I have been taught to do the right thing no matter how hard the road is. Stop acting like you're doing anyone a favor. You are only taking revenge for your mistreatment on those who are too defenseless to stop you. Try attacking adults for a while. Even as a spiritual entity, they would probably still kick your butt."

"Had you plenty scared several times," he reminded me.

"Okay. So, you can scare people? My point is that you have taken a road that allows you to feel like you are doing something but actually only allows you to just become a bully like all the bullies you always hated. You are not fixing anything. You are adding to the problem by becoming part of the problem."

"Okay. I get your point." He was breaking.

"Let us go. Leave us alone forever and move away from here. Those are the terms. In exchange, I do not complain. As long as you stay away from us, I will never complain about what you did."

A long pause gave me time to take a quick look in Kathy's direction. She was indeed looking at me. She gave a slight pull against the bonds that held her as a way of saying, 'Get me out of here.'

"Deal." the Keeper said.

"And letting us go means escorting us out of here to freedom."

"Deal." he repeated.

Months later Kathy and I were married. My mother came to the wedding and was delighted to meet Kathy and welcome her into the family. The campground was up and running and our first season was looking very profitable. Kathy quit the police department and came to work with me full time at the campground. We never reported the confrontation with the Keeper or explained to Detective Mercer what happened to me in the Mist. We just wandered back out of the Mist about dawn and found the detective asleep on his watch. He was glad to see us and told us he was getting ready to send in the cavalry if we didn't come out when we did. We thanked him and reported that all was well now that I had found my Kathy. And it was, too.

Read the other books in this series. Here is a sampling of Chapter One of Book Two, DARK, from the Campground series.

Chapter One

Barbara Self was in pain. She tried to hide it but it was getting worse. She was not good with pain. She didn't like it at all. Not even a little pain. This pain had steadily grown worse through the weekend. She believed it was a punishment from God for her wild, promiscuous Friday night. She tried to convince herself she was being silly. God did not work like that. He did not chastise people with horrible pain to make them behave or simply because they had already misbehaved. But the pain was hard to overlook. And it had begun the morning after her tryst with that handsome guy, Joe. At least she thought he might be handsome. Truth was, she could barely remember the night. From the moment she had met him, it seemed as though everything went into slow motion, like a dream.

She remembered seeing the man across the room on a bar stool. Not her normal place for meeting men. But he had looked forlorn and inviting and needy and exciting all at the same time. He had triggered something in her that drew her outside of herself. She felt different around him. She felt like he looked at her as though she was exciting. At least she thought she remembered it that way. She hadn't got his number. She could not remember if she had given him hers. All she knew was his name was Joe. And that they had had a wild time in her bedroom.

She sat in the straight backed chair of the doctor's office and wished time would move ahead faster. She did not waste her time wishing for the doctor to hurry and get to her. That would be asking too much. Easier to move a planet than a doctor's schedule.

Every once in a while the pain doubled her over in her chair. The nurse behind the counter took note of Barbara's pain and monitored it for severity. She considered letting the doctor know they had an emergency in the waiting room. But that would make more paperwork for her. The doctor would certainly tell her to call an ambulance and then she would be on the phone with the hospital for the next half hour arranging things for the admission of the young woman now barely bearing up under the pain that was attacking her body. She decided to wait.

Two streets over, Iris Cunningham listened as the doctor explained that she was pregnant. How that could be, she had no idea. She was on the pill. She was careful about the men she was with. They used protection, too. And the doctor had said the baby was how old?

"How far along?"

"Six months." the doctor replied.

"That's impossible."

"Well, there is a small margin of error in the calculations, but not more than a week at this stage."

"Impossible," Iris repeated. "I have not been with a guy since a week ago and before that it has been almost a year."

And that week ago had been a one night stand with some guy named Joe. She didn't expect she would ever see him again. It wasn't that good. Although, she had to admit that something had attracted her to him so strongly that she could not let the night pass without trying him out. She remembered having to know. It was like she saw him and developed an addiction. She had to have him. Like he was some kind of chocolate. So, she had taken him home and unwrapped him and devoured him.

