“I’m useful like that.” Zayne pulled down the last board, and it joined its friends against the wall. Stretching up, he leaned through the window. “All clear.”
I was happy to hear him speak, because I kept picturing something straight out of an ’80s horror movie. The kind Peanut loved to watch that involved a lot of bizarre decapitations.
Zayne pulled himself up and disappeared through the window. A nanosecond later, his hand shot out. He wiggled his fingers. “Come on.”
I rolled my eyes. “Back up.”
There was a sigh, and then his hand disappeared. I planted my palms on the dusty windowpane, then jumped through the window and landed nimbly on floorboards that groaned under my weight. I straightened, finding Zayne standing a few feet in front of me.
“Show off,” he muttered.
I smirked as I looked around. A good part of the ceiling was missing, as apparently was either the roof or an interior wall, because a decent amount of moonlight filtered in. There was a maze of broken, toppled chairs, and graffiti marked the walls.
We left the room in silence, entering a hallway where less of the moonlight could penetrate. “Damn,” Zayne muttered. “Looks like a lot of this floor is rotted out.”
Without asking this time, I gripped the back of his shirt. “Lead the way, wherever that may be.”
We passed several rooms with doors broken off their hinges but found no sign of the demon except for the blood that Zayne could see.
We entered another wider hall with windows, which allowed more light through. I let go of his shirt and peered around to get a better grasp of my surroundings. There were several more open rooms, and the musty smell was starting—
A vision in white burst from a wall—well, actually not a vision. It was a person in a...white uniform. White pants. White top. Even a strange little white hat. A nurse. It was a nurse.
Who ran through another wall without looking in our direction, as if she were in a hurry.
I stopped walking. “Uh, you didn’t see that?”
Zayne looked over his shoulder at me. “No.”
“Oh.” I stared at the empty hall. “What did you say this place used to be?”
“An old manufacturing building,” he answered. “Why? Wait. Do I even want to know?”
I slowly shook my head. “Probably not, but I think we should go in that direction,” I said, pointing to the left.
We made our way to where I’d seen the ghost nurse disappear and came to a set of rusted yellow double doors. Zayne carefully opened the doors as quietly as possible. Every muscle in my body tensed as I prepared to see the demon.
But that’s not what we found.
It was a ledge, about twelve feet by twelve feet. Only a railing separated us from wide, open emptiness below.
“I’m so confused,” I said, looking back and then up, just to confirm that we were still on the first floor. “We didn’t go up any stairs, right?”
“No.” Zayne kept his voice low as he crept to the railing and looked down. “It’s an old pool. Emptied out, but it must’ve been in the basement or a lower level than where we entered. Probably used for rehab.”
I joined him, placing my hands on the metal bar, surprised to find that it was sturdy. This definitely wasn’t a normal basement, because the whole west wall was full of unbroken windows, allowing light to spread across the bleached cement pool.
Was this where the ghost nurse had come from? There weren’t any rooms between where I’d seen her and here, but that didn’t mean much. She could’ve come from anywhere, but—
Footsteps echoed through the open space. Zayne suddenly grabbed my hand and pulled me onto my knees. My head spun toward him, but he placed a finger over his lips and then jerked his chin toward the pool.
I followed his gaze, not seeing much at first, and then someone shuffled toward the steps leading into the shallow end of the pool. It must be the demon, but...
Something seemed wrong with the way it shuffled, taking a few steps and then twitching uncontrollably, the head jerking left once and then twice.
Pulling my hand free of Zayne’s, I grasped the bars of the railing and leaned forward as far as I could. My eyes were bad, but I could still see enough to know something looked really, really off about this demon.
Then it stepped into a ray of moonlight, and while its features were nothing but a fuzzy