Dan stared into the dank bowels of the classroom storage closet. The shelves had been knocked out and scattered into the room, leaving a kind of cave for vagrants. A few pillows and blankets littered the floor, eaten to tatters by rodents and insects. He squeezed his nose shut with his thumb and forefinger, pressing into the closet and kneeling, searching among the disintegrating remnants of a camp. There was no telling how long it had been since the place was last used.

He toed aside the pillows and blankets. Something moved among the discarded bedding, distorting the fabric before tearing through it. A whip-thin rat darted out at him, shrieking and then scurrying out of the closet. Dan sank back against the gutted shelves, holding his chest and catching his breath from the sudden shock. The hole left by the rat showed a glimpse of faded yellow, and Dan carefully moved the blankets to find a sort of nest, torn pieces of paper piled together. Most of it had been chewed and soiled beyond recognition, but a few half sheets of paper still held visible text.

Dan gathered what he could, shuddering from the damp, foul smell and clumps of fur and droppings that clung to the pages. He poked around the closet for more, but there was nothing. Behind him, the school echoed with the voices and footsteps of his friends.

Out in the main hall, he discovered Abby documenting the ruins with her camera. Jordan hugged himself, staring around at the precariously open and broken ceiling.

“There you are,” he said, breathing through his mouth. “Where the hell did you go?”

“I saw something,” Dan said. “It might have been . . . I’m not sure. But there was some old junk in a closet. I took it to look at later.”

“Dan,” Abby said, staring at him over the eye of her camera. “What did you see?”

“One of those visions,” he admitted. “I think it might have been my dad. Hopefully some of this stuff was theirs.” Grimacing, he held up the stained, old pages.

“Delightful,” Jordan mumbled, holding his nose and scowling at Dan like he was crazy.

“We could try and dry them out with my blow dryer,” Abby suggested, unfazed. She returned to her camera, wandering over to a mound of rotting and piled tabletops. Her camera clicked softly as she shot the ceiling, the classrooms, Jordan. She was taking so many pictures that it was a few minutes before Dan noticed it, staring past her to the maintenance door he had entered through.

A softer, faster click-click-click came from the bushes right outside the door.

Abby wasn’t the only one taking photos.

“What the hell,” he whispered, racing toward the door.

A slim shadow huddled against the shrubs outside, photographing them. When Dan neared the door, the guy swung the camera over his shoulder on a strap and raced out of view. Dan followed, cursing the low-hanging boards nailed over the maintenance hatch.

The guy was fast, far faster than Dan, nimbly leaping over the landslide of junk in the front yard. Skidding down the embankment, he reached a black motorcycle parked across the street from Abby’s car. Out of breath, Dan stumbled down the hill, watching as the stranger hopped on the bike, slammed one foot down on the gas, and then executed a neat circle before speeding away. A red insignia flashed on the back of the cyclist’s jacket, but Dan was too far away to read it, and he had missed the license plate, too.

Panting, Dan stared after the motorcycle as it disappeared.

“What was that?” Jordan was out of breath, too, running back toward him. “Did a cop see us?”

“I don’t think it was a cop,” Dan said. “Someone was photographing us. Watching us.”