Coyote Hills slept like it always did — badly.

  The town never really shut all the way down. It just dimmed, like a TV with the sound turned low. The old freeway hummed in the distance, a constant, tired exhale from trucks grinding up and down the valley. Somewhere out in the scrubland, coyotes yipped and yowled at each other, their calls bouncing off the low hills before fading into the dark. A generator thumped behind one of the motels. A lone motorcycle prowled the main drag, engine growling like an annoyed animal.

  Familiar noise. Human noise.

  Noise that meant everything was still normal.

  Inside Eric’s apartment, the illusion held as long as you didn’t listen too hard.

  He sat on the edge of his thrift-store couch, elbows on his knees, a beer sweating in his hand. The TV across the room glowed dimly with some sitcom rerun, the volume low enough that the laugh track sounded like ghosts trying too hard to remember why anything was funny. Colorful characters did exaggerated things for invisible applause.

  The apartment smelled faintly of cheap hops, old carpet, and the stale residue of nights just like this one. Someone else might have called it depressing. Eric called it Tuesday, even if it wasn’t.

  Mike sat in the recliner across from him—the recliner that Eric had found on the curb six months ago with a “free” sign taped to it. The springs creaked if you leaned too far back, and one arm had a burn mark from where someone had dropped a cigarette, but it reclined and it supported most of a grown man’s weight. That was good enough for both of them.

  He hadn’t said much since they left Manny’s store.

  Neither had Eric.

  Silence itself wasn’t unusual between them. On most nights, it was companionable. They’d sit, drink, watch whatever garbage the TV offered, and let their thoughts drift. The silence then felt like a blanket—thin, worn, but warm enough.

  Tonight, it felt like a countdown.

  Eric took a sip of his beer. It didn’t do much for the knot in his chest. He stared at the TV without really seeing it. His mind kept feeding him the same image over and over: that shimmering seam down the block, the way the world had bent, the glimpse of blackness on the other side that didn’t look like any shade of night he knew.

  He squeezed his eyes shut for a second and opened them again.

  The laugh track cackled at something that hadn’t been funny twenty years ago.

  “You okay?” Mike finally asked.

  Eric let the question hang in the air for a few seconds, pretending to consider it, pretending he hadn’t been waiting for it. He took another drink and set the can down carefully on the coffee table. Condensation left a ring among several other rings, overlapping like the ghosts of poor decisions.

  “Define ‘okay,’” he said.

  “Still breathing,” Mike replied, “and not actively screaming.”

  “Then yeah,” Eric said. “Crushing it.”

  He meant to sound glib. His voice came out more strained than he liked.

  Mike watched him from the recliner, studying him over the rim of his bottle. The TV light flickered across Eric’s face, highlighting the hard edges around his eyes. Tension sat on his shoulders like a physical weight, lifting them half an inch higher than usual.

  “You’ve been off since Manny’s,” Mike said. “And I don’t mean ‘hungover off,’ I mean ‘I-just-saw-a-ghost-off.’”

  Eric shrugged, a small, tight roll of his shoulders. “Weird sky. Long day. I’ll sleep it off.”

  “You’re a shitty liar,” Mike said conversationally.

  “Luckily,” Eric said, “I don’t lie often enough to need the practice.”

  Mike snorted. “That is, objectively, a lie.”

  Eric stared at him for a beat, then huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh if it had tried harder. He picked up the remote and clicked to another channel without really processing what was on. A crime drama flickered onto the screen. Blue and red lights washed across some anonymous alley in high-definition misery.

  Mike leaned forward, forearms on his knees, bottle dangling loosely from his fingers. His gaze was steady. He’d worn a similar expression in other contexts—before arguments, before interventions, before telling Eric things he really didn’t want to hear but probably needed to.

  “Back there,” Mike said, voice quieter now. “On Sycamore. When the air… did whatever the hell that was. You looked like someone punched you in the soul.”

  Eric’s throat tightened.

  He swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the feeling.

