The Sleepwalkers by J. Gabriel Gates

he feels his heart quicken—then he sees his friend, maybe ten yards back, standing still. Listening. He’s standing under one of the rare breaks in the leafy canopy through which moonlight has been able to spill through. And from the look on his face, Caleb knows he hears the singing too.
    “What the hell is that?” Bean asks.
    “What?”
    “It’s freakin’ eerie,” says Bean. He doesn’t move.
    “Probably just . . .” and Caleb has no platitude to fit this. This is inhuman singing. Chanting.
    The devil is close. Her words blow through every synapse in his brain.
    But Christine is crazy, isn’t she?
    They walk on.
    This whole thing is screwed. He shouldn’t have brought Bean. He has to get his friend out of here.
    “Do you want to go back?” asks Caleb suddenly. Bean clearly does. He’s sweating badly and keeps looking over his shoulder at nothing.
    “Do you ?” Bean asks.
    Caleb does want to go back. And not even just back to his dad’s house, but back to Malibu. Back home, to surf and go for runs on the beach every morning, to get ready for college, read some good books, to meet Amber at a hotel in Santa Barbara and screw her and bask in the secret thought that he doesn’t really care about her anyway. To do some writing, maybe even finally get something in the LA Times . These are all things that Caleb understands. Here, he understands nothing.
    The singing starts up again. It’s a howl now, chopped up with a few explosive consonants that ring through the woods like gunshots.
    Caleb looks in the direction of the sound. He whispers: “Look, I think the witch the guy was talking about is Christine’s mother. The kids in school always used to make fun of her, saying her mom was a witch and everything. I only met her a few times, but she seemed okay—and they say kids are the best judges of character, right?”
    Bean gives him a wary look.
    “Okay, man.” Caleb says, “I promise, if everything is cool with Christine’s mom, and we still think that Christine is just a crazy girl getting the help she needs, I swear we’ll get on a plane tomorrow, deal?”
    Bean looks at his friend and exhales heavily. “Deal.”
    “But we have to talk to her mom tonight,” says Caleb.
    “Dude, I said ‘deal.’ Move your ass before I renege.”
    Caleb turns and takes a step forward to lead the way—and sees that he has come to a fork in the path.
    “Whoa . . . ” he says, half to himself. “I don’t remember a split here.”
    “Stop trying to scare me, dickhole,” says Bean. “Which way?”
    “This way,” Caleb says, leading his friend down the left fork. What he doesn’t mention is that he wasn’t trying to frighten Bean at all. In fact, Caleb is the scared one. Because the path is changing.

    Above, it looks like a Van Gogh painting. A field of stars. That’s how Caleb describes it to himself later. There’s a clearing, mowed and empty of everything but a crappy trailer and an old, rusting propane tank. Light spills from the windows of the trailer across the brown, parched lawn— in fact, every light in the place seems to be on, judging by the beacon-like aspect of the little square panes of glass. And above, stars pepper the sky, sloppy traces of a higher power, maybe, like Jesus’s breadcrumbs or God’s dandruff. There’s something in the air. It’s heavy. Not just humidity, either. Something humming. Something hissing. Caleb doesn’t like it.
    The singing is coming from behind the trailer. And it’s louder now, a shrill warble. Like some terrible battle cry, it crescendos loud enough to pierce reality before degenerating into barely audible chattering.
    “I do not like this,” says Bean.
    “I do not like it, Sam I am,” says Caleb, feigning a grin. He steps into the clearing. Bean follows like his shadow. They make a wide arc around the trailer, passing in and out of the glare from the trailer windows. Caleb is struck for the second time that day by the stillness of a place.
    This