“But,” Lance continued, “things can also tune into me. I guess … I guess I sort of broadcast my own signal all the time, and other … things can pick up on it. And that’s not always good.”
And a realization lit up Leah’s face. “And that’s what happened outside?”
Smart girl. Smart, smart girl.
“Yes. That’s what happened outside.” Lance told her about the strong sense of dread he’d been picking up since he arrived in town, then added the bit about feeling as though whatever evil was present had noticed him (picked up his signal) and was concerned. “It knows I’m here, and it knows I can feel it. It’s worried I’ll intervene with whatever it’s got its teeth into around here.” He told her about the flickering lights, and then the gust of wind that’d knocked him out.
“It can control the weather?” Leah had asked, eyes wide.
Lance thought about it. “Yeah, maybe.”
Leah was quiet for another moment, deep in thought. When she came back to the present, she said, “So, you’re kind of trapped in between, aren’t you? You’re here, with all the rest of us, but it’s like you’ve also got one foot on the other side—wherever that is—right?”
Lance thought about the analogy. “I don’t know if I have a whole foot on the other side, maybe just a toe or two, but yes. I’d say that’s accurate.”
Leah’s expression had turned to one of pure excitement and fascination now. “Do you have any idea how you got to be this way?”
“My mother had a theory,” he said. “But forget about that for now. I’ve done a lot of talking. Tell me what you think is wrong in this town.”
So she did.
6
“You lost the newspaper I gave you?” Leah asked, mocking heartbreak.
Lance grinned, and a streak of pain bolted through the back of his head. “Sadly, yes. I would have gone after it, but, well … I was unconscious.”
“I suppose you think that’s an excuse.” Leah got up from the couch and walked back to the check-in counter.
“My mother never allowed excuses,” Lance said. “So it’s merely a fact. Conscious awareness or not, the paper is gone and I was the last to have it in my possession. Hold it against me if you want.”
Leah crouched behind the counter, disappearing from view. Lance could hear her rummaging through whatever lay behind the wooden panels. “Daddy doesn’t particularly care for excuses either,” she said, “though I doubt he and your mom had similar parenting styles.” She popped back up and triumphantly held a newspaper above her head, like she’d just won a trophy. She came back to the couch and tossed it into Lance’s lap.
“It’s not the same paper,” he said, noticing different headlines and pictures.
“You’re right,” Leah said. “You are gifted.”
Lance said nothing, just looked at her.
“It’s from two weeks ago,” she said.
Lance looked back down at the black-and-white pages. “So there was a story about what’s wrong in this paper too?”
She smiled a little, and Lance knew she was playing some sort of game with him. “There’s a story about it every week. At least for a few months out of the year.”
Lance scanned the headlines again. Quickly skimmed an article about a farmer out on Route 19 having to rescue two of his cows after they got stuck in a ravine. Not exactly worthy of print, in Lance’s mind.
Leah sighed. “I’m sorry. I was just … I guess I wanted to see if you could, you know…”
“Read your mind?”
She grinned.
“I don’t work that way,” Lance said. “I don’t … I told you, I don’t understand how I work. Things just happen sometimes, and sometimes they don’t.”
Leah shrugged. “Worth a shot. You’re the first psychic I’ve ever met.”
“I’m not a—”
Sports! There would be an article about sports teams every week!
Lance was a quiet for a moment, his mouth frozen midsentence as Leah’s clues clicked together. Then he looked down and opened the paper, finding the sports section. When Leah saw where he’d ended up, she whispered, “Not psychic, my ass.”
He shook his head and said. “No, really. It just suddenly made sense. The weekly article. Small town like this, it was a logical conclusion.”
“Uh-huh, sure.”
Lance looked down at the front page of sports and said, “Okay, I made it this far. Help me out.”
Leah scooted across the couch, so close now he could smell her shampoo and a whiff of what remained of the perfume she’d probably administered early this morning before coming into work. Lance was suddenly very conscious of his lack of deodorant and toothpaste. He’d need to get to a store as soon as possible, especially if girls were going to be sidling up to him on couches.
Not what should be concerning you right now, Lance.
Whatever…
Leah leaned over further and tapped her index finger, the nail clean but unpainted, on the top story, the headline in large bold font.
MCGUIRE LEADS WESTHAVEN TO 3–0 START
Lance recalled the sports page from the newspaper he’d lost. “They’re four and oh now. They beat a team from”—he paused to think—“Newberry, last week. They scored a touchdown and a field goal in the fourth to seal the win.”
Leah nodded. “Nice memory.”
“Like you said, I am gifted.” Lance looked at the black-and-white snapshot chosen for the article’s picture. A Westhaven High School player was walking off the field toward the sideline, helmet off and dangling from one hand while he used his other to high-five a man who Lance assumed must be the coach. The photo’s caption read: WESTHAVEN QUARTERBACK ANTHONY MILLS AND HEAD COACH KENNY MCGUIRE CELEBRATE VICTORY OVER NON-DISTRICT FOE.
