My heart just about burst in my chest when I noticed the silhouette of a person in the projection room at the back of the theater. Then I realized it was just one of the other two groups who’d started up there instead of a theater. False alarm.

  Now that we were nervously acclimating to the darkness, Len was truly in his element. It wasn’t a word I’d normally use to describe him, but he scampered down the rest of the aisle with his flashlight and hopped up on the stage. Over the years, he’d perfected his moody, aloof, vibe that I so enjoyed about him. But being here gave him a whole new energy. He was actually bouncing on the balls of his feet with a big goofy grin while he made sure everyone was out of the aisle.

  Out of familiarity, I suppose, Len’s brothers stuck near me. I followed Len all the way down to the front and turned into a dark row of seats and they followed along. I stopped at what I figured was the mid-way point of the row and felt around to put down the seat. Carlisle took the seat right next to me. Sterling on his other side.

  Once we were all sitting, Sterling leaned over his brother to whisper at me, “Does it feel cold in here?”

  It was dark enough that I couldn’t get a read on his facial expression. He might have been sincere, but it seemed more likely that he was just trying to freak me out. Nevermind that it was pretty chilly, but that was probably because it was dark and we were noticing things.

  “Shhh,” I said as quietly as I could and settled back into my chair, clasped the armrests, and fixed my eyes firmly on Len.

  Once everyone was sitting, Len switched off his flashlight. It was so quiet, I swear we could have heard a pin drop onto carpeting.

  With the slight comfort of a flashlight gone, my body became more attuned to the only sensory input around. It was definitely cold. I almost wished I hadn’t taken my coat off. I crossed my arms over my chest to conserve warmth. Then I started to notice all the little sounds that are usually relegated to background noise—shuffling of shoes, creaking of the old theater seats, the breathing of the people around me.

  Nothing had even started yet, but every nerve was at attention. My heart rate sped as if I was preparing to fight or flight.

  “Listen to the sound of my voice.”

  I jumped, soothing quickly when I realized it was just Len. If I was this jumpy now, what would happen if we actually encountered something supernatural?

  “I just like to say that once we’re in the darkness because it tends to freak people out.”

  This elicited a few low chuckles from the group.

  “For real though,” Len continued, “the spirit world is only separated from ours by a thin veil. It’s pretty easy to cross if you know how. Of course, it’s just like dropping by to visit a living friend. Sometimes they’re in the mood for company, sometimes they’re not. So I can guarantee we’ll reach through the veil tonight, but we’ll have to see if anyone there is willing to play with us. That said, I’ve never had a silent night here, but it’s my first time leading a group, I wouldn’t put it past them to screw around with me.”

  There were some more chuckles, but the joke sent a shiver down my spine instead. I knew Len’s ghost hunting stories, but it hit me that spirits could possibly be in the room, surrounding us, at that very moment. The idea that they’d want to mess with Len, or maybe even me, didn’t sit well.

  I shoved my hands between my knees. My fingers were really cold. Even Carlisle next to me rubbed a hand over his upper arm as if trying to warm up.

  Anxiety fluttered in my chest and the dark room gave me little else to focus on. Since no one could see me anyway, I closed my eyes and took a couple deep breaths. That seemed to do the trick.

  When I opened my eyes again, Len was starting to explain what we’d be doing.

  “The first thing we’re going to do is use a spirit box. This is a tool we use to hear auditory phenomena in real time. In other words, we can talk and the spirits can answer.”

  There was that rapid heartbeat again. Conversing with a ghost didn’t seem like it should be a terrifying prospect, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that ghosts were swirling around the room, perhaps even in my personal space. It wasn’t just that they were ghosts, but ghosts had been people. Who were these people? If they were dead, what did they know? Did they immediately have access to my life? It was unsettling in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

  Tucking my cold, clammy hands into my pockets, I tried to think of something else while Len got his spirit box contraption set up. Once he did, it did nothing to soothe my nerves. Not that I was expecting anything, but this was not it.

  As it turned out, the spirit box quickly cycled through the white noise of radio stations. Len said it scanned seven stations per second. It was a maddening cacophony of static at higher and lower pitches. How were we supposed to talk to anything through all that noise?

  In the darkness, I couldn’t even use Len as a focal point to stay grounded. I’d assumed that he’d be smiling at me the whole time and then I wouldn’t feel nervous. In lieu of Len’s familiar face, I searched the darkness for one thing I could use to anchor myself in reality, the glowing red letters of the exit sign to the left of the stage. I concentrated on each letter and took long deep breaths. Eyes on something familiar, it was easier to keep myself from freaking out. Sterling and Carlisle would never let me live it down if I freaked out. Len would probably tease me too, but more than that, he’d be disappointed that I never shared this experience with him. That would be worse than any taunting Sterling and Carlisle could come up with. I had to stay calm, or at least fake it.

  “We’re going to go around the room and everyone can ask a question, and we’ll see if we get any responses. Sometimes we can’t understand it until we go through the recordings later, but other times it’s clear immediately. I’ll start so you get a feel for how it works, and then we’ll just go around the room.

  “My question is, if there are spirits in this room with us tonight, how many of you are there?”