"I only know what the test shows us." The doctor stated.

"How can that be?"

Iris was concerned because she just suddenly started showing. Monday night nothing, the next morning a definite baby bump that she tried to ignore. By Tuesday afternoon she was feeling the pinch of her pants against her belly. Wednesday morning, she had to call in sick because none of her clothes fit except her sweats, which she could not wear to work. She took antacids, and vitamins and everything else in her medicine cabinet. She knew something was out of balance with her body. Thursday morning she had woken up and thrown up. Her belly was greatly expanded and that's when she made the doctor's appointment.

"Listen, Iris," Doctor Schwartz looked down at her patient. "I don't believe in miraculous conception, so I'm going to have to believe that you must have had sex somewhere in the past six months. This baby is definitely entering the third trimester."

"I know where I've been, Doc." Iris was adamant. "Eleven months ago, I broke off a long engagement with the only man I had sex with since high school. It was bad. I did not have sex again until last Friday night. I met a guy who swept me off my feet and romanced me out of my pants. Before that, nothing."

"You sound like you believe it, but that does not change the fact that you have a six month old baby inside you."

"This is impossible," was all Iris could think to say.

The doctor could only shrug.

Helen Norris waited on the gurney. She was scared but Gary had demanded she do this. He was already mad enough that she sometimes slept with other guys without asking for money. Hell, he had always liked it before they got married. And when he had started renting her out to other guys he had even allowed her some free time to herself. He knew she was a sex maniac. She couldn't help it. She loved sex. At no time did she ever feel so good about herself than when a guy was on top of her, grunting and really getting into it. She always knew that guys appreciated her for what she could do for them. She could do for guys what every guy wants. She loved knowing that.

Maybe she was a freak. She didn't care. She didn't mind most of the guys Gary farmed her out to either. Hell, she thought most guys were sexy. What bothered her was how he thought he owned her and could say who she could and couldn't screw. It was her body. She could do what she wanted with it. Like that Friday night a couple weeks back.

She had seen Joe in the bar before. She always ignored him because he acted like he was afraid to be alive. He just sat and drank. He never really lived it up. He hardly ever laughed. But that night he was laughing and living it up large. She had been immediately attracted to him and knew a few seconds later that she wanted to sleep with him. She never brought up the subject of paying even once. Gary could go screw himself for once. She wanted Joe for herself that night. It had been good, too. Not fireworks and rainbow good, but at least big city lights and carnival good. That was how she rated her partners, by the experience. Levels of light. That night Joe had put away his darkness and brought a little light into her life. She would always remember that.

That was two weeks ago. Things were a little tense with Gary after that night and then a couple days later she started showing and was obviously pregnant. Gary got mad about her personal philandering. After his screaming fit, he demanded she have the abortion and commit to only the guys he brought around. Then they had found out she was six months pregnant and no doctor would perform an abortion of a six month old fetus. So, Gary had found a doctor who would. He said she needed to get back to work for him. He could not have her lying around doing nothing. Besides, he was not taking care of some other guy's baby.

As she lay there on the gurney, waiting for the doctor to come in, Helen tried to hold back the tears. She had always wanted to have a baby. Gary didn't want kids. They had argued about it once. He got so mad he threw the television out the window. She never brought the subject up again. She had always viewed her life as failure. Now she was going to kill the one good thing she had done with her life. She had no idea who the father was. There was no way to tell. But half the kid was hers. That was the thing that gripped her heart. Her child. Growing inside her. Living inside her.

She didn't want to kill it. She had just discovered she was pregnant a couple weeks ago. Part of her wished she had known about it the whole time. Six months. Wow! She thought she could have at least treasured that time before Gary made her abort it.

Suddenly she heard a loud commotion in the other room where Gary and the doctor and his nurse had gone out to confer. She figured Gary was paying the man up front. This was not exactly a legitimate doctor's office. That was obvious from the warehouse decor all around her. More like a storage shed than an office.

