Page 201 of Love at First Fright

What the fuck—

I shoved harder. The resistance gave way all at once and I stumbled forward, gasping. The wrongness didn’t fade. If anything, it pressed closer. Crawled over my skin like static electricity, raising every hair on my arms. My eyes struggled to adjust, shadows bleeding where they shouldn’t.

You just crossed into the seal. You’re inside it now.

Joy upon joy.

Phone light shaking, I swept it across the space. Wine racks lined one wall, most empty, a few bottles still nestled in the slots. Dark glass furred with dust. The labels had long since rotted away.

An old wooden crate sat in the corner, its lid askew. I glimpsed tarnished silver inside—candlesticks, maybe, or serving platters. Things Lady Grimthorne had wanted kept safe.

A heavy door stood at the far end of the room. Open. Hanging crooked on its hinges.

The storage room she’d locked him in?

I moved closer. The door was thick—reinforced with metal bands, rivets the size of my thumb. Built to keep things secure. Or to keep something in.

Scratches covered the inside surface. Deep gouges in the wood, clustered around the handle. Fingernail marks.

Sounds filtered through the doorway. Shouting. A woman crying. And underneath it all, something that made my skin itch worse than a thousand spiders—a low rumble that felt wrong in my bones.

I stepped through.

The basement proper opened before me—a vast space that swallowed my phone’s meagre light. Exposed beams overhead. Stone pillars supporting the floor above. The taste of copper and fear hung in the thick air.

Brad’s torch lay on the floor, throwing harsh white light across scattered bodies.

Harrison sprawled near the centre of the room, both hands pressed against one foot, face grey with pain. Dark blood pooled beneath him, black in the torchlight. He made small grunting sounds, each breath a struggle.

Evelyn knelt beside him, sobbing. Her hands fluttered uselessly over his body, not touching, just hovering. “Harrison. Harrison, please. We need to—we need to get you to hospital—”

Father Ashworth stood apart from them, his black briefcase open at his feet. He held a silver cross above his head, eyes squeezed shut, lips moving rapidly. Latin, maybe. His other hand clutched a small vial—holy water? His voice rose and fell in rhythmic chanting, desperate and strained.

Movement in the shadows.

Something darker than the darkness itself shifted between the pillars. Not a shape, exactly. More like an absence. A void that consumed the light around it.

Brad noticed me first.

He spun, PolterPulse already raised. The weapon’s barrel locked onto my face.

“Charlie? What the hell?” His eyes were wild. “How did you—”

“Bat?” I called out, voice laced with pure panic. “Bat, where are you?”

Brad’s face twisted. “That fucking ghost can’t help you now.”

I scanned the basement frantically. Nothing. Just shadows and stone and that thing moving between them.

Panic clawed up my throat. He had to be here. He’d been dragged through with the others, Vivian said so—

The darkness surged.

It slammed into me. Something that had weight and force and intention but no physical form. The air crushed out of my lungs. My body flew backwards, smashing into a stone pillar.

My phone sailed from my hand. Glass shattered. The light died.

Pain exploded across my back. I slid down the pillar, gasping.