In Saving the Imperfect

34. But we might never know

"Has to be in one of these trees." Coden waved his arms around him.

A speaker had to be somewhere right next to their camp. Every night, the fake howls disturbed their sleep and scared the children. Layne had to admit that he himself wasn't too comfortable whenever it started – knowing the threat wasn't real didn't help, especially with how realistic and loud it was.

If only it wasn't so dark, they could have found it days ago and finally had a better rest – but the sounds weren't there in daylight, so, they had to choose. And they chose to try both. It just never worked.

"The fucker..." Layne covered his ears when another deafening howl came from somewhere right next to him. Even if, for the most part, he said to have recovered, the noise still gave him a harder time than anyone else. Maybe that's why Alana didn't want him to go look for the source – but at that point, he couldn't trust anyone else to do it better.

Coden jumped by his side. "Somewhere right here, on the left."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he grunted and touched the tree trunk nearest to him in the right direction. It was one of the shorter howls, that time, which he was glad about. It just gave them another hint of where to look.

Coden was touching around the other nearby trees. Layne knew they had to be close – yet they didn't even know what to look for. Was it even in a tree?

"There's something there!" called Coden. Layne rushed by his side and froze. He followed the guy's eyes up the trunk of a tree and there it was – an unnatural, boxy shape near the top, almost hidden by naked branches and twigs.

"A birdhouse?" Layne raised his eyebrows.

"Could be."

"Well there's only one damn reason there'd be a freaking birdhouse here."

"We should check it out in the daytime."

Layne shook his head and gripped on the branches closest to the ground. It was a while since he last went climbing trees – actually, he hasn't done that since he was a child – but the noise had to stop.

"Hey, be careful." Coden stepped aside.

Layne ignored him. He wasn't going to purposely fall off a tree, anyway, so there wasn't any logical reason to be reminded of that.

The first couple of meters were difficult – the branches were sparse and he was constantly conscious about one of them breaking from his weight. However, he quickly picked it up and found himself next to the birdhouse in no time. The thing looked like it'd fall apart from touch, the wood was soft from the rot and Layne had no doubt it housed plenty of tiny creatures.

Another howl confirmed their assumption – the sound came directly from the wooden box.

Layne flinched from the loud noise. "Damn, it's a fucking amplifier at this point."

From lack of response, he guessed that Coden couldn't hear him – or the other way around. It didn't matter, anyway. He slipped his hand inside the wooden box and pulled out the speaker.

"Catch!" he yelled out and dropped the speaker. Coden stretched out his arms, but the device fell right through the gap between his hands and crashed into the ground. "Nice one."

"I couldn't see it in the dark", bleated Coden and stepped on it with a loud crack. "Wasn't my fault."

Layne chuckled to himself, but his voice stuck in his throat. A thin column of smoke rose into the sky not too far from them. It came from the opposite direction to the destroyed village. He wasn't quite sure where the second one, Victor's, was located, but that couldn't be it – way too close.