The noise grew louder and she could definitely hear crashing and screaming and groaning and yelling. Gary must be arguing with the doctor. He was a very violent man. She had learned that the hard way. The only reason she stayed with him was because he let her satisfy the urge to sleep with almost any man she saw and still stayed married to her. That pleased her mother. Her mother held marriage as sacred. That and the fact he had told her he'd kill her if she ever left him.

Several minutes dragged on and the screaming finally quit. She expected the doctor and his nurse to come in after the arrangements were completed. No one came. It was very quiet. Thirty minutes passed and Helen wondered what was happening. She was getting more nervous about this with every tick of the clock.

Finally she got off the gurney, pulling her gown closed behind her to ward off the cool air more than any attempt at modesty. She liked when men looked at her. Being wanted was her dream. Fulfilling a man's desire was her passion. Being modest was something those women with no sex life could afford. The rest of womanhood needed to show it off and attract more men. How else could they get their own needs met?

She opened the door to the outer room slowly in case the men were discussing things in a more quiet tone. She did not want to anger Gary for intruding. What met her eyes as the door swung open stopped her in her tracks. Blood. Everywhere she looked there was blood. The walls. The ceiling. The floor was like a big puddle of the sticky, smelly red fluid. And there was no way to identify the bodies. There were just pieces of torn flesh flung in every direction like a lawn mower had run over a cat. Or maybe a cow.

Helen started to scream. At least she thought she was. All that came out of her mouth was a small chirp. Then she felt her head spin and knew she was going to faint. She had never fainted before but she knew that was what was happening. As she fell to the floor, she felt someone catch her and gently lay her down. Darkness was closing in and taking her sight as well as her reason. But before she gave in to the unconsciousness of her shock, she could have sworn that she saw a very hairy man or a balding ape. And he had to be seven or more feet tall, too. Then all went dark.

Three weeks before, across town in another doctor's office, Carol Bennings had heard similar news from her doctor. A thin, wispy woman, her baby bump was exaggerated against her small frame. It had been four weeks since she had grown concerned about the added weight she was gaining. By the time her appointment had arrived, she was definitely showing all the signs of a pregnancy. Her discussion with the doctor then centered around the paternity testing she was doing for the time period in question. There were two candidates. Both men lived in her apartment building. She had divided her time between them that month. Not at the same time. One began the month as her partner. The other finished the month. She had her standards, after all. She would never allow a man she dated to sleep with other women. She would never do that to them either.

"What do you mean that neither of them is the father?" Carol asked for the third time.

"Neither of the men in question matched the DNA of your baby. There must be a third possibility."

"No way!" Carol was concerned. "Are you sure we have the time period down, right?"

"Within a week or two, I'd say."

"Which way?"

"Earlier, maybe."

"Can't be that."

"Why not?"

"I was in a kind of dry spell before that for almost three months. And it's the same guy after that up until a month ago."

"No one else? No...uh...one nighters?"

"Listen doc. It's been the same guy until a month ago and then only one since then and that was almost exactly four weeks ago."

Even that was just a guy she met at work named Joe. She had seen him around before but four weeks ago he had come into the office on a Saturday afternoon to do some work on a bathroom lock and she could think of nothing else all day until she got him home. He had seemed surprised that she paid him any attention at all since they traveled in different circles. But that night they had traveled in the same circle very closely all night long.

It had been a fling, a random moment of passion and unwise thinking. Her rule was to never date guys from work, but she just had to break it that one time for Joe. She would never do it again. No future in Joe. But it was fun for the one night. But that was it. But even that was not far enough back to account for a pregnancy in its seventh month.

"I do not know what to tell you. If you think of anyone else to test, we'll be glad to run it for you, but neither of the ones submitted to date are the father of your child."

"I just don't know, Doctor."

"One thing you can think about is this. The guy probably is exotic. His DNA is nothing like normal American or European markers. It's very different. If you'd like we could have an expert look at the markers and maybe give you a better idea of who to look at."

"No use, Doctor." Carol was crestfallen. "There is no one else. I'm pretty careful about who I sleep with. Things being what they are. I have no idea who else this baby could belong to unless someone slipped into my house without being noticed and impregnated me in my sleep."

