Jake woke up, stretched for a minute, and went to get a drink of water. As he walked into the living room, he stopped dead in his tracks. Alan was passed out on the sofa, wearing a bright red cocktail dress.
"Dad. Dad!" Jake started waking Alan up by shaking his shoulders.
"Uh, not right now... five minutes more, Mom," Alan groaned, trying to swat Jake's hands away.
"Wake up, Dad!" Jake said louder.
Alan suddenly stood up, his eyes darting around the room. "What? What happened?" he asked, surprised and still heavily groggy. He looked down at himself and gasped. "Why am I wearing a dress? And what is this tattoo?" he asked, pointing frantically at a fresh, red-inked tattoo on his forearm that read: NEON GRAVEYARD – UNIT 44.
"I don't know, Dad, I just woke up. Where is Uncle Charlie?"
"I—I don't know. He was with me, that's the last thing I remember," Alan said, panic immediately creeping into his voice.
"Ah, he'll be okay. He's like a cat," Jake assured him.
"A cat?" Alan asked, confused.
"Yeah, nine lives and always falls on his feet," Jake explained casually.
"I don't know, Jake. We were supposed to come back together," Alan said, wringing his hands and ignoring the rustle of his sequined dress.
"Well, he's probably still in the hotel. Let's go look for him," Jake said.
But after an hour of searching the sprawling casino floors, the restaurants, and the lobbies, they couldn't find Charlie anywhere. Alan was getting more anxious by the second.
"Alright, Dad, calm down. Let's go ask to see the security cameras," Jake decided.
Jake and Alan reached the high-security surveillance hub hidden deep in the back corridors of the casino. A massive man, whose nametag read "Miller," blocked the doorway.
"Restricted area. Guest relations is in the lobby," Miller grunted.
"My brother is missing," Alan pleaded, clutching a hotel bathrobe tightly over his dress. "We just need ten minutes with the cameras."
"I'll need a warrant otherwise. Move along."
Jake stepped forward, his eyes locking onto Miller's. He let his expression go flat and his voice dropped into a hollow, eerie tone. "You should let us in, Miller. The spirits are very agitated today."
Miller snorted. "Beat it, kid."
"They're whispering about a woman," Jake continued, his gaze drifting to Miller's left hand. "She took the ring, but you're the one who threw it. A month ago? No... three weeks. You're sleeping on a friend's couch, somewhere with a golden retriever, and you're ironing your shirts on a coffee table because you don't have a home anymore."
Miller's arms slowly uncrossed. The color drained completely from his face.
"They're also worried about your left knee," Jake whispered, his eyes never leaving Miller's. "The spirits say if you don't open this door and show me the North Exit at 3:00 AM, the pain in your leg is going to be the least of your problems."
Miller swallowed hard. He looked at the man , then back down at the terrifying child who seemed to be reading his soul. Without a word, he swiped his keycard and held the door open, backing away as if Jake were radioactive.
"Thank you," Jake said, his voice returning to a chillingly polite calm.
Alan followed him in, shivering. "Jake... how on earth did you—"
"Not now, Dad," Jake interrupted, his eyes already scanning the massive wall of glowing monitors. "We have a timeline to reconstruct."
Miller, keeping a fearful distance, cued up the tapes for the North Exit.
Alan stared at the fresh barcode on his forearm, his breath coming in shallow, panicked gasps. His eyes darted from the paused security monitor to the small boy beside him.
"Jake," Alan whispered, his voice trembling. "Am I cursed? Are you cursed? Be honest with me right now, are you possessed? Did a demon tell you about Miller's divorce?"
Jake didn't look away from the screens. He calmly tapped a key to enhance the freeze-frame on the camera feed.
"There are no demons, Dad," Jake said. His voice had dropped its eerie, hollow resonance, returning to the flat, slightly annoyed tone of a kid dragged on boring errands. "I'm not a psychic. People just don't pay attention."
"But the ring! The golden retriever!" Alan sputtered. "You looked right into his soul!"
"I looked at his uniform," Jake corrected, finally spinning the office chair around to face his father. He ticked the points off on his small fingers with.
"First of all, he had a pale, untanned band around his left ring finger. But the skin wasn't just pale, there was a faint, healing scratch right above the knuckle. He didn't just take the ring off; he yanked it off in a fit of rage.
"Second, he had coarse, blonde animal hairs clinging to him," Jake continued seamlessly. "Too long for a lab, exact right texture for a golden retriever. But the hairs were only concentrated on the back of his left shoulder and the side of his hip. He wasn't just petting a dog; he was sleeping on a surface the dog sleeps on. And since his uniform pants had deep, horizontal creases near the thighs, he clearly slept curled up in a fetal position on something too short for his massive frame. Like a friend's couch.
"And finally, his shirt collar and chest were crisp, but the bottom half was wrinkled and the fabric smelled faintly of lemon Pledge and stale beer. He ironed the top half of his shirt on a low, hard, unclean surface. A coffee table."
Alan blinked, the panic slowly giving way to sheer bewilderment. "Okay... but what about the knee? You threatened his leg!"
"He was wearing a thick neoprene brace under his pants, you could easily see the rectangular outline against the fabric when he moved," Jake sighed, turning his chair back toward the glowing monitors. "Plus, he was keeping his left leg perfectly straight and shifting two hundred and fifty pounds of body weight entirely onto his right side. It's not magic, Dad. It's basic deductive reasoning wrapped in a creepy voice."
Jake grabbed a pen from the desk and scribbled a license plate number onto his hand.
"Now," Jake said, his eyes narrowing at the screen. "There he is."
The grainy black-and-white footage flickered to life.
4 AM: casino doors slid open. Charlie stumbled out onto the sidewalk. He wasn't looking for a taxi. Instead, he enthusiastically shook hands with a man driving a large flatbed truck. The truck's door had a very distinct logo: a cracked lightbulb with the words 'NEEON GRAVEYARD – UNIT 44.'
Alan gasped, pulling back the sleeve of his bathrobe. He stared at the fresh, red-inked barcode tattooed on his forearm. It matched the logo on the truck perfectly.
"Oh no," Alan breathed, his eyes widening in horror. "I'm not a box of cereal. I'm a sign."