Shadows Fall

Kate Genet

Published: 2011
Categorie(s): Fiction, Lesbian, Occult & Supernatural, Romance,
Paranormal
Tag(s): horror mystery supernatural shadowmen lesbian

SHADOWS FALL

by Kate Genet

Separated by circumstances, Michaela and Trisha are both too stub-

born to admit they miss each other. Even Trisha’s impulsive phone call

for help degenerates into an argument. But why does Trisha need help?

Swallowing her pride, Michaela decides she needs to fly back to the

States to see what trouble Trisha has gotten herself into this time.

She’s glad she did. This time it’s not a stranger in trouble, it’s Trisha’s

sister, and the trouble is a lot darker that any of them can imagine. This

time, the night is filled with shadows, and some of them move on their

own…

Chapter

ichaela walked down the gravel drive to the mail box. She squin-
ted at the sun in the pale morning sky and rubbed at the ink

around her forearms, a gesture that had become unconscious since the
tattoos had healed. It was hot already and only edging into summer. She
supposed that would be a good thing, the heat ripening the fruit on the
vines that marched in orderly rows in the paddocks behind her.

She flicked through the circulars at the mail box without any real in-

terest; they would go straight into the trash when she got back to the
house. She coughed out a little laugh at that. Trash. She was still talking
American inside her head. Rubbish. It was rubbish again, and she’d bet-
ter get used to it.

Flicking a wave at the old geezer riding his pushbike into town like he

did every weekday morning, read the paper in the library and enjoy the
air conditioning or the heat. Michaela wiped an arm across her forehead
and guessed today it would be air conditioning. The old guy lived fur-
ther down the dirt road in a house even more antiquated than hers. She
had at least persuaded her grandmother to insulate the ceiling, even
though the rest of the place was still scrim behind the faded wallpaper.
One day, she told herself, and the very thought made her tired.

She fished the mail proper out of the box. There was never much. It

was the twenty-first century and her phone and power accounts came by
email. But she made the trip to the mailbox at the end of the drive
regardless.

There was a postcard. She stared at the picture on the front, a pictur-

esque scene of fall leaves somewhere in America. She flipped it over,
hands trembling slightly and she cursed under her breath. The words
blurred and she stuck the card in the pile of junk mail and turned back to
the house, whistling for her grandmother’s old dog to follow.

‘Mack,’ she called. ‘Come on.’
The dog pulled his head out of the ditch and left the scent of rabbit to

trail after Michaela down the drive.

The house was cool. Not from fancy air conditioning, but the simple

fact of the day being early and the house shady. Mack flung himself in
his favourite spot on the cracked red linoleum by the refrigerator and
closed his eyes. Michaela ignored him and smacked the mail down on
the bench. She wrenched on the tap (faucet, tap, who the hell gave a shit)
and splashed some cold water on her face, scrubbing with her hands. She
turned the tap off and sniffed, reaching for a tea towel to dry her face.

Pawing through the mail she plucked out the postcard and turned it

over in her hands to read the back. ‘Tourist season,’ she read. ‘All the
pretty tourists here to see the fall leaves. Sure is a sight worth seeing!!!’

Michaela chewed her lip and re-read the card. Typical Trisha, she

thought. Ambiguous as always. Were the fall leaves the sight worth see-
ing? Or the pretty tourists? Michaela sighed and propped the card
against the sugar bowl. She was putting her money on the tourists.

Putting the jug on to boil for coffee, Michaela put fresh water into

Mack’s bowl and scratched the sweet spot behind his ears. There was no
one else around, so she spoke to the dog.

‘Eh Mack, what we going to do, boy?’ The dog leaned into her hand

but otherwise made no reply. Michaela gave him a pat and moved away
to make coffee. She took it out onto the porch and sat in her grandmoth-
er’s old swing seat. Mack followed and threw himself down in the sun.
Michaela looked around and sipped her coffee, still thinking about the
postcard. It was eight months since she’d flown out of the States and
back home for her grandmother’s last few days.

Trisha hadn’t come with her. A month before the phone call from New

Zealand, from the old geezer down the road, as it happened, his voice
cracking and loud as he struggled to tell Michaela her grandmother was
in the hospital and not expected to last more than a week; a month be-
fore this, Trisha had decided she was going to go home to her family and
try patching things up there. She was still shaken by what that bastard
Gardener had done, trying to murder his mother, and only narrowly
stopped from succeeding by the actions of Michaela and Trisha.

They’d made a sure-fire team, all right, her and Trisha, Michaela

thought, putting a booted foot on the porch railing and pushing herself
on the swing. And she understood Trisha needing to spend some time
with her family, of course she did. But it had all fallen apart. She’d had
her dissertation to finish, then the call home.

And now. Now there was a house and a dog and an orchard. She

sniffed and checked the time, digging a watch out of her jeans pocket.
The strap had broken and she hadn’t bothered to replace it. She saw the

time and planted both feet on the ground standing up so that the swing
bumped against the back of her knees and Mack looked up from where
he was lying, ears raised as if to ask what’s the fuss?

‘Meeting with the manager, boss dog,’ Michaela filled him in. ‘And

fuck it, I’m going to be late.’

By the time she’d met the manager, a sunburned guy in his forties who

seemed to know what he was doing, and who seemed to view Michaela
with her tattoos and half-cocked American accent and her English lit de-
gree as vaguely more baffling than the average sighting of the Loch Ness
Monster, and they’d taken a tour of the orchard, discussing the upcom-
ing season in detail, Michaela had had enough of the day.

The sun was sinking when she swung open the door to the house and

stepped inside. She was knackered, if she did say so herself. She pulled
open the door of her grandmother’s ancient refrigerator and fished out a
beer. It wasn’t hard, there was only beer and a limp half a lettuce in
there. Damn, she’d forgotten to go to the supermarket. Again. She pulled
the cap off the bottle and leaned against the bench, drinking half the
small bottle in one go. Damn it but she was tired.

The manager was an asshole, she’d decided halfway through the day.

Though truthfully, she’d decided this months ago, within half an hour of
meeting the guy. But he was, she knew, an asshole who knew how to do
the job. She wiped her sleeve across her forehead and sighed. The man
was having a bit of trouble believing she knew the first thing about
growing kiwifruit. The fact that she’d lived and worked on the damn
orchard with her grandmother since she was fourteen years old, was a
fact he seemingly couldn’t comprehend.

She put the bottle down on the tiled bench and pushed up the sleeves

of her long sleeved tee. The blue lines of her tattoos twined around her
wrists. She rested her head in her hands and surveyed Mack gloomily.

‘At least you have something for your dinner, boss dog,’ she told him.

She straightened up and shrugged her shoulders. She was too tense.
Would get a bloody headache if she didn’t relax. She snorted and fin-
ished off the beer. The postcard caught her eye and she picked it up
again and re-read the words on the back. She cocked the bottle in a toast.

‘Cheers Trisha. You sure know how to cheer a woman up.’
Another sigh and she tossed the card down. She picked up her keys

instead.

‘C’mon Mack. Looks like we’re eating out.’

The phone rang as Michaela was pulling on her jacket. Cursing under

her breath, she snagged the portable phone and stuck it under her ear.

‘Yeah,’ she said, expecting it to be Heyward, the manager.
‘Michaela?’ A woman’s voice. ‘Michaela, that you?’
Michaela finished stepping outside and let the door swing shut behind

her. The sky was turning a bruised purple as the sun went down
amongst storm clouds brewing in the west. She shivered.

Chapter

‘T

risha?’

‘Oh thank fucking Christ, babe. Thought I’d got the wrong

number again. You know how many numbers you have to punch in
when you’re calling another country? You’d think you were calling off
bloody planet.’

Michaela looked up at the sky. A first, fat drop of rain fell, making a

perfect round circle in the dirt at her feet. She kept her face towards the
clouds.

‘Trisha?’
‘Yeah Michaela, you said that already.’ The voice on the other end of

the telephone line softened. ‘How you doing, babe? It’s been a long time,
yeah?’

Michaela closed her eyes. ‘I got your postcard today,’ she said.
Trisha’s voice brightened. ‘Yeah? Hey I only sent that a few weeks ago.

Hope you didn’t take it seriously babe, I was only teasing, you know.’

So it had been the tourists. Michaela shook her head. Then realised of

course that Trisha couldn’t see her. Probably just as well, Michaela
thought, then cleared her throat.

‘I know. How’re you getting on?’ Why are you calling?
‘I’m not so bad, you know. Working in Mom’s diner, she and I are

working it out. It’s okay.’ There was a pause. ‘How about you?’

The rain was falling faster now, the clouds fattening overhead, the

dimes of rain darkening the ground. Michaela thought she should prob-
ably go inside.

‘Getting on,’ she replied, making no move back towards the house.

Mack was standing by the truck looking at her. ‘The orchard’s a lot of
work,’ she said. Lightening flashed away to the right, in the sky behind
the kiwifruit vines.

‘What the fuck’s that noise?’ Trisha asked as the sky vibrated and

cracked.

‘Thunder.’

‘You standing outside or something?’ Trisha asked. ‘Jeeze babe, you

standing outside or something? Fuck me Freddy that was loud.’

The rain started in earnest now, falling out of the sky in great silver

sheets. Mack whined and Michaela shook herself, ran back up the steps
to the house, pushing the door back open, Mack twisting past her legs,
almost tripping her.

She was wet, her hair plastered to her head. She took the phone with

her to the bathroom and grabbed a towel.

‘You still there?’ she asked. ‘Storms come up pretty quick here, I was

just on my way out to grab a bite, there’s nothing in the cupboards, I’ve
been working all day, had a bitch of a day.’ She was babbling. Stopped
and took a breath. ‘Trisha. Why are you calling?’

There was silence on the phone and Michaela wondered if it had got-

ten wet, short circuited or something. She supposed she was lucky in
that case not to have electrocuted herself.

‘Trisha?’
‘Yeah, I’m here. Listen,’ a moment’s silence again. ‘Listen, can you

come over?’

Michaela put the towel down on the bench. ‘What?’ she said.
‘I need you to come over. Listen, Michaela, can you come over?’
Michaela leaned her elbows on the bench and bent over the phone as

lightening flashed again. Mack whined. ‘Shush Mack,’ she said but the
thunder drowned her out, rocking and rolling right over the house. Mi-
chaela jumped, and looked up at the ceiling. ‘Shit that was close,’ she
said.

Trisha was speaking. ‘Michaela, Michaela, you there? Damn it I can’t

hear a bloody thing, what the fuck is going on there?’

Michaela stood up and pushed away the dog cringing against her.

‘Storm’s right overhead,’ she said. ‘I can’t hear anything either. Can I call
you back, Trisha, I’m going to have to call you back, I can’t hear anything
worth a damn and the bloody dog’s trying to climb into my lap.’

On the other end of the line, Trisha swore. ‘I gotta go to work in half

an hour. I’ll call you, all right? During my lunch break.’

Another flash of lightening, followed almost immediately by a great

roar of thunder. The lights flickered.

‘Yeah, that’s fine. Think the electricity’s going to go out.’ She flinched

against another lightning show and crouched down on the kitchen floor
with the dog as the thunder rolled over head. ‘Trisha? One thing, did
you ask me to come over?’

A pause on the other end. ‘No. I said I needed you to come over. I’ll

call you back, okay.’

Michaela pressed the phone’s end button, just as the lights flickered

again and went out. Power was out. She laid the handset on the floor
and sank down on her heels. Mack crowded against her and whined
again. She wrapped her arms around him and they sat there, while the
storm battered its fury against the house.

The pause between lightning and thunder grew longer and Michaela

found herself holding her breath. She let it out and pushed herself to her
feet, digging out her watch and checking the time. Nine o’clock. Would
be midnight before Trisha called back. If she did. Michaela ran a hand
through her hair.

She flicked the jug on to make a coffee. She was bone weary and it was

going to be a long night if she had to wait for the phone call. The jug
didn’t turn on and Michaela cursed herself. Of course it didn’t turn on,
the power was out. Had she forgotten? It was dark in the house.

She opened the cupboard and fished out the flashlight. Damn it, she

meant torch. Whatever it was called, the batteries weren’t flat and it
switched on, the beam lighting up the dog in the corner, mashed against
the cupboards where she’d left him. Now she knew how the expression
hangdog had originated; he was hunched over, head down.

‘Hey Mack, it’s okay boy. The storm will be over soon.’ Already the

lightshow was moving past the town and out to sea. The power might
still be out an hour or so though. She held the light up and set about
finding something to eat.

Chapter

he was asleep when the phone rang. Sprawled out on the couch
with Mack parked under her feet like a cushion. An old desk phone

was plugged in and sitting on the coffee table, just in case the power
didn’t come back on. A can of peaches with a fork sticking out sat beside
it.

Michaela dived on the phone and Mack crashed off the couch, knock-

ing into the table, sending everything flying. Michaela snatched at the
phone.

‘Trisha?’ She was suddenly breathless, her heart pounding. The power

wasn’t back on and the room was dark with shadows.

Trisha answered. ‘You okay Michaela? You sound like you’ve been

running.’

Michaela took a calming breath. ‘Was asleep. Power’s out, got a fright

when the phone went.’ She laughed a bit. ‘Can you talk, Trisha? What’s
going on?’

‘What’s the time there? Didn’t mean to wake you.’ Trisha sounded un-

characteristically subdued.

Michaela looked around at the dark room. ‘Dunno,’ she said. ‘Late.

Doesn’t matter. Listen Trisha, is there something wrong? What’s going
on?’

She heard Trisha breathing. Mack whined and stuck his snout into her

hand. She patted him without thinking. ‘Trisha?’

‘Yeah I’m here babe. How long will it take you to get here?’
Michaela sat back down. ‘I can’t just pick up and fly back to the States,’

she said, shaking her head even though Trisha couldn’t see her. ‘I have
the orchard to run, the season’s just starting. There’s the house, and the
dog.’ At the dog word, Mack jumped up on the couch and sat next to
her. Michaela was shaking her head again. ‘I have all these responsibilit-
ies, Trisha.’ She squeezed her eyes shut. ‘I know you’d already gone by
then, but my grandmother died, remember? And now I have everything
to take care of.’

Trisha didn’t reply immediately. ‘Why are you being a bitch,

Michaela?’

‘What?’ Michaela stood up and stumbled over the toppled can of

peaches. ‘Fuck!’ She wished the fucking lights would come back on. She
took a deep breath. ‘I am not being a bitch, Trisha. You’re the one who
wanted out, remember.’

‘Oh jeeze, Michaela, we went through all this at the time. What, you

think I should have just forgotten about my family because poor little
Michaela didn’t fucking have any worth knowing?’

Michaela took a breath and let it out slowly. ‘Fuck you Trisha, that’s a

miserable thing to say and you know it’s not bloody true. I supported
you working it out with you mother, remember? We both bloody knew I
couldn’t come with you. And you never fucking asked me to anyway!’

Trisha’s voice spat at her through the phone. ‘How the bloody shit-

damn fucking hell could I? You knew that for christssakes. You still
bloody know that. And it wasn’t going to be forever you dumb bitch.’

Michaela wasn’t sure but she thought Trisha might be crying. She

shook her head. No way, not Trisha.

But Trisha was talking again. ‘It wasn’t going to be forever, but then

you picked up and flew back to the other side of the world and all I got
was a fucking change of address card. So no Michaela, fuck you.’

There was silence on the line and Michaela pushed it against her ear in

amazement. Trish had hung up.

‘Shit.’ That hadn’t gone well. Michaela groped around for the rest of

the phone and put the receiver back. She straightened and ran both
hands through her hair. ‘Shit shit shit.’ Mack barked. Michaela patted his
head. ‘I fucked that one up,’ she told him. ‘Good and bloody proper.’

And with that, the lights came back on.
Michaela stared at the peach slices scattered over the floor and sighed.

She picked up the fork and scraped them back into the can. She walked
through to the kitchen, Mack at her heels and tossed the fork into the
sink, the can into the trash. Leaning against the bench, she tried to get
her thoughts into some semblance of order. But all she could think was
how totally she’d messed up. She looked at the portable phone sitting on
the kitchen bench. It didn’t ring. She picked it up. But Trisha was at
work. And Michaela didn’t think she even had Trisha’s home number.
She chewed on her lip and put the phone back down. Maybe Trisha
would call back when she got off work.

‘Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly,’ Michaela said. She headed to the bath-

room. She’d grab a shower and hit the sack. Hell, who knew? Maybe
she’d even be able to sleep.

Chapter

he’d slept. Dropped off round two in the morning near as she could
figure. She groaned and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

Another day. Mack stuck his brown head around the door and looked at
her, silent reproach in his eyes. She glanced at the clock. Shit, half past
nine already. No wonder Mack was looking at her like that.

She snagged a pair of jeans and pulled them up her long legs, walking

towards the door as she fiddled with the zip.

‘C’mon then, boy,’ she said, reaching the kitchen and opening the door

so the dog could head out to do his business. Mack scooted outside
without a backwards glance. Michaela sighed and filled the jug to make
coffee. She rubbed at her bleary eyes and tried to remember what she
was supposed to be doing today. The phone caught her eye.

It sat mute on the bench while she went over the previous night’s con-

versation, cringing while she did. She picked up the phone and knocked
herself on the head with it.

‘Fool fool fool woman,’ she said. She’d never even found out why

Trisha wanted her over there. No, not wanted.

‘Needed. She said she needed me there.’
The jug boiled and switched itself off. Michaela stirred herself and put

the phone back down. She didn’t think Trisha would call back, even
though she’d be off work by now. No; she’d screwed it up good and
proper. She tipped a couple teaspoons of sugar in a mug, added coffee
and hot water. Reached into the fridge for milk and swore when there
was none to reach for.

The day was not off to a good start.

She spent the day outside, under dripping kiwifruit vines, checking

the irrigation hoses, and fixing where they leaked. When she’d finished
she was filthy and irritable. She hit the shower, pulled on clean jeans and
long sleeved black tee and grabbed her keys. She hadn’t bothered to buy
herself a new car yet, so Mack stood on the back of the Ute waiting,

grinning at her for the first time that day. She stopped and looked at him
then shrugged. Gave him a pat.

‘What the hell, boy, you love going for rides, don’t you?’
She swung in behind the steering wheel and spun down the driveway

and out along the road to the highway.

Nelson was nothing of a metropolis compared to the cities she’d vis-

ited in the States, but it had good places to eat and grab a beer. She liked
the new Mexican cafe. Hot food, cold beer. She left Mack standing in the
back of the truck and went in. Propped herself up on a stool at the long,
polished bar and ordered.

She’d almost finished her nachos and was downing her second beer,

brooding over the phone call with Trisha. A woman slid onto the stool
next to her.

‘Hey Mickey, how you doing?’
Michaela looked up into the smiling face of her one and only friend

from high school. She tipped her bottle in Sandy’s direction.

‘Don’t call me Mickey,’ she said. And laughed, leaning over to give the

other woman a firm hug. ‘Life’s a bitch, what can I say? You’re looking
good, Sandy. How have you been?’

Sandy grabbed Michaela’s arm and pushed the sleeve up to reveal the

tattoos. She raised a delicate eyebrow.

‘Wow, Mickey, these are kinda over the top, don’t you think?’
Michaela shrugged and pushed her sleeve back down.
Sandy laughed. ‘You always did like making statements. You back for

good then? Are you on your own? Hey I was real sorry to hear about
your grandmother, she was one very cool woman.’ She turned and
ordered two more beers from the bartender and waited while they were
served.

‘Cheers,’ she said and smiled again. ‘So Mickey, spill your guts girl,

tell me you news. Got a girlfriend?’

Michaela hesitated and Sandy pounced on her.
‘Yeah, I think so. Is that a blush I see?’
Michaela laughed and took a swig of beer. She wasn’t going to be able

to drive home if she kept drinking. ‘There was someone. Over in the
States.’ She shrugged. ‘It didn’t work out.’

Sandy was examining her, eyes narrowed. ‘All these years, I can still

read you like a book, Mickey. That’s not the whole story, is it? C’mon,
tell Aunty Sandy and I’ll buy you another drink.’

Michaela rolled her eyes. ‘Can’t drive home if I have anything more to

drink.’

Sandy shrugged. ‘So, you can crash at my place tonight.’
‘I have Mack with me.’
Sandy looked confused. ‘Who’s Mack?’ she asked.
Michaela picked at the last of her nachos. ‘Gran’s old dog. I inherited

him too. He’s standing outside in the truck.’

Sandy smiled. ‘Jeeze Mickey, thought for a moment your time away

really had been a life changing experience.’ She laughed as Michaela
shook her head.

‘What about you, Sandy,’ said Michaela. ‘You have anyone special?

Where are you working now?’

They bought more food, more beer and talked and caught up until the

guys in the place started giving them pointed looks. Michaela laughed.

‘I think they want to close,’ she said and they stood, paid and made

their way out into a pleasantly cool night. The fresh air revived them a
little and they decided to walk back to Sandy’s place. Mack was curled
up asleep on a blanket in the back of the truck. He gave Michaela his re-
proachful look.

She gave him a pat. ‘C’mon buddy, this lady is taking us home.’
Sandy lived above her shop. Michaela wandered around, admiring the

place while Sandy hunted up a bottle of wine. She appeared finally,
clutching the bottle and two beautiful, hand blown glasses.

‘Thanks,’ said Michaela. ‘This place is amazing. Everywhere there’s

something interesting to look at. You’ve done really well for yourself.’

Sandy laughed. ‘Yeah, who woulda thought, if they’d known us in

high school. Here’s me with my own shop, and you all educated and
brainy.’ She toasted with her glass. ‘Here’s to us. It really is good to see
you again, Mickey.’ She placed her glass carefully on the coffee table and
took Michaela’s and did the same.

‘What’re you doing Sandy?’ Michaela asked.
‘Shh,’ Sandy said, and kneeling in front of Michaela on the couch,

wrapped her arms around her and kissed her. Michaela could taste the
wine on her breath. ‘What’re you doing, Sandy?’ she said. ‘We agreed
years ago we weren’t each other’s type.’

Sandy sat back and ran her hands up Michaela’s arms. ‘These are sexy

tattoos,’ she said. ‘Come on Mickey. That was back in high school. Lot’s
changed since then.’

Michaela disentangled herself from Sandy. ‘Sorry Sandy, I don’t think

I can.’

Sandy stood up and grabbed her glass of wine. She looked down at

Michaela still sitting on the couch. ‘That sure is a shame then Mickey.

You are one very hot woman.’ She laughed. ‘You have this intense,
brooding thing going on, which is an amazing turn on.’ She took a sip of
her wine and looked speculatively at Michaela in a way that had her
squirming on the couch.

‘You’re still hung up on this American chick aren’t you?’
Michaela put her hands over her face and groaned. ‘Fuck it, Sandy,

why can’t anything in life ever be simple?’

Sandy sat down beside her and stretched out her legs. ‘She called you

and said she needed you over there, didn’t she?’

Michaela took her hands away from her face. ‘Yeah, but I screwed that

up. She hasn’t called back.’ She sighed.

Sandy shrugged next to her. ‘It’s simple, Mickey. Go there.’
‘What’re you talking about? I can’t just go there.’
‘Yeah, I know. You have all these responsibilities. But you also have a

manager for the orchard, and I’d bet anything your gran’s old boyfriend
would happily take old Mack there in.’ She set her wine down and
turned to Michaela. ‘Just go, Mickey. She said she needs you. What’ve
you got to lose?’

Michaela thought about it. ‘It’s not really busy on the orchard yet,’ she

said. ‘Old Frank sure doesn’t mind when Mack wanders down there to
visit.’ She picked up her wine glass and sipped. ‘A couple weeks away
wouldn’t hurt. Would it?’

Sandy toasted her. ‘Wouldn’t hurt at all,’ she said.

Chapter

ichaela couldn’t get comfortable. She drummed her fingers on the
armrest and earned an annoyed look from the fat woman next to

her. The woman stared at her tattooed forearms and Michaela pulled her
sleeves down and reached for the headphones. She didn’t know what the
in-flight movie was, but anything would be better than listening to her
thoughts for the next eight hours.

She spent the four hour stopover drinking coffee and pacing the air-

port from one end to the other. She was nervous, stomach churning. She
alternated between cursing Sandy for convincing her that this was a
good idea, and praying she was right.

Back on the plane, she fished Trisha’s postcard out of her bag and

gazed at it, ignoring the interested looks from her new neighbour. The
scene on the postcard was beautiful. Michaela wondered if it had been
taken somewhere near where Trisha lived. Perhaps they could go there.
Take a picnic lunch. Get reacquainted; work things out.

She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, clutching the post-

card in white fingers. Was she being an idiot? What was Trisha going to
say when she saw her? For God’s sakes, Trisha didn’t even know she
was coming. Michaela swallowed and wished she was sitting up front in
first class so she could order something a bit stronger than coffee to
drink. No, she didn’t need a drink. She just needed to think about this
rationally.

Just because Trisha didn’t call back at any time during the three days it

took Michaela to get organised and get on this plane, didn’t mean any-
thing. Except she’d needed Michaela and Michaela had fucked it up
again. Well, now she was going to fix that one. She opened her eyes and
looked down at the postcard again. It would work out okay. Trisha had
needed her, right?

Good grief but she wanted nothing more than a hot shower and a full

eight hours in a clean, soft bed somewhere. Instead she was standing in
line at customs, her leather satchel over her shoulder and a hastily
packed suitcase at her feet. Just the one; she’d packed only the basics,

jeans, jerseys, clean underwear and a warm jacket. She’d told Heyward,
the manager, that she’d be away two weeks at the most. Why then, she
wondered, had she not purchased a return ticket?

‘Because I don’t know the exact date I’ll be coming back,’ she told her-

self, realising with a blush she was speaking out loud. She was tired. The
line was inching forward and she tried not to catch the eye of any of the
uniformed guys, uniformed guys with guns. ‘We’re not in Kansas any-
more, Toto,’ she said, again out loud. The customs guy looked at her and
beckoned her to hand over her bags.

Michaela wiped her forehead with a sleeve. She didn’t cope well

without proper rest. Got all drawn and pale looking. And unlike most of
the women in the customs line with her, she didn’t try to disguise it with
make-up. Michaela just wasn’t that sort of girl.

The customs officer was checking her face against her dark blue pass-

port. Michaela didn’t think she’d changed that much in the five years
since the passport photo was taken but he seemed to be taking his time
in the comparison. Bugger she wished he would hurry up; she needed to
pee.

The customs guy was speaking. ‘You had a stopover in Bangkok?’
Michaela nodded. ‘Yeah. Only four hours. I never left the airport.’
He was staring at her tattoos. ‘You meet anyone while you were

there?’

Michaela stared at him. ‘No,’ she said.
He looked back down at her passport. ‘You’ve spent a long time in the

U.S previous to this year. What were you doing here?’

Michaela watched him flicking through the pages and visas. ‘I was

studying at the University of Ohio.’

‘Ohio?’
‘They have a good literature and writing school.’
The guy looked at her again. ‘So you graduated now?’
Michaela tipped her head on the side. ‘B.A honours. Was studying for

my Masters when my grandmother died and I had to go back home.’ She
shrugged. ‘I’m just back here to visit a friend.’

‘Not to finish your studies?’
‘Not at this time. Look, why all the questions? I’m a New Zealander.

Hardly a terrorist threat.’

He closed her passport and gestured at her suitcase. ‘Just doing my

job,’ he said. ‘If you could come with me, please, we’ll examine your
things over here.’

Michaela couldn’t believe her bad luck. What possible threat could she

be, for crying out loud? She followed the muscular customs official as he
carried her gear further into the room. The woman in line behind her
gave her an odd look and stared after her.

Michaela sat in a plastic seat, answered more questions, this time from

a baby-faced blond woman with a hard-assed attitude. She was required
to take off her shirt and display the inked designs on her skin, explain
their significance. Sniffer dogs were brought by to give her bags a once
over. Her passport was frowned over and she was questioned closely
about where she was going.

‘To visit a friend,’ she said. Again.
‘What friend? Where does this friend live?’
‘A woman I met when I was living here.’ She stared at the uniformed

woman. This one was wearing a gun as well. Michaela didn’t know what
sort. ‘My girlfriend,’ she said.

The officer raised her eyebrows. ‘Girlfriend?’
‘Yes,’ said Michaela. ‘She was my girlfriend when I lived here. She

called me last week, said she needed to see me.’

‘And you just packed up and came? Why did she need you?’
Michaela closed her eyes. ‘I’m here to find that out.’

Chapter

here was a bitter wind and Michaela pulled her jacket tighter, wish-
ing she had a hat too. Fall in Wisconsin. Not so much of the beauty

thing going on from outside the airport. Just a damned cold wind.

She still hadn’t told Trisha she was coming. She’d tried Trisha’s cell

phone but it was disconnected. She didn’t have a home phone number
for her. How bad was that? They, both of them, had done a piss poor job
of keeping in touch. Michaela shook her head.

Michaela had done as much research as she could before she left

home, so now she followed the signs to the rental car lot. She was tired
and her bag, unpacked and then repacked by customs was weighing her
down. She tucked her head down into the collar of her jacket and
walked.

Michaela’s eyes were gritty from lack of sleep by the time she reached

Tricia’s home town. She wished she could stop somewhere and splash
cold water on her face, wake herself up some before going to meet
Trisha. She eyes her reflection in the rear vision mirror. She looked
wrecked. Sighing, she concentrated on the road again. It was four o’clock
in the afternoon. A chance then that Trisha was working.

She hoped so. She hadn’t been able to find Trisha’s address back at

home, and there was none written on the post card. She scanned the
road. Place as small as this, there couldn’t be too many diners, surely?

There weren’t. Corner of Main and Sorrow Streets (who the hell

named these places?) a diner, big windows in the front, Pat’s Place
etched on them. She pulled over to the curb and looked in. Red and
white décor, half a dozen customers and holding a coffee pot in one
hand and order pad in the other, Trisha. Michaela felt dizzy. She
coughed and tried to breathe.

Hand slippery on handle, she opened the car door and forced herself

out onto the street and up to the door of the diner. She took a breath and
pushed it open, stepped inside. That was as much as she managed. She
stood there, just inside the door, heart pounding, taking in the sight of

Trisha in a red nylon uniform, a little apron tied around her trim waist.
A sight. A sight for sore eyes.

Trisha filled coffee cups at one of the tables and turned around to see

who had come in. The smile on her face fell away as her eyes widened in
shock. She groped to put the coffee pot down on an empty table and took
a few steps toward Michaela, still standing by the door.

