Overtaken by Mark H. Kruger

I was honestly too skeeved out to dial any of them) and tried to decide if any of the filthy words Sharpied onto the smooth, tan plastic could have a double meaning. I almost went full Godfather and checked the toilet tanks, but that felt like a step too far. I headed back out to the main room.
    Starting to get desperate, I eyed the blinking Christmas lights that draped around the edges of the windows. Were they programmed to convey some sort of Morse code? I hoped not, since I didn’t know Morse code. For all I knew, they could be screaming the truth about UFOs and Area 51 and I would be none the wiser. I clenched my jaw, frustrated and ready to give up when I spotted the bulletin board by the door. I cocked my head and drifted toward it. It would be too easy to just leave a note. . . .
    I scanned the ads and missing pet posters to see if anything seemed like a secret message, and caught my own face staring back at me. What in the . . . ? I pushed some other flyers to the side and revealed not just my face, but Oliver’s, Jackson’s, and Maya’s as well—all smiling out from an ad for “Ellen Bowes Photography—School Portraits, Weddings, Events.” Except the photos of my friends and I weren’t portraits at all. They were selfies pulled from Instagram and Facebook. Either Barrington had a terrible photographer wannabe at large, or something was up.
    My fingertips sizzled with anticipation as I snatched the ad off the board. What could it mean? I didn’t see anything else out of place on the front, but as I turned away from the board, light hit the back of the paper and made it ever so slightly translucent. I flipped the ad over to read them. There I found a question staring back at me.
    WHAT IS BLACKTHORNE?
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    Could it be a futuristic video game? Or was it an obscure Bolivian movie about Butch Cassidy? Or perhaps a dive rib joint in Boise, Idaho? These were among the many dubious possibilities I discovered during an exhaustive Internet search, which yielded little of actual substance. Certainly nothing that led me to connect Blackthorne to Bar Tech or Cochran or shadowy conspiracies.
    I even risked reaching out to Maya and texted her, hoping that maybe she was behind the cryptic message, but no such luck. She assured me that she was still safely a thousand miles away, lying low somewhere in the Chicago area. And despite my attempts to connect with Oliver, he blew me off, not responding to any of my increasingly apologetic texts.
    After hours of futile and exhausting bleary-eyed research, I shut my laptop and called it quits. I had to face the prospect that maybe Blackthorne and my secret texter were bogus—meant to distract and send me off on a wild-goose chase. For all I knew, this could’ve been one big setup by Richard Cochran to entrap me.
    I stared at my phone like it was radioactive. Damn, I was definitely losing it. A good night’s rest would hopefully clean the cobwebs out of my brain and help me think clearly in the morning. Blissful sleep was what I desperately needed.
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    BZZZZZZ. BZZZZZZ.
    I sat upright in bed and looked around my room in a foggy haze. It was dark outside. 11:04 p.m. according to my clock. I had drifted off to sleep no more than ten minutes earlier and now my cell was buzzing. I looked around. Where was my phone? Not on my nightstand or anywhere on the bed. My hands felt around the coffee-colored shag carpeting, fingers combing through the long, dense fibers until I found the phone underneath the bed. The number was blocked on the incoming call, but I answered anyway. I hoped it was my mysterious texter wanting to establish verbal contact.
    â€œHello?” I waited for the caller to identify himself.
    Nothing.
    â€œWho’s there?” I heard breathing. Someone was definitely on the other end.
    CLICK.
    I dropped the phone, unnerved by the disturbing