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I laughed. It was a nervous laugh, admittedly, but irritation had a way of making me bold. “I’ll do what I want. Thanks for the ride.”
I opened the door, only to have Leon reach across me and slam it shut again.
My breathing slowed. His face was close to mine, his arm reached across my body to hold the door shut. I could feel his heat, warming my skin without even touching it, like being near a blazing fire. His eyes pierced into mine, pale green like the lichens that grew on the side of massive stones—but deep within that color, flecks of gold glowed like fireflies in the dark.
“Raelynn, I don’t want to catch you walking at night again.” His tone was vicious but desperate. Almost pleading. “Drive your goddamn car. I don’t know what you’re used to in California, but no matter how many streetlights come on here, they won’t chase away the dark. They’ll never illuminate the trees.”
The thought of that thing, that sculpture, flashed through my mind. Those teeth, that black tongue, the skeletal face. My fingers plucked at the seat as I imagined it spread among the trees, still as stone in the growing dark. Then – gone. Where had itgone?
Leon pushed open the door again. But he kept his arms on either side of me for a moment, pinning me there. “Stay inside at night. Don’t go walking around after dark. Understand?”
My first thought was to push back. But squashed beneath him on the seat, with his gaze not letting my eyes go for even a second, all I managed to get out was, “Got it.”
He didn’t move for a moment, as if he could see the lie in my eyes if he looked hard enough. Then a crooked smirk curled his mouth, and he said softly, “Behave yourself, Raelynn. Or there will be consequences next time.”
He straightened up, finally allowing me to hop out of the truck. Dozens of words all shuffled for space on my tongue, some angry, some curious, many confused. But before I could get any of them out, he revved the engine and sped off up the driveway, the glow of his headlights disappearing into the trees.
The video was shaky and unfocused. It was aimed at the floor, at first, as the audio came in and out with crackling static. The tiled floor was smeared and spattered with something dark—blood.
The video finally focused. Two young men stood over another, who was lying on his back on the floor in a pool of blood. One of the men had his cell phone to his ear—“Yeah, at the university...no, no, he’s definitely dead...there’s blood everywhere…”—while the other used his phone to snap photos.
Whoever was filming kept gasping and laughing nervously. “I just can’t believe this, man...I can’t believe this…”
He zoomed in on the body. The eyes were open, glassy, and vacant. The jaw hung slack, and at a strange angle. Stab wounds in the victim’s chest had created a crater between his ribs. His face was puffy and bruised, the flesh on his arms were cut as if his assailant had been slashing at him wildly. An act of viciousness, of unhinged violence.
The video ended, and I hurriedly clicked away from the webpage, hoping none of the passing students had seen what I was looking at. No wonder they closed Calgary Hall. I was surprised they hadn’t closed the entire school, especially considering that whoever had done this hadn’t been caught.
Someone capable of doingthatwas still walking around Abelaum.
Maybe that was why Leon had been so furious at finding me walking alone. There was still a criminal out there looking for their next victim, and I may as well have been offering myself up on a silver platter. It was creepy as hell that he knew where I lived, but at the same time, mine was one of the only houses close to the university on that stretch of road. It wouldn’t take much effort to guess that if I walked home in that direction, the cabin was probably where I was headed.
Thinking about the terror I’d felt over that creepy statue made me giggle a little now. I’d worked myself up for nothing. Once I’d gotten home, I’d been blushing with embarrassment at my reaction. Blushing at my reaction, and blushing at the heat Leon’s gaze had left in me. I felt like I was losing my edge—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gotten that scared.
Which meant it was time to put myself to the test again. I planned to film an investigation in St. Thaddeus, and recommit myself to getting good content uploaded to my channel.Goodcontent, if not entirely authentic. I had plans for the next video that were a little less than truthful, but if that’s what it took to gain success as a paranormal channel now…
Then I’d suck up my pride and do it.
On Saturday, I packed my backpack with the essentials—an electromagnetic field reader,anaudio recorder for electronic voice phenomena, my camera, a sheathed knife for protection, and enough snacks to last me through a hike. I packed extra batteries, a small first-aid kit, and my secret weapon: the grimoire.
A good play needed the right props. I’d done my best to study the conjuring rituals within the grimoire, but working with online translations was sloppy at best. I’d assembled together bits and pieces until I had a believable string of words. A ritualistic prayer, symbols I would draw on the ground in chalk, and lit candles would provide a perfect creepy atmosphere.
I was going to record a mock summoning in the old church. It was absolute clickbait trash, but I had to generate more views for the channel somehow.
My usual stance was to take investigations seriously and respectfully. If there were actually spirits of the dead present, I wasn’t there to disrespect them or anger them. But maybe the magical mockery would be just enough to bring in more views.
I didn’t think anything would actually come of it anyway. I’d cobbled together such a hack version of the rituals laid out in the grimoire, any spiritual beings who took notice would surely just roll their eyes. But just to be safe, I was leaving out a key part of the ritual the grimoire had called for: spilling my own blood to complete the summoning. As dramatic as it would be to give myself a little cut and bleed all over the floor, I wasn’tactuallytrying to make a demon show up.
St. Thaddeus was nearly an hour’s drive away from downtown Abelaum. It wasn’t someplace I could simply look up on Google Maps, so I was relying on the directions I’d found on a Reddit Urban Explorers forum. Abelaum’s quant business and cozy cabins disappeared as I drove, becoming long rural streets with big family homes set back from the road. The pine trees looked as if they were on the verge of consuming every spec of civilization here; their boughs wrapped around the houses, growing over them as if slowly capturing them in a living cage. The clouds moved overhead, with patchy clearings where I could see spots of blue sky and sunlight shining down. It wasn’t raining yet, and I was hoping I could finish my investigation before the downpour started. I wasn’t looking forward to hiking in the rain.
I turned the speakers up, blastingLondon After Midnightas I downed my second canned espresso. The anticipation before an investigation had me buzzing, even more than the caffeine. Plenty of people would call me foolish for going to abandoned places by myself—a woman doinganythingalone was bound to attract disapproval. But I had my knife, and I had pepper spray on my key chain. I wasn’t going to let anyone’s pearl-clutching about my safety stop me from living.
Admittedly, the only thing that had given me the slightest pause was thinking of Leon’s warning the night he’d picked me up from the road. “Behave yourself, Raelynn. Or there will be consequences next time,” was something I would have preferred to hear uttered in bed. It didn’t scare me; I felt bizarrely thrilled to know going to this old church would probably qualify as misbehaving in his mind.
He could bring on the consequences, if he ever managed to find out what I’d done.
The road narrowed. I hadn’t seen a house in at least twenty minutes, and the asphalt was rutted, the yellow paint dividing the two lanes faded into invisibility. The distant bay, my constant companion to the east during the drive thus far, had vanished beyond the trees. My music cut out as my cell lost reception.
Following the directions, I made a quick turn onto a narrow dirt road. The road was clearly unmaintained, the dirt overtaken by grass and rotten leaves. Low hanging branches brushed against the top of my car, and a few stray raindrops dotted my windshield.