Michaela swallowed, her mouth dry. ‘Trisha?’ she said.
Trisha had one hand over her mouth, eyes still wide in shock. She

stumbled the last few steps and threw her arms around Michaela.

‘Michaela? Oh my God Michaela, why are you here? I can’t believe

you’re here.’

Michaela buried her face in Trisha’s hair. Oh God, she smelled just the

same. She wrapped her arms around Trisha.

There was murmuring through the diner and finally a voice spoke.

Loudly.

‘Trisha?’
Trisha drew back and simply stared at Michaela instead. She angled

her head toward the speaker, not taking her eyes off Michaela. ‘It’s all
right Mom; I’ll just be a minute, okay?’

Trisha grabbed Michaela’s arm. ‘Come and sit down, all right? Before

these people here get neck strain trying to see who you are.’ She shook
her head. ‘I cannot believe you are here.’

She led Michaela to a booth along the wall and they slipped into the

seats, twisting round to face each other. Michaela twined her fingers in
Trisha’s.

She cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry about the phone call the other night,’

she said. ‘I was being a bitch, you were right.’

Trisha was still staring at her and though she was just an apparition

and would disappear at any moment.

‘Trisha?’ Michaela was suddenly uncertain. And hot. She untangled

her fingers and shrugged out of her jacket. When she looked back, Trisha
was still staring. ‘Trisha? You did want me to come, didn’t you?’

Trisha blinked. ‘You came because of that? Without even knowing

why?’ she took a breath and blew it out between her lips. ‘Holy shit,’ she
said.

Michaela shrugged. She took Trisha’s hands. ‘I missed you Trish. I’ve

been missing you for months. So I came over. I’m sorry I didn’t say I
would when you called.’ She ran out of things to say and gave a quick
smile.

Trisha took her eyes off Michaela and took a quick look around the

diner. Everyone had gone back to their coffee and food. Turning back
Trisha took Michaela’s face in her hands and gave her a hard kiss on the
lips. She kept her hands in place and shook her head. ‘I just cannot be-
lieve you came,’ she said. ‘This is such a shock; when I saw you standing
there in the doorway I thought I was hallucinating for fuck’s sakes.’ She
ran her hands over Michaela’s short hair. ‘But here you are, just because I
asked. You don’t even know why.’ She sat up and grinned. ‘What if I
was just drunk and being an idiot when I called? And you came all this
way for nothing?’

Michaela leaned forward and kissed her, a softer touching of lips. ‘It

was morning here when you called. You were just about to start work,
remember? Not drunk,’ she said.

Trisha laughed. ‘Too clever by far,’ she said. ‘Just the way I remember

you.’ She grasped Michaela’s hand. ‘I have to get back to work before
Mom starts in on me. You hungry?’

Michaela realised she was. ‘Starving,’ she said. ‘Coffee be great too.’
Trisha stood up and nodded. ‘Coming up,’ she said and smiled. ‘I just

cannot believe you’re here.’

Chapter

here was a problem. Trisha didn’t finish work until after nine, and
Michaela was ready to drop. Trisha slid into the seat opposite her

and fiddled with her dishrag.

‘Would you be all right with taking a room at the hotel?’ she asked.

‘Just for tonight, I promise. Only I don’t finish work for hours yet and
what with living at home, it’s all a bit awkward to arrange without
warning.’ She screwed her face up and reached for Michaela’s hand. ‘I’ll
come over after I finish here? Is that okay?’

Michaela turned Trisha’s hand over and looked at the soft palm, the

curve of fingers. She smiled. ‘Of course that’s okay. I don’t want to cause
any trouble with your mom.’

Trisha pressed her free hand to her forehead. ‘You’re not going to

cause any trouble,’ she said. ‘I won’t let there be any trouble, because I
reckon you’re the only one with a shit show in hell of figuring out what’s
going on.’ She stood up and smiled. Michaela thought she looked tired.
‘I’ll give the hotel a call. It’s only a block down. I wish I could come with
you now, Michaela, but it’ll be the evening rush soon.’

Michaela looked around at the almost empty diner. ‘A rush?’ she

asked.

Trisha barked a laugh. ‘Actually yeah. Anyway, I’ll organise to take to-

morrow off and I’ll come down after work, okay? You don’t need to wait
up or anything if you’re absolutely whacked. Maria at the desk will give
me a key.’ She leaned down and gave Michaela a quick kiss. ‘A block
down,’ she said. ‘On the corner, you can’t miss it. I’ll see you after,
okay?’ She grinned and the old Trisha Michaela remembered was look-
ing at her. ‘Can’t believe you’re here, babe,’ Trisha said. ‘Fuck me Freddy
but it’s good to see you.’

The day outside the diner was dimming towards twilight. Michaela

shrugged down into her jacket and looked around. Across the street a
drugstore and hair salon butted up beside each other. A dispirited
second hand bookshop lurked in the shadows on one corner. None of it

looked especially prosperous, as though these businesses had been sit-
ting hunched over the same customers doing the same business for so
long no one could remember why anymore.

Michaela shook off her fanciful thoughts and got back into the car,

driving the couple hundred yards to the hotel. She cast a glance over it
before pushing open the door. She’d been right to think the word hotel
hadn’t meant five star tourist trap. It was old instead, bar, restaurant and
accommodation. She went in and looked around the foyer. A murmur of
voices from the right and she looked through the windowed door at a
trio of old men warming a row of stools at a polished bar. She backed
away and rang the bell for service.

The room was small, but clean and tidy, and this one had its own bath-

room, though it looked like it had probably been a closet in a past incarn-
ation. Michaela thanked the round young woman who had shown her
up and the woman giggled happily and asked if Michaela would be
wanting some dinner. Michaela shook her head.

‘No problem,’ the woman said, giggling again. ‘I’ll let Trisha up when

she’s off work, that be all right? She said you’re a friend of hers.’

Michaela put her satchel down on the bed and made an effort to smile

at the cheerful young woman. ‘That would be great if you could,’ she
said. ‘Trisha and I haven’t seen each other in ages.’ She looked down at
her arms. No ink showing.

The woman gave a bit of a wave and slipped out the door. Michaela

closed it behind her and leaned against it. She took a breath. She was
here. She’d really done it. Packed up without a moment’s warning and
flown all this way because of one half-assed phone call. Was she crazy or
what?

Then she thought of Trisha’s expression in the diner. Shock, she

thought, naturally enough, and quite a bit of delight in there too, which
was definitely good, but the other? She thought maybe it had been relief,
and that was the one that made her pause as she stood there, head
leaned back against the door, eyes closed. Relief was puzzling, because
that meant something was going on.

Something Trisha thought Michaela could fix. And that was definitely

a worry.

She yawned, checked her watch, still having to dig it out of her pocket.

No wonder she was tired. At home it was the middle of the night. She’d
have a shower, lie down, watch a bit of TV before Trisha turned up.
Good plan. She rubbed her face and went to her bag for toiletries.

She fell asleep watching a movie she couldn’t for the life of her follow.

She woke with the sensation of someone watching her.

Chapter

he peeled her eyes open, head muzzy with sleep. The light was still
on, the TV droning in the background. She smiled. Trisha was look-

ing down at her, a matching smile on her face.

Michaela moistened her lips. ‘You’re a vision,’ she said. ‘I fell asleep

and now I’m dreaming. Wish I could dream like this every night.’

Trisha started laughing. ‘You always did say the most ridiculous

things,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you remember how to shut me up,’ Michaela remarked, a

smile playing around her lips. ‘Do you remember, Trisha?’ The smile dis-
appeared. ‘I remember.’

Trisha slid down onto the bed next to her, propped up on an elbow.

She reached out a hand and touched Michaela’s face, hesitantly at first,
the expression on her face now one of concentration. Then she smiled,
just a lifting on one corner of her mouth and flattened her palm against
Michaela’s cheek. She nodded.

‘I remember too,’ she said.
Michaela reached up and touched Trisha’s face. Drew her down to

meet her lips. Brushed them against Trisha’s own and whispered against
them. ‘I never stopped remembering,’ she said, then kissed Trisha prop-
erly, pushing her back against the pillows and flipping over until she lay
on top.

Trisha twined her arms around Michaela’s neck and Michaela was un-

done completely. She kissed lips, eyes, neck, lips again. She ran her
hands over Trisha, seeking the heat of her skin, slipping under the tee
shirt Trisha had changed into sometime and sighing against her as they
found the warm silk of skin.

Trisha squirmed and pulled her tee shirt off, Michaela sitting back to

watch, eyes dark with wanting. Trisha’s skin was pale and perfect. Mi-
chaela’s eyes looked over everywhere her hands wanted to go. She
leaned forward and brushed the strap of Trisha’s bra off her shoulder,
then kissed the gentle slope of breast. Trisha reached for her, and

Michaela let her pull off her own tee shirt so that she sat before her in
only her underpants. They smiled at each other.

‘It’s good to see you baby,’ Trisha said.

Afterwards, Michaela lay sprawled and very pleasantly exhausted

across Trisha’s chest. She was listening to the delicate beat of Trisha’s
heart. Trisha lay against the pillows, a hand stroking Michaela’s hair,
shoulders.

‘When did you get the tattoos?’ Trisha asked.
Michaela held up a wrist and looked at the blue snakes entwined

around it. Two of them writhed around her forearm, twisting around so
they each held the other’s tail in their mouth. Trisha ran a finger over
them.

‘Few months back,’ Michaela said.
Trisha placed her thumb over the pulse in Michaela’s wrist. ‘They’re…

fascinating,’ she said. ‘And kind of awful. You’re obviously not planning
to get any sort of job where you have to show your arms.’

Michaela lifted her head and laughed. ‘Since when are you so

practical?’

‘Since I started waitressing in a small town diner. Do they mean

anything?’

Michaela rolled onto her back. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Snakes are this pretty

loaded symbol, of course. Most people when they think of the snake
think of Adam and Eve and the snake in the garden of Eden.’ She paused
and looked at her arms. Sometimes she couldn’t decide whether she’d
drawn something true on herself or actually disfigured herself. She
snorted and Trisha raised an eyebrow.

She carried on. ‘But the symbol of the snake is much older, and it’s a

really matriarchal symbol, you know? It symbolises birth, death and re-
birth. Change and growth.’ She stopped and shrugged.

‘What about them eating their own tails?’ Trisha asked.
‘That just means that everything’s connected; life, death, the universe,

it’s always changing, growing, but the fact that it is always changing is
invariable.’ Michaela stuck her arms behind her head.

Trisha cupped her chin in a hand and laughed, but it was a strangely

humourless sound. ‘I would be tempted to say what a load of bullshit,
except I’m becoming more and more aware that the world is full of really
strange, scary shit, so I’ll go along with you, no problem.’

Michaela pushed back a stray corkscrew curl from Trisha’s face.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked. ‘Strange, scary? What is it, Trish?’

Trisha lay her head down on Michaela’s breast and licked a lazy

tongue over a nipple. ‘Not now,’ she said. ‘Not yet, okay. Let’s just make
this reunion night, enjoy ourselves. Get some sleep even.’

It was Michaela’s turn to run her fingers through Trisha’s hair. ‘Okay,’

she said. ‘Sure. Come here then gorgeous.’ Trisha wriggled up the bed
and they lay face to face on the bed, fingers exploring the planes of a
face, lips meeting and kissing and talking their own language.

Sometime during the night someone got up and turned off the lights

and they lay back in the bed, silver limbed in the moonlight, arms and
legs entwined, both breathing the soft air of sleep.

Chapter

ichaela was hungry. Famished, in fact. She looked down at Trisha
still asleep among the rumpled sheets and trailed a hand over her

soft skin, leaned down and kissed her awake. Trisha blinked and stared
up at her.

‘Morning, glory,’ Michaela said. ‘I should be in bed ravishing you

right now, but I’m starving. Honestly, I could eat a horse and chase its
rider. Had hardly anything except at your Diner last night and if I don’t
eat something soon I’m going to swoon like a pretty Victorian maiden.’

Trisha was sitting up now, the sheet in her lap, full breasts beautiful in

the band of light showing through the curtains. She rubbed her face.

‘What on earth are you going on about, Michaela?’
Michaela knelt down beside the bed and wrapped her arms around

Trisha’s waist, burying her face in those beautiful breasts. She took a
nipple in her mouth and rolled her tongue over it until it hardened in her
mouth. She kissed it and leaned her head back to look at Trisha.

‘I’m wide awake, babe. And as much as I think I’d like to get back into

bed and do reunion night all over again, my stomachs rumbling fit to
shake the whole building.’ She kissed Trisha on the lips. ‘Know any-
where good to eat?’ she asked.

Trisha laughed and looked at Michaela, fully clothed. ‘Okay, I get the

picture. Can I have a shower first?’

Michaela grinned. ‘You can have anything your heart desires,’ she said

and stood back to watch while Trisha climbed from bed and headed to-
ward the bathroom, admiring the sway of female hips. She stretched and
smiled. She hadn’t felt this good in how long? Months? The shower was
running now and Michaela grinned again and pulled her tee shirt off
and was undoing her jeans as she walked to the bathroom.

It wasn’t even eight in the morning when they emerged from the hotel,

Michaela carrying her suitcase to stash in the car. The morning light was
a fresh, cool wash upon the day and they walked down the road to the
Diner. Trisha sighed.

‘What’s the matter?’ Michaela asked.

Trisha just shrugged. ‘Reality,’ she said. She took a breath and blew it

out between pursed lips. ‘I feel way too good to deal with anything
today.’ She looked up at Michaela. ‘Let’s just pack a lunch and blow this
joint for the day, how about it?’

Michaela stopped walking. A blue and white pick-up drove past and

pulled in at the diner the block ahead of them. There wasn’t any other
traffic on the road. She laid a hand on Trisha’s shoulder, turning her to
examine the expression on her face.

‘I don’t think you should put off telling me,’ she said after a moment.

‘Whatever it is, and you can’t tell me something isn’t going on, you’re
jumpier than a kitten after string. You’re just going to stew and I’m just
going to wonder, so you’d best just tell me, Trisha babe. You’d best just
tell me why you called and told me you needed me here.’ She smiled
and pushed a curl from Trisha’s cheek.

Trisha grimaced and sighed. ‘Yeah, I know. You’re right.’ She turned

down the street. ‘Come on, I’ll introduce you to my mother. We’ll have
something to eat and take it from there.’ She turned and looked back at
Michaela and Michaela didn’t see even a ghost of a smile on her face. She
looked pale and upset.

Michaela nodded and they walked together down the street.

Trisha’s mom greeted her matter-of-factly, wiping her hands on her

apron first before sticking them under her arms.

‘So you’re the one Trisha reckons can help. Do you know what’s going

on?’

Michaela cast a glance at Trisha.
‘I haven’t told her yet, Mom,’ Trisha said. ‘We’ll have some breakfast

then go back to the house and I’ll fill her in, okay?’

Trisha’s mother looked from one to the other. ‘Where’ll she be stay-

ing?’ she asked.

‘With me, Mom,’ Trisha said, a warning tone in her voice. ‘She’s come

all this way because I asked her to; we are not going to make her stay at
the hotel. Besides, what use would that be? She’d never see anything.’

Michaela raised her eyebrows at this titbit, but Shirley Motton simply

sniffed and turned back to her cooking.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But I don’t want no funny business in front of Caro,

you hear? She’s problems enough without having to deal with yours.’

Trisha stared at her mother, then grabbed Michaela’s hand and led her

out of the kitchen. ‘Sorry about that,’ she whispered. They sat down in a
booth and a girl in waitress uniform with a carafe of coffee came up.’

‘Hey Trisha,’ she said. ‘You two want coffee?’
Trisha nodded, pushed their cups forward. ‘Diane, this is my friend

Michaela. She’s come all the way from New Zealand to stay a while.’

Diane nodded and poured coffee. ‘Nice to meet ya,’ she said. ‘You

want something to eat too?’

They ordered the breakfast special and Diane wandered away. Trisha

cast a glance around the diner and took Michaela’s hand.

‘Sorry about Mom,’ she said. ‘She’s better about it than she used to be,

but mostly because I’ve been keeping it out of her face.’

Michaela shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it. My mother dropped

me off to live with my grandmother when she found me kissing my best
friend. I was fourteen. So I know how it goes, for sure.’ she squeezed
Trisha’s hand. ‘How’s Caro?’ she asked.

Trisha took her hand away and leaned her head on it. Caro was her

sister. ‘Caro’s okay,’ she said. ‘She’s fifteen now and Mom thinks she’s
some sort of angel child just ripe to be corrupted by her big sister.’ She
shook her head.

Michaela laughed. ‘Is there any such thing as a fifteen year old angel?’
Trisha smiled. ‘Caro’s probably as close to one as you could get, actu-

ally. She’s really bright. I don’t know how Mom managed to produce
her. She’s better than the rest of us put together, that’s for sure.’

Michaela looked at her. ‘Don’t underestimate yourself,’ she said.
Trisha just shrugged. ‘Here’s our food,’ she said.

Chapter

fter breakfast, Trisha led them out through the kitchen to where
her car was parked behind the building. It was an old ’78 King Co-

bra Mustang. Michaela looked it over and whistled. Trisha smiled.

‘Not bad, is it?’ she said. ‘It was my dad’s. He gave it to me just before

he died.’

Michaela was surprised. ‘We don’t know much about each other, do

we?’ she said.

Trisha shook her head, and Michaela thought again there was

something so tired about her friend. It wasn’t the same Trisha she’d met
last year up at the lake. There wasn’t near so much swearing and postur-
ing and that was just for starters.

‘We don’t at that, Trisha agreed. ‘My dad died of bowel cancer when I

was Caro’s age.’ She shrugged. ‘At least I didn’t have to have him kick
me out and swear to have nothing more to do with me.’ She looked
down at the car. ‘I couldn’t have handled that.’ She shrugged and un-
locked the door. ‘But hey,’ she said. ‘Life goes on well after you’re done
living, right?’

‘So, where are we going now?’ Michaela asked once they were in the

car.

‘I’ll drop you off at your car and you can follow me home,’ Trisha said.

‘And with a bit of luck the ghosts will jump out and say boo and you can
just see them for yourself without me sounding like a dick telling you
about it all.’

Michaela’s eyes widened. Ghosts? Not for real, surely? She wanted to

ask, but some instinct told her not to rush. Trisha was concentrating on
driving now, but she was looking almost green in the brightening fall
light. Michaela reached out instead and lightly touched a shoulder, then
looked out the window at the town.

It was built crouched on the side of a wide green snake of a river. Main

Street behind them, the town straggled and lingered like a naughty child
after school. Everywhere there were trees showing their fall kaleidoscope
of brilliant reds and oranges.

‘The trees are pretty,’ Michaela said.
Trisha snorted. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But not pretty enough to make us one

of those rich little tourist traps.’ She shrugged. ‘We get our share, I sup-
pose, but they’re only passing through to somewhere better. Taking the
scenic route off to see the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.’

She turned the car down a residential street and pulled into the drive-

way of small ranch house looking neat and prim under a new coat of
paint.

‘Well,’ said Trisha. ‘Here we are. I painted the place during the sum-

mer. Tidied it up a bit. Mom doesn’t get much time for stuff like that.
She’s down at the diner every day of the week.’ She looked over at Mi-
chaela and Michaela thought she could see shadows in those lovely eyes.

‘Come and meet Caro,’ Trisha said.

Trisha’s young sister was probably the most beautiful teenager Mi-

chaela had ever set eyes on. The same dark curls and light olive tint to
the skin as her sister, but instead of Trisha’s short stature and generous
curves, Caro was tall and slender, with jean clad legs that went all the
way to heaven. She smiled shyly at Michaela and her eyes were a clear,
deep green.

Trisha was watching Michaela look at her sister, a smile playing

around her lips. ‘You’ve got a stunned mullet look on your face, Mi-
chaela,’ she said.

Michaela turned glassy eyes towards her amused girlfriend. ‘This is

your sister?’ she asked.

Trisha laughed. ‘Real polite, babe.’ She put her arm around her kid sis-

ter’s shoulder and gave her a peck on the cheek. ‘Yup this is the kid. The
hope and dream of the family aren’t you, gorgeous?’

Caro laughed and blushed at the same time and Michaela realised this

girl was the real deal. Beautiful and somehow at fifteen, still unaffected.

Trisha was still talking. ‘But it’s not her looks going to get her far, is it

sweetheart?’ She turned to Michaela. ‘Caro’s making the top grades in
the school. She’s a real swot, but that’s not the reason. She’s a bright kid.
Really bright.’ Trisha gave Caro another kiss and stepped back toward
Michaela. Her face was serious again. ‘I have high hopes for Caro. She
has a real chance to make it in the world.’ Trisha was looking suddenly
fierce now. ‘Nothing is going to ruin it for her, okay?’

Michaela looked back at Caro’s green eyes and bright red face and

nodded. ‘Okay, I hear you, Trisha,’ she said. But she wasn’t really sure
what she was hearing.

Trisha seemed to realise it. She took a breath and lightened up. ‘Come

on, let’s put your bags away,’ she said and led the way down a narrow
hallway.

Michaela looked around at the house as she followed Trisha. It was

clean and tidy but frayed around the edges. The carpets were worn, the
furniture old though serviceable. Someone had arranged some fall
branches in a vase to brighten up the place, but behind the cheerful ges-
ture, the house seemed sad and dark. Michaela shivered, telling herself
not to be fanciful. It was Trisha’s brief mention of ghosts before that had
the hairs on the back of her neck all fluffed up.

Trisha pointed to a door. ‘Bathroom,’ she said and opened a different

door. ‘It’s not the Hilton,’ she said and indicated Michaela to go in. Mi-
chaela put her bags down and turned around.

‘Are you sure I should be staying here with you?’ she asked. ‘Your

mom didn’t seem too keen on the idea. It’s okay, you know, if I have to
go back to the hotel.’ She looked around the little room, also clean, bed
neatly made.

Trisha rubbed her forehead with the heel of a hand. ‘You have to stay

here,’ she said. ‘Mom’s okay with it, really. She understands the neces-
sity. She’ll put up with it at least, though if there was a spare room, she’d
probably insist you sleep in there.’

She looked back down the hallway behind the open bedroom door

and her face had that tired, wan look again. Michaela looked at her, and
remembered the day she and Trisha were locked in the Gardener’s rank
and dark swim house, unable to get out. Then she realised. Trisha wasn’t
just tired. Trisha was afraid.

Chapter

risha sank down on the double bed that took up just about all the
space in the room. She lay on her back and drew a hand through

her hair. Looked up at Michaela and tried on a smile.

‘Guess it’s time,’ she said.
Michaela was feeling torn between wanting to hear what was going on

and simply picking up Trisha and dragging her way the hell out of it all.
Back to the hotel room for starters, then out of Dodge all together.

But it wasn’t going to be the second option. She’d seen the way Trisha

had looked at her sister – a fierce pride and a desperation that the girl be
okay. Michaela leaned over and kissed Trisha lightly on the lips then
settled down on the bed too, a waiting expression on her face.

Trisha scrunched her eyes closed. ‘I don’t know how to start,’ she ad-

mitted. ‘It’s going to sound crazy no matter how I put it.’ She opened her
eyes and Michaela was worried at the defeated look she saw in them.
Trisha shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to do, babe,’ she said.

Michaela stroked Trisha’s hair. ‘Isn’t that why you asked me to come

out. So we can figure out whatever it is, together?’ She smiled. ‘We
already know we make a pretty good team. Whatever it is, it can’t be
worse that we’ve dealt with before.’

Trisha sat up. Her hand snaked out and grabbed Michaela’s arm. ‘It is

worse. Michaela it’s worse because I don’t know what’s doing it! It’s all
smoke and mirrors, you know?’

Michaela shook her head. No, she had no idea, but it was time to find

out. She unhooked Trisha’s hand and kissed the white knuckles. ‘How
about we make a coffee, sit down together, and you can fill me in. From
the beginning.’

Trisha nodded, leaned her head against Michaela’s shoulder. ‘Glad

you’re here, babe. Because I sure don’t know what to think anymore.’

There was a knock at the bedroom door. Trisha jumped up and

opened it. Caro stood in the hallway, a backpack in her arms.

‘Trish,’ she said, a hesitant smile on her lips as her eyes flicked past

Trisha to Michaela. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m just going down to the

library to study, okay?’ She lowered her voice to almost a whisper. ‘I
hate being here now, okay? I want to get out of the house.’

Trisha nodded. ‘Make sure you’re home in time for tea, all right? Do

you have your phone with you in case I need to get hold of you?’

Caro nodded and backed away down the narrow hallway, giving a

tiny wave to Michaela. Trisha looked after her, then turned around and
sighed.

‘Let’s make that coffee,’ she said.

The kitchen was tiny. Trisha apologised for it only being instant coffee

and Michaela nodded, not minding at all. She was far more interested in
finding out what was on Trisha’s mind.

‘Do you mind if we take these outside?’ Trisha asked carrying the

mugs out of the kitchen. ‘It shouldn’t be too cold out. And I would feel
much better talking about all this outside of the house.’

Michaela took one of the mugs and nodded, following Trisha out a

back door and into the yard. Down the back, a wooden table and chairs
looked like they’d been placed as far from the house as possible. Trisha
led her toward them and sank into one of the chairs with a tiny groan,
rummaging through the pockets of the jacket she’d grabbed on the way
out. She drew out a battered pack of cigarettes.

Michaela took the other chair and shivered. There was a cool breeze,

despite the bright blue sky.

‘I’m going to go inside and get my jacket,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit chilly out

here.’

Trisha nodded, cupping a hand around the flame as she bent to light

her cigarette. Michaela patted her on the shoulder and headed back to
the house.

One of the other doors in the hallway was open and Michaela poked

her head in out of curiosity. She guessed it was Caro’s room. The walls
were papered in posters from the Twilight and New Moon movies,
pretty, pale-skinned vampires looking down at her. Other than that it
was a poky, dark little room and Michaela felt a pang of guilt for being
nosy. She turned back and walked the rest of the way to Trisha’s room,
wondering if she really shouldn’t just take a room at the hotel again.
There wasn’t going to be any such thing as privacy in this house.

She looked around for her jacket. She would wait until Trisha had ex-

plained what was going on before she decided about the hotel room. She
found her jacket on the floor and glanced down the hallway.

What was that? Michaela blinked and looked again. Just a shadow. For

a minute she thought something had been there, watching her from,
from where? The doorway of Caro’s room? Michaela rubbed at her
sleeves. The hairs on her arms were standing up. She looked down at
herself, then swung her head back towards the hallway.

Something moved there. She was sure of it. She stepped over to the

doorway and put a hand on the door jamb, eyes scanning the dim hall-
way. Nothing there. Except for the prickling on the back of her neck. She
debated shrugging it off, picking up her jacket and going back outside
where Trisha sat smoking, and where her coffee was going cold.

Instead she took a few steps forward, moving slowly, cautious. With

the doors closed, it was almost dark. Had it been this dark before? Mi-
chaela wasn’t sure. She walked down to Caro’s room and pushed the
door open wider. The room was full of shadows.

Ignoring the faces on the walls, Michaela stood still, only her eyes

moving as she looked around the room.

There. Over there beside the bed. Michaela could feel her heart beating

against her chest. There was something there. Something that didn’t be-
long, shadows piled upon shadows. One dark, tall, vaguely human
shaped.

Michaela looked around; there must be something in the bedroom to

throw that shadow. But she knew already she wouldn’t find anything,
this wasn’t anything ordinary, and the hairs standing up on the back of
her neck seconded the opinion.

She watched it. And as she watched it she would have sworn it was

staring right back at her. She refused to move, watching it, refused to
blink and all at once it shrank back into the corner of the room, into the
shadows cast by the furniture, and disappeared.

Michaela backed out of the room in shock.

Chapter

risha looked up. ‘What took you so long? Your coffee will be cold.’

Michaela drew her jacket tighter. She was shivering. Sitting

down beside Trisha she picked up the coffee mug and wrapped her
hands around its luke-warm sides. She took a sip. Trisha was looking at
her.

‘You okay? You look kinda weird.’
Michaela leaned over. ‘Give me one of your cigarettes, okay?’
Trisha frowned. ‘What the hell? Michaela, you don’t smoke.’
Michaela merely shrugged and Trisha pushed the pack towards her.

She dug into the pack and pulled one out, lighting it and taking a breath
of smoke. She didn’t cough, but grimaced and blew it out. ‘Bloody hell,
these are disgusting,’ she said.

Trisha was looking confused. ‘Are you all right, Michaela?’ She ges-

tured for the cigarette. ‘Give me that, you silly bitch. You don’t smoke,
and take it from me, you don’t want to start.’

Michaela handed over the cigarette and went back to her coffee. It

wasn’t hot, but it was better than nothing. She thought about the hall-
way, and the shadow, the shadow thing she’d seen in Caro’s room.

‘There’s something in your sister’s room,’ she said. ‘That’s why you

wanted me to come over.’

Trisha gaped at her. When she spoke, her voice was high and thin.

‘You saw it?’

‘I saw something,’ Michaela replied. ‘What it was, I have no idea, but I

didn’t like it.’ She looked down at the dregs of cold coffee. ‘It didn’t feel
like a ghost,’ she said, thinking of the time years ago when she’d seen a
ghost for sure, standing in the doorway to her own bedroom, looking for
all the world like an old- fashioned, half- erased photograph of a gentle-
man in a top hat. She’d had other experiences since then, but that had
been the start of it.

But she’d seen nothing like this. ‘What is it?’ she asked Trisha.
Trisha was sitting staring at her, a wide grin on her face. She jumped

up from her chair and punched the air.

‘I knew it!’ Trisha said, doing a little two-step. ‘I fucking knew you

were the right person to deal with it.’ She grabbed Michaela’s face and
kissed her smack on the lips. ‘I love you, Michaela.’

I love you? Michaela tucked that nugget away for later perusal. She

shook her head instead. ‘You’re going to have to tell me what you know,’
she said. ‘I saw something, but I’m not even sure what, so don’t go get-
ting too excited yet.’

Trisha was shaking her head too. ‘No fucking way, Michaela, I don’t

care. You’ve been here all of five shitting minutes and it showed itself to
you. I knew I was right to call you.’ She took a drag on the cigarette and
pulled her fingers through her hair. ‘I don’t know what it is, babe. All I
know is we gotta get rid of it. I don’t like it, and Caro is scared out of her
fucking mind, I’ll tell you that for free.’

