Headlights(109)

“Can we figure out the routes?”

“Um, maybe—”

“Skin has blood,” Hannah says. “Smell. Bodies have smell. Do you see? Covering themselves in the blood of the skinned victims, walking…”

Tillman says, “Scent-marking.”

Hannah nods, excited. “Yes! If … if we can get a map, a better one. If we can figure out the routes…”

Tillman at the house in Greeley, talking about the path Frank Wheely walked in the grass to us.

The flight path matters.

“Dude,” Tillman says. “You’re a genius. She’s a genius! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.”

“What?” I say. “What am I not getting?”

“Ritualized territorial displays,” Tillman says.

I look between them.

“A lot of animals use them,” Hannah says. “Ways they signal boundaries and needs to other animals. It can be visual, auditory, olfactory. Like wolves—scent-marking and howling, to show what their territory is. We’ve been thinking like people,” Hannah says. “But maybe whoever—whatever—is doing this doesn’t.”

“So,” I say, “we redraw the map, see if there’s some way to figure out what the territory is. Either Father Sky or this Witchwalker, or … if we can see the outer lines—”

“Maybe we can figure out what they’re defending,” Hannah says. “And from who.”

I look from Hannah to Tillman and back again.

Tillman, on board. Listening to us, believing us. And Hannah beside me.

We need space. We need to map this thing. We need somewhere to go.

“Do the others know you have us?” I ask.

He looks at me in the rearview. “Not yet,” he says.

“Okay.” We can do this. I think this could be something. Maybe. There’s a chance.

So I do something else I never thought I’d do. I take a breath, and I say, “Tillman. You ever been in a haunted house?”





5



The wind howls against Whileago Manor, the world white outside the windows. It’s getting dark, the snow still coming.

I light candles around the living room and hand Hannah and Tillman flashlights. Hannah stands far from Tillman. Tillman can’t stop looking around the room, his jaw open.

I pull out some of Marianne’s big drawing paper and toss it on the coffee table. Hannah and Tillman get started drafting a makeshift map of Denver while I pile some logs on the hearth and get a fire going. For some reason the shadows here haven’t changed, haven’t become that brighter glowy ghost-version, but have remained shadows, black and lurking in the corners. I don’t know what it means, don’t understand it.

“You know, it’s actually kind of cozy in here,” Tillman says.

And as if in response, a door slams, and footsteps run above us.

Tillman looks up, tracks the movement along the ceiling. The floorboards creak.

“Is someone else here?” he asks.

I shake my head.

He watches me. “So this place is really haunted?”

I shrug.

“Can everyone hear it?”

“No.”

“So why can I?”

I consider this, watch as the lights glow just a little in the living room above the map. Watch as Tillman’s eyes widen when he clocks it too. I shrug, again. “Maybe you’ve got a little shine too,” I say.

I turn away before I can see the grin on his face.



* * *



It takes us the better part of an hour to get it all mapped out. And Pete Noland’s path wasn’t the only one Tillman suspected was different than we’d originally assumed. Hannah found all the original bodies while they were fresh, and she never encountered one of the Drifters leaving the body. Which means the direction she came from couldn’t have been the one they walked. With that information, we’re able to redo a few of our original routes.

We rework it again and again, adjust so many lines we would have thought obvious, had thought obvious before. Flight patterns. Pieces aligning to make …

We step back, look at it all.

Not a perfect circle. But about as close to one as anyone could get by following roads. One large territory encompassing most of the city and surrounding areas.

And smaller ones within it.

“Shit,” Hannah says.

We stand in silence in the candlelight, the fire crackling behind us, the snow flurrying outside the window. The three of us look down at the map of greater Denver, the routes intersecting to make these circles. The lights glow a little brighter.

A long minute passes in which none of us says anything. The house is silent, warm even. Aside from the flicker of flames, everything inside the walls of Whileago Manor is still.

Dizziness, nausea threaten again. As I realize what I’m looking at. As it fully sinks in.

The paths on the map. The circles.

Around Whileago Manor. The Happy/Wander Inn. Josie and Nat’s house, and Hannah’s cabin. The largest one extending up, below, around the city.

“You said scent-marking is about … defending a territory?” I ask Hannah.

“Yeah,” she says, thinking.

“So … my house. Your cabin. Nat and Josie’s. The motel. That’s its territory?”