PROLOGUE

Somethin’ ain’t right.

Wayne Swanson peered out the window of his front door, studying his vast yard as best he could in the pitch-black night. There were no streetlights in the rural area where he lived, so the only light came from the moon. Wind whipped at the trees, blowing the dead brown leaves all over his lawn. Old Pat on the news channel had said the wind speeds were low, but to Wayne’s eyes it looked like a hurricane was coming. He’d endured plenty of those in his long life.

He sipped his whiskey, savoring the burn in his mouth and the back of his throat. He didn’t drink often, but that night he needed to calm his nerves.

“It’s the weather, Wayne,” his wife Geraldine said behind him. “The weather guys can’t predict it no matter how much they try, and neither can you. Stop obsessing.”

It wasn’t the weather that bothered him, though. He was on the lookout for something else. Twice in the past week he’d had trespassers on his property, and they’d come around the same time both nights.

“The weather ain’t the problem, Gerry,” Wayne said, never taking his eyes from the window.

His wife sighed. “Honestly, Wayne. You can’t call the police again.”

Wayne pressed his lips together. He’d called the police after both occurrences, but they’d turned up nothing. The second time, the officer had given Wayne that look he’d come to recognize. The one that seemed to say, “just another old-timer losing it.” Not even Geraldine believed he’d seen anyone.

Boss, Wayne’s bullmastiff, whined and scratched at the back door, wanting to go out. Wayne checked his watch. It was 9:49 PM. Close to the time the trespassers had come the last two times.

Wayne downed the rest of his whiskey in a single gulp and went to the kitchen. Boss looked over his shoulder at Wayne, eyes big and pleading.

“Yeah, yeah.” Wayne placed his empty glass on the nearby counter and crouched down to lace up his boots. Even at eighty-one, he could still bend, sit, and work. He was blessed. Sadly, his wife couldn’t say the same.

“Are you taking the dog out?” Geraldine’s voice came from the living room.

“Yup,” Wayne said. He finished tightening his boots and straightened up.

Geraldine appeared in the kitchen. Her long, white hair was tied up in a loose bun and she wore her white nightgown, ready for bed. “Try to keep him calm. He’ll wake the neighbors.”

“We ain’t got neighbors,” Wayne said, annoyed at how often he had to remind her. The residents of Plaster Road, the Swansons included, owned large plots of land. Their nearest neighbor on one side was about a mile away. On the other side, two miles away. There had once been a closer house, but it had been demolished, leaving behind a vast, unused portion of land. Wayne wondered when the owner—whoever it was—was going to build something there.

Wayne opened the closet next to the back door. His shotgun leaned against the wall. He grabbed it and checked to make sure it was loaded. It was.

“Wayne.” Geraldine’s hand went to her collarbone. “What in God’s name?”

“Somethin’ ain’t right, Geraldine.” He grabbed the flashlight off the closet shelf, checked that it worked, and opened the back door. Boss bolted outside.

Wayne knew Geraldine didn’t like his gun. Knew she didn’t believe that he’d seen anyone on their property. The police had failed him twice, so if these goons were going to keep harassing him, he would have to take matters into his own hands. Wayne Swanson did not like to take chances if he could avoid it.

Forty years ago, burglars had broken into their home and made off with a bunch of stuff. The most valuable had been some of Geraldine’s family jewelry. His wife had cried for days after losing things with such sentimental value. Wayne had sympathized with her, but he always knew it could have ended up so much worse. What if they’d come home during the burglary? And if they had, what if those criminals had been armed?

The nighttime walk around the house had been a ritual ever since Boss was a pup. Wayne called it “the patrol.” Boss couldn’t, and wouldn’t, settle down to sleep until he sniffed around the perimeter of the house, circling the entire property and scoping everything out. He would pee here and there, drink a bit from his outdoor water bowl, and when they returned inside he’d curl up on his cushion in the corner and snore until dawn. Innocent enough, at least until recently, when the patrol had become a lot more sinister.

That’s what had frightened Wayne the most. Both times, the trespassers had come during the nightly walk, as if they knew Wayne would be outside. If they knew his routine, that meant they’d been lurking around for a lot longer than a week.