Michaela held up her hands. ‘Slow down Trisha. Let’s start at the be-

ginning, okay?’ She eyed the house. She would have liked another cup of
coffee, but truthfully, she didn’t much fancy the idea of going back into
the house. She shivered again as she remembered the sensation of being
watched, of that dark shadow like cancer on an x-ray.

‘How do you guys manage to stay here?’ she asked without thinking.
Trisha slumped back down in the chair beside her. ‘Where’re we going

to go, babe? Don’t have any choice.’ She flicked the cigarette away and
inched her fingers towards the pack for another. ‘I could leave, sure. But
what about Caro? She can’t go anywhere. And Mom’s as useful as tits on
a bull.’

‘Has she seen it too? Your mom, I mean?’
Trisha nodded and pulled a cigarette out. ‘She’s seen something, any-

way. None of us knows what to call it.’

Michaela looked up at the sky, thinking. ‘What do you see?’
‘Some sort of black shadow fuck.’ She shuddered and took a deep drag

on the cigarette. ‘It lurks around. Caro complains it watches her at night.
Stands by her bed and watches her. Fuck, just the thought of that scares
me to death. What the hell is it?’

Michaela shook her head. She had no idea. She was still amazed she’d

even seen anything. How weird was it to just walk into a place and see
something like that straight away?

Almost as if the thing had wanted her to see it. Or it had wanted to

take a look at her.

Which was worse?
She looked at Trisha. Trisha’s exhilaration had left her and she looked

pale and drained again.

‘Have you seen anything else?’
Trisha seemed to understand what she was asking. She shook her

head. ‘Just the shadow. Though sometimes I think there’s more than one
of them.’ She took another puff on the cigarette and stared off into the
distance. ‘Sometimes I’m sitting at the table, okay? Late at night, I can’t
sleep. I’ll see something out of the corner of my eye. Movement. A dark
blur or something. Turn around and there’s nothing there.’ She moved
her dark eyes until she was looking at Michaela again.

‘Just shadows, babe,’ she said. ‘But there’s nothing there throwing

these shadows.’ Back into the distance again. ‘And I don’t think they’re
friendly either.’

Chapter

ichaela tried to think logically. There were things she needed to
know if she was going to make a start on getting to the bottom of

this.

If she even wanted to, that was.
She remembered the sensation of being watched, of turning around

and seeing that inky mass of shadow lurking in the depths of the bed-
room. A shadow, she thought, could hide anywhere. Move anywhere.

But shadows were just patches of darkness caused by objects blocking

the light. She looked down at the ground. There was her own shadow,
long and vaguely Michaela-shaped, flattened against the grass.
Harmless.

Not a normal shadow, then. Michaela almost smiled to herself. Well,

duh, not a normal shadow. So what did that make it?

An entity of some sort.
Michaela looked across the table at Trisha. She looked beautiful in the

slanting sunlight. Even puffing nervously at yet another cigarette, left leg
juddering as she tapped her foot. Her customary bravado was missing,
but she was still beautiful. Michaela would have come all this way just to
sit right here and look at her.

An entity of some sort. This wasn’t good. But it did bring to mind the

next questions to ask. Michaela picked up Trisha’s lighter and fiddled
idly with it as she thought. She was aware that Trisha was looking at her,
but she didn’t open her mouth just yet.

If it were an entity of some sort, well then, what sort was it? And why

was it here? Did it want something? Was it already getting something?
Jeeze, that was a bad thought. Michaela tapped the lighter against the
table, in time with Trisha’s foot. The last question, of course, was how do
you get rid of it? That was the one you really wanted to hit on the head.
Michaela looked up.

‘Let’s go have another look inside,’ she said. ‘Maybe I can look in

Caro’s room?’ She picked up her empty mug. ‘I’d love another coffee
too.’

She stood up and Trisha stepped forward and wrapped her arms

round her. Michaela put down the cup and hugged her back. ‘What’s
this for?’ she asked.

Trisha looked up at her face. ‘You believe me, don’t you? That

something’s there, that something’s going on?’ Trisha’s eyes were moist
and Michaela suspected she was close to tears. Somehow that was the
worst thing of all. That Trisha, so cocky and sure of herself, was scared.

Michaela tipped her head down and kissed the woman in her arms.

‘Yeah, I believe it,’ she said. ‘Of course I do. I saw it.’

But Trisha was shaking her head. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘Most

people, even if they’d seen something, wouldn’t believe it even then.
You, you just accept it and start puzzling out what it could be.’

Michaela tightened her arms, but Trisha wasn’t finished.
‘You’re amazing,’ she said. ‘Last year, by the lake, you figured out

what was going on and I know you’ll do just the same this time.’

Michaela frowned and took Trisha by the shoulders. ‘For starters,’ she

said, ‘last year at the lake it was both of us who did that, both of us who
figured out what was going on and we both did something about it.’ She
was shaking her head now. ‘And this is different. You know it is; this is
no hoax or anything, you know that. And I may not be able to get to the
bottom of it in a million years. We may not be able to figure it out at all,
this time.’

Trisha stared at her. She shrugged. ‘You will,’ she said. ‘If anyone can,

you will.’ She turned toward the house and sighed. ‘Shall we go in?’

Michaela followed her in and wandered around the house while

Trisha made more coffee. She opened every door and peered into the
corners. She felt terrible snooping around the house but Trisha just told
her to go ahead. But there was nothing to see anyway. Whatever had
been here before, it didn’t seem to be around now. Michaela went back
to the kitchen and took a sip of her coffee.

‘When did it start?’ she asked.
Trisha shrugged. ‘Few months back, I guess. Something scared the shit

out of Caro one night and she came barrelling into my room babbling
about someone watching her. I searched the whole fucking neighbour-
hood that night.’ She took a sip of her drink. ‘Didn’t find anyone, of
course. It kept happening though. Someone dressed in black, Caro kept
saying. A shadow man, she said, except I didn’t know what the fuck she
meant by that.

‘Then one night I was up late, worked the late shift at the diner, too

wired to sleep. I was sitting over there.’ She gestured at the dining table.

‘Saw something. Out of the corner of my eye at first, just movement. So-
mething dark. Shadows.’ Trisha shuddered at the memory. ‘Shadows
like out of some fucking horror movie, gathering just out of sight, watch-
ing.’ She sighed, shrugged. ‘And it’s been the same story ever since. I
only see them out of the corner of my eye, but Caro says they stand
around her bed and watch her.’ She looked at Michaela. ‘Can you ima-
gine how terrifying that must be?’

Michaela thought about what she’d seen. Would she want to wake up

in the middle of the night and see that looking down at her? No way,
and she’d woken up to see other things. Ghosts. That shadow in the hall-
way and then the bedroom though; that wasn’t any ghost. She didn’t
think so anyway. It had felt, for that moment, like something with abso-
lutely no vestiges of humanity. She looked around.

‘I don’t think there’s anything here at the moment,’ she said. ‘Not that

I can see anyway.’

Trisha moved past her to go outside. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’ll be

back tonight.’

Chapter

risha broke the silence that had descended over them as they sat
outside staring back at the house.

‘So what do we do first?’ she asked. She blew out a stream of smoke.

‘Ugh I’m smoking too damn much.’

Michaela laughed and reached over, tugged on a curl. ‘Don’t think

now’s exactly a good time to try quitting,’ she said.

‘Yeah, ain’t that the truth.’ Trisha stubbed the cigarette out and sighed.

‘Let’s get out of here babe,’ she said. ‘We can drive over to Kenosha.
There’s a bar there, has live music on Saturday nights. We can drink too
much, dance too much then find a room and fuck till the sun comes up.’
She looked over at Michaela. ‘What do you reckon?’

Michaela leaned over and grabbed Trisha by the back of the neck,

pulling her close enough to kiss, which she then proceeded to do, ex-
ceedingly thoroughly. When done she looked into Trisha’s dark eyes and
smiled. ‘I especially like the part about fucking until the sun comes up,’
she said, ‘but perhaps my gorgeous woman, we should take a rain check
on that particular plan.’

Trisha stuck out her tongue and they both laughed. ‘Ah, fuck it all,

you’re right of course,’ Trisha said. Then she looked at Michaela. ‘But it’s
a date for next Saturday, all right?’

Michaela grinned. ‘Deal,’ she said, then sobered. She fingered Trisha’s

long curls, winding them around her long fingers. ‘Trisha?’ she said. ‘I
know we had last night together, but I’m not interrupting anything, am
I?’ That wasn’t quite what she wanted to know. She cleared her throat
and tried again. Trisha was looking at her curiously.

‘Are you seeing anyone, is what I guess I’m asking. I mean, if you’re

seeing someone, you’re under no obligation to me. To go to bed with me,
I mean.’ She gave up, subsided in silence.

Trisha was staring at her, fine arched brows raised. She looked mo-

mentarily uncomfortable before curling her mouth up in a smile. ‘It’s
okay,’ she said. She swept an arm around. ‘Have you noticed the size of
this place?’ she asked. ‘Place isn’t exactly swarming with potential dates.’

Michaela nodded, embarrassed. But she’d had to ask. She just didn’t

think Trisha was the type for celibacy. She leaned back against the chair.
She was tired again and checked her watch which was still on Antipodes
time. No wonder she was tired. Maybe she should eat something.

‘I need something to eat,’ she said. ‘What about we pick Caro up from

wherever she is and grab a bite to eat. I could ask Caro some questions.’

‘She’s at the library,’ Trisha said, looking preoccupied.
‘What’s wrong?’
Trisha shrugged. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Bit tired, I guess.’ She stood up

and stretched. ‘Yeah okay, let’s do that then. I could do with something
to eat too. Although maybe not at the diner, all right? I’m sick of that
place.’

‘Which reminds me,’ Michaela said. ‘Do you have to work?’
Trisha shook her head. ‘Told Mom I was taking a few days off. She

said she’d get someone to cover.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ll have to go back after
the weekend probably.’

Michaela nodded. ‘No problem,’ she said.
Trisha stuck her cigarettes in her pocket and picked up the mugs. ‘I’ll

put these away,’ she said, ‘then we’ll go, shall we?’

Michaela nodded and watched Trisha walk towards the house. She

looked around at the tiny back yard, the fence that needed a paint and a
narrow strip of garden where someone had made a mostly futile attempt
to brighten the place up. It wasn’t much of a place, but she guessed it
was enough. A roof over your head.

Except for those shadows.
Michaela chewed on her lip. What was she going to do, for crying out

loud? What was there that she possibly could do? Trisha was dreaming
if she thought Michaela could not only figure out what the hell they
were, but get rid of them as well.

She was tired. She only had to think logically about the problem, and

she’d be able to make some headway on it at least. That’s the way things
worked. But she needed something to eat, and she needed to get over
this jet lag as well.

Rubbing her face, Michaela walked over to the car to wait for Trisha.

Oh God but it was good to see Trisha again. It made her realise just how
damned much she’d missed her the last eight months or so. But that
wasn’t the thing to think about either. There was an orchard at home
with her name all over it. Responsibilities. She had them back in NZ,
Trisha had them here; what bloody hope was there?

Trisha came down the steps, car keys in hand. She stopped in front of

Michaela.

‘Ready to go?’ she asked.
Michaela nodded. Then changed her mind. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said. ‘I

just want to do this first.’ She buried her fingers in Trisha’s dark tangles
and bent down until their lips touched. She lingered there, just a press of
lips against each other, closing her eyes, feeling the strong swirl of emo-
tions fill her. Trisha’s arms snaked around her neck and Michaela lifted
her slightly, pulling her against herself and kissing her properly now,
feeling all the frustration and sadness of the last few months pushing
tenderness aside. She stopped and pulled back. Trisha opened her eyes
and stared at her.

‘Wow,’ Trisha said, some color in her face now. ‘What was that for?’
Michaela shrugged. ‘Let’s go get something to eat, okay?’
Trisha stared at her. ‘Okay.’

Chapter

he library was a surprisingly pleasant, modern building, slung low
to the ground, windows curving around the perimeter to let light

in. Michaela waited in the car while Trisha went in to get her sister. She
adjusted her long legs in the foot well and tapped her fingers nervously,
wishing she wasn’t so tired. She felt punchy, her eyes gritty. Hopefully
some food would help.

Trisha and Caro returned to the car, looking like they were arguing

over something. Caro scrambled into the back seat and sat silent. Trisha
started the engine.

‘Let’s grab a meal at the hotel, yeah?’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can

stomach more fried food at the Diner.’

There was a snort from the back seat and Trisha’s face tightened. Mi-

chaela wondered what they’d been arguing about. She decided she
didn’t care, it would only be some sort of sister thing she didn’t under-
stand. She rubbed her eyes. If she didn’t get something to eat shortly she
was going to fall asleep where she sat.

‘Wherever you want to eat is fine by me,’ she said, then lapsed into a

silence to match everyone else’s in the car. She leaned her head against
the window and closed her eyes.

The food was good. Michaela could feel her head clearing as she ate.

‘God did I need this,’ she said. She looked at the other two, both of them
merely picking at their food. ‘All right,’ she told them. ‘What’s going on
with you two?’

Trisha looked up. ‘Nothing,’ she said. She pushed her plate away.

‘Guess I wasn’t that hungry after all.’ She looked at Caro. ‘What about
you?’ she asked.

Caro looked up from her plate and shrugged. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, star-

ing at her sister.

Michaela looked at them both, feeling like something was going on.

Maybe Caro had been talking to someone at the library Trisha didn’t
like. Who knew? She cleaned up what was left on her plate.

‘You want a drink, Trisha?’ she asked.
Trisha nodded. ‘Yeah, a beer thanks.’
‘What about you Caro, you want a Coke or something?’
The girl shrugged, so Michaela went off to get the drinks anyway. She

thought about the house and wondered how to broach the subject and
ask the questions she needed to when Trisha and Caro were clearly fight-
ing about something. Well, she decided, they would just have to get over
themselves. She picked up the drinks and went back to their table.

The plates had been cleared away and Caro was fiddling with a nap-

kin. Trisha was leaning back in her chair, arms folded. Michaela set the
drinks down.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘What’s going on between you two? Do I even want

to know?’ She sat down and swallowed a mouthful of beer. ‘We really
need to be on the same side here, you know.’

Trisha sighed and sat up. ‘Sorry Michaela, we’re just having a bit of a

disagreement.’

‘Yeah, cos you’re being a bitch,’ muttered Caro.
Trisha spoke before Michaela could. ‘For fuck’s sakes Caro, shut up.’
Michaela looked from one to the other. ‘I’m tired,’ she said at last. ‘I

flew half way round the world yesterday and I’m just a wee bit jet
lagged, so can you two please sort out whatever it is so we can get on to
the real issue here? I need to get some sleep, but damned if I’m going to
want to sleep in that house without just a couple of questions answered.’
She lifted her glass and drank.

The sisters looked at each other. Caro shrugged finally and picked up

her Coke.

‘Sorry babe,’ Trisha said. ‘We’re all a bit strung out, I guess.
Caro was looking at Michaela. ‘Trisha told me about last year, you

guys saving that old lady from her son. It’s really cool that you figured
out the lights and ghost and shit were fake.’

‘Jeeze Caro, watch your language.’ Trisha seemed genuinely offended.
Caro gaped at her, then started giggling. ‘You’re telling me that?’
With that, the tension around the table evaporated. Michaela looked at

them, both of them giggling like a pair of lunatics. ‘I just do not under-
stand women,’ she said, shaking her head.

That made them laugh harder, Caro laughing and choking on her

Coke. Michaela stared, then replayed her own words and started laugh-
ing too. They were gathering looks from the people around the other
tables when Michaela rested her head in her hands and made an effort to
pull herself together.

‘Come on guys,’ she said, smothering the last of her laughter. ‘Oh God,

my sides are sore from laughing.’

Trisha wiped her eyes and Caro stifled her giggles, looking at Mi-

chaela’s arms. Her sleeves had slipped back to show the blue lines of her
tattoos.

‘Cool ink,’ Caro said. ‘What’s it of?’
Michaela shrugged and pulled back one sleeve to show Caro the

snakes around her wrists. Caro put out a finger and traced the lines.

‘They’re amazing,’ she said. ‘Snakes are such awesome symbols, you

know. The power of regeneration and all that. This is just like the old
kings and chiefs had around their arms, to symbolise their relationship
to the land and the cycle of the seasons.’ She looked up at Michaela.
‘What?’ she asked.

Michaela pulled her sleeve down. ‘You’re amazing,’ she said. ‘Most

people wouldn’t know that stuff.’

Caro shrugged. ‘I like magic and symbolism and stuff. It interests me.’

She gave a sly smile. ‘I found this cool book in the library a while ago.
Mists of Avalon. Written ages ago, but it was really good. King Arthur
had tattoos just like that.’

‘Told you she was bright,’ Trisha said. ‘Totally annoying what with

knowing every damn thing, but you gotta give her points for getting
stuff right.’

Michaela looked at Caro more closely then looked around to see if

anyone was sitting near enough to them to hear, then turned to Caro. ‘I
was at your place today,’ she said. ‘I saw it. The shadow thing. It was
watching me from the hallway then disappeared into your room.’

Whatever Caro had been expecting to hear, it clearly wasn’t this. The

blood disappeared from her cheeks, giving her a shocked, sallow look.

‘You saw it?’ she said. ‘In broad daylight, just like that?’
Michaela nodded. ‘Not only that, but I saw it before Trisha even told

me what was going on.’ She thought about what Caro had said about the
tattoos. ‘Do you have any idea about what it is?’

Caro nodded. ‘I found hundreds of stories about them on the internet.’
Michaela and Trisha stared at her.

Chapter

hey got out of there within minutes, all of them talking at once.
Until they got back home. Trisha parked the Mustang in the drive-

way and silence fell in the car.

‘I don’t like it at home anymore,’ Caro said after a moment. ‘I wish I

was old enough to go away to college already,’ she said.

‘You’d miss Mom,’ Trisha said in a way that made Michaela guess

she’d said the same thing several times before.

‘Mom’s never around,’ Caro replied. ‘She’s always at her precious

Diner.’

Still staring at the house. ‘The Diner is what pays for your food and

clothes.’

Caro snorted. ‘Food maybe. I have to work there to pay for my own

bloody clothes.’

Caro was crouched forward between the two front seats. Trisha took

one of Caro’s hands and squeezed it. ‘You’ll be away to college before
you know it, kiddo.’

‘Sure.’ Caro’s knuckles whitened in Trisha’s hand. ‘But let’s leave now,

all right? We can get an apartment somewhere, I’ll work part time after
school, we’d manage fine, you know?’

Trisha took her eyes off the house and looked at her sister. Michaela

shifted in her seat.

‘Mom would never let you leave with me,’ Trisha said. ‘You know she

wouldn’t let you do that.’

‘Mom won’t even be home tonight,’ Caro replied. ‘I’ll bet you anything

you like she’ll sleep above the Diner. She refuses to rent out the apart-
ment above it because it’s where she prefers to live.’

Trisha didn’t say anything. Michaela gave them a minute then cleared

her throat.

‘You want to show me what you found on your computer?’ she asked

Caro.

‘Yeah, sure. Whatever.’

The lights sent the shadows fleeing to the corners of the room. Caro

disappeared into her room.

‘You want a coffee?’ Trisha asked.
‘Please,’ Michaela replied. ‘Does your mom really sleep over at the

Diner? She asked.

Trisha moved around the kitchen. ‘Since I’ve been back, yeah. But

Caro told me she was spending a three or four nights a week there before
that too.’ She spooned instant coffee into the mugs. ‘I don’t think we’ll
see much of her.’ She stirred in the hot water and carried Michaela’s cup
to her. ‘It’s why I’m still here.’

‘Thanks,’ Michaela said, taking the cup from her and setting it down

on the table. She smoothed Trisha’s hair back from her face. ‘You’re do-
ing the right thing,’ she said.

Trisha stared back at her. ‘I know.’
Michaela nodded; she deserved that. ‘I wish I’d known earlier.’
Trisha shrugged. ‘What was the point of telling you? By the time I

knew how things really were here, you were gone back to New Zealand
when your grandmother died.’

Michaela rested her forehead against Trisha’s and gazed into her eyes.

‘Nothing’s ever easy, is it?’ she said. She drew Trisha closer and
wrapped her arms around her, finding her lips.

A voice interrupted them. ‘Get a room, guys, jeeze, this is supposed to

be G-rated around here. Save the hot and heavy girl on girl action for
somewhere else. ’

They drew apart, Michaela feeling a blush spread over her face.
‘Zip your mouth, little sister,’ Trisha said and Caro shot her a look Mi-

chaela couldn’t make out.

Caro was holding a sleek silver laptop. Michaela nodded at it. ‘Show

me what you have,’ she said.

Caro put it on the table and opened it. She fiddled round with cables a

moment. ‘We’ve only got a dial-up connection, so I have to plug this in.
It takes so much longer with dial up,’ she said.

‘Nice computer,’ Michaela said, watching it boot up.
‘Yeah, I got a really good deal on it,’ Caro said. ‘And really bloody sore

feet waitressing to pay for it.’

Michaela laughed, she couldn’t help it. ‘You sound just like your sis-

ter,’ she said.

Trisha was scowling. ‘I told you to mind your language.’
‘Don’t be such a hypocrite,’ Caro told her. ‘Besides, I am nowhere as

bad as you.’

Michaela laughed again and looked at Trisha. ‘She’s right babe, no one

I’ve ever met has quite your facility with language.’

Trisha pulled a face and dug around for her cigarettes. ‘Ah fuck up the

both of you,’ she said.

They all laughed and Michaela decided that despite the fact she was

dog tired and somewhere in this very house there was something quite
strange and awful, despite all that, at this very moment, she wouldn’t
have wished to be anywhere else.

Caro was sitting at the table now, typing into the search engine. The

page changed with a few clicks of Caro’s mouse and the screen went
black. Michaela leaned forward as she watched the page load. Black
background, gold lettering for the title. She gave a low whistle.

‘There’s a whole site dedicated to this?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ said Caro. ‘There’s this site, and hundreds of others.’ Michaela

saw her shudder. ‘Those things in my room, that thing you saw today,
Michaela, everyone’s seeing them.’

She pointed at the page. ‘Everyone’s seeing them, but no one knows

what they really are.’

Michaela stared at the title and image on the screen in front of her.

Trisha walked around the table until she could see too.

‘You never showed me any of this, Caro,’ she said.
Caro shrugged. ‘Too freaky,’ she said.
They lapsed into silence then. Michaela lifted her eyes from the screen

and looked around the room. Suddenly the electric light seemed very
yellow and dim against the darkening afternoon pressing against the
windows. The hallway was shadowy behind the partly open door.

She looked back down at the screen. ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘We’ll start

with this.’ Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. She read the heading
on the page again.

The Official Shadow People Archives.

Chapter

risha sat perched on the window sill, her feet on the table and the
window open so she could lean out and smoke. Caro went off, mut-

tering something about having a shower. Michaela bent over the laptop,
reading from the screen, a frown creasing her brow.

‘Maybe Caro’s right,’ Trisha said.
Michaela clicked the mouse on another link. ‘Right about what?’
‘Leaving. Maybe she and I should pack up and go somewhere else. I

could look after her as easily as myself.’

Michaela looked up. ‘How old is she?’
Trisha stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer she was using as an ash-

tray. ‘Fifteen,’ she said.

Michaela looked back at the computer. ‘Doesn’t she need to be sixteen

to leave home? Otherwise you’ll run into all sorts of shit with your moth-
er. You can’t really be serious about taking her away from her mother
anyway, can you?’

‘She’s sixteen in two months. And you know what? Mom’s never

home, Caro was right about that. And even when she is, she’s sleeping.
Caro had been pretty much raising herself until I got here. I should have
known, you know? I should have known what it would be like for her.’

Michaela stopped reading. ‘How could you have known?’ she asked.

‘You got kicked out, if I remember what you told me. How were you
supposed to stick around for your little sister if you weren’t even al-
lowed in the house?’

Trisha lit another smoke. ‘I still should have come back earlier,’ she

said, blowing twin streams of smoke out her nose. ‘I should have stuck
around anyway.’

Michaela watched her. ‘There’s no point thinking that way, babe. You

came back, and you’re not too late. Look at her – Caro’s the most togeth-
er 15 year old I’ve ever met, and this is despite everything. And I reckon
you probably came home at just the right time.’

Trisha sniffed. ‘Yeah, I suppose so. It’s the way it’s turned out anyway.

But when she’s 16, if she wants to go, I’ll take her.’ She pulled at the

cigarette again. ‘I’m going to go bat shit if I have to stay here much
longer.’

Michaela looked down at her hands. ‘Where are you going to go?’
Trisha shrugged. ‘Dunno babe. Out of this shit hole for sure. Some-

where with more than two streets.’

Michaela wondered if the small town she lived in would be counted as

a shit hole. It might have more than two streets, but it wouldn’t be many
more.

‘What’s it like at your place?’ Trisha must have read her mind.
Michaela shrugged. ‘Beautiful, I guess,’ she said. ‘I’m not far from the

sea, and on the other side there’re mountains and rivers. Lot of tourists
in summer.’ She shrugged and mentally kicked herself. Could have
talked the place up just a bit, surely?

‘It’s a small town, though, right?’
Michaela nodded. ‘But Nelson’s half an hour away, lots of shopping

and places to go there. Or you can take a ferry across to Wellington,
which is the capital.’ She stared at the computer screen, not wanting to
see Trisha’s expression.

‘Sounds nice,’ Trisha said. She scooted down from the window sill and

sat next to Michaela. ‘You finding anything useful?’ she asked.

Michaela thought about it. There was an awful lot of information here,

but it was all of the same sort. Eyewitness reports for lack of a better
term. She rubbed her eyes.

‘Well, I guess so,’ she said. ‘It’s a start anyway, but I’m getting too

tired to make any sense of it.’ She looked around the room. ‘I can’t see or
sense anything here at the moment, can you?’

Trisha leaned against her and shook her head. ‘No, but I don’t even

want to.’

‘How does Caro manage to sleep at night?’ Michaela asked.
‘With the light on, I think,’ Trisha replied. ‘And some nights she’s not

the only one.’

Caro came into the room, carrying a hairdryer she plugged into the

wall. ‘What do I manage to do?’ she asked.

‘Michaela was just asking how you manage to sleep at night, with this,

you know.’ She gestured at the computer screen.

Caro pulled a face. ‘Badly,’ she said. ‘With the light on half the time,

and the other half I’m buried under the blanket wishing I was anywhere
on earth but in this house.’

Michaela frowned. ‘Do you think they, these shadow people as these

people call them,’

‘Or shadow fucks, as they’re more commonly known,’ Trisha said.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Michaela said, still looking at Caro. ‘Do you think

they’re attracted to the house?’ She didn’t quite want to add the rest of
her question – or are they attracted to you?

But Caro was right there with her. ‘Do I think they’re attracted to the

house, or to me?’ She fiddled with the hairdryer, thinking about it. ‘I
want it to be just the house,’ she said at last. ‘But I really don’t know.’
She pointed at the laptop. ‘Everyone talks about seeing them, but no one
seems to have any theories about what they are. Or what they want.’ She
shuddered.

Michaela rubbed her face. ‘It’s a lot to think about,’ she said. ‘And I’m

too bloody tired to think straight.’ She looked at the webpage again then
closed it down. ‘I need to sleep off this jet lag,’ she said. ‘Then I have
some ideas for tomorrow.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I don’t even know
what day it is,’ she said.

‘It’s Saturday,’ Caro said. ‘School again the day after. And in a few

days it’s Halloween.’

‘Right. Okay then. Will you be okay tonight?’ Michaela asked Caro,

who simply shrugged a yes.

‘Sorry guys,’ Michaela said, ‘but I’m dead on my feet here. I feel like

I’ve been here a week already and awake for every minute of it.’

Chapter

ichaela woke with the sun and no memories of the night. She’d
fallen into bed and straight to sleep. Opening her eyes, she

couldn’t for a moment figure out where she was, but Trisha breathing in
the bed next to her made her remember. She rubbed her face and leaned
over Trisha, still sleeping soundly. She smiled and pulled back a strand
of long hair from Trisha’s cheek.

She was wide awake. She checked her watch and swore lightly under

her breath. She really needed to change her time zones. Looking around
she guessed it was still early. The light was only the dimmest glimmer
from the window. The rest of the room was shrouded in shadows.

Shadows. She thought of the website’s shadow people. It was an ugly

thought to be watched by great gummy black shadows, some of them
apparently with red eyes. What the hell were they? There was something
almost vampiric about it. Not that she expected that to be what they
were. It was just the gathering round, watching, bit. What did we have
that they were so interested in?

Michaela brooded on that as she slipped from the bed. She needed to

pee and she wanted coffee. Coffee helped her think. And she was here
for a reason, after all. Not just a pleasant holiday reunion with an old
lover. She looked back at Trisha and suppressed the urge to go back to
bed and gather the woman in her arms and not let go until she agreed to
come home with her.

Michaela groaned. She did not want to feel that way. Far far far too

complicated. There was no way Trisha would want to go back to New
Zealand with her. And there was Caro to consider now too. Michaela re-
fused to think about it and fished around in the gloom for some clothes
instead.

The house was quiet. The door to Caro’s room was closed. If there was

anything lurking around at the moment, Michaela couldn’t see it. She
hurried instead into the bathroom to relieve herself. Then she would
make coffee and plan what she was going to do. God, what was she go-
ing to do?

She drew the curtains in the living room, wondering if Trisha’s mother

had come home. She hadn’t heard anyone, but she might as well have
been in a coma last night for all that was worth. She glanced back down
the hallway but all the doors were shut. She shrugged and went back to
the kitchen. She knew what it was like to have an absent mother.

She’d been fourteen when her own mother discovered the magazines.

Michaela had found them in the trash. Skin mags, only a couple of them,
soft stuff, mostly boobs and provocative poses. She’d been fascinated by
them, her skin feeling hot and flushed when she looked at the naked wo-
men inside them.

But her mother had been furious and Michaela had been too startled

by their discovery to lie. Instead she’d told her mother she liked the pic-
tures, and no, she didn’t like boys at all and she didn’t think she ever
wanted to get married. Most mothers would probably have blown it off,
but not Elizabeth Perdue. She watched her daughter like a hawk ever
after that. It was inevitable, Michaela supposed that her mother would
have caught her out eventually, walking into Michaela’s bedroom one
day to discover her daughter kissing another girl. Elizabeth had loaded
Michaela into her car and drove seven hours to leave her daughter on
her mother’s doorstep like an abandoned puppy.

