I figured that since James was out of the picture, I’d call Danny about it. He agreed to make the short trek down to my place to try and solve the mystery of the photos.

Cat left to travel all the way back to Tampa to meet with her colleagues and discuss the matter of the massive environmental catastrophe that was coming their way. She was out the door maybe five minutes before Danny arrived. When he arrived I pulled out the three manilla folders and asked him about the circled faces.

“This one, from the Vanderbilt in ‘97 . . . holy shit, oh holy shit! That’s James in that picture!” he exclaimed pointing to the circled face.

My mind went into overdrive, “What the fuck!? How!?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I heard that he . . . “ he trailed off for just a few seconds before his eyes filled with realization. “ . . . he told me he was in the Navy at one point and that he was on a ship that sank but he made it ‘cause it left the bay without him!”

“Holy shit! For real!?” I bellowed.

Danny picked up the picture. He and I both saw James’s face circled in the picture, the resemblance was uncanny. Even if the picture (for some reason) wasn’t in color, I could still make out many of the features I had noticed on James’s face when I first met him. I turned to Danny and then back to the picture again. “How in the fuck did I not know about this?” Danny said, “I’ve known this guy for six years, and this is the first time I figure all this out!?”

That’s when I brought out the picture of the Malibu crew, the picture that “James” had dropped off to me that had started it all. I realized that with James most likely out of the picture at this point, who the fuck had dropped off the new folder?

“Danny, did you send these to me?” I asked.

“Don’t be stupid, I would’ve recognized these if I had come here and gave them to you, I bet it was James,” he explained.

My heart sank as I came to the realization that someone else had delivered me these pictures. I dropped the manilla folders onto the table and took deep breaths as to avoid a total freakout. When I dropped the folder, Danny noticed something else that made us both uneasy; he was the face circled in the picture of the Malibu.

This had not been the case the first time I looked at the picture, only days prior.

“That’s not possible,” Danny muttered, “That can’t be.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I was never due to so much as be in the vicinity of that ship while it was in the port,” Danny said, “Much less board it.”

I started freaking the fuck out. Who wouldn’t in this kind of situation?

I heard a rattling noise coming from my basement. It sounded like something was acting up in some of the pipes. I was about to go downstairs when that wave of dread slammed into me. I turned to Danny and said, “We need to get the fuck out of this house.”

He said, “You got the feeling to?”

That’s when we both bolted out of the house and got to our separate cars. Danny left first so I could back out. As I was backing out, a body smashed through my bedroom window and fell to the concrete pathway below. Even inside the car and over the radio, K could hear the disgusting thump! of the body smashing into the concrete. Blood burst out of the body like someone had dropped a water balloon out of the window.

As I got out of the car and raced over to the body, I instantly recognized the outfit to have belonged to James.

Holy. Fuck.

There was no way that he was alive (the brain matter everywhere confirmed that), but how would this jump have killed him? I looked upstairs and saw something. I didn’t know what exactly it was, but I knew it was that same thing that was present at the abandoned house in Groveland.

I went back to the car and drove off. In my mind I knew that I could never go back to that house. I couldn’t grab any clothes or food or even the manilla folders, I’d just have to go start over. Luckily for me, one of Cat’s friends worked at the realty office in downtown Naples.

I opted to go there and get a new place to live before sorting out this mess.

I pulled up to the office on Central Avenue and walked in. I saw Cat’s friend, Tiffany, sitting at her desk filling out some paperwork. When she looked up, her face suddenly lit up with joy. “Oh my God, David, how are you? I haven’t seen you in forever! It’s been way too long. What are you doing here?”

“I’m . . . Tiff, I’d love to catch up later, but I need to do some business right now,” I said. She could tell something was very wrong just from my speech tone.

“Oh, okay. Well, how can I help?” she asked.

“I need to move, right now. What’s the cheapest listing you have?”

She was genuinely concerned now. “Oh Jesus, David. Is everything okay?”

“Tiffany, please,” I begged.

She paused for only a moment before she typed some information into her computer. “I have a tiny house on the shore that amounts to about a shack that’s rented monthly. If you want ownership, I can make that happen. It’s about a mile from any neighbors and is probably a half an hour from the nearest Walmart-”

“How much a month?”

Her eyes scanned the screen. “It’d be seven thousand if it’s only you residing there. It’d be about two hundred if you bought it.”

“I’ll take it. How soon can I move in?” I asked.

“David-”

“How soon?” I asked.

She sighed. “It’d be a few days. You need to get a loan from the bank before you can get the keys. It shouldn’t be too hard to get that by Thursday, but if you really need to move now, I’d suggest crashing with a friend or at a hotel for the next couple of nights.”

I sighed heavily. “Thanks Tiff. I’ll be in touch.”

I walked out of the office and called Danny. I told him to meet me at the IHOP on the northside of town and try and talk some more shit out.

We talked about the photos and I told him about what had happened to James and how I was never going back to dad’s house. Danny couldn’t blame me.

“Seriously, I think about what was said on that tape, and it all makes sense now,” he said.

I perked up. “Let me listen to the tape.”

He shook his head. “What? No! It’s disturbing as fuck, David. I have nightmares just thinking about it.”

“Well, whatever killed all those men is hunting me for sport and causing an environmental catastrophe. I need to know what’s going on and if there’s any chance I can stop this fucker,” I informed him.

Danny sighed. “No. It’s not gonna happen.”

It took every fiber in my body to not flip shit and scream at him. Instead, I took a deep breath and said, “Dan, my life might be on the line here. If I don’t listen to what happened to those men, I’ll be dead just like all of them. You’re doing nobody any favors by not letting me listen to those tapes, so swallow your pride and let me hear them.”

He sighed again. “Tomorrow. Tell me where you’re staying and I’ll bring them to you.”

I thanked him profusely before I went and checked into the local Holiday Inn. I dropped off whatever I had on me in my room and then went out to check out some apartment listings as well, but they were way out of my budget. The cheapest place was a literal shithole no bigger than a college dorm for eight thousand. I eventually just went down to the bank and applied for the loan on the tiny beach house.

So, I was stuck in a Holiday Inn until my loan application cleared.

I texted Cat to check in with her, but I got no reply. I didn’t hear from her at all. In fact, I still have no idea if she’s dead somewhere or if she just stayed up at Eckerd when she heard about what happened the next day.

The next day came around, and Danny came to visit with the tapes as he promised. He told me something vital beforehand.

“Before you listen to these tapes, you should know that the Malibu and Vanderbilt were both sent out to the coordinates James gave you to see what happened to the McCoy after activity was detected. The McCoy was sent out there in ‘68 to check out a strange signal picked up from the middle of the ocean. They found nothing but wound up in some nasty fog. They radioed a similar message to the one you’re about to listen to, and the ship was gone. No radar picked it up, ever. The same thing happened to the other ships. You sure you still want to listen?”

I nodded.

He set up the tapes for me to listen to on his MacBook. He looked at me before he played them and I nodded. With that, he played the tapes.