Drip.
Drip.
The scratching grows more insistent, turning into a constant white noise like someone’s scraping their nails together next to my ear.
“Did you know the human brain is hardwired to fear the dark because our ancestors were prey animals?” Benji whispers.
A foot scuffs down the hallway. Benji stops the chair.
I don’t think either of us is breathing because all I hear is dripping water. A shadow passes through a beam of moonlight.
Drip.
Drip.
My heart thumps in my ears as Benji steps away from the chair. He unscrews the lid from the containment jar with a high-pitched scrape and plugs the mini ghost vac into the base.
The footsteps stop.
“Eden?” a voice calls out.
Wait.
“Griffin?” I yell back.
A flashlight beam cuts through the dark. I raise my elbow to cover my eyes, and Griffin thunders over to us. DJ’s right behind him.
“The hell are you guys doing in here?” Griffin demands, lowering his shotgun.
“The comms went out—we thought—” I struggle for words. “What happened?”
“We were on the lower level,” DJ says, breathing hard. “Chasing Morrow—he disappeared—we must’ve lost signal.”
I fumble for my earpiece, pressing the button. “Zoey? Can you hear me?”
No answer.
“We had him cornered, but he lost us,” Griffin says. “Went through a door that locked behind him.”
DJ steps past us, wagging her flashlight at Griffin. “We have to catch him before he gets to his car and flees.”
The scratching sound gets louder and I wince, plugging one ear with my finger. I turn in the direction of the noise. An oily smear of ectoplasm drips down the door frame behind Benji like a slug trail.
The hairs on my arms stand up. “Guys?”
A pair of eyes glints in the shadows, right behind Benji.
“Benji,look out!”
Benji reaches into his pocket and spins around, flinging out a handful of salt.
It hits David Henley square in the face.
Henley screams and staggers backward, hands flying up to scrub at his eyes, but his skin doesn’t smoke. Then he just stands there, blinking and sputtering like Benji accidentally filled his pockets with sand instead of salt.
“What the hell?” Henley shouts. “What thehell?”
Griffin lowers his shotgun. DJ openly stares.
