Thin Places

“If there’s anyone here, would you please give us a sign?”

Ell en Logan pointed her microphone into the darkness. Even though it was the dead of winter, the attic was warm and musty. But there was no oppressiveness, no feeling of being watched. Not a single sign the house was haunted.

She turned to her partner. “Are you getting anything?”

“I don’t like the way Greg looks at you.”

“What?”

“Greg,” Phil Marcus said, referring to the expedition’s leader. “I think he’s interested in you.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Ellen tore off her night goggles and sat down on the couch. The cushions let out an exhausted woof. “You think everybody’s interested in me.”

“That’s because they are,” Phil insisted. He was Ellen’s current boyfriend, a blo nd-haired, blue-eyed surfer from Red ondo Beach.

She thought a relationship with a guy like him would bring some much-needed light into her world.

She was wrong.

“Are you getting any readings?”

“Nah. EMF is flat.” Phil sat down beside her. “I don’t get it, Ellen. Why do you do this?”

“What do you mean?”

“The ghost hunting. You’ve put in the hours Miskatonic requires of students. Why do you still do it?”

Ellen shrugged. “Because I like it.”

That was only half the truth. The real reason? Ghost hunting was all she had left. Already in the middle of her junior year, Ellen still hadn’t been asked to join Miskatonic’s advanced program. And without the university’s special training, she could never be a serious paranormal investigator.

Her window of opportunity wasn’t just closing.

It was collapsing.

“Well, I don’t think you should be doing this. Especially now,” Phil insisted.

“What do you mean?”

“Jeez, Ellen, haven’t you heard? There’s a serial killer on the loose.”

Ellen rolled her eyes.

“There are always serial killers on the loose around here. I swear, there should be a major in serial killing at Miskatonic.”

“I’m serious. They’ve found bodies scattered all over Ark ham County.”

“Ours is a dangerous profession.”

“Profession?” Phil frowned at her.

“Yes. Profession,” she shot back.

An awkward silence filled the room.

“Do you think this place is haunted?” he asked.

“Well, there’s always the possibility we’re here on an off night.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Phil motioned for her to get to the point.

“I don’t think there’s anything here. Even if it were an off night, I would feel something. Some residue or—”

A sudden impact rocked the house.

The roof above their heads bulged and buckled, and a fine layer of dust rained down from the rafters. Ellen looked at Phil. He stared back, his mouth hanging open.

She rose and grabbed her walkie-talkie.

“Greg, this is Ellen,” she barked into the receiver, calling down to the command post on the ground floor. “Is anyone on the roof?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing. What the hell is going on up there?”

“Maybe a bird hit the house,” Phil offered.

“Have to be a flying dinosaur to make that kind of racket,” Ellen muttered. Flying dinosaur or not, she knew what she had to do. “I’m going to take a look.”

“Are you insane?” Phil spluttered.

“We have to find out what it is.”

“We don’t have to do anything,” he insisted.

Ellen stared at him until he wilted.

“I can’t stop you from going out there, can I?”

“No.”

He hissed and shook his head. “Then for God’s sake, please be careful.”

“I will,” she promised.

The attic was in one of the towers, at the point where the strange angles of the house converged. Ellen crawled out of a window and made her way to the widow’s walk.

As she inched closer, she heard a wet, gurgling wheeze.

A man’s face appeared between the railing posts of the widow’s walk; it was mangled and bloody. As she got closer, she realized he was impaled on one of the iron spikes.

Ellen stabbed the button on the walkie-talkie. “Greg, there’s somebody up here. He’s hurt. Call 911!”

The battered man motioned for her to stay away.

“No, don’t. It’s a trap,” he rasped, his torn lips making him slur his words. “Get away . . . It’s watching . . . It’s watching.” The man spluttered blood.

“What’s watching?” she asked.

She tried not to look at him. The sight of the man made it hard to think. Every time he breathed, his chest bubbled. And his hands—there were no fingers left. They had been ripped off. Even the bones were gone.

Ellen closed her eyes and swayed. For a moment, she thought she would lose her grip.

“Will somebody please get help?’ she screamed into the radio.

The man looked across the roof.

Ellen followed his gaze.

She saw nothing except a large stone gargoyle.

“Just hold on. Help is coming,” she reassured the broken man. She listened for the sound of emergency vehicles. Only the wind rattled through the trees.

Phil stood in the street below, along with the rest of the ghost-hunting team. They gawked up at the house. Phil was filming her.

Enraged, Ellen yelled to her boyfriend, “Where the hell is the goddamn ambulance?”

“Ellen, move!” Phil shouted.

“What are you doing? Don’t just stand there! Call 911!”

“Ellen, move. Now.”

She heard a cri sp snapping sound, like the flapping of a sail. Except it sounded raspy. Leathery. Loud. She looked up. A monstrous creature hovered over her, its huge bat-shaped wings unfurling in the winter air. Ellen’s words came back to haunt her. Flying dinosaur. With its huge wingspan and long spiked tail, the creature filling the night sky did look like a dinosaur. But the shape of its body was all wrong. It was sleek. Humanoid. It had arms and legs. A torso. A head. Ellen paused. But no face. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Nothing that connected it to the world as she knew it.

She was so transfixed she didn’t see it swoop down on her. Only the cries of her friends snapped her out of her stupor. She rolled to the side as the creature punched through the roof. The sudden movement sent her sliding down the wood-shingled slope. This isn’t real, she thought as her hands fluttered, searching for something, anything to stop her descent. This can’t be happening. I’m going to wake up. Any sec—

Her feet caught on a storm drain. The old metal split from the house, rocking under her weight. The rain gutter held just long enough for her to swing her body through the attic window. She tumbled onto the floor—her breath hard, her heartbeat thundering in her ears.

She looked up at the roof.

The creature was still there. It toyed with the broken man clenched in its talons. Ellen knew she should be running. She should be racing downstairs to the safety of the group. But she couldn’t move. She was trapped by it, by the mere fact of it, and by a single, terrible thought.

I’ve seen a thing like this before.

She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“No. No, no, no, no,” she chanted.

A moment later, Phil burst through the door. The rest of the team followed, enveloping her in a cloud of noise.

When she looked back out the window, the creature was gone.

“Jesus, are you okay?” Phil rushed to her side. When he saw she was uninjured, he babbled like a hyperactive child. “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe what we . . . I got some incredible footage. It’s a little out of focus, but I think we got it. I think we got that thing! We couldn’t quite see what it was messing with, though.”

“It was a man.”

A shadow passed over Phil’s face. His enthusiasm evaporated. “What?”

“The creature was ‘messing around’ with a man,” she repeated, loud enough for the others to hear.

A hush fell over the group.

“The guy was hurt. Bad,” Ellen whispered.

“Did you recognize him?” someone in the group asked.

She shook her head.

It was only then that the full significance of what happened hit her. She started to tremble. Pain shot through her body. She could feel bruises forming from her rough ride down the roof.

If it weren’t for that storm drain, I’d be dead. Smashed on the driveway like a pumpkin.

An ambulance wailed in the distance.

“We need to call our advisor and let him know what happened,” Ellen said.

“But he said to call only if it was an emergency,” Phil protested.

“And you don’t think this qualifies?!”

He looked at her, stunned.

“Um. Yeah. I guess it does.”

He unlocked his phone and called for help.