AfterLife

Chapter 15: Close Call

When I got back, I couldn't find Void. The sun was almost over the horizon and he needed to get back soon. Actually… does he really? He can easily float through walls and hide in the shadows. Sometimes I envied that. Not having to worry about whether it's day or night or if someone will see you. Then again, who cares if someone sees me? As long as they don't see me in the area of the house I should be fine, right? But then they would send out Ravens and I might run into them. Suddenly a thought struck me. Can demons be captured in photos like ghosts? We are more solid than them. The cameras were designed to suck in spirits, so would they still work? My thoughts were interrupted by Void crashing into the room.
“RUN!”
“Wha-!?”
“JUST RUN!”
Suddenly on the bottom floor I heard the door get kicked down and yelling. RAVENS!?
“Why did you lead them here!”
“They were following me and I didn't know! I ran in as soon as I noticed to get you out of here!”
“Shut up for a minute! Hide in a shadow!”
I hid next to the door. I could hear footsteps on the creaky rotting stairs. Then I heard an oddly familiar voice come from the hallway,
“You check the bottom floor. Be careful, it may not just be a wisp.”
“Ok!”
A younger cheery voice replied. The footsteps began to approach the room where me and Void were. I got ready to use blunt force to make whoever was coming in to pass out. Then we would have time to get out of here without being seen or caught. They walked in and I froze. RIN!? He didn't seem to notice me and I went as far into the wall as I could while still being able to see. I couldn't hurt him! But if I didn't he would get Void, and he would recognize him. He has a knack for recognizing faces. I had to do something. Going fully into the other room I knocked over a large glass vase making it break on the floor. Quickly I went back to the other room. It had worked and he wasn't there anymore.
“C'mon!”
I quietly yelled to Void, wherever he was, and I jumped out of the side of the house through a window. It was morning and the chance of us not being seen was very low. Void fell next to me and started to run.
“Rin, there's more than one! They're making a run for it!”
Shit! I forgot she was here! Void was fine, he was far enough ahead. Me however… I had started to run when I heard a click behind me. Shit. Suddenly an agonizing pain shot through me. It felt like I was getting slowly getting ripped apart.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!”
I keeled over clutching my chest. I felt as though I was being slowly torn apart piece by piece. All the sudden it stopped. I turned around to see Void had hit the camera out of the young girls hand and it shattered on the ground. My whole body still hurt like hell but I didn't have time to sit there in pain.
“C'MON!”
I shot up and scrambled to the top of a nearby building and fell over. The pain was too much still and I couldn't stand. I couldn't sit there so I heaved myself back up and went into the building I was on top of and slumped to the floor. Void came in seconds later.
“Alex are you okay!?”
“No…”
“What was she doing to you!?”
“I don't know but it *cough*”
My words fell into a coughing fit.
“Sorry…”
“You have nothing to be sorry for.”
He helped me stand up. We couldn't be there for long. Looking around it looked like someone did live here. There was furniture like a couch and a lamp and none of it was coated in dust.
“We need to get as far away from here as possible.”
“Yeah, but where are we gonna go?”
“The buildings on the other side of the city are probably our best bet.”
I stopped leaning on Voids shoulder and staggered.
“Woah, Alex. You should probably lean on me until you can actually stand.”
“I'm… fine.”
Void gave me a look.
“I promise I can stand by myself.”
He sighed,
“Fine, let's go once you can properly walk. And don't push yourself.”
I was about to respond when the lights suddenly flicked on and I heard a loud scream. I whipped around to see a middle aged brunette standing in the doorway.
“GHOSTSSS! SOMEONE HELP! GHOSTS!”
She shrieked as she ran down the stairs to her left and out the door below.
“Shit, this day just keeps getting worse and worse.”
I quickly jumped through the ceiling. I pain shot through my chest but I didn't let it show. Looking over the edge I saw that Rin and the younger girl had come back with the older lady behind them. The young Raven looked up and we made eye contact. Shit. I backed up and started running a random direction.
“Alex, this isn't the right way!”
Void yelled to me. I yelled back,
“I know, we need to make them think we went somewhere different!”
After a few minutes I stopped to catch my breath. Void didn't look tired at all. But he didn't even actually have to run. He seemed to understand that I could run out of breath, unlike him, and stopped to wait for me.
“Think we lost them?”
“Let's hope we did.”
I flopped down on the roof of whatever building we were on. My whole body ached but it didn’t hurt nearly as much as it did before.
“You know, this would’ve been a whole lot easier if you had just knocked him out.”
“Look, I know but I just couldn’t. He’s one of the few people who actually looked out for me. He was like the older brother I lo-”
I slapped my hand over my mouth. I didn’t mean to say that. Quickly I continued before Void could comment.
“Basically I just couldn’t, ok. Maybe later when I have less humanity in me but not now.”
“You had an older broth-?”
“We should probably get to one of the other houses. It’s almost sun high and the streets get really busy then. We want to keep sightings of us at a minimal. Especially since we have two people who now know almost exactly what we look like.”
Void gave me a look, but got the hint. I didn’t want to talk about it. After a few minutes or so I caught my breath then stood up and looked at my surroundings. We appeared to be in a richer part of town.
“I think I’ve been here before.”
“How? When have we ever gone close to here?”
“When I was alive that is. This is really close to the Nest and almost everyone uses it to get ba- oh shit.”
“Oh shit what?”
“This is the most Raven crowded street and Rin uses it to get back to so that means…”
Right as I said it I heard Rin’s voice.
“So you’re saying it just didn't work.”
“For the last time, yes!”
Said a higher pitched voice. Must be the younger Raven. Me and Void ducked down behind the short wall on the roof to avoid being seen. I peeked over to keep an eye on where they were.
“I had a direct picture of her! The camera just started vibrating and smoking, then out of nowhere some ghost just pops out of the shadows and smacks it out of my hands! He didn’t even try to kill me, he just helped the poltergeist get away. Now, I don’t even get to have a bond spirit. Is that normal? Do ghosts usually team up like that?”
Lord, she talked a lot.
“Angela, you said one of the ghosts came out of the shadows? Did you get a good look at them?”
“Yeah sort of, why?”
“What did they look like?”
“Ummm… jet black, short cut but kinda long messy hair. He was taller than me, kinda skinny. Again, why?”
“What did the poltergeist look like?”
The young girl, Angela from what I had heard, began to look frustrated.
“She had a shorter spiky pixie cut, and she also had black hair. Was pretty skinny too. Come to think of it, they looked pretty similar. Were they siblings? Maybe they died together and decided to stick together? What do you think Rin? Rin?”
Rin’s face had gone pale. I knew he had put two and two together. I stood up and began to head in the direction of the other abandoned houses. Void followed behind me. Suddenly something Angela mentioned popped into my head.
“Why do you look like me?”
“What do you mean?”
“She was right. You look like my fucking twin.”
“Ah. Well I was in your shadow when you caught me. So I became more like a second version of you. Before that I didn’t even have a set appearance. I couldn’t leave shadows and I looked like whatever shadow I was possessing.”
“That’s… creepy.”
Void shrugged and went ahead. Looking at him now, I realized that we could act like twins and no one would suspect a thing. It was weird. Or, it could be. But considering everything else that had happened, it really wasn’t.