“I mean, we’re about to go hunting down one of the most famous and fearsome paranormal entities south of the Mason-Dixon, and you think we should split up? That’s crazy talk!”
“No, sweetheart,” she corrected him. “That’s fantasy, and this is three people who have a lot of territory to cover before it gets dark. We’re on the lookout for an entity that has never displayed any violence towards anyone so far as we know, and the clock is ticking.”
“Don’t care. I’m staying with…with one of you, at least.”
“Then you’re staying with Eden.”
“That’s fine, because I’m staying with her.” I indicated Dana with my head.
She threw her hands up and rolled her eyes. “Oh, for God’s sake. What’s wrong with you two? We’ve only got an hour, or two hours tops before it gets dark. What good exactly do you think it would do to stay with me, anyway?”
“You’re the professional here,” Benny said, reaching into my trunk and lifting out a satchel filled with equipment. “And you’re going to need a caddie for all this shit, aren’t you?”
“We aren’t bringing all of it. Just some of it. Here—hand me that one there. The black one with the Velcro and the zippers.”
“This one?”
“The one that looks like the Bat-belt on a strap?”
She stepped past me and lifted the latch. “Very funny. Very fucking funny. Open the doors again. I’ll need that one.”
“What is it?” I wondered.
“A high-resolution digital video recorder. It’s got a night-shot mode for low light, which we might want here before long. And the other bag, the one beside it there, yeah—that one.”
“What’s this one?” Benny asked as he handed it to her.
“Um…let’s call it a multimeter, and I won’t bother to explain all the bells and whistles. It was custom-ordered from a Japanese company.”
Benny again looked astounded. “Not the one that makes cheesy ‘ghost detectors,’ is it? Oh, please tell me those don’t really work.”
“No, they don’t work. They’re useless. This isn’t one of those. This is a custom engineering device. The base unit is designed to detect electrical leaks and assorted magnetic fields in commercial and residential properties. It is very, very sensitive. So sensitive that I have to calibrate it to account for my body’s own fields before I can use it. Sometimes it’s easier to set it down and walk away than carry it around. It’s also expensive. Be careful with it, would you?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good boy. Give it here.”
He handed it over and reached for the last large bag in the trunk. “Do we need anything else?”
She thought about it, and weighed what she was already holding. “No, probably not. Leave it for now—unless there’s anything in there that either one of you wants to take.”
The sentence hadn’t left her mouth before Benny had opened up the bag and started rummaging. In the end, he found a great number of toys that he didn’t know what to do with, but opted to go with his standby of a flashlight and a tape recorder.
I’d already nabbed my mini metal flashlight from my glove box, and I couldn’t see needing anything else. I wasn’t looking to record Old Green Eyes, just track him down and chase him back to the battlefield. And I didn’t think weapons would do me any good, aside from a small knife that I kept in my boot in case of an accidental and incapacitating tangle in tree roots, rope, or anything comparable. In case of monsters, I might be in trouble, but I tried not to look at it that way. Old Green Eyes hadn’t made any threatening moves towards me during our first meeting, and unless he had some aggressive reaction to being talked to, I ought to be quite safe.
Dana obviously operated that way too: I didn’t see anything remotely violence-capable in her luggage, except possibly a set of small screwdrivers, if the wielder really used her imagination. Satisfied that my companions also meant only to find and not to catch him, I pushed my little flashlight into my back jeans pocket and asked if they were ready to begin.
They were.
As a compromise between splitting up and sticking together, we opted to stay together at least at first; and if we had no luck within thirty minutes, we’d spread out. So, leaving the car with the hazard lights blinking, we set off along the road onto the peninsula of Moccasin Bend.
We stuck to the paved strip at first, because the way onto the main body is narrow and we didn’t have much choice. But then we were out in the open. Above us, the sky was a darkening blue, and only a few clouds fluttered past the sun for shade. Around us were strips of open grass that terminated sharply into the tree line.
“We can’t hang out here, where everyone can see us. You can bet Green Eyes isn’t,” Dana said. “Where did you see him last, Eden? Take us to where you ran into him. We can start there.”
“Sure. If I can find it.”
