FIVE YEARS AGO

A successful YouTube channel, academic accolades, a potential television deal. Liv's life could not be going better and all she had to do to enjoy her success was to ignore a crippling sense of doom. That doom was once contained in an inside cloud and a voice breaching the veil. Now, doom had become a sort of frenemy—a pit in her stomach, a constant weight, an unnatural presence telling her that it was only a matter of time before everything was taken from her. At the same time, she couldn't comprehend what it would be like to live without it.

Maybe that was the sign she needed. She had entered onto a path that was both nonsense and dangerous and she had become too comfortable with the direction it was taking her. She should turn around, choose differently. Escape. Sometimes, she reasoned with herself, it takes getting what you've always wanted to realize your desires were delusional to begin with.

Unfortunately, those desires seemed to have been passed down to her younger sister. Whether through nature or nurture, the sisters shared a supernatural proclivity. Unlike Liv, however, Penelope had no reservations—no reason to believe diving headfirst into the paranormal realm held anything but promise.

"I'm eighteen now," Penelope told Liv whenever they argued over her involvement. "I can do what I choose."

"You sure can!" she'd respond. "Go make your own channel. Build your own business, client lists, advertising. That's what I did when I was your age."

"You're impossible, Liv," she'd say and then change the subject. They waged a constant and pointless battle on this subject, one that Helina refused to take Liv's side on.

"She's proven herself over the last year," Helina said. "Fans adore her, and she does a great job. We need to include her."

"She needs to focus on college, not some pipedream that more than likely will fall through."

Helina frowned. "You don't spend enough time manifesting what you want, Liv. I want this. Not just for me, but for you as well. And for Pen."

This pipedream, as Liv called it, was a potential contract to take their internet show onto a television station as soon as they graduated from college, filming in haunted locals in far-flung corners of the world. Liv viewed this opportunity with apprehension (What about her science degree? What serious employer would take her seriously if she was visibly pursuing work in what they would view as a pseudoscience?), Penelope with naïve joy, and as for Helina, it seemed to signify the pinnacle of everything she'd been working on her entire life.

This argument, with its impending doom or promising outcome, was curtailed for the weekend by the arrival of Helina's older brother, an architecture grad student back in Helina's corner of the Pacific Northwest. One of the first questions out of Graham's mouth was, "So, what's with this ghost shit, anyways. I don't get it."

This statement, perhaps said in jest with a kernel of truth slipped in, had endeared him to Liv right off the bat. Had it not been for her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend whisking her away for the weekend, she would have spent long hours giving him her take on "the ghost shit," while possibly schooling him on a few other things she considered herself an expert in.

The next week, Helina announced they were to visit a new client. "He owns a farm," she said. "And he's agreed to be filmed, so let's bring Pen and Richie with us."

"A haunted farm? What are we talking about here, possessed pigs? Has his scarecrow come to life to terrorize his family?"

Helina laughed. "Something like that. Put on your big girl boots. This one should be fun!"

They made the trek that Saturday, loading up Richie's van with equipment and snacks. Liv hadn't been thrilled with Richie's inclusion in their outing, but he was Helina's current boyfriend and a decent cameraman. As Penelope reminded her, "He could be worse. He could be your boyfriend."

"Ex-boyfriend, as of two days ago," Liv said.

"Thank God."

Outside Madison, Richie drove southeast, following Helina's directions, until they came to a small track house with a lifeless front lawn, and a backyard that stretched over a gently rolling hill.

"What the fuck is this?" Liv asked, feeling immediately like she'd been duped. "There's no barn. This is not a farm. That doesn't even look like a farmhouse." Studying what was there instead made her want to grab Richie's keys, drive the van back to town, and leave the three of them stranded.

"It is a farm!" Helina's bright response didn't help Liv's mood. "A wind farm!"

"That's so cool!" Penelope said as though she'd just found this out at the same time as Liv, instead of being in on the deception from the beginning. "It's like, the farm of the future."

"Where we eat air instead of food?" Liv shook her head. "Why are we here?" She knew why. They all did. They just hadn't wanted to tell her until it was too late for her to back out.

Whoosh, the turbines said in response.

"Same reason we'd be at another kind of farm, or anywhere else from that matter. The manager has experienced some unexplained phenomenon, and he's paying us to investigate. Why are you so agitated?" She waved at an older man making his way out the front door of the house. "That's Mr. Chen. Be nice."

Liv masked her irritation during the pleasantries with their client. It wouldn't do to be unprofessional, and so she let him see only that side of her. Mr. Chen, for his part, gave her enough compliments to bring a blush to her cheeks.

"I started watching your channel back when the trouble here began. You're brilliant," he said, looking directly at Liv. "I appreciate your scientific approach. Most of the other paranormal investigators aren't like that."

"Thanks," Liv said, letting the tension ease. Maybe this wouldn't be what she thought it was going to be. Maybe Helina hadn't signed her up for a heaping dose of 18.98 hertz despite knowing Liv's aversion. Maybe she was still safe. "Can you describe what this trouble, as you mentioned, was like?"

Richie shifted to get a better shot of Mr. Chen. By now, he and Liv were walking ahead of the group on a dirt trail leading from behind his house to a cluster of turbines, their blades tilted to the wind like dandelion seeds about to spin off into the sky.

