"My mother passed away a few years ago," Quinlann went on.

"Sorry to hear that." Kyle shoved the straightest end of the crowbar under the plywood and started pulling.

"Yeah," Quinlann said. "She was always onto me about losing things. You know: keys, my wallet, my wedding ring since I don't wear that to work."

Nails screeched as they pulled free of the wall. Gradually the plywood section came loose. Sunlight split the darkness of the room, playing on the dust motes eddying in the air.

"Anyway," Quinlann said, "my mom always had this special place she put my things when she found them and knew that I wouldn't remember where I'd left them. About two years ago, I lost my wedding ring for a couple weeks. I looked everywhere. My wife looked everywhere. My kids even looked everywhere because I offered a reward. Nothing. No doing. Couldn't find the ring anywhere."

Kyle grabbed the plywood and hauled the section to the floor. The plywood landed with a thump that raised a dust cloud that reminded him of a nuclear bomb blast.

"Then one night," Quinlann said, "I have this dream about my mom telling me to look in that little place she had. She'd come to live with us the last four years of her life. Anyway, I get up the next morning, remember the dream, and go to the hiding place. Guess what I found."

"The ring," Kyle said.

"Yeah." Quinlann flicked off the flashlight beam. With the plywood off the dirt-streaked window, more light invaded the room, battling the darkness back and illuminating the surroundings enough to get around without falling. "What I'm saying is that maybe you should keep an open mind about ghosts."

"I'll do that."

Quinlann pointed to the other covered windows. "Let's tear those down for starters, then get the cleanup crews in here and start gutting these rooms."

Grateful for the change in topic, Kyle threw himself into the work.

Fifty-plus years ago, the three-story building near Roswell 's downtown area had been a cheap hotel that rented by the day, by the week, and by the month. For the last twenty years the building had been primarily derelict, rented by a few businesses to store stuff that was basically a collection of junk that no one had bothered to officially throw out. Now someone had bought the building and hired Quinlann Construction to revamp and remodel the structure into a telecommunications marketing center to take advantage of the changing labor force in the city.

As Kyle attacked the covered windows, yanking down the plywood and letting more light into the room, Quinlann busied himself marking the permanent walls that couldn't come down in the deconstruction phase. Only a few of the walls had to remain to provide support for the offices.

"There should be a bathroom back there," Quinlann said after Kyle had finished with the windows. "Crack it open and let's have a look. According to the blueprints, we should be able to tear that out of there."

Kyle crossed to the door and halted when an offensive stench reached his nostrils even through the mud-caked mask filter. "Smells like something died in there."

"Sewer gas," Quinlann replied. "Once the water to the building was shut off, the pipes all went dry. With no water in the S-traps to seal off the gas coming back from the sewer, the gas flows back up the pipe."

"Oh," Kyle replied. During the construction gigs, he'd also learned a lot more about plumbing than he'd ever wanted to know.

The bathroom was a small full-size with a tub-shower ensemble, a toilet, and a sink. Broken Sheetrock littered the floor.

Kyle opened his mouth and breathed. Not breathing through his nose helped mute the stench, but the experience was still pretty harsh.

"How bad is it?" Quinlann asked.

"Bad," Kyle assured him.

"I'm talking about the construction work. We're going to have to tear out all the pipes and fixtures, right?"

"Yeah." A silver glint on the floor caught Kyle's attention. He peered more closely, then figured that the glint had been a trick of the light. Nothing was there now.

"Kyle."

The thin whisper permeated the room and made the hair on the back of Kyle's neck stand to attention. Primitive instinct, a concrete fear of the unknown, froze Kyle in place.

"Kyle." The soft, sibilant sound repeated.

Mouth suddenly dry, Kyle had trouble swallowing. "Do you have someone else up here with us?"

"No. Why?"

"I thought I heard somebody in here," Kyle said.

"Better have a look," Quinlann said. "There may be transients or kids prowling around in here. They look for places like this to flop or party occasionally. I've had it happen before."

Kyle stared at the dust-streaked translucent glass that encased the shower. No other place in the room was large enough for someone to hide in.

"You got that window open in there yet?" Quinlann asked.

"Getting to it," Kyle responded. "Where is it?"

"According to the blueprints, the only window in that room is on the east wall."

Kyle looked to his left, then spotted the covered window. He'd missed the window because it was smaller than the windows in the outer rooms, and because the cabinets around the window helped camouflage it. The window was also close to the enclosed shower.

"1 found it," Kyle said. He moved to the wall and lifted the crowbar. Before he could slide the crowbar into position, movement to his right, made murky by the pebbled design of the shower stall glass, drew his attention.

The figure on the other side of the shower glass looked vague and indistinct. But the shape was definitely moving.

"Kyle. You are a friend to Max, Isabel, and Michael. They must go."

Fear hammered through Kyle. Ever since he'd gotten involved with Liz and her alien friends, his life had never been the same. The weird things that had gone on had activated his dad's obsession with an old unsolved case of his grandfather's. Then they'd learned the truth about Max, Isabel, and Michael, about their alien heritage.

Despite his fear, Kyle peered through the shower glass, trying to get a better look at the figure on the other side. There was something vaguely familiar about the shape. He reached out with a shaking hand and slid the shower door open.

A dead man stood in the shower cubicle. He was thin and young, his dead flesh ground into bloody hamburger by the road that had killed him. His face was black with bruising where it wasn't red, gooey, and dripping.

"Stay away from them, Kyle," the dead man said. "Their time is coming. They will be hunted and sought after. Everyone with them will suffer the same fate."

Fear gripped Kyle, holding his feet as tightly as cured concrete. The dripping horror in the shower suddenly grabbed the glass edges of the shower and stepped toward Kyle. Panicking, Kyle tried to dive backward. His foot slipped on loose debris. He twisted as he fell, flailing his arms as the dead man hovered over him.

The crowbar crashed through the glass surrounding the shower, shattering the glass into huge shards. One of the shards slid against Kyle's left arm, slicing neatly through the flesh. The cut instantly filled with blood, then overflowed and ran down his arm. A steady stream dripped to the floor as he landed on his butt beside the enclosed shower.

The dead man leaned down toward Kyle, revealing the hideous gashes left from rough contact with street pavement. Kyle now remembered who the dead man was, though he hadn't thought about him in years.

"Stay away," Kyle gasped. The burning pain of the cut reached him, as well as the initial fear of the amount of blood he was losing. "Stay away!"

The dead man leaned in more closely. His hands left bloody smears on the bathtubs edge. "They are going to die, Kyle. We are going to kill them. Just as we will kill anyone who stands with them against us."