Possessed by Shadows Ebook

Ghost hunting was not my chosen profession.

Standing outside a dilapidated house in the middle of the bayou was not my idea of Friday evening fun. A distance from the city in gator filled swamps on a chilly and overcast night made me wonder about my brother’s sanity. His idea, even though Micah, my boyfriend, and I stood with him and a half-dozen professional ghost hunters.

“Are we being paid for this?” I asked Micah quietly. He shook his head. “Dammit.”

Sometimes Micah and I did ghost hunts with a group of tourists, who paid us to lead them into the scary darkness. We even had some basic equipment, like thermal cameras and EVP devices. Not that we ever caught much. More often we’d see something—well, I’d see something and Micah would feel something—and we’d catch nothing on video. Sometimes something would show up that we couldn’t explain. Photo evidence that had everyone debating for months. Well, not Micah and me. We sort of knew the truth behind the rare glimpses of the supernatural in our lives. We could both do with a little less of the unexplained, which was something we were working on.

Tonight, they loaded me for bear, or a ghost-vampire-yeti, but not with equipment for detection, rather talismans of protection. Every charm or trinket my brother Lukas thought would save me from the dark unknown he couldn’t see. Micah stood next to me, wary, tired, but determined to stay at my side.

We were both bundled up against the early January cold. Phones in hand. I had the thermal and a digital recorder. Micah had a camera and was instructed to keep eyes on me at all times. I glanced his way. He was frowning.

“Cold?” I asked him, feeling like the wind was blowing right through my jacket even while the trees didn’t appear to move much. This deep in the bayou, having driven far outside the city and taken a boat to get to this middle of nowhere falling down house, I felt very alone.

Micah nodded, glanced at my brother who was standing in a circle of paranormal investigators, and said, “Ants on my skin. Made worse by goosebumps.” He often felt things long before I saw them. Though his awareness of the supernatural, or paranormal, or whatever the fuck it was, had increased of late. I suspected that was my fault, but tried to remain positive.

“Want some of my charms?”

He gave me a teasing smile. “I always want your charms.”

Which of course made me hot. “Stop being sexy while we’re stuck in the swamp.” He wasn’t doing anything at all to be sexy. Bundled up in a thick coat and even a pair of mittens he’d dug up somewhere, with a beanie pulled down over his shoulder-length chocolate brown hair, I couldn’t see much more than a pale gleam of the camera light on his face. The high cheekbones, delicate lips, and pale blue eyes were all hidden in the shadows. I could spend hours counting the freckles across his cheeks and nose, loving them. He hated them.

Thankfully, we’d spent enough time together in the dark that I seemed to find comfort in the overlap of our souls. Or spiritual energy, which is what Sky called it. She said she could see the way it draped over us when we were together. A version of kindred spirits, perhaps. Not that it mattered. Having Micah close, hearing his voice, and knowing he was mine, turned my slow libido into hyper-drive, and brought me peace, all at once. He didn’t look at me and think I was insane or broken.

Micah leaned in close, having to stand up on his tiptoes to kiss me. I lingered with the warmth of his lips on mine. Hard to believe we’d been together a few months. Life had become fairly normal. The New Orleans ghost tours we did had died down for the winter, leaving us with holiday shoppers and planning for the upcoming Mardi Gras and music festivals. We’d been expanding the online version of Micah’s shop, Simply Crafty. Building a strong e-commerce version and regular video tutorials, which meant a lot of shipping, product photos, and constant movement in the shop. Life had become… quiet, almost mundane, but steady.

Not that I was protesting.

Meanwhile, Lukas struggled.

“It will be okay,” Micah said.

I sucked in a deep breath. “Don’t let me vanish, okay?”

“Same?”

“Agreed,” I said. My eyes were on him, his on me.

“Alex,” Lukas called. I pried my gaze from Micah’s shadowed face to find my brother in the sprawl of overgrowth and ghost hunters. He’d morphed from police homicide detective to paranormal detective. I was not a fan. But he didn’t see the same sort of stuff I did, and it seemed to be a goal to either prove me right, or crazy. I wasn’t sure.

“Stay close to Micah. Keep to the back of the group. The house is enormous, but I want to keep us together. One team out here monitoring cameras. The rest inside in small groups. No one goes in alone.”

