Page 37 of Possessed By Shadows

“Not easy,” Micah said.

“Not really,” Sky agreed. “Dangerous a lot. People don’t care if they hurt you. Some of them want to hurt you. And it’s not as easy as books and movies make it out to be. Separating your mind from your body? It’s not really like flipping a switch.” She shrugged. “Maybe for some people? Some people really like the sex and don’t care who it’s with.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing I could fix things. Rewrite the past or something.

“Anyway, I woke up in the hospital. Micah was there. The police told me about Lukas, asked questions about how I’d been lured.”

“But no one could answer how he miraculously found you?”

“Instinct and a million other bullshit comments,” Micah remarked. He dug through the pile, putting things in one section and folders in another. “When he was looking for Sky, the handful of times I saw him, he almost seemed…possessed?”

“Like me?” I couldn’t imagine a zombie-like Lukas being useful at all. But maybe only I went into zombie mode.

“A little? It was like he wasn’t there. And something else was? Every once in a while, he’d wake up in the middle of a conversation we were having and I’d be like, oh, it wasn’t him? Like it was a different person.”

Schizophrenic? Isn’t that what they had called me when something seemed to take control? I had been questioning that for a while. But what if Lukas had that happen too? His intensity then made sense. He wasn’t looking at a way to fix me. Or at least not just me.

Did that mean he saw stuff too? Or was it at a different intensity like Micah’s was? Maybe he felt things or something. I really wished he was around to ask, or had even bothered to trust me enough to admit he experienced some weird stuff too. Instead, he’d let me think I was crazy. Though that wasn’t really true either. He’d insisted I wasn’t, even to medical doctors who wanted me drugged to oblivion.

“And when I went missing, did he go off too?”

“Sort of,” Micah said. “He was off the grid, but met his check ins. I think a lot of that is because the police were keeping eyes on him. He wouldn’t talk face-to-face then.”

“Not even with me,” Sky agreed. “He’d stare at his computer, and not look at me. He was gone a few days at a time and then would be back, without explanation.”

“I can’t imagine how much trouble he gave you while I was gone this last time.” Gone…mentally checked out. “At least you all knew where I was.” What if Lukas was like that right now? Mentally checked out in some place that it wasn’t safe? “We should find him.”

“That’s the plan,” Micah agreed. “But we need to know what he’s working on. Trying to find a way to fix you? Or searching for someone else? Either way, he’s got a lot of explaining to do, and I’m not going to let him dodge it anymore.”

“How do we do that?” And wasn’t that a loaded question that I really didn’t want to know the answer to?

“These are the places he’s been researching for his ghost hunt thing,” Micah said. “When I called Jason on the way over to Lukas’s house, he said Lukas does a lot of research before heading to any locations. We’ll have to go through and see which ones are most likely? I think some of these places we need a permit to get into. That doesn’t mean he might not try to get around that, especially by himself, but it does mean we should probably start with the easier places.”

“You think he went off to ghost hunt on his own?” I made my way to the chair opposite him, thinking that the last thing I wanted to delve into was more paranormal stuff. But that was my lot in life, wasn’t it?

“I think he’s looking for answers. To what happened to me, to you, and whatever showed him the way to Sky,” Micah said. “It means looking through all this crap, and watching the videos, then hunting for your brother. Unless you’d rather just wait?”

And hope he showed up? Technically that happened before, often enough that everyone expected him to pop back in. “What if he’s in trouble? Can’t call? Or maybe went to one of these places and got injured? Fell through the floor or something?” Or got taken by some dark shadow. My heart sped up at that idea.

“I think we should look for him, and if he shows back up, give him hell,” Micah said.

“He’s not nice to you, and you’re still willing to look for him?” I hated the way my brother treated Micah lately. Like he was some sort of wedge between us. Lukas had sort of pushed us together. Why the bad attitude? Cause we were both targets of weird shit?

“The microaggressions come from his worries about you, I think.”

“Not your fault,” I reminded him.

“I vanished. You went somewhere to bargain with a devil for my return.”

“Sort of,” I agreed.

“Maybe Lukas is looking for a way out of the bargain?” Sky asked. She didn’t move from her spot on the futon with Jet curled around her.

“Not sure it’s his bargain to break,” I said.

“Do you want to read through files or watch videos first?” Micah asked.

“I am not a detective.”