The wind whistled past Wayne’s ears and whipped at his shirt. It was unusually cold for autumn in the south, and the chill pierced through the thin cotton material. He trained the flashlight’s beam onto the ground in front of him. Boss dipped in and out of the light, sniffing around and leading the way. Wayne’s boots crunched through piles of dead leaves so thick that they bunched around his ankles. He’d have to rake them in the morning before they rose to the roof.

The roof. That means the gutter’s gonna be full, too. He didn’t mind cleaning those out, but it was always a pain because Geraldine didn’t like it when he climbed the ladder. She would no doubt shout at him all day, telling him to come down and pay someone to do that before he fell and broke his neck.

Wayne and Boss circled the house and came to the empty lot next door, the one where the abandoned house had been demolished by the new owner. Boss never wandered too far onto it, as if he knew the property line. He sniffed the ground and looked around, then paused with one leg up, poised to pee.

Suddenly, Boss’s entire body stiffened. He started growling.

Wayne pointed his flashlight toward where his dog was looking. The beam illuminated only an empty field.

“Who’s there?” he shouted. Wayne tightened his grip on his shotgun.

Boss backed up against Wayne’s ankles. The dog was usually fearsome and wanted nothing more than to tear the mailman apart, and no visitor had ever scared him. But whatever Boss sensed in the empty lot next door turned him into a cowering mess.

“T-this is trespassing,” Wayne shouted. “I’ll c-call the police.”

No response.

Wayne’s flashlight blinked out like an extinguished torch, plunging him and Boss into darkness. Wayne mashed the button several times, thinking he’d pressed it by accident, but it didn’t come back on.

“What the hell?” he muttered. He’d just changed the damn batteries.

Boss let out a single, aggressive bark. Wayne dropped his useless flashlight and gripped his shotgun in both hands.

Then, even though it was dark, Wayne saw them. The two familiar black shadows stood in the middle of the empty lot, side-by-side, one taller than the other.

Wayne raised his shotgun and pointed it straight at the pair. “I’ve got a gun. You’d better leave.” His aim was unsteady in his trembling hand.

They remained completely still, like statues.

Wayne Swanson wasn’t seeing things. He was eighty-one years old, but Dr. Hays praised his eyesight every year when he went in for his checkup. Yet how could those shadows be there in the first place? It made no sense. You had to have light to make shadows. It was like the shadows were darker than the night.

Wayne pumped the shotgun, hoping the sound would frighten the trespassers. “I’m warnin’ you. This is private property.”

Boss started whimpering and crying.

Wayne considered firing a warning shot. Far up and to the left, of course, only to scare the bastards off. But if he did shoot, he’d never hear the end of it from Geraldine, who’d likely think he was only firing at figments of his imagination.

A sharp gust of wind almost knocked Wayne off his feet. It was like something from a storm, though Old Pat hadn’t said anything about a storm coming in. The leaves whipped around Wayne, lifted from the ground, and were carried up like a mass migration of birds, breaking his line of sight on the trespassers.

Boss relaxed. When the leaves settled, Wayne saw that he and Boss were alone. The intruders had run away again.

Wayne scooped up his flashlight, pressed the button. It turned on as if nothing had been wrong before. He aimed the beam at where the figures had stood. Definitely gone. He pivoted and shone his light toward his house. He illuminated the back door, the windows, anywhere the intruders could be breaking in.

They weren’t there.

“How the hell do they move so fast?” he whispered to Boss. And so quietly? He hadn’t even heard running footsteps crunching the leaves. It was like they’d simply vanished rather than fled.

There was no telling how long these thugs would be satisfied just by scaring an old man and his dog. Eventually, they’d do something worse. Hurt him, or Geraldine. Wayne had to get to the bottom of this before that happened, with or without the police’s help.

Wayne made a final sweep of the empty lot with his flashlight. He shivered and said, “Come on, Boss. Let’s go back inside.”

He returned to the house, already dreading tomorrow night’s patrol.

Somethin’ definitely ain’t right.