THREE YEARS AGO

Unlatching the chain link gate, Liv let herself into the dog park's leash-free zone. Jumping back to avoid a wayward frisbee, a golden retriever with his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth came bounding after it. Liv picked up the frisbee and gave the dog a pat on the head.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there," a man around thirty years old sporting a baseball cap and a five o'clock shadow jogged up to her, his face red.

"No big deal," she said with a wide smile that made all the requisite muscles ache. It had been a while since she'd forced her face into that position and attempted to pass it off as natural.

The retriever circled around his human and then around Liv, eyeing his frisbee before letting out a short yelp. Liv tossed it and the dog took off running.

"Where's your pup?" the man asked.

She let her smile fall. "Sorry to say, I don't have one. I came here to watch them play and live vicariously through dog owners like you. Dogs are always so happy. I'm hoping some of their dumb gleefulness will rub off on me."

By now, the dog had returned, frisbee in mouth. "Drop it, Bradley." Bradley complied and the mad spun it towards the opposite side of the field.

"Bradley?"

He grinned. "It was my mother's maiden name."

"Gotta keep the family name alive, huh." Liv hopped on top of a picnic table in need of a fresh coat of paint and motioned for the man to join her there.

They chatted for several minutes about Bradley and a collie that frequented the park who had become Bradley's best friend. Liv told him she was new to town and asked for restaurant recommendations.

After swearing by a diner on second street, the man asked the inevitable. "Why don't you get your own dog, if you think their happiness is contagious."

"Too much commitment."

"Oh yeah?" He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. "Do you have commitment issues?"

"Maybe. I like to play, have a little fun, then walk away." She shifted her weight so that her thigh brushed against his. "What do you like?"

He raised an eyebrow, cheeks flushed again. "We're not still talking about dogs I hope?"

"That depends." She hopped down from the picnic table and stepped towards the gate. "You don't have a wife or girlfriend, do you?"

He didn't, but she had to ask.

"No."

"Then let's head to your place. Unless..." She turned to look back at him. No smile this time, just what she hoped was an alluring gaze. "Am I reading this wrong?"

Placing his hat back on his head, he fidgeted with Bradley's leash. "I'm sorry, I'm flattered. Obviously, I'm not saying no, but this is a bit abrupt for me. I don't know you, and you don't know me. You haven't even asked what my name is."

She didn't need to ask this, of course, but clearly he expected her to. Some men required coaxing more than others. She held out a hand.

"I'm Liv. What's your name?"

Two hours later, she left Gene asleep in bed and wandered out into the hallway, where the affable Bradley met her with a wagging tail and a high-pitched whine.

"Shh," she said, scratching his ears. "You can stay with me, but only if you're quiet."

The one-story house had a simple layout. Entryway leading into a living room, dinette behind it and kitchen off to one side. To the left, the hallway she was now standing in, with Gene's bedroom on one side and a bathroom and smaller bedroom on the other. She headed there, turning the doorknob cautiously, anticipating a creek. It slid open easily, though, revealing what she'd expected: Gene's study. A desk covered with stacks of paper had been shoved next to a window to maximize the amount of space available in the room for bookshelves. The study looked like a library after an earthquake, books in collapsing piles stacked on the floor or rammed at various angles onto flimsy, overfilled shelves that sagged under their weight.

He could use someone like Liv to organize this space, but Liv wasn't here to play librarian and she didn't have time to contemplate fantasies of putting order to chaos. Gene could wake up from his post-coital nap at any moment. She took out her phone and opened her camera app. As soon as she found what she was looking for, she could get out of here and prove to Gene that she was just the sort of commitment-phobe she'd made herself out to be.

#

It had taken Liv months to determine if Eugene Farrow could be of any use to her. When she'd first discovered his paper on frequencing, she'd been intrigued, but the essay offered speculation, not proof that such a thing was possible. And so, the million-dollar question became, does this man deal solely with conjecture, or is there more to it, something solid that may give her what she's looking for?

She began to probe deeper, reading his blog, searching through his digital footprint to determine if he'd said anything more useful than what was in his essay. What she'd found was that Eugene Farrow worked as a college instructor, not at a big-name university nor within any field of study that could be related to his theory on frequencing. Instead, he taught English literature at a small liberal arts college in the middle of Nebraska boasting a student population of less than a thousand. Studying Frequencing seemed to be a hobby, the way paranormal investigation had once been for Liv before Helina had come into the picture.

That said, Farrow had developed a reputation for innovative thinking and had many followers commenting on his blog posts, which ranged in topic from interdimensional travel to Marry Shelley to pictures of his golden retriever catching tennis balls at the local dog park.

There wasn't a lot to go on here; even in the posts that mentioned frequencing, there was nothing to suggest he wasn't simply pulling ideas out of his ass. And then... five weeks before Liv's dog park escapade, a new post:

I suppose it's time to say this. I've shared a lot with you all but there are some things I've kept to myself. Some of it will remain private for now—for your safety as well as for mine. Other things though... I've had a breakthrough and it's worth sharing with you what I can.

The first thing I should note is that my stepfather disappeared when I was nineteen. I don't like to talk about it, it's very painful to recall—he'd raised me since I was four. When I say, he disappeared, I don't mean that he took the car keys and left to start a new life, or that he was abducted by armed men, or that he went off somewhere else to end his life. He did none of these things—I know that to be certain because I was there when he disappeared.

For years, he'd talked about dark forces opening themselves to him. He thought our house was haunted—even had a priest come to exorcise it when I was eleven. His episodes in which he claimed to be in communication with ghosts, became more frequent and scarier over time. My mother tried to have him committed to a mental institution on three separate occasions.

