THE FRONT OF the store is locked, naturally. But we peer in through the windows anyway, just to see what we might be in for … and to make sure the Dagger Hill anomaly (or even the Bug Man) isn’t waiting inside. All I see is a mess. Shelves torn down, kicked apart, TVs trashed. One in particular looks like it might be covered in blood, and I can only imagine what happened, how afraid Ricky must have been.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Gabe says as we head around to the back of the building.
“How can I not?” I reply. And the awful punctuation to that statement is a scream that sounds like it’s really close by. Gabe stops, and we both listen. “Was that…?”
“No. No, I don’t think so.”
We’re cut off from view of the Widow’s Lodge by a curving slope of Sunrise Hill. So if it was Sonya, we’d have to go back down to the street to even try to see her.
“Let’s hurry,” I say. “We’re supposed to be the distraction, remember?”
“You mean the bait,” Gabe says.
“Same thing.”
We come around to the back of the strip mall, pressed right up against the hill. There’s an assortment of dumpsters and a terrible reek. Flies are buzzing everywhere.
“Look,” Gabe whispers behind me. He’s pointing ahead of us. “His ladder is still set up.”
Sure enough, propped up against the back of Ricky’s place is a metal ladder. The back door to the shop is closed, probably locked, but nobody ever took the ladder down.
We approach the ladder, then stop. Neither of us moves. It’s dark and quiet back here. I feel like I can sense every little sound, every tiny movement. My heart is kicking along at double time.
“I don’t think I can make it up there,” I say, peering up the length of the ladder to the roof. “I could try, but…”
“It’s okay, man,” Gabe says. “Let me see something…” He grabs the door handle, presses the button. It unlatches with a perfunctory click, and Gabe is able to pull the door open. “That thing has to be hardwired in somewhere, right? Jacked into some of the electronic stuff inside the store? Maybe you can go in there and figure out where that is and disconnect it?”
I squint into the dense black shadows lingering inside that doorway and swallow hard.
“Sure,” I squeak. That’s all I can manage.
“Okay,” Gabe says, sounding more unsure of himself than ever. “Here I go.” He comes around me, takes hold of the ladder, shakes it to see if it’s sturdy. It rattles loudly, and I jump.
“I don’t even know what to look for,” I say. “Are there going to be wires? Computers? Do I have to cut the power?”
“How the hell should I know?” he hisses. “This is some weird Ghostbusters shit we’re dealing with. If it looks important, break it.”
I nod. So does he, then he shakes out his hands, hops from one foot to the other, and starts to climb.
As he ascends, I look nervously through the crack in the door that leads into the smothering black. I glance up at Gabe, who’s already halfway to the roof. The ladder creaks and cracks under him. I wish I had a flashlight. I wish I had a weapon that isn’t also the thing I need to help me walk. A knife, a gun, a baseball bat, anything. Another look up top, and Gabe is hauling himself onto the ledge. I look down around Ricky’s dumpster and take inventory of what’s there—a couple of boxes full of dismantled electronics that Ricky might have had staged for the antenna; a tied trash bag; a ladder on its side, pushed up against the wall; some empty bottles …
I do a double take at the ladder. It’s not just another ladder—it’s the same ladder that Gabe just climbed. When I look up at the roof again, Gabe’s foot is disappearing over the edge, but the ladder is gone, as if it were never there.
“It knows we’re here,” I mutter. “Gabe!”
There’s the metallic whine of a door opening. I turn my head and see the back door to Ricky’s Video Rentals opening farther now, that slit of darkness widening to a gap.
“Charlie?” somebody says from inside the door, the voice soft and sweet, and my breath catches.
It’s my mom.