Page 8 of Haunted By the Mountain Man
After she left for the west wing, I checked on Walt one more time. He was already asleep, his breathing steady, the worry lines smoothed from his weathered face. In sleep, he looked peaceful. No confusion, no fear, no memories of fires and death.
I should go home. Back to my warm cabin, my comfy bed, and all my modern conveniences. But how could I be comfortable when Walt and Raven were here. Raven’s sleeping bag might be state of the art, but it wasn’t a bed like mine.
I settled into my usual spot—the old manager's office across from Walt's area—and tried not to think about Raven alone in the west wing. Tried not to imagine what she looked like gettingready for bed, pulling off those boots, that black shirt, those tight pants.
Tried not to think about how easily my hand had wrapped around both her wrists earlier, how small she'd felt backed against that wall, how her pulse had raced under my thumb.
The lodge settled around me, wood creaking and groaning like something alive. Wind whistled through the broken windows, carrying the smell of approaching rain. Somewhere above, something skittered across the floor—rats or squirrels, nothing more sinister than nature reclaiming abandoned space.
But in the darkness, with shadows moving in corners and Walt's occasional sleep-mumbling, it was easy to understand why locals called this place haunted.
RAVEN
The west wing was fucking creepy at night.
I'd explored abandoned buildings all over the world. Asylums where people had died in restraints. Prisons where executions had taken place. Even a morgue in Eastern Europe that still had examination tables bolted to the floor.
None of them had felt like this.
Maybe it was the isolation—no streetlights, no distant traffic sounds, no reminder that civilization existed beyond these walls. Maybe it was the wind that made the whole building moan like something in pain.
Or maybe it was knowing that somewhere in this decaying lodge, an old man was lost in 1995, reliving memories of a fire that had killed two people. I wish I had cell service so I could do more digging on ski lodge. I supposed I could have gone back into town and stayed in a bed and breakfast and come back here at night. But I didn’t want to disturb Walt by coming and going.
I'd set up my sleeping bag near the old fireplace in what had been a suite. Shane had built me a fire before leaving, and the flames cast dancing shadows on the peeling wallpaper. Water stains on the ceiling looked like faces in the flickering light—mouths open in silent screams, eyes that followed my movement.
"It's just water damage," I muttered to myself, pulling out my laptop to review the day's footage.
The thermal imaging showed exactly what I expected—cold spots from broken windows, drafts, but nothing supernatural. The EMF readings were equally mundane—old wiring still carrying residual charge, metal framework in the walls.
But the audio was different.
I pulled up the recordings from the dining room, adjusting the frequency filters. Walt's voice came through clearly—his confused questions, his rambling. But underneath, barely audible even with enhancement, there was something else.
Not voices, exactly. More like... echoes. As if the building itself was remembering sounds from decades past. Laughter, conversations, the clink of silverware on plates. Ghosts of sounds, preserved in the walls like recordings.
"Acoustic memory," I said aloud, trying to rationalize it. Some buildings could hold sound, especially those with specific construction materials. Layered wood and plaster could create chambers that preserved and replayed vibrations under the right conditions.
But it still made my skin crawl.
A loud crash from somewhere above made me jump, my hand flying to my chest. Just the building settling. Had to be. Old structures made noise, especially in wind.
But then I heard it—footsteps. Slow, shuffling, directly overhead.
Walt. Had to be Walt, wandering in his confusion.
I checked my phone. It was just before two in the morning. Shane had said Walt usually slept through the night, but dementia patients were unpredictable. Maybe he'd woken up disoriented, was looking for something.
The footsteps moved across the ceiling, following what sounded like the path of the hallway above. Then they stopped.
Silence.
I held my breath, listening.
Nothing.
"It's fine," I whispered. "Shane's here. He'll handle it."
But the rational part of my brain that had kept me alive during dozens of dangerous explorations was screaming that something felt wrong. Walt's area was in the opposite wing. If he was wandering up here, he was far from where Shane could easily find him. And if he fell through a rotted floor, got hurt—
