the hood, the crack of bone against windshield.
I felt like I’d been pranked. This ghost was starting to really piss me off.
With a surge of anger, I jumped to my feet and I shouted at the empty road, “What do you want?” Then I spun and called to the limestone hills, “I’m busca-ing for you, you stupid ghost. What more do you want?”
Only silence answered.
The ghost wanted me to stop. I was stopped. I remembered the EVP, and though I’m sure Phin would be ready with a digital voice recorder, all I had was my phone. Maybe the voice-note app would work.
Before I could get it from the car, I heard a strange, deep whump.
I knew that subwoofer sound. It was soft and distant, but not as distant as when I heard it at the farm, or at the dig site.
I caught a flicker of light in the darkness past the fence that ran along the highway. There was a gate about a hundred feet from me, and the sign told me I was in the middle of McCulloch land, but the twists of the road made it hard to know exactly where. Which probably made what I was about to do even more stupid.
There was something out in that pasture, and I was going to follow it, and I was going to find it. Ghost, mystery, Mad Monk … I was hell-bent on putting them all to rest.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I got in the car and drove closer to the gate, pulling off the road and into the weeds on the shoulder. Then I grabbed my phone and my flashlight and clambered over the gate.
I was doing exactly what I’d sworn never to do again. I was chasing ghosts into the darkness. But my determination was stronger than my fear.
The deep sound didn’t repeat, but I could hear a throaty rumbling. The hills made it impossible to localize. I left my flashlight off and picked my way down the white caliche road until my eyes adjusted to the moonlight. Something big moved in the shadows to my right, scaring my heart into my throat—until I heard rhythmic chewing. A cow.
The cows had been cleared from around the dig site, so I was in a different section of the ranch. I thought the looming bluff in front of me might be the big granite outcropping that Mrs. McCulloch had pointed to at lunch, which helped me get my bearings.
The light I’d seen from the road winked out. I fixed the point where it had disappeared in my mind and, trusting my night vision, set off at a slow jog across the pasture. At first I kept to the packed-down cattle trails, but when it became too difficult to keep on target, I abandoned the path for the more uneven ground.
The hill was a black shadow against the charcoal of the sky, and as I neared it, I heard an intermittent rumble. It took me a moment to identify the sound as a diesel truck engine, coming toward me.
Coming right toward me, I realized with a start. The bounce of its shocks, the crunch of rock and dirt under big tires, but no headlights. Who drove over this terrain in the dark with no headlights? There were ravines and ditches and cows and girls with more determination than sense out in these hills.
In those heartbeats of frozen confusion, I couldn’t think of a single person who wouldn’t be extremely annoyed to see me. But I also couldn’t think of any good reason for someone to be driving without lights. I mean, no reason that wasn’t sneaky and dangerous. I didn’t want to be caught there by anyone, but especially someone who didn’t want to be caught there, either.
For another second I danced indecisively from foot to foot, then spotted a rocky outcropping like a gift from heaven. I ran for it and rolled into the concealment of shadow beneath it.
Only it wasn’t a shadow. It was a hole.
And I was falling.
I slid down an almost vertical slope, sharp rocks tearing my shirt and scraping my back, but slowing my descent. Before I had time to let out more than a startled screech and pained yelp, I landed on something soft and yielding and really foul.
My flashlight clattered down beside me and hit with a squish.
The blackness was so profound it hurt my eyes. From overhead I heard the faint rustle of leathery wings in the keen,