"Not likely, huh?" The doctor offered.

"Not likely, Doctor."

John Allen Corwin sat on the wooden deck of his camper at the back, northwest corner of the campground he and his wife owned and managed. The air was still warm, especially for late November. But no one was complaining. Cooler weather would come soon enough.

The light breeze tousled his short, brown hair slightly as he bent his head to the book he was reading. His brown eyes scanned the pages but he was not really reading any more. His mind kept drifting to elsewhere. Elsewhere being his campground business and the end of a great season. Deep satisfaction was his primary emotion at the moment.

He had set up the campground last winter and opened it up with the help of the community in time for the tourist season beginning in May. From the first week it had taken off and supported itself. He was proud that he had not had to dip into his cash reserves even once all summer long. The campground had supported itself from day one with the help of some locals steering campers his way.

A new business. A new community. A new wife. A whole new life was how he saw what had become of his existence. If there were unhappy people in the world, John was not one of them. He had never expected to have so much so young in life. Just out of college with a business degree, he had inherited some money, built a campground in a new community, saved his future wife from a demented, ghostly killer, married her and was now enjoying what they had built together.

He picked up the coffee cup at his left hand. The hot liquid was good against the cool breeze drifting in off the ocean only a few miles to the south. A few birds were still around and singing in the trees around him. The squirrels were busy digging and hiding acorns everywhere. It had been a good season for the squirrels.

"Still reading?"

John's wife, Kathy, stepped out onto the deck. Her blond hair had grown longer over the summer than when John had first met her working behind the desk of the local police station. But the twinkle of quiet mischief in her deep blue eyes was an ever present marvel to John. It was like she could think one thing and be doing another behind those eyes. He loved the sound of her voice as much as he enjoyed the shape of her body and the mannerisms of her youthful energy.

The two had been drawn together almost immediately from the moment they met. More than a mere physical attraction, they had shared something of a mental connection, a way of believing in life and all the mysteries it holds. Somehow they recognized it in each other over an inane meeting about John's problem with trespassers on his property. The meeting may be forgotten but the result of that meeting was the marriage they shared and the life they now lived out to its fullest every day together.

If love was the deepest emotion a human being could experience then John and Kathy were exploring the deepest levels of that emotion in an attempt to explore uncharted territory. Though they had been drawn together from their first meeting, John's sacrificial rescue of her against a spiritual enemy of demonic evil cemented her feelings for him in an unbreakable manner. And it was that rescue that pushed John to discover just how far he was willing to go for the woman he loved. Nothing. Nothing in this world or any spiritual realm could keep him from being with her and making sure she was happy and safe.

"Thinking more than reading," John replied.

"Like usual," Kathy smiled and took the chair on the other side of the small table where his coffee rested. John just looked up at her and smiled.

"With all the work mostly done for the season, there is not much else to do."

She laughed. Her musical tone and obvious happiness shined through her laughter. He fought off an incredible urge to reach out and pull her into his lap. With his love for her had come an unbearable desire for enjoying her body, too. He would never deny that. He might be a preacher's kid and someone labeled as a Christian in most sections of society but he was not a monk. Kathy and he enjoyed a rousing, exciting and very hot love life. It was so good that only his upbringing in the small churches where his father pastored kept him from shouting how great their sex life was to the world.

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

John grimaced.

"Don't be like that." She slapped his knee playfully.

"Okay. Okay."

John put his book on the small table beside his coffee cup. Kathy obviously had something on her mind. Besides the fact that if it was on her mind he wanted to know about it, she could be a considerable force to reckon with if he tried to ignore her. Not that he ever would. He found everything about her to be wonderful and amazing. He could not conceive of anything that she was involved in as being any less than fantastic just because she chose it. That's the way she made him feel about himself. But something about her let him know that if he ever did happen upon that one thing that might not be so great about her, it would be best for him to forget it and go back to rule number one. Everything about Kathy is fantastic.

"I know when you went into the Mist something happened between you and Marcie, the little girl." Kathy began.