  “It was just—” He groped for a normal word and came up empty. “—weird. Probably some freak thing with the heat. Mirage, inversion layer. I don’t know.”

  Mike stared at him like he’d just tried to convince him the sky was purple. “Uh-huh. ‘Just weird.’ That’s what we’re going with.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Eric snapped, sharper than he intended. His own tone surprised him. Both men went still for a second.

  Mike didn’t flinch. He just raised an eyebrow. “How about the truth?”

  Eric squeezed his eyes shut again, this time longer. Behind his eyelids, he saw the seam splitting the air—white light defining the edges, the abyssal black within. The way the world had seemed to hold its breath.

  He opened them before the memory could grow teeth.

  “The truth,” he said slowly, “is that I don’t know what that was.”

  “And?” Mike prodded.

  “And I don’t like it,” Eric said. “That’s all I’ve got.”

  Mike watched him, searching his face for more. He didn’t find what he wanted, but he didn’t accuse him either. He was frustrated, not stupid.

  “Back there,” Mike said quietly, “I had that feeling. The one from the sandbox. Before something exploded or someone started shooting. You know the one I mean.”

  Eric nodded silently. He’d never been deployed, but he’d heard enough stories. Seen enough of that look in Mike’s eyes when certain noises played on TV or a car backfired just right.

  “World gets real small,” Mike continued, gesturing with the bottle. “Real quiet. Every hair on your neck stands up like it knows something you don’t. That’s what it felt like on that street. Except there weren’t any mortars. No radio chatter. No convoy. Just… us. And that thing.”

  Eric swallowed. His mouth was dry.

  “And here’s you,” Mike went on, “looking at the spot like you’d seen that exact kind of wrong before.”

  The room felt smaller. The walls closer. The laugh track from the TV laughed at a joke neither of them heard.

  Eric leaned back into the couch, the springs complaining softly. He rubbed at his sternum with the heel of his palm, like he could push down an ache that wasn’t physical.

  “You ever get déjà vu so bad it makes you nauseous?” he asked.

  Mike blinked. “Once or twice.”

  “That’s what it felt like,” Eric said. “Except instead of ‘I’ve been here before,’ it was ‘I’ve survived this before and I really didn’t want to do it again.’” He paused, then added quickly, “Which doesn’t mean I actually have. It just… felt like it.”

  Mike sat with that for a few seconds, eyes never leaving Eric’s face.

  “Is that the truth,” he asked, “or is that the best version of it you’re willing to give me?”

  Eric stared at the ceiling. A water stain above the far corner looked vaguely like a continent. He focused on that instead of Mike’s eyes.

  “It’s what I’ve got right now,” Eric said finally. “Maybe it’ll make more sense later. Maybe it won’t. I don’t know.”

  Mike leaned back slowly in the recliner, exhaling through his nose.

  “All right,” he said. “For now.”

  The “for now” hung in the air like a condition.

  Eric heard it. Didn’t argue with it.

  The TV cut to a commercial. A cheery voice sold laundry detergent over a polished kitchen scene where nobody looked like they’d ever worked a day of hard labor or woke up on a couch with their spine complaining about it.

  Eric muted it.

  The sudden lack of sound amplified the noises inside the apartment: the faint hum of the fridge, the tick-tick-tick of the ancient clock on the wall, the soft creak of the building settling.

  Outside, somewhere down the block, a car rolled through the intersection, its tires whispering against the asphalt.

  Eric took a longer drink from his beer, draining half the can, then set it aside. “You want another?” he asked.

  “In a minute,” Mike said.

  “Pace yourself?” Eric asked.

  “Trying to stretch my liver’s lifespan by an extra week,” Mike replied.

  “That’s ambitious,” Eric said.

  “I’m a dreamer.”

  Silence settled between them again, but this time it wasn’t empty. It felt charged. Like the space between lightning and thunder.

  Eric’s gaze drifted to the window. The blinds were closed, but not all the way. A sliver of the outside world squeezed in between the slats. Night pressed up against the glass, thick and dark. The streetlamp outside leaked a bit of yellow light through, painting faint bars across the wall.

