Her Soul to Take (Souls Trilogy #1)(25)

A good play needed the right props. I’d done my best to study the conjuring rituals within the grimoire, but working with online translations was sloppy at best. I’d assembled together bits and pieces until I had a believable string of words. A ritualistic prayer, symbols I would draw on the ground in chalk, and lit candles would provide a perfect creepy atmosphere.

I was going to record a mock summoning in the old church. It was absolute clickbait trash, but I had to generate more views for the channel somehow.

My usual stance was to take investigations seriously and respectfully. If there were actually spirits of the dead present, I wasn’t there to disrespect them or anger them. But maybe the magical mockery would be just enough to bring in more views.

I didn’t think anything would actually come of it anyway. I’d cobbled together such a hack version of the rituals laid out in the grimoire, any spiritual beings who took notice would surely just roll their eyes. But just to be safe, I was leaving out a key part of the ritual the grimoire had called for: spilling my own blood to complete the summoning. As dramatic as it would be to give myself a little cut and bleed all over the floor, I wasn’t actually trying to make a demon show up.

St. Thaddeus was nearly an hour’s drive away from downtown Abelaum. It wasn’t someplace I could simply look up on Google Maps, so I was relying on the directions I’d found on a Reddit Urban Explorers forum. Abelaum’s quant business and cozy cabins disappeared as I drove, becoming long rural streets with big family homes set back from the road. The pine trees looked as if they were on the verge of consuming every spec of civilization here; their boughs wrapped around the houses, growing over them as if slowly capturing them in a living cage. The clouds moved overhead, with patchy clearings where I could see spots of blue sky and sunlight shining down. It wasn’t raining yet, and I was hoping I could finish my investigation before the downpour started. I wasn’t looking forward to hiking in the rain.

I turned the speakers up, blasting London After Midnight as I downed my second canned espresso. The anticipation before an investigation had me buzzing, even more than the caffeine. Plenty of people would call me foolish for going to abandoned places by myself — a woman doing anything alone was bound to attract disapproval. But I had my knife, and I had pepper spray on my key chain. I wasn’t going to let anyone’s pearl-clutching about my safety stop me from living.

Admittedly, the only thing that had given me the slightest pause was thinking of Leon’s warning the night he’d picked me up from the road. “Behave yourself, Raelynn. Or there will be consequences next time,” was something I would have preferred to hear uttered in bed. It didn’t scare me; I felt bizarrely thrilled to know going to this old church would probably qualify as misbehaving in his mind.

He could bring on the consequences, if he ever managed to find out what I’d done.

The road narrowed. I hadn’t seen a house in at least twenty minutes, and the asphalt was rutted, the yellow paint dividing the two lanes faded into invisibility. The distant bay, my constant companion to the east during the drive thus far, had vanished beyond the trees. My music cut out as my cell lost reception.

Following the directions, I made a quick turn onto a narrow dirt road. The road was clearly unmaintained, the dirt overtaken by grass and rotten leaves. Low hanging branches brushed against the top of my car, and a few stray raindrops dotted my windshield.

The road came to an end at a metal gate. A rusted NO TRESPASSING sign dangled from it by one remaining chain, and I pulled the vehicle up alongside it, turning off my engine. According to what I’d read, this was it. I wouldn’t be able to drive any further; from here, it was a twenty-minute hike back into the trees.

I gathered my supplies, double-checked the batteries on my flashlight, and headed out. The path I found through the trees was narrow, and largely overgrown with brush, but I’d expected far worse. The wind rattled the pines overhead, and fallen needles made every step soft. The rain held off, for now; but I still felt the occasional cold drop hit my face.

I spoke to my camera as I walked, recording some backstory for the viewers. “In 1899, forty miners took the lifts down to the lowest level of Abelaum’s notorious silver mines — two weeks later, only three of them came out alive.” It was the same legend I’d first heard told in elementary school, the story every kid in Abelaum knew. The Tragedy of 1899 changed Abelaum forever, bringing its booming mining industry to a sudden grinding halt. “The mine experienced a massive cave-in, and the lowest levels rapidly flooded, leaving the miners trapped inside. Over the coming days, as they waited for rescue, the men survived in the only way they could: by cannibalizing the dead, and later — killing and eating the living.”

I paused as I came to a fork in the path. I knew I had to go to the right; the path sloped slightly downwards, and around the sharp bend, I should find a clearing and the cathedral. A tree stood at the center of the trail’s fork, and I could see something buried among the twigs and leaves piled around its roots. I grabbed it, and tugged out a wooden sign chipped with age. The ghosts of old painted letters remained on the wood, reading: White Pine Central Shaft, 1 Mile.

I held it up to the camera. “After two weeks, rescuers were finally able to clear a way down, right here at White Pine. Only three men remained alive, including the owner of the mining operation, a man named Morpheus Leighman. The bodies of the others were never recovered.”