Haunter 1: The Shadow of the Haunter

22. In the Moonlight

I let him take my hand and lead me toward the Quabbin trail in no hurry. Funny, now that he was wearing gloves, he didn't seem to have any problem touching me. Was it some kind of phobia of skin-to-skin contact? No way. He wouldn't have stood the cleansing. Whatever. This man was so weird.

Don't ask me why, but we headed down the trail with our arms almost brushing each other. Maybe the dark woods made us stick closer together.

"I didn't expect you to join me," he said without raising his voice, glancing at me with a quick smile.

"Me neither," I replied before I could stop myself.

We chuckled under our breath, and he was about to say something more when a twig snapping behind us made him stop on a dime, phone already in hand. Of course the flashlight wouldn't show anybody there. Noticing how tense he was, I tapped his arm softly.

"It's okay, it's Edward."

He turned to me with a questioning frown. "One of the spirits? They don't let you go out at night alone?"

Crap. He wasn't gonna like the answer. "He's just keeping an eye on your parasites," I said, as softly as I could. "Just like Joseph is keeping an eye on Kujo. You can't blame them if they don't like having that kind of thing around, right?"

His frown was a full-out scowl for a heartbeat, then he rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Yeah, guess you're right." He put his phone back in his pocket and grabbed my hand again.

Okay, that had been way easier than I'd expected. We walked until the Quabbin showed past the end of the woods, and paused to admire the golden shimmer of the water framed by the dark arch of the last trees.

"Wish there was a camera that could capture this," I whispered, like speaking any louder would shatter the magic of the moment.

He just nodded, pressing my hand.

When we reached the shore, I took him to the fallen tree and we lingered looking around in silence for a long moment. Then he turned around, letting go of my hand.

"You think we can get a little fire going? It's fucking freezing."

"Why not? As long as we're careful."

I was then introduced to Brandon the Camper, who had a small campfire on in under ten minutes, including firewood to keep it going for a good while and stones to circle the pit. We sat on the cold pebbles before the fire with our backs against the fallen tree, hands stretched out to the flames.

"That's better," he said. He opened the beers and handed me one with his nice smile. "This was your first cleansing, right?"

"Jeez. That bad?"

He shook his head, chuckling. "Just shy. Like you were afraid of touching me."

"Well, I was, sort of." I shrugged. "You don't seem fond of touching people, so I didn't wanna make you feel awkward and distract you. Hope I didn't screw up."

He smiled wider. "You did well, don't worry."

Time to move on from the touching subject. "And how did it go for you? When Amy cleansed me, I sort of forgot about my body and saw myself here under the sun."

He shook his head again, this time turning back to the fire, frowning instead of smiling. "I've been getting cleansed and saged once a week ever since what happened here, and I know how to keep my mind eye closed, but it felt different this time."

"Different good or different bad?"

"I don't know. It was your hands." He sipped his beer, like forcing a pause to pick his words. "They cooled down the usual burning in the back of my neck, but you did something else."