Garrin crept forward through wet brush, lying low as he made his way toward the looming factory building where two fifteen year old boys, using smartphones as flashlights, had just disappeared through an entrance door hanging off its hinges. Their crunching footfalls soon faded, swallowed up by the stridulation of crickets. Before entering the same door, Garrin looked over his shoulder first, and peered in through a broken window pane next to the door. The corridor beyond was empty, save for bits and pieces of debris, so he went inside, careful not to kick or scuff any litter, or to step on any loose tile. Though his steps could be loud as thunder if so chosen, tonight they were light as snow.
Many doors flanked the left side of the hall, but muddy footprints made a straight path to the farthest one. Garrin closed the gap with swift strides and stood with his back against the wall next to the door.
He listened.
In the room beyond, the boys conversed in undertones, laughing at times. He guessed them to be about a hundred feet away.
Before entering, he looked through the door window and scanned the area. It was a large room, the ceiling some three floors above, and two parallel rows of windows on the far wall overlooked a forest crowding up against it; industrious branches growing through the fragmented panes here and there. Silver beams shone through the windows along the left side of the room, suffusing the contours of ancient equipment and myriad trash, along with tables and conveyor belts whose surfaces had collected dirt, dead insects, and chunks of machinery for many years. Moss and rain water filled the cracks in the slanted cement floors; peeling paint hung in strips from the walls.
Garrin ducked down and entered the room without a sound.
The air was dank; bitter with the scent of soil and vegetation. Residual rain water dripped from a window ledge nearby onto a pipeline. Little by little he inched his way closer to the boys, who were in a far corner poking at things and rooting through refuse. When he reached a close proximity, he remained hunched and still beside an overturned table, listening to their conversation.
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"Think this place is haunted?"
"Uh, yeah, that's why we're here."
A laugh. "No, but seriously."
Garrin peered out from the shadows, getting a clearer visual of the teens.
One boy, whom he knew to be Landon, sat on the bottom step of a metal staircase. The other, Hunter, stood close by, examining the screen of his phone. "I was here last week with Justin and we saw something," he went on. "I swear it. But I dropped my phone and whatever I saw was gone by the time I could look again." He cussed at the memory. "We waited forever but it didn't come back."
Landon draped his bare forearms over his jean-clad knees and leaned forward, suddenly sombre. "Ghosts aren't real, man."
Hunter glared down at him in the near darkness, the outlines of their faces made visible only by the light of their phones. "Look, I've studied this stuff . . . I mean, there's so much proof out there, and I wanna see things for myself . . . wanna try an' get a pic. Came here in the spring too, on that ghost walk—the one your parents wouldn't let you come on—remember?" His tone lowered to one of disappointment. "But it wasn't dark enough for anything to happen."
