Page 37 of If This is Love

Luke offered a small salute.

I turned forward and grabbed the crowbar off the ground, holding it out low to my side and then lifted the flashlight to shine over Skye’s right shoulder. I swung the beam of light across the interior of the space once more before giving her the go ahead. “Move.”

Skye lifted her foot and placed it gingerly on the other side of the threshold, and I followed shortly after, and the second I stepped inside,somethingimmediately weighed down on my shoulders with a near-physical presence.

It was like stepping inside a tomb.

Something way worse than the stench of mold was in the air, something worse than erratic junkies was in the building, and whatever it was… it was otherworldly.

I had lived through enough that there wasn’t a damn thing in the world I was afraid of, but this sixth sense wasn’t fear. It was a foreboding warning that Skye and I were standing on hallowed ground with irreverent feet, and that there would be consequences for our trespassing.

I wasn’t much of a religious person, but there seemed to be an almost spiritual atmosphere, and it was thick with death and suffering. Awful things had taken place here, and my mouth was dry, but the rest of my senses were honed and alert.

“Skye?”

“I’m fine.”

“Then keep moving.”

We stepped quietly, carefully, and I glided the flashlight back and forth.

A tattered couch; the innards thrashed out and spilling all over, blackened with time and rot. An overturned coffee table, legs gnawed to almost nothing. A tube TV from probably the late nineties on its side, screen cracked and broken, mud caked to the glass, a crooked antenna. In a far corner next to the coffee table was a pile of yellowed cigarette butts, smoked to the filter, the handful of syringes, and a broken ashtray. A baby doll with singed hair and one of the eyeballs missing. A pile of water-stained books; some with half the pages ripped out, others untouched with the pages fluttering haphazardly despite the still air. Rodent-chewed holes in the walls; droppings. Ancient empty liquor bottles. Used condoms. Filthy articles of clothing flung here and there.

I listened, my eyes skimming the walls and landing on the hallway.

Darkness. Of both the optical and spiritual varieties.

“Right.”

Skye turned to the right, and we continued to creep along. My ears were alert, and I didn’t even blink despite the sting of filth in the air, my breath quiet and shallow, my heart rate expertly subdued to not interfere with my hearing. Skye’s light, almost inaudible breathing whispered into the atmosphere.

Other than that… silence.

The second we reached the hall, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and Skye’s shoulders trembled with a quick shiver.

Two doors on the right; two doors on the left; one door facing us at the end of the hall.

Behind us, the book pages crinkled as the cold breath of a breeze whispered through the narrow space, but rather than filling my lungs with fresh air, it only wafted the scent of death into my nostrils. Even in the darkness, I could see that the once-white walls were dyed brown with mud and water lines that crawled clear to the ceiling. The ceiling was dark, dingy yellow and bowed as if it might collapse right on top of us.

Every door was open except for the first one on the left, and something was in there. Everything about the place was careless and chaotic, but every junkie who had passed through had been disturbed enough by this room to keep the door shut on whatever was in there.

Skye stepped away from me and stopped in front of it, then reached for the doorknob, and the impalpable weightiness nearly crushed me.

“Skye, you need to let me check that,” I said just a split second too late.

She pushed the door open wide and immediately stumbled backward, colliding with the wall. “No…no… no…”

I sprang forward, putting myself between her and whatever the hell was in the room, and then I saw it.

A corpse. One that was female, and dressed in skimpy clothing, and appeared to have died with a needle in her arm, and had been rotting here for so long that she was basically a skeleton with skin.

My heart rate skyrocketed, and a cold sweat soaked me.

We shouldn’t be in here.

“Skye,move.”

She pushed away from the wall and darted into the blackness of the way we came. I ran after her, trying to keep the flashlight trained in front of her while blindly dodging all the shit around me. There was a smacking sound, and she pitched forward. I lunged to catch her, but only managed to get my arm around her waist before we both tumbled to the gritty, grimy,disgustingfloor.

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