Michaela could still hear the yelling that went on that day as she

huddled on the porch with her arms around her grandmother’s dog. Her
mother never even looked her way when she finally came flying out of
the house letting the door slam behind her. Seconds later it was just Mi-
chaela, the dog, and her grandmother. And that’s the way it stayed.

Michaela shook herself and poured the hot water. She must still be

muzzy with sleep, she decided, to be remembering things like that.
Waste of time. She had other, much more important things to think
about today. Outside the window, dawn was a yellow smear across the
sky. She leaned against the bench and sipped her coffee, watching the
light spread. She shouldn’t have thought about her mother. She screwed
her eyes closed and blew out a breath.

What had she been thinking about before? Ah, the relevant question.

Why were the shadow people watching? What did we have that they
were so interested in? Okay, that was two questions, but it was a start.

Caro’s laptop was still on the table. Michaela checked that the cables

were all still plugged in and turned it on. She smiled to herself when she
saw it was password protected. Smart kid. She turned it off and went
back to the bedroom for her own.

Swopping the dial-up over to her own computer she started it up. She

checked her email first, and answered a short one from Heyward, the
orchard’s manager, then opened up Firefox and went on the Internet.
She Googled ‘Shadow People’ and whistled when the results loaded in
2.4 seconds. Caro had been right. People were seeing these things every-
where. She clicked on a link and watched the page load. She sat down
and reached for the coffee mug, scanning the page as she did. The cup
was empty. She let the page finish loading while she went to the kitchen
to make more coffee.

There was so much information. Caro was right, though. Most of it

was people writing about their experiences, usually with no attempt at
using correct grammar. But in a weird way, that made it more convin-
cing. These were just ordinary people, living ordinary lives, and all of
them seeing something so extraordinary, so strange, that Michaela didn’t
know what to think of it.

After an hour and two cups of coffee, the sun had made it to window

height and Michaela had a page full of scribbled notes, a thousand ques-
tions and still no real idea of what was going on. She stretched and
yawned. She was hungry. Too much coffee on an empty stomach was
not good. She listened to the house but it was quiet, the two sisters still
sleeping. Michaela wandered into the kitchen and checked out the cup-
boards. They were pretty bare.

She laced her feet into her boots and hooked her jacket from the back

of the couch. She’d go find a bakery or something. Bring back something
good to eat for breakfast. She had a hankering for something with lots of
sugar.

And then, she would ask a few questions.

Chapter

ichaela decided to walk back into town. She was used to more ex-
ercise. It was quite a hike back into town and Michaela looked

around as she walked and saw few signs of life. But it was Sunday morn-
ing, she remembered. The breeze was fresh against her skin and she
found herself enjoying the exercise.

There was no bakery, only the diner. Feeling a little apprehensive

about meeting Trisha’s mother again, Michaela nevertheless swung the
door open and stepped in. There was only one other person, a thick-set
man slurping coffee by the window.

The coffee smelt good, but surely Michaela had had too much already.

Trisha’s mom came to the counter to serve her.

‘Good morning,’ Michaela said politely.
Mrs Motton stared at her. ‘What can I get you?’ she asked after a

moment.

Michaela made an effort to smile. ‘An orange juice, please, and

something I can take back to your daughters for breakfast.’

Trisha’s mom stared at her, then nodded toward the drinks refrigerat-

or. ‘There’s orange juice in there,’ she said.

Michaela opened the fridge and got a bottle out, placing it on the

counter. ‘You must work very long hours here,’ she said.

The older woman shrugged. ‘Someone has to pay the bills.’
Michaela nodded. ‘I suppose so.’
Shirley moved away, put some cinnamon rolls in a bag and handed it

over to Michaela. ‘I won’t charge you for that,’ she said. ‘But you’ll have
to pay for the juice.’

Michaela checked the price advertised on the fridge and dug some

coins out of her pocket. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Motton. It’s been
nice seeing you again.’

Trisha’s mother snorted. ‘Tell Trisha she’s working the early shift

tomorrow.’

Michaela nodded and left the diner, carrying the bottle of juice and pa-

per bag of rolls. The rolls smelt terrific. Whatever else might be said

about Trisha and Caro’s mother, she could obviously cook. But Michaela
didn’t think they would ever be great friends. She sighed. She had to go
home in a couple weeks anyway so it hardly mattered.

The walk back to the house seemed to take less time. The town was

waking up now and several people eyed her as they drove by.

There was a car pulled up behind Trisha’s Mustang. Michaela glanced

in as she walked past. An iPod with pink headphones lay on the passen-
ger seat.

Trisha was up. Caro too. Caro was sitting at the table and Trisha was

talking to a blonde in denim skirt and white sandshoes. Except Trisha
stopped talking when Michaela stepped inside. Everyone looked at her.

Michaela took one look at all the faces and realised what she’d stepped

into. She stood in the doorway a moment, looking more closely at the
blonde, who glared back, high spots of colour on her cheeks.

Still no one said anything and Michaela stepped further into the room,

hands full with bottle and bag. She walked over to the table where Caro
was and set the things down. Before she could open her mouth to say
anything the blonde spun around and flung herself out the door.

‘Bitch!’ she said as the front door slammed closed behind her.
Michaela looked at Trisha. ‘Why didn’t you tell me when I asked you?’

she said.

But Trisha didn’t answer. She turned instead and disappeared down

the hallway.

‘I told her she had to say something. To one of you, at least,’ Caro said,

and pulled the paper bag toward her, peering in. ‘Yum,’ she said. ‘Mom
makes the best cinnamon rolls, you gotta give her that.’

Michaela had closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and opened

them. ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I have to talk to Trisha.’

‘If it’s any consolation I think she likes you better.’
Michaela ignored this and unzipped her jacket, feeling suddenly hot.

She walked down to the bedroom. Trisha hadn’t closed the door and she
went in. Trisha sat on the bed, her back to the door. She didn’t say
anything.

Michaela laid her jacket on the bed and leaned against the wall, look-

ing at the other woman. She sighed.

‘Why didn’t you tell me, babe, when I asked if there was anyone?’
Trisha surprised her by laughing. ‘Jeeze what a fucking mess this has

turned out to be,’ she said, twisting round on the bed to look at Mi-
chaela. ‘Julie and me, we weren’t serious. Not on my part anyway. Just
fooling round, I thought. Spending some time together because there’s

fucking no one else in this shitty little town.’ She pulled a face and got off
the bed, coming to stand in front of Michaela, eyes searching her face.
‘You and me, that I thought was serious. Those months we spent togeth-
er, those I thought were serious.’ She sighed. ‘Then I had to go home,
and you fucking disappeared, and it all fell apart. Never for one minute
did I think I was going to see you again. Even that morning when I rang
you.’ She stopped and shook her head. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight when I
asked you to come. I was just freaked out from the night before, and I
guess it’s still you I think of when I need someone.’

Michaela reached out and stroked Trisha’s hair, ran her fingers lightly

over her cheek. She bent and kissed Trisha’s upturned face, her hand
moving behind to hold her neck. Trisha’s hands came up and held Mi-
chaela’s face. Michaela gathered her up in her arms and held her tighter.
Trisha kept kissing her.

Moaning lightly in her throat, Michaela picked up the smaller woman

and laid her on the bed, kicking the door closed. Trisha looked up at her,
eyes luminous in the morning light. Michaela knelt over her and kissed
her again, leaving a trail of kisses over her face and neck. She teased her
fingers under the dressing gown that Trisha wore and pulled the sash
undone. Trisha smiled at her and reached down to tug at Michaela’s tee
shirt, pulling it over her head and off.

Michaela lay down, pressing skin to skin, following Trisha’s curves

with an inquisitive hand. Trisha fumbled with button and zip on Mi-
chaela’s jeans and in a few moves they were both nude, mouths hot and
hungry on each other. Trisha slipped an arm around Michaela’s neck
and kissed her, pushing the fingers of her other hand deep between Mi-
chaela’s parted legs. She arched her body as Michaela reciprocated, find-
ing each warm, wet and ready. They looked at each other, keeping eyes
open and locked as they rocked together, climaxing within moments of
each other, lips coming together in a kiss of shared breath.

Chapter

hey lay, arms and legs wrapped around each other.

‘Wow,’ Trisha said. ‘That was intense.’

Michaela smiled against Trisha’s hair, which was tickling her nose, but

she didn’t feel like moving. Not a single inch.

‘I want to do that again,’ Trisha said. ‘You hearing me?’
Michaela smile widened. ‘I’m hearing you,’ she said.
‘Yeah. I want to do that, and other things a whole bloody lot more

times.’ Trisha shifted so she could look at Michaela. She shook her head
slightly, looking serious. ‘What are we going to do, babe?’ she asked.

Michaela stopped smiling and just looked at her. ‘I don’t know.’
Trisha sighed and tucked her face into Michaela’s neck. ‘I don’t know

either, fuck it all.’

Michaela closed her eyes and held Trisha tighter. What on earth were

they going to do? ‘You can come back to New Zealand with me,’ she said
before she even knew she was going to speak.

Trisha lifted her head and looked at her. ‘What about Caro?’ she

asked.

‘Caro can come too.’
Trisha shook her head. ‘We can’t just go to the other side of the world.’
‘Why not?’
‘Why don’t you stay here?’
‘And do what?’
Trisha shrugged and rolled over on her back, letting go of Michaela.
‘We’ll work something out,’ Michaela told her.
‘Yeah, sure.’ Trisha got up and started looking for clothes.
Michaela pulled her back towards the bed and kissed her. ‘We will

work something out,’ she repeated.

Trisha pulled away. ‘Fuck!’ she said. ‘Like fucking what? You won’t

come here and I can’t go there, so we’re fucking stuck living a million
fucking miles away from each other.’

Michaela looked at her, then bent to pick up her own clothes. ‘It’s not

that I won’t come here, Trisha. I have a whole business to run back at

home. I can’t just up and forget about that. I have ties there. What sort of
ties do you have here?’

Trisha glared at her. ‘My sister? Remember her? I’m not leaving her

here with a fucking mother who lost interest years ago. And I’m not
fucking off on her while all this creepy shit’s going on that’s for bloody
sure.’

Michaela tugged her jeans on. ‘She can come too! I’m not asking you to

leave her here. Jesus Christ, Trisha, will you be reasonable for one
minute?’

Trisha yanked at the buttons on her shirt. ‘Don’t tell me to be reason-

able,’ she said, her voice suddenly low. ‘Don’t fucking patronise me, just
because you’re the fucking big hot shot who thinks she can solve every
fucking problem.’

Michaela gaped at her. Where did that come from? ‘I don’t know what

you’re talking about, Trisha,’ she said. ‘What the hell are you talking
about, Trisha?’

But Trisha just shook her head and stalked out of the room. Michaela

heard voices in the living room, then a door slammed. A minute later
Trisha’s Mustang started and screeched out of the driveway.

Michaela sat back down on the bed. Well. That hadn’t ended up so

well. She smoothed the sheet down, then got up and made the bed, mov-
ing on autopilot, wondering what Trisha was so upset about. She shook
her head, nothing was ever easy, was it?

Out in the living area, Caro was still sitting at the table. She looked up

and grimaced when she saw Michaela’s face.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘My sister can be a real bitch

sometimes.’

Michaela shook her head and sat down at the table. ‘I’m in love with

her,’ she said.

There was a moment’s quiet, in which Michaela could hear the mech-

anical hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

‘Huh,’ Caro said. ‘You’re in deep shit then, my friend.’
Michaela looked up and couldn’t help it, she started laughing. Caro

stared at her, eyes wide, then began laughing too.

‘Ah fuck,’ Michaela said. ‘Deep shit is right.’ She looked around as if

just seeing the room for the first time. She needed coffee, and she was
hungry. ‘Any rolls left?’

Caro nodded and pushed the bag her way. Michaela took one and bit

into it as she stood and went into the kitchen.

‘How did you sleep last night?’ she asked.

At the table Caro fiddled with her computer and shrugged.
Michaela looked at her as she got a clean mug out of the cupboard.

‘No, I’m serious,’ she said. ‘I want to know.’

Caro gave her a smile. ‘I kinda read the notes you made,’ she said. ‘I

hope you don’t mind.’

Michaela leaned against the doorway, waiting for the water to boil. ‘I

don’t mind,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

Caro pulled the note pad over. ‘No one really has a clue, do they?’ she

said. ‘The theories are pretty far out.’

‘Yeah. Everything from time travelling aliens to demons.’
Caro shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I believe in either. Though I don’t

suppose there’s any reason that aliens shouldn’t have discovered time
travel if they’re managing to zip around the universe anyway.’

Michaela smiled. She was beginning to like this girl.
Caro was still talking. ‘What do you think about this one? I’ve never

really got the idea of archetypes. What are they?’

Michaela walked over and skimmed her notes again. ‘Yeah, that was

one of my first thoughts when I realised we were talking about shad-
ows,’ she said. ‘Archetypes are a Jungian idea.’ She looked at Caro to see
if the girl was following. Caro shrugged. ‘Carl Jung. Initially Freud’s stu-
dent but lots smarter, I reckon. Invented psycho-analysis.’ Michaela con-
tinued. ‘Archetypes are like human patterns of thought and behaviour
that cross every racial and cultural divide. They’re simply common to
the human condition. Jung was a big supporter of what he called the
‘collective unconscious’, a system of basic human thought and behaviour
that reached deeper than anything we can pinpoint from our upbringing,
or even temperament.’

Caro nodded again. ‘How come you know all this stuff?’ she asked.
Michaela shrugged and went to make her coffee. ‘It interests me,’ she

said. ‘I do a lot of reading.’ She came back in and sat down. ‘The shadow
archetype is one of the big ones,’ she said. ‘It’s like the darker side of us.
The aspect of ourselves we cut off when we learn to interact with the
world around us and become civilised.’ She paused, gathering her
thoughts. ‘The shadow isn’t civilised. It’s all instinct and doesn’t differ-
entiate between codes of behaviour or make moral judgements. It just is.’
She sipped her coffee. ‘And most of us cut it off from ourselves com-
pletely; we don’t accept we have this aspect to us, we turn away from it,
but turning away from it doesn’t mean it’s still not there.’

Caro was chewing her lip. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I kinda get that. But do

you think that’s what the shadow people are?’ she shrugged. ‘I hate the

thought, that I’m just kind of projecting these things myself; that it’s be-
cause I haven’t done some sort of psychological bullshit work on myself
that these things are staring at me from the corners of my room every
night.’

She looked at Michaela. ‘And it doesn’t explain why there are more

than one of them.’

Chapter

ichaela stood in the doorway, half-eaten roll in one hand, coffee
in the other. She was silent, thinking. More than one of them,

Caro had said. And definitely entities. The one Michaela had seen when
she first arrived – that hadn’t felt mindless. It was more as though the
thing was taking a deliberate look at her. And had it been an accident
that she’d seen it as it did so? Michaela wasn’t sure.

Caro was still looking at her, waiting for her to speak. She put her cof-

fee and roll on the table and pulled out one of the chairs, sitting down
and stretching out her long legs, she laced her hands behind her head
and stared at the ceiling. Her thinking position, Trisha had called it.

‘We’re not asking the right questions,’ she said after a minute or two.
Caro was shaking her head. ‘We want answers, not more questions.’
‘Sure,’ Michaela said. ‘But what do you have to do to get the correct

answers?’

Caro understood. ‘Ask the right questions,’ she said.
Michaela gave a little laugh. ‘Franz Kafka said “a first sign of the be-

ginning of understanding is the wish to die”.

‘That’s not exactly very encouraging, is it?’
Michaela sat back up. ‘Actually, I’ve never been able to decide whether

it is or not,’ she said. She looked at her page of notes and wondered
where Trisha had gone.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘When did you first notice these shadow people?’
Caro yanked on a curl of hair as she thought about it. ‘A few months

back, I guess,’ she said at last. ‘But it was just something I was seeing out
of the corner of my eye, to start with. I didn’t give it much thought.’

‘When did it start bothering you?’
‘When I started getting this creepy feeling whenever I went into my

room, that it was really crowded in there. that I wasn’t the only one in
there, you know?’

Michaela nodded. ‘Okay, so the phenomenon was fairly unobtrusive

to start with then worsened. I wonder what the triggering event was?’

Caro frowned. ‘What do you mean triggering event?’

‘Well, think about it. Something must have happened to bring these

things here, and that something most probably had to keep on happen-
ing to keep them here and getting stronger.’

Caro was silent.
‘You and your friends didn’t do anything like mucking around with

an Ouija board or anything, did you?’

‘No way.’ Caro was shaking her head. ‘No way am I dumb enough to

play with one of those. Everyone knows they’re dangerous.’

Michaela laughed. ‘It’s a human condition, I think, to be drawn to

danger.’ But Caro was still shaking her head.

‘I haven’t done anything. I’m thinking about it and it can’t be anything

I’ve done. This year has been the pits. Dead dull – all I do is go to school,
come home and go to work at the diner. In fact, I’m due at the diner this
afternoon.’ She gave a dissatisfied sigh.

‘Okay,’ said Michaela. ‘Fair enough. What about people at school. Is

there anyone there with something against you?’

‘What do you mean?’
‘People can be unbelievably mean and even more unbelievably stupid.

I know that sounds awful, but what if someone did something, maybe as
a prank, but it got out of hand, and had real consequences?’

‘I can’t think of anyone who would do anything like this to me. And

how would they anyway? I mean how? There’s no dial-a-freak show in
the phone book is there.’

Michaela laughed. There was a family resemblance between Caro and

her sister, that was for sure.

‘Something triggered this off,’ she said. ‘Either something someone

did, or a change in circumstances within the house and your room, I
don’t know. But there must be a reason, however far-fetched it is.’

‘Eliminate every possibility and what’s left, no matter how impossible,

must be the truth?’

Michaela grinned. ‘Sherlock Holmes. Exactly. Absolutely exactly.’
Caro smiled back and Michaela thought again what a stunning girl she

was. Smart too. It was no wonder Trisha was so protective of her. This
girl could go far in the world. Given the chance.

‘Would it be all right,’ Michaela asked, ‘if I could have a look at your

room?’

Caro nodded, and they got up and walked down the hallway to her

room. Michaela looked out the windows on the way past, aware that
part of her was still wondering after Trisha. Where was she? And why
the hell had she taken off like that?

She sighed and followed Caro into her room. Caro drew the curtains

while Michaela stood in the middle of the room and looked around. She
guessed it was a pretty typical teenage girl’s room. Posters on the wall.
Set of drawers covered in hair brush and ties. Not a lot of make-up
though. Lots of books. Bed in the middle of the room, an armchair beside
it, next to the window.

‘What do you say to me staying in that chair tonight?’ she asked.
Caro looked at it, surprised. ‘While I’m asleep, you mean?’
‘Yeah. I want to see if they will come out while I’m there.’ She re-

membered the shadow in the hallway, and thought there was a chance
they would. Maybe.

Caro looked doubtful. ‘I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep with you

there,’ she said.

‘I’ll come in when you’re already asleep.’
‘Okay. Do you think you’ll be able to see them?’
Michaela took another look around. The room looked perfectly cheer-

ful and normal in the sun from the windows. ‘I have no idea,’ she said.
‘But it’s worth a try, don’t you think?’

Chapter

ichaela sat outside waiting for Trisha to come back. She was tired
again. Tired and just a little edgy. She was having trouble under-

standing why Trisha had taken off like that. But then, had she ever fully
understood the volatile Trisha? She suspected that was part of the
charm.

She’d checked her email again before coming out to sit in the fall sun.

Another email from the orchard manager, sounding pretty pissed that
she’d taken off. Several decisions needed to be made, he’d said. She
knew she should be back there; it was going to be her first season solely
in charge.

She tipped back in the chair and thought about the orchard. It wasn’t

exactly what she was planning to do with her life, was it? After all those
years away at university, she wasn’t just going to be an orchardist, was
she?

Why didn’t she sell up? She could sell the place and look for work

here. She thought of the tiny town she was now in and gave a laugh. The
only work she could probably find was on one of the orchards she’d seen
from the car. How was that for irony?

Not really an option. At home she owned the whole show. Here she

would just be a picker, climbing a ladder during the season and nothing
more. She wasn’t qualified to teach in the States, she couldn’t use her de-
gree for that. What a bloody mess.

And where the fuck was Trisha? She let the chair fall forward and

stood up. She felt a lot like a caged animal. Trapped and all this energy
making her edgy. She took a calming breath. Wouldn’t do to be blowing
steam from between the ears when Trisha finally turned up.

And just like that the Mustang turned into the drive and parked beside

the house. Michaela stood where she was, hands tucked into jeans pock-
et, rocking back on the heels of her boots. What sort of mood was Trisha
going to be in now?

Trisha climbed out of the low-slung car and walked over. She stood in

front of Michaela, not saying anything. They simply looked at each other.
Trisha sighed.

‘I wasn’t ready for this,’ she said.
Michaela frowned. ‘For what?’ she asked.
‘Seeing you again, it’s made me realise some things.’
Michaela could see this wasn’t going to be easy, whatever way it was

going to go. ‘What sort of things?’

Trisha shifted as she stood. ‘Ah fuck it, Michaela. I love you, all right? I

don’t want to lose you again, we have to work something out, okay? I
mean we really have to.’

Michaela stared at Trisha in surprise. She’d never heard Trisha say

that before. Not seriously like this anyway. Not in a way that meant
anything.

Trisha was going red and looking increasingly uncomfortable. ‘Say

something already,’ she said. ‘Jeeze, Michaela.’

Michaela took a step towards her and brushed the hair out of Trisha’s

face. She cupped the blushing face in her hands and kissed her. She
smiled into Trisha’s eyes. ‘I love you too,’ she said. ‘And we’ll work
something out, for sure.’

Trisha nodded, then smiled and nodded again. Slipped her arms

around Michaela’s neck and hugged hard. ‘I’m sorry about taking off,
babe,’ she said. ‘I was just overwhelmed. Had to sort myself out.’

Michaela hugged back and kissed Trisha’s hair. ‘It’s no problem,’ she

said. ‘Absolutely no problem at all now.’ She lifted her up and swung
her round. ‘I love you so much Trisha. I am never letting you get away
from me again.’

She put Trisha down and they stood, fingers entwined, grinning at

each other. Caro came down the back steps and walked over.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

Trisha turned around and shrugged. ‘Nothing, baby sister. Just get-

ting a few things sorted.’ She looked back at Michaela and shrugged.

Caro examined them both through narrowed eyes. ‘You guys have

made up,’ she said and glared at her sister. ‘What about Julie?’ she
asked.

Trisha shook her head. ‘It was never serious with Julie and me.’
Caro nodded. ‘Don’t think she would have agreed with you there, but

okay, I can swallow that.’ She looked at the pair again. ‘You two look
good together,’ she said. ‘But don’t you guys live on the opposite sides of

the world?’ Her eyes widened. ‘You’re not fucking off and leaving me
here, Trisha,’ she said. ‘Don’t you dare tell me you’re doing that.’

Trisha let go of Michaela and slung her arm around her sister. ‘I’m not

doing that, don’t worry,’ she said. She shot a look back at Michaela. ‘We
haven’t figured out a way around that particular obstacle yet, but I ain’t
leaving you, little sis, that’s for damn sure, all right?’

Caro nodded and poked Trisha in the ribs. ‘Never thought I’d see the

day,’ she said, grinning now.

Trisha looked perplexed. ‘What day?’ she asked.
Caro was laughing. ‘The day you’d admit to falling in love.’
‘Hey,’ said Trisha, poking Caro back. ‘Who said I’ve admitted any

such thing?’

Caro stopped laughing and gave her sister a hug instead. ‘It’s written

all over Michaela’s face,’ she said. ‘And it’s very cool news.’ She stepped
back and grinned at Michaela. ‘We should celebrate,’ she said. ‘I know,
let’s go to Kenosha and eat at that Chinese place they have there! I love
the food there.’ Her face fell. ‘Shit, I forgot. I have to work this after-
noon.’ She turned to Trisha. ‘Mom says you’re back on tomorrow morn-
ing as well.’

They walked back inside together, Trisha’s hand sneaking out to find

Michaela’s and twisting her fingers around hers. Michaela raised it to her
mouth and kissed Trisha’s knuckles. It was going to work out; all of it, it
was all going to work out. She was sure of it.

Caro was first in the door and she stood frozen, blocking the way.
‘Move,’ Trisha said. ‘What’s the matter?’
Caro moved. She was looking around the room. ‘It’s dark in here,’ she

whispered.

Chapter

ichaela pushed past into the room and looked around.

‘I can’t see it,’ she said. ‘Did you say it was dark?’

Caro was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know now. I’m sure it was dark in

here before.’ She peered around the room. ‘Maybe my eyes were dazzled
from being outside or something,’ she said.

Trisha looked around, frowning. ‘It all looks normal to me,’ she said.

‘What did you see when you first stepped into the room, Caro?’

Confusion spread across Caro’s face. ‘I don’t know,’ she said again.

‘The room was just dark. Like it was night time or something.’

Michaela looked around the room. It was all normal in here now. The

shadows all had matching objects. That she could see anyway.

But Caro was looking suddenly pale. She shook her head and walked

stiff legged over to the table and sat down. ‘I feel sick,’ she said.

Michaela and Trisha followed her into the room. Michaela went

through the archway into the kitchen and poured Caro a glass of water.

‘Look at this, you two,’ Trisha said. She was standing in front of Caro’s

open laptop.

Michaela gave Caro the water. The girl was pale and sweating. ‘What

is it?’ Michaela asked, examining Caro, who looked like she was in
shock.

‘You gotta see this,’ Trisha said and turned the computer around so

they could see the screen.

Caro dropped her glass of water. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, her

voice little more than a whisper.

Michaela stood up and leaned closer to the picture on the screen.

‘What is this? How was it taken?’ she asked.

‘I had the webcam on,’ Caro said. ‘It’s horrible. Get rid of it.’
Trisha turned the screen away from Caro. She met Michaela’s eye and

raised her eyebrows. Michaela gave a slight shake of the head and
looked down at Caro, who was hunched over, staring at the glass on the
floor. Trisha came over and put an arm around her sister.

‘Let’s get you over on the couch okay?’ she said. Caro stood up, still

pale and shaky and walked over to the couch, leaning into Trisha as they
went. She lay down on the couch and Trisha tucked a blanket around
her. ‘Lie here, okay, while I mop up the water and talk to Michaela?’

Caro gave a small nod and Trisha walked back over to the table where

Michaela was already wiping up the spilled water. She stared at the pic-
ture on the screen.

‘You got any ideas?’ she asked.
Michaela put the towel in the kitchen and came back for a closer look.

She shook her head.

‘Sure isn’t like the last mystery we solved,’ Trisha said.
‘You’re right there,’ Michaela agreed, both of them speaking quietly. ‘I

really don’t see how a person could be doing this one.’ She thought of
Gardener’s terrible plan to hurt his mother, and almost wished this was
along the same lines.

But she didn’t think it was. The picture on the screen, caught in a

freeze frame by the webcam, which was now off, sure didn’t look to be
some sort of elaborate hoax perpetrated in the few minutes that Caro
was out of the room.

She wondered if perhaps Caro had taken this photo herself. Some sort

of cry for attention, perhaps. Except Caro was lying on the couch in
shock.

Michaela pressed down a couple keys and saved the picture to the

hard drive. Later she would ask Caro to email her a copy, so there was
less chance of losing it. She peered at the screen. It showed part of the
room they were standing in. The camera had been at a slight angle, cap-
turing perhaps a third of the room and the front door. The depth of field
was strange, almost as though a fish-eye lens had been used, the room
strangely distorted and bubble-like. But that wasn’t the worst thing.

The walls were black. She looked up at the real version, papered in a

light floral pattern, then back at the photograph. Shadows climbed the
walls, congregating in the corners, their darkness looking dense enough
to reach out and touch. The front door was open and there the shadows
were worst, as though they were coming through the open door in
droves. Michaela reached out a finger and traced the almost human
shape of one of the shadows.

‘Shadow people,’ she said, ‘just like on those Internet sites.’
Trisha was standing behind her. ‘Yeah, but what are they? What does

it mean?’

Michaela shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

Trisha looked back at Caro, lying still on the couch. ‘Well, we’d better

find out, and quickly,’ she said.

Michaela sank down onto the chair and rubbed her face. Where the

hell was she supposed to start? She remembered what she and Caro had
been talking about. Ask the right questions and you would get the an-
swers. But what were the right questions?

Trisha was checking on Caro. ‘She’s gone to sleep,’ she reported. ‘Is

that normal?’

‘Shock puts some people out. Probably the best thing she can do.’
Trisha looked at her watch. ‘Yeah, except she’s supposed to be at the

diner in a couple hours.’ She came and sat next to Michaela. ‘I’ll do her
shift if she’s not up to it. We can’t let her sleep in her room anymore you
know.’ Trisha sighed. ‘I don’t know if I even want to sleep in my room
anymore.’

Michaela nodded. ‘I was going to spend the night in Caro’s room,’ she

said. ‘See if I could see anything.’

‘You want to still do that?’
Michaela looked at the photo. ‘More than ever,’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ said Trisha. ‘You’re braver than me then.’
‘It’s not bravery, believe me babe. Caro’s the brave one; this has been

going on for months, she said, and she’s slept in there every night.’

‘Guess there wasn’t much choice.’
Michaela leaned over and gave Trisha a kiss. ‘We’ll figure it out,’ she

said.

‘Where do we start?’
Michaela looked back at the photo. ‘At the beginning,’ she said.

Chapter

risha was rummaging around in the fridge for something to eat for
lunch.

‘There’s nothing here to eat,’ she said in disgust. ‘Guess I’ll have to go

down to the bloody diner to get something. I wish Mom would bring
some food home every now and then.’

Michaela looked up. ‘Do you know anything about this town?’ she

asked.

Trisha pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘Not a fucking thing,’ she said.

‘You’re not thinking some sort of poltergeist garbage, are you – the
house on an old Indian burial ground or something?’

Michaela pushed her chair back and stretched. ‘I don’t know what to

think,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of stories about these shadow people
on the Internet, and a few theories, but the theories are really out there. I
feel like I’m trying to do a puzzle without having all the pieces.’

