Chloe's demand echoed once more through the processing floor, bouncing off concrete walls and dying somewhere in the darkness above us. Then nothing. Just the ambient hum of Madison's equipment and the sound of five people breathing too loud in the cold.
I watched the seconds tick by on Jake's camera display. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. A full minute of absolutely fuck all.
My gut, once coiled with tension, just felt hollow. We were standing in a circle like idiots, waiting for a haunted house to do a party trick.
Jake shifted his weight. The floorboards creaked.
Madison clicked her flashlight back on. The beam cut through the darkness, painting everyone in harsh, unforgiving white light that turned us all into ghoulish caricatures of ourselves.
Jake looked utterly crestfallen, like a kid who'd just been told not only that Santa wasn't real, but that Christmas was canceled forever.
Bree's expression had gone somewhere far away, confused and disappointed, as if she'd misplaced something precious she'd been certain was right there a moment ago.
And Chloe—Christ, Chloe's jaw was clenched so tight I could practically hear her teeth grinding, the muscle underneath jumping like it was trying to escape.
"Is that it?" Chloe's voice shattered the silence, cracking through the air like a bullwhip against skin. She pivoted slowly, addressing the emptiness around us with growing contempt. "We drove three hours, hauled all this equipment, broke into an abandoned factory... for stage fright? Really?"
Oh boy. Here we go. The famous Chloe meltdown, right on schedule.
"Maybe it needs a formal invitation," Jake suggested, lifting his camera higher with renewed determination. His voice instantly shifted into that polished, overly enthusiastic YouTube presenter tone he always used when trying desperately to salvage usable content. "Don't be shy, spirits! We've got all this fancy ghost-hunting gear set up just for you! The least you could do is knock something over for the cameras!"
He started waving his arms in wild, exaggerated motions, like an airport marshal having a seizure. "Boo! Look at me! I'm a scary ghost hunter! This is me provoking you! Consider yourself officially provoked!"
"Jake." Madison's voice dropped like a lead weight, absolute zero in temperature.
"What? I'm trying different approaches here." He spun in a complete circle, limbs still flailing like an inflatable tube man outside a car dealership. "Maybe this ghost appreciates comedy! Maybe we're dealing with a spirit that has a sophisticated sense of humor!"
"It's not a goddamn Labrador," Madison said, her clinical tone cutting through his theatrics. "You can't just wildly wave your arms around and expect it to come running over to fetch your spectral stick."
Bree's approach was quieter. Her hands were still extended, fingers trembling slightly in the cold. "I know you're here," she whispered to the darkness. "I felt you earlier. In the van. On the road. Why are you hiding from me now?"
Her voice cracked on the last word. Actual hurt. Like the building had personally betrayed her.
Still nothing. The silence felt deliberate now. Mocking. Like the universe was laughing at us for thinking we were special enough to warrant supernatural attention.
I kept my mouth shut and watched. This was their show. I was just the skeptic they'd dragged along for demographic balance.
"This isn't working." Madison lowered her camera. Her tone shifted, became clinical. Detached. "Direct confrontation is just noise. We're contaminating the environment with our own energy."
Chloe turned on her. "Contaminating—?"
"Yes. Contaminating." Madison's expression didn't change. "Look, if this is a residual haunting, it's not intelligent. It's a recording. Yelling at it is like yelling at a movie screen expecting the actors to respond."
"I know what a residual haunting is, Madison."
"Then you know this approach is fundamentally flawed." Madison gestured at the empty space around us. "If it's an intelligent entity, it's clearly not interested in direct confrontation. We're just a bunch of loud apes with flashlights from its perspective. Why would it engage?"
Jake started to protest, but Madison kept going.
"We need to cover more ground and create multiple points of potential interaction. We split up. Two teams. We can monitor the static cams and audio sensors from different locations, see if our presence in one area triggers a response in another."
A pause.
"It's a more scientific approach," she added.
And there it was. The classic horror movie setup delivered with perfect logical justification. My inner voice was screaming every slasher film warning it knew, but I had to admit her reasoning was sound. If you believed in any of this, her strategy made more sense than standing in a circle begging the darkness to notice you.
Chloe's jaw tightened, then her eyes narrowed at Madison. A flicker of frustration crossed her face before she looked away, her gaze sweeping over the empty floor. She took a sharp breath, her shoulders squaring as she finally met Madison's stare.
"Fine. Two teams."
Madison was already moving, her mind clearly three steps ahead. "Okay. Chloe, your gear is best for direct EVP and thermal sweeps. You, Jake, and Bree take the ground floor and check the old freezer units in the back. According to the building records, that's where most of the accidents happened."
She turned. Her camera found me in the darkness.
"Rome, you're with me."