Ritual by Ryan Casey

Author:Ryan Casey [Casey, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Higher Bank Books
Published: 2015-07-28T05:00:00+00:00

Thirty

The old bunker at Langley Lane was another one of those classic places in Preston that just so happened to be derelict and just so happened to be creepy as fuck.

Just Brian’s luck that he’d end up being reeled into meeting an anonymous stranger who’d been sending him hair and notes in the mail right here.

He sat in his car outside the main gate. The bunker was an impressive building—mounds in the grass like the homes of Teletubbies. Only there were industrial green metal buildings sprouting out of the top of them, stretching right across a barren stretch of land in north Preston. Although the bunker itself was derelict, abandoned many years ago, it was one of the few places where urban explorers didn’t seem to hang around. Not like the old abandoned mental hospital or the orphanage in town. Brian wasn’t sure why. And in a way, it made being here even eerier.

Because nobody was here to bail him out if things went tits up.

He’d relied on Location Services enough times to last him a bloody lifetime.

He kept the lights of his car off. Sat in the complete darkness. A part of him wanted to see whoever it was he was supposed to be meeting before they got here—he wanted to be the first to know of anyone walking towards his car, whether they were holding a hammer or a knife or a gun or—

Fuck. What was he doing here?

He sat in the darkness. Engine off. Lights off. ’Cause he didn’t want anyone to know he was here. He didn’t want to alert anyone to his presence. Partly because he was scared. But partly because he knew he was breaking procedure once again. Disobeying his duties. Not just as a police officer but as a partner, as a father. He’d explained to Hannah that he had to go out. That he had to meet someone. And she’d argued with him. Told him to stop being fucking stupid. To stop pretending he was some kind of superhero ’cause he wasn’t—he was a retiring cop in his fifties.

He needed to wake up to his real responsibilities. He accepted that.

But he just had to do this one thing first.

He swallowed a groggy frog in his throat. You know the kind. The kind that wedges right at the tip of your trachea and won’t go away no matter how hard you cough, how much you swallow. And somehow these frogs seemed to get bigger and taste more rancid with age, too. One of the other downsides of growing up. One of the many.

He stared into the darkness and he thought about the thing that preoccupied his thoughts whenever he was in the darkness these days. Death. Was it blacker than this? Blacker than a dark country night? Quieter, too?

Yes. The difference between death and a dark night was that death was eternal. With a dark country night, you always had the sun to rise in the morning, awake you from your unconsciousness.

Movement. Behind the car.

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