‘So what pieces are you missing?’
Michaela thought about it. ‘The trigger,’ she said after a while.
‘Trigger?’ asked Trisha.
‘Yeah. What set this off? You don’t have everything normal one day

and totally screwy the next. So what happened?’

‘Did you ask Caro this?’
Michaela nodded. ‘Yes, but we didn’t get a real chance to think about

it. She said it started a few months ago. Can you remember anything that
might have happened then?’

‘To Caro, you mean?’
‘Well, mostly, because it’s undoubtedly centred around her. But not

just her. Anything at all out of the ordinary that happened then.’

‘Three months ago would have been July.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t

think of a damned thing.’

Michaela’s eyes were sore. She squeezed them closed and told herself

she was going to have to go to the optometrist sooner or later. Sooner
would be best. She shut down her laptop. ‘I need a break,’ she said. ‘And
I need to talk to Caro. The answer’s going to lie with her, I’m sure of it.’

Trisha came over and looked at Caro still sleeping on the couch. ‘Why

her, do you think? She’s just your usual kid, you know. Brighter than
you want to think about, but she’s a good kid.’

Michaela nodded. ‘I like her a lot,’ she said. ‘But the phenomenon are

focused around her, you can’t deny that.’

Trisha leaned against Michaela. ‘Maybe babe, but I sure don’t have to

like it.’ She pointed at the photo frozen on the screen of Caro’s computer.
‘And I sure as fuck don’t have to like that. That’s way worse than any-
thing that’s happened before.’

‘It’s escalating,’ Michaela said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The first time I came here, I saw that shadow in the hallway. I thought

at the time that it was deliberately letting me see it, but I’m beginning to
wonder if instead it was taking a look at me.’ She gestured at the picture.
‘Now this, it’s like they’re gathering, and not only gathering, but show-
ing us. Like a show of strength.’

‘Like for some sort of showdown, you mean?’
Michaela frowned. ‘I’m not sure what I mean,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty

much just thinking out loud. But yeah, you may be right – for some sort
of showdown.’

‘I gotta say, Michaela, that doesn’t sound good to me.’ She looked at

Michaela, her face serious. ‘I think we should pack up and get out of
here.’

There was movement from the couch and Caro’s head appeared.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked, sounding panicked.

Trisha shook her head. ‘Nowhere,’ she said. ‘Nowhere without you

anyway. Michaela and I were just discussing whether we would be bet-
ter off getting out of the house for a while.’

Caro came over and shuddered at the picture on her laptop. ‘Where

would we go?’ she asked.

Michaela interrupted. ‘I don’t think we need to go anywhere,’ she said,

hoping like hell she was right. ‘I think we should just get on with things
like normal.’

Trish looked annoyed. ‘Look at that photo, babe. There’s nothing fuck-

ing normal about that. I don’t know. I really don’t know that we should
stay here.’

Caro cleared her throat. When she spoke her voice was unsteady. ‘That

photo scares me,’ she said.

Trisha put her arms around her. ‘You and me both,’ she said.

Michaela stared at the picture. Then at the room around them. Were

the shadows in the picture still in the room? Were they clustered around
the walls and corners, perhaps listening in to their conversation? She
didn’t know. She couldn’t see anything.

‘In stories, shadows like those usually cluster around areas where bad

things have happened or are going to happen. They’re the spirits that
feed off disaster, and the spirits that take us down to hell.’

Trisha and Caro were staring at her in horror. She shouldn’t have said

that out loud. She tried to make it better. ‘But that’s only in stories and
horror movies.’ She looked at Caro. ‘You’ve read the accounts on those
websites. They’re everywhere and nothing ever seems to happen around
them.’

But Caro was shaking her head. ‘But we don’t know that for sure,’ she

said. ‘Just because the people who saw them didn’t say anything doesn’t
mean that nothing happened. They could have gotten sick, or had bad
dreams, or argued with each other, and just never put two and two to-
gether.’ She turned to Trisha. ‘Why are they here?’ she asked. ‘Why are
they after me?’

Trisha blanched. ‘We don’t know they’re after you,’ she said. ‘We

don’t know anything about them.’ She looked at Michaela. ‘But I’ll tell
you one thing – we are not staying here any longer. No way. Not now
I’ve seen that photo.’

Caro turned to Michaela. ‘Is that right? Are we going to find some-

where else to stay?’

Michaela shrugged. ‘What if they follow us?’ she asked.

Chapter

‘O

h for fucks sakes,’ Trisha said. ‘That is not helping, Michaela.
What’re you trying to do – scare us half to fucking death?’

Michaela looked at Caro who was standing with her sister’s arm

wrapped protectively around her, her face frozen in fright. She didn’t
want to scare them, not any more than they already were. But she did
think she had a better chance of getting a look at these shadow things if
they stayed here.

‘I’m not trying to make it worse,’ she said after a minute. ‘How about a

compromise?’

Trisha raised her eyebrows.
‘We stay here tonight, I spend the night keeping watch in Caro’s room,

and tomorrow if you still feel the same way, we can get rooms at the
hotel. What do you reckon?’

Trisha shook her head. ‘I reckon you’re nuts.’ She pointed at the pic-

ture on Caro’s laptop. ‘Do you not see that? Does that not scare the shit
out of you?’

Michaela looked again at the photo. It was frightening in some deep,

primal way, but on top of that Michaela felt a far more clear fascination.
That photo was amazing. The whole situation was amazing. She wished
she had some equipment with her. It would be fascinating to study the
phenomena properly – she’d had a look at a couple of ‘ghost hunter’
sites on the net this morning, and she’d love a camera, thermometer and
EMF meter at the very least.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Trisha asked, sounding suspicious.
Michaela shrugged. ‘I wish I had a camera and a couple other things,

that’s all.’

‘What on earth do you want a camera for? We already have a shot of

the shitting things.’

Michaela sat down and ran her fingers through her hair. Outside

somewhere a bird was singing in a series of loud whistles.

‘What about if you guys spend the night at the hotel and I stay here?’

she said in a moment.

Caro spoke up. ‘No way,’ she said. ‘I reckon we should stick together.

And you should interview me or something, and see if we can’t find out
why all this is happening in the first place. We have to get to the bottom
of it.’ She turned to Trisha. ‘Especially if Michaela’s right about them fol-
lowing us anyway.’

Trisha looked from one of them to the other. Then she flung up her

hands. ‘All right. I give up. We’ll stay here. On two conditions.’

‘What are the conditions?’ Michaela asked.
‘No work,’ she said to Caro. ‘Mom will have to get someone else to

cover for us until we get this sorted out. You’re right about us sticking
together. All the time.’ She looked at Michaela. ‘If there’s going to be
some sort of showdown, I want to know where you all are.’

Michaela nodded. ‘And the second?’
‘That we go into town and buy some fucking food. The cupboards are

bare and the only thing in the fridge is a pot of penicillin.’

‘All right,’ Michaela agreed. ‘Is there an electronics shop here?’
Trisha snorted. ‘In this backwater town?’
‘We’d have to go to Kenosha. There’s bound to be one there,’ said

Caro.

‘Great. Caro, can you email me a copy of this please?’ Michaela was

pointing to the image caught by Caro’s webcam.

Caro nodded and sat down at her computer. ‘What’s your email ad-

dress?’ She tapped away at the keys. ‘The webcam still works,’ she said
when she’d sent the email. ‘It switched off after taking the still frame,
neither of which should have happened without someone setting it up.
Weird. But it’s working again, so that’s something.’

Michaela looked over her shoulder and saw the moving image of both

of them on the screen. ‘That’s good. It might be useful later.’

Trisha came back into the room. ‘I called Mom; she is one very un-

happy camper.’ She shrugged and looked at the phone in her hand. ‘I
had to explain that the health and well-being of her daughter was at
stake. She totally doesn’t believe me, but she’s getting someone else to
work our shifts. And she’s sleeping over at the apartment.’

Caro closed the top of her laptop and all three of them looked at each

other. Outside a bird whistled a cheery song.

‘Well,’ Trisha said. ‘This is it, then. We’re all sorted, I guess.’ She tried

for a grin. ‘The ghost hunt is a go for tonight.’

Michaela kissed her and smiled at Caro. ‘We’ll be fine, I’m sure. Mean-

while, we’ll go get some provisions, shall we?’

They were quiet in the car as they crossed the town line.

‘What about school tomorrow?’ Caro asked as they drove past the

school buildings.

Trisha shrugged. ‘What’re you expecting to happen tonight, Mi-

chaela?’ she asked.

Michaela wasn’t sure. On the one hand, possibly nothing. But like

she’d told Trisha earlier, things were escalating. All she knew was that
she wanted to be there to witness what, if anything was going to happen.

Trisha wasn’t waiting for an answer though. ‘I can’t believe this is hap-

pening,’ she said. ‘I keep expecting this to all be some weird dream or
something. Or one of those crazy candid camera jokes. Stuff like this just
doesn’t happen in real life.’ She threw a sideways glance at Michaela in
the passenger seat. ‘It’s just been one big adventure after another since I
met you babe.’

Michaela laughed. ‘You think I bring all this into your life?’
Trisha looked serious. ‘Shit like this didn’t happen before I met you,

that’s for sure.’

Michaela blinked in surprise. ‘Doesn’t have anything to do with me,’

she said. ‘Gardener would have gone bankrupt and tried to murder his
mother last year whether we were there or not. And this, this whatever it
is, it was happening before I got here. You called me up and asked me to
come over because of it, remember?’

Trisha turned off the road into the parking lot of a mall. ‘I remember,’

she said. ‘But I thought it was you who didn’t believe in coincidences.
You called it, what? What was your name for coincidences?’

‘Synchronicity,’ Michaela replied. ‘Meaningful coincidence.’
‘Yeah, that’s the one. Synchronicity. And I’m saying shit like this just

didn’t happen until I met you.’ She parked and pulled on the handbrake.
Caro was looking on apprehensively from the back seat.

Michaela leaned across and kissed her girlfriend. ‘If you’re going to

believe in synchronicity, then it must be our destiny to be together.’

Trisha laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘Guess I was asking for that one.

Come on you two, let’s get this show on the road.’

Chapter

ack at the house, with arms full of bags, Caro handed the door key
to Michaela. All of them were apprehensive of what might have

happened while they were out. Michaela slotted the key in the door and
the lock slid open. She pushed the door wide and stepped in.

The room was heavy with dust and late afternoon sun slanting in the

windows. She scanned the room. Shadows clustered in the corners and
under the furniture, but none moved or took on human shape. Michaela
shifted the bags in her hands and wished she’d had the video camera be-
fore they’d left. Who knew what it would have picked up while the
house was supposed to be empty?

She put her bags down on the table and smiled at Trisha who was

stepping warily inside, a look of suspicion on her face. She stepped for-
ward and took the groceries from her and carried them into the kitchen.

‘Everything seems to be all right in here,’ she said. She looked at Caro,

who had gone into her bedroom to check.

Caro nodded. ‘Nothing’s moved or whatever,’ she said. ‘Thank God. I

don’t think I could handle another shock like this morning.’

They’d stopped for lunch before shopping so Michaela helped Trisha

put the groceries away.

‘It’s been a hellishly long day already,’ Trisha said.
‘I know what you mean,’ Michaela agreed. ‘I’ve been up since half past

five or so.’ She yawned to prove it. ‘I might see if I can sleep for an hour.
It’s going to be an even longer night.’

Trisha looked up at her in the dimness of the kitchen. ‘It’s going to be

all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is totally different to the bastard up at the
lake last year.’ Her voice was almost a whisper. ‘He might have been a
bastard, but at least he was a human one. Not like this.’

Michaela wrapped her arms around Trisha. It felt good to hold her. No

matter what, it felt good to be here, holding her like this.

‘I missed you so much,’ she told Trisha in a low voice. ‘Those post-

cards you sent were like torture.’

Trisha smiled. ‘They were meant to be.’

‘Hardly fair.’
Trisha brushed her lips against Michaela’s ear. ‘But they were effective

weren’t they?’

‘Still; not fair.’
Trisha kissed her properly. ‘I missed you too. Now, how about that

nap?’

‘I’ll nap if you will,’ Michaela said, searching for the warmth of

Trisha’s skin.

‘Yeah, come on then.’
Caro was sitting on the couch with the television on. Trisha led Mi-

chaela past by the hand.

‘We’re going to get an hours sleep, okay? We’ll be just down the hall if

you need us.’

Caro looked up and narrowed her eyes at them. ‘Just down the hall

with a do not disturb sign on the door, you mean?’

Michaela answered. ‘You need us, we’ll be there. In fact, in an hour,

come wake us up. We’ve got a lot to do tonight.’ She could tell Caro
wasn’t thrilled to be left in the room on her own.

‘If we’ve so much to do, why are you wasting time sleeping then? If

sleeping’s what we call it these days?’

‘It’s sleeping, Caro,’ Trisha said. ‘Michaela’s still not on US time- she’s

been awake since early morning.’

‘Yeah, sure. Whatever.’ Caro turned back to the television.

Michaela kicked her boots off and lay down on the bed with relief. She

really was tired. Trisha came and lay beside her, pulling Michaela’s arm
around her. Michaela drew her closer and closed her eyes. Within
minutes she was asleep.

Michaela dreamed she was back home on the orchard. She was walk-

ing down the driveway towards the mailbox, Mack following her, head
down and tail between his legs. She wanted to ask him what was wrong,
but he was just a dog, he couldn’t answer. Instead she opened the mail-
box and looked in. it was dark inside the old metal box. She couldn’t see
if there were any letters so she reached a hand in. The darkness was cool
against her skin; cool and almost wet. She frowned and beside her Mack
whimpered, his nose almost to the ground.

There was something in the mailbox. Michaela drew it out and the

darkness inside the box let go of her hand almost reluctantly.

It was a postcard. Michaela gazed at the picture on it. It showed three

women, and with a start, Michaela recognised herself and Trisha. She

squinted at the postcard trying to make out the third woman. She let out
a slow breath. It was Caro, but the Caro in the picture looked different.
Wearing some sort of long robe, for starters. Like some sort of priestess.
She was wearing something around her neck, something that gleamed
white like bone. Michaela peered closer trying to make it out, but gave
up and turned the card over. The reverse was blank.

Mack whimpered again. Michaela bent dawn and examined the inside

of the mailbox. Nothing but a dense darkness in there. She looked back
at the picture and the sun beating down on her head was incongruous as
she saw the picture had changed. Caro was gone, just a shadow as she
walked out of the picture.

Michaela awoke, sweating, eyes flying open. She looked around the

room and settled on Trisha, lying on her side, hair a tangle of black curls
over her cheeks.

She moved closer to the sleeping woman and tried to remember the

dream. Something about Caro, dressed strangely? She struggled to pick
up the tattered remnants of the dream, convinced it was trying to tell her
something. But all she had left was a bad taste in her mouth.

Chapter

he weather changed while they were sleeping. Clouds clustered on
the edge of the sky and the breeze blew cold. Michaela stood on the

driveway looking up at the northern hemisphere stars, realising she
could recognise none of them.

Trisha was sitting on the front step, smoking. ‘I’ve got a headache,’ she

said, sending the cigarette butt flying in a shower of red sparks. ‘This
whole thing’s a bloody headache. What’s going to happen tonight?’

Michaela looked over at Trisha. She buried her hands in the pockets of

her jeans to keep them warm. ‘Maybe nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m just going
to see what I can see. Nothing more.’

Trisha scowled. ‘That’s fine as far as it goes. But can’t we just get this

whole shitty scenario over and done with? She rolled her shoulders. ‘I so
need a good night out. Something to drink, a bit of dancing.’ She smiled.
‘A whole lot of sex.’

Michaela sighed. ‘I’m with you there, babe. Not exactly the best cir-

cumstances for a reunion.’

Trisha fished out another cigarette and lit it. ‘Yeah, but you wouldn’t

have come except for this.’

‘You wouldn’t have asked me except for this.’
‘Touché. You reckon Caro’s going to be all right? She’s looking pretty

stressed.’

Michaela came and sat down next to Trisha. She plucked the cigarette

from Trisha’s fingers and took a drag, blowing the smoke out in a
grimace.

‘I keep forgetting how bloody foul these things are.’
‘Quit fucking pinching them then.’
Michaela took a second lungful and passed it back. ‘Caro will be fine,’

she said.

‘How do you know that?’
She put her arm around her girlfriend. ‘Because we will make sure she

is, okay?’

Trisha sighed. ‘Yeah.’

They stared out at the clouds erasing the stars from the sky.
‘I never knew the world was so full of weird shit,’ Trisha said after a

moment.

Michaela nodded. ‘Hell of a wake-up call isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. How the fuck are you supposed to carry on all like normal af-

terwards though?’

A shrug. ‘Maybe you’re not.’
Trisha finished the cigarette. ‘Come on babe. It’s cold out here.’
They went up the steps and inside, closing the door behind them. Caro

was poking around the bags on the kitchen table.

‘You must have spent a fortune on all this stuff,’ she said.
Michaela shrugged and took out the digital video camera. ‘None of it

will go to waste.’

Caro stared at her and held up the EMF meter. ‘You’re going to use

this again?’ she asked. ‘For what?’

Michaela laughed and looked at the item in her hand. ‘How do you

know what that even is?’

Caro tuned it over in her hands. ‘I watched that English program

‘Britian’s Most Haunted’ or something like that. It was such a stupid pro-
gram, you never got to see anything except some woman who screamed
all the way through it.’ Caro started giggling. ‘She swore a lot too, this
woman. Could almost put Trisha to shame.’ She stopped laughing.
‘Anyway, they used these to measure some sort of ghost shit.’

‘Electromagnetic field detector. Used to measure differences in the

electromagnetic fields. Apparently, small fluctuations from no apparent
sources is supposed to be evidence of spirit activity,’ Michaela filled in.

‘You’re really keen on all this ghost buster stuff, aren’t you?’ said Caro.
Michaela looked at the bags of electronic equipment. ‘Sure looks like it,

doesn’t it? I think I went a little crazy in the electronics shop.’

Caro handed over the EMF meter. ‘A little? You think?’ she shook her

head. ‘What’s it all going to do though?’

This was a more difficult question. Michaela sat down at the table and

looked over the gear. Trisha came over and sat a coffee in front of her.

‘Thanks sweetheart,’ Michaela said. She picked up the digital thermo-

meter and took it out of its box. Fortunately it measured temps in both
Fahrenheit and Celsius. The most she knew about Fahrenheit was that 30
degrees was zero in Celsius. She’d never got the hang of American meas-
urements. But she was hedging.

‘Well,’ she finally said. ‘The cameras are so we can record whatever is

happening. We know these shadows can be captured on film now, and it
will be useful to watch them when we can’t be everywhere.’

Trisha interrupted her. ‘I don’t think you’re getting the big picture,

babe. The idea is simply to get rid of the fuckers. Not to make a scientific
study of them.’

Michaela ran her fingers through her hair. She had gone a little over-

board. Most of the stuff she’d bought would never be used again. Unless
she set up work as a ghost hunter.

‘You’re right,’ she conceded. ‘I got a bit carried away. This business

just fascinates me, is all.’ She looked at Trisha then Caro. They both had
identical frowns. ‘Priority one is to get rid of them, okay?’

Trisha nodded. ‘As long as we have that understood.’ She gestured at

the bags of gear. ‘This stuff is just a side line because you’re interested,
right?’

‘Right.’
‘Okay then. Why don’t the two of you get all that shit set up and stuff

while I make us something to eat?’ She checked her watch. ‘Damn it’s
late. How did we forget to eat, for fucks sakes? Omelettes okay with you
guys?’

Michaela and Caro both nodded and Trisha disappeared into the kit-

chen and began to bang the pots and pans around.

‘You want to help?’ Michaela asked Caro.
‘You bet. Just tell me what we need to do.’
There were two video cameras. One they set up in Caro’s bedroom.
‘How will it film in the dark?’ Caro asked.
Michaela blushed. ‘I bought ones with night vision.’
Besides the cameras, there was the EMF detector and thermometer, a

tiny digital recorder and a really cool little gadget that worked not only
as a motion sensor, but actually filmed whatever tripped the sensor. Mi-
chaela had been secretly delighted with that one – buying all this stuff
had been kind of fun. She set up the motion sensor and looked around
Caro’s room again, wondering if she’d forgotten anything. She put the
voice recorder down on Caro’s bookcase. When she came in later she
would switch it to record automatically at sound. She sat down a mo-
ment in the armchair beside the bed and gazed idly at the books on the
shelf, going over her mental checklist.

One of the titles caught her attention. Then the couple next to it. She

pulled out the first and stared at the cover then flipped it over and read

the back. She realised she was holding her breath and let it out in a
whoosh of air.

Had she just found the trigger?

Chapter

ichaela walked back into the dining area where Caro had gone to
clear the table.

She smiled at Caro, not letting on about the gurgle of excitement she

was feeling in her belly. ‘How long have you been interested in this sort
of thing?’ she asked.

Caro looked at the books with a mixture of surprise and embarrass-

ment. She took the one Michaela was holding out and looked at it. Trisha
came in carrying plates of food and glanced over at the book.

‘Where’d you get that?’ she asked.
‘I bought it from Amazon.’
Trisha set the plates down. ‘Eat, everyone. How’d you do that, Caro?

Don’t you need a credit card or something to buy shit online?’

They sat down at the table. The food smelled great.
‘I told Mom I needed some books for school. She let me use her Visa.’
Michaela tapped the cover of one of the books. ‘I somehow doubt

these would be part of the school curriculum.’

Caro was staring at the books. ‘They’re not,’ she said. ‘But last year I

stayed with a friend and went with her family on a trip over to Salem.’
She looked at Michaela. ‘Where the witch trials were? There are some
great museums there, lots of stuff about the trials and witchcraft in gen-
eral. We also went to this place which is a like a replica of a proper sev-
enteenth century village. It was very cool.’

Trisha was frowning. ‘When was this?’ she asked.
She rolled her eyes. ‘You weren’t here then, Trisha. It was just before

Halloween and we had a great time.’

Michaela looked at the books. ‘You must have taken it a bit more seri-

ously though.’

Trisha pointed to one of the books. ‘I bought this one while I was

there. Read just about the whole thing on the trip back.’ She shrugged.
‘It’s fascinating. I wanted to learn more.’ She looked almost embarrassed
a moment. ‘I think I want to study this sort of thing further. You know,
like when I go to college.’

Trisha snorted. ‘What sort of degree would they call that?’
Caro took her seriously. ‘Well, it’s kinda anthropology to start with,

and a bit of archaeology and psychology thrown in.’

Michaela sat down and regarded her. ‘You’ve thought quite seriously

about this, haven’t you?’

‘Like I said, it’s fascinating stuff. Up until only a few hundred years

ago, people used to see the world in a totally different way. Spirits and
fairies and witches were just a fact of life. There was a whole ghostly,
spiritual aspect to the world that was just taken for granted. And every-
where there are physical remnants of this world.’

Michaela was interested now. ‘Like what?’ she asked.
‘Like the dead paths,’ Caro said. ‘They were paths built specifically for

the spirits of the newly dead to follow. And they were always straight.’
Her face had lit up. ‘They’re all over the world, these paths. In Europe
there’s hundreds of them still about. And here, there are things like the
Nazca lines in the Peruvian Desert – some people reckon they’re like
ritual paths for shamans and the spirits of the dead.’

She stopped talking and looked around the table. The food was mostly

untouched on the plates and growing quickly cold.

Trisha was looking alarmed. ‘You’ve just been reading about this stuff,

right? Not conducting your own voodoo experiments or some such shit?’

Caro shifted in her chair. ‘It’s not shit, and I don’t know anything

about voodoo and don’t want to. Jesus Trisha, you think I’m stupid or
something?’

‘No, I think you’re way too bright for your own good.’
Caro looked suddenly near tears. ‘You’re such a bitch, Trisha.’ She

stared down at her plate.

Michaela judiciously interrupted. ‘It sounds fascinating, Caro. Do you

mind if I borrow one of these to read?’

Caro shook her head. ‘There’s one of the dead paths I talked about not

too far from here.’ Her hand snaked out and touched the cover of one of
the books. ‘I hitched out and took a look at it. It’s actually more of a buri-
al mound, but it has some of the elements to it that they talk about in the
book.’

Michaela picked up the book Caro had rested her hand on. She flicked

through the pages, stopping at some of the photographs. Ancient burial
mounds.

‘The one I went and looked at isn’t in the book,’ Caro said. ‘But it’s real

similar.’

‘When was this? When did you go out and look at this place?’

Caro shrugged. ‘Few months back, I guess.’ Her face paled. ‘You don’t

think that’s why, do you?’

Michaela exchanged a glance with Trisha. She thought that was ex-

actly why and could see Trisha was in agreement. But she turned back to
Caro and smiled. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘What did you do while you were
there?’

Caro was chewing on her bottom lip. ‘I just kind of wandered around

and explored. I wanted to take some photos but my camera wouldn’t
work for some reason.’ She shrugged and played with her fingers, look-
ing down at them.

‘What else?’ Trisha’s knuckles were white from clenching her hands.
Caro looked up at Michaela. ‘I did some creative meditation, all right?

I tried to imagine what it was like when the place was being built, and
what it was all about. I tried to open myself up to the place.’

Michaela rocked back in her chair. Here was the trigger all right. It had

to be.

‘How far is this place?’ she asked.
Caro was looking down at her hands again. ‘Couple of hours away,’

she said.

Michaela checked with Trisha. ‘We go there tomorrow?’
Trisha nodded. ‘Definitely.’ She gestured at the electronics boxes. ‘And

we’ll take some of this shit and see what there is to see.’

Caro looked up at both of them. ‘What did I do?’ she asked.

Chapter

risha came in and perched on the arm of the chair.

‘You smell good,’ said Michaela, looking up from Caro’s book

and taking in the newly showered Trisha.

Trisha leaned down and kissed Michaela. ‘Almost got myself a case of

the heebee jeebees in the shower. Kept thinking about that webcam
photo. My God I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.’

Michaela nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day. Looking around

and wondering if they’re here watching us and we can’t see them, or
what? Gives new meaning to the idea of jumping at shadows, that’s for
sure.’ she glanced down the hallway. ‘How’s Caro?’

‘She’s asleep. How she manages to sleep in there, I’ll never know.’

Trisha smoothed her fingers through Michaela’s hair. ‘I’m not going to
be able to sleep without you tonight.’

Michaela closed the book and pulled Trisha down onto her lap. She

felt the warmth of Trisha’s body pressed against her and relished it.
After months of empty arms, she finally had them wrapped around
Trisha again. She pressed her face into Trisha’s neck and breathed in her
scent.

‘I feel like I must be dreaming,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Being with you again.’ She ran the tip of her tongue along Trisha’s

breastbone.

Trisha dipped her head and caught Michaela’s lips. ‘You and me both,’

she said.

Michaela slipped her hands under Trisha’s robe and stroked the silky

flesh. Trisha hummed deep in her throat and pressed her fingers under
Michaela’s collar. Trisha’s skin was flushed from her shower and Mi-
chaela pressed her palms to her skin, soaking up the closeness. Trisha
shifted slightly and they kissed, tongues meeting.

‘I can’t believe I’m horny,’ Trisha whispered.
Michaela smiled under the kiss. ‘You have no sense of occasion,’ she

agreed and moved a hand up Trisha’s thigh seeking the warmth between

her thighs. ‘You’re wet,’ she said. She dipped her fingers in the wetness
and explored the delicate contours. Trisha tightened her grip around her
shoulders and Michaela felt her hot breath against her neck. She slid her
fingers inside Trisha and stroked the warm, wet flesh. Trisha’s breath
quickened.

Michaela ran a series of kisses down the side of Trisha’s face, her fin-

gers still inside her, keeping the rhythm slow, feeling Trisha build up to
a climax. She moved her hand and wet fingers slipped out and rubbed
instead. Trisha groaned into Michaela’s neck, her legs spreading wider.

‘I want to taste you,’ Michaela whispered.
Trisha barely nodded but moved obediently when Michaela slipped

out from under her and laid her back in the armchair, pulling the robe to
the side and running her tongue over a hardening nipple. Trisha arched
toward her. Michaela dipped her fingers back into Trisha’s warmth as
she trailed kisses down the length of her beautiful, bare body.

She knelt on the floor in front of Trisha, smoothing her legs gently

apart and placing her mouth upon her. She flicked out her tongue and
lapped at the wetness there, running the tip of her tongue over and
around, Trisha arching back in the seat, panting

Michaela teased, feeling Trisha moving closer towards climax, keeping

her there just on the edge as Trisha’s hands grabbed handfuls of cush-
ions in whitened knuckles. Michaela opened her mouth and sucked, and
that was it, Trisha fell over the edge and shuddered to a climax.

Michaela tucked the robe closed and smiled, waiting for Trisha to

open her eyes.

‘What are you smiling about?’ asked Trisha, eyes still closed.
‘How do you know I’m smiling?’
‘I can feel you.’
Michaela laughed and kissed Trisha. Trisha rolled into Michaela’s

arms and opened her eyes. ‘How did you get so damn good at that?’ she
asked.

Michaela laughed again. ‘I met you,’ she said.
It was Trisha’s turn to laugh now. ‘You’re so corny.’ She looked Mi-

chaela in the eye. ‘You want reciprocated?’

Michaela kissed her. ‘More than anything, but I’m going to make cof-

fee instead and read more of that book.’ She smiled. ‘You should be able
to get to sleep now.’

Trisha rolled her eyes and sat up properly in the chair. ‘I can’t believe

we even did that, when this is going on,’ she said, waving her hand at
the room.

Michaela kissed her again and stood. ‘When you’re that close to me,

you’re all I can think about.’

Trisha looked serious a moment. ‘It goes both ways, you know.’
‘Good.’

Chapter

ichaela ended up making coffee for both of them. Trisha disap-
peared into the bedroom and returned with pyjamas under the

robe.

‘It’s getting cold at nights now,’ she said.
‘Heading towards summer at home.’ Michaela sipped on her coffee

and flicked through the pages of the book, looking for the place she was
up to.

Trisha picked up the other books from Caro’s room. She looked

through the titles. ‘Do you think this has something to do with it?’ she
asked.

‘Absolutely positive it does,’ Michaela answered.
Trisha was shaking her head and looking around the room. She spot-

ted the second video camera, set up on a tripod and facing out into the
room.

‘Oh fuck, tell me that thing’s not on!’
Michaela looked up and grinned. ‘Don’t worry babe, it’s not on. But

only because I didn’t think of it.’

