Page 47 of Possessed By Shadows
Chapter 14
Ilooked through Lukas’s car, like he’d be curled up in the backseat. But his old sedan was empty of him or anything of value. Which was the only real way to try to prevent car theft in the city. I wondered how long the vehicle had been sitting there. At the very least, it couldn’t have been long and still have unbroken windows. Stolen from an area like this was more likely. But maybe people recognized him, and knew he was a former cop?
It probably helped that his car was older, and less valuable to thieves.
Micah went to the chain-link fence and trailed it for a ways until we found a small opening. The hole was just enough to wiggle through the up-turned section. I followed, having to play a game of Twister to fit. Micah had the benefit of being short and lean. My shoulders, a bit too broad, made it a tight squeeze for me, but I got through without ripping anything.
The wide swath of the yard was overgrown, and with a spattering of trees here and there. If there was security actually at this site, there was no sign of them. The board over the windows and doors painted in an array of colors, led me to believe they’d been up for a while. The main entry impassible as it seemed to have a triple layer of plywood.
“There’s a lot of bees,” Micah remarked, keeping his distance from one of the windows with a hive growing out of the top. “Not the nice ones either.”
“Are you allergic?”
“No. But I’d also not enjoy being stung a million times.”
“Truth,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been stung.”
“Stay away from them. You’d be the one to have that allergy.”
Because I was allergic to a lot of random shit. “Okay.” I followed his lead, staying away from the windows and areas swarming with the bees.
We circled the building looking for signs of Lukas or even an opening to get inside. The first fat drops of rain hit as we found a side entrance that had a broken board over the door. The full hit of the storm was hours away, but that wouldn’t stop the beginning edge of rain from soaking us if we stayed long.
Micah pulled off his backpack and handed me a filtered facemask, a pair of thick leather gloves, and a flashlight. I blinked at him.
“What? Like I wasn’t going to be prepared? How many abandoned buildings do you think I’ve explored in my life?”
“I honestly have no idea,” I admitted. Prior to his disappearance in the woods, I didn’t think he’d been into the paranormal much, but maybe that was wrong. “Why do people think abandoned places are haunted?” I adjusted the mask and crouched under the overhang as he readied himself. He turned his light on and peered through the opening, shining the beam around slowly, looking for signs of movement or life.
“Residual of life mostly? Not all places have record of previous death. But people are attracted to places that havedied, people leaving or abandoning it to be reclaimed by the earth, thinking that the veil between worlds might be weak.”
“Veil between worlds. That’s hella creepy.” I held up my flashlight too, trying to see more than a few feet into the darkness beyond. Nothing moved, but the light didn’t go far. The boarding of the doors and windows seemed to add to the inky blackness of the space, and there were naked two-by-fours built up like barren walls waiting to be drywalled. But it must have been done ages ago as there were spider webs everywhere.
“I hate spiders,” Micah grumbled. He handed me his light. “Let me climb over first.”
“Please be careful,” I whispered.
He climbed up on the half door, while we both watched for nails and the jagged edges of the wood. I gave him a little boost, hands on his fine ass, which helped calm my racing heart a little. “You do have the perfect ass,” I told him.
He snorted as he finally wriggled his way inside and reached out to take the flashlights. “You are such a perv.”
“Only when it comes to you,” I promised. The trip through the opening was a bit more complicated than I had hoped. My stupid hip locking up, plus the narrow, off the ground space, and Micah practically had to drag me inside. Landing on the ground stirred up so much dust I was glad he’d thought to bring the masks. Who knew what sort of mold was covering everything here?
He put his hand on my wrist. “You didn’t wear your bracelet?”
It took me a minute to recall what he meant. The crystal charged thing we’d made with hair woven in. “No. With everything going on today I forgot.” Hadn’t really thought about it actually. It wasn’t part of my routine. “Do you really think it would help?”
His gaze lingered on me. “Just stay close, okay?”
“Do you feel bugs?”
“Yes, but it could be my anxiety. The webs make me feel like I’m crawling. But I don’t know if that’s in my head or real. Hard to tell sometimes.”
I knew what he meant. Most of the places we did little ghost hunts for tourists were actually regular occupied spaces. But we’d explored a vacant one or two. Though those were much more open than this, spaces mostly empty of everything, rather than boarded off and enclosed. Micah usually stalked them first, deciding if the bugs on his skin sensation was too intense or not. People wanted thrills from a ghost hunt, not terror. And a regular tour group could scare itself silly without seeing a single thing.
Unlike the places we’d been before, the section here was narrow, the odd, half-built walls making everything tight even though they were empty slats. There were offices heaped with rotting furniture, papers, and piles of debris that I couldn’t identify. And I kept the flashlight moving, focused in front of us, searching not only for movement, but spiders.
“Should have worn a hazmat suit,” I grumbled. “Why do people want to be in these places?” The mask helped, but the stench of rot, mold, and feces, which I hoped was animal related, still penetrated the filter. I really hoped we weren’t tromping through shit. The floors were piled with stuff that looked like leaves, maybe papers? Some old signs with the school’s name? It was like they’d left this place in the middle of a regular day and never came back, leaving everything behind. A capsule in time, plastic not degrading, while everything around it became little more than dirt.