They parked the car as far off the road as possible. Michaela was still feeling unsteady on her feet but she assured Trisha she was fine to walk. Trisha scanned the woodland in front of her.

‘Hike, you mean,’ she said.

Michaela shrugged. She took the water bottle Caro held out to her and drank deeply.

‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘You know which way to go?’

Caro nodded and pointed. ‘That way.’

Michaela checked the car was locked. The last thing she wanted was the laptop with that horrible film on it to be stolen. She nodded and turned on the video camera she held.

‘Let’s go then,’ she said.

They clambered over the fence and set off into the woods, Caro leading the way. Trisha walked beside Michaela. She looked at the camera Michaela was holding and frowned.

‘Is the sound on?’ she asked.

Michaela switched it off so they could talk.

‘You okay?’ she asked.

 Trisha rolled her eyes. ‘It’s me who should be asking you that. God, I should never have called you and asked you to come.’

Michaela flinched. ‘Why would you say that?’ she asked.

Trisha took her hand and squeezed it. ‘Because now I have to worry about you on top of everything else.’

Michaela laughed. ‘You don’t need to worry about me. I can look after myself.’

Trisha shrugged. ‘Yeah that’s how come you were puking your guts out on the side of the road before.’

Michaela looked at her and shook her head. ‘How could you have foreseen that?’

Trisha looked severely aggravated. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘And it pisses me off that I don’t know what’s going on here. This is way beyond anything I could ever imagine.’ She turned to Michaela. ‘What exactly is going on?’ she asked.

Michaela shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But we’re going to find out and we’re going to fix it.’ She grinned. ‘And then we’re going to live happily ever after.’

Trisha rolled her eyes. ‘Anyone ever tell you that you are a hopeless optimistic?’

They stumbled upon the mound after fifteen minutes of walking. Michaela looked around. The effigy mound was little more than an oval rise in the middle of the trees.

‘Is this it?’ she asked.

Trisha was glancing around, looking puzzled.

‘There’s hardly anything here,’ she said. ‘This is what’s caused all the problems?’

Caro shrugged and walked around the outside of the mound.

‘What were you expecting?’ she asked.

‘Something a bit more earth shattering than this,’ said Trisha.

Michaela couldn’t help but agree. It was a very unprepossessing sight. Little more than a raised hillock. She followed Caro around the perimeter. It was a uniform shape; she had to give it that. An oval, almost but not quite egg-shaped. She wanted to climb up and stand on the mound but hesitated, wondering if that was appropriate. Then with a shrug, decided to anyway.

It was cool in the woods, but beautiful with the light playing in the red and gold leaves. Michaela stood on top of the small mound and looked around.

‘What were these mounds for?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ Caro replied. ‘They’re old. Really old. And probably shamanic in purpose.’

‘Shamanic?’ Trisha was standing with hands on hips facing out into the trees.

‘Yeah, remember how I said last night that people used to live in a world populated just as much by spirits as people? Well, shamans were the go-between guys in the old days. They could travel between the worlds of the spirit and people.’

‘And these are the dudes who built these mounds?’ Trisha was still looking away.

‘Maybe,’ said Caro. ‘I think so anyway.’

Trisha threw her a quick glance. ‘You know sis, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. All this ‘I think so stuff’ doesn’t get you anywhere but into trouble.’

Caro’s face reddened and Michaela could see she looked close to tears. But Trisha had turned back out to watch the trees, like some sort of sentry.

‘What are you looking at?’ Michaela asked her.

Trisha shrugged. ‘Keep thinking I see something, is all. A dog or something.’ She turned around and looked up at Michaela who was now scanning the woods in the direction she had been looking. ‘Woods and forests and the like creep me out now, ever since that carry-on at the lake last year.’

Michaela caught movement off to their right. She watched but could see nothing. An animal of some sort, she guessed. Not what they were here for anyway. She turned in a circle.

Something was strange about the way the trees were growing around the mound. She stopped and frowned, trying to figure what it was. Turning slightly she realised there was some sort of track leading away from the mound. She walked down from the mound and took a few steps along the track. It was much harder to see from down on the forest floor, but narrowing her eyes, she could just make it out. It went in a straight line.

The others were watching her.

‘What have you found?’ asked Trisha.

‘A faint track,’ replied Michaela. ‘It goes straight through the trees, look.’

Caro and Trisha fell in behind her. The track led a hundred feet into the woods and petered out in a small clearing. A clearing which held another, smaller mound. Michaela toured around the outside of this one. This one was a circle.

‘I wonder what significance these mounds had,’ she said. ‘They’re not actual burial mounds, are they? And why the straight path between them?’

Caro spoke up. ‘The path would be a spirit path probably. A path the spirits would follow from one place to another, and also a path for the shaman to follow on one of his out-of-body journeys.’