"Don't let Marcie hear you call her a little girl." John warned her. Every time he tried to remind the spirit from the Mist that she resembled a battered and beaten little girl, he was strongly rebuffed and reminded that she had been killed a hundred and thirty years ago. That made her older than his great grandmother would have been if she was alive.

"Well, you know who I mean," Kathy held her ground. The little girl's age was not her point. "I know something happened in the Mist between you two and I do not want to pry. I know you did whatever you did to save me and that is enough for me."

"Are you sure? Because this is, like, the fifth or sixth time you've brought it up." John dreaded the day he had to reveal all that had happened in the Mist. He wanted it to stay as just him passing a test to gain entrance to the world created by the Keeper of the Cabin, who had kidnapped Kathy to play out some fiendish plan he had for her life ever since she was a little girl.

"I know. I know." Kathy hesitated. She was not sure how to go on. She knew what she wanted to say and what she wanted to ask, but she was unsure how it would come out or in what light John would see her questioning. She didn't want to seem jealous of a ghost, or even concerned about it. John had done what was necessary and that was good enough for her. What she wanted to know was to what extent they could use this contact with the Mist to investigate other killings and evil plots that originated in a realm other than the one they lived.

"Let me put it like this," Kathy began. John felt his insides cringe at the coming onslaught. Part of him wondered if it was evil to pray that she suddenly be struck mute.

"I am interested in solving unsolved murders and kidnappings, especially of children."

John understood her interest in this since she had been a kidnap victim when she was a child. Still, he was not sure where she was going or what it had to do with his experience in the Mist. Kathy had talked about wanting to help parents and family members find closure for the cataclysmic events an untimely or violent death could unleash in a family's life. Her heart cried out for closure in her own case, which would never happen now.

She was forever burdened with the knowledge that her own father had not only been a serial killer of children but had also targeted her when she was a young girl and again just this last winter. On top of that her father had been dead for five years. So the killer who had abducted her and caused John to come to her rescue was a ghost or spirit himself. John understood there were a lot of mixed emotions and tumultuous thoughts ranging around in Kathy's head.

John waited for her to go on.

"I believe the Mist can help. The people of the Mist have knowledge of the crimes and access to the victims in a way normal police do not have. If we can talk to the victims, follow the real events and uncover the evidence in our world, we can solve the cases and give the families closure."

"And Marcie?" John asked.

"Your relationship with Marcie is what will get us cooperation on the other side."

"How?"

"I don't know. I know she likes you and likes being around you and wants to do things for you."

"To me, is more like it." John muttered half to himself.

Kathy smiled. She had reasoned out that what had happened between Marcie and John when he came to rescue her had been something sexual or embarrassing at the least. She could not remember much of her own escape through the Mist as a little girl but she remembered a very nice ghost man laying down with her and being very gentle with her as he helped her share her energies or something with him. She did not know or care about it back then and never considered it important since. She would like to have asked John to ask Marcie about it for her but decided not to push things.

"I was just wondering if you would ask her about the possibility of us doing this," Kathy stated.

"I can ask," John looked up. "But I have no idea how they feel about such things or what it would cost to get their help in something like this."

Truth was, he had a good idea that Marcie would do pretty much anything for sex allowing her to accept the fluids and energies it released for her. That was part of his reticence. His embarrassment from their first meeting, as much as his male pride, kept him from trying to further the relationship with Marcie. He could not get over the fact that a little girl, ghost or no ghost, had forced him to have sex with her in order to get past the maze that was keeping him from rescuing Kathy from her crazy father, the ghost of Air. He reminded himself that she was a one hundred and thirty year old little girl ghost that faded back and forth between her little girl persona and her beautiful, adult persona. Still when he thought about the incident, it was the visage of the little girl riding him like a full fledged woman while he lay on his back that disturbed him.

"Could you at least ask?" Kathy gave him her best please-please-please look. He could not resist her. He would have dug a hole to China for her knowing it couldn't be done but believing he would be the first to do it if she asked.

"Yes, I could ask." John admitted.

"Will you?"

"Yes, I will." He promised.