Trisha threw a cushion at Michaela then turned serious again. ‘Are

they in here now, do you think?’ she asked.

‘The shadow people?’ Michaela looked around the room, gaze linger-

ing in the corners where shadows naturally congregated. ‘I don’t think
so, not at the moment. I don’t think they show themselves straight on
like this.’ She paused. ‘They lurk, and slink and amass in the dark
places.’ She pulled a face.

Trisha wore a matching expression. ‘That’s horrible.’ She looked

around. ‘Would they come out if we turned off the light?’

Michaela got up and checked the video camera, turning it on. ‘We’ll

find out in a minute,’ she said.

‘Oh God, do we have to?’
Michaela shrugged. ‘No, we don’t actually. I don’t think we’re going

to find any real answers until we visit this burial place Caro was talking

about. Something she did there has made something happen here, I’m
sure of it.’

‘How could she have even gone there? Of all the stupid bloody things

to do!’

‘I bet hundreds of people have been there and nothing like this

happened to them afterwards. She wasn’t to know she was doing
something with consequences like this. How could she? She said it her-
self – it’s been hundreds of years since people have lived in a world filled
with spirits.’

Trisha was hugging a cushion to herself. ‘I think I liked it better when

it was some guy pulling a hoax, Michaela.’

Michaela gave Trisha’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. ‘This is better,’ she

disagreed. ‘At least no one’s life is in danger.’

‘Can you say that for sure?’
Michaela pulled the EMF device out of her pocket and checked the

reading. ‘Nothing’s ever for sure, babe.’

Trisha rubbed her face. ‘You’re kind of enjoying this, aren’t you?’
Michaela smiled and checked the temperature. It had dropped a bit,

but that was to be expected as the night grew late. She looked at Trisha.
‘You know what? I actually am. Here I am, an English grad, a kiwifruit
orchardist, and yet, I’m more interested, stimulated and intrigued doing
this ghost hunting thing than I’ve ever been doing anything else.’

‘Yeah. You’re totally fucked up all right,’ Trisha grumbled.
Michaela laughed. ‘I want to turn the lights off now. You going to

bed?’

‘You going to go sit in Caro’s room?’

Michaela shook her head. ‘Not just yet.’
‘I’ll stay a while longer.’
Michaela flicked the lights off and looked at the viewfinder of the di-

gital video camera as she adjusted the night vision. She panned it around
the room, lighting on Trisha’s face and past it to the blank screen of the
TV. She stopped and looked past the camera, waiting for her eyes to ad-
just to the darkness. There was nothing to see. She looked back down at
the camera and focused again on the television screen.

The camera was picking up a shape on the TV screen. She stared at it,

wondering if she was picking up the shape of something real, or just a
trick of the light. Or darkness in this case. She looked around. There was
some ambient light from the kitchen, where the microwave clock
glowed, but otherwise it was pretty damn dark.

She looked back at the television. She hadn’t been imagining it. There

was a definite shadow in the screen. Vaguely man shaped. Head and
shoulder shot.

‘What are you looking at?’ Trisha whispered.
‘There’s a shadow figure in the TV screen.’
‘In or in front of?’
‘In. Definitely in.’
Trisha inched down to the end of the couch opposite the television.

‘What does the gizmo say?’

Gizmo? Michaela kept the camera trained on the television and pulled

the EMF meter out of her pocket. The needle fluctuated unsteadily then
settled.

‘It’s reading slightly higher than before.’
Trisha shivered. ‘Christ, you feel that draft?’
Michaela shook her head in the dark and stepped over to the open

doorway to the hall. ‘There’s no draft,’ she said.

‘I felt one. Icy, like a blast of wind from outside on a snowy night.’ She

paused. ‘It didn’t last. It’s gone now. Like someone opened an outside
door.’

Michaela looked back at the television. The screen was grey and blank.

‘Shadow in the TV’s gone,’ she said. She panned the camera around the
room again, but shadows were everywhere. Trisha’s eyes were wide
through the viewfinder of the camera. She was still holding onto the
cushion.

‘I can’t see anything else,’ Michaela said.
‘Go into Caro’s room.’
Michaela turned around and pointed the camera down the hallway.

She couldn’t be sure but she thought something had moved, just before
she looked. She glanced away a moment, hoping to catch movement out
of the corner of her eye.

Something touched her on the back and she jumped.
‘It’s just me.’ Trisha.
‘Shit. Okay. You coming?’
‘Caro’s room. Lead the way.’
Michaela inched down the hallway, Trisha holding onto her shirt. It

really was dark here and Michaela had her eyes glued to the camera, fol-
lowing its greenish view of the hall and doors in front of her. She
reached out a hand and it came into view, disembodied, glowing softly
in the camera’s light. It grasped the door knob to Caro’s room and twis-
ted slowly.

Chapter

ichaela pushed the door open. The darkness in the room came
out to greet them and Michaela felt Trisha’s grip tighten on her

shirt.

‘You all right?’ she whispered.
‘Yeah. What’s it look like in there? I can’t see a damn thing.’
They took a few steps forward into the room. Caro lay in the bed,

blankets tucked up around her ears, breathing steadily.

‘Caro’s okay,’ Michaela said. She panned the camera around the room.

Everything looked ghostly in the green light in the viewfinder, but noth-
ing moved or seemed out of place. The room was wreathed in shadows
but none of them moved. Michaela turned to Trisha.

‘Can you turn the bathroom light on, babe? I want just a little bit of

light.’

Trisha nodded and turned back into the hallway. Michaela heard the

snap of the light switch in the bathroom. The room brightened a little.

‘I left the door open a fraction,’ Trisha said, back at Michaela’s side.
‘Excellent.’ Michaela felt uncomfortable being in the room like this

with Caro sleeping in front of her, but she bent to the camera again and
continued her survey. She looked toward the curtain, certain she’d seen
something move. Trisha tugged on her elbow.

‘Over there,’ she hissed. ‘Under the wardrobe door.’
Michaela swung the camera over to the wardrobe.
‘Oh shit.’ Trisha was holding hard to her elbow now. ‘Oh fuck me

Freddy it’s like some awful stain.’

Michaela watched through the camera. It was like a stain. The ward-

robe was leaking dark matter. Under the door a black shadow was
spreading, somehow almost oozing. Michaela had a mad desire to reach
down and touch it, but Trisha’s touch kept her in one spot.

She held her breath and watched. She hadn’t been sure at all that they

would see anything. But maybe she’d been right when she’d said the
phenomena were escalating. Because here it was right in front of her
eyes, and that shadow was definitely spreading.

It came shapeless from under the wardrobe door, spread across the

floor and up the wall, a blackness staining the room. Heading up the
wall beside the bed, it grew taller, almost toward the ceiling. Michaela
adjusted the focus on the camera, panning back to fit it in, hoping like
hell it was recording.

‘It’s going toward Caro,’ Trisha whispered. ‘I want Caro out of there.’
Michaela nodded but neither made a move to wake the sleeping girl.
‘Fuck! Michaela look!’
Where? Michaela panned the camera around the room and saw

straight away what had alarmed Trisha. From behind the curtains anoth-
er shadow was materialising, spreading across the wall, growing taller.

‘We gotta get the fuck out of here,’ Trisha said.
Michaela was mesmerised. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said.
Both shadows were spread against the wall beside Caro’s bed now.

Michaela watched as they seemed to draw themselves together. She
could see the shape of head and shoulders on them now. She could also
feel her heart pounding against her ribs. She heard a low keening and
realised it was Trisha.

The shadows were tall against the wall now, and the one from the

wardrobe began to bend down as if to look at the girl sleeping in the bed.

‘Michaela, there’s more of them.’
Michaela looked back at the wardrobe and Trisha was right. More

were flowing out from under the door. More were coming from behind
the curtains. And the one on the wall was bending over, almost touching
the pillow.

Trisha reached out and flicked the light switch. Light flooded the

room. She leapt forward to the bed and grabbed Caro by the shoulder.

‘Wake up! Caro, wake up!’
Caro raised her head and Trisha flung back the blankets, grabbed her

sister’s hand and wrenched her from the bed. They stumbled past Mi-
chaela and out of the room.

Michaela had flattened herself against the wall when the light had

snapped on. Still holding the camera she watched in horror as the shad-
ows drained from the room. They were fast, and she got the image of
something dark and slippery, something that had reached out from an-
other dimension. She swallowed, heart pounding, and rested her head
back against the wall, eyes wide now, adjusted to the light, staring at the
crack under the wardrobe door. She glanced at the curtain, and almost
thought she saw it move.

On leaden legs she took a few steps forward until she stood in front of

the wardrobe. She could hear voices from the living room. Trisha and
Caro. In the bedroom it was silent save for her own harsh breathing. She
stared at the door. Why was it always wardrobes, she wondered? The
bogeyman had hidden in wardrobes when she was small and obviously
nothing much had changed.

She grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled it open before she

could change her mind. Something dark fell on her and she staggered
backwards, tripping over onto the bed. Her breath hissing between her
teeth she fought to get the dark thing off her. She flung it away and
looked at it lying on the bedroom floor.

A coat. A black duffle coat. Fallen off its hanger when she wrenched

the door open.

Michaela shuddered. ‘Fuck me Freddy,’ she muttered, cribbing one of

Trisha’s favourites. She looked back at the open closet. Just a closet.
Clothes hanging in an untidy row, the floor littered with shoes and bags
and other pieces of Caro’s life. Just a closet. Michaela sat forward on the
bed and rubbed her face.

The camera was lying on the floor at her feet. She picked it up and

checked it. It looked okay.

‘Michaela?’ Trisha was calling her.
She got to her feet and made her way, slightly unsteady, to the door.

She saw the other video camera still on its tripod in the corner of the
room. She’d forgotten about that one. And the voice recorder on the
bookcase. She walked quickly over and switched the voice recorder on.
Then she picked up Caro’s robe from the end of the bed and walked to
the door. She turned off the light and pulled the door closed.

100

Chapter

risha and Caro were huddled on the couch, though Trisha was
throwing dubious glances towards the television.

‘I feel like they’re everywhere,’ she said when Michaela walked in.

‘Are you okay? What were you doing in there?’

Michaela leaned down and kissed her girlfriend. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

‘How’s Caro?’

Caro looked up and answered for herself. ‘I’m all right,’ she said.

‘Though Trisha gave me a huge fright pulling me from bed like that.’

‘Trisha was incredibly brave, getting you out of there like that.’
‘Yeah, except she won’t tell me what was going on.’
Michaela looked down at the camera in her hand. ‘Maybe this will tell

us.’

‘Fuck this,’ Trisha said and got up. She went to the kitchen and turned

on the lights in there and over the table. Then she walked back into the
living room and flicked the television on. She muted the sound and
looked at Michaela and shrugged.

‘You said there was one in there before,’ she said in her own defence.

‘If it’s still there it doesn’t stand a chance against Jerry Springer.’

Michaela grinned and walked over to Trisha, enveloping her in a giant

hug. They stood there a moment, wrapped around each other, then
stepped back, Michaela still holding the camera.

‘You ready to watch this?’ she asked.
‘I am never going to be ready to watch that,’ Trisha answered.
‘Right there with you, hon. But we’re going to watch it anyway, aren’t

we?’

Trisha gave a tired laugh. ‘You’re the ghost buster, babe.’ She looked

around the room and Michaela read her mind.

‘You want to get out of here?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Part of me thinks we should go get a room somewhere.

How do people do this shit?’

Caro spoke up. ‘Will someone tell me what is going on?’ she asked.

‘The lights are all on, Trisha. I can’t see anything here, can you?’

101

Trisha looked at her little sister. ‘It ain’t the things I can see I’m wor-

ried about.’ But she looked over at Michaela.

‘I guess we’re all right here, as long as no one turns the lights off. I’m

going to make coffee, you want some?’

Michaela nodded and walked over to her laptop still hooked up on the

dining table. ‘Yes please. With a liberal dash of bourbon.’

‘And I’m right with you there.’
Caro came over to the table, pulling on the robe Michaela had brought

out from her room.

‘What’s going on in my room?’ she whispered.
Michaela looked at her, surprised. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You turned off the light and closed the door. I thought you would

have left the light on. There still a camera recording in there?’

Michaela nodded and after a moment Caro nodded too.
‘Tell me why Trisha dragged me out of bed, she said.
Michaela searched Caro’s face. She was pale but seemed otherwise

composed. How would she react when she saw what was hopefully on
the tape though? She’d had a shock earlier in the day already.

‘I can show you,’ Michaela said. ‘But are you sure you want to see?

It’s, well, I mean, it’s in your room.’

‘I want to see. I’ll be okay.’
Michaela gave her one more searching look then nodded, satisfied. She

would want to see too, if roles were reversed. She plugged in the USB
cable and opened up the right program on the computer. Within mo-
ments an image of the room they were standing in showed up, glowing
green, on the screen. In the bottom right-hand corner the time counted
off in seconds.

Trisha came around the table and handed Michaela her coffee. Mi-

chaela took a sip and just about coughed.

‘Where’s the coffee in my bourbon?’ she asked.
‘Where’s mine?’ Caro complained.
‘Shut up the both of you; let’s see what the camera recorded.’
They stood in a row, watching the camera pan around the room in

jerky movements. Her technique needed a bit of work, Michaela thought.
The picture froze on Trisha sitting wide eyed on the couch then moved
past, past the television then reversing until the television came into fo-
cus. On the screen, something showed, a shadow doing what should
have been impossible, lurking, man-shaped inside the set.

102

They watched the tape straight through then set it back to the begin-

ning and watched it again. Caro was chewing on her fingernails by the
second time through.

‘What are they doing?’ she asked as on the screen the shadow man

bent over her sleeping form. ‘What do they want?’

Michaela put an arm around the girl and squeezed. ‘I don’t know,’ she

said. ‘But we’re going to find out.’

Caro was shaking her head. ‘They don’t want anything good, do

they?’

‘We don’t know that.’
She pointed at the screen which was paused on the image of the bend-

ing shadow. ‘What’s it going to do? Suck my life force from me while I
sleep? What the hell is it doing? What does it want from me?’

The picture on the computer was disturbing. Michaela stood and ex-

amined it in silence. She didn’t have the answers for Caro. It looked
ominous. She turned to Trisha, standing silently on her other side.

‘What sort of feeling did you get from them?’ she asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did they feel friendly and harmless to you?’
Trisha shook her head. ‘No. they felt dark and awful. And somehow

relentless, you know? Definitely threatening. That’s why I think we
should get the fuck out of Dodge.’

Michaela hadn’t found them particularly pleasant either. Their aura

was one of darkness all right, and a very dislocating sense of other-ness.
They didn’t feel like human spirits. Or anything that had once been a hu-
man spirit. They were far more elemental than that.

‘Turn it off.’ Caro sat down at the table and rubbed her arms. ‘I don’t

want to look at it anymore; I just want to know what we’re going to do
next.’

Michaela did as she was asked and turned off the footage from the

camera. She thought about the other one still in Caro’s room and
wondered if it were recording anything. She would leave it a while
longer. Instead she sipped at her coffee and thought about Caro’s
question.

She looked at Trisha. ‘Tomorrow we go to this effigy mound, yeah?’
Trisha nodded. ‘And if we figure out what you did there, Caro, maybe

we can figure out how to get rid of those fucking things.’

103

Chapter

ichaela pushed back from the table and stretched. She didn’t
think she’d been this tired since pulling all-nighters studying for

exams. She blinked at the computer screen and rubbed her eyes. Maybe
she should pour another coffee.

Trisha and Caro were asleep on the couch, wrapped in blankets Trisha

had pulled from her bed. Michaela checked the time. She’d been work-
ing all night, perhaps it was time for a couple hours sleep. They’d stayed
up talking for a few hours last night, after the events in Caro’s room.
Everyone was reluctant to go to sleep, but eventually the pauses were
longer and Caro especially was yawning. Michaela decided to insist they
bed down for the night. She would stay awake longer, do some work,
and keep watch.

She’d hadn’t been aware of anything more happening, but then they’d

kept the lights on and Trisha had closed the door to the hallway when
she’d come back in with the blankets. Michaela ran her hands through
her hair and wondered if she should get the other camera now and play
it back on her laptop,. But she was tired. A rest first, it was going to be a
long enough day as it was.

She’d failed to find anything substantial trawling around the net. Lots

of weird stuff, no shortage of that. No shortage of accounts by people
who certainly sounded sincere. Shadow people, ghosts, poltergeists and
Bigfoot, she’d found them all knocking around the Internet. Now she
was almost cross-eyed from the sheer bulk of information. It had become
clear fairly early on though, that she was finding the same stories and
theories over and over. And nothing that really helped.

Somewhere around four in the morning she’d tried finding out where

they might be going when the sun came up. There were burial or effigy
mounds all over the state, from what she could see, but she didn’t have a
good enough idea of where she was to figure anything out. She’d wait
and see instead.

She stood up and stretched again. The house was cold and she spent a

moment longing for the warm spring days at home. She wondered what

104

Trisha would think of the place. Deciding to leave that thought for later
too, Michaela picked up one of the spare blankets and wrapped it
around herself, dropping into the armchair and closing her eyes. Within
minutes she was asleep.

The sun climbed high enough to peer through the chinks in the cur-

tains. Caro was the first to wake, emerging from the wrappings of
blankets like a butterfly from chrysalis, blinking the sleep from her eyes.
She stuck a toe into her sister.

Trisha groaned and rolled over on the couch and promptly fell off.
‘Shit!’ she sat on the floor looking dazed. Caro peered down at her.
Trisha leaned back against the couch and groaned. ‘We are not sleep-

ing on the couch again. We either sort this mess out today or we’re find-
ing somewhere else to stay.’

Michaela woke up halfway through Trisha’s words. She yawned and

looked around.

‘Morning gorgeous,’ she said. ‘What are you on about?’
Trisha pulled a face. ‘I said, we’re sorting this out today or we’re

moving.’

Michaela stretched. ‘Better get on with it then, I suppose. Caro, did

you manage to get some rest?’

Caro was sitting up on the couch, hair a mass of dark spirals around a

pale face. She nodded. ‘Okay considering Trisha was squashing me half
the night.’ She got up and pulled the curtain back, sending sunlight
streaming in. She waved her hand through the streams of golden dust.
‘Are we still going to see the mound today?’

Michaela looked at Trisha. ‘That’s the plan,’ she said. ‘Right?’
‘Definitely.’ Trisha hauled herself off the floor. ‘Anyone feel like break-

fast?’ She looked at the others. ‘Me neither. But I do need a shower.’ She
opened the door to the hallway. ‘God, I hate this place now. It feels bad,
being here.’ She took a deep breath and disappeared down the hall. Her
voice trailed back. ‘If I’m not back in 10 minutes, call the ghost busters.’

Caro snickered. ‘We are the ghost busters.’ She looked at Michaela, her

face serious again. ‘Can I ask you something?’

Michaela was standing up, feeling like her clothes were growing on

her, she’d been in them so long. ‘Of course,’ she answered.

Caro hesitated. ‘You and Trisha are going to be together, right?’
Michaela nodded and smiled.
‘Well, you aren’t going to stay here, I mean, I know that, but…’
‘But what about you?’

105

Caro nodded and Michaela saw just how young the girl really was.

She went over and put an arm around Caro’s shoulder and hugged her.

‘We won’t be going anywhere without you, okay?’
Caro swallowed. ‘You guys won’t want me tagging along though. But

Mom, she’s never around and I, I don’t know, I don’t really want to be
left alone.’

Michaela moved and looked Caro straight in the face.
‘Trisha and I have talked about it, okay? We both agree you can’t stay

here without us. So no matter what we decide to do, you’ll be part of the
plan.’

A smile broke out on Caro’s face and she nodded. ‘But won’t you have

to go back home?’ she asked.

‘Yes. No matter what, I will have to go back. But what we’re going to

do in the long run, that hasn’t been decided yet.’ That was an understate-
ment. It hadn’t even been mentioned yet. Was it only yesterday Trisha
had told her she wanted them to be together? Michaela smiled and
spread her fingers through her hair.

‘I’m going to make coffee. You want an orange juice or something?’

she asked.

Caro trailed her into the kitchen. She accepted a glass of juice and

leaned against the bench, watching Michaela make coffee.

‘Did you look through any of those books last night?’ she asked.
Michaela nodded and poured some milk in her cup. ‘They’re really in-

triguing,’ she said.

‘I’m really interested in that stuff,’ Caro said. She glanced at the other

room. ‘Even this shadow people stuff? It’s really freaky and scary, but
kinda interesting too, you know?’ She looked down at the floor. ‘Don’t
tell Trisha I said that, okay?’

The jug boiled and Michaela poured the water into her cup. She was

fairly sure at this stage she had coffee instead of blood pumping through
her system.

‘I won’t tell,’ she said. ‘And you’re right – it is interesting. It’s fascinat-

ing stuff. It makes you realise there’s a lot more going on in the world
than we know about. I love that.’ Michaela shrugged and subsided into
silence. She took a sip of the coffee. It was bitter; she’d forgotten to add
sugar. ‘I can understand you wanting to study the stuff in those books,’
she said. ‘I think it’s a great idea. But I think you’re going to realise in a
hurry that it’s not just academic stuff. It’s real, and because of that, ac-
tions have consequences.’

Caro was frowning. ‘What do you mean?’

106

Michaela stirred the sugar into her cup. ‘Well, actions always have

consequences, one way or another, but what I really mean, is that when
you start experimenting with consciousness, or the spirit world or
whatever, things might happen that you never expected.’

‘Like the shadow people turning up because I visualised the effigy

mound as a doorway into the world of shamans and spirits?’

There it was. The trigger.
Michaela nodded. ‘As unbelievable as it seems, I think the shadows

are a direct consequence of that visualisation you did.’

‘But how? I mean, I can’t be the first person to imagine that kind of

thing.’

Michaela shrugged. ‘And we don’t know what anyone else has experi-

enced. All I can guess is you were in the right place at the right time, do-
ing something that caught their attention for some reason, and now
they’re here, sniffing around.’ She thought about it for a moment. There
must be more to it than that. It was so hard to think this way, as though
the impossible were not only possible, but highly likely. ‘And maybe you
were the right person in the right place,’ she added.

Caro was blushing. Michaela looked at her. ‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘What you said about right person at right time. Maybe you were

right.’ She chewed on her bottom lip. ‘I went there at Midsummers.’ She
blushed harder. ‘And my period started while I was there.’

Michaela leaned back against the kitchen bench and thought about

this. She sighed. She just didn’t know enough about all this. There was
so much to think about and learn, but no time to. If they were going to be
able to do anything, it was all going to be off the cuff, and Michaela was
secretly afraid that would be more dangerous that anything.

She rubbed at her face. ‘I need more time,’ she said. ‘I can’t figure

everything out.’ She stood up. ‘I need to make notes. A timeline. I think
so much better when I’ve things written down.’

Caro followed her into the dining area where their laptops still stood

on the table.

‘I’m going to get dressed then I’ll help,’ she said.
Michaela looked up at her. ‘That would be great. Two minds are al-

ways better than one. We will probably have to do it on the drive to the
mound though.’ She remembered something. ‘I need to get the second
camera out of your room, okay?’

Caro nodded and they both headed down the hallway to Caro’s room.

The shower was still going. Michaela stopped outside Caro’s room and
glanced at the girl before opening the door. The colour had returned to

107

Caro’s cheeks and she looked only mildly apprehensive about what
might be behind the door.

Michaela swung the door open and they both peered in.
‘It looks like normal,’ Caro said.
‘Yeah. Good.’ Michaela stepped in and opened the curtains. Caro bent

over the camera on the tripod.

‘I’ve just switched it off,’ she said. ‘These cameras are so cool. Are we

going to have a look at what’s on it?’

Michaela picked up the voice recorder and switched that off too. It was

a digital one so she couldn’t tell if anything had been recorded. It didn’t
matter. She looked around the room. It was impossible to tell that just
last night shadows had crowded around a girl in the bed. She shivered
anyway and walked over to the wardrobe, pulling the door open.
Nothing.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I guess everything’s back to normal in here.’
Caro was at the door. She looked back in the room. ‘Yeah, until night

time again.’

They left the door open and Caro took the camera back to the kitchen.

Michaela opened the door to Trisha’s room and slipped in.

Trisha was dressing. Michaela wrapped her arms around her and bent

down to bury her face in Trisha’s warm neck. She smelled good.

‘What’re you doing?’ Trisha asked.
‘Smelling you,’ Michaela said.
Trisha wriggled around so they were facing. She placed her hands on

Michaela’s cheeks and smiled.

‘I love you,’ she said.
A grin spread across Michaela’s face. ‘I am never going to get tired of

hearing that,’ she said.

Trisha pinched her cheeks then. ‘You’re supposed to say it back, babe,

not make some smart comment.’

Michaela organised her grin into a chastened look. ‘I’m sorry. I love

you too.’ She squeezed the smaller woman and Trisha gave a squeal.

‘All right already, give it up, you great lug. You need a shower.’
Michaela let go and kissed her instead. ‘I’ll go and have a shower,’ she

said. ‘Then we’ll head away, shall we?’

Trisha nodded, serious again. ‘I want this over with, Michaela. I know

this ghost busting shit is right up your alley, but I’d rather it was
someone else’s ghosts we were busting, you know?’

‘I know. We’re close, I think. I’m getting a handle on it. We’ll have

more idea what to do after today, I think.’

108

Trisha stared at her. ‘I hope so babe. I’d really rather start planning

what we’re going to do about us, you know.’

Michaela grinned again and grabbed Trisha, lifting her off her feet and

planting a big kiss on her lips. ‘I’ve some ideas about that too,’ she said.

Trisha laughed. ‘Have a shower, get dressed and let’s go. You can tell

me all your big ideas on the way.’

109

Chapter

‘H

ow long will it take us to get there?’ Michaela asked. She had the
roadmap open on her lap.

Caro sat forward between the two front seats and looked at the map.

‘It won’t show on there,’ she said. ‘It’s not part of one of the mound
parks, I found some reference to it on the Net and figured out where it
was by looking on Google Earth.’

‘It’s on private property?’
Caro shrugged. ‘I guess. Maybe. It’s in this kind of wooded area. Not

farm land or anything. Took me a couple hours to get there, but I was
hitching.’

Trisha glanced at her. ‘Hitching? I thought you said you took the bus?

Don’t you know you’re not allowed to hitchhike?’

‘I said I hitched and I made it there and back, didn’t I? No harm done.’

She squeezed an arm between the seats and pointed at a small dot on the
town. ‘It’s about half an hour outside of that place. Walking.’

Michaela looked at the map. Judging by the size of the dot, it was just

a one horse town.’

‘Gas station, pub and dairy,’ Caro said, as though reading her mind.

‘Wasn’t anyone about on the street when I was there.’ She pointed again.
‘Take this road and I guess it’s a few miles down, then off the road for
about a fifteen minute walk through the woods.’

‘Through the woods? How the fuck did you manage not to get your

idiot self lost?’ Trisha’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

In the back seat, Caro shrugged. ‘I was prepared,’ she said. ‘Had a

compass with me. And a typographical type map with me I printed off
the Net.’ She rummaged in her back pack a moment and passed a
creased piece of paper over to Michaela.

‘Do you have the compass too?’
‘Of course.’
Michaela smoothed out the paper. The typography showed gentle hills

and swells in the land, largely covered in trees. In the corner, a road she
guessed led to the one horse town.

110

‘You really were well prepared to look for this place,’ she said, unable

to help the admiration in her voice.

‘A fool, more like,’ Trisha interrupted. ‘Hitching, walking in the

woods, good grief anything could have happened.’

Caro pouted. ‘Well nothing did, so there you go. You’re not my moth-

er, quit acting like you are.’

‘No, your mother doesn’t have a clue what you’re up too.’ Trisha

slowed the car and turned onto a two lane back road. ‘Just as well I came
back, that’s all I can say about it.’

Caro leaned back against the back seat and stared out the window,

arms crossed.

Michaela was looking at the map still, but couldn’t see anything help-

ful. She folded Caro’s map up and passed it back to her.

‘We’ll need that,’ she said. ‘Good thinking to bring it with you.’
Caro gave a smile and replaced the map in her backpack.
Michaela rested her hand a moment on Trisha’s thigh, gave it a pat

then sighed and opened the laptop she’d brought with her. They hadn’t
stopped to watch the recording from the second camera before leaving,
agreeing that finding the effigy mound before the day got too late was
the priority. Michaela had the camera in her bag on the back seat beside
Caro. Along with a couple other bits and pieces. Caro leaned forward
and watched with interest as Michaela found and opened up the right
programme.

‘How come you could afford to buy all that gear, Michaela?’ she

asked.

Michaela shifted slightly in her seat. The subject of money embar-

rassed her.

‘My grandmother left me some money when she died,’ she replied.
‘Lots?’
Trisha just about choked in the driver’s seat. ‘Caro!’ she said. Then

turned to Michaela. ‘Lots?’ she echoed.

Michaela guessed there was no avoiding the issue. And if she and

Trisha were going to be together, it would come out anyway. She cleared
her throat and stared down at the computer.

‘Yeah, quite a bit,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know when I was a kid living

with her, but Gran was pretty astute when it came to business, and she
didn’t have much but the orchard to spend money on.’

Trisha gave another sideways glance. ‘How much is quite a bit?’
Michaela laughed. ‘You’re not supposed to love me for my money,’

she said.

111

Trisha gave a sly smile. ‘I don’t love you for your money babe, but I

might just marry you for it!’

Caro hooted with laughter in the back seat and Michaela groaned.
‘Go on then,’ Caro said. ‘I want to know if we’re going to be rich.’
‘Not rich, and what’s this we, anyway?’ Michaela asked, pulling at

face at Caro and grinning.

‘How much?’ asked Trisha.
Michaela gave in. ‘About a million in investments and cash. Then

there’s the orchard, which is probably worth another couple million.’

No one said anything. Trisha pulled the car over and stopped on the

side of the road. She pulled on the handbrake and turned to Michaela.

‘How much did you say? Did I hear you say two or three million dol-

lars?’ Trisha’s eyes were wide.

Michaela nodded. ‘About that, yeah.’
‘You didn’t seem that rich when we were together?’
‘I wasn’t that rich when we were together. It was a surprise to me too.

I never had any idea my Gran was that well off. I knew the orchard was
worth a bit, but I didn’t know about the rest. My grandmother believed
in working hard. She made sure I had everything I needed while I lived
with her, but anything I wanted on top of that I had to work for.’

