Page 41 of Possessed By Shadows

Chapter 12

Ihad crawled into bed with Micah, with too many questions in my head, and a heavy heart. At least with him tucked in my arms, I slept. The dreams a bit wild. If the night noise happened, it didn’t stir either of us. But come early morning, I was up and needed to move. I’d finished my second cup of coffee before deciding I needed to do more than watch Lukas’s videos. I needed to know the truth of all of it, find him and get answers, I told myself as I kissed Micah.

“You promised you weren’t a morning person,” he grumbled from his spot under the covers.

“Too many years in the military,” I said. “But don’t get up. I’m going to go out for a bit. Promise to be back before work today.” Micah and I opened the shop most days, though occasionally we were on opposite shifts. He spent a lot of his time ordering for the shop, organizing, and even negotiating with artists to carry their lines. While I did all the mundane things like ring up customers and restocking shelves. He had a better eye than I did when it came to merchandise. I’d have bought it all if I could. New artists came in all the time looking for a spot to display their work. Micah was picky about what he accepted, and never wrong about what sold and what wouldn’t.

I packed up my bag, slipped on my shoes, gave Jet a few pets, before transferring my remaining coffee to a portable mug, and remaking the pot on a timer. It would brew again after nine, ready for Micah’s normal wake time. When I walked out the door, I double-checked the lock. I was headed to the makeshift office that Lukas’s ghost team was renting.

The walk took a while, as I steered the long way around some of the locations that had always creeped me out a bit. The voodoo museum, still unopened after a fire a while back, was often on our walking tour, but not some place I enjoyed encountering every day. And the Lalaurie Mansion was always on the avoid list. The old nightclub too, though the path I was on didn’t lead me close to there. Instead, the building was on some back section of the Quarter with not enough lights to really give it a retail center. It looked almost residential, though not as cleaned up as the inner Quarter units were. Most of those had nice units above the shops with oversized balconies and beautiful architecture. This area was a bit more run down, streets narrow and empty.

I stood in front for a few minutes trying to decide if this was the address, and if it was haunted. A lot of the homes in the Quarter had something lingering in them. Shadows, sometimes ghost flames from a fire that happened ages ago, sometimes just an energy. This place looked ordinary enough. Since I didn’t have Micah with me to give me an ants-on-skin level of energy, I’d have to deduce what I could on my own.

Jason was supposed to be here waiting for me. The fact that he’d responded to my text early meant he was either an early bird, or would be pissed that I’d woken him. I headed up to the door and knocked, wondering what would be inside. All the secrets to my brother’s unspoken truths? I didn’t know if I could stand to learn much more about him.

It took a minute but the door opened, two actually, with what appeared to be multiple locks, before Jason stood in the doorway. “Hey,” he said. “Come on in.”

He stepped aside to let me in, and I entered what seemed to be some sort of paranormal investigation headquarters. The murder board concept was used here too, only with places, broken up into a half-dozen small sections. Whiteboards hung on the walls, along with freestanding ones with pictures and documents posted in sections.

“Wow,” I said, glancing around the room. “This is more than I expected.”

“Lots of planning goes into each location. We aren’t like other groups that jump in without knowing the ins and outs. Some of the locations take months to get permits for, others just aren’t safe to wander through. Too much debris and broken structural support.”

“You guys take this pretty seriously then?” I asked, recognizing a few of the places from the files my brother had. At lot of these were blights of the city, left abandoned after Hurricane Katrina had done major damage. I had walked by their fences with the ‘Keep Out’ signs a time or ten.

“We do. Your brother has always instilled an importance to be respectful. The ghosts in some of these places are stuck, unable to leave. Others aren’t ghosts at all.” Jason pointed at one. “That one is something demonic, and we’ve applied for permits, but so far no go. We only have other investigators information to research.”

“How do you know it’s demonic then?” I wasn’t certain of the difference. Other than maybe ghosts didn’t have a lot of malicious intent? The few that I met could change on a dime with a fuel of negative energy, so what did I know?

“Reports. Classic demonic activity. Steps above a residual or even an intelligent haunt. Those are places where things will throw bricks at you, or nails, or try to drop an elevator on your head.”

“Really?” I was skeptical of that level of activity. I could see being taken, yes. But something trying to murder a person from beyond? That seemed a stretch. The demon that had taken me over could probably have killed me, but it would have been through malnutrition and overexertion. Whatever had taken Micah had been much the same. Like whatever those things were, demons or something else, they forgot that humans needed food, water, and rest to survive.

“You’ve had some wild stuff happen to you. The ghost bear,” Jason pointed out. There was a section for that house. Details of the past, and even snapshots from our hunt. Including the bear that had lit up. I hated that thing.

“Have you heard from Lukas?”

“No. But that’s not unusual. We have a hunt tonight, and sometimes he scouts those early.”

“So he could be at the location already?” I went to the board he indicated and studied it. “He’d be at this school?” I’d seen it in drives around the city. Knew it was boarded up and mostly inaccessible. It looked pretty run down.

“Yeah. It’s taken forever to get permits. There are supposedly plans to fix it up, but it sounds like it will eventually be demolished.”

“Probably not safe.”

“None of these places really are. Probably not as bad as Libby’s was,” he pointed to the board with the hospital I’d seen. “The entire lower level was still flooded there until recently, so everything is covered in black mold, rust, and toxic water. I don’t think Holy Cross still has standing water anywhere.”

“What if he gets hurt or something in one of these locations?”

“Hasn’t happened yet. But I know he has his phone with him.” Jason didn’t seem worried at all, which kind of irritated me. What if something happened to Lukas? Wasn’t he funding this whole thing?

“You’re supposed to meet him there tonight?”

“Yeah. We’ll get there probably by nine p.m. Spend the next few days filming. We have permits to explore for the week. Just have to check in with the guard each day. Unless it’s a total bust. That has happened a time or twelve. The first night is individual cams, more to get a sense of fear than actually catch ghosts. It’s why we arrive so late. Everyone is tired and already geared up for something.”

I really hoped no one showed up armed. And what if they encountered squatters or homeless folks who were using it as shelter? Places like that were often spoken of as utopias to a lot of the homeless. I knew that from my time on the streets. Places where people left you alone and you could hunt for food, sounded amazing. Isolation was a dream of a lot of the ones who had really bad mental health issues. For a while, I’d been much the same. Hopeful that not being around people meant I wouldn’t have to see that demon again.

“Any chance I can catch a ride with you to this place?” I asked Jason. If Lukas was there and not answering his phone, either something was really wrong, or I was going to fuck him up for worrying everyone.