Chapter 15
I watch Reyes and his officers through the binoculars until they reach their cruiser.
Reyes pauses at the passenger door and looks back up at the building. Does he know that he is being watched? He stands there for a moment, almost as if those probing eyes are filing something away before he gets in the car.
I lower the binoculars.
Paul is at Eleanor's desk, the leather-bound tome open in front of him, his posture that of someone who sat down intending a quick look and has been unable to stop staring. He's carefully taking in the grotesque illustration, visibly affected by the power of the gruesome image.
He finally looks up. "This is the thing you've been seeing."
I nod slowly.
He looks back at the illustration. "No wonder you're freaked out." He closes the book, then immediately opens it again, like he can't commit to not looking. "Your grandmother was into some twisted shit."
"That's putting it mildly."
"You were right about Marian."
"Not the only thing I'm right about."
Paul looks at me. Knows what I mean. The grotesque. The rooftop. All of it. He holds my gaze for a moment and then looks back at the books spread across Eleanor's desk, the hidden library, now fully arranged across the desk. He studies the various tomes on witchcraft, demonology and occult rituals.
"Okay. Say I accept this is really happening. Say it's real. Why you? If this thing, this grotesque, is actually out there, why come after you and then spare you? It killed three people. It had you on that roof, it had every opportunity and you're still sitting here. Why play games?"
I turn to the windows. The skyline stretches in every direction.
I’ve been asking myself those same questions. I can’t say I have the answers but I give it a try.
"These texts talk about spirits attached to people," I say. "Entities that protect but also consume. They form bonds, kinda like a covenant or contract." I pause. "This thing is connected to Eleanor. Was connected to Eleanor."
Paul leans back in the chair. Processing. "You're saying your grandmother conjured a demon."
"I think she made an arrangement with something. Whether she initiated it or inherited it, I don't know yet.”
The room is quiet for a moment.
"You look skeptical," I say.
"I'm a journalist. Skeptical is the job." He rubs his face with both hands. "It's a lot to process, Sara."
"You want to see something really crazy?”
He gives me a long look. I can sense his hesitation and I don’t blame him. We keep going deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole.
I pick up the bowl of brass keys from Eleanor's desk and hold it out toward him. “Let me show you something.”
Paul emerges from Apartment 6C with a stunned, disturbed expression. This is his fourth empty apartment.
I'm waiting in the hallway with the chain of keys in my hand.
"Most of these places are empty," Paul finally says. "Not recently empty. Abandoned for years."
"The units were transferred over time. Shell companies, LLCs. The lawyers are apparently still untangling it."
"All owned by Eleanor Shaw."
"All owned by Eleanor Shaw.”
He looks down the hallway. The rows of identical doors stretching in both directions, every one of them closed. "So all of these are technically yours now," Paul says.
"Apparently."
"That's—" He stops. Almost laughs. "That's not creepy at all." He looks at the doors again. "What was the plan? Drive everyone out one apartment at a time? Get out of my building or I'll unleash my pet gargoyle?"
"It's a theory."
We stand in the hallway and look at the long empty corridor together. Our minds coming to the same conclusion.
This isn’t an apartment building anymore.
We are standing in a tomb.
A ghost building.