Then I got a closer look at that matchbox. A perfectly preserved wooden one, with a painted logo for an adventure supply store with a website address.
Brenin moved closer to the body and lowered his head to examine it, starting at the top. It was exactly as I'd thought from farther back--skin stretched tight over bone. But here I could see lesions, like pockmarks, dotting the cheeks.
Definitely male, a young man with stubble and hair a little longer than Ricky's, drawn into a topknot. A modern hairstyle. Modern clothing, too, from a multi-pocketed khaki jacket to hiking boots to a T-shirt announcing that he'd survived whitewater rafting in the Devil's Gorge. He didn't survive this, though. Whatever this was.
When Brenin backed up, I spotted two items, half hidden under the young man's corpse. A cell phone and an open notebook. Brenin used his nails to tug out the notebook. The ink had smeared too much to read, but words covered the pages, as if the guy had been scribbling notes right up until...well, whatever happened.
Another step back. Off to the side lay a backpack with a crowbar and flashlight. I remembered the hole above, the boards looking as if they'd been pried off.
Urban-explorer dude came into this room. Specifically into this room, tearing through the boards to get to it. Then he wrote that on the wall--
He didn't write it. Ioan had been quiet, and his mental voice startled me.
The blood isn't his, he continued.
Blood? Oh, it's written in...
Yes. We can smell it, and Brenin can tell it's not the same as that from the body. It's also older. Significantly older. And from multiple sources.
Multiple...? Oh.
The writing was what this guy had come to see. He'd somehow known this room was down here and broken in to get a look at it.
And then surrounded himself with candles?
Beware the darkness.
He'd brought the candles. He'd come prepared.
He did, a voice said. Yet he didn't listen. Wouldn't listen.
It took a moment to realize that wasn't Ioan's voice. I looked over to see a man writing on the wall. Brenin moved closer, and I saw the man's finger...the end bloodied and raw, bone poking through as he wrote in blood.
I gave a start, and Ioan said, Liv? What do you see?
You don't? I asked.
No.
The man turned. He wasn't much older than me, dressed in old-fashioned pajamas and a bathrobe, cinched tight. He tucked his hand into his pocket.
"My apologies. That was rude. Nasty to look at, I'm sure. But I had to do something. We all did. We had to warn the others. Not that it ever worked. One can't hide from the darkness. Which never stops us from trying, does it?"
"You're talking to me, right?"
He looked around. "I don't see anyone else."
His gaze was fixed above the hound's head, where my face would be if I were standing there. The ghost was addressing what he must have seen and heard as another person.
"Tell me about the darkness," I said.
A brief, wry smile. "I don't need to, and that would waste our time, wouldn't it? The darkness is here. It is always here. It waits, and it feeds. Now it just waits. For you, apparently."
"Who am I?"
The man chuckled. "If you don't know that, I can't help you. If you're testing me again, it's a waste of time. I know only that you are the one they've been waiting for." He pursed his lips and tilted his head, as if listening. "Though apparently, you are unfashionably early."
"Bad habit. Why are you here?"