A/N: (hides) Eeek I'm sorry I'm not great with updating this on time, guys! Thanks so much for sticking with this and to those of you who are reading and reviewing! Here's chapter five, ha.

Five:
“It’s cold.”

Damien

Under Jason's orders, it's my job to execute the lie that's getting us out of the house tonight. It's easy to lie to my dad because he's a liar—but it's not so easy to dump SISTER for a night. As soon as she notices my frame leaning in the back corner of living room, my eyes like glass reflecting the mindless, flashing images from the T.V., she sits up from her coloring book and tightly crosses her arms across her chest.

"Jason's in there," she snaps, jerking a thumb toward the kitchen, "cramming all the food into his pockets." She narrows her eyes. "Where are you going?"

"Nowhere. You know you look just like mom when you do that?"

"Oh, yeah," she scoffs, ignoring my last comment as she begins to habitually peel the paper off her blue Crayola crayon. "Too bad for you I wasn't born yesterday." Her jaw tightens, ready for battle; mine does the same.

"Where is he?" My tone is flat, dangerous. Sydney blinks, scattered and confused from the off-center, flank attack.

"Dad? In his room, but…"

My back is to her before she can finish her sentence.

"And you're not coming because Jason says so!"

There's a pause, and then: "Jason!"

My plan of diversion works; a moment later, with her wrath diverted into the kitchen, there's time for me to slip down the hallway. The lights in the back of the house are off, but his door is open, the T.V. casting a sickly glare of light and shadow just bright enough to follow. My toes dig into the discolored old carpet as my knuckles brush the doorframe.

"Yeah?" My dad's lying back in his bed, one arm propped behind the pillows, the other curled around a depression in the quilt that's surrounding the remote and a can of Budweiser. "What's your sister yelling about? Did Jay do something to her?"

"They're working it out."

"Oh…" There's a crash that sounds like Tupperware falling in the kitchen. We both ignore it. "So…what's up? You got plans?"

"Me and Jason are going to Pablo's for the night." The words come out easy, without thought or remorse, and suddenly, while he's nodding to himself, pretending to mull it over, a nearly overwhelming urge to tell him the truth and dare him to stop us washes over me.

"Mom lets you go out this late?" he asks, trying to small talk, reminding me of my mom's very similar and no less irritating attempts.

"We're taking Jason's car…we'll be back by eleven or so," is my terse response, my teeth hardly moving apart.

My dad winks at me, then smiles. "Sounds good, Damien," he concludes. "Just be careful."

My backwards steps have already taken me out into the hallway.

"Yeah…we will be—hey!"

My progress comes to a lurching halt against the quite solid chest of my brother. He's blocking the entire hallway, and giving me a look that makes my eyes sink and burn through the floor.

"You know you have to really talk to him sometime," Jason tells me in a whisper, and then raises his voice to shout, "Bye, Dad!"

Acid starts to build in my throat as the absolute state of my alienation surfaces once again. Jason's over it; Sydney never knew everything—never will—leaving me alone in my own volatile pool of acrimony. My shoulder proves a good tool for shoving past him, but my freedom is due only to the fact that Jason doesn't try to stop me.

"I'm just saying…" he calls after me.

"I'll be in the car."

Paige's shrill protests at Braden's arrival are only enough to dully penetrate the rapid process of diffusion that's taking place in the air around the Sloan Mill Sanatorium. My stomach twists into an uneasy knot as the building claims my vision; the brick façade rising from wrecked piles of broken concrete and glass; the upper floors untouched by external vandalism, but somehow more unnerving. My chilled hands go automatically for my jacket pockets just as a gust of night-filled air breaks the hold.

The door to Braden's Ford F150 slams shut—chrome grille, modified side and back bumpers, custom paint—but nothing exceptional under the hood.

"Hey, guys," he says nonchalantly. "I brought flashlights." He sets down a nylon pack that clunks dully against the packed mixture of dirt and rocks beneath our feet.

"Good call," Jason approves.

"New batteries, too." Braden unzips the pack and holds one flashlight out to my brother. James quickly forms a one-man line, his hand outstretched, his face split into a grin. Instantly his is on and blinking on and off in Pablo's eyes. Braden wields the last one, and then turns his eyes on me.

"That's all she wrote, kid," he says to my half-attentive indifference. "Sorry," he tells the rest; Pablo, Lucy, and Paige—who looks like she's about to explode. Braden shrugs and shines the beam down the path toward the sanatorium. "Creepy…" he comments. "Maybe you should be more worried about this place caving in on us than its ghosts, huh?"

