Wings to the Kingdom (Eden Moore 2)

“Do you see anything?” Benny asked, hunching down in front of us as if making himself shorter would make us all more difficult to see.

“No,” I whispered back. “Not yet. You?”

“We don’t see ghosts, remember?”

I nudged his back with my knuckles. “Maybe not, but you might see the Marshalls’ field party. I can’t be on the lookout for everything at once. Work with me, here. ”

“Oh yeah,” Jamie breathed. “Them. ”

I’d loaded the camera with the infrared film before we’d left the car. It hung around my neck on a festively embroidered, hippie-looking strap Dave must have picked up in 1970. As I walked, I tugged on the strap to shorten it so the heavy apparatus wouldn’t bang up and down against my breasts. I liked it better up high, perched above my sternum.

“Need a hand?” Jamie offered.

“Got it, you perv. Thanks. ”

“Where are we going?” Jamie asked, tapping my shoulder.

“Dyer’s field. Right?”

“Right,” Benny backed me up.

“Why?” Jamie asked.

“Because,” I said, too loud. I cleared my throat and lowered it again, continuing the conversation in our best “inside” voices. “Because something’s going on over there, and we’re going to find out what. ”

“Are we sure?”

“No,” Benny and I answered at once.

We walked on without talking for another few minutes before a sudden stop caused us to collide into one another. We had to halt—we’d reached the edge of the Tower area, and the woods had made way for the two-lane road. We retreated en masse back into the trees.

The three of us huddled, bringing our heads together to plot our course of action. One way or another, we were going to have to brave a big open space.

The field itself was no more than fifty yards away, but that field had been mowed to a knee-high state of grassy uniformity. It was a giant rectangle several acres across, one side marked by the road, and the other sealed off by a dark strip of trees. Another crop of dense woods topped off the short side closest to us. The side farthest away was difficult to discern, and it was only when we tried to see it and failed that we realized the fog was rolling in.

“What is it about that damn fog?” Jamie swore, following the misting boil with a suspicious squint.

Benny and I did too, shaking our heads in time. The fog was a creepy and inscrutable sign; it was often said to mean that strange things and ghostly happenings were afoot. I knew it really only meant that we were stuck in a low-lying cloud, but hey, whatever makes you quiver around a campfire.

From a more practical standpoint, it meant we needed to stay close together or risk getting lost.

“Well,” I said, lifting the camera and popping the lens cap into my back pocket. “If we wait a few minutes, it might make for good cover. ”

Jamie did a terrible job of trying to hide the fact that he thought I was crazy. “You want to hang around until the fog gets thicker?”

“Yes. Yes I do. ”

Benny made a noise that was just short of a sigh and a whimper. “It makes sense. I guess. But it’s not thick enough yet. Let’s hang out over here for a while. Hey, does that camera have a good zoom?”

“Good enough, I bet. ” I crouched down and balanced my elbow on my upper thigh, sighting the camera through the trunks. “Let’s get a little closer to the edge and see if we can’t catch anything before it gets too cloudy down here. Turn off the light, darling, would you please?”

Together we crept as quiet as we could closer to the road and the end of the trees. All of us went down into a crouch or a kneel. I pulled the camera up again and watched the field across the road, scanning the cabin, the tree line, the grass. I wanted to bring the view closer, but I’d have to settle for the magnification I had on hand.

I reached my finger around to the shutter, but a faint hum made me change my mind. The flash was warming up. I flicked it off and aimed the camera back across the road again, feeling stupid—but not so stupid as I would have if it’d actually gone off.

Over by the cabin I thought I saw a smudge of motion. I snapped a picture. The click seemed unnaturally loud, though I knew it wasn’t.

“Did you get something?” Jamie’s lips were almost touching my ears, but he was speaking so quietly I barely heard him.