Page 91 of Possessed By Shadows

It was insane. Something out of a horror movie, though I wasn’t sure anyone was seeing the dark thing but me. The dining table tipped sideways, landing with a thud, and the sofa slid across the room. The man took a step backward, the gun lowering and loosening in his grasp. The dark thing moved toward him, but I don’t think he saw it. He seemed focused on the moving furniture.

I took that moment to pop up and rush at him, slamming into him, knocking him out the open doorway behind him with a hit to his core using my shoulder. He stumbled back, over the narrow deck and down the stairs, landing at the bottom in a sprawl. I threw myself backward, landing just inside the doorway, but out of range of the gun, even while he struggled to hold it.

The police rolled up to the curb, no lights or sirens as he was lifting the gun again. Fuck. This was going to go sideways fast. The police jumped out and were pointing weapons at the man.

“Put the gun down!” They screamed, using their doors as shields.

I crab walked backward away from the dark thing. My dad’s gaze was focused on the thing too, but Jason was filming the movement of stuff in the room. Everything flying off the walls, counters, and sliding around the floor. The swirling darkness pulled energy from us. Just trying to move away exhausted me, and the hurt was fading, which made me think I’d pass out soon.

Jason cursed. “Battery is dead. Fucking gold and my battery is dead.”

My dad was hunched down near the kitchen, though his gaze was on the open door to the den. He glanced my way, and tilted his head toward the door. I blinked, trying to decipher what it was he was seeing.

Wait. I’d left Micah beside the stairs, near the door to the den. Was Micah in there? I turned and crawled away, clinging to the wall, trying to keep moving even as the swirling thing seemed to grow. If it was the ghost of the dead cop, it had changed. Turned yokai as Micah called it. I wasn’t sure there was a way to push it back, or disconnect it from me. But if Micah was still in the house, I had to get to him.

I reached the beginning edge of the doorway and the collar of my jacket was grabbed, pulling me forward into the den threshold. “Don’t let it drain you,” Micah said, his face filling my vision for a few seconds before he kissed me soundly. “Clear it. Don’t feed it.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but sank into his kiss, so grateful he was alive and safe for the moment that my heart seemed to warm, chiseling away the ice that had still surrounded me from the thing from the attic. I gasped as my body awakened, heating, thawing, a reminder of our play only hours before awakening something in my core. Memories good enough to arouse me even while feeling half dead.

Whatever tie the shadow thing had to me shattered, melting under the heat of Micah’s touch. The wind died down, the movement stopped, and the shadow-thing began to fade. For a few seconds it looked like a man, angry, and flailing, almost as though he were chained, trying to get free.

I gasped for breath, holding tight to Micah from my spot in the doorway of the den. The police outside still standing off with the man who hadn’t put down his gun.

“Stay low,” Jason said from his spot on the floor. He sighed as the last of the pictures drifted to the ground near him. “This is going to take some fast talking.”

Micah gripped my collar. “Help me,” he demanded.

“What?” Was he hurt?

He waved his hand at the room behind him. The rug was up and his phone was shoved into a tiny crack in the floor, lifting some sort of door or panel. “Help me! I think Lukas is down there.”

I was moving without realizing it, my dad not far behind. We crawled in the narrow space and it took all three of us to lift the panel, partially because the desk edge was on top of it. Stuff clattered to the floor, but Dad put his back to it holding it. Below was water. A lot of fucking water. A flooded crawlspace for sure, but Micah shined his phone toward the edge a few feet over and I could see…

“Fuck!” I cried and slid into the water reaching for Lukas.

It was like jumping into an ice bath. I reached him, tried to lift him, but he was tied to something, his face tilted upward, barely out of the water, and he was icy to the touch. I took a deep breath and dove down. The darkness too intense to see anything, but I felt around to find where he was tethered. It took a few seconds to realize he was tied to a chair, hands and feet, and the chair was tied to a pipe. Probably to keep it from floating? The space was impossibly dark, even with the lights directed into the water. Not much penetrated the murky depths.

I had to go back up for air. “I need a knife or something to cut him free,” I told Micah when I resurfaced. I didn’t tell him how fucking cold I was or how much I suspected that Lukas likely teetered on the edge of death. Lukas’s eyes were open, but unfocused, and he didn’t respond when I touched him. I really hoped he wasn’t already dead.

“Here,” my dad said, handing over a Swiss Army-style folding knife.

I took it, sucked in a big gulp of air and went under. I tried to saw the bond on one leg first, but it was wrapped a dozen times, so I aimed for the one on the pipe, sawing at it until the first round gave way and my lungs were aching, begging for air. The chair moved a little. I grabbed Lukas’s shirt, tugging him forward, praying the chair moved, but I had to breathe.

I breached the surface, gasping for air, flailing with one hand, still gripping the knife, and the other tugging at Lukas’s shirt. He popped up beside me, the rope around the chair unraveling and letting him float. If the chair flipped and he ended up with his face underwater he’d drown. I gripped his shirt so hard my fingers were going numb, or that could have been from the cold.

Micah grabbed me. Dad caught Lukas, dragging the entire chair and all upward. The entire panel of the door was pulled off and shoved to the side. I panted and sucked in gasps of air as Micah held me against his chest, me still half in the water, while my dad tried to drag Lukas free. The hole in the floor wasn’t that big. The water frigid with biting cold. I’d live, Lukas might not.

Lights appeared in the doorway. Police. Weapons pointed our way, but Lukas was lying on his side, tied to the chair and I was shivering in a hole filled with standing icy water. I had no idea what the police would think in that moment. Were they going to shoot us? Was Lukas even alive?

I blinked into Micah’s shoulder, him holding me tight as the world around me faded, going black at the edges. The exhaustion from the dark shadow pulling energy from me taking its toll in combination with the cold etching through my legs.

“Micah?” I whispered as the world vanished around me. I really hoped I didn’t end up a puppet to the black-eyed kid again, though I did suppose I owed it something for helping me find my brother, even if that meant it had let something else take over me for a while.