  The anticipation of everyone in the room was palpable. The air in the theater felt like it was being held as everyone strained their attention forward toward this oddly irritating box that Len had set up for us to listen to.

  It took a few seconds, but then I heard it. The beginning was mumbly and hard to pick out, but then, clear as anything, a staticky voice said “eleven.”

  My heart stopped beating for a moment and even Carlisle went rigid next to me. The already cool air in the theater seemed to drop by at least five more degrees. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like it could be a joke or a performance. All I could think about was eleven dead people floating around us at that very moment.

  The next question came from a voice in the darkness.

  “Do you need help to cross over?”

  I wanted to keep my mind full of happy memories so I wouldn’t pay attention to any more answers, but they kept being displaced by visions of Ebenezer’s shrouded future ghost, plus a few swirling in the spaces between guests like ethereal ribbons.

  It didn’t help that a chilled blast of air blew across my face. Had someone turned the air conditioning on full blast to freak us out? I even turned to see if Carlisle had brought a personal fan to trick people with, but he was still, arms on his armrests.

  Since I couldn’t keep happy thoughts in my mind, I decided to try a mantra instead.

  Ghosts aren’t real. Ghosts aren’t real.

  Just because Len was my best friend and he believed this stuff, it didn’t mean he was right. It was okay for me to stick with what my parents had taught me.

  Even though I was thinking my mantra, it didn’t manage to keep my ears from hearing the next question.

  “Do you have a message for any of us?” Some man asked in a perfectly cocky voice. He was loud, not timid, and the whole thing filled me with dread.

  Ghosts aren’t real. Ghosts aren’t real.

  Just as I thought someone would toss out a new question, the temperature dropped sharply. I might as well have been standing out in the snow with no coat on. A particularly icy gust grazed my left cheek…the side no one was sitting on…and Len’s spirit box made an electric sizzle sound. Then, clear as day, but tinny as an old phonograph, the message came: “Trade me.”

  The words came out of Len’s device and slid into my ears like the poison used to kill Hamlet’s father. It felt like ants streaming down my eustachian tubes, into my throat, and milling uncomfortably in my chest. They were taking hold in me and I didn’t like it.

  “Look here,” called the voice. “I’m in the room. Do you see me?”

  The words reverberated, like a cough, in my chest, compelling me to action.

  I certainly didn’t want to see an apparition, but I couldn’t stop myself from looking.

  My eyes were drawn to the glowing red exit sign. It was too high on the wall to be near an actual person, but dropping my gaze lower, I gasped.

  It was like a shadow over darkness, but there was an unmistakable outline of a person and a mysterious flicker of gold that rose to eye level on the being, then back down to the waist. Slowly up it went, then back down. The pattern was mesmerizing.

  “Amy?” Len’s voice cut through the weirdness, but the things I was seeing remained. “What’s going on?”

  “There,” I said, my voice wobbly. “Under the exit sign.”

  Seats groaned. People whispered.

  “What are you seeing? Tell me.” Len’s voice held a vibration of excitement, but remained calm overall.

  I described what I saw.

  “Ah! You do see me!” The voice reverberated around my chest again, even though I heard it in my ears.

  The shadow seemed to grow a little taller, and the motion of the gold sparkle stopped – hovering at the waist level.

  “Hello.” The voice sounded heavily processed, tinny with too much treble, but eager now too. “You really do see me, right? It’s not just wishful thinking?”

  “I,” my voice came out in a rasp, so I tried again. “I do see you.”

  “Whoa! Is it talking to you?” Len was all excitement now.

  “Yes,” I said. “On your box thing. Doesn’t everyone else hear it?”

  The thought of being singled out by a ghost was even worse than hearing it with all these people. This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted to come.

  “Don’t worry about all of us,” Len said. “This is your experience. What did you hear?”

  The tittering of the crowd increased, but it was just unimportant background noise to me. I focused on talking with Len.

  “Well, uh, it seems surprised that I can see it.”

  “Ok, yeah, that makes sense. It can take a lot of energy for a spirit to make itself known. Maybe this one is having an energy surge for some reason and it’s not used to it. Maybe it was the message thing? It might have a connection to someone here. Ask about the message again.”

  I could feel Len near me as a buzz of excited energy. He was absolutely living for this bizarre experience. It wasn’t what I’d imagined, but I was doing okay. Maybe there wasn’t anything to be scared of after all. Isn’t that what Len had been trying to tell me for so long?

  But the message. Right. That was the last question, but we’d already heard the answer. At least I had…or was that just something I’d imagined? If Len was asking me about it, I must have made it up.

  “Do you have a message for someone here?” My voice was stronger this time.

  “As a matter of fact,” the voice rattled against my breastbone. “My message is for you.”

  I sucked in a deep breath. That was not the answer I wanted.

  Goosebumps broke out on my arms and the hairs on the back of my neck perked up like tiny antennae.

  The glittering golden object resumed its steady upward, downward motion as the voice crushed the breath from my lungs.

  “Be my guest.”

  It felt like I’d swallowed something the wrong way and was going to choke.

  Sterling realized something was going on and turned on Len.