Trisha rested her hands on the steering wheel and stared out the front

windscreen. ‘Well fuck me Freddy,’ she said. ‘From now on babe, you’re
paying for dinner.’ She grinned and accelerated back onto the road. ‘Well
fuck me.’ She was shaking her head in amazement. ‘I have a rich
girlfriend.’

112

Chapter

hey rode in silence for the next five minutes, and Michaela turned
her attention back to the computer.

‘The options are endless,’ Trisha said.
‘What?’
‘I said, the options are endless. Here I was thinking we had bugger all

choice about what we did next, where we went and so on, but all the
time, we had all these options I never dreamed of.’

‘How’s that?’ Caro asked from the back seat.
Michaela answered. ‘The thing that having money really allows,’ she

said, ‘are choices. If you have no money, your choices in life are severely
limited.’ She twisted around in her seat and looked back at Caro.
‘Trisha’s just getting used to the idea, that maybe she won’t have to work
in a diner all her life.’ She laughed.

‘You guys are really going to be together?’
Michaela and Trisha looked at each other. Trisha snaked a hand over

and grasped Michaela’s.

‘Yes,’ they both said at the same time and laughed.
‘Cool,’ said Caro. ‘Don’t forget you’re taking me wherever you go.’
Trisha grinned. ‘What if we don’t go anywhere? You need to finish

school, remember.’

Caro pouted. ‘I can go to school anywhere,’ she said. Let’s get out of

boringsville.’

Michaela was thinking. ‘Come back to New Zealand with me,’ she

said. ‘Both of you.’ She shrugged. ‘I have to go back no matter what. I
really want you to come with me. We can decide what we want to do
after that, but in the meantime, I have the orchard to run. It’s coming up
summer at home, fruit season.’

Trisha was shaking her head. ‘Mom will never let us take Caro away.’
‘You’re not going without me – you promised!’ Caro looked totally

alarmed.

Michaela spoke up. ‘No offense, Trisha, but it doesn’t seem like your

mother is really worried about her daughter.’

113

Trisha tapped her fingers on the steering wheel.
‘She’s not around at the moment because you’re here. She can’t turn a

blind eye to the way I am if you’re staying in the house. She cares about
Caro.’

‘Not much,’ said Caro.
‘Enough not to let you move to the other side of the world. Or any-

where, for that matter.’

Caro had her arms folded. ‘I’m going and she can’t stop me. She’s

hardly ever home and we all know it. I’m sixteen in five weeks and
what’re a few weeks? She’s not going to do anything when she knows
I’d just pack up and leave the day I turn sixteen anyway.’ Caro sat back,
a determined look on her face.

Trisha glanced around then back at the road. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘We’ll

argue about it later, all right? We’ll work something out, I’m sure. Now,
are we almost there?’

Michaela looked out the window. They were surrounded by farmland.

A grassy ditch ran on each side of the road and beyond it were pad-
docks, some with cattle, others showing the stubble from freshly harves-
ted crops.

‘Where are we?’ she asked with a laugh.
Trisha pointed to the map. ‘You’re the navigator.’
Michaela picked up the map and scrutinised it. ‘Wouldn’t have a clue,’

she decided after a minute.

‘Useless,’ Trisha said with a shake of the head and a quick grin. ‘We’ll

be there in about an hour.’

Michaela nodded and looked out the window again. It looked a lot

like home, she decided. The land was fertile, good farmland. She startled
and saw a hare leap out of the ditch and dodge under their wheels.
There was no bump, maybe they didn’t hit it. She shrugged and turned
to her computer again. This time no one interrupted her when she
clicked open the program and brought up the recording made by the
video camera in Caro’s room.

It was strange. Michaela fast forwarded through the ten or so hours of

recording, then went through it again. And a third time. By now, Caro
was leaning forward again, watching with interest, and the same puzzle-
ment on her face that Michaela felt.

Trisha looked over. ‘Well?’ she asked.
‘There’s nothing on it,’ said Michaela.
Trisha frowned. ‘What do you mean nothing? Didn’t it record

properly?’

114

Michaela slowed the recording to real time speed and watched. ‘It re-

corded,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t record anything.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Trisha. ‘That doesn’t make sense.
Michaela tried again. ‘I mean it recorded, but the picture is just black.

Just darkness.’

Caro was watching from the back seat. ‘Stop it there a minute, Mi-

chaela,’ she said. ‘Go back a tiny bit and play it in slow motion.’

Michaela played it slowly forward, squinting at the screen. ‘That’s a bit

freaky,’ she said.

‘What’s a bit freaky?’ Trisha asked, trying to see the screen despite the

fact she was driving.

Caro answered. ‘It looks like faces,’ she said. ‘Just faint faces in the

darkness.’

Michaela replayed it again. ‘They are faces,’ she said. ‘And they’re not

just faces, they’re our faces.’

‘From when we were in the room, right?’ asked Trisha.
Michaela shook her head, then realised she had to answer. ‘No. Not

from then. The faces are looking right at the camera. We never did that.
In fact the camera shouldn’t have caught our faces at all, not the way it
was positioned. And it doesn’t show the lights going on and you getting
Caro out of her bed or me checking the wardrobe or anything.’ She
paused. ‘It doesn’t show anything that happened. It’s just blackness ex-
cept for the one bit where you can just make out our faces like shadows
in the dark.’

‘That sounds scary,’ Trisha said, a trace of nervousness in her voice.
‘It’s horrible,’ Caro said from the back seat. ‘I don’t like it. Turn it off

Michaela, it makes me feel weird, like I’m going to be sick or something.’

Michaela was feeling the same. Her stomach was churning and sweat

broke out on her forehead. She felt nauseous.

‘Turn it off, please,’ Caro said.
‘Pull over,’ Michaela told Trisha, snapping the screen of the laptop

down on the eerie footage.

Trisha raised an eyebrow but pulled over. Michaela stumbled from the

car and bent over in the tall grass. She’d only had coffee for breakfast but
that and half her stomach lining ended up on the ground. And then she
was dry retching, suffering suddenly from vertigo and feeling like the
world was spinning out of control under her feet.

115

The car door opened and Trisha was beside her. She reached a hand

out and found support. She steadied herself against her girlfriend and
rested her forehead on Trisha’s shoulder.

‘Oh my God,’ she groaned.
‘Are you okay?’ Trisha asked.
Michaela wiped her mouth. ‘Need to sit down, babe.’
Trisha led her to the open car door and lowered her onto the seat. Mi-

chaela stuck her head between her legs and groaned again. Caro was sit-
ting on the grass beside the car, looking pale.

‘Are you all right?’ Michaela asked her.
‘Queasy,’ Caro replied. ‘What’s going on?’
Michaela shrugged, still with her head down. She straightened up and

caught Trisha’s concerned face. She tried a sickly grin.

‘I’m okay honey,’ she said. ‘Don’t think my legs are ever going to sup-

port my weight again and half my internal organs are over there in the
ditch, but I think I’ll live.’

Trisha looked at her. ‘If you can make a bloody speech like that, then I

have to agree with you. You’re definitely going to live. But what the fuck
caused this?’

Michaela shook her head and ran a hand over her face. Her skin was

clammy. ‘The recording,’ she said. ‘Got a huge case of vertigo watching
it.’ She turned to Caro. ‘Same with you?’

‘Yeah. I was watching it then suddenly felt like the world was col-

lapsing in on itself or something.’ She shook her head. ‘Made me feel
sick.’

Michaela tucked her feet back inside the car. ‘Let’s go, shall we? Time’s

wasting.’

Trisha gave her one more look then helped Caro back up and into the

car.

‘Do you think we should turn back?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Michaela placed the laptop on the floor out of the way of her feet.

‘No, I think we should keep going. Visit this mound. See what there is to
see.’

Trisha got in behind the wheel. ‘What if there’s nothing to see?’ she

asked. ‘Do we even have the slightest idea what we’re doing?’

No one replied. Trisha sighed, shrugged and started the car. She

pulled out onto the highway and drove down the road.

116

Chapter

hey parked the car as far off the road as possible. Michaela was still
feeling unsteady on her feet but she assured Trisha she was fine to

walk. Trisha scanned the woodland in front of her.

‘Hike, you mean,’ she said.
Michaela shrugged. She took the water bottle Caro held out to her and

drank deeply.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You know which way to go?’
Caro nodded and pointed. ‘That way.’
Michaela checked the car was locked. The last thing she wanted was

the laptop with that horrible film on it to be stolen. She nodded and
turned on the video camera she held.

‘Let’s go then,’ she said.
They clambered over the fence and set off into the woods, Caro lead-

ing the way. Trisha walked beside Michaela. She looked at the camera
Michaela was holding and frowned.

‘Is the sound on?’ she asked.
Michaela switched it off so they could talk.
‘You okay?’ she asked.

Trisha rolled her eyes. ‘It’s me who should be asking you that. God, I

should never have called you and asked you to come.’

Michaela flinched. ‘Why would you say that?’ she asked.
Trisha took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Because now I have to worry

about you on top of everything else.’

Michaela laughed. ‘You don’t need to worry about me. I can look after

myself.’

Trisha shrugged. ‘Yeah that’s how come you were puking your guts

out on the side of the road before.’

Michaela looked at her and shook her head. ‘How could you have

foreseen that?’

Trisha looked severely aggravated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘And it

pisses me off that I don’t know what’s going on here. This is way beyond

117

anything I could ever imagine.’ She turned to Michaela. ‘What exactly is
going on?’ she asked.

Michaela shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But we’re going to find

out and we’re going to fix it.’ She grinned. ‘And then we’re going to live
happily ever after.’

Trisha rolled her eyes. ‘Anyone ever tell you that you are a hopeless

optimistic?’

They stumbled upon the mound after fifteen minutes of walking. Mi-

chaela looked around. The effigy mound was little more than an oval rise
in the middle of the trees.

‘Is this it?’ she asked.
Trisha was glancing around, looking puzzled.
‘There’s hardly anything here,’ she said. ‘This is what’s caused all the

problems?’

Caro shrugged and walked around the outside of the mound.
‘What were you expecting?’ she asked.
‘Something a bit more earth shattering than this,’ said Trisha.
Michaela couldn’t help but agree. It was a very unprepossessing sight.

Little more than a raised hillock. She followed Caro around the perimet-
er. It was a uniform shape; she had to give it that. An oval, almost but
not quite egg-shaped. She wanted to climb up and stand on the mound
but hesitated, wondering if that was appropriate. Then with a shrug, de-
cided to anyway.

It was cool in the woods, but beautiful with the light playing in the red

and gold leaves. Michaela stood on top of the small mound and looked
around.

‘What were these mounds for?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know exactly,’ Caro replied. ‘They’re old. Really old. And

probably shamanic in purpose.’

‘Shamanic?’ Trisha was standing with hands on hips facing out into

the trees.

‘Yeah, remember how I said last night that people used to live in a

world populated just as much by spirits as people? Well, shamans were
the go-between guys in the old days. They could travel between the
worlds of the spirit and people.’

‘And these are the dudes who built these mounds?’ Trisha was still

looking away.

‘Maybe,’ said Caro. ‘I think so anyway.’

118

Trisha threw her a quick glance. ‘You know sis, a little knowledge is a

dangerous thing. All this ‘I think so stuff’ doesn’t get you anywhere but
into trouble.’

Caro’s face reddened and Michaela could see she looked close to tears.

But Trisha had turned back out to watch the trees, like some sort of
sentry.

‘What are you looking at?’ Michaela asked her.
Trisha shrugged. ‘Keep thinking I see something, is all. A dog or

something.’ She turned around and looked up at Michaela who was now
scanning the woods in the direction she had been looking. ‘Woods and
forests and the like creep me out now, ever since that carry-on at the lake
last year.’

Michaela caught movement off to their right. She watched but could

see nothing. An animal of some sort, she guessed. Not what they were
here for anyway. She turned in a circle.

Something was strange about the way the trees were growing around

the mound. She stopped and frowned, trying to figure what it was. Turn-
ing slightly she realised there was some sort of track leading away from
the mound. She walked down from the mound and took a few steps
along the track. It was much harder to see from down on the forest floor,
but narrowing her eyes, she could just make it out. It went in a straight
line.

The others were watching her.
‘What have you found?’ asked Trisha.
‘A faint track,’ replied Michaela. ‘It goes straight through the trees,

look.’

Caro and Trisha fell in behind her. The track led a hundred feet into

the woods and petered out in a small clearing. A clearing which held an-
other, smaller mound. Michaela toured around the outside of this one.
This one was a circle.

‘I wonder what significance these mounds had,’ she said. ‘They’re not

actual burial mounds, are they? And why the straight path between
them?’

Caro spoke up. ‘The path would be a spirit path probably. A path the

spirits would follow from one place to another, and also a path for the
shaman to follow on one of his out-of-body journeys.’

Trisha turned an enquiring eye upon her younger sister.
‘And all this helps us how?’ she asked.
Michaela looked around. Trisha was right. It was interesting for sure,

and there was a certain, hushed atmosphere about the place that was a

119

little spooky, but there was nothing really to see here that shed any light
on the infestation of shadows back at the house.

‘So go over what you did while you were here last time, Caro,’ she

said after a moment.

Caro’s face darkened and she led then back to the first, larger mound.
‘I just kind of looked around,’ she said. ‘You know, wondering who

built the mounds and what for.’ She shrugged. ‘Then I decided to sit
down and try to visualise what it was like when the place was being
used. For whatever it was used for. I pretended I was a priestess or
something.’

Michaela ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Show us where you sat and

did that,’ she said. ‘Sit down and do it again. Describe what you were
thinking.’

Caro gave them an embarrassed look and sat down against the

mound. Michaela couldn’t help but notice the girl was right at the head
of the track. The spirit path, Caro had called it. Right in the way of any
traffic, Michaela thought. Presuming of course, there was still traffic
along these old ways.

Michaela was aware that she was groping in the dark, making one in-

tuitive leap after another. Doing nothing more really that following
vague associations in her mind. She rubbed her arms and caught sight of
the snakes twining themselves around her wrists. The blue ink shined in
the soft light. She looked back at the mound and the path that she knew
was there, invisible from this vantage point, but there nonetheless.

Caro was sitting on the ground, her pack in her lap. She looked awk-

ward and uncomfortable. Michaela smiled at her but stayed silent, trying
to recapture the flow of her thoughts. What was it she’d been thinking?

Right in the way of traffic. That had been it. Caro was sitting right in

the way of any traffic. Michaela shook her head. That was ridiculous.
What sort of traffic, for crying out loud? Spirits, Caro had said. The
shamans followed the paths on their trips out of body, going from our
world to the world of spirit, the two worlds nudged up close against
each other and anything possible in places where the veil was thin.

Michaela knew little of shamanic practises but thought maybe that

didn’t matter. She opened her eyes and looked around. Was it possible
that some residue of power clung to this place? Was it possible the spirits
still used the path? Michaela shivered at the thought.

The afternoon had turned very still among the trees. A hush had fallen

over the clearing as though even the breeze was holding its breath while
Michaela tried to keep hold of her nebulous thoughts.

120

She wondered if places once powerful and significant could still attract

traffic, for lack of a better word. If places like that were the easiest places
to cross from one world to the other?

And if they were, was it also possible that a young woman, in one of

these places at a time of year also significant, could have presented her-
self as a very interesting distraction, and attracted the attention of those
travellers?

Michaela rubbed her face. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Caro, get up, will you?’
Caro scrambled up from her seat at the foot of the path.
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘I thought you wanted me to tell you about what I

did?’

Michaela nodded. ‘Yeah, I did. I do. I just need to think a moment first,

okay?’

Michaela closed her eyes again. She had a strong feeling she was on

the right track. But it was so farfetched. She shook her head. Believing
this would require a major shift in world view. She thought about what
she’d seen so far. The shadows in Caro’s room, caught on tape the other
day, for God’s sakes. Was there any choice but to believe in this other
world?

She almost laughed. All right, say she was right. What then? How

were they going to undo what was done? How were they going to shift
attention away from Caro again? Was it even possible?

Michaela opened her eyes and saw Caro staring at her, face pale under

the mass of dark hair. She glanced at Trisha, who was still peering out
into the trees, a frown on her face.

‘What is it, Trisha?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Trisha said. ‘I just keep getting this weird feeling we’re

being watched. And every now and then I hear a twig breaking or
something like someone is walking around out there.’

Michaela looked around, alarmed. What would be out there? She

amended that. What would be out there all three-dimensional, breaking
sticks underfoot? She walked over to Trisha and looked in the same
direction.

Trisha shook her head. ‘I think it’s only a dog or deer or something.

I’m just freaking myself out.’ She looked at Michaela. ‘Do we need to
stay here much longer?’ she asked.

Michaela looked over at Caro. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a few

ideas, from seeing this place, but I’m not sure what we can do here. We
might have to come back though.’

Trisha nodded. ‘I want to head back to the car then, okay?’

121

‘You really think there’s something out there?’
‘Something. Don’t know what though. It’s keeping its distance.’
Michaela had a frightening thought. ‘It’s not a bear or something is it?’

There were no bears back home.

Trisha shook her head. ‘Don’t think so,’ she said.
That was enough for Michaela. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Don’t think so just

isn’t positive enough for me.’

They grouped together and headed back towards the car, walking

with wary steps. Michaela glanced back at the effigy mound and thought
about the dead straight path heading away from it to the other mound.
She had some thinking to do, but she was sure she was on the right path.
No pun intended.

122

Chapter

he feeling of being watched grew as they walked. Hurrying now,
Michaela hoped like hell they were going in the right direction be-

cause she had no idea. She just followed Caro who looked like someone
who knew where they were going.

‘We’re being followed,’ Trisha said.
Michaela wiped cold sweat from her face. Please God, she thought, let it

not be a bear.

‘It’s not a bear,’ said Trisha. Reading her thoughts.
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know.’
They reached the fence and tumbled over it, rushing for the car. Trisha

unlocked it and the three of them fell inside with sighs of relief.

‘That was freaky,’ Caro decided. ‘What was following us, Trisha?’
Trisha shrugged and slotted the key in the ignition.
‘Dog or something,’ she said. ‘Didn’t get a look at it. Was just damned

spooky.’ She started the car and turned around on the narrow road and
headed the car back towards the small town up the road. Michaela twis-
ted around in her seat towards where they’d come out of the woods. So-
mething stepped out onto the side of the road and she gasped.

‘Holy fuck can you see that? Trisha, in the rear vision mirror!’
‘What? What is it?’
The indistinct figure turned back into the woods and disappeared

from sight. Michaela turned back around.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It was like some sort of dog.’ She paused and

Trisha looked at her, eyebrows raised.

‘It was on two legs,’ Michaela said at last.
‘Bullshit!’
Michaela shivered and looked down at her hands. ‘I think I need a

nap,’ she said. ‘I could have sworn it was standing on two legs.’

Trisha was shaking her head. ‘Not possible, babe. Did you see it,

Caro?’

123

‘I don’t know what I saw. Something. A dog maybe, or a skinny bear.

It was gone so quickly, I really didn’t get a look.’

Michaela leaned back against the seat. Fatigue swept through her as

her heart finally slowed. Boy oh boy she’d had enough drama to last a
lifetime now, she reckoned. Whatever it was she’d just seen, she was
sure glad it had been once they were in the car.

‘What are we going to do now, babycakes?’
Michaela gave Trisha a wan smile and wished she could just lie down

with her head in her girlfriend’s lap and drift off to sleep.

‘I need a decent sleep,’ she said.
‘I don’t think we’re going to get that at home,’ said Trisha.
Michaela sighed. ‘You’re right. But if I don’t get some proper sleep,

I’m not going to be able to think straight.’ She rubbed at her eyes.

‘Perhaps we could stay somewhere else,’ Caro said from the back seat.

‘Who knows, maybe the shadow men wouldn’t follow us if we were
somewhere else for the night.’

Trisha shrugged. ‘You want to try it?’ she asked. ‘Worth a go, surely?

Then we can plan the next step and take it from there.’

Michaela nodded. ‘Okay. Let’s find somewhere else to stay then, just

for a night.’ She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. The motion of
the car lulled her into a doze. She thought about the weird creature she’d
seen when she looked back at the woods. It had been so strange; she’d
never seen anything like it in her life. If only she’d still had the camera
on. This reminded her, she still hadn’t listened to the recording made last
night in Caro’s bedroom. In fact she’d barely glanced at the recorder.
Another thing to do.

The list was getting too long. She needed some sleep. In a bed. All

night. With Trisha tucked up beside her. Perfect. She drifted off deeper,
face creased in a frown.

When she woke, Trisha was pulling to a stop in front of a hotel.
‘Where are we?’ she asked.
‘Back in Kenosha, sleepyhead. Come on, I’m starving. Let’s get a room

and see if we can find something to eat.’

Michaela got out of the car and stretched. It looked nice here. She

smiled as she looked around.

‘This looks like a very nice place,’ she said to Trisha.
Trisha grinned. ‘It is thanks, babe. May I suggest you get your credit

card out and ready?’ She came round the car and kissed Michaela, a
quick but warm pressing of lips.

‘Wait until we get a room, you guys,’ Caro complained.

124

Trisha laughed and cuffed her sister around the ears.
‘Hush up or no dinner for you.’ She leaned in the car and picked up

the video camera and Michaela’s computer. ‘Let’s go make ourselves
comfortable, shall we?’

They ended up not with just a room and bed, but a complete suite. Mi-

chaela followed a gleeful pair of sisters up in the elevator and along the
hallway to their rooms. Caro and Trisha whooped and danced in
between the furniture.

‘Look!’ squealed Caro, ‘A fruit basket! Holy shit how much did this

room cost?’

Michaela looked around. ‘Not room, sweetheart,’ she said. ‘Suite. Jesus

Trisha, you don’t think you might have gone just a little bit overboard,
do you?’

Trisha grinned and dragged Michaela into the room and flung her

arms around her, kissing her deeply.

‘We deserve it,’ she said.
Michaela looked at Trisha and couldn’t help but smile. Hell, maybe

they did deserve something of a treat. It had been a pretty stressful few
days. A bit of luxury wouldn’t go amiss. She tugged on Trisha’s hair and
kissed her.

‘Are we going down to the restaurant, or do we order room service?’

She looked from Trisha to Caro.

Caro giggled. ‘We’re not exactly dressed for a place this fancy.’
‘Room service it is, then. Why don’t you guys order? I’m going to have

a shower.’ She looked around again. ‘Bet this place has a great shower.’

125

Chapter

t did have a great shower and the room service was excellent too.
They ate at the dining table which sat littered with plates when they

had finished.

‘That was the most brilliant meal I’ve ever had,’ Caro announced. ‘I

absolutely couldn’t eat another bite.’

‘Considering that I’m sure you’ve just eaten the equivalent of a buf-

falo, I’m not surprised,’ Trisha said, her own face betraying satisfaction
with the meal.

Michaela smiled at both of them. She was feeling a bit better now. The

nap in the car, a hot shower which had been more of an aquatic massage,
thanks to the excellent water pressure, and now a terrific meal; she was
feeling all right. She cleared the table and got out her laptop. Trisha
groaned.

‘Can’t we have a break from that just for one night?’
Michaela shrugged. ‘Just give me half an hour,’ she said.
Trisha shrugged. ‘I’m going to watch a movie,’ she said. ‘Caro, what

about you?’

Caro looked conflicted a moment. ‘Movie,’ she said. ‘Sorry Michaela.’
Michaela looked up from the screen. ‘No problem,’ she said. Caro and

Trisha threw themselves onto the couch in front of the television and
squabbled over which movie to watch. Michaela pulled the digital voice
recorder from her pocket and plugged it in. She scooped a set of head-
phones out of her laptop bag and plugged them in too. She ran through
the recording.

Nothing.
It hadn’t recorded anything. Michaela tapped a fingernail on the table

and thought about it. Weird. Definitely weird. The device was designed
to record when there was noise. She checked the numbers on the pro-
gram. According to that, it had recorded for three hours and twenty five
minutes.

But it had recorded silence. She picked the recorder up and examined

it. Perhaps it was faulty. But she didn’t think so. It had been fresh out of

126

the box when she left it on the bookshelf in Caro’s room. Brand new. It
was a little like the camera, she decided. Recording nothing, which in it-
self was something. The recorder should at least have picked up Caro
and herself talking when they went into the room in the morning, but
like with the camera, there was nothing.

It was as though something was running interference. She leaned back

in her chair. The strange thing was, that this was just more proof. Not the
sort of thing that would stand up in some lab, sure, but to her it was in-
controvertible proof.

She sighed and logged onto the internet. Proof of what, though? That

was the million dollar question. Caro and Trisha laughed at something
on the television and Michaela took her headphones off, saved the silent
recording and opened up the Google search page. She thought for a mo-
ment, then typed in effigy mounds, map, Wisconsin and hit search.

One of the search results caught her eye. She clicked on it and a page

loaded, a red background, two outline drawings of the state, the top
marked with the sites of effigy mounds and there were a lot of them.

But the lower map was the one that really made her sit up. Again, the

state outline, but this one was titled differently, though most of the
marked spots were in the same places as the mounds in the top map.
This one was titled ‘Dogman sightings’.

She scrolled down the page and found the link to the sites homepage.

She clicked on it, wondering where it was going to take her. Another red
background, this one with a big title. She stared at it. The Beast of Bray
Road. And there was a picture. A dog, long muzzle, big teeth, tall, ugly
and standing on two legs.

Michaela ran her fingers through her hair. This was getting frighten-

ingly weird. She scanned the text. Sightings of a man-dog creature, span-
ning a period of years, spread across the southern part of the state. She
read on.

Then clicked back to the map. Very definitely weird. The maps were

almost exactly the same. She wondered where their own effigy mound
was. She moved the mouse and the little arrow pointed to where she
thought they were on the map.

‘Caro?’ she said after a moment. ‘Do you have your map that we used

today?’

Caro looked over and nodded. ‘It’s in the outside pocket of my bag,’

she said, pointing. ‘Just grab it if you want.’ She turned back to the
television.

127

Michaela unfolded the map and smoothed it out in front of her. She

needed a more detailed map of the state. Maybe she could pick one up in
the morning. She looked back at the computer. Or not. She was just get-
ting herself side-tracked here.

Or was she? Chewing on her lip, she gave it some thought. If these

things, these beasts, were being seen like this, in clusters around these ef-
figy mounds, then chances were it meant there was still some sort of
power attached to the mounds. Which brought her back to her earlier
thinking.

If they were still places of power, then there could be some sort of

traffic. If that were the case, it was more than possible a young girl could
sit herself down in the path of that traffic and prove herself quite a
distraction.

Okay. So Caro had caught the attention of these shadow men. What

could these shadow men actually do? She thought about all the stories
about them she’d read so far. Most of them were tales of being watched.
Just watched. There was no real interaction except for those who said
they were sat upon, suffocated and the like. Michaela had dismissed
those ones, though. They were too consistent with the symptoms of sleep
paralysis.

But back to the point. These shadow men were watchers. Michaela

considered the evidence from the webcam and video cameras. They were
real enough, she had no doubt about that, and they could be seen. They
could even influence their environment to some degree, judging by the
voice recordings and the darkness the second camera had recorded. But
on the whole, they seemed just as interested in us as we were in them.

Michaela looked over at Caro and Trisha laughing and relaxed on the

couch. The big question really was how were they going to rid Caro of
the shadow men’s unwanted attention?

That was that question that Michaela simply didn’t have an answer to.

She sighed and shut down her computer. She was tired again. Yawning,
she put everything except the video camera away.

‘I’m going to set this up in your room, okay Caro?’ she asked.
Caro looked up and a frown crossed her face. Then she nodded.

‘Okay, but I don’t think they’ll come here, do you?’

Michaela shrugged. She hoped not, that was for sure. ‘I’d like to set it

up anyway,’ she said. ‘Just in case.’

Caro nodded and turned back to the television. Michaela went into the

second bedroom where Caro would sleep and set the camera on a set of
drawers. She would tell Caro to turn it on when she went to bed.

128

Bed. That sounded like just the place. She leaned over the couch and

wrapped her arms around Trisha. ‘I’m going to bed, okay babe? Caro, I
put the camera in your room. Just turn in on before you get into bed.’
She kissed Trisha.

‘I’ll be in shortly,’ said Trisha. ‘This is almost finished.’
Michaela nodded and went into their bedroom, desperate suddenly to

slide between the crisp cotton sheets. She was asleep within minutes.

129

Chapter

n her dream, she was suddenly tumbling down a hillside. The
ground was shaking underneath her. The shaking didn’t stop.

‘Wake up Michaela! Holy shit, wake up already!’
Michaela opened her eyes. Trisha was shaking her by the shoulders.

She forced the dream away and herself awake. ‘What’s wrong?’ she
asked, grabbing Trisha by the hand. She could see Caro at the end of the
bed too, her face pale under her heavy, dark hair.

‘You gotta get up. They’re back.’
Michaela looked around and groped for her jeans. The room was

ablaze with electric light. Through the bedroom door she could see the
rest of the suite similarly bright.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.
Caro was chewing on her fingernails. Trisha handed Michaela her

shirt.

‘We were just watching TV. The movie had finished and you were

asleep. Most of the lights were off and then it was just like at home.
Shadows started moving, but you could only see them from the corner of
your eye. But that was bad enough.’ She shuddered. ‘We could feel
them, in the corners, watching us; it felt like there were hundreds of
them.’ She sank down on the edge of the bed. ‘It was horrible, Michaela.
Caro leapt up and we started turning on all the lights. What’re we going
to do?’

Michaela took in their drawn, white faces and knew they had to do

something. She looked around for her boots, eyes drawn to the corners
of the room, where she could have sworn she felt them waiting. She
shivered all of a sudden.

Caro asked again. ‘What’re we going to do?’ She stuck her fist back in

her mouth. ‘They’re not going to go away, are they?’

Michaela stood up, socks on now, shoving her feet into boots. ‘Get

your shoes and jackets on,’ she said.

‘Where are we going?’ Trisha asked, but she was already looking

around for her shoes.

130

Michaela leaned down to do up her laces. ‘We’re going to take them

back,’ she said after a moment.

There was a slight popping sound from the other room, and the ceiling

light went out. Caro squealed in fright and Trisha clamped a hand on
Michaela’s arm.

‘What the fuck?’ she said.
Another popping sound, and another light out. The suite’s small

lounge grew dark through the doorway.

‘Shoes, jackets, now,’ Michaela commanded, standing up and drawing

Trisha with her. ‘Get your car keys.’