Trisha turned an enquiring eye upon her younger sister.

‘And all this helps us how?’ she asked.

Michaela looked around. Trisha was right. It was interesting for sure, and there was a certain, hushed atmosphere about the place that was a little spooky, but there was nothing really to see here that shed any light on the infestation of shadows back at the house.

‘So go over what you did while you were here last time, Caro,’ she said after a moment.

Caro’s face darkened and she led then back to the first, larger mound.

‘I just kind of looked around,’ she said. ‘You know, wondering who built the mounds and what for.’ She shrugged. ‘Then I decided to sit down and try to visualise what it was like when the place was being used. For whatever it was used for. I pretended I was a priestess or something.’

Michaela ran her fingers through her hair. ‘Show us where you sat and did that,’ she said. ‘Sit down and do it again. Describe what you were thinking.’

Caro gave them an embarrassed look and sat down against the mound. Michaela couldn’t help but notice the girl was right at the head of the track. The spirit path, Caro had called it. Right in the way of any traffic, Michaela thought. Presuming of course, there was still traffic along these old ways.

Michaela was aware that she was groping in the dark, making one intuitive leap after another. Doing nothing more really that following vague associations in her mind. She rubbed her arms and caught sight of the snakes twining themselves around her wrists. The blue ink shined in the soft light. She looked back at the mound and the path that she knew was there, invisible from this vantage point, but there nonetheless.

Caro was sitting on the ground, her pack in her lap. She looked awkward and uncomfortable. Michaela smiled at her but stayed silent, trying to recapture the flow of her thoughts. What was it she’d been thinking?

Right in the way of traffic. That had been it. Caro was sitting right in the way of any traffic. Michaela shook her head. That was ridiculous. What sort of traffic, for crying out loud? Spirits, Caro had said. The shamans followed the paths on their trips out of body, going from our world to the world of spirit, the two worlds nudged up close against each other and anything possible in places where the veil was thin.

Michaela knew little of shamanic practises but thought maybe that didn’t matter. She opened her eyes and looked around. Was it possible that some residue of power clung to this place? Was it possible the spirits still used the path? Michaela shivered at the thought.

The afternoon had turned very still among the trees. A hush had fallen over the clearing as though even the breeze was holding its breath while Michaela tried to keep hold of her nebulous thoughts.

She wondered if places once powerful and significant could still attract traffic, for lack of a better word. If places like that were the easiest places to cross from one world to the other?

And if they were, was it also possible that a young woman, in one of these places at a time of year also significant, could have presented herself as a very interesting distraction, and attracted the attention of those travellers?

Michaela rubbed her face. ‘Jesus,’ she said. ‘Caro, get up, will you?’

Caro scrambled up from her seat at the foot of the path.

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘I thought you wanted me to tell you about what I did?’

Michaela nodded. ‘Yeah, I did. I do. I just need to think a moment first, okay?’

Michaela closed her eyes again. She had a strong feeling she was on the right track. But it was so farfetched. She shook her head. Believing this would require a major shift in world view. She thought about what she’d seen so far. The shadows in Caro’s room, caught on tape the other day, for God’s sakes. Was there any choice but to believe in this other world?

She almost laughed. All right, say she was right. What then? How were they going to undo what was done? How were they going to shift attention away from Caro again? Was it even possible?

Michaela opened her eyes and saw Caro staring at her, face pale under the mass of dark hair. She glanced at Trisha, who was still peering out into the trees, a frown on her face.

‘What is it, Trisha?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Trisha said. ‘I just keep getting this weird feeling we’re being watched. And every now and then I hear a twig breaking or something like someone is walking around out there.’

Michaela looked around, alarmed. What would be out there? She amended that. What would be out there all three-dimensional, breaking sticks underfoot? She walked over to Trisha and looked in the same direction.

Trisha shook her head. ‘I think it’s only a dog or deer or something. I’m just freaking myself out.’ She looked at Michaela. ‘Do we need to stay here much longer?’ she asked.

Michaela looked over at Caro. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a few ideas, from seeing this place, but I’m not sure what we can do here. We might have to come back though.’

Trisha nodded. ‘I want to head back to the car then, okay?’

‘You really think there’s something out there?’

‘Something. Don’t know what though. It’s keeping its distance.’

Michaela had a frightening thought. ‘It’s not a bear or something is it?’ There were no bears back home.

Trisha shook her head. ‘Don’t think so,’ she said.

That was enough for Michaela. ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘Don’t think so just isn’t positive enough for me.’

They grouped together and headed back towards the car, walking with wary steps. Michaela glanced back at the effigy mound and thought about the dead straight path heading away from it to the other mound. She had some thinking to do, but she was sure she was on the right path. No pun intended.