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“I’m pretty sure this is stalking.”
“This isn’t stalking, its reconnaissance. ” The young woman currently hidden in the shrubbery adjusted her oversized binoculars, attempting to focus through the dirty dorm window.
“No, it’s stalking. Do you not remember that online seminar thing we had to do before move-in so people could recognize stalking? Well, I remember it, and I recognize stalking.” Immediately adjacent to the figure crouched in the bushes, another college-aged girl shook her head and adjusted the walkie talkie she had repurposed into an EMF reader. “You’re literally crouched in a bush like a cartoon pervert.”
“May, if I was a cartoon pervert, I would have joined the anime club.”
“Like a pervert from a cartoon, dumbass. You could only get more obviously shady if you put on all black clothing and a fedora.”
“I’m not an idiot. All back makes your silhouette stand out, dark blues are better for stealthing at night.”
May looked down at her friend, noticing that she had, indeed, put on a navy hoodie and a dark wash pair of jeans for this excursion, and felt nothing but exasperation and incredible disappointment. And stress. Because if they did get caught on a stakeout at three in the morning by campus security, then she could probably wave goodbye to her scholarship and maybe get…thrown in prison? Get put on the sex offender list? Do they lock people up for this?
“Usually, you just get slapped with a restraining order and a fine, worst case if they press charges is that you settle out of court.”
“What?”
“You were talking out loud.”
“No, I – “ May pinched the bridge of her nose. “Grace. Grace. Please tell me you know that because you googled it.”
The woman in the bush, Grace, took a sip of a now cold cup of coffee she had brought along with her, not breaking eye contact with the window. “If that makes you feel better, sure.”
May sighed and crouched down. “Why am I even here? Like, sure, the dude is a little weird, but this seems wildly out of proportion.”
“I needed someone to watch my back.”
“Why couldn’t Wes watch your back?”
“Wes is…” Grace paused, possibly out of trying to find a polite way to describe their new club member, but probably for dramatics. “suspicious. I’m not sure that he’s…entirely up to code. I’m not gonna say that he’s an alien lizard person who killed and replaced the human he’s impersonating, or anything, but there is something off about him that makes my hair stand up, you know?”
“No. You think there’s something off about anyone who has a weird habit or a quirk. Didn’t you go on a rant to me last week about your RA possibly being a supernatural being in disguise?” May countered. Sure, maybe Wes made her startle a little when she first met him, but that was because he was six foot six, built like an under stuffed scarecrow, incredibly ginger, and walked very quietly right up until he started talking.
“She has to be. I watched her take cookies out of the building’s oven without oven mitts on.”
May rolled her eyes. “That’s not enough evidence to support a hypothesis! A person doing a weird thing, or, I don’t know what your deal with Wes is, being tall? That isn’t solid. I thought that the campus paranormal society would tackle actual, real cryptids, like Bigfoot.”
“Okay, forget Wes. I’m telling you, this guy is straight-up, bona fide Cryptid quality. He needs to be investigated.” Grace crumpled her now-empty coffee cup and stuffed it in her hoodie pocket, refocusing on the building where her latest target lived. “Why did you even agree to come if you don’t believe me?”
May could tell that Grace was trying to sound casual but was doing a poor job hiding the hurt in her voice.
“Hey,” She put a hand on her shoulder, having to lean into the pine needle like bush a bit to reach. “I never said that I didn’t believe you.”
“You implied it.”
“I didn’t! I was just wondering why we had to break the law in the middle of the night to keep an eye on this guy. Are we even sure that we have the right window?” It would suck if they got his room number mixed up and something wild happened, but they were on the wrong side of the building.
“It’s the right window.” Grace sounded curt.
“Alright, just checking. Look, I – “ May cut herself off. “I’m sorry if I’m not super enthusiastic about this, it’s just that it’s cold and I’ve never really done anything, like, illegal before and I have an eight a.m. class and I’m just…tired and nervous.”
Grace nodded stiffly, saying nothing.
“Just, like, what exactly are we looking for here? If you tell me what tipped you off about…”
“Daniel Fenton.”
“Thanks. If you tell me what tipped you off about Fenton, then I’ll know what to look for?” May squeezed Grace’s shoulder. “I know you take pretty good notes.”
She sighed. “You won’t think it’s stupid? Or crazy?”
“Of course not. Even if I do think that, isn’t every great theory stupid or crazy until its proven true?”
“Okay. Okay. So I take my Thermo class with Daniel, right? We both sit in the back. And two weeks ago, he brought his lunch in with him. No big deal, right? But there was a loud noise because someone dropped their laptop or something near the front and he startled, and do you know what happened next? He swallowed his fork.”
“What? How?”