  “You think Manny’s okay?” Mike asked after a minute.

  Eric’s mind jumped back to the liquor store—the way Manny’s hands had shaken just a little as he bagged their stuff, the way his eyes kept darting to the front windows like he expected something to be staring back at him.

  “He’ll worry himself half to death,” Eric said. “But he’ll be okay.”

  Mike rubbed the back of his neck. “He looked spooked.”

  “He’s superstitious,” Eric said. “Lightning from a clear sky, weird vibes, power flickers… his brain’s probably playing connect-the-dots with every ghost story he’s ever heard.”

  “Yours isn’t?” Mike asked.

  Eric didn’t answer that.

  He thought of Manny turning the sign to CLOSED with hands that moved just a bit too fast, the bell over the door jangling like a nervous laugh. Thought of the way the neon light had sputtered behind the glass.

  He should swing by tomorrow. Tell Manny… something. He didn’t know what yet. “It was nothing” felt like an insult. “It was something” didn’t come with a manual.

  “You’re doing it again,” Mike said.

  “Doing what?”

  “Staring at the wall like it personally offended you.”

  “Maybe it did.”

  “Eric.”

  He sighed, shoulders sagging. “I’m thinking.”

  “Oh shit,” Mike said lightly. “Everybody take cover.”

  Eric flipped him off without much heat.

  The tension in the room thinned a little.

  “What if it was just some weird atmospheric thing?” Eric said, mostly to see if he could convince himself. “Electromagnetic…” He waved a hand vaguely. “...whatever. This planet’s full of weird.”

  Mike shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I saw guys try to explain incoming rockets as ‘someone slamming a door too hard’ for a good thirty seconds after one landed,” Mike said. “Brains like to lie to us when the truth doesn’t fit.”

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Comforting,” Eric muttered.

  “Hey,” Mike said, “you wanted honesty.”

  “Remind me to stop asking for that.”

  “Noted.”

  A faint breeze found its way through the aging window frame, cool against Eric’s overheated skin. The hairs on his arms stood up.

  He frowned and glanced at the thermostat. The apartment’s AC was off. The air hadn’t been moving a moment ago.

  “There it is again,” Mike said softly.

  “What?”

  “That quiet,” Mike said. “Listen.”

  Eric held his breath.

  The fridge hum was still there. The clock still ticked. But outside, the faint undercurrent of the town’s nighttime soundtrack had shifted again. The distant freeway hum felt more muted, as if the world had put a pillow over its mouth. The coyotes had gone silent. That was the wrong kind of quiet.

  Eric’s chest tightened.

  He set his beer down with exaggerated care and stood up, moving toward the window like he didn’t quite trust his legs.

  He tilted one of the blinds with two fingers and peered out.

  The street had that washed-out, long-exposure look it got under the harsh yellow glare of the streetlights. A few cars were parked along the curb. The scraggly tree near the sidewalk barely moved. No one walked their dog. No neighbor out for a smoke. No kids cutting through the complex like they sometimes did.

  Just stillness.

  His eyes went to the streetlamp.

  Its light flickered.

  Not the usual soft, random flicker of a tired bulb. It dimmed, brightened, dimmed again with a slow, almost thoughtful rhythm. Like it was deciding whether or not it wanted to keep doing its job.

  “You see something?” Mike asked.

  Eric let the blind fall shut. “Just a glitchy light.”

  His voice sounded thin to his own ears.

  “You’re having that ‘I’m lying but I’m too tired to come up with a better lie’ tone again,” Mike noted.

  “You want to look yourself?” Eric asked, gesturing.

  Mike stood, bones cracking faintly as he straightened up. “Why not. If the world’s ending, I’d like to see it coming.”

  He shuffled over, peered through the blinds, and scanned the street.

  “Looks dead,” he said. “Even the pothead kid from 3B isn’t out on the stairs.”

