When Frederick stepped into the single-person cabin, he didn’t know what to expect. The retreat center website showed images of a wooden structure in the forest, a basic floor plan, and the kitchen appliances. 

As it turned out, the pictures provided an accurate view of the appearance while somehow concealing the small size. The main area contained the kitchen, dining room, and living room in one open space. Along the back wall, three doors led to the bedroom, maintenance room, and bathroom. If Frederick stood on his toes and stretched, his fingers brushed the ceiling. 

Not that he could complain, with the cabin’s short-notice availability, low price, and amenities. After all, it served his goals well enough.

He set his duffel bag in the bedroom and unpacked his work laptop in the dining room. The newest emails came from a potential client he hoped to meet with today and tomorrow. Earlier that week, a spiritual retreat center had requested his services on transcribing their public and private events.

Not only had they offered a hefty pay, but they held potential as a repeat client. They even offered a discount on the rental cabin. As such, Frederick wanted to prepare even more for their meeting.

His phone buzzed, and a message from Amara popped up. “Just dropped the kids off at school and preschool. Hope your meeting with the client goes well. Love you.”

Frederick smiled and replied. “Thanks, and thanks for watching over them so I can go on this trip. Love you too, honey.”

The oven clock showed he had a couple hours before the client meeting. Since the community center was a fifteen minute walk away, that gave Frederick ample time to prepare his materials. He packed his notes, notebook, and writing utensils into a small backpack and set them near the front door. With those tasks done, he had time to chip away at his true mission.

The client had offered to meet Frederick through video call. He’d elected to go in person with claims that he wanted to scope out the retreat center and see if he meshed well with the workers. These claims held truth, but they didn’t encompass his third reason for wanting this trip.

If he planned to train himself in fighting interdimensional threats, he needed a far away location to not endanger anyone. The retreat center’s reclusive cabins served as the perfect spot for him.

To start with an easy task, Frederick set a pen on the table. Then, he closed his eyes and focused on the layout of the small cabin filling his mind’s eye. Aside from his own aural trail, all energy traces had long since faded away, showing how guests didn’t stop by often. 

Frederick then honed in on the blue ballpoint pen in the middle of the table. He imagined an invisible hand rolling it off the table, then focused inward for any changing sensations within.

To his delight, the familiar warmth filled his chest within seconds. It started as a gradual trickle, then spread toward his extremities while strengthening. The sudden changes excited Frederick, but he refused to let his feelings distract him. Returning his attention to the ballpoint pen, he once again imagined an invisible hand pushing it off the table. 

Light clinking of plastic on wood indicated the pen had rolled away. A subsequent clatter let him know that it had fallen to the floor.

Despite listening to the sounds and watching it unfold with his spectral vision, Frederick almost jumped back when he opened his eyes and found the pen a few feet away on the wooden floor.

With his first task a success, Frederick stood to grab the pen. An idea occurred to him, and he repeated the earlier process while imagining it flying back into his hand. The warmth in his fingers turned to heat, and he stopped as flashbacks returned of searing pain.

More memories of that encounter returned, and Frederick gritted his teeth. Since the heat hadn’t turned painful yet, he continued leaning into the sensation while doubling down on his orders to lift the pen to his hand. Slowly, it rose from the floor, wobbling the whole way and pausing whenever Frederick took a break. A couple minutes later, and he held the writing tool in his hand, which now throbbed with an uncomfortable icy burn.

Repeating the task with his other hand yielded similar results. Fortunately, he pushed the pen to the ground and lifted it back a few seconds faster than his first attempt. By the time he finished, he could commence round three with his original hand, and he shaved the time on both tasks by a significant amount. Now, he could push the pen off the table in five seconds and lift it off the ground in thirty seconds.

The triumph of his new records made the stiffness in his hands worth it.

Since he didn’t want to fry them before meeting the client, Frederick paused his training and checked his messages. Amara sent him pictures of the lunches she packed for Caleb and Debby. Pastor Isaac gave updates regarding the previous Sunday’s incident and offered a discount on the upcoming men’s retreat as an apology. Frederick responded to both and was about to put his phone away, but a message from a recent contact gave him pause.

“Hey, Frederick,” the message read. “This is Lian Hai. I have a question regarding your attack earlier this week. Where did it happen?”

Seeing the message brought mixed feelings. Although Frederick liked catching up with Lian Hai, their conversations usually involved serious matters. Somehow, he suspected she wasn’t asking out of curiosity alone.

Frederick replied, “It happened at the pond near my community church. Why?”

Her response took several minutes to arrive and included two messages. The first one had links to videos and news articles. In contrast, the second had only two words.

“They’re spreading.”

Frederick’s stomach dropped, and the sinking sensation strengthened when he clicked on the various videos and news articles. All of them centered on animal attacks within the past couple days. Some occurred in the woods, while others took place in more remote parks.

However, all the locations had two traits in common. They had a pond or lake nearby, and they had minimal people at the time of the attacks.

For the animals themselves, many sources claimed the witnesses or victims didn’t get a clear view of their attackers. The ones that did described an enormous four-legged animal that could’ve been a wolf, coyote, or small bear. It would stalk its prey, strike from out of nowhere, then disappear before anyone could find it.

