Trisha was rummaging around in the fridge for something to eat for lunch.

‘There’s nothing here to eat,’ she said in disgust. ‘Guess I’ll have to go down to the bloody diner to get something. I wish Mom would bring some food home every now and then.’

Michaela looked up. ‘Do you know anything about this town?’ she asked.

Trisha pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘Not a fucking thing,’ she said. ‘You’re not thinking some sort of poltergeist garbage, are you – the house on an old Indian burial ground or something?’

Michaela pushed her chair back and stretched. ‘I don’t know what to think,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of stories about these shadow people on the Internet, and a few theories, but the theories are really out there. I feel like I’m trying to do a puzzle without having all the pieces.’

‘So what pieces are you missing?’

Michaela thought about it. ‘The trigger,’ she said after a while.

‘Trigger?’ asked Trisha.

‘Yeah. What set this off? You don’t have everything normal one day and totally screwy the next. So what happened?’

‘Did you ask Caro this?’

Michaela nodded. ‘Yes, but we didn’t get a real chance to think about it. She said it started a few months ago. Can you remember anything that might have happened then?’

‘To Caro, you mean?’

‘Well, mostly, because it’s undoubtedly centred around her. But not just her. Anything at all out of the ordinary that happened then.’

‘Three months ago would have been July.’ She shook her head. ‘Can’t think of a damned thing.’

Michaela’s eyes were sore. She squeezed them closed and told herself she was going to have to go to the optometrist sooner or later. Sooner would be best. She shut down her laptop. ‘I need a break,’ she said. ‘And I need to talk to Caro. The answer’s going to lie with her, I’m sure of it.’

Trisha came over and looked at Caro still sleeping on the couch. ‘Why her, do you think? She’s just your usual kid, you know. Brighter than you want to think about, but she’s a good kid.’

Michaela nodded. ‘I like her a lot,’ she said. ‘But the phenomenon are focused around her, you can’t deny that.’

Trisha leaned against Michaela. ‘Maybe babe, but I sure don’t have to like it.’ She pointed at the photo frozen on the screen of Caro’s computer. ‘And I sure as fuck don’t have to like that. That’s way worse than anything that’s happened before.’

‘It’s escalating,’ Michaela said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The first time I came here, I saw that shadow in the hallway. I thought at the time that it was deliberately letting me see it, but I’m beginning to wonder if instead it was taking a look at me.’ She gestured at the picture. ‘Now this, it’s like they’re gathering, and not only gathering, but showing us. Like a show of strength.’

‘Like for some sort of showdown, you mean?’

Michaela frowned. ‘I’m not sure what I mean,’ she said. ‘I’m pretty much just thinking out loud. But yeah, you may be right – for some sort of showdown.’

‘I gotta say, Michaela, that doesn’t sound good to me.’ She looked at Michaela, her face serious. ‘I think we should pack up and get out of here.’

There was movement from the couch and Caro’s head appeared. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked, sounding panicked.

Trisha shook her head. ‘Nowhere,’ she said. ‘Nowhere without you anyway. Michaela and I were just discussing whether we would be better off getting out of the house for a while.’

Caro came over and shuddered at the picture on her laptop. ‘Where would we go?’ she asked.

Michaela interrupted. ‘I don’t think we need to go anywhere,’ she said, hoping like hell she was right. ‘I think we should just get on with things like normal.’

Trish looked annoyed. ‘Look at that photo, babe. There’s nothing fucking normal about that. I don’t know. I really don’t know that we should stay here.’

Caro cleared her throat. When she spoke her voice was unsteady. ‘That photo scares me,’ she said.

Trisha put her arms around her. ‘You and me both,’ she said.

Michaela stared at the picture. Then at the room around them. Were the shadows in the picture still in the room? Were they clustered around the walls and corners, perhaps listening in to their conversation? She didn’t know. She couldn’t see anything.

‘In stories, shadows like those usually cluster around areas where bad things have happened or are going to happen. They’re the spirits that feed off disaster, and the spirits that take us down to hell.’

Trisha and Caro were staring at her in horror. She shouldn’t have said that out loud. She tried to make it better. ‘But that’s only in stories and horror movies.’ She looked at Caro. ‘You’ve read the accounts on those websites. They’re everywhere and nothing ever seems to happen around them.’

But Caro was shaking her head. ‘But we don’t know that for sure,’ she said. ‘Just because the people who saw them didn’t say anything doesn’t mean that nothing happened. They could have gotten sick, or had bad dreams, or argued with each other, and just never put two and two together.’ She turned to Trisha. ‘Why are they here?’ she asked. ‘Why are they after me?’

Trisha blanched. ‘We don’t know they’re after you,’ she said. ‘We don’t know anything about them.’ She looked at Michaela. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing – we are not staying here any longer. No way. Not now I’ve seen that photo.’

Caro turned to Michaela. ‘Is that right? Are we going to find somewhere else to stay?’

Michaela shrugged. ‘What if they follow us?’ she asked.