Groggy, Dean rolled over and reached out to shut off the alarm clock he couldn’t remember setting. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep, but he felt wiped out, as if he’d run a marathon. Sleep had not refreshed him and now the stupid alarm—
His hands closed over the EMF detector.
He swung his legs to the floor and stared at the device, which had suddenly become silent. Before the mental fog lifted, he wondered how Sam had programmed an EMF detector to function as an alarm clock, but stopped himself mid-speculation.
He looked around the dark room. No sign of Sam.
“Sam?” he called. “Sammy, you here?”
An EMF detector.
Beside the bed.
Sam had left it behind. He’d left it powered on for some reason. What did Sam know? Or suspect? Then Dean saw the note, read it quickly. Sam had gone to the police station to review traffic cam footage from the night of the first blackout. Nothing in the note about the EMF detector.
No surprise he’d dreamed of a shadow army and an invasion, considering the case they were working, and that Dean had seen a shadow shape up close after it possessed a man long enough to assault someone with a knife and threaten others. And while he had incorporated the sound of the EMF in his dream, something had triggered the alarm right inside his motel room.
Dean looked around the motel room, cloaked in darkness and shadows.
It could be hiding anywhere in here.
Attempting to appear unhurried and unconcerned, Dean stood up and walked over to his bag, slipping one hand inside, searching for a familiar cylindrical shape. When his hand clamped down on the flashlight, he turned to face the darkened room. Then he flicked on the power switch and pulled it from the bag, piercing the darkness with a powerful beam of light. He swung the flashlight in wide sweeping arcs, sequentially obliterating darkness and shadows in every corner of the room, hoping direct light could weaken or even banish it. Catch it on the move, expose every patch of darkness, including areas the room lights couldn’t reach. Whatever the shadows were, they couldn’t outrun light. If one was hiding in his room, he’d find and reveal it. What he’d do if he found one was a bridge he’d cross later. Would a few shotgun salt rounds get its attention—or simply put a hole in the wall?
Finding a shadow among shadows presented its own challenge. From what he’d learned by observing one at the club, they could go anywhere, hide anywhere, even—
—the ceiling.
He pointed the flashlight straight up and swept the ceiling from corner to corner, front to back, zigzagging the beam as fast as his eyes could track. Nothing.
Next, he dropped to his knees and swept the beam under both beds. Then he checked behind the desk and television, inside the closet and bathroom. Again, nothing.
With a relieved sigh, he turned on all the lights in the room, banishing the darkness and minimizing shadows. At least if one entered—returned—to his room, he’d see it. He dropped the flashlight back in his bag and placed the EMF detector close to the door.
Once again, he examined the room and his eyes settled on the framed photos of lake life hanging over each bed. A third hung over the television. The shadow creature was thin enough to hide behind any of them. A darkness the flashlight would not have exposed. One by one, he checked the frames, but each one was bolted to the wall. Though who would steal the antiquated photos, he couldn’t guess. Maybe the frames themselves had some aftermarket value, but he doubted it.
He had a small crowbar in his duffel. For a few moments, he considered ripping the frames off the wall, but he had an easier way to check. If one of the shadows set off the EMF meter before, it would do so again if he brought it within proximity of the hidden intruder.
A few moments later, the EMF remained silent.
“Gone,” he whispered.
EIGHTEEN
Maurice Hogarth lounged in a worn executive chair he’d picked up at a local yard sale, feet crossed at the ankles on the corner of his small desk while he talked into his laptop’s webcam. Instead of wallpaper, various hard rock posters plastered his bedroom walls. Even the ceiling and the back of his door paid homage to some of his favorite bands. Only the windows—at his mother’s insistence—had been spared. Months ago, he considered ripping up the carpeting to cover the floor, but he couldn’t disrespect his bands by walking on them.
His bedroom was L-shaped, with his desk located in the short side of the L, what his parents called a study nook. When he wasn’t live-streaming his album reviews, he called it his privacy station. Presently, his broadcast booth was on air, the posters in the nook bathed in black light for dramatic effect.