  “He might be having an introspective night,” Eric said.

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “Or he got raptured and we didn’t.”

  “If we’re still here after a rapture,” Eric said, “the bar for ‘good people’ was way higher than advertised.”

  “True,” Mike agreed.

  They stood side by side, shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the quiet for another long moment.

  Suddenly, a distant bark cut through the night. A dog, somewhere a few houses down, finally found its voice. It barked once, twice, three times—sharp and urgent.

  On the fourth bark, the sound stopped mid-note, chopped off like someone had closed a door on it.

  Eric’s skin crawled.

  “What the—” Mike began.

  The streetlight flickered again, then steadied.

  The dog did not resume barking.

  No other dogs joined in. No irritated human voices shouted for it to shut up.

  Silence rushed back in, settling over the street like a heavy blanket.

  Eric felt something press at the edge of his awareness, like an inspection. It wasn’t a sound or a sight. It was more like the feeling of being in a crowd and suddenly knowing someone was staring at you, even before you spotted who.

  He resisted the urge to look up at the sky.

  “Okay,” Mike said quietly. “I hate everything about this.”

  Eric let the blinds close again. “Welcome to the club.”

  They retreated from the window as if distance could lessen the sense of being observed.

  “Want that other beer now?” Eric asked.

  “Yes,” Mike said, “but I also want to not be awake for whatever this is.”

  “The eternal conflict,” Eric said.

  He went to the fridge, opened it, and grabbed two cans. The chill bit into his fingers. He took a moment to savor the normalcy of that sensation before bringing them back to the coffee table and tossing one to Mike.

  “You ever think we missed some memo?” Mike said, popping his can open. “Like the universe sent out an email—‘by the way, physics are optional after 7 PM’—and we just didn’t check our inbox?”

  Eric sat back down, cracked his own can, and took a swallow. “I don’t check my inbox on weekends,” he said. “Personal policy.”

  “You don’t check it on weekdays either,” Mike pointed out.

  “Consistency is important.”

  Mike gave him a sideways look. “You joke when you’re scared.”

  “You talk more when you’re scared,” Eric replied. “We all cope.”

  They drank, the fizz and clink of metal a small, comforting ritual. The TV remained muted, flickering images of people having problems that could be solved in forty-two minutes plus commercials.

  “Whatever that was on the street,” Mike said eventually, “you don’t think it’s over, do you.”

  Eric stared at his beer. Tiny bubbles rose and popped on the surface, little bursts of chemical effervescence.

  “No,” he admitted. “I don’t.”

  Mike nodded slowly. “Yeah. Me neither.”

  They both fell quiet at that, as there wasn’t much else to say.

  ***

  Across town, in a small, cramped apartment above his own store, Manny knelt beside his bed.

  The room was dim. The only light came from a cheap lamp on the nightstand, its shade crooked. The TV across from the bed showed the local news, the anchor talking about something mundane—sports scores, school budget issues, a lost cat found five streets over. The mute button was on. A pale blue banner scrolled silently at the bottom of the screen.

  Manny’s hands were laced together so tightly his knuckles were white. He stared at the little wooden crucifix mounted above his bed.

  “Se?or,” he whispered, voice raw, “I know I don’t come to you as much as my mother would have wanted.”

  He swallowed. His throat felt dry.

  “I don’t know what that was today,” he said. “The sky—” His eyes squeezed shut. “Lightning with no thunder. Doors slamming without wind. Those boys looking like they saw the devil in the street.”

  He crossed himself, heart thudding. “If it’s Your sign, I accept it. If it’s not Yours…” His voice wavered. “Then please keep it far from my door.”

  He bowed his head, murmuring half-remembered prayers in Spanish, the words worn smooth by years and desperation. He prayed for his store, for his neighborhood, for the two idiots who bought more beer than groceries but always smiled at him and asked about his day.

  Outside his window, the night pressed against the glass.

  For a moment, the picture on the muted TV glitched, the image smearing sideways before snapping back into place. Manny didn’t see it. His eyes stayed shut.

