They stood in a line in the lady’s backyard and took in the landscape. There were gardens along the edge of the lawn with sundials and gnomes. The fake garden gnome kind. Jeremy eyed them and wondered if there were real gnomes out there somewhere now. In the center of the yard was a circular garden with a large stone birdbath. A few birds flitted around in the water. A squirrel was scaling the bird feeder staked beside it.
“Well, let’s set up our tents,” Jeremy said.
The single tents were super lightweight and small to be portable in a rucksack. The sleeping bags Caleb grabbed with them were the same way. Jeremy spotted a flat part of the yard and dropped his bag there so he could start making camp.
“Here is as good as anywhere else, I guess.” Caleb joined him.
“Are we really going to sleep out here in the dark, knowing there might be a monster in those woods?” Zanie peered between the trees suspiciously, even though it was still daylight. Dusk would fall soon, though, so the space beneath the trees was considerably darker than out here in the open yard. “Wouldn’t it be better to sleep inside?”
“I’d rather be out here than trapped in the house.” Jeremy glanced back at the house. It was a mundane house, like any other, really. There were a few wind chimes on the back porch. Another bird feeder is hanging from the eave. Out front, there had been a small flag, welcoming the colors of autumn. Mrs. Jennings probably changes it each season and for every holiday. Still, “We don’t know her either.”
Zanie looked at the house, too, but she had an expression like she’d rather take her chances inside.
“The guy at the bar said she’s always said there is something in the woods behind her house.” Caleb unfurled the tent. “She is just freaking out because now it might be real. There probably isn’t actually anything back there.”
“Those sound like famous last words.” Zanie dumped her bag on the ground and started unstrapping her tent from it.
“We’ll take turns staying awake and keeping watch,” Jeremy said. “If something does show up, we’ll take care of it. If nothing happens, then maybe she’ll believe there isn’t anything to be scared of.”
Zanie insisted on taking the first watch, citing the fact that she was more of a night owl anyway. Jeremy told her to wake up for the middle watch, and then he would get Caleb up to keep an eye out for the remainder of the night. Atticus curled up on the back porch steps and watched them settle in for the night.
Jeremy laid down in his tent and shuffled around until he found a marginally comfortable position on the hard bumps of the lawn. He ended up with the sleeping bag mostly beneath him because and it provided extra padding. Once he settled down, his exhaustion from walking all day quickly took over and sent him to sleep.
The next thing he knew, he was blinking at the top of the tent. At first, he couldn’t remember where on earth he was and what was going on, but then he heard Zanie’s voice and looked to the side to see her peeking through a gap shed unzipped in the tent flap.
“Time to take over,” she said when she saw him blinking at her.
He groaned and lifted a hand to rub his eyes. The ground certainly was not comfortable, but it was a flat lawn without any rocks or anything, so there wasn’t anything particular causing the discomfort other than its hardness. But having relaxed into sleep, Jeremy found that he was as loathe to move as he might be waking up on a nice soft mattress.
But Zanie wanted to get some sleep, too. He hauled himself out of the tent and stumbled into the yard. The temperature had dropped considerably. Most nights were still muggy and hot, difficult to sleep through. But there was actually a bit of a breeze tonight, along with the dropped temperatures that made Jeremy shiver in surprise under his thin t-shirt. He looked up to see if maybe thunderclouds were moving in, but a plethora of stars winked down at him uninterrupted.
Mrs. Jennings had put on her back porch light for them or perhaps as a barrier between her house and the shadows in the woods. Jeremy would have honestly rather sat out here in the darkness and let his eyes adjust to being able to see between the trees better. He turned his back on the light and went over to Zanie, who sat by the edge of their ring of tents, keeping herself occupied by scanning page after page of the book. After staring at her phone like that, she definitely could not see anything in the darkness.
“Hey,” Jeremy plopped down beside her and took a look at how far she was through the book. “You’re going to be almost done with that soon.”
“Yep.” She grinned. “Then I can load it all on the tablet, and you can take your notes on it.”
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“People and their technology,” Jeremy sighed wistfully. He’d never been the type to check his phone constantly anyway. Usually, he had it on Do Not Disturb and would check his notifications at a set time during the day – usually between his two jobs – and not anytime else. Its destruction had not been a great loss, but he can appreciate that without Caleb letting him borrow his phone all the time, he would have had to get himself some way to communicate with people by now.
“Is there a stylus or something along with the tablet?” Jeremy asked. “Because a lot of my notes are the runes that I see, which I have to draw out.”
Zanie nodded. She took one last scan, then leaned back to tuck her phone and the book into her tent. She did not follow them right away, though. Instead, she peered out into the darkness and frowned.