Alex looked at the team. They had set up a sort of tent-like thing filled with equipment that looked a lot like the setups we used for craft tutorials. All of them were fairly new to the ghost hunting thing, or so I’d been told. Lukas had been running this group a little over two months. Building up an online reputation with a handful of spooky videos. I don’t know if he was hoping to catch more with Micah and me around, or if he really wanted the charms-of-a-thousand-legends to work and keep everything away from me. So far, other than the cold and an eerie sense of being watched, which was a normal part of my life, everything felt ordinary.

“Sure. Do I have to wear the garlic all night? Or will there be a warning of oncoming vampires?” If there was a legend to prevent the supernatural that I could wear, Lukas had found it. I was going to need a shower before getting into bed tonight. Even a normal garlic fan wouldn’t enjoy the extended stink. “Was crushing the cloves necessary before I put it on?”

“Keep it on,” Lukas said. “All of it.”

“How will we know what works and what doesn’t?” If any of it worked at all.

“Keep it all on.”

I sighed. Micah stifled a small laugh, keeping close to my side.

“You’re the one who has to smell me.”

He shrugged, obviously not bothered. “Stop tugging on your hair or it will come out of the braids,” he said. The snug beanie I wore wouldn’t help, and it itched.

“Means you’ll get to play with it later,” I reminded him. His smile was warm even in the pale dredges of light projected by our phone cameras.

The group headed toward the main doors of the house. It was a bit of a monstrous thing in size alone. Weathered and stripped on the outside, and painted with fading graffiti. At one time, three floors maybe? Likely, severe weather had dropped the roof down on the third floor. Perhaps that had been an attic rather than an actual living space.

The swamp had reclaimed a lot of the area; the grass soggy close to the house. I hoped there was no sort of cellar or basement, as it would probably be filled with alligators. Or was it crocodiles? I couldn’t remember which was more common in the bayou. Desert combat had not prepared me for swamp monsters. I kept my eyes peeled for the glowing eyes of something looking for a snack.

Micah and I moved in behind the small crew going in. Cameras and lights projecting into the open doorway, making it stretch like a gaping mouth. Micah looked around us, keeping plastered to my side. Did he hear anything? To me, the entire area was oddly silent. No birds or bugs, only the faint rustle of leaves. Though that could be because of the cold, or even our presence disturbing the normal rhythm of the place. I didn’t think humans ventured out here much. Not that they had a reason to. Inside, the house was a broken mess of smeared artwork, falling walls, and rotting wood.

“Careful where you step,” Lukas said, leading the group around a giant hole in the floor. If there was a floor below, it was flooded, as all I caught when we passed was the gleam of water reflecting our flashlights.

I kept the thermal imager up, creeping it around the room. The handful of lights, as low as they were, messed with my night vision, so I tried to focus on the screen. The crew emulated heat, but the space itself was barely above freezing. It was going to be hard to recognize anything as something other than our heat moving around. Micah focused his camera on my thermal screen, arm wrapped around my elbow, locked in close.

“You two stay down here,” Lukas said, motioning to Micah and me. “We’re going to do a base scan of the rooms, set up some cameras, and be back.”

I glanced up, not liking the look of the ceiling and rotting timbers above us. What if someone fell through? We were in the middle of nowhere. Medical attention would be long in coming. I opened my mouth to protest, but Micah squeezed my arm, gaze focused on his camera and my thermal screen.

I blinked at it and up. Something moved across the screen, only slightly above the normal room temperature. An animal maybe? I tried to see across to that open doorway, but it was too dark. The movement had been pretty faint on the screen. Maybe a trick of shadow?

“We should time stamp that,” Micah said.

“What?” Lukas demanded. Every word we whispered echoing loudly in the silence of the abandoned space.

“Something moved that way,” I said, pointing toward a distant doorway. “Barely a change in heat level from the environment. But showed up on the thermal. A shadow of one of our heat levels, maybe?” Science in the paranormal space is something I’d begun researching a while ago. It was part of all the equipment Lukas had brought. His attempt to see as I did, without whatever curse I had. But I still wasn’t sure it wasn’t all in my head. Even if Micah did sometimes see the same things. We were both a little strange. Maybe that’s why we fit so well together.

Lukas made his way back to us. He had Micah pause his recording and rewind to view. Everyone gathered around us, searching out the small bit of movement.

“There,” Micah pointed it out.

Lukas made him replay it two more times before taking a group to the door and beyond to search for anything. He left us in the wide main room, with a stern warning to two of his team to monitor us.

“I’d rather be quilting,” I grumbled.