  “You’re freaking her out with this shit. Why did you—”

  But his tirade was cut off and everything changed. My body felt as if I’d walked out of a cold shower directly into the violent winds of an ice storm.

  I wrapped my arms around myself instinctively, but it didn’t generate any warmth. It felt like I was tipping backward and rising into the air, like I’d been caught in an alien tractor beam.

  The sounds of the theater receded away to nothing, replaced by the roaring of winds I couldn’t see or feel.

  In fact, I realized I couldn’t see anything at all. Only the darker shadow outline of the figure, the golden something, and nothing more. Even the glowing red exit sign was gone. Something was horribly wrong.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Where are we? Len, I can’t see you.”

  There was a pause for a moment and then the weird ghost voice rattled to life again.

  “This has been my home. I call it the Land of Forgetting. Don’t worry. I don’t expect you to remember that for long.”

  I was waiting for my eyes to adjust like they had in the dark theater, but it wasn’t happening. It was pure darkness in all directions.

  The only time I’d experienced such complete darkness was when my parents had taken me to Mammoth Cave when I was ten. The guide turned out the lights for one minute and all existence disappeared. Even though I had a parent on each side holding my hands, I’d never felt so completely alone, lost in the nothingness of absolute blackness.

  Unlike in the cave, there was no sudden return of light and no one to cling to.

  Another wave of cold dripped over me like someone had poured a bucket of ice water over my head in slow motion. The top of my head chilled, then it slid to my ears and nose, chin, shoulders, all the way down to my toes. For a moment, it felt like I was encased in ice, but then the extreme cold turned to a tingly burn. My entire body broke into an uncomfortable sweat, each drop pricking my skin like tiny glass shards.

  Just when I thought I couldn’t stand anymore, my body jolted, as sometimes happens when I’m drifting to sleep. I no longer felt anything.

  “What do you want from me?”

  It seemed like the being laughed, but it sounded like a robot with a synthesizer trying to simulate laughter. The effect was chilling.

  “I can’t express how miraculous it is to have you here, my dear. I don’t recall the last conversation I had and there’s certainly been no visitors. Only the teasing kind like what was happening before you got here. I don’t remember much, but it hasn’t stopped the longing. To be where you are, it’s the only thing I desire. At last, it’s going to happen!”

  The voice seemed to come from everywhere and had a weird tone to it, as though it was turned up to a high frequency and had a bit of an electric zing to it. It sounded a little different every time, but always charged and not quite human.

  There were a lot of words to take in and the meaning slipped away from many of them as soon as I heard them. Maybe the cold was numbing my brain.

  “Who are you?” My eyes strained to see deeper into the shadow and make out some detail that would help.

  “I wish I could tell you. That’s one of the things I no longer remember. What about you? Do you still know your name?”

  I was about to say it, but the idea cracked to bits and floated away. Name. That’s a funny word.

  Not even Len could pull off a prank this elaborate and he would never do anything that would truly scare me. Thinking of Len, why wasn’t he with me? I couldn’t imagine why I would venture into a void like this unless Len had come along. He’d expanded my comfort zone over the years, but he was always right beside me when he did. This didn’t feel right.

  “You can go, Lennox is on his way.” I may not have known what was going on, but I knew better than to admit I was alone. I only hoped this mysterious character wouldn’t try to call my bluff.

  He let out an exasperated sigh. “Lennox, you say? He hasn’t been able to find his way here yet. Only you, in all this time, have been clever enough to manage that.”

  “Why are you hiding in the dark, and what have you done with Lennox?”

  “Calm down, please. There’s no need to get agitated. Lennox has not come to any harm, he simply can’t get here. If I may be frank, I don’t know how you managed it, but I’m very pleased you’re here.”

  “No.” The word came out of me and I focused my eyes on the glittery gold sparkle to stay grounded. “I don’t want to be here. I have to go.”

  “Don’t say that. You only just got here, and I’ll be on my way soon.”

  I didn’t like the sound of it.

  “I need to get back now.”

  My mind reeled trying to find something to land on. I didn’t understand why I was in complete darkness with a stranger. It felt like I’d just been doing something. The memory was right there, just out of reach of my consciousness.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how to help you with that. If I did, I would have gone back years ago.”

  Years ago? Did he mean he’d been hovering around in complete darkness for years? I needed to get out of there. That was the one thing I knew for sure.

  “Where are we? Why can’t I see anything?”

  “That’s a million dollar question. One I’ve been pondering for a very long time. It’s easier to explain where we are not. We certainly aren’t in heaven, if such a place does exist. Maybe it’s a holding pen. Maybe it’s a dalliance before the real end. I don’t know. All I know is I’d rather go back than stay here, and it’s very good of you to help me.”

  His answer did nothing to soothe me.

  “There’s some mistake. I shouldn’t be here at all. I need to go back where I was.” There was no point telling him I couldn’t remember where that was, but I still had the residual feeling of having been doing something important. Len was there. I don’t know why I couldn’t access what we’d been doing, but I was sure he’d been with me. I didn’t like that he wasn’t here now.

  The shadow man chuckled, but the sound didn’t have any mirth.

  “I don’t think you’ll be able to do that.”