A/N: Alright so short chapter by my standards, but I wanted to update because it's been awhile. School has been killing me with late nights and no time hardly for fanfics. Every now and then im graced with a sliver of time to work on them and every Tuesday this fanfic comes to mind, so here it is everyone :D I hope to get the next chapter out faster, it's all planned out just needs to be put on the page.
Chapter Two: Not So Simple
The answer of vengeful spirit never seemed more obvious to me as I heard this from O'Donnell. It made sense now, the coroner's report on the autopsy had been that both victims died of internal trauma and severe burns, burns he couldn't explain the origin of. This was almost as if they had died in an explosion, he stated, an explosion, the most probable cause for this accident years ago. Then there was the information given to me by Harry O'Donnell, his mother and grandmother had devoted their lives to a school -something very personal to them no doubt lied within- which welcomed all students, even the underprivileged. Now Mr. O'Donnell wanted to make this school into one which would have to be paid for and would only let in the rich and academically superior, a cause for the spirits to be angered. This would explain the two victims, both were contributing to this idea, therefore responsible in the spirits' eyes. Another explanation of the killings would be that one, or both, of the spirits were trying to protect the children that also died in the explosion from being disturbed. A completely different explanation would have to start with the spirits of the kids doing the hauntings and would leave me without any motive, unless...unless the two adult victims were somehow connected to the mysterious explosion. The latter was a weaker theory, seeing as it had much less support, but I wouldn't cast it aside so soon. I thanked Mr. O'Donnell for his time, wrapping up our conversation before heading out of the massive office building with the intention to get to the bottom of this before anyone else ended up dead. Death, of course, was in the very nature of being a hunter, but it didn't make it any more pleasant to encounter. It was inevitable that death would be involved in most cases as a death usually sparked the investigation of hunters. If one was to take it even further back, death was the cause for many hunters to start hunting in the first place; it surely was in my case. In rage at bringing up those thoughts in my mind I rushed across the parking lot in frustration, almost being hit by a backing car.
I made it safely to my car and dove off, heading toward the abandoned school, but stopping first at a fast-food-style restaurant. It was already around one or two in the afternoon, I hadn't eaten breakfast, and I desperately needed to lose these insufferable, moneybags clothes for something more comfortable. Once I had parked I took a duffel bag that contained my normal hunting attire out of the back of my Camaro, heading inside the joint. I went straight to the bathroom, not being able to bare the stiff, contained feeling these dressy clothes were giving me any longer. I emerged a couple minutes later having traded in the skirt for my worn jeans, blouse for a simple, gray V-neck, and heels for black combat boots, my light, army-green jacket draped over my arm. I slung the now dress clothes-filled duffel over my shoulder and headed to the order line. I decided I would settle for something quick and normal, so a burger and fries, not the lightest meal I could eat before possible physical engagement, but it would have to do. I sat down at one of those half-booth-half-chairs tables setting the duffel next to me on the booth side as I started on my meal. I was done in only a few minutes, the point of choosing a place like this, I grabbed my duffel before exiting the restaurant to carry on with the job. After getting in my car I put the duffel on the passenger seat floorboard and pulled out almost anxious to get to the school to figure out what I was dealing with. I certainly wasn't one of those ghost chasers who only went into presumably haunted places to get a high or a rush, no, I was a hunter. Which means that I go into presumably haunted places to take down the thing causing the problem, either to prevent ghost-chasing idiots from getting their half-wit asses killed or to protect innocent people who wander into or past the place. Now I don't consider all of the ghost chasers complete idiots, however I have inevitably run into a few of them in my life and only the ones who, after clearly seeing I'm not after spirits for fun, still act as if they know more about them than me. Only the ones who do this and then go and get themselves caught or anger the spirit even more, putting me in more danger to save them, are the ones that really piss me off. Hopefully, and with a little bit of luck, this wouldn't be the case this time though it usually wasn't when someone is murdered and the police are involved. It was only a few minutes from leaving the restaurant that I pulled in front of the chain-link fence enclosing the abandoned school. It was not surrounded by yellow police tape, as the detective had told me, they were trying to avoid striking up unwanted attention or fictional leads about the cases, but I could now clearly see why it would have so many chilling tales of its demise.
The eerie, brick edifice was not in complete shambles, as it was still stretching its red fingers to the mid-day sky. Although the decades it had stood in disuse shone clear on the green tendrils of ivy snaking their way up the thick, white columns which marked the entrance to the building and the windows were broken and boarded up on both stories. The double rows of windows stretched all the way along the front of the building on both sides of the entrance. Palm trees had taken root at the base of the building, their height showing they were almost as old as the school. All along the base, reaching to the ends of the front wall, were all sorts of shrubbery, as if they tried to fence in the horrors themselves. The school looked more like a building belonging on a college campus rather than a once-elementary school, but it didn't matter anymore because it was heading into ruin. After seeing the school I was appreciative of my choice to start my investigation early, allowing enough daylight for me to search the place. The boarded up windows would still pose a problem as I would still have to bring along a flashlight, which would slightly hinder my ability to use my gun. Regular bullets certainly wouldn't do anything against a spirit or poltergeist or any other disembodied monster, but my father and I had come up with a way to fuse salt and iron, the most effective monster deterrents, into the metal while molding the bullets. This method of ours had proved useful for years, so I was still confident they would work. I got out of my Camaro, the Florida humidity hitting me immediately as I made my way to the trunk to prepare for my task ahead. I popped the trunk, pulling the false bottom out I grabbed my shotgun and a good number of rounds for both the shotgun and my handgun which was still tucked safely away on my person. For the shotgun we had used a method my father had gotten from another hunter: filling the shotgun shells with salt. I took one last look at the school, took my flashlight from the trunk before I shut it and started to walk to the school.