“Okay, not the whole fork, it was one of those plastic ones you get in the to go boxes from the cafeteria. So he had it in his mouth, and when he jumped the handle broke off, and I watched him swallow something reflexively and then just sort of, stare at the handle for a moment. I thought he was going to leave or at least raise his hand to be excused because swallowing the spiky part has to be dangerous, right? Or at least painful! But he just kind of stabs what’s left of the fork into his pasta and takes another bite of his food! I didn’t see any plastic leave his mouth, and I watched him like a hawk for the rest of class! He even answered a question and his voice sounded fine!!” Grace got a little louder on that last sentence, before remembering where she was and what she was currently doing and looked a little sheepish.
“Alright, that is strange.”
“That’s not the only thing.” She lowered her voice back down to a stage whisper. “I started watching him after that, discreetly, and that incident was just the tip of the iceberg that is Daniel Fenton, if that even is his real name. I take my eyes off of him for a second, or he turns down a corner that no one is around, and he vanishes. Like, literally vanishes.”
May frowned, thoughtful. “Mind if I advocate for the devil?”
“Go for it.”
“He could just be a really fast walker.”
“that fast? If he is, that’s just as abnormal as vanishing.”
“Or, more likely, if he knows that someone is following him, then he’s hiding, trying to break sight lines.”
“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know that I follow him. At least, he doesn’t know it’s me. He hasn’t acted differently around me since I started. Also, a few places I saw him vanish didn’t have good hiding spots. I saw him duck behind that one building placed between the rec soccer fields, and when I caught up, he was gone! He disappeared in the middle of an open field!”
“Hmmm. Okay, for the fork thing, maybe it was an edible fork?”
“I maybe thought so too, so I snagged the handle out of the trash after class. It was plastic!!!” Grace lightly slapped her friend’s shoulder. “And, and! Three days ago he came with his arm bandaged up, with what looked like a bite mark, but two days ago there was nothing there, not even a trace of a scar! Which is strange, because his other arm is covered in scars, in Lichtenberg figures! according to Wikipedia those usually go away in a day or two after getting hit by electricity, but he’s had them for weeks, now, and they don’t look like they are going away!”
“A tattoo? And maybe the bite was from, like, a theater class?”
“See, I was able to get his class schedule a few days ago – “
“You what.”
“And there’s nothing there that would be even a remotely reasonable explanation. And his social media! I tried investigating from that avenue, and anything posted before he moved into the dorm causes my phone to glitch out and crash! The library computers too!”
“Could we maybe circle back to – ”
“And! And! When I told Wes that I was investigating tonight he just laughed in my face and said that investigating Fenton was a lost cause! That he had tried already and it wasn’t worth it!”
“Shhh.” May put her hand over Grace’s mouth as her volume started increasing again. Grace retaliated by licking her palm.
“That’s not going to work, I have two younger sisters. You good to be quieter?”
She nodded, and May wiped the spit off onto her pants. “I thought you didn’t invite Wes because he was suspicious.”
“I mean,” Grace steepled her fingers together. With the crouch, it was a passable, unintentional Gollum impression. “He is, but he’s also great at taking photos at night.”
“Fair.”
“But that’s another strange thing about him. Both of them. I prodded a little and Wes let it slip that they went to high school together, in some place called Amity Park? But I couldn’t find any records. Not online, not on a map, hell, I went to the state archives, and they don’t have a record of it either!”
“That’s…incredibly weird. Wes claims that he already looked into Fenton and didn’t find anything? You’re sure that he’s not covering his own ass?” May leaned forward. Sure, Wes himself probably wasn’t abnormal. Well, more abnormal than anyone else in the paranormal society, but the fact that he was somehow tied to this felt…important. Like it recontextualized some of the things he did and said.
How did he walk so quietly, anyways?
May shook her head, dispelling the errant thought. “We can always talk to Wes later, press for details. For now, let’s focus on Fenton.”
The walkie talkie in her hand crackled with static ominously.
“Who’s focusing on Fenton?”
Both girls jumped, as suddenly there was a hulking figure right behind them.
Grace let out a strangled yell, springing up and yeeting her empty coffee cup at the silhouette. The figure caught it right before it made contact with its head, lazily plucking it out of the air with one hand.
May grabbed Grace in a death grip and fumbled for her bag, then sprinted as fast as she could with her friend being pulled along behind her, nearly dizzy with the adrenaline spike.
“Wait!” The figure called out, holding its hands up in surrender and taking a step back, towards the streetlight. The shift caused the electric glow it had previously blocked out with its bulk to reflect off the windows of the building, the chrome of a nearby parked car. The glass bottle held in its hand, its eyes.
Neither girl wanted to stay to figure out what it wanted, and sure as hell weren’t going to. They took off, scrambling into the middle of the road and turning the first corner out of sight.
Dash blinked, slowly and still a little buzzed from the frat party he had just returned from, wondering what the fuck that was all about. He went to scratch his jaw, realizing he was still holding whatever trash the bush people threw at him only after he bumped it against his face in the attempt. Huh. Okay, maybe he was more than buzzed. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea to mix his liquors.
He pulled out his card to swipe into the dorms and tossed his drink containers into the trash as he staggered in. Hopefully there wasn’t anyone up in the building and he could just quietly make his way back to bed.