But he’d long since stopped reviewing Skull Town, the latest album by Morpheus Adrift. The vinyl disk continued to play on repeat on his turntable, the volume on the stereo as low as it had ever been since the day he brought home his first subwoofer. He’d begun his broadcast review before midnight and had been halfway through his analysis of the thirteen tracks, pulling heartily on a joint, when everything went dark.
After the two-minute blackout, he extinguished the smoldering spliff. It had burnt his rug, but fortunately hadn’t set the house on fire while he was oblivious to the world. Instead of returning to the album review, he’d stayed online with his limited audience to discuss what had happened. His parents had slept through it all, completely unaware, even though the crash he must have made when he fell out of his chair should have been enough to wake them. Which begged the question…
“Is it possible to black out when you’re already asleep?”
His laptop screen showed his image up top, with a row of viewers in thumbnail images below. Six guys, all friends from Moyer, and Sally Jennings, a cute girl his age from Bakersburg. His regulars. His attempts to broaden his viewer base had, so far, been unsuccessful, despite posting his recording online for general consumption. He needed to ramp up his marketing game. For now, the broadcasts had an air of exclusivity he kind of enjoyed. Like how his favorite bands had gotten started playing in small venues before performing for stadium crowds. His motto: start small and build a core following.
“Sure, man,” said Cory Henderson, the self-professed philosopher of the bunch, “if you sink to a deeper state of unconsciousness.”
“Somewhere between sleep,” Sally said, “and a coma.”
“Exactly,” Cory said, nodding. “Bitch gets it.”
“What did you just call me?”
“Not cool, bro,” Reggie Coleman said.
Maurice clicked on Cory’s thumbnail and hovered his finger over the delete key. “Have to boot you, Cory.”
Cory waved his palms in front of the screen before Maurice could disconnect him. “Sorry, Mo!”
“Not me you should be apologizing to.”
“No disrespect, Sally,” Cory said quickly.
“That don’t sound like an apology,” Frank Newton said, giving Cory a thumbs-down.
“C’mon, Fig,” Cory said. “You know what I meant.”
“She don’t,” said Eddie Alvarez. “Spell it out, dude.”
“You guys are busting my balls here,” Cory whined.
“Boot in three, two…”
“All right, okay,” Cory said. “Sorry, Sally. I’m not like that.”
“Then don’t act like that,” Sally said.
“Did that hurt?” Reggie asked Cory.
“Little bit,” Cory said, holding his index finger and thumb an inch apart.
“Not the time to be measuring your manhood, Cory,” Gary Geiger said.
“Screw you, Gary.”
“Where were we?” Maurice said.
“Somewhere between dazed and confused,” Gary Geiger replied.
Stevie Foulkes rolled his eyes. “That doesn’t even make sense, nimrod!”
“You guys scared the crap out of me,” Sally said. “I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Thought you were pranking me or something.”
“Pranking?” Maurice asked. “How?”
&
nbsp; “You were talking about track seven, Mo, and then you all collapsed at once. Your chair fell over, Reggie faceplanted on his keyboard. Cory—you drool, by the way—and everyone else looked like they decided to take instant naps.”
“Another blackout,” Fig said. “Like midnight yesterday.”
“But not as long,” Maurice said. “Only a couple minutes this time.”
“I heard people were acting weird in Moyer all day,” Sally said. “I thought you guys were goofing around, scare the out-of-town girl.”
“We weren’t goofing,” Stevie said.
“Figured that out after the first minute,” Sally said. “Started yelling at you guys to wake up. I was about to call 911 when you started to come around.”
“Wonder why Bakersburg doesn’t black out,” Fig said.
“It’s like a human EMP,” Reggie said.
“What’s that?” Gary asked. “Email program?”
“Electromagnetic pulse, dimwit,” Stevie said.
“Hey! It was a fair question.”