Micah laughed. “Me too. We sort of have quite the stack now.”

We had been fanatical about getting things done. Everyone we knew got a quilt for the holiday. And who knew sending something that big overseas would cost a fortune? But we’d gotten letters back from Micah’s family, praising the work and thanking us for the gifts. I hadn’t really expected anything as my family was never big on gifts. My mom had called, and that was all. Micah’s family had sent us enough to cause a bit of havoc in our tiny apartment space. From real fabrics made in Japan, to a stack of books on legends and history from his father, to wildflower honey from a cousin I’d never heard of.

I groaned. “Dreaming of honey now. Over buttermilk biscuits.” Which Micah couldn’t eat because his stomach hated anything dairy.

“There’s a new vegan bakery right off Bourbon. We can try tomorrow. But I have a couple of protein bars packed if you’re hungry.”

Of course he did. He probably had a crochet project and several hooks in that backpack of his, too, as much for himself as me. “Not right now. But thank you.” I watched the area we’d seen the movement. Nothing happened, though the creaking of the house meant the group had gone upstairs. I stared upward warily. “Let’s hope the house doesn’t fall on us.”

The crew returned. I jumped when their heat signatures appeared in the doorway. These things didn’t see through walls, that much I knew, but I should have been prepared for them. I could hear them moving around the house.

“There’s a couple of rooms upstairs. One actually has some furniture,” Lukas said. “We set cameras up. I think we’ll have Micah and Alex start up there.”

“Really?” I groaned. “Why are we here again?”

“Testing. Make sure that stuff works,” Lukas waved at me. “Are you seeing a creepy black-eyed kid?”

I glared at him. “No, just an annoying big brother.”

The crew eyed me. Had they not known about the thing that followed me? Micah had seen it. I knew it wasn’t a me thing. Not exactly. My first encounter had been something much more terrifying. I wasn’t sure if it had changed or presented itself differently, so it could use me whenever it wanted. I wasn’t a fan of the latter option.

 Lukas led us through the doorway, flashlight bright and almost blinding in the darkness. I kept my camera, and the thermal held up. I stuffed the digital recorder in my pocket. There was no movement or sign of anything as we made our way to a back staircase half broken by weathering. I didn’t like climbing to the creaking second floor.

Micah gripped my arm tight, but I saw nothing that caused alarm. Maybe the charms were working? If so, I’d have to get him some too. I still felt ridiculous draped in random supernatural paraphernalia.

Most of the inside walls were gone and parts of the roof had caved in, leaving patches of gray covered night sky above. We didn’t even have the comfort of starlight.

“Do you see anything?” Lukas asked, leading us back toward the front of the house. Every step made the floor creak and moan, and I clung to Micah’s arm, worried more that we’d fall through, than run face-to-face with a ghost.

“No,” I said.

“No,” agreed Micah.

The last room on the left was a wide space with a hole where the window once had been and a rocking chair in the corner. There were pieces of a broken bed, but not enough to call it much more than that. Lukas opened the backpack he was carrying and pulled out a teddy bear.

“Um?”

“It’s a psychic bear,” Lukas said. “Gives them an outlet. It will tell us if it senses vibrations, records an EVP, or high EMF levels. It’s pretty handy.”

“I thought that was what we were for,” I joked.

“Nope. That’s why you’re all warded,” Lukas corrected me. He set the bear on the rocking chair. There was a camera set up in the room to face the chair. “I want anything here to be attracted to the bear, not you. You two stay up here for a bit. Let us know if the bear talks.”

“The entire house is shaking with our movement. I think if it senses vibration, it’s going to talk soon.” It didn’t sound all that scientific to me. Who decided a teddy bear was a good outlet for spiritual voices?

“Find a spot and don’t move. I’m going to have folks do multiple EVP sessions in different spaces.” Lukas headed out of the room, leaving us with the creepy toy.

I sighed. Micah was quiet. “Do you feel anything?” I whispered.

“Ants, lots of ants,” Micah muttered. “Nothing for you?”

“Cold? Uneasy?” I looked around the room, searching out all the shadows with my gaze, finding no movement. “Let’s sit there.” I pointed to a spot mostly clear of debris, and still somewhat in sight of the tripod camera. Close to the wall, it would give us something at our backs and a view of the window, the door, and that spooky bear.

Micah let out a long breath. We both sat down, side by side, him holding tight to my arm. I focused the thermal on the bear. It was slightly warmer than the surrounding room, but I attributed that to Lukas having it in his backpack.