On the day that he disappeared, my mom had taken my younger sister prom dress shopping. I was living at home during my first year of college and was in my room studying when I heard him talking in an argumentative tone. Only, when I went to see what was going on, he wasn't on the phone and there was no one in the room with him.

His eyes. The details of his face have faded over the last decade, but those eyes I will never forget, not because of how they looked but because of how they made me feel. And that feeling? Utter helplessness.

His eyes saw what I couldn't, like an eagle spotting prey from one hundred feet in the air, a small mammal that would be invisible to humans at that distance. He continued to argue with something or someone I couldn't see and none of it made sense to me. I remember snippets, like "Not now," or "why can't you let me go?" And most chillingly, "If you take me, will you leave them be?"

I entered the room at that point, intent on pulling him from it, taking him outside to get some fresh air, but he motioned me back, and what happened next did so in a way that can only be described as anticlimactic.

What happened was... he got his answer. He existed in that room and then, poof, he was gone, like a magician disappearing but with no smoke or mirrors. They took him... and they let us be.

Ever since then, I've been convinced that my stepfather was not hallucinating or exaggerating or making anything up. I'd seen him there and then not there. Gone from our world, but possibly, still existing somewhere else.

That's the reason I've dedicated all my spare time to the ghost frequency, to finding ways into other realms, to this notion I call frequencing.

My stepfather, I believe, had the ability to vibrate at a frequency which let him access another realm, and let beings from that realm access him as well. Perhaps he was born with this ability. I've wondered if it might not be a genetic mutation. And so, I got to thinking, what if there was a way to alter those of us who only vibrate to the frequency of our world so that we too could access another. The more I read and studied and learned and thought about it, the more I became convinced that all it would take was a window in: a defining moment of exposure to reconfigure us the way his was naturally configured.

Today, I've figured it out.

Here's the point where I must disappoint you. I can't give you this information. You want it—I get that. But it's dangerous, dear readers. I have much more work to do before I can safely share this discovery with others. I haven't even tried my discovery out on myself because I'm so afraid of that point of no return. If you think I'm a coward, then so be it. I think I'm cautious.

For now, be happy that this breakthrough exists. I have the data here, written down, offline, for safekeeping, until the day when I can present it to the world, knowing that will be the day the world becomes worlds, and our reality is changed forever.

That was all Liv needed to read to know she was headed to Nebraska, to meet up with a man and his photogenic dog, to steal the data she needed to fulfill what had become her own life's mission.

Shuffling papers on Eugene Farrow's desk, Liv searched. Work this significant should be stored in a locked safe. In her purse, Liv carried a safe cracking kit she'd taught herself how to use specifically for this trip, but there was no safe to be seen, at least not in this room.

Concerned that maybe she'd gotten this all wrong and she'd seduced this unsuspecting man for no reason, she almost missed a warm sensation beginning in her left knee. A moment after she took note of it, running her hand through a current of oddly balmy air, Bradley began whining again. He nestled his nose against her knee and then gave the middle drawer of Gene's desk the same treatment. She opened it and gasped as she pulled out a thick binder, the words "The Answer" scrawled across it in red ink.

Liv shook her head. This supposedly intelligent man announced to the world on his blog that he'd made the most important discovery since the ability to control fire, and he didn't even keep his research in the locked drawer on the opposite side of his desk.

Opening the binder, she began taking pictures, barely giving herself the time to see what was on each page. She'd gotten less than a third of the way through when Bradley's ears perked up and he beelined it to the doorway.

Crap.

"Looking for something?"

She whirled around. "Just curious," she said with a smile that absolutely did not come across as genuine.

She waited for the beratement, the threats of a call to law enforcement, the stern and deeply disappointed "get out of here, you awful person" treatment. Instead, he stepped inside and sat down in his desk chair.

"Who'd you lose?" he asked her.

"Excuse me?"

Bradley sat next to him, leaning against Gene's chair. "You'll need to be forthcoming with me if you want me to give you what you're looking for."

This was a plot twist Liv was not expecting. "My sister. She was... like your stepfather."

He nodded. "And so are you."

"What?"

He lifted his chin towards the corner of the room. A tiny red dot glowed. "I've been watching you for the past several minutes. Bradley reacted to it. Were you aware that certain animals have the knack just as certain humans do? But your ability is far stronger than his. You felt it first. A warmth and then a pull. Not a cloud or shadow this time, but a sensation. Am I right?"

Liv's jaw tightened. She kept her lips pressed together. Feeling vulnerable in front of Eugene Farrow had not been on her steal-the-frequencing-information bingo card.

"That's the one question I need answered before I give you what you came here for, Liv. If you are already in tune with the ghost frequency, why do you need my research?"

There were many lies to choose from, but in that moment, Liv decided on a different strategy—a risky one, to be sure. But if it paid off, it would be well worth it.

"It's pretty simple, Gene." She leaned against his desk and gave him the first real smile of the day. "I want revenge."

_____

Author's note: For those of you keeping track, we have heard of Eugene Farrow and his paper on Frequencing previously. In fact, Liv mentions it several times within the story's fluctuating timeline. This may cause confusion, or maybe not, but don't worry, it will eventually make sense. Liv is somewhat of an unreliable narrator and it should come as no surprise that she is keeping things from us.

I hit the 20K requirement for #ONC2023 a few chapters back (yay!)--I'm over 26K at the moment and the goal is to have the story completed in less than a month. I hope if you made it this far that you are enjoying it!