Page 28 of Possessed By Shadows

Chapter 8

Sunday came too quickly. Normally it was a day of rest for Micah and me since the shop was closed. Jackson Square was pretty much empty on Sunday mornings other than the churchgoers, which we were not. So dragging my tired ass out of bed to head to my brother’s haunted mansion was not a happy plan for the day.

Taking over Lukas’s schedule consisted of finding someone to replace his hours at the shop, fielding a handful of calls from the ghost hunting group, which Micah had suddenly become the leader of, and dealing with my dad. The latter was the worst. Lukas had called him too, though I doubted it was the three a.m. call he’d rewarded Micah and me with, and volunteered me for helping with hauling trash out of the haunted house we’d been avoiding.

The schedule indicated the dumpster had been dropped off early in the morning. But we were expected to be at the house by nine a.m. My dad’s idea of timing or Lukas’s? I suspected my dad’s since Lukas would have known we were not morning people.

Four cups of coffee, and a quick egg sandwich, was not enough to clear the fog from my brain. Finding Sky on our doorstep, hair back in a tight braid, wearing yoga pants and an over-sized, paint-stained sweater, was unexpected. I raised a brow at her as I held the door for Micah. He stepped out behind me, stuffing bottles of water and gloves into his bag.

“I’m helping,” Sky said.

“Moving trash from Lukas’s house?” I clarified. Because if I could have gotten out of helping and stayed in bed, I would have.

She nodded. Micah said nothing. I wasn’t sure he was awake yet, even though I’d given him a blow job in the shower. The chill in the morning air made me want to crawl back in bed. Fucking Lukas, giving us work on a Sunday.

I headed down the path toward the gate, Micah at my elbow and Sky on the other side. It felt a bit like a death march. All of us too tired and weary of everything to do much protesting. I wondered if Sky had read cards about today, which said she needed to be there. Would I go nuts? Be possessed by something? Would Micah be stolen from me while I stood two feet away? I reached out to grab his hand. He moved his coffee from one hand to the other and gripped mine, leaning in to me.

Normally Sundays were slow days. Some snuggles, maybe sex, and then sewing. The three Ss of Sundays. My favorite day of the week. Sometimes we watched movies and then late in the day wandered the Quarter like tourists, Micah pointing out weird random bits of history he knew. Digging through the history of my brother’s house didn’t sound like fun to me. But maybe Micah would find something interesting.

The dumpster had arrived, and apparently so had the ghost hunting crew. I blinked, recognizing a handful of them in the daylight.

“Babe?” I asked Micah.

“They will be helping,” he said. “After their cameras are set up.”

“We’re planning on catching ghosts?”

“Moving things, and messing with renovations often stirs stuff up,” Micah said absently.

“Fuck,” I said.

He squeezed my hand. One of the guys came our way when he saw us. Jason, I think his name was. He had brown hair and eyes, a bit of a stocky build and looked more like a stock broker to me than a ghost hunter, but he seemed to keep the others focused.

“Hey, Micah,” he said. “We’re all set up, keeping cameras mostly upstairs and in the common areas. It sounds like most of the stuff is in the basement, and the attic. The attic is incredibly packed, stairs narrow, so it will be a chain of people for that.”

I knew the basement wasn’t actually a basement as much as it was the first above ground floor. The house itself, like most this close to the river, was raised up by a high-level porch and stairway leading to the entry. Most basements were storage spaces, though with the flooding that had happened in the past decade, I was surprised anything was stored on the lowest level.

“Everyone needs to wear masks,” Micah said.

“We’ve got boxes of them and gloves. Lukas noted that there were signs of mold. And anything of value has already been removed from the property. Everything left is trash,” Jason added.

“Doesn’t mean there won’t be people picking through the garbage,” Sky said staring at the giant dumpster parked in front of the house.

“Yeah,” Jason agreed.

We all headed toward the door. Micah tensed, his hand squeezing mine. Likely the sensation of bugs crawling on his skin again. I wondered briefly if it would be less stressful to feel things rather than see them. He did seem to get advance warning, as I rarely felt anything until something popped up in front of me. But not being able to see what caused it? A blessing or a curse?

Inside the house, a small table had been set up with masks and gloves, even construction goggles. And there was movement from the back of the house, clattering. I really hoped everyone wasn’t gawking at the storyline of my life in that back room.

One of the ghost hunters, a young woman was sitting near the table, looking at her phone. “I’m guarding backpacks and stuff, feel free to put your stuff down.” She didn’t really look at us, but I got the point. The dumpster would bring looters, and people in and out of the house would be hard to track, so someone was guarding stuff. Micah set down his bag, pulling out gloves, three pairs of sturdy work gloves rather than the plastic ones. He handed them out and took a mask.

In the front room, which had already been cleared, a table full of monitors and computers had been set up. Images of the house flooding the screen. Two guys sat at the table with headphones on, gaze intent on the panels of motionless rooms. Looking for ghosts already?

“I’m surprised my dad is okay with this,” I said absently. But I didn’t know much about my dad anymore either. Any other Sunday and I’d have expected him to be at church instead of overseeing a crew of ghost hunters.

He appeared before we were all masked up and ready to go. I was surprised to find him wearing a mask and gloves. Instead, I had expected him to buck the rules and be like,what mold?

He nodded to us, passing by with an armful of what looked to be broken wood. “Don’t touch the walls if you can help it. I’ll have to get them treated.”