Trisha nodded mutely and Michaela pushed past to Caro. ‘Caro?’ she

hissed. ‘Get your shoes on.’

Caro shook her head, eyes gripped by the dark room. ‘They’re in

there,’ she said.

Michaela put an arm round her. ‘I’ll come with you.’
They went through into the next room, lit now only by the television.

Caro moved round by the couch and groped on the floor for her shoes.
Michaela stood by her, willing her to hurry up, eyeing the corners of the
room where the shadows seemed to grow and darken, gelling together
into solid blackness.

The light in the bedroom went out.
‘Trisha?’
Trisha appeared in the doorway. ‘The keys are on the table,’ she said.
Michaela glanced down at Caro, still pulling on her shoes. ‘Are you

ready?’ she asked, tugging on the girl’s sleeve.

The television screen went back. Trisha gave a startled shriek from the

doorway.

‘We have to get out of here now,’ hissed Michaela, pulling Caro

through the sudden blackness to where she hoped the table was. The
darkness enveloped her, as though it had form and mass, pushing at her
face. ‘Trisha?’ she called. ‘Where are you? Find the door.’ She heard
movement, hoped it was Trisha groping towards the suite door. Caro
stumbled behind her and Michaela could hear the harsh sounds of her
breathing. Her bag was on the table. And the keys, somewhere.

She crashed into something, hitting her shin. She bit her lip on the pain

and stuck a hand out, groping, relieved to find the tabletop under her
fingers. She swept up her bag, slinging it over a shoulder and reaching
back for the keys. Where were they?

‘Michaela?’ Trisha’s voice was almost unrecognizable.

131

‘Keys,’ Michaela said into the darkness. ‘Where the fuck are the keys?’

She could feel movement in the darkness of the room, hoped to God it
was Trisha or Caro.

Caro moved to her side, hands sweeping the table, looking for the keys

too. Her hand touched something that jangled and she grasped them.
‘Found them,’ she said, her voice an outrush of held breath.

Michaela grabbed hold of her. ‘Don’t drop them,’ she said, already

turning them towards what she hoped was the door.

The air seemed to be growing thicker. She bit down on her panic. Just

imaging it, she told herself. A breeze of something fanned past her face
and she gave a startled yelp. The darkness was filled, and writhing.
Hand clamped on Caro’s arm, she dragged the girl forward.

‘Trisha?’ she called, throat filling with syrupy darkness. ‘Where are

you Trish?’

Something bumped into her. She flung out a hand and was relieved

when it struck something warm and solid. ‘Trisha? That you?’

The warm body grabbed her back. ‘I can’t find the door.’ It was Trisha

and Michaela hung onto her.

‘It has to be here somewhere,’ she said, struggling for calm. She peered

into the dark room, straining her eyes. There must be a chink of light
somewhere, just the smallest reflection from a window where the drapes
weren’t fully closed. But there was no light anywhere. And the darkness
was pressing closer.

She tried to remember the room, picturing it in her mind. It wasn’t that

big, for fuck’s sake! Where the hell was the door? Hell, where was a
wall? She surged forward, taking the other two with her. She could feel
the shadows reaching for them, grasping with their inky fingers…

A wall. She let go of one of the girls, no longer knowing which one.

‘Hang onto me,’ she commanded, letting her hand sweep the smooth
surface and moving along it. The door must be close.

Her hand closed over the door knob and her knees just about buckled

with relief. She twisted it but it didn’t budge. ‘I can’t get the door open,’
she whispered.

A hand slid down over hers, grasped the door knob, did something,

twisted it and it turned.

‘Move back!’ Trisha yelled. ‘It opens inward.’
They stumbled back, the three of them entwined in the twisting dark-

ness and Trisha yanked the door open, letting a welcome oblong of light
spill into the room.

132

Through into the hotel hallway, Trisha banged the door shut behind

them and staggered back against the facing wall. All three of them stared
at the closed door, their breathing hitching.

‘Oh fuck.’ It was Trisha. She was staring down at the bar of blackness

under the door. She groped for Michaela as they watched in stunned fas-
cination as the blackness bulged beneath the door and began to ooze un-
der the gap and into the hallway like an oil spill. There was a fizzing and
a popping and the hallway light beside them burst in a shatter of glass
and went out. The stain grew larger in the dimmer length of corridor.

‘We’re outta here,’ Michaela said, pushing the other two in front of her

and towards the exit. Within seconds the three of them were running.

There was no one at the reception desk when they ran past and

pushed the doors open, tumbling out into the night. Probably just as
well, they would have been a suspicious sight, Michaela was sure, three
wild, disheveled women running as though the hounds of hell were
chasing them. They backed away into the car park.

‘You still have those keys, Caro?’ Michaela asked, her voice barely a

croak, her throat dry.

Caro didn’t even answer, just held the shining bunch of keys up. Mi-

chaela nodded at her and turned towards Trisha. ‘Where’s the car, babe?’

They walked off, huddled together, looking for the car. Trisha saw it

first and pointed it out. Caro gave her the keys and the doors were un-
locked and they all clambered in, feeling a little safer.

‘Where are we going to go?’ Trisha asked at last. She looked over at

Michaela sitting in the passenger seat and her face was starkly pale in the
yellow car light.

Caro spoke up from the back seat. ‘We can’t go home,’ she said.

‘Those, those things will just follow us, I know they will.’ She stifled a
sob and set her face. ‘They’re going to follow me wherever I go aren’t
they?’

Michaela tried to smile at her, but she was afraid it would have looked

more of a grimace than a reassurance. ‘We have to get rid of them,’ she
said, knowing the other two women weren’t going to like what she was
about to say. Hell, she wasn’t thrilled with it either.

Caro was struggling not to cry. ‘How?’ she asked. ‘We don’t even

know what they are? How are we supposed to get rid of them?’

Michaela shifted, uncomfortable. She looked at Trisha. ‘We know

where they came from though,’ she said. ‘We can take them back.’

133

Trisha’s face creased in a frown and she started shaking her head. ‘Oh

no. No way. Michaela you have to be fucking kidding me,’

Caro swiped at her eyes. ‘What?’ she asked.
Trisha was still shaking her head. ‘You can’t be serious. It’s the middle

of the night. Middle of fucking Halloween night, no fucking less. There’s
no way we’re going back there.’

Michaela ran her fingers through her hair. There was no way she

wanted to go back there either. Not when something had been stalking
them last time, something that was not a bear, but was probably worse
than a bear. And she didn’t have a clue what they were supposed to do
when they got there, but it was the only idea she even thought might be
worth something.

‘What?’ Caro repeated, looking from one of them to the other.
‘I don’t think we have a choice,’ Michaela said to Trisha, her voice

gentle. ‘And I think the fact that it’s Halloween will be in our favor.’ She
looked at Caro. ‘It was Midsummers when you went there and were no-
ticed. If we can lead them back there, perhaps they will go back to what
they should have been doing.’ She watched horrified comprehension
dawn in Caro’s dark eyes. ‘Or something,’ she finished, aware of how
lame her argument sounded.

There was silence in the car. Trisha had her hands set on the steering

wheel, gazing out into the dark night.

‘I really, really need a smoke,’ she said at last.
Michaela opened the glove box and passed her a pack of cigarettes.

Trisha shook out a smoke and groped around for a lighter. She cranked
the window down a little and blew out a stream of white smoke.

‘Okay then,’ she said and turned the key in the ignition. ‘Let’s do this

thing.’

Michaela nodded as they backed out of their parking space and pulled

out onto the road. She swiveled in her seat and tried to smile reassur-
ingly at Caro.

If only she felt as confident as she was trying to look.

134

Chapter

ichaela was tempted to pinch one of Trisha’s cigarettes. But her
stomach was churning enough already, she’d probably be sick at

the side of the road again if she tried to smoke. But her nerves were
jumping; she didn’t think she’d ever been this nervous in her life. Not
even last year when they were chasing a madman through the bush. Her
mind kept playing images from the website in her mind. Images of a dog
man that walked on two legs and didn’t even look a little bit friendly.

‘Should have brought a bone,’ she muttered, trying to get comfortable

in her seat.

Trisha glanced at her. ‘What was that?’
Michaela shook her head. ‘Nothing, just talking to myself. Trying to

convince myself we’re not totally crazy.’

Trisha wasn’t any help. ‘Babe,’ she said. ‘We’re absolutely fucking

nuts. But why let that stop us?’ She grinned unexpectedly in the light
from the dash.

Michaela couldn’t help but return the smile. ‘We’re going to deserve a

holiday after this,’ she said.

‘Honey, you can bet your sweet ass on that one.’
Michaela checked on Caro, sitting white-faced in the back seat then

settled down. They were doing the right thing, she was sure of it.
Besides, as far as she could tell, this was their only option. These shadow
things would just follow Caro around if they didn’t find a way to send
them back to wherever it was they came from. Just had to put them back
on the right path and remind them of their real business. Whatever that
was.

But when Trisha finally pulled off the road and parked, Michaela

stared out at the dark mass of trees and suppressed a shudder. Please
God, she thought, just keep the wolf thing away from us.

Trisha lit another cigarette. ‘Are we ready?’ she asked.
Caro scooted forward. ‘I still don’t understand what we’re going to

do,’ she said, wrapping her arms around herself.

135

‘We’re going to boot these fucker’s asses back to where they came

from,’ Trisha answered.

‘But how?’ Caro persisted. ‘And how do we even know they’ve fol-

lowed us? Nothing’s going to happen if the shadow men are still waiting
for us back at the hotel, or the house or whatever.’

Trisha pointed her cigarette at Michaela. ‘You want to field this one,

babe?’

Michaela turned to Caro. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We don’t actually

know if this will work. We don’t know if this will work.’ She tried to
smile. ‘But I think they will have followed us, and I think this is the right
thing to be doing.’ She shrugged. ‘I can’t think of what else to do and this
makes sense. And it’s Halloween.’

Caro looked miserable. ‘When the veil between the worlds is at its

thinnest,’ she said.

Trisha stubbed out her smoke. ‘If we don’t get a move on, it won’t be

Halloween for much longer.’

Michaela reached into her back pack and took out the flashlights.

There were only two so she gave the other to Trisha. They sat and looked
out the windows.

‘Ready when you are,’ Trisha said, but her voice was tight.
Michaela took a deep breath. ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘Here goes

nothing.’

It was far worse outside actually in the dark than sitting in a nice safe

car looking at it. It was also cold. None of them had had time to pull on
jackets and a cold damp seemed to seep up from the ground. The path
was narrow, forcing them to walk single file when they would much
rather have huddled into a tight knot. Michaela forced herself to lead the
way, ears straining for any sounds not being made by the three of them.
She took deep breaths and shone the flashlight ahead, trying to keep her
hand from shaking. Behind her, Caro was clinging on to the tail of her
shirt and Michaela could hear the hitching sobs of her breathing.

All around them the trees reached gnarled fingers towards them from

the darkness and Michaela cringed at every touch. Were they doing the
right thing? She nodded to herself, she was pretty sure this was their
only real option. But wandering through the cold night with just a puny
beam of light to guide them, and knowing a strange beast was on the
prowl in the area, there was no way that it was a sensible choice.

‘What’s that?’ Trisha hissed, pulling them to a stop.
Michaela strained her ears to listen.

136

‘I don’t hear anything,’ Caro whispered.
Trisha traced a circle in the trees around them. She shuddered and

flicked the flashlight beam in front of them again.

‘Don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’m just spooking myself. Let’s get moving

again.’

They stumbled forward. Michaela couldn’t tell how far from the

mound they still were. Everything looked different in the darkness. She
hitched in a breath and let out a frozen puff of air. It was getting colder
with every step they took. A branch swatted her in the face and she
clamped down on a sudden scream. God help us, she thought. We’re out of
our minds. But the scene in the hotel room flashed though her head and
she straightened her shoulders and stepped forward again, the others
crowding at her back. There was nothing else for it. They had to do
something. And this was the only thing she could figure.

A thin voice from behind her. ‘We’re there.’ Caro was still gripping the

back of Michaela’s shirt. She tugged on it. ‘Look, the clearing’s just in
front of us, see?’

Michaela swung the flashlight around. Caro was right, they were here.
Trisha stepped up beside her. ‘Now what?’ she asked.
Michaela cleared her throat. ‘Let’s have a look around,’ she said, not

wanting to admit she didn’t have a plan for what came next. Maybe
something would come to her. As long as it wasn’t covered in fur and
walking on hind legs.

They moved forward in a huddle, twigs snapping under their feet. The

clearing was tinted slightly with stray light from the moon, the mound
showing silver green flanks in the torch light.

‘Where’s the path to the smaller mound?’ Michaela asked.
Caro held up a pale hand and pointed. ‘Over there, I think.’
Michaela nodded. ‘What’s the time, Trisha?’

There was a small blue glow as Trisha checked her watch. ‘Almost

midnight,’ Trisha said, uncharacteristically reserved.

Michaela wrapped an arm around Caro. ‘Are you feeling brave, Caro?’

she whispered.

‘No,’ came the strangled reply. ‘Not even a little bit.’
Michaela squeezed the girl’s shoulders. ‘You’re going to have to be,

okay? We have to fix this.’

Caro shivered against her. ‘How?’ she asked.
Trisha was looking at her too. Michaela shone her light on the vague,

shadowed path from one mound to the other. ‘You have to go sit down,’
she said to Caro. ‘Just like you did before. I think maybe that will lead

137

the shadows back to the path.’ She swallowed. ‘And with a bit of luck, I
think they might continue on their way. Somehow.’ It seemed a pretty
weak plan, now she was hearing it out loud.

Caro was shaking her head. ‘I don’t want to.’
Trisha spoke up. ‘You have to, little sis.’
‘We will be right here with you,’ Michaela said. ‘We won’t go any-

where, I promise. Right here with you.’

Caro wiped her eyes with a fisted hand. She nodded. ‘I have to, don’t

I?’ she asked. ‘I started it here, somehow.’ She looked around at the dark-
ness. ‘I have to fix it somehow.’ She took a stumbling step forward and
looked back at the women. ‘You’ll be right here?’ she asked.

‘We’ll come stand right beside you.’ Michaela said. ‘Sit down where

you did last time. In fact, just do everything you did then.’

Caro gave an unsteady laugh. ‘It was daylight then. Sunny. Somehow

I don’t think it’s going to feel the same this time.’ She took another few
steps forward and Michaela could see she was trembling.

Trisha was scanning the trees with the flashlight again. Michaela

looked at her.

‘Anything?’ she asked.
Trisha shook her head. ‘Just shadows and trees and shit,’ she said.

‘Don’t know if they’re just shadows or shadow things. Can’t tell.’

‘Okay,’ Michaela said. ‘You go on the far side of Caro, and I’ll stand

this side so we’re flanking her.’

Trisha nodded and gave Caro a squeeze. ‘Right over here, baby,’ she

said and took her place on the other side of her sister. Michaela stood op-
posite her, watching Caro sit herself gingerly down on the ground, her
back to the mound, facing the track.

‘Okay,’ Caro whispered. ‘What do I do now?’
Michaela glanced over at Trisha. ‘We’re going to turn the lights off

now, okay?’

138

Chapter

he darkness rushed in on them. Michaela felt a momentary sense of
vertigo and resisted the urge to snap the light back on. She forced

herself to be still instead, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim moon-
light. She could hear Caro’s breathing as the girl struggled to keep calm.

‘That’s good, Caro,’ Michaela told her. ‘Relax as much as possible.

Close your eyes and imagine the path between the mounds again. Just
like you did the first time.’

‘The dead paths,’ the girl on the ground responded. ‘Where the sham-

an travels, where the spirits walk, where shadows from the other side
cross over.’

Trisha cleared her throat on the other side of Caro and Michaela

flashed her a warning look. She didn’t know if Trisha intercepted it, but
they both remained silent. Michaela stood, not quite holding her breath.
What was going to happen? Was anything going to happen? She didn’t
have the slightest idea so she stood there, trying to calm breathing and
mind. On the ground beside her, Caro had her eyes half closed, sitting
cross legged, facing the path.

Trisha gasped. She nodded towards the path. Michaela turned to look.
It seemed lighter than before. The moon must have come out from the

clouds for the track glowed lighter, silvery white as though a mist hung
in the light there. Michaela held her breath.

The track grew lighter and lighter. Mist was swirling, visible off the

ground now. Michaela could feel her heart beating painfully in her chest.
She released her breath slowly, not wanting to disturb anything. On the
other side, Trisha made a sudden movement and Michaela followed her
lover’s glance. The track may have been lighter, but there was something
dark there as well. At the far end of the track, something was emerging
from the light by the far mound. Something dark. Shadows. Michaela felt
her heart stutter and a cold sweat sprouted on her brow. She swallowed
and forced herself to stay rooted to the spot.

139

They were definitely shadows. Pressing in from the depths of the

woods. Breaking off from the surrounding darkness to press together on
the other end of the path.

The mist shivered on the path and seemed almost to undulate in front

of them. Michaela felt faint as she realized the mist wasn’t just water va-
por - something else was in there with it. Foggy white shapes moved
down the path from the effigy mound towards them. Closer and closer
they came until Michaela was sure Caro, and even she and Trisha would
be swallowed up in shapes. She held her breath as they reached Caro,
but they didn’t even pause. They swept over Caro’s head and up to the
mound at her back. Michaela turned and watched them linger on the
back of the mound then sink away into thin air again. Two, three, four of
them. A dozen. So many that it seemed mist again, heavy fog lit from in-
side itself, moving, swirling up the path from one mound to the other.

She looked back down the track again. The shadows? Where were

they? They were there, gathered still at the end of the track. She could
see them through the wraith-like shapes of fog.

Trisha’s voice hissed out. ‘They’re coming,’ she said.
Caro’s head had been bowed over her knees, but she lifted it now and

stared down the track. The shadowy forms had begun to advance, like a
dark hole in the fog. Michaela stood, fascinated, terrified, her heart stut-
tering in her chest. She could make out odd shapes like limbs as the dark
mass moved towards them, coming closer.

Coming closer! What would they do when they came upon the three

women? And Caro in their way! Michaela’s throat felt suddenly dry and
she stared at the approaching forms. It’s working, she thought. It’s really
working – they’re back on the path.

Now they were in the clearing, coming closer to the mound, to Caro.

Caro was sitting up now and staring at the advancing dark shapes.
Watching them bear down on her. Almost on top of her.

Michaela’s breath was coming quickly now, her heart hammering at

her ribs. She half bent to grab the girl from the ground, but Caro was
quicker. The shadow forms almost upon her, she ducked her head and
rolled off the path, out of the way. Michaela’s heart stuttered as the shad-
ows seemed to pause. Keep going, keep going, she mentally urged them on.

After an interminable second, they passed. On up the sides of the

mound and disappearing into the air, the same way the misty white
wraiths had.

With that the spell was broken and Michaela collapsed onto the

ground next to Caro. She squeezed her eyes shut and groped in the

140

darkness for the girl. Caro found her and wrapped her arms around Mi-
chaela. They clung together.

‘Are you all right?’ Michaela whispered, opening her eyes and finding

Caro’s white face. It bobbed up and down in a nod at her. Michaela nod-
ded back and hugged her.

‘Did you see that?’ It was Trisha’s voice, low and awed. ‘Did you see

that?’ she repeated. ‘Holy fucking shit, did you see that?’

Michaela stifled a laugh that would have sounded dangerously close

to hysterical and reached up for her girlfriend. Trisha’s hand grasped
hers and pulled her and Caro up from the ground. They stood with arms
around each other.

At last Caro spoke. ‘It worked, didn’t it?’ she asked.
Michaela could only nod. She looked around again at the clearing, dim

again with ordinary moonlight. She untangled herself and flicked on the
flash light again, sending the beam down the path. There was nothing
there. She turned the beam on the two sisters.

Trisha was grinning. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.

141

Chapter

ichaela carried the tray of coffees and a glass of lemonade to the
table. They were in the airport lounge waiting for the plane to

board.

‘Where’s Caro?’ she asked Trisha.
‘Over there checking out the cute guy,’ Trisha replied.
Michaela tracked across the room until she found the teenaged girl,

standing on the viewing platform chatting to a boy of about the same
age. She smiled and sat down. ‘You okay?’ she asked her girlfriend.

Trisha grinned at her. ‘Hell yeah,’ she said. ‘It is going to be summer

where we’re going isn’t it?’

Michaela rolled her eyes. ‘No regrets then?’
Trisha shook a headful of wild curls. ‘Not even one. I think Mom

might even have been kind of relieved when I told her what Caro and I
were planning to do.’ She shrugged. ‘Didn’t offer any objections anyway.
Even though Caro’s not sixteen for a month or so.’

Michaela looked out the window at the girl again. Caro looked good.

Like she’d been sleeping well. Like she had nothing to worry about
anymore.’

‘I’m glad,’ Michaela said. ‘I’m glad it worked out all round.’ She

reached over the table and tugged on a stray curl. ‘Thanks,’ she said.

Trisha looked surprised. ‘Thanks for what? It should be me thanking

you, that’s for shit sure.’

Michaela shook her head. ‘Thanks for getting into trouble and drag-

ging me over here to sort it out,’ she said, a sly smile stretching over her
face.

Trisha grinned. ‘Cheeky bitch.’

The loudspeakers announced their boarding call and Caro wandered

back in.

‘Are you ready?’ Michaela asked her.

142

Caro laughed. ‘Am I ever. That guy I was talking to says he has his

holidays in Nelson every summer. He’s offered to teach me to surf.’ She
looked at Michaela. ‘Nelson is where we’re going isn’t it?’

Michaela pulled a face and nodded. ‘Surfing?’ she said and picking up

her bag and the newspaper she’d bought earlier, followed the other two
towards the plane. Once they were settled in their seats, she took out the
newspaper and opened it to the headline that had snagged her attention.

‘HALLOWEEN PRANK? DOGMAN SPOTTED AGAIN.’

143

SHADOWS FALL

By Kate Genet

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

144

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145

Out-takes

We've been having a lot of fun over at The Misbehaving Mind, and I

thought I'd share with you some of the amusing “out-takes” we've done
as spin-offs from Shadows Fall.

(Reproduced with full permission from Mike H. - thanks Mike!)

Mike's Alternative Ending:
Trisha sat at Michaela’s computer. She noticed a folder named “When

Trish…” Curious, she click on it once and the full name appeared “When
Trish is away”. A slow dread came over Trisha. What would Michaela
save on her computer that she would only need when Trisha was away?
Phone numbers? Addresses? She double clicked on the folder. There was
only one file in the folder. From the icon, she could tell it was a video
file. She double clicked on it and as she watched it her face went pale.

Standing up with fists clenched she yelled “You said the camera was

off!”

* * *
In other Trisha sightings, part one : (Also provided by Mike H.)
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Trisha demanded, reach-

ing over Michaela’s shoulder and pushing the guy away that was stand-
ing behind her.

“What do you think I was doing?” he said.
“We were minding our own business dancing and you come over here

and hit on us,” Trisha said.

“Well you two were advertising.”
“Advertising?” She looked like she almost swallowed her tongue. At

first she seemed dumbfound, then incredulous, “ADVERTISING?! Pre-
cisely how were we ADVERTISING?!”

“Well two girls and no guy. You must be looking for one.”
“Did it occur to you that we enjoy dancing with each other and wer-

en’t doing it to fulfill some voyeuristic desire on your part?”

Apparently it did not and still did not.
“Look,” Trisha tried again,”When YOU are dancing with a girl are you

ADVERTISING for some sweaty guy to start grinding up against you
from behind?”

“No of course not.”
“And neither are we!”
“Why not?”
Words failed her.

146

She turned to Michaela, “C’mon let’s get out of here.”
When they reached the door, Trisha turned back to the club,”You can

put your cell phones away, the lesbians are leaving now. Sorry we didn’t
spontaneously fuck for your entertainment. After all that’s what we’re
supposed to do in public.”

When they got outside,Trisha suddenly felt herself pushed up against

an outside wall of the club.

Michaela had pinned her to the wall with her forearm across Trisha’s

chest.

“Michaela, you okay? You’re not mad are you?”
“I’m not mad and I am way more than okay.”
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think? We’re going to spontaneously fuck in public.

After all that’s what you’re supposed to do when your girlfriend rises to
your defense and you know you can’t make it home without tearing her
clothes off. Besides, there’s a security camera above us and I need some
new footage. Someone deleted my other video.”

Part Two: (provided by Kate Genet)

Trisha leaned back against the wall as Michaela attacked her buttons.

“I always knew I had a dirty mind, but you, Michaela, you take the
cake,” she said.

Michaela just grunted as she uncovered the skin she wanted so much.

“And you talk too much, baby,” she said.

Trisha tipped her head back as Michaela grazed her thumb across a

nipple.
“Yeah sure. But you not only have a fantastically dirty mind, Michaela,
it’s a devious one too,” she said. “I really, really like that in a woman.
But there’s no way in hell we’re getting you another video!”

Part Three: (provided by Mike)

The video game character on the screen was surfing the waves with

great precision. Standing sideways in front of the screen with one arm
towards the screen and one away was Caro, her posture mimicking the
character on screen. She had never been into video games but she really
liked the motion tracking surfing simulation.

147

The onscreen character crashed as she turned around at the sound of

the door opening. Trisha entered, her hair rumpled and her shirt missing
a couple buttons, which she held closed with one hand.

Caro panicked.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
“Oh, I was … uhmm…mugged.”
“Mugged?!” Caro said in disbelief, ”Are you okay, did you call the po-

lice, how’s Mich-” her words cut off as Michaela entered equally
disheveled. Caro’s eyes narrowed, “Lemme guess. You were ‘mugged’
too?”

“Something like that. There’s been a surge in criminal activity in the

region lately.”

“Yeah, apparently public indecency is on the rise,” Caro said, then

looking at Trisha, “Apparently your ‘mugger’ wore pink lipstick.”

Trisha blushed, “I think I’m going to take a shower.”
“Try not getting ‘mugged’ in the shower,” Caro said turning back to

the television.

“That was yesterday morning,” Michaela whispered to Trisha as they

entered the next room. Michela shut the door behind them.

“Hey thanks again for getting Caro the game system. She seems to be

having a blast with it. We never could afford one before,” Trisha said.

“Well she helped me with some important computer stuff.”
“Really? What did she help you with,” Trisha asked from the bath-

room as Michaela sat down in front of her computer.

On the screen read the message “One deleted file recovered”. Michaela

smiled.

“Oh, nothing for you to worry about,” she replied.

Fat Pat and the Accidental Death of Maryanne

(By Kate Genet)
Some characters like to keep on talking outside of their books.
I was outside enjoying the mild evening air one night and admiring

the pretty, pearl-coloured moon when Trisha decided to drop by for a
chat. We had a most amusing conversation and I just have to share with
you the story she had to tell:

Trisha: Hey, you think I could be a writer?
Me: I don’t know. Why, do you want to be one?

148

Trisha: Not really, I suppose. Don’t think I’d be able to sit still long

enough. Besides, I bet you have to know a lot about human nature and
shit, right?

Me: I wouldn’t necessarily say that, but you probably need to be the

sort of person who thinks about it a lot, at least.

Trisha: Definitely don’t have the patience, then. Hey. I have a hell of a

story for you though.

Me: You do? Tell me.
Trisha: All right. No shitting you, this is as true as I’m sitting here,

right?

There was this guy used to come into the diner all the time, okay? He

killed his wife. You know, murdered her? He got away with it too, but
everyone in town knows he’s as guilty as a bear shitting in the woods.

Me: How’d he get away with it?
Trisha: See, this is the story, right? His name’s Pat but everyone calls

him Fat Pat. Didn’t used to be fat, was as fit as anything all his life but
few years back he started putting on weight. Out of the blue, like, started
piling on the pounds, scarfing burgers and fries every night at the diner
then going home to eat whatever his wife cooked for him too, I’ll bet.

He got pretty huge all right – not big enough to be stuck in bed all day

like those grossly enormous guys you see on TV sometimes, but pretty
fucking big anyway. Any time anyone asked him why he was suddenly
trying to turn into King Kong, he’d just shrug and order another shake.

It was kinda disgusting but fascinating at the same time, you know?

Everyone in town started placing bets as to how much he’d gained and
one day they actually brought in some scales and made him get on them.

The needle went right off the dial so no one knew who’d won the bet

and there was a big uproar over that but Fat Pat didn’t give a shit, he just
went right back to eating.

Me: Is this going somewhere?
Trisha: Shit yeah, give me a minute. Anyway, next thing we all hear is

that Maryanne, his wife is dead. Apparently what happened is they were
fucking away merrily one night and old Fat Pat he was riding the mis-
sionary position and he never notices that his wife’s not enjoying it so
much any more. In fact, she’s not moving at all because Fat Pat’s
squashed all the air out of her.

He’s happily enjoying playing hide the sausage and thinking she’s

thrashing around because she’s seeing Jesus, when in fact, she’s dying of
suffocation. Gruesome, don’t you reckon?

149

The what’s-his-name, medical examiner guy and police and everyone

have to call it an accidental death, because being fat and fucking your
wife’s hardly a crime, is it?

But we all know it was murder. Everyone in town knew right away it

was murder.

Me: How did you all know?
Trisha: Because Old Fat Pat got himself a nice sum of insurance money

and has been living the high life ever since.

He’s shacked up with a bimbo from away somewhere and I’ll tell you

what – we all still call him Fat Pat, but Pat? He sure as shit isn’t fat any
more. That cunning bastard started on a diet before Maryanne was even
cold in her grave.

* * * * http://www.themisbehavingmind.com * * * *

150

From the same author on Feedbooks

Silent Light (2011)
Michaela knew it was a stupid idea to stay at her lover’s lake
house just days after being dumped by the woman, but she finds
herself there anyway. The trouble is that she isn’t the only visitor –
Trisha, another of Michaela’s lover’s conquests has invited herself
around, just when Michaela wants to be alone. Worse, this feisty
newcomer seems to delight in pushing Michaela’s buttons and
soon she doesn’t know whether she wants to strangle Trisha – or
kiss her.
Then there’s the distraction of the weird lights over the lake at
night, and the haunting sound of a child’s laughter, when as far as
they know, there isn’t a child for miles. Michaela’s convinced
something is going on and Trisha is looking at her like they should
find out what. But what happens when two headstrong women
start digging up long-forgotten secrets and can they pull together
long enough to survive finding out?

151

www.feedbooks.com

Food for the mind

152

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