“How come you wanted to go to a campground instead of just squatting somewhere like this in the first place?” She asked.
“Well, I was hoping they would have cabins,” Jeremy said. “Like the one back at the state park did. But even if it didn’t, we would be around at least some people and wouldn’t have to keep watch like this.”
“I thought we were keeping watch because of Mrs. Jenning’s monster.”
“Well, I think it would be a good idea to do it no matter what,” Jeremy picked at the grass under his fingers. “I’ve seen monsters in the middle of cities and out in the woods, but the ones that really creeped me out and I’m glad I haven’t met yet are the ones I’ve encountered at night or in parks where nobody else is really around.”
“Well, when we go out into the mountains to look for dungeons in the middle of the woods, we’ll be doing a lot of this.”
“True,” Jeremy said.
“I’ve never slept in a tent before,” Zanie admitted. Jeremy raised his eyebrows at her but supposed it wasn’t really all that strange. His parents used to take him on camping trips growing up, but not every family did that.
“It’s a little uncomfortable but not too bad,” he said. Zanie hummed, and they lapsed into silence.
A breeze rustled through the leaves and gusted across the lawn. Jeremy shivered and crossed his arms. “It’s actually a little chilly tonight.”
“It is September by now.” Zanie folded her arms up as well. “It’ll start getting cold, so we should pick up jackets somewhere.”
Jeremy hummed in agreement. Zanie rubbed her arms.
“Do you want a jacket?” Jeremy asked. He still had one tucked away in his back, although he hadn’t used it much since it had still been hot. Zanie rubbed her arms some more, then shook her head. She had a strange look on her face.
“I’m going to bed anyway.” She pulled her hands away from her arms and stared at her palms.
“What’s wrong?” Jeremy asked.
“Feel this.” She put her hand on his bicep. It took a moment for his brain to process what he was feeling, and by the time he realized her skin was hot, he had already instinctively flinched away. He frowned and offered his arm again so he could feel it without the shock. Her hand was not burning hot, but enough to be a little uncomfortable if left in the same spot for too long. It was about the temperature of a hand warmer when it had just been activated.
“How did you do that?” Jeremy asked.
Zanie pulled her hand back and shrugged. “I just wished I was a little warmer. I hate the cold.”
“It just happened without you thinking about it?” Jeremy asked for clarification. “You didn’t imagine your hands warming up?”
“Nope. The same thing happened to me before my apartment got flooded. There were a couple of times where my tea went cold, and I was disappointed, but then it was just magically warm again.” She stretched her arms out and climbed to her feet. “Anyway. I’m going to sleep. See you in the morning.”
“Night.” Jeremy watched her go, then sat and pondered what she said. He’d thought that her magical affinity somehow had to do with technology since that seemed to be where her skills and interests lay. But if she was subconsciously making warmth, that sounded much more like an affinity for a certain magic type. The way that Caleb subconsciously froze the bullet in space.
He thought that over for a little while. His unique personality trait also came to him subconsciously. He did not have to do anything to see the mana around him, although he had gotten used to it enough by now that he did not really notice it unless he concentrated. It was kind of like being aware that everyone around him was wearing clothes but not really taking notice or being able to remember what color they wore if asked about it later. He shook his head and chuckled at the thought that he was getting used to any of this.
But he supposed he had no choice. Being able to see mana gave him a unique advantage in acting as a night watch. It wasn’t as good as night vision or anything, but he could see the overlays on the trees around them much more clearly than he could see the actual trees themselves. The runes did not exactly glow, but they certainly were visible whether or not there was light for him to see anything else.
After a while, he got tired of sitting there and thinking, so he got up and moved through the workout he’d been trying to get into the habit of doing. It also kept him warm since he was not used to chilly nights like this and kept shivering even though it couldn’t actually be that cold. Doing something as mindless and repetitive as push-ups and sit-ups made him feel in control of himself and content for a little while.
Plus, it kept his mind off the creeping feeling of discomfort he kept getting from the house behind them. There hadn’t been any movement or strange presence in the woods thus far, but Jeremy couldn’t keep his eyes from straying back to the house, where he knew Mrs. Jennings was. If she saw the eyes at night, that meant she might stay up or wake up and look out the window a lot.
While nothing was peering at them from between the trees, he knew she might be from behind her curtains. For whatever reason, he did not like that thought and kept frowning at the back porch light that illuminated their camp clearly in the night like a goddamn spotlight. Bug buzzed around the lightbulb. He thought about the kelpie.
She was probably just a nice old lady, and he was just paranoid, he told himself as he rooted through his bag to find his jacket. The thin sheen of sweat he built up while working out now worked against him in the night breeze. He pulled the jacket on and huddled at the edge of their tents with his back to the house so he would stop staring at it.