We had headed off into the woods with an ill-defined game in mind. Whoever spotted an animal first got a point. If they could name specifically what it was, and the answer matched the little pocket wildlife book we had brought from the house, they got four extra points. Whoever won got full control of the t.v. remote that night, as Karen had taken to lying down early most evenings. Despite the fact that I was eleven to Rusty’s fifteen, the game was actually biased toward me, as he knew I had the better memory and was more interested in animals and stuff like that. Still, he was four points ahead when we entered an unfamiliar clearing and saw the monster that lived there.

Except at first we didn’t realize it was a monster. It looked like a dust devil, or in this case, a leaf devil, as it seemed to just be a small whirlwind of leaves and grass twirling around a relatively open space buried in the midst of a deeper part of the woods. We laughed and watched in amazement as it moved around, both of us expecting that it would peter out or wander away after a few more moments, as those kinds of natural phenomena tend to do.

But after several minutes it was still going strong, and while it was moving around a good bit, it never seemed to leave a certain space in the middle of the clearing. And, as was becoming increasingly clear, it was unlike anything natural we had ever seen.

“Maybe it’s a ghost!” Rusty offered, not taking his eyes off of it as I stepped closer to him.

I considered it before shaking my head. “Nah, I don’t think so. Papa said there’s no such thing, and why would a ghost be out here anyway? Maybe it’s a freak nature thing like lightning out of nowhere or those places where fish start raining from the sky.”

I saw him frown slightly at that. “Fish raining from the sky doesn’t sound like a nature thing.”

I shrugged. “There’s a scientific explanation for it though. I bet there is for this too. I wish we had a video camera.”

Not wanting to let it go at that, Rusty was about to say more when he realized the same thing I just had. The leaf devil had stopped moving. It was just hovering—an ever-shifting swirl of forest detritus that was at the closest point to us that it could reach and not travel further out than it had gone so far. Almost as though it couldn’t go further out, which was a troubling thought on its own, but which was temporarily eclipsed by something I was thinking just as Rusty said it.

“I think that fucking thing is looking at us.”