I nodded. “I’m sure you all are eager to see it, but I don’t think it will be wise to go down there unless we have to. That’s where a bulk of the Shadow People were last time. I killed a lot of them, but I bet they’ve been replaced.”
“They’re guarding the portal,” Teller asserted.
“They’re definitely—” A dark shape moved past the windows on the gym doors, and a second later, a face appeared in the window, gray and distorted as the mouth dropped open, letting out a silent scream.
Another ghost appeared, this one hanging upside down. Stringy, dark hair obscured the face. A hand clawed the glass, its skin patchy and an unnatural dark shade.
“Do I want to know what you’re looking at?” Dez asked.
“A whole room full of nope.” I exhaled noisily as I walked toward the gym. The hairs on my arms stood up as my grace pulsed and throbbed. I reached for the handle.
“Shouldn’t we be looking upstairs since the officer was sucked through the ceiling?” Teller wondered.
We could, but I had a feeling we didn’t need to. “Stay out here until I give you the all clear.”
Hoping they listened to me, I opened the doors wide.
And ghosts spilled out into the hall, brushing past me and through me as I stared in. The last time I’d been here, the lights had been turned off. I hadn’t been able to see what was in here, and I’d thought that had been a nightmare come to life.
I’d been wrong.
Seeing was so much worse.
The gym was packed with ghosts. Those milling about randomly looked the most...fresh. Some of them almost looked alive, having passed either naturally or from causes that weren’t visible. They seemed unaware of the others around them, and they didn’t even turn toward the open door. I had a sinking feeling they hadn’t been here the last time. My heart ached upon the sight of them. Somehow they’d been led here and then trapped inside by the angelic wards. They were good people who would most likely never have a chance to move on.
A man in a white shirt with some kind of blue graphic on the chest and blue jeans paced, pulling at his brown hair. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand,” he mumbled over and over.
I dragged my gaze from him. The others, though?
Ew.
They’d been dead awhile, and trapped here long enough that they were one step away from wraiths. Their skin was a ghoulish color, gray or waxy, and most had some really gross wounds. Holes in the head and chest. Bullet wounds. Throats cut. Faces bloated and bruised. Bodies swollen and misshapen.
They were well aware of our presence and they smiled, reeking of pure malevolency.
“What the...?” Jordan’s wings fluttered as he looked around him. A man with a nasty, bloody hole in his head had just walked through him. The Warden’s blue eyes went wide. “Did a—? You know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
Swallowing roughly, I lifted my head and wished I hadn’t. “God.”
They swarmed the ceiling like a thousand cockroaches, crawling over the beams and each other. They smothered the walls and the stacked bleachers.
A ghost drifted past me and into the hall, coming into unfortunate detail. She was young—had been no older than me when she died. Her throat and chest were torn open, revealing thick, jellylike tissue. She looked like a Raver had gotten ahold of her, but blackened veins covered her shoulders and upper arms. Maybe a Nightcrawler? Their claws and teeth were poisonous, and there was definitely something very wrong inside of her.
Her feet didn’t touch the ground as she stopped in front of Dez. “Did you come to collect your dead?” she asked in a wispy, singsong voice. “Or did you come to die?”
“He can’t see or hear you,” I told her. “I can, so leave them alone.”
Dez looked at me as the ghost’s head swung jerkily in my direction. I waved at her. “Yeah. Hi. Where are the people?”
Teller and Jordan exchanged looks while another ghost shuffled out from the thickest crowd, dragging a mangled leg that was hanging on by a few stringy tendons. He was older, his plain shirt spotted with blood. “We’re here,” he whispered. “Right in front of you.”
“Not you. The people who worked here. The cops?” I clarified. “The ones who are hopefully still alive and breathing?”
“This is really freaky,” Teller murmured.
“There’s no one alive here,” the man growled. “Not even you. You’re already dead and you—”
“Blabbity-blah-blah. Whatever, man. You weren’t supposed to be here. You were probably a good person who should’ve moved on, but here we are. I’m not going to hold it against you unless you give me a reason to.” The dead girl reached for my braid. I shot her a look of warning. “Don’t even think about touching me,” I warned, summoning my grace until the corners of my eyes turned white. “I won’t just exorcise your ass from here, I will end you. Like permanently. So, back the Hell up.”