Page 48 of Possessed By Shadows

There were walls of lockers in the hall, the paint peeling, doors wide open, and revealing rotting textbooks. Some piles on the floor of black pages, desks piled up in rooms. Lots of junk. It made me think of those movies about after the world ended, and how nature began to eat away at everything.

“Thrills mostly.” He projected his light upward, searching the floor above us, and I paused to listen, wondering if he’d heard something. But all I caught was the sound of rain on the roof.

We had to weave through halls and several of those odd open two-by-four sections. Some of the more open area, that might have been a lunchroom, had so much graffiti that every time my lights hit it, I felt like I saw movement. But I kept pausing, listening hard, searching the shadows, which were endless this deep inside.

Most of the rooms were so full of debris, we couldn’t do more than direct the beam of the light into the room. Once or twice, I thought I caught the flash of eyeshine, but was gone before I could pinpoint where I’d seen it. Trick of the light? The location working on my mind? Or something really there?

The lower level appeared to be empty. Though we did walk the length of it, pausing to listen and search as much of each room as we could. That left going up.

From the outside it appeared to have three floors. But were they still accessible? I shined my light around until we found the stairs.

A section had fallen. Micah pointed his light into the space, trying to see beyond the darkness above. The sky overcast and the mostly boarded windows, left us with nothing but the flashlight’s glow. I admit to clinging to Micah. Which was silly. I was an ex-Army Ranger and shouldn’t be afraid of any stupid shadows. But I also had vivid memories of seeing some writhing bit of Death in a stretch of Texas woods, and a black-eyed child who dogged my footsteps.

“Second floor, I think,” Micah shined his light over the wall until it found a plate that indicated room numbers and arrows. “Yeah.” The stairway was gone. We could probably climb. I could give him a boost, but the next section of flooring didn’t look stable. And there was another floor above, which seemed to have a separate stairway. Weird.

“Strange layout,” I muttered. “How about we go up to three, since that stairway looks intact?” He followed as I headed that way. I tested the first few stairs, which groaned under my weight. “Maybe one at a time?” I sucked in a breath, wondering if I should call for Lukas. Would he answer if he was here? Everything was still, and eerily quiet. The rain outside actually a bit comforting, like there was a world beyond the wreckage. “Should we call for him?”

“If there are squatters, it might startle them.”

“I’d rather startle squatters from a distance than let them startle us up close.” I paused on the third step from the top, holding up a hand to keep Micah back until I was all the way up, and slowly panned his light around. The beam, even as high powered as it was, barely penetrated the darkness.

“Lukas?” I called, not really shouting. We both paused to listen.

Nothing.

The roof had to be leaking somewhere. The sound of water hitting random bits of debris echoed as the rain pooled in spots. I mounted the last few stairs, testing the floor with my weight and praying I didn’t fall through. It held, though it creaked and groaned like it would bust any second. I picked my way forward slowly, until I found a spot that didn’t seem to sink when I stepped on it.

Micah appeared behind me, light illuminating the floor, while I kept my beam projected out in front of us. “The building isn’t that big. If someone is here, they would hear us.”

“And we should hear them,” I said, listening hard as Micah stopped at my side. Both of us working hard not to move, and to barely breathe, hoping and yet fearing the sound of something else in there with us.

“If he’s here, he’s not moving,” Micah said. “All I hear is rain.”

“Me too. I feel a lot like Shaggy without Scooby-Doo and this moment.”

“This place would be more fun if we were stoned,” Micah remarked. “Wasn’t the dog afraid of everything?”

“I don’t think Scooby got to be stoned.”

“Ah, that explains a lot,” Micah said.

“I’ve never done weed, does it make you braver?”

“Mellow,” Micah corrected. “Very mellow, slow to react, so sort of?”

That made sense. Hard to jump at shadows if you were super chill. We picked our way forward. This level wasn’t as full of junk. Though there were chunks of the floor missing in some rooms and holes in the floor that gaped down to the next level. I paused at one to direct my light down.

Eyes.

I leapt back, stumbling into Micah, and we both fell. My heart pounding.

“You okay?” Micah helped me up.

“I saw something. Someone?”

“Where?” He peered over the edge, shining his light into the hole in the floor. When he didn’t react, I wondered if I’d seen something he couldn’t? It happened a lot. He tended to feel more than see, while I got visuals of all the nightmare bullshit. I crept up close to him, afraid to look down again. “I think I see a camera?”

I looked down into the area he was illuminating. And sure enough, there was a camera, which appeared attached to a tripod, tipped over. Lukas’s? Or someone else’s? Micah moved his light around the space, searching the corners of the room even while I breathed hard and clung to him, feeling stupid as nothing showed up. If Lukas had been there, he wasn’t there now.