  The digital clock on the stand beside the TV flickered, one segment of a digit going dark for a heartbeat before returning.

  A faint gust of wind brushed against the building.

  Manny felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

  He prayed harder.

  ***

  On a side street not far from Eric’s complex, a police cruiser rolled slowly down the block.

  The engine idled low. Inside, the dashboard glowed faintly, casting its mix of green and blue light over the officer in the driver’s seat. Radio chatter murmured quietly, mostly routine calls, nothing urgent.

  The officer—young-ish, but not fresh—had one hand on the wheel, the other resting lightly near the radio. Their eyes flicked between the road and the sky with increasing frequency.

  It was the sky that bothered them.

  They had been out when the silent lightning happened. There’d been a flash—too bright, too sharp—and then nothing. No thunder. No static crackle. No reported power outage. Just a white knife of brightness across a clear blue dome.

  They’d expected the calls to start pouring in. Panicked residents, “did you see that,” “is there a storm coming,” “are we under attack.” Instead, they’d gotten… nothing. A few confused “must be a transformer” comments on the scanner. A laugh or two. Then silence.

  Now, as they drove their usual patrol route, the officer couldn’t shake the feeling that the town was acting.

  Houses that usually had music leaking from open windows were sealed up tight. Porch lights flickered on here and there, but no one stood under them. No kids were trying to sneak out. No couples sat on steps sharing cigarettes and secrets.

  An uneasy quiet sat on the neighborhood like fog.

  The cruiser’s headlights washed over a yard where a dog sat rigidly in the middle of the grass, staring at nothing. Its ears were flat. When the car passed, the dog didn’t bark. It didn’t even glance at the vehicle.

  The officer’s fingers tightened on the wheel.

  “Yeah,” they muttered to themselves. “That’s not creepy at all.”

  They considered calling it in—hey, dispatch, the sky feels wrong and the dogs are broken—and decided against it. There was no code for “the town’s giving me the creeps.”

  The streetlamp at the end of the block flickered as the cruiser approached. For a moment, the officer had to resist the irrational thought that the light itself was watching them.

  They drove on.

  ***

  Back in the apartment, Mike had reclaimed his usual position in the recliner, but his body language hadn’t fully relaxed. His shoulders stayed a little high, his feet planted, as if ready to push up at a moment’s notice. His eyes tracked movement on the muted TV without really seeing it.

  Eric sat cross-legged on the couch now, beer in hand, the remote within easy reach but untouched.

  “You ever think about leaving?” Mike asked suddenly. “The town, I mean.”

  Eric tilted his head. “That come out of nowhere or…?”

  “Just thinking,” Mike said. “About how if something decides to go full ‘signs and wonders’ on this place, we’re a little under-equipped. Might be nice to not be present when the universe pulls whatever it’s pulling.”

  Eric considered the question more seriously than he might have on another night.

  “Where would we go?” he asked.

  “Literally anywhere else,” Mike said. “Pick a direction. I got half a tank of gas and enough bad decisions left in me to power at least two states’ worth of poor planning.”

  Eric looked down at his hands. The can left a damp ring on his palm when he shifted his grip. “I don’t know if it would matter,” he said.

  Mike frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Feels like…” Eric searched for words that wouldn’t make him sound crazy. “Whatever’s happening isn’t about the town. The town’s just where we’re standing when it hits.”

  Mike studied him quietly. “That a gut thing or a hangover thing?”

  “Both,” Eric said.

  Mike made a face. “Cool. Love that for us.”

  He took another long drink.

  “Seriously, though,” Mike went on, “if things keep getting weird… I’d rather be weird on the move than weird sitting on my ass.”

  “You hate moving,” Eric pointed out. “You complained for three days when we moved that recliner up the stairs.”

  “That’s because it nearly killed me,” Mike said. “If I’m gonna blow out my back, I’d like it to at least be in service of fleeing an eldritch nightmare.”

  “Fair,” Eric conceded.

