"Ya sure this is the place, Miss?" The cabbie asked, making a face at the decrepit building. "Cause it looks abandoned."
I sighed, glancing at the sticky note crumpled in my hand.
-She sure knows how to pick a meet-up spot.
Then again, what was the Calvary if not grotesquely dramatic?
"Yep, pretty sure," I replied, queasy. His nut-brown eyes regarded me in the rearview mirror with a dose of concern and apprehension.
"Alright, if ya say so," he finally said, clocking the meter. I pushed a fistful of ones into his hand and dragged myself out of the car before I could change my mind and tell him to drive me back.
The building looked even worse up-close.
An ancient, 1940s apartment complex, its sickly marsh green façade was covered with vines, rain stains, and graffiti. The missing windows, half-collapsed terraces, and holes dotting sections of wall spoke of previous attempts to demolish the place, but whoever was helming the project probably realized that it wasn't worth the effort to rebuild anything in an industrial dead zone, and left the thing alone to gather dust, mold, and ghosts.
No, I'm not kidding.
Even standing a good fifty feet from the cavernous hole where the front entrance used to be, I could feel the ethereal energy oozing out of every inch of concrete. This place was infested with angry dead people, their dark feelings making the shadows surrounding the building blacker, the air colder and tasting of ash and stale blood. The atmosphere was something straight out of those urban explorer stories.
And I had to go right in.
-God, I need to learn to schedule all my meetings for daytime.
Haunted locations didn't go well with the dead of night. Still, I shook my head and gathered my courage. Glass and gravel crunched beneath my boots as I crossed the threshold and entered the ground floor. I'd thankfully had the sense to charge my phone, so I could use the flashlight tool to see-though a part of me wished I didn't. The beam of light periodically illuminated old wires hanging from the ceiling, broken lamps, furniture, and abandoned children's toys. The smell was even worse inside, the mold and blood like a steel hand reaching into my lungs to claw at them.
"Hello?" I called out, my voice echoing forlornly through the desolate hallways. No response. I felt like the dumbest horror movie protagonist in the history of ever.
-Is she honestly going to make me climb upstairs to find her?
When another one of my calls went unanswered I realized that she was.
I hissed in protest as I mentally prepared myself to step onto the decrepit stairs. The stone beneath me rumbled, and I silently hoped that they didn't cave in. Pointing my flashlight upward to the nauseating stack of floors above, I saw no sign of movement.
That should have been a relief, but the smell and bitter cold was a clear giveaway that I was most definitely not alone.
-I better get a medal for this.
The first floor was equally abandoned-the sound of rainwater dripping from above was the only noise polluting the oppressive emptiness.
My fingers shook with the cold.
"Seriously is anyone here?" I demanded, pulling my coat on tighter. Though I tried to maintain a hefty dose of annoyance, fear was starting to overshadow it.
Gnashing my teeth I made my way toward the second set of stairs.
Laughter echoed in the distance.
YOU ARE READING
Death's Rulebook
Paranormal"You cannot change fate. But maybe, you can edit it just a little." If there is one thing Violet Ellis has learned in her five years as a Grim Reaper, it's that a) reaping souls and sending them off to the afterlife is the worst job in existence, b...
