Page 46 of (Mostly) Human Resources

“Oh, no,” Alexys moaned. The odds of her being able to find her way back to Opal’s were zero, and God only knew what might be stalking her in those woods. Alexys pressed her hands against the sides of her head and squatted low to the ground. “Oh God. Oh God, oh God, nonono. I’msuchan idiot! Waylan!” Alexys cried. “Elliot!”

Whether Waylan was hiding or had abandoned her altogether hardly mattered. The sun was setting, and she would have to spend the night out there. No tent, no sleeping bag, no way of keeping warm or camping out for the night. She was so woefully unprepared for the trip it was almost laughable. Nic had been right. She wasuselessin the field, and rather than find Elliot, she had managed to put herself in just as much danger. How stupid she’d been to think she didn’t need Nic.

Alexys squeezed her eyes shut and tried to slow her now frantic breathing. Her heartbeat thundered against her chest, and the world around her tilted.

“Miss Alexys?”

Her head snapped up, and she saw Waylan standing before her.

He looked uncertain as he shifted from foot to foot, the image of a child that knew he was about to get chastised but almost believed he deserved it. He smiled apologetically and held a hand out to help her up. “Sorry ’bout that. I tend to wander off sometimes. Mama hates it when I do that.”

“Waylan … But …” Alexys accepted his hand and her voice trailed off.Had she been crying?She couldn’t be mad at him, she was too relieved to see him. And besides, he was only a child.

“Don’t worry, I’m not upset.” She smiled at him and hoped her panic didn’t show on her face. “But are you sure that’s your house?”

“The house?” Waylan looked past her toward the dilapidated structure, and his smile vanished. A look of confused horror came over his freckled face. “What?”

He stepped past her to stand before the ruined steps of the porch and stared. He looked so small, so helpless.

Alexys frowned. “Waylan? Is everything alright?”

He stood quietly for several moments before she realized he was muttering to himself. She stepped closer.

“Uh, Waylan? You okay?”

“Mama said to get home before dark. I shoulda come home. I was out too late. I shoulda made it home for dinner.” He took another hesitant step toward the house. “Mama?”

The soft question, and the plaintive tone of his voice, nearly shattered her heart. Surely that house wasn’t his. It’d been abandoned for years.

As Alexys watched, right before her very eyes, Waylan began to flicker.

It was like a video game glitch, or the way a hologram image tends to stutter in a movie. Waylan was still there, but there weremoments where he vanished from view, and others where he was nearly transparent, the house and the trees beyond visiblethroughhis form.

Oh. No.

Alexys took a step back.

“Waylan.” She needed to get out of there. “I think I better get going.”

“I was too late,” he said, voice rising in volume. His misery was palpable. “I shoulda been home before dark like Mama said!”

He continued to flicker, fading in and out of view with increasing speed as she backed away another step. The darkness of the setting sun crept in around them, the shadowed fingers of trees reaching out toward the little boy. A half-formed thing, neither here nor gone but trapped between two places.

Alexys squeezed the straps of her backpack between trembling fingers, her legs poised to run. She had never seen a Haint in person, but she’d heard enough stories to know that Waylan was no ordinary boy, oh no. And she was afoolfor following him into those woods.

Waylan let out a tortured howl before his form disappeared, and Alexys ran.

CHAPTER 27

“Entity discredits ghosts as non-issues and wants to distance themselves from that brand of ‘paranormal,’ but I’ve seen what ghosts can do. There’s no way to get rid of them, either. The best we can do is protect ourselves and pray we’re able to ward off the worst of them.”

Journals of Warden Michael Keane

Alexys ran for her life.

Cold wind whipped across her face, and her breaths rushed painfully from her lungs. She tripped and staggered over brambles and bushes and fallen trees. Vines of kudzu and low-hanging branches, nearly invisible in the darkening sky, caught her face as she ran past. She didn’t dare look back.

The sound of her feet crashing through the leaves echoed around her, and it was joined by her heartbeat reverberating in her ears. Alexys didn’t know if Waylan (or anything else) was following her, but she didn’t want to find out.