Page 9 of Haunted By the Mountain Man
I grabbed my flashlight and crept to the door.
The hallway was pitch black beyond my room, the darkness so complete it seemed solid. My flashlight illuminated peeling paint and torn carpet and decades of decay.
"Mr. Harrison?" I called softly. "Walt? Are you up here?"
No answer.
I moved into the hallway, every horror movie I'd ever seen playing in my mind. This was how people died—going to investigate strange noises, separating from safety, walking into danger with nothing but a flashlight and good intentions.
But I couldn't just leave Walt wandering alone if he needed help.
The hallway stretched ahead of me, doors hanging open on either side like mouths. Some rooms were completely exposed, their exterior walls collapsed, letting in cold October wind. Others were sealed tight, their doors swollen shut with moisture.
My flashlight beam swept across a doorway, and I froze.
A figure stood in the shadows just beyond the light's reach.
Tall. Male. Completely still.
"Walt?" My voice came out higher than I wanted. "Shane?"
The figure didn't move.
I took a step forward, my light illuminating more of the shape.
Not a person. Just a coat rack, draped with old maintenance uniforms that had been left behind. The angle and shadows had made it look human.
I laughed shakily, adrenaline making my hands tremble. "Get it together."
But as I turned to head back to my room, I heard it again—those shuffling footsteps, but this time coming from below me. From the main floor.
Which meant whoever had been walking above me was still up there.
Or I'd imagined it entirely.
"Fuck this," I muttered, walking quickly back to my room. Shane had been right. Don't wander at night. The building was too dangerous, too disorienting in the dark. Better to wait until morning, check the recordings from my night vision cameras, see what they'd captured.
I closed and locked my door—the lock was old but functional—and added a chair under the handle for good measure. Then I dragged my sleeping bag closer to the dying fire and tried to convince myself that the sounds were just the building settling, the wind, my imagination working overtime.
But I kept my knife close. And my flashlight. And I didn't close my eyes until the sky outside started to lighten with dawn.
Because urban exploration had taught me one important lesson: the scariest things in abandoned buildings were never ghosts.
They were always human.
Chapter 3
Raven
I'd been reviewing last night's footage for two hours when I heard Shane moving around downstairs. I knew it was him because he was cussing something out under his breath.
My night vision cameras had captured plenty of atmospheric shots—shadows moving across empty hallways, and the wind making doors creak.. Perfect content for my subscribers.
But they'd also captured something else. Around three in the morning, clear footsteps on the floor above me. Then, twenty minutes later, the same footsteps below. And throughout it all, that eerie humming—Walt's voice singing Christmas carols, but with that strange harmonic undertone my audio equipment kept picking up. At least I wasn’t going crazy. I had proof of the noises.
I pulled off my headphones as the smell of coffee hit my senses better than an alarm clock. When I entered the kitchen area, he was standing at a camping stove, his back to me, and the sight made me pause. He'd taken off his jacket, leaving him in just a black t-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders and back.
"Morning," I said.