  He glanced toward the hallway that led to the bedroom. Months ago, he’d insisted Mike could crash here “until things settled.” That had turned into “as long as you need.” Mike’s lean-to setup behind the building had finally surrendered to one storm too many, and Eric had refused to let him patch it together again with duct tape and spite.

  Having another person in his space had been an adjustment. He’d forgotten what it was like to be tripped over in the kitchen or have someone else’s laundry share the same basket. But on nights like this, he was weirdly grateful for the extra heartbeat in the apartment.

  “If you decide you want to bail,” Eric said eventually, “I won’t stop you.”

  “I know,” Mike said. “That’s how I know I probably shouldn’t.”

  Eric frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  Mike shrugged. “If you were the clingy type, I’d assume you wanted me around for selfish reasons. You offering me the door makes me think you actually might need someone to tell you when you’re doing something stupid.”

  Eric huffed. “I’ve been doing fine with that myself.”

  “You’ve been doing it to yourself,” Mike corrected. “That’s not the same.”

  “Didn’t realize we were having a feelings talk tonight,” Eric said.

  “World’s acting weird,” Mike said. “Figured we might not have infinite nights left to procrastinate one.”

  Eric looked at him. Really looked at him.

  Mike’s face was more lined than it used to be. Laugh lines, sure, but also the faint creases of someone who’d squinted into too many harsh suns and frowned at too many things he couldn’t control. There was a steadiness in his gaze, but also a familiar kind of fear—recognition, not panic.

  “You think we’re in danger?” Eric asked, quietly serious.

  Mike considered. “I think something’s shifted. Whether we’re in the blast radius or just watching the show… I don’t know yet.”

  Eric nodded slowly.

  “I’m not asking you to spill your guts,” Mike added. “I know you’ve got your reasons for… whatever this is in your head.” He tapped the side of his temple. “But if there’s something you do know—something you’re not saying because you think it’ll freak me out more than I already am…”

  He trailed off.

  Eric waited.

  “I’d rather be freaked out with full context,” Mike finished.

  Eric thought of half a dozen non-answers. Thought of deflecting, turning it into another joke, another “I don’t know” with a shrug.

  Instead, his shoulders slumped.

  “Here’s what I know,” he said. “I’ve had nightmares for years that feel like… like the moment before that seam opened out there. You know how sometimes you dream about falling and you wake up right before you hit the ground?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said.

  “My dreams never hit the ground,” Eric said. “They just hang there. That moment stretched out forever. Like something’s about to tear open in front of me and I don’t get to see what’s on the other side. I always wake up before I do.” He swallowed. “Today felt like someone finally hit ‘play’ on the rest of the scene.”

  Mike stared at him, the weight of that sinking in.

  “You could’ve led with that,” he said.

  “I could have,” Eric agreed. “Didn’t want you to think I was crazier than you already know I am.”

  “Too late,” Mike said, but there was no bite to it.

  Eric managed a weak smile.

  “Thank you,” Mike added, surprising him. “For that. I can work with ‘recurring nightmare’ more than I can work with ‘nothing, it’s fine.’”

  “Glad my subconscious horror show is useful to someone,” Eric said dryly.

  “In a way,” Mike said, “it makes me feel better.”

  Eric blinked. “How?”

  “Because it means whatever this is… it’s not random,” Mike said. “Which is terrifying, sure. But it also means it’s not just the universe throwing a glitch for fun. There’s a pattern. And patterns can be figured out.” He paused. “Or at least yelled at.”

  Eric let that sink in.

  He wasn’t sure if the idea of a pattern was comforting or more horrifying.

  “Just promise me something,” Mike said.

  “What?”

  “If it gets worse… if you start recognizing more of this… you’ll tell me. Before we’re in the middle of it.”

  Eric looked at him.

  Mike’s gaze didn’t waver.

  Finally, Eric nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I promise.”

  Something eased in Mike’s expression—not relief, exactly, but something close.