“Anyway, this EMP knocks out human brains,” Reggie suggested. “And Bakersburg is beyond the blast radius.”
Gary frowned. “Knocks out human brains?”
“Yeah,” Reggie said, warming to his own theory. “The human brain runs on chemical and electrical signals. After the blast, our brains need time to reboot.”
“Okay, genius,” Fig said. “Who’s knocking out our brains?”
“Aliens, obviously,” Gary said.
“Not aliens,” Eddie said. “Uncle Sam.”
“Why Moyer?” Maurice asked.
“We’re guinea pigs, Mo,” Eddie said. “Rats in a maze.”
“But Moyer is so boring,” Cory said. “Why pick us?” “Because nobody cares about Moyer,” Stevie said. “If the whole town disappeared, who would even notice we were gone?”
“Jeez, Stevie!” Reggie said. “That’s dark, man.”
“He’s off his meds,” Gary said. “Pop some of the happy pills, Stevie.”
“I’m not on meds,” Stevie said.
“That’s the problem!” Gary exclaimed and laughed.
Sally said, “Darkness.”
“Stevie’s new nickname,” Cory said, chuckling.
“Mo!” Sally yelled, pointing at her own computer screen. “What the hell is that?”
“What?” Maurice asked, scanning his screen, his image and the seven thumbnails for whatever had alarmed her.
“Behind you!” she shouted.
“Seriously?”
“Yes! Look!”
A sudden feeling of dread overcame Maurice. He whipped his head around and saw an ink-black shadow gliding across his dark room, floating mid-air, as if it had detached itself from a wall or the floor and become a separate entity. Strangely, it was shaped like a human silhouette, but he couldn’t have cast the shadow and he was alone in the room. It shouldn’t exist, but it eased toward him.
Petrified, he watched as it crept closer, his gaze intent on the shape and the substance. He sensed an uncanny depth to it, ripples on the surface of the darkness, as it neared, but from certain angles it almost vanished.
When it was inches away, he shoved his executive chair back with a convulsive effort, rolling on the chair’s casters deeper into his nook. He wanted to stand but had the sense his legs would betray him. If it came any closer, he would dive away, somehow scramble past it and out the door of his room, locking it inside. But that thought triggered another. How the hell did it get inside my room?
“Mo?” Reggie called. “Talk to us!”
“What is it?” Sally said.
“I—I don’t know,” Maurice said.
The silhouette glided closer, into his broadcast booth, almost cornering him in his nook. He cast about for weapons. He had an old baseball bat in his room, but he kept it in his closet, well out of reach. A pocketknife on his keychain—hanging on a hook downstairs.
The silhouette slipped between him and his desk. He couldn’t see through it, couldn’t see the laptop or the concerned faces of his friends. It was a shadow but completely opaque, unaffected by the ambient light coming from the laptop screen. Except, he noticed, at the extremities. Where a human would have fingers and toes, the silhouette became fuzzy, almost wispy. Like a visual trick it hadn’t completely pulled off. Look closely and you could see the fail.
“It’s an alien, guys!” Gary said, completely serious for once. “A freaking alien!”
Whatever it was, Maurice tensed, ready to dive to the side once it got close enough. Maybe he could slip past the fuzzy edges.
But as it passed under the black light lamps he’d set up for his webcast, he noticed something happening to its surface. Almost instantly, the fuzziness vanished. Wispy extremities solidified with clearly defined edges. The transformation mesmerized him. And he forgot to duck and roll past it.
A black-shadow hand with slender fingers and pointed fingernails reached toward him.
“It’s a she,” Maurice said. “It’s female.”
“What?” Stevie asked.
“It’s just—darkness,” Sally said. “Get out of there, Mo!”
“Can’t you see,” Maurice said. “It’s—”
The feminine silhouette-head canted slightly, revealing a brief flash of twin red orbs—eyes! Suddenly the silhouette-hand darted forward and brushed against his skin, raising the hairs along his forearm like a static charge.
“Whoa!” Maurice said, instinctively yanking his arm away from the strange contact.
