The Beast

“You coming?”

“Oh, yup.” She headed over to him—and had an absurd wish that he was built more like the Rock instead of one of the boys from The Big Bang Theory. “So you said you were familiar with the school?”

“My mother went here.”

Small world, Jo thought. So did mine.

Their feet shuffled damp leaves out of the way, but did nothing for fallen limbs. Those they stepped over. And when they got to the end of the asphalt, there wasn’t any real difference between the amount of fallen stuff on the grass versus the parking lot.

“What year?” Jo asked as she put her hands into her coat pockets. “Did your mother graduate, that is.”

Shoot, they had no flashlights. Just their phones.

Then again, the moon overhead was bright, with nothing but the occasional cloud wisp to mark the dark, cold heavens.

“’Eighty.”

“When did the school close?”

“Sometime in the late nineties. I don’t know who owns all the land now, but it’s a helluva property. I mean, why hasn’t someone developed this?”

“Not economically feasible. For one thing, the zoning out here isn’t commercial, and second, some of these buildings have to be on the Historic Register, which would restrict their being retrofitted for reuse.”

Bill looked over at her. “I’ve forgotten—you work for a real estate company.”

“Two years next month.”

“Where did you say you went to school? Or did you?”

Williams College. English lit major with a minor in American history. Accepted into the Yale master’s program for English, but couldn’t foot the bill on her own.

“Nowhere important.” She glanced at him. “How did you know where to park?”

“I used to come here to think when I was at SUNY Caldie. My mom had told me about it, and one day I biked out and just went exploring. I haven’t been back in a very long time.”

They made it around the side of the building, and just as he’d described, the open area of the campus rolled out before them—which was, yup, still marked with crushed dead grass.

“Jesus . . .” Bill said. “What the hell?”

“Crop circles, Caldwell style, right?”

Bill proceeded ahead of her, and Jo went some distance farther—before she had to stop and look behind herself.

They were being watched. She was sure of it.

“Hey! Wait up,” she called out.

As she jogged forward and caught up, he said, “I need to come back in the daytime with a camera.”

“Maybe we should just go now—”

“Look at that storage building over there.” He pointed ahead. “The roof’s been torn off.”

“You know, in retrospect, coming during the day would be better. I mean, we can’t really see anything—” She sniffed the air. “Is that pine?”

“From the broken rafters. That damage is new.”

Sure enough, as they went over to the debris and she picked up pieces of splintered wood, the cuts were all fresh, the yellow insides of the old boards exposed. And asphalt shingles were everywhere around the roof-less shed, littering the crushed ground—

Jo’s foot caught on something and she fell to the side, her ankle giving way. As the earth rushed up to her, she threw out a hand and twisted around, saving herself from a total face-plant.

“What the hell?” she muttered as she looked at what had tripped her.

It was not a footprint. A giant footprint. Nope.

“Are you okay?” Bill put out a hand—then got distracted by what she’d noticed. “What is that?”

“I’m fine, and no clue.” She stood up by herself and brushed her slacks off. “Is it just me or does this feel like a grown up episode of Scooby Doo?”

Bill took his cell out and snapped a couple of pictures with the help of his flash. When he checked what had been captured, he cursed. “No, we definitely have to come back during the day.”

Jo got down on her haunches and examined the sunken pattern in the ground with the flashlight in her phone. The imprint was deeper and smudged on one side, as if whatever had made it had been pushing off in mid-run.

Bill shook his head. “Does your buddy—Dougie, I think you said that was his name—have resources?”

She glanced up. “You mean, could he have paid to set this all up?” When the reporter nodded, she had to laugh. “He can barely fund his pot-related munchies. No, he didn’t do this, and as far as I’m aware, he doesn’t know anyone who could.”

“Maybe this was made by a four-wheeler.” Bill lowered himself down, too. “Skidding out.”

Not even close, she thought.

“But what about the roof?” Jo nodded at the topless four walls. “It wasn’t blown off by the wind—there was a little rain recently, but nothing even close to a tornado. And as for an explosion? Nothing is charred and there’s no smell of smoke, which you’d expect to find if it had been a bomb.”

Bill regarded her steadily. “When you grow up, do you want to be an investigative reporter?”

“I’m twenty-six. By all accounts, I have grown up.” Although rooming with Dougie and his ilk might disprove that notion a little. “I really think we should—”

As she stopped talking, Bill looked around. “What?”

Jo searched the shadows, her heart beginning to pound. “Listen . . . I think we need to go. I really . . . really think we need to leave.”