Page 3 of Come Find Me
I don’t look at Abby as I drive past. Today will be a good day.
—
The ranger at Freedom Battleground State Park thinks he’s got me all figured out.EMF meter?he once asked when I pulled the gear from my backpack.You got one of those infrared cameras, too?
Apparently if there are enough ghost stories in your area, you’re bound to get some amateur ghost hunters. I guess I wasn’t the only one roaming the woods, looking for signs of the unexplained. I don’t have one of those infrared camera things, though—or a temperature gauge—because I’m not looking for cold spots or orbs or anything. I’m not even looking forghosts,exactly. But I let the ranger think that’s what I’m up to, because he mostly leaves me alone. I must seem harmless enough.
But, like he assumes, Iammeasuring, and mapping, high-electromagnetic spots, and I also have a Geiger counter to detect radiation pockets, and an extra-low-frequency meter, all of which are typically associated with theother side.With signs of ghosts. Or spirits. Honestly, I’m not exactly clear on the proper terminology.
That psychic my parents hired came out here with us, and she said she could feel someenergy,thatsomething happened here—well, of course it had, we’d told her as much. And she gave us some hard sell about her colleague who was an expert and could help pinpoint spirits, or energies or something, and this was the point where she lost my parents.She preys on the desperate,my father said when we got back home, and my mother, with her silence, agreed.
But I looked it up after, which is how I stumbled onto all this stuff, but also how I stumbled onto the Quest for Proof: a group of people devoted to proving the existence of anything paranormal. Not just showing on some questionable video, or explaining with a persuasive paper, butproving.
I know there’s something here. There’s a reason for all the stories. There’s a reason for the ghost hunters.
My brother and his dog disappeared with no earthly explanation. And if I can prove it, I’ll have the backing of people who will admit, finally,Yes, this is what happened to your brother.
Because what the police kept stressing when Liam first disappeared was that the only way to find a missing person was to first understand what had happened to them.
So, step one.
I guess at the end, I do want the same thing as my parents: answers. A way to understand. It’s just that I’m pretty sure they’re looking in all the wrong places.
A dream. A premonition. An unexplained disappearance. A forest of ghost stories and legends, and my brother vanishing into thin air. There are things that have happened since that make it clear there is no rational explanation.
But I’m not here to chase ghosts. There are enough people who’ve taken that angle, coming up empty. I’ve got a different plan: drop a rock, and the same thing happens over and over again, predictable.
But what if it doesn’t? What if there’s something unexpected, some failure to predict?
The unpredictable, the unexplained—that’sthe proof.That’smy plan. I know I’ll find it here. I’m the one who felt it, after all.
—
What I don’t like to admit to myself too frequently is this, the second half of what the police were implying. Step two, if you will: if we understand how my brother disappeared, then it follows that maybe we can get him back.
—
I’m in the northwest corner of the park, a section I’ve never scanned before, when it’s finally time to call it quits.
I stop taking readings when the visitors begin arriving. Their cell phones might interfere. The walkie-talkies of the other rangers. I leave my own phone in the car, every time. I know I should really be doing this at night, when nobody’s around, when it’s just me and the stories, and the dark.
But then it’s just me and the stories, and the dark.
So, I’m a coward.
I pull out the map to mark off my progress, jot down the readings, before heading back for my car. The park spans three townships, a four-mile area, drawing the line between counties and school districts. Where I stand, the woods stop abruptly, giving way to open field, a split-rail fence, a barn. A house.
The Jones House.
A shudder rolls through me. I know about the Jones House because everyone knows about the Jones House. Because Sutton went to school with the girl who survived it, because he made himself a part of the story, told pieces at a baseball clinic this winter to anyone who would listen. And because it was splashed across the headlines for weeks, just like Liam’s disappearance two years ago. It was the train wreck from which people could not look away.
And apparently, I’m no different.
There’s nothing paranormal about what happened in that house. But I remember what the psychic told my parents, about energies. I think about what could be left behind in a place like that. It could be useful for some sort of comparison or something. But mostly, I think—What can it hurt?
I’m across the field and over the fence before I can talk myself out of it. The house is abandoned, though there’s aFOR SALEsign in the front yard. I take out the EMF device when I’m far from the house, just for some baseline readings. Then I step closer, walk up onto the front porch, and press my forehead to the closest window, peering inside.
The curtains are pulled open, and I can see the outline of a couch, a lamp, pictures. But something registers as off in my mind, and I look again. The pictures hang crooked, and some have been knocked to the floor. The house isnot right,and goose bumps rise on the back of my neck.