I pulled out the small key given to me by the detective in the police station and unlocked the fence surrounding the school. I cautiously headed up the crumbling, wooden front stairs trying to avoid widening the numerous holes in them by stepping through the rotting, white wood. As I put my weight on the wood it creaked and snapped under my foot, but otherwise held. I was about to pull open the grand and massive wooden front doors when I realized I had failed to take out one of, if not the most important, piece of equipment for this hunt: my EMF detector. Luckily I found it in one of the pockets of my light army-style jacket I had put on, saving me a trip back to the car. The detector had been a gift from my brother after I had been on my first hunt...I shook away the memories once more, I certainly did not need them, or anything, distracting me now. I put the EMF back in my pocket, having to use both of my hands to pull open the firmly shut doors. They caught at first, but with an extra tug I was able to pull them open, a gust of wind blowing from inside as if the horrors from within were trying to escape. It took me a second to realize that the gust of wind, which had lacked a chill, was not of supernatural occurrence and rather was a result of the wind picking up outside, carried through what I assumed were many open passages in the building. This wasn't to say that I wouldn't encounter anything supernatural in this building, in fact I was sure I would find the cause for the murders inside, but I did not know to what extent just yet. Placing an old, loose brick between the doors keep them ajar, the damp darkness engulfed me as I stepped inside the school.
Immediately I had to turn on my flashlight to ward off the almost pitch black darkness of the place, darkness that unnerved me. It wasn't the haunting rumors which unnerved me or the fact that without my flashlight I was almost completely unable to see, it was the unnaturally silent state of the darkness that had settled everywhere. Usually there was some sort of sound in these type of places, winds making the wood creak, rats scurrying about in the floor, but here there was nothing, not one sound besides those I was making. The EMF was silent in my pocket, a good sign so far, though I had to move on, this place was huge and I was going to lose daylight soon. The light of the flashlight fell on the walls and floor which were both covered in graffiti, thick, meaningless graffiti. I continued on past the large, open entrance room into a long hallway which had many doors on either side, classrooms I assumed. I didn't bother going in them at the moment because it would take too much time to go into each individual one, and without the EMF spiking too much I had no reason to. That was the other unusual and unnerving thing about this place: the EMF wasn't going off. With the unexplained murders and the stories of the hauntings there had to be spirit activity all over the place, but the detector was hardly making a sound when I'm sure it would have been blaring at me. My intended destination was the old principal's office where I expected to find the ghost of Harry O'Donnell's grandmother, seeing as there was probably something personal of hers there. The office was at the end of the hallway I was walking down with cautious curiosity, I wasn't about to stray from my path to investigate one of the rooms. It might have been in my best interest to deviate from the direct path I was on, which was apparent in seconds. I took one step in front of me, the wood creaking uneasily under me and before I knew what was happening the boards under my foot snapped, throwing me down into apparent nothingness.
The fall through the rotten floorboards to whatever lay below was much shorter a drop than I feared. It all happened so fast I saw nothing but darkness before landing on something solid in a heap of weapons and clothes with debris raining down on me from the hole I made above. I remained motionless for a minute or so checking over my whole body, testing things, making sure I was uninjured, I was for the most part. After making sure I wasn't severely injured anywhere I pushed boards off of myself, moving, my head swimming and my ankle screaming protest, to where my shotgun and flashlight had fallen a few feet away. Possible minor concussion and a slightly sprained ankle, not too bad of injuries for falling through a floor with two guns on. The echo of falling debris still persisted through the winding halls of the lower floor that wasn't necessarily a basement. It took me a few seconds to realize that falling through probably wasn't just the work of compromised wood, not just an accident. Taking my shotgun in hand I roamed the lower level until I came upon an old, rusty-hinged door to the side of one of the halls. Kicking the door inward, with little effort, revealed one of the greatest mysteries of this place, and the subject of my investigation, the furnace room.
I was careful not to disturb any clue that might lie in or on the dust-blanketed floor as I stepped inside the dark room. In the corner I saw twisted and torn pieces of metal and piping that were clear relics of the disaster that happened here. Immediately suspicion arose in me because if the furnace room was clear evidence of what had transpired on the tragic day what were all the myths about? Exploded pieces of metal, as the charring painted all in the room showed, should be enough evidence for anyone to believe a furnace was the cause of the accident, not cannibalistic teachers or rouge janitors. My heightened awareness made me jump violently when the EMF detector started to whir and make its noises. I exhaled heavily, surprised when I wasn't able to see the white cloud of my breath in front of me, no ghosts in the vicinity then. Upon closer inspection of the rusting, twisted pieces of the alleged furnace I noticed something very odd and very chilling embedded in the metal. What I was seeing didn't make any sense, but it clearly had been blasted into the metal by the explosive force. I pointed my flashlight all around the room, revealing small specs of the curious substance to be everywhere, even in the walls. It didn't make any sense because this was a haunting, not suspected to be anything else, no signs that suggested otherwise, but there in the twisted metal all around was what most hunters feared to find on a hunt: sulfur.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed it, please feel free to comment on how you liked it, I really do like to know what I'm doing right and what can be improved, don't know unless you tell me ;P thanks for reading