Widespread searches via police or park rangers failed to turn up any culprits. Adding to the lack of evidence, most people who had witnessed attacks either didn’t capture video or photo evidence or were in no state to share their findings.

That changed when Frederick reached the last source. The news video itself didn’t give anything new, but one comment contained a link to a different video that was deleted but had been reuploaded by third parties. 

A shaky short video showed a hiker on a dirt trail in a tall grassland. Whoever was filming walked past several large puddles before stopping when the nearby grass rustled. Suddenly, a flash of black covered the screen, and the camera blurs with a loud thud. The last several minutes showed a side view of the ground and a still human hand.

The video title read, “Last video of hiker. Animal attack death caught on film.”

When Frederick slowed the video down and paused on the few frames of black, the shadowy beast filled the screen. 

With shaking hands, he replied to Lian Hai’s message, “Where did you find these?”

“A lot of searching and going down random rabbit holes. As someone who lives and works in the wilderness, I keep a close eye on anything involving wild animals. My friends and family know this, so they help me keep tabs, and they didn’t bat an eye when I asked them to look into this.”

Frederick paused to organize his thoughts, then typed, “Why are they attacking people? Where did they come from? Have they always been here, or is this some sort of new phenomenon?”

A dark voice in Frederick’s mind whispered a question that made his skin crawl. Did his and Lian Hai’s excursions into the astral plane somehow summon these entities here?

His rational side insisted that couldn’t be the case. From the many articles about astral projection, the practice existed long before he or Lian Hai were even born. Besides, if the monsters had a grudge against him, why target strangers in other parts of the world? More likely, this phenomenon started long ago or was caused by more factors than he realized.

That didn’t stop the bad taste in his mouth.

A ping from his phone made him jump. Fortunately, it was a reply from Lian Hai, though the message didn’t reassure him.

“I don’t know for sure. Maybe they’re attacking physical people too so they can strengthen their connection to this layer of existence. I can imagine only feeding on spectral entities isn’t exactly fulfilling. The people attacked could also be travelers, but without knowing them, I can’t say with certainty. I’m especially hesitant to speculate on those who are no longer around to speak their case.”

Frederick nodded and studied the ballpoint pen. His slow but satisfactory sense of progress went down the drain at the revelation that these monster attacks meant he’d have to fight one again. If he struggled to lift a pen, how could he hold his own in a death match?

He searched for something else to test his strength again and saw the coffee table on the other side of the cabin. Harnessing his power again, Frederick imagined the short and stout table sliding across the room. The warmth in his hand exploded into burning pain that shot up his arm in seconds. He grunted and clenched his fist but refused to back down. 

After several excruciating seconds, the table inched across the floor, stopping and starting with ear-grating scrapes. He moved the table a few steps closer before exhaustion and pain forced him to stop.

With his dominant hand out of commission for the next several minutes, Frederick struggled to respond to Lian Hai. “That’s understandable. I also don’t want to dig too deep into these people’s lives, but I can’t help but wonder. If everyone who astral projects risks running into these monsters, why haven’t there been more attacks or sightings of these shadow beasts? At least from what I’ve seen online, several people have done this before, and none of them reported any danger.”

Lian Hai replied, “I suspect at least some people are making up their experiences for attention. Even if everyone is telling the truth, it’s worth noting that not everyone astral projects the same way. Some people stay at home or don’t leave their towns. Not everyone goes on grand adventures to other layers of the astral plane.”

“You can say that again.”

At this point, Frederick’s hand had recovered enough that he could type with both of them. Nonetheless, he waited for Lian Hai’s response and used the pause to check the time and that he had his supplies ready. His training had taken longer than he anticipated, for he had a half hour before the meeting began. He packed his work materials away and was about to grab his backpack, but a question gave him pause.

After mulling it over, he sent a message. “How did you learn to fight the monsters?”

She replied, “A lot of trial and error, plus bruised fingers. Why?”

“I want to learn to fight these things in case they target me or my family again. So far, I’ve been moving items with my spirit-based power, but I fear it won’t be enough to take even one of them down. That first encounter, you held your own pretty well, so I want to learn to do that, too.”

A long pause followed, without even a symbol to show typing. Frederick wondered what caused the sudden hesitance when another message came through.

“You’re going to hate me for this, but unfortunately, that’s not something I can teach you through messages or even a video call. We’ll have to meet again in the astral plane in order for me to fully explain how the process works.”

Although he suspected that response, Frederick gulped and weighed his options.

After a pause, a second message appeared.“If you’d rather not go back after everything that’s happened, I understand. Like I said, you’re new enough that you should be safe if you back out now. However, if it turns out that these most recent attack victims aren’t travelers and were chosen at random, you might still be in danger. The choice is yours.”

The second part of her message brought back memories of the random hiker killed by a shadowy beast for no apparent reason. Hypothetical scenarios of that happening to him or his loved ones followed, and any hesitation disappeared.

Frederick replied, “What time works for you tonight?”