“What is this?” Logan asked.
Ashley paced along the main room, running her fingertips along the walls. “I don’t really know. John found it when we were in eighth grade. It was on one of his dad’s maps. We started coming out here on weekends so our parents wouldn’t find us.”
Logan nodded. “Tristan came here, too?”
“Yeah.”
Logan turned to the window facing the lake. Fragments of broken glass littered the dirt outside, catching specks of white sunlight. Down the bank, Lake Owyhee ebbed at the shore. This place was beautiful once. Logan could almost picture it.
Behind her, Ashley gasped.
She faced the front of the room, staggered like she meant to run. Her eyes were fixed on the empty space in front of her.
“What’s—”
“Shhh,” Ashley hissed. “Do you not hear that?”
Logan listened, but aside from the standard sounds of the woods and the cabin, she heard nothing. Ashley’s eyes were wide with fear. She backed up slowly until her shoulders met the wall.
“They’re coming inside.”
“Who?” Logan whispered.
Ashley looked at Logan, blue eyes teary with panic. She turned back to face the door, and her expression changed from fear to confusion. “It’s … your dad?”
It was Logan’s turn to be confused. She watched the front door, following Ashley’s gaze, but there was nothing. Not even a shadow she could mistake for a person. She heard no voices. No footsteps. It was just the forest and the cabin and the nothing.
“I don’t see anything.”
Ashley kept staring, palms flat against the wall.
“Ashley,” Logan tried.
“He’s…” Ashley closed her eyes. “I’m trying to … he’s yelling at someone. He just keeps saying he doesn’t know.”
“Who?” Logan demanded.
“Your dad,” Ashley said again. “Oh … uh, Brandon.”
Another handful of silent moments passed, Ashley’s glassy eyes fixed on a point in the center of the cabin. Logan closed her eyes, tried to hear, but there was nothing. “What’s happening?”
“It sounds like someone else is talking to him, but I can’t hear them. Brandon says he’s sorry. He says he doesn’t know what to do.”
“There’s no one here.”
Ashley’s gaze snapped to Logan. “You have to see him. There’s no way it’s just…”
Logan stared at the entrance to the cabin, but it was empty. Her stomach sank. The whole cabin was empty. There was no way someone was in this cabin and she couldn’t see them. This wasn’t the kind of thing that happened in real life. Invisible people were the kind of thing that happened on a filler episode of ParaSpectors when they didn’t have the budget for special effects.
Logan swallowed. “What’s he doing now?”
“Just standing there.” Ashley said. She narrowed her eyes. “It’s like he’s listening. Not to us. He says they have to go. He says…” She paused and looked at Logan. “… He says people will find out. He says no one can find the body.”
“What?” Logan asked. “What body?”
“I don’t know,” Ashley said. “I’m just repeating—”
She went silent again.
Logan sank to the sofa and closed her eyes and listened, but there was nothing.