Page 59

“Well,” he said aloud, mostly to hear his own voice. “Well. It’s okay anyhow. ”

Any given direction gone far enough would bring him into either a clearing or suburbia, so being lost wasn’t such a concern. That’s what he told himself. That’s what kept his hands steady as they clenched the flashlight. The important thing was to not accidentally walk in circles.

He shifted his shoulders, and the pack creaked. Its contents clanked together.

Otherwise, there was no sound.

Even his breath came without a huff or a wheeze. Even his feet did not rustle. Only then did Pete realize he’d stopped walking. He was holding perfectly still, perfectly quiet. Flashlight pointed at his shoes. Listening for all he was worth.

He squeezed his eyes into a frown, squinting to make out anything at all beyond three feet away.

“This must be…” He’d prepared to make an observation to himself about the way blind people feel, but the internal warning system that had immobilized him forced his jaw to close.

He must have heard something and not realized it. He must have seen something and not noticed. Something must have yelled “danger” to his most primitive wiring, but Pete didn’t know what it was.

Other trespassers, possibly. Other vandals.

Or something else.

Pete tossed his head again, trying to shake a thought loose. Other people didn’t bother him much. If he met any other people, then that was okay, since anyone else out there at that time of night was likely to be as dishonest as Pete was, and would understand that nobody wanted a ruckus. But he didn’t like the idea of any something else.

Between the fog, the leafy canopy, and the late hour, Pete Buford now found himself in proper all-the-way dark.

“This sucks,” he wanted to say, but didn’t.

To his left, and up through the trees, he heard a leaf crunch.

All the baby-fine hairs on the back of Pete’s neck began to rise, and his arm hairs followed.

From near the same place, but maybe closer, a stick broke.

He was being watched. He knew it, as surely as he knew he wasn’t supposed to be on the battlefield after dark, and as surely as he knew that he would be going back to jail if anyone with a badge found him.

Through the wispy places where the white blanket thinned, he thought he saw a light—just for an instant. But it was gone as soon as he’d registered it.

Another cluster of leaves crumpled beneath something heavy. Definitely closer. Not Pete’s imagination.

There it was again, the telltale wink.

Not a ghost, Pete told himself. Not a ghost. Ghosts don’t have feet to break twigs. Ghosts don’t step hard enough to mash leaves. Definitely not a ghost. Definitely just some other person.

A louder crack popped through the silence. An acorn, or a bigger stick. Something small and crunchy giving way beneath something bigger and denser.

Another person who had a right to be there—somebody like a cop or a ranger—would have identified himself by now. He would have told him to come out with his hands up. Keeping this in mind, Pete did the bravest thing he’d ever done. With great deliberation, he swiveled his flashlight and pressed the lens into his chest, cutting off its illumination. A dull red ring marked where the circular head crushed against his shirt.

When he looked out again, he knew he was not alone.

A yellow-green gleam the color of a margarita peeked out through the low-lying cloud, or maybe there were two gleams. Maybe they were eyes. The matching lights disappeared in a slow contraction, then returned—reinforcing Pete’s initial impression.

Surely not, he thought.

When the blink was finished and the lights burned again, Pete was all the more certain that these were no eyes. They hovered too high off the ground. Any head that would host them must belong to a giant seven or eight feet tall. But somehow this assessment didn’t soothe Pete any.

A name was floating around in his skull, itching to surface. A label for this giant thing, invisible through the fog, rattled about in Pete’s chattering mouth.

There’s no such thing. There’s no such thing as Old Green Eyes.

The lights went out, or the eyes closed. The red circle on Pete’s chest was the only glow. He clutched the flashlight hard, jamming it against his rib cage—not quite brav