Page 4 of Haunted By the Mountain Man
Shane's expression shifted, something vulnerable flickering beneath the anger. "One week. You help with Walt, you keep him out of your footage, and you make this place urbex poison."
"Deal."
"If you betray him, if you put Walt at risk in any way, I will destroy everything you've built. Your channel, your reputation, your entire life. Do you understand?"
The threat should have scared me. Instead, it sent an unexpected thrill through my body. This man would burn the world to protect someone he cared about.
"I understand."
He stepped back, and I could finally breathe properly. "You can stay in the west wing. Don't go near Walt's area without me. Don't film him. And don't even think about mentioning him online." Shane turned to leave, then paused. "Why do you really do it? Explore places like this?"
The question caught me off guard. "Because abandoned places are broken and beautiful and forgotten."
He nodded, seemingly satisfied. "One week," he said. "Then you disappear and never come back."
One week in an abandoned lodge with a dangerously compelling man and his confused ward. I pulled out my laptop and began reviewing the footage I'd captured before Shane arrived. The thermal anomalies around Walt. The EMF spikes. The way the temperature had dropped in his presence. The audio of him humming with what sounded like harmony underneath—impossible harmony from voices that shouldn't exist.
My subscribers were going to lose their minds.
Chapter 2
Shane
A few hours after finding the trespasser in Walt's makeshift kitchen, I stood outside the west wing listening to her set up enough surveillance equipment to film a small war. Every instinct screamed at me to throw her out, consequences be damned. But she'd seen Walt. She knew.
And Walt had been happy to see someone new for the first time in months.
I pushed open the door without knocking. Raven looked up from where she knelt surrounded by cameras, cables, and laptop screens. In the fading afternoon light, her black hair with its purple streaks looked like spilled ink against her pale skin.
"Privacy doesn't mean much to you, does it?" She didn't stop working, fingers flying over her keyboard as she adjusted settings.
"About as much as private property means to you." I scanned her setup—night vision cameras, motion sensors, thermal imaging. "That seems excessive for a YouTube channel."
"My subscribers expect quality content." She pulled up footage from earlier, and I tensed seeing Walt's confused face on the screen before she deleted it. "Don't worry. I keep my promises."
I moved closer, noting how she tracked my movement without looking directly at me. Smart. Alert. Not the reckless amateur I'd assumed.
"Tell me about Walt," she said, replacing batteries in what looked like expensive, professional equipment.
"That's not your concern."
"It is if I'm going to help you with him." She finally looked up at me, those dark eyes serious. "I need to understand what triggers his confusion, what time periods he thinks he's in, what stories to avoid."
The logical argument annoyed me because she was right. "His mind fractured after the fire. He couldn’t accept that it was over, that everyone was gone. Stuck in a loop where it's always the good years, always just before the fire."
"So he's been living here for almost thirty years?"
"Not really. More like on and off. When he was more lucid he stayed in town and local motels from time to time, when the weather was particularly bad. I found that out from asking around town after I bought the property in this area and found him squatting."
“Where did he get food and water from?”
I shrugged. “No one ever cleaned out the lodge’s pantry. I think he survived on cold canned goods until I came across him. I wouldn’t be surprised if old Mary Lorenzo took care of him before she died. She was a nice old woman. My brother Keith married her granddaughter.”
"What about all the medical supplies?"
"He was in a bad way when I found him. After convincing him I was the new owner of the place, I told him he had to ger a mandatory physical. We found out he had diabetes among other things. He's eighty-three. Every day is a gift and a challenge."
"It seems such a complicated way to live. He’d be better off in a care facility. I would be easier on everyone.”