“Should we ask questions?” I wondered. Lukas hadn’t really given us any instructions other than to stay here. On the rare occasion Micah did a ghost hunt, he led and there was always a very set game plan before we began the night. But those hunts were tourists, and keeping them safe was a priority. I wasn’t sure what my brother’s priorities were.

“I don’t know the history of this place, but sure. Questions. No provoking,” Micah said. He had a very firm rule about irritating spirits. Respect was key. I wholeheartedly agreed. Pissing off supernatural things didn’t sound healthy for anyone.

I pulled out the digital recorder and flipped it on. “Micah and Alex, upstairs bedroom with spirit bear?” I noted the time on my phone. Maybe we’d be lucky and it would be an uneventful night. “Is anyone here?” We listened for a minute, but if anyone spoke, we didn’t hear it.

“If someone is here, can you tell us your name?” Micah asked.

We paused between each question as though we expected to hear something. The room and the house remained quiet. If anyone else was upstairs, I couldn’t hear any movement. We asked a few more questions before turning it off and sitting to wait, since nothing seemed to change.

Time passed, and we sat huddled together for so long that I dozed. This late-night stuff messed with my sleep schedule. And since it was almost three in the morning, I figured no one would begrudge me a catnap.

The bear tittered. A bit of a maniacal laugh, like a possessed child. I jolted awake. Was it supposed to do that? Some light on the bear’s belly flickered. I blinked. “Did you see that?” I asked Micah.

“Yeah. Got it on camera. I think it’s supposed to do that? Hands and belly light up? I looked them up a while back when I saw another YouTuber use one. They’re expensive.”

“The giggle?” I was going to hear that in my nightmares. “It’s supposed to do that?”

“I didn’t hear a giggle. You heard something?”

That didn’t bode well. Fuck. I hated the idea that I was hearing some disturbing kid laugh that wasn’t attributed to that terrifying bear. “Creepy as hell.” I kept my gaze on the psycho bear. It did nothing for a while, and I relaxed. The sound of the floor creaking out in the hallway nearly made me jump out of my skin. Was Lukas coming back?

No one came through the door. Maybe they were exploring the other rooms? Odd, as I didn’t hear any voices, only the wood groaning.

“Do you smell perfume?” Micah whispered. He had the digital recorder set in front of us on the floor, on again. The small red light on the top indicating it was rolling.

“All I smell is garlic,” I said. “Making me crave spaghetti and garlic bread.” I couldn’t imagine any scents in this place other than swamp and rot, and was kind of grateful for the garlic. “My phone battery is getting really low.”

“Mine too,” Micah agreed. He looked at the tripod camera set up not far away. “Light is still on. I think that’s still recording.”

Another rush of footsteps sent the hallway creaking, like someone running toward us. I tensed, waiting for one of the other guys to burst through the door. Nothing. Micah’s gaze was intent on the door, too. He gripped my arm tightly.

Nothing happened.

The bear flickered again, an eerie dance of rainbow lights.

“Do the colors mean something?” I whispered.

“I don’t remember,” Micah whispered back, his gaze focused on the bear.

That creepy laugh came again. Not the bear. Wrong direction. Near the door. I swung around, heart racing, thinking I’d catch something in the doorway, but there was nothing. What was it they said about hauntings? Fear gave them strength? The battery in my phone went from thirty percent to five and then off.

“Fuck,” I grumbled.

The bear danced now. Shaking, lights flickering like some horror movie prop. If it was supposed to talk, whatever it was saying was coming out garbled.

“Is it supposed to do that?” I asked Micah. He gripped my hand so tight it hurt, but at least it was grounding. The room was freezing. Our breath a visible mist in the tiny glow of light from the screens. I shivered, feeling iced to the core. Fear or legit cold, I wasn’t certain. “Because if so, this is a prop I don’t recommend for our tourist stuff.”

The bear flew off the chair, landing as a pulsing, glowing thing at our feet. I dropped my phone and the thermal as the words became something recognizable.

Get out! Get out! Get out!

“Fuck,” I cursed. We were backed into a corner, but the urge to run was strong. The need to get out, run away, demanding we escape.

Had it suddenly gotten darker? I tried to find the window and the pale bit of light that had come from it, but it was gone, lost to pitch blackness. Even Micah’s screen had vanished, though I could still feel him holding me tight.

“Micah?” I whispered. But then there was nothing.