Carlos

I've never been able to pinpoint the exact moment my consciousness slips free of my body and leaves it behind. I just know when it's happened.

I know it's happened when I open my eyes and find myself outside the circle, watching myself and John. My body looks still and peaceful as a statue of the seated Buddha, while John watches warily, on the lookout for any sign of a change. For the moment, we're both safe. Things are under control, and I sense only one other presence.

"Mr. Martinez?"

I turn, my astral body feeling as real as my physical one, and see Kyle watching me from the shadows in the corner of the shop.

Right. Not creepy at all.

"Kyle?" I move towards him cautiously. "Are you okay?"

His eyes gleam with uncanny light, like an animal's at night. He whispers, "I'm scared."

Christ. Poor kid. "Do you remember what happened?"

He shakes his head. "I went to buy lunch. Then... I was back here. I keep trying to leave. Sometimes I go home. But I always come back here."

Great. He's stuck in a loop. I suck my bottom lip and try to come up with the right words.

"Kyle, it's okay. Don't worry about lunch. I'm not hungry anymore. Are you?"

"No," he says, his voice small and soft as a child's. "I don't feel anything anymore. What's happening to me, Mr. Martinez? Why am I like this?"

Fuck. This is messed up.

I hold out my hand to him. "Kyle, come here. I'm gonna show you something, okay?"

With heartbreaking trustingness, he comes towards me and takes my hand.

"Close your eyes. I'm gonna take us somewhere. Don't open them until I say."

He nods and shuts his creepily gleaming eyes obediently.

I shut mine as well, and envision the place I want to take us as strongly as I can. When the sounds and smells of the location surround me, I open my eyes and blink against the glare of a bright, mid-morning sun, which makes me very glad my astral body isn't as hungover as my physical one.

"Okay, you can look," I say.

Kyle blinks and rubs a hand, still blackened with ghostly engine grease, against his brow.

"Why are we in a cemetery, Mr. Martinez?"

Confronting someone with the fact of their death isn't the gentlest way to go about getting them to realize that they're dead, but I need Kyle to get the point quickly. It seems like he's fragmented, probably shattered by the extreme trauma of the manner in which he was killed, and he doesn't seem aware of our previous encounters. He probably forgets everything he's done as soon as he resets in the garage, like an NPC restarting a level in a video game.

Like the Ghost of Christmas Past, I point to the plain, budget grave marker at Kyle's feet. It's not even a headstone — just a small plaque set in the grass — and like someone trying to read in a dream, Kyle struggles to make out what it says.

I give him a minute, and when he finally figures it out, his spirit flickers and loses a few shades of saturation as he looks up at me with eyes full of tragic defeat.

"Oh, yeah. I'm dead," he says. "I keep forgetting. Sorry, Mr. Martinez."

"It's okay. I just wanna help you. Do you remember what happened?"

Kyle gets a faraway look, as if he's daydreaming about something else — literally another life — but after a moment, he shakes his head.

"Sorry, Mr. Martinez. I remember going for lunch. There were no burgers left. I was afraid you'd be mad, so I went... somewhere else. Then it's all... blurry after that."

I bite back a sigh of exasperation. On the one hand, it's a mercy Kyle doesn't remember what happened to him. Seeing his insides become outsides, while he was still alive, and knowing there was no way he could survive something like that, is a trauma that would break anyone's mind. On the other hand, it would have been really convenient if he could just tell me who the bad guy was.

"What's the last thing you remember clearly?" I ask.

His face pinches, as if recalling a memory takes as much effort as lifting a heavy set of weights, and then his expression relaxes and he smiles.

"Someone called my name," he says. "They called me, and I was happy, because..."

He trails off as his expression goes blank. He flickers again, now so drained of color he's practically in black and white.

Fuck, I'm losing him. If he resets, I'll have to start all over.

"Kyle, concentrate! Who was it? Who called your name?"

"My name?"

He looks at me, and suddenly his eyes are completely clear and lucid, and full of fear.

"My parents."

"What? Kyle, your parents are—"

Sheer terror contorts his face, and he reaches for me, grasping my left shoulder with a hand like ice.

"Find my parents, Mr. Martinez! And stay away from him!"

"Who is 'him?' Kyle!"

He's fading fast, almost transparent and his voice is a thin echo of what it was.

"Help me!"

With those two, barely audible words, he's gone.

Then my world tips to the side, flipped like a rotating mirror, and goes dark.

Dizzy and disoriented, I pick myself up. Darkness surrounds me, and while I stand in my astral body, I get the sense there is no real 'down' or 'up' in this place.

Great. I slipped into a shadow plane, probably dragged along by Kyle.

He's not here, though. And yet, I'm not alone.

Something dark is watching me; something close.

I've only felt a presence like this once before. Aunt Toni barely dragged me back to the living world on time, and I had nightmares for months. It's the same feeling of swimming in dark water and being suddenly convinced that there's something beneath you, about to grab you and drag you down, or feeling you're being watched from the shadows in the woods.

A primal, instinctive fear that can quickly escalate to panic.

I tamp down on it, hard, doing my best to remain calm. Emotions are energy, and in a place like this, energy attracts demons the way movement attracts the Rex in Jurassic Park.