Whoosh, the blades spoke as they cut through the air, a low-pitched declaration that this was their domain. Whoosh, Whoosh. The ground hummed along, making Liv's feet tingle with each step.

"Right, well... I've managed this farm for close to a year now. First time it happened was my second, maybe third week. It was dusk and my crew had already left for the day. I was heading back to the house in my pickup when I see this dark shape up near this spot." He pointed to a machine off in the distance.

Liv picked up the pace as though the turbine was sucking her into its orbit. The others followed suit, like a school of fish.

"What happened next?" She cursed herself for sounding enthusiastic.

"I thought, maybe it was an animal. The shape didn't seem right, though, so I got to thinking, it's a human. Someone's trying to mess with it, maybe just a kid with a can of spray paint, or maybe worse, someone's trying to sabotage it. Either way, I had to check it out.

"It didn't take long for me to rule out human either. I got closer, and the shape, if you could call it that, started to change. It grew and it seemed—this is going to sound odd, but, it seemed like a storm brewing. But not up in the sky where it should be. Just, down near the ground, a whole storm cloud swelling up and about to burst." He paused to let out a rattling cough. "And then there was the sound."

"Like thunder?" Penelope popped up from behind them.

Mr. Chen seemed to consider that. "No, that's not quite right. I didn't even notice it first, not with my truck chugging along and the sound the blades make. I can't decide, not even after hearing it several more times, if it was something apart from the turbines or not. It seemed to come from this one." Again, he motioned to the turbine up ahead of them. "But also, it seemed as though the cloud was generating it. And also, like... Like it wasn't... of this earth. That makes me sound like I'm off my nut, doesn't it?"

"No," Liv said. "Our experiences are always valid, even if they don't make sense to others."

"The thing is, everything has felt off kilter since then. And I haven't even gotten to the strangest part."

"And what is that?" asked Helina.

"I was, maybe fifty feet from the turbine's base, driving real slow, keeping an eye on that cloud. And then, the engine cuts out. I'm telling you right now, there's nothing wrong with my truck—nothing. But it just stops, dead. So, I get out, and it's dark now. There's a utility lamp at the base of the turbine, but its not working. I get out my flashlight and shine it at the cloud and I just... I have this bad feeling going through me, like the cloud, it's not just up there, hovering ten feet in the air, it's in me. Inside of me. A storm cloud. A sound from another world, but it's not even a sound anymore, it's a feeling. And it's making me sick. I feel caught up in it. Nauseous."

He stopped a moment, took off his baseball cap, and rubbed sweat from his brow. "I'm not one to easily scare, but I'm telling you, I was terrified. And then, it spoke to me."

Because of course it did. Liv wanted to scream. She wanted to turn around and run. But also, she wanted to take this man aside where there were no cameras rolling and no Helina or Penelope and tell him, she understood. "What did it say?"

"You believe me?" He seemed shocked.

"It's not about believing, you," Liv answered. "It's about listening."

"I'll take what I can get." The crow's feet around his eyes deepened as he spoke, as though telling this story was aging him a lifetime with every word. "It said, 'We found you.' That's it. 'We found you.' And it had—or they had, I guess. They'd found me. I was certain that in that moment, I had nowhere to hide. Whatever they wanted from me, they'd get it, even if it what they wanted was my life."

"But you're still here," Liv said. "They didn't take you."

"Sometimes," Mr. Chen tucked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and stared at his feet. "I'm not so sure."

#

They circled the haunted turbine several times that day, dragged their coolers over to it and ate lunch under the deafening swish of the blades. Liv imagined one of them breaking off, falling, splitting her in two. But that didn't happen, and the cloud didn't appear. A low-grade panic constantly ate at her, unpleasant, but manageable. Whatever had happened to periodically trigger the events Mr. Chen had described, it wasn't happening now.

"Let's wait until dusk," Helina said when she saw Liv's leg shaking, a sign that she was antsy and anxious. "Can you hold out?"

"I'm fine." Liv didn't want to wait that long. She wanted this to be a bust. A false alarm. The case of a fan manufacturing a supernatural event to bring them out here and get to entertain them for a day.

When dusk fell, so did her resolve. "We need to leave," she told the group. "Fuck this."

"What's wrong?" Helina asked her. "Seriously, tell me."

"Do you not see it?" She pointed at the dark cloud forming under the churning blades.

Helina shrugged. "No, but let's film the spot anyways." She motioned to Richie and he aimed his camera in that direction. She took a vibration analyzer from her bag. "I'll get some readings."

"You seriously don't see it? None of you?" Mr. Chen had left for the safety of his house hours ago, but Helina and Richie seemed legitimately clueless. Meanwhile, Liv was having trouble keeping herself from crumbling to the ground. "What about you, Penelope?"

She turned to look for her sister, only to see an empty stretch of land. "Pen?"

Whoosh. Turbulent skies. A looming storm. Desperation melting her from the inside.

"She's over there," Helina said, motioning to Penelope, who had somehow managed to transport herself from where they were standing to directly underneath the cloud. "What's she doing?"

Whoosh.

The storm grew. It approached.

She would die. Penelope would die. Victims of a supernatural disaster.

Liv couldn't move. She froze like a cartoon character that had been magically turned into a statue and she watched helplessly as Penelope reached her hand up to the cloud, a wide smile on her face.

"Hello," she said to it. "Tell me what you want."