“What happened?” Reggie asked.
“It touched me,” Maurice said. “I felt it and—”
Again, the hand darted forward, this time aggressively, not content to graze his skin. This time it tried to penetrate his skin. And it felt like a black razor blade slicing into his flesh. Where the black edge of the silhouette pushed, blood flowed, running down his arms to his fingertips.
Maurice screamed in pain.
He shoved himself backward with such force that he toppled over in his chair again, felt it flipping over, striking his back, pinning him. Throwing it off him with one frightened surge, he scrambled to his feet, staggered toward the right wall of the nook, caught his balance even as he trembled in fear, and braced himself for the next attack—
NINETEEN
A new wave of emergency calls flooded the Moyer Police Department with reports of sleepwalking injuries, car accidents involving people driving in their pajamas or underwear, missing spouses and children and, strangest of all, sightings of dark ghosts. Some police officers still hadn’t finished writing their reports following the second round of midnight blackouts, and now had to respond to numerous calls. And unlike the blackout accidents, the new batch involved willful negligence.
“More Moyer residents behaving badly,” Gruber said.
“With amnesia chasers,” Dean added.
After determining his motel room had no unwelcome visitors hiding in the shadows, Dean had joined Sam and Gruber at the police station to interview a suspect who seemed immune to the town-wide blackouts and not above a little larceny on the side when the opportunity presented itself. While the Winchesters wanted to know how the man had acquired his immunity and if he had any involvement in causing the blackouts, Gruber seemed more concerned with the man’s penchant for thievery.
The missing persons reports were troubling, especially those involving children, but most of those were resolved when the missing person turned up miles from home with no idea how or why they had wandered away. None had any idea what they’d done during those periods of lost time. Without evidence, eyewitnesses or security cameras, they faced no consequences, but those who had been observed or recorded faced charges.
As Gruber led the Winchesters to the interview room, a uniformed officer approached him.
“What’s up, Dunn?” Gruber asked. “Wait. Do I even want to know?”
“Hear about Brady?”
“No. What?” Gruber asked. “Isn’t he off-duty?�
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“I’ll say,” Dunn replied. “Climbed out of bed buck naked, got in his car and rolled over his neighbors’ lawns—four of them—tried making figure eights. Ripped up all the landscaping, left rooster tails of mulch, then took out all of the mailboxes and the corner stop sign.”
“Jesus!”
“Brady’s one of yours?” Sam asked.
“Unfortunately,” Gruber said, embarrassed.
“Responding officers found his car idling in the middle of some hedges,” Dunn added. “Apparently, he abandoned the car, walked home in the buff, got in bed and fell asleep. Has no clue what happened.”
“Please tell me he failed a breathalyzer,” Gruber said.
“Nope,” Dunn said. “Stone cold sober. Brought him in a half-hour ago.”
“Moyer’s finest,” Gruber said, shaking his head. “People are losing their damn minds!”
“Something like that,” Dean said.
Not so much losing their minds as losing control of their minds. If the shadows took control and committed the act, the suppressed humans were innocent. Yet the Winchesters lacked any way of proving that to Moyer law enforcement, certainly nothing convincing enough to counter physical evidence and witnesses. Maybe now that the possession had affected one of their own, the police would allow for the possibility that the accused had no control of their actions.
Gruber escorted the Winchesters through the investigations office to the interview room. After peering through the narrow window slot, he unlocked the door and they filed in. Gruber took the seat facing the seated suspect, Albert Kernodle. The Winchesters hung back, standing on either side of Gruber.
Kernodle wore a knit hat, a pea coat with missing buttons, fingerless gloves, frayed jeans and scuffed work boots. His sallow complexion created a stark contrast to the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. His forearms rested on the table between them, his fingers twitching.
Gruber placed a manila evidence folder on the table and said, “Hello again, Albert. You already know me. These gentlemen are from the FBI. We have some questions for you. You’ve been read your rights and have agreed to talk with us. Correct?”
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