Page 90 of Possessed By Shadows
Chapter 28
Iglared at the kid. They moved around the upper-level, opening and closing doors like it was mimicking what I had done. Like it was searching too. Though it seemed a halfhearted search, more to make noise and create movement.
The closet door squealed as it moved, but the kid stopped and stared. Waiting.
I sighed and made my way over. A panel for the plumbing access as this wall was shared with the bathroom, was the only thing in the closet.
“Lukas wouldn’t fit in there.” Not in one piece at least. I swallowed that thought and pulled on the plastic panel cover. It snapped off easily enough, one of those pop together pieces. Inside was plumbing pipes and pictures. “What the fuck?”
I reached in and grabbed a handful of the pictures. Polaroids. Who used that sort of thing anymore? Dated. Some from over thirty years ago. All of kids in various shades of undress. “What?” I had the urge to drop them like they burned as I flipped through the images. Was this some sort of child pornography thing?
Dated, nothing else. Boys and girls, all preteen as far as I could tell? I frowned at it all. Was this what Lukas had been looking for? I gathered up handfuls of them, but there were too many in the wall for me to carry without a box or something.
“This is sick shit,” I told the kid, who stared at me with a blank expression. “Abusing kids?”
The door downstairs slammed open, and I heard, “Put your fucking hands up!”
The police? I raced down without thinking. If I’d been smart, I’d have tried to crawl out a window or something. Guess I wasn’t smart, but I had also left Micah downstairs. I wasn’t about to let him get shot.
I tripped and half-slid down the stairs on my back, still gripping a handful of pictures although a lot of them fluttered around me as I landed at the bottom, face-to-face with the man who’d been in the video stuffing Lukas’s backpack, and an AR-15. Overkill for a civilian weapon, and the man was not dressed in police garb, though it wouldn’t have surprised me if he was a cop.
Micah was nowhere to be seen, had he gotten out?
My dad stood in the kitchen, hands in the air, unmoving, and Jason was actually in the doorway of the garage, door shut behind him. He still had his phone and seemed to be filming on it, but he stood with his free hand in the air, unmoving.
“Put the phone down,” the man said, swinging his gun in Jason’s direction and back to me. “Don’t move,” he said.
“How about you put the gun down and we talk?” Jason offered.
I lay on the floor, back aching. Where was Micah? I really hope he had bolted with the rest of the ghost crew.
The man noticed the pictures. “What the fuck? You’re going through my house?” He pointed the gun at Jason again. “Put the phone down!”
“You shoot us and we are getting it on camera, man,” Jason said.
I thought technically he could shoot us since we were trespassing in his house, but we also weren’t threatening him even though there were three of us. I was not faster than an AR-15. And I didn’t really want to get Jason or my dad shot.
“What’s with the pictures of naked kids?” I asked. I didn’t think it was very threatening or dignified that I didn’t get up from where I landed at the bottom of the stairs, but my back and hip were screaming at me. I held my hands up, careful to not move too much, even though I hurt. Nothing felt broken, but everything ached.
He swung the gun back my way, looking owl-eyed and nervous. His gaze going to the pictures strewn around me.
“Dozens of these, maybe hundreds, in the access panel upstairs,” I said, keeping my hands up but waving one to the trickle of them around me.
“Naked kids?” Dad asked. “You some kind of pedo?” he demanded of the man. “You took my son? Where is he?”
“Man, bad play. You’re some kind of child molester? I’m getting all this on video,” Jason added. I was more than a little shocked at him standing his ground and trying to protect us. But maybe he was giving the others time to get away.
The man gaped, seeming undecided on how to respond, but the garage door flew open, slamming into Jason, and knocking him to the floor. He landed with anoof!
The shadow came through the door then, looking a bit like the mix of my demon and aDeaththing, writhing with movement, dark slugs instead of faces, swirling with screaming rage. Not a ghost like the girl, or even Adrian who’s faded and gray. Yokai, demon, and nightmare for sure.
Did anyone see it but me?
It seemed to be pulling energy from me as it stepped through the door and the pictures flew up off the floor as though a heavy wind had dropped on us. I blinked back darkness for a few seconds as the thing yanked on me, threatening unconsciousness. I struggled to breathe, shoving back the dimness and trying to create some sort of shield around me. Something flickered in the back of my mind, bits of my shield maybe.
Where are the rest! It’s gone!
I put my hands over my ears as the sound grated on me, low and brutal, stone grinding on stone in every word. The man gaped at the whirlwind of pictures. Jason scrambled for his phone, which he’d dropped when he fell. A chair shimmied across the room, and the wind whipped hard enough that my dad grabbed the counter to keep himself from being blown over.