Then again, just like a real t-rex probably had pretty good eye-sight and would have had no problem spotting someone even if he was holding still, so too, whatever's in this place will have no trouble finding me.

As it nears, its presence overwhelms me. Whatever it is, it's big, and bad, and I don't know if even the world's greatest exorcist (whoever that is) would have a chance against something like this. It's as many times more powerful than I am as I am to an ant.

Still, ants can bite, and I ready what defenses I have and prepare to fight.

Something looms above me, big as a building. I get an impression of an immense form, leathery wings, bone and stinking flesh; fire, ash, and rot. I choke, falling back beneath the stench, and then I'm falling again, my world flips like an hourglass, and my eyes — my real, flesh and blood eyes — snap open.

I'm on my back, lying on the hard, cold, deliciously real concrete of my garage, and the face of an angel looks down on me.

"Jesus fucking Christ, are you alive?" John asks.

I cough and fill my lungs with air a few times. "Yeah. Looks that way."

"Fuck."

He hangs his head, and I wince and rub my chest, which is weirdly sore. Also my mouth tastes like mint.

"What happened?" I ask. "Is the circle intact?"

He lifts his head and glares at me, eyes bloodshot with stress. "Yeah, the circle's fine. You, on the other hand, fell over and had what looked like a seizure. Then you stopped breathing. I gave you CPR. I just about gave up when... you came back."

He rubs a hand over his mouth and stares down at me, as if afraid I'll pass out again, or disappear if he takes his eyes off me. Meanwhile, I'm boneless as a jellyfish with relief. Wherever I was, whatever I saw, it didn't follow me through. Neither is there any trace of Kyle.

"Sorry," I say, sitting up gingerly. "I should have warned you that might happen."

"You think?"

I cough and laugh. "I'm okay, really. It's not impossible for someone to lose the connection to their physical body entirely while traveling, but it's super rare."

"So, what you're saying is the chance you could have died is greater than zero."

"Uh... yeah. I guess."

"Fucking hell." He sighs and shakes his head. "Okay, what now?"

"Help me up."

I ask more because I want to feel the solid, physical warmth of a living body than because I really need help, but he obliges.

I lean into his strength, breathe his scent, and accidentally find myself resting against his chest, my head on his shoulder and my arms around his waist.

"Uh... So are you okay now?" he asks, sounding a bit strained, when I finally come back to reality.

"Sorry." I release him and step back a pace. "I just needed to get grounded again. This will just take a minute."

Quickly, I complete the ritual, sending any lingering spirits back to their home realms and cleansing the circle before I break it, releasing the sacred space.

"So, what did you get?" John asks, as I cross to my work bench, grab a clean rag, and use it to wipe the sweat from my face.

I tell him what Kyle told me.

"He wants you to look for his parents? That case is long cold," John says, frowning. "Anything else?"

After a slight hesitation, I tell him about the presence.

He listens non-reactively, neither accepting nor rejecting, but simply absorbing what I have to say.

Again, perfect guy.

"What's wrong now?" he asks, as I slump a little and sigh.

"Nothing. Did I say anything on this side?"

"Nope. You just sat there until you fell over and had a fit."

I laugh and then cough again, rubbing my sore sternum. "Thanks for trying to save me, even if it wasn't necessary."

"Are you sure it wasn't?" he asks. "I gave you artificial respiration for almost five minutes. People have been brain dead after not breathing for less time."

Mouth to mouth for five minutes? Why did I have to be unconscious for that?

I frown at him. "My body is used to it. And it might look like I'm not breathing, but I am — just very slowly. In fact, forcing me to breathe faster might do more harm than good. But... thank you for saving my life."

He breaks eye contact and looks away, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly as he checks his phone.

"Shit," he swears, scrolling through his messages.

"What?"

"They ID'd the body we found in the park."

"Who was it?" I ask, craning to see over his shoulder.

"One Daryl Sparks. A private investigator based out of Shasta City."

He taps a link in a message, and a website opens on his phone. A balding white guy with teeth so bleached they put snow to shame grins from the top of a page full of glowing endorsements, including "The best detective since Sherlock Holmes," which, honestly, seems like a bit of a stretch.

"What was he doing in Spring Lakes?" I ask. Shasta's only about an hour away, which isn't that much in this region of remote little towns, but still not a drive one takes without a reason.

"That, dear Watson, is the question," John murmurs. "Or rather, given where and how he was killed, I'd bet my last dollar he was investigating Kyle's death. So, the real question is... who hired him?"

"Can't you find out? Hack his computer, or whatever?"

He looks over his shoulder at me. "Probably. That's my next move, anyway. You up for a little drive?"

"You want me to come with you?" I ask, unable to hide my surprise.

He turns and meets my eyes with an intensity that roots me to the spot.

"Yeah. If this guy's a ghost now, he might go back to a place he's connected to, right? Besides, after what just happened, I am not letting you out of my sight until this is over and done. Especially not tonight. Understand?"

I nod. Unless we can stop it, tonight is the night of the second Feast.

"Good. Grab whatever you need for your ghost hunt, and let's go."