Coach McGuire was somewhat atypical for a football head coach. He was a small man, short and very thin, and he wore small rimless glasses that sat low on his nose, a look that seemed more fitting for somebody closer to sixty than the early forties McGuire appeared to be. He wore a Westhaven High ball cap on his head, and a pair of large earphones with built-in microphone were draped around his neck. An iPad was clutched in his non-high-fiving hand. Lance smirked; the man almost seemed to be a biology teacher playing dress-up as a football coach.
Leah was quiet as Lance read the full article detailing a Westhaven blowout. He finished, considered his location, and then said, “Small town like this, I’m guessing high school football is a big deal, right?”
Leah threw back her head and laughed. “A big deal? Go ask for a tire rotation and oil change down at Clarence’s Tire and Lube on the morning after a Westhaven loss and see for yourself. Service with a smile? Forget it.”
Lance understood. His hometown had been enthusiastic about high school sports as well. The time junior year he’d missed a ten-foot jumper to win a close one midseason had haunted him for weeks. People had still smiled at him in the streets, but he had known deep down they blamed him for the loss. Fortunately, Lance knew better than most that sports didn’t exactly rank high on life’s important bullet points.
Leah leaned back against the couch cushion, kicked off her sneakers and pulled her feet under her. Her socks were so white they could blind you. Lance remembered the overwhelming smell of disinfectant from his entrance earlier and thought: She keeps everything so clean, and I look and smell like a stowaway.
“Would you like to guess how many AA state championships Westhaven has won in the last three years?”
Lance hedged his bet and guessed two.
“All three,” Leah said. “Three years, three titles.”
“Wow,” Lance said. “That seems … improbable.”
“You think?”
“No competition? Weak district? Region?”
Leah shook her head and passed on the question. “You know how many games they won the season before their first title?”
Lance knew she was playing to some sort of buildup. Shrugged and said, “Six?”
> “One. They beat one stinking team. I remember because it was my sophomore year, and my date to the homecoming dance, a safety who was terrible, just like the rest of the team, sprained his ankle on the second play of the game.”
“So no dancing?”
“That’s your question?”
“No, I have others. I just … my mind’s funny, remember?”
She smiled. “Try and focus here, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. So the local high school team went from being the Bad News Bears to winning three titles in a row?”
“Correct.”
“Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that happens overnight. Or in one off-season, in this case.”
“Exactly.”
“So what changed?”
Leah looked up to the ceiling, in contemplation of her answer. Lance looked up too, and another sharp crack of pain shot through his skull. He’d really hit that door hard, and was about to ask Leah if she had any ibuprofen when she said, “Everything changed. Everything except the players.”
“I’m not a football expert, but I’ve played enough basketball in my life to know that it’s going to take at least one new player for a team to improve from a nearly winless record to winning a state title.”
“Well, there was one, but he was just a placekicker.” Leah closed her eyes and thought. “Okay, yeah, sure there were a few seniors from the losing team that graduated, and then some JV kids moved up, but the core team was still there, and none of the rising players were what you might call game-changers.”
“So … the change?”
“The coach, for starters. Coach McGuire’s first year at Westhaven was the first year they won state.”
“Did he have a winning record where he coached before?”
Leah’s face went blank for a moment, then she looked at him and said, “You know, I’ve never even thought about that. I’ve only focused on him since he’s been at Westhaven. All I know is he and his wife came from Georgia. They were both schoolteachers. She worked at the library part-time the first year they were here, then she took over as vice principal at the high school a year later. That was my senior year.”
“Big jump from putting books back on the shelf at the library to being vice principal of a high school. Small town or no small town.”
“Mr. Barnes, the vice principal she replaced, retired and moved to Florida with his wife, who’d just been diagnosed with dementia. Apparently they had a son there.”
Lance thought about this, somewhat surprised that no internal candidates, no longtime high school staff, might have gotten the job. But he moved on. “So the team got a new coach. What else?”
“The paper mill sold to new owners.”
This seemingly unrelated bit of information made zero sense to Lance. So he nodded his head and said, “Elementary, my dear Watson.”
“What?”
“Sherlock Holmes. Well … it’s a misquote. He never said that exactly, but people get the idea.”
“Uh, okay.”
Another fallen-flat joke. He was on a roll. “I don’t understand why a paper mill selling to somebody new affects the football team.”
“Ah, right.” Leah readjusted her legs under her. “It wouldn’t normally, I guess. But in this case, it did, in a big way. When the paper mill sold to the new owner, some big business out of Atlanta, they moved in a new general operations manager. Glenn Strang. Glenn’s son, Bobby, was the placekicker I mentioned.”
Lance’s brain was trying to figure out how any of this had anything to do with the team’s miraculous turnaround. “Unless Westhaven’s offensive strategy was to kick fifteen field goals a game, I fail to see why this changes much. And you’ve already suggested that the new kicker wasn’t a big deal.”