“How hard could it be?” Benny asked, keeping pace with us even as he lugged the bulk of the baggage.
“I don’t know. Let’s see—it was the middle of the night, there weren’t any lights, and I was distracted and shaken from my recent automobile accident. What do I look like to you, a homing pigeon?”I led them at a diagonal angle, across the street and towards the far side of the woods. Wherever the wreck had taken place, I knew that it was, at least, on that side of the road. Our feet made simultaneous swishes in the grass, kicking up rocks and sticks as we went. None of us were being too quiet—partly because we didn’t need to, and partly because there was no one to hear us anyway. Though the occasional car passed us on the way out to the hospital, we could hardly see the facilities off in the distance, and there were no other hikers or explorers that we saw.
Long tree shadows stretched themselves out, reaching for us with the coming darkness. Lookout Mountain cast its pall over our group as well, since we were sitting at its foot.
“Technically, we have another hour at least before sunset,” Dana observed, but her analysis didn’t prevent the Bend from being a prematurely gloomy place.
“Technically.” Benny offered a weak agreement. “But with the mountains and ridges, when the sun falls behind them, it’s, you know, darker than you expect.”
“Don’t worry about it. We can see to keep going, can’t we?” I asked.
Neither of them replied.
We stayed together past the prearranged thirty minutes, though. Once the light really started to leave us, no one wanted to go at it alone.
We didn’t talk much. I guess we were all working on exactly what we were going to say if we found him. I wondered how much it mattered, except insomuch as we were distracting Dana by giving her something to do.
How would we begin a conversation with something so inhuman? After all, the prospect of company may not have been necessarily welcome to him, but I had to assume it didn’t intimidate him much either. I’d run into Green Eyes after a very loud wreck and a lot of swearing; on that occasion I would’ve been easy to avoid, but he didn’t bother.
I don’t know what thoughts kept my companions silent, but I could safely bet that Dana’s impression of the place wasn’t terribly different from mine. She might have been preoccupied with her grief, but no one with an ounce of psychic sensitivity could fail to notice the oppressive feel that weighed down on us.
It wasn’t like the battlefield, with its benignly frustrated ghosts. It wasn’t like the old Pine Breeze location either, where the bashful dead were nebulous, and distant.
“You feel it too?” I ventured, even though I didn’t need to.
Dana nodded.
“What?” Benny asked.
“Malice. Confusion,” she answered.
“Not malice exactly, I don’t think. More like aggression. Anger without a focus.” If I had the words, I would’ve argued further. Sometimes I think that there are things people deliberately fail to name, as if refusing to label them can make them any less real. “There’s sadness, too,” I concluded.
“Sure,” Dana said, but she didn’t look at me, and I couldn’t tell if she was agreeing with me or just being nice.
“I don’t feel anything, except sticky. This sucks. I want to be psychic.”
“No you don’t,” Dana and I said in perfect time. My amazing psychic powers told me he didn’t believe us.
“Your car,” Dana said abruptly. “I saw it was damaged. You did that here?”
“I did that here.”
“Against a tree?”
“Against a tree.”
“So if we find a tree that looks like it had a high-velocity date with your fender, we’re in the ballpark, right?”
“Sounds good to me. Sure, yeah. That’d be a good starting point.”
“It’s getting dark,” Benny whined.
I nudged him with my shoulder and started keeping my eyes on the tree line. “It’s been getting dark for an hour, but it’s not dark yet. It’s just the mountain’s shadow, and the trees. It’s fine.”
“I wouldn’t call it ‘fine,’ but it’ll do for now. Get the lights handy, though. We’re going to need them soon. Weren’t we going to split up?”
It was Benny’s turn to join my chorus. “No.”
Mine was as ready as it was going to get, there in my back pocket; Benny took her suggestion, though, and fished his flashlight free of the bag he carried.
“Eden, is that your tree?” Dana pointed at a likely candidate a few yards ahead.
I squinted at it, and tried to picture everything as it had happened. “No, I don’t think so. It’s farther down. I was closer to the hospital than this when I hit. I remember because I was looking for—” And at that moment I realized that I’d not told Benny the whole truth, and I wasn’t sure I was interested in laying it all out now. I wrapped it up short. “It’s a long story.”