  “Good,” he said. “Because if I get eaten by some invisible sky-tear thing and find out later you had a playbook in your head the whole time, I’m haunting your ass forever.”

  “Fair terms,” Eric said.

  They clinked their cans together gently.

  “Cheers to mutual terror,” Mike said.

  “Cheers,” Eric echoed.

  ***

  Time dragged.

  The show on TV rolled through another episode unnoticed. The muted blue-and-red crime scenes and dramatized trauma moved behind glass, separate from the very real unease in the apartment.

  Eventually, the beer and exhaustion tag-teamed Mike into slouching down in the recliner, then tipping it back. The footrest popped up with a clunk. He set his empty can carefully on the floor beside him and let his eyes drift shut.

  “You good sleeping there?” Eric asked.

  Mike mumbled something that might have been “better than the sandbox,” or might have been a snore. It was hard to tell.

  Eric watched him for a moment, then nodded to himself. The sight of someone else asleep in the room anchored him in a way he hadn’t known he needed until now.

  The clock on the wall ticked past some unnoticed hour.

  The apartment slowly fell into that liminal space between late and early, where time blurred and reality felt thinner.

  Eric killed the TV completely, plunging the room into relative darkness. The only remaining light was the faint band leaking through the blinds and the digital glow from the microwave clock in the kitchenette.

  In the dimness, the familiar shapes of his furniture became different. The recliner grew a hunched silhouette. The couch stretched longer than it should have. Shadows gathered in corners that had never seemed particularly shadow-prone before.

  He sat there, on the couch edge, elbows on his knees again, hands clasped loosely. His beer rested untouched on the table.

  He listened.

  He heard the fridge, the clock, the soft exhale of Mike’s breathing.

  He heard the quiet.

  Not just the absence of sound.

  The quality of it.

  Outside, a car drove by somewhere in the distance. Its noise reached the building faintly, then faded.

  The streetlamp outside flickered once, but Eric didn’t get up to look. He didn’t need to see it. He could feel the way the light changed against the blinds.

  His fingers twitched.

  If someone had walked in right then, they would have just seen a tired man sitting in a dark, messy living room, trying not to think too hard.

  But inside, it felt like he was standing on the edge of something vast, peering over, trying to spot movement in the black.

  He didn’t know how long he sat like that.

  Long enough that his legs went numb.

  Long enough that his eyes started to feel dry.

  When he finally stood, his knees cracked. He grimaced and padded over to the window, moving carefully so he wouldn’t wake Mike.

  He lifted a single blind slat with two fingers and looked out.

  The street wore its late-night emptiness like a cloak. No cars moved. No people walked. A thin layer of dust on a parked sedan glowed faintly under the streetlamp.

  That lamp—the same one from earlier—glowed steadily now, its flickers gone, as if it had decided on continuing to exist after all.

  But Eric’s focus wasn’t on the light.

  It was on the space between.

  Between buildings. Between cars. Between ordinary things.

  The desert surrounded Coyote Hills, pressing in just beyond the edges of street grids and property lines. Even when you couldn’t see it, you could feel it, waiting. Old scrubland and sand and rock, stretching for miles, older than the town, older than the highway, older than the fences pretending to keep it out.

  Tonight, the desert felt… attentive.

  Like it had turned its head.

  Like something in that wide, dark expanse had finally noticed the small human cluster making noise at its center.

  The hairs on Eric’s arms rose, unnoticed.

  He let the blind fall closed.

  Behind him, Mike snored softly.

  Eric stood in the dark, listening to the quiet press in on all sides.

  Coyote Hills did not sleep.

  Not really.

  The town lay there, pretending to rest, while stress knotted in its foundations. Dogs paced yards silently. People woke in the middle of the night without knowing why and stared at the ceiling. An officer in a cruiser checked the sky again before ending their shift. Manny clutched his rosary in one hand as he finally drifted off, the TV still on.

  The desert listened.

  And somewhere just beyond the horizon of human senses—

  Something ancient, curious, patient…

  Listened back.