Leah shrugged. “Well, he wasn’t, in terms of being an on-the-field contribution. But … his daddy quickly became the piggy bank for a school football program that’d been having the players wash their own uniforms at home. Before Strang, it would be generous to say the Westhaven athletic department was on a shoestring budget. It was more like a stray thread of a budget. But Glenn Strang is apparently a huge sports fan, played D-1 football somewhere out west and then had a somewhat lucrative stint as a pro. Now that he’s got more money than he knows what to do with, he’s living vicariously through Westhaven players by making sure they’ve got the shiniest, most sophisticated everything. Uniforms, training equipment, you name it. He contributes to the other sports programs as well, but I think it’s just so he doesn’t appear biased. Everybody knows football is his baby.”
Lance thought about this. Could understand the situation fully. He knew some people could never let go of a game they loved, and he also knew from his one and only season of officiating peewee basketball that parents were just about always borderline insane and dangerous fans of their kids. He supposed dumping a ton of money into a program was a good enough way to support that habit.
“But, a new placekicker and fancy new equipment still doesn’t take them from zeros to heroes. You can’t buy a game.”
Well…
“Wait, are we talking about bribery? Payoffs? Kickbacks?”
Leah closed her eyes and took a deep breath, shook her head. “No. Well, I don’t know, maybe. There … there’s something else, too. Something worse. The thing that came to mind when you asked me earlier if I thought something bad was going on around here.”
“Enlighten me.”
A dull, thunderous sound was suddenly heard in the distance. Faint, but noticeable. Leah’s eyes widened and her face went pale. She jumped up from the couch and quickly pulled on her sneakers, hopping from one foot to the other as she did so. Her eyes darted around the office, checking everything and nothing at the same time. “You’ve got to go!”
The booming noise was closer now, very close. “That’s Daddy’s truck! He’ll kill you if he finds you with me!”
Lance jumped up from the couch, the threat of death always a motivation to move quickly if needed. “I thought you said he was working. Never takes a sick day. Employee of the year. Master of—”
“He doesn’t!” Leah spun around on her heels, her eyes darting over every inch of the office. Lance headed for the door and she yelled, “No! He’ll see you!”
The booming of what Lance now realized was a truck’s exhaust muffler was nearly shaking the windows in their panes. He stopped halfway to the office door, almost turned back, and then continued. He heard Leah begin to protest again, but then he quickly flipped the NO VACANCY sign off and unlocked the office’s door. He turned around and Leah was disappearing into the black mouth of the now-open door at the rear of the office. She was half-hidden in shadows as she waved frantically for him to follow her.
Lance ran across the freshly polished office floor, one continuing thought in his head.
It knows I’m here, and it definitely doesn’t like it.
7
Leah had pulled Lance into the doorway and then told him to hide. She’d given him one hard shove, pushing him out of the way of the door she was closing behind her, and then she was gone, leaving Lance alone in a dark, unknown space, hiding from a man he’d never met, for a reason he didn’t fully understand. He chalked it up to an overprotective father, remembered the supposed shotgun behind the check-in counter, and quickly decided any man who’d give his young daughter a shotgun to use at will on any human being who might pose a threat was a man whom Lance would like to try and remain on proper terms with. Lance also remembered the panic he’d seen in Leah’s eyes when she’d first recognized the sound of her daddy’s truck. It was a true panic, one which alluded to fierce repercussions should she be caught.
Lance did as instructed and tried to find a place to hide. Because apparently being behind a closed door in the near pitch black wasn’t good enough.
Lance turned around and closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them, trying to let them adjust. The thundering from the truck muffler was now right on top of them, Leah’s
daddy having clearly arrived in the parking lot. It rumbled on for another ten or fifteen seconds and then stopped completely. The newfound silence was almost as deafening as the noise had been. Need to move fast now. He’s here.
As things came slowly into focus, Lance was surprised at what he had found. He’d seen the door at the rear of the office from the first moment he’d stepped inside Bob’s Place earlier that day and had noticed it again as Leah had helped to nurse his injuries after the Great Ghost Gust and their subsequent conversation. But the entire time, he’d assumed it was some sort of utility closet, laundry room, or storage area. A place where you’d find the mop buckets and the bottles of bleach and boxes of mini-soaps. A room with a musty smell and a hard concrete floor with edges lined with mousetraps, a small grubby window perched high that was so covered in grime you couldn’t see out. As the room’s objects became clearer, what he found instead was a bedroom.
The space was small, but well furnished. To his immediate left, flush against two walls, was a twin-sized bed, made neatly and with a small stuffed animal of some sort propped between two pillows. A wooden nightstand sat next to the bed with a small lamp atop it and a paperback novel with a bookmark sticking out the top of the pages. On the opposite wall, a tiny square desk with an office chair hugged the corner. From atop the desk, the dull green glow of a power cord plugged into a laptop provided just about the room’s only light. To the right of the desk was a wide dresser, a mirror mounted to the back that showed Lance a dull reflection of himself in front of the door. A small TV cart was in the corner opposite the desk, and the flat-screen resting there was no more than fifteen inches. A spark of light from his right caught Lance’s eye, and he finished his scan of the room by noticing another door. It was open just a crack, and a small amber glow was beckoning him.
Outside the room, a door opened and heavy footsteps fell on the hardwood.
“Daddy?” Lance heard Leah say, her voice traveling from the direction of the check-in counter. “I thought you had to work tonight.”
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