He's talking directly to Paige. In the waning daylight, she looks cold—almost cadaverous—and does not respond. Maybe it's the wind, but her tiny frame is shaking.

"I want a flashlight," she finally says stiffly.

"You have a light, you lead," James wagers, now flashing the beam into her face.

"Fine," she hisses, holding up an arm to block her eyes. "You get your face peeled off first, then!"

"Fair enough…" he laughs.

"I'll take that as foreshadowing…James is out first, then Damien'll prob'ly wander off somewhere and that'll be the end of him…lo siento, amigo," Pablo snickers at my look, with Lucy looking appalled and passing her hand across his shoulder disapprovingly. We're starting to walk, weaving down a narrow lane of crumbled asphalt crawling with grass and weeds. Jason and Braden, at the front of the group, tear down the feeble signs and warnings that stand in our way as we charge into the ring of debris that surrounds the grounds of the sanatorium. The diffusion reaches a critical point—my stomach knotting again—but then vanishes the instant my body crosses under the deep line of shadow that's blocking out the waxing moon. The hiatus is startling; Pablo nearly runs into the back of me, his eyes fixed up on the leering windows.

"Ojo!" he yelps, sidestepping to avoid the collision. My mouth goes dry, making it impossible to apologize. Pablo passes, but Paige is looking at me, a flash of curiosity kindling behind her eyes. For a moment my mind wonders if she felt it too—the death of the noise, the absence of feeling, opening to a new, echoing emptiness…

"Move, yeah?" she snaps, and shuffles past me over the glass.

"These are the porches," James announces from up ahead, jumping through a jagged hole where a floor-to-wall window must have stood, "where they set the tuberculosis patients to get fresh air and sunlight…" He waves his flashlight down the open corridor, the beam glancing off the countless shards of broken glass, and graffiti-profanity. "All the way up to the roof…" He lifts his pointer finger toward the eroded ceiling. "They thought it would help cure them."

"Where's the front door?" Braden asks, stepping through the same hole and adding his light to the scattering effects of the dust-laden air.

Glass crunches under my converse as the ability to move creeps slowly back into my limbs. The porch wraps around the entire front of the sanatorium, the ceiling studded with gaping holes and empty electrical sockets. Dark ivy has heaved itself through the broken windows, and wraps around the wooden posts and the piles of rusted bed-frames and upturned mattresses. Everywhere my eyes fall the twilight scene is the same; cigarettes and discarded bottles, spray-paint cans, peeling paint, and exposed insulation—a wreck that needs to be torn down.

Pablo suddenly claps me on the shoulder. "Mire," he says, pointing to the mattresses. The sheets—now yellow and soiled by time—flash pristine white for a moment in front of my eyes. "Somebody really died in that bed."

"Cool…"

"How much would you give me to lay in it?" James asks, swinging his flashlight in our direction.

"James!" Paige snaps, her eyes huge in protest.

"Easy, Tink…"

"Hey!" Braden's voice is accompanied by the waving signal of two beams. "Found the door!"

Braden and Jason are only a few mattresses down, appraising the dull black surface of the double-door entrance, but more so the nailed-down arrangement of two-by-fours that span across it, complete with a padlock and chain across the door handles.

"We can't get in?" Paige sounds elated.

"Oh, we can get in…" Jason assures her, stepping up to the door and carefully placing his hands along one of the obstructing boards. "It might just take a second…" His arms go rigid, and the fabric of his high school letter-jacket pulls taunt across his shoulder blades. My brother, like some kind of human demolition machine, overpowers the nails and rips out the board, grunting, "Heh," in satisfaction, and then moves on to the next.

At my side, Paige seems to deflate as both Braden and Jason go at the door. It's cleared in less than five minutes, the padlock dismantled with a ringing crash as Braden brings a rusted piece of bed frame down on it. Silence falls in on us as the echo fades away. My heart feels like it's beating in my throat, and the night takes on a new chill, reminding all of us it's only March—winter is still a poignant memory.

"Pues…" Pablo ventures to say, "Estamos listos?"

"What did he say?" Braden demands.

"Are we ready." My voice is empty; sucked through the air into the vacuum that's lingering behind the door. Braden smirks, shrugging off the misunderstanding. He places his hand on the doorknob, and leans back to look past me and wink at Paige. She shudders in response, and her bottom lip curls threateningly.

"Here we go," Braden says with all the drawn out syllables his excitement would allow for.

The doors open inwards, triggering an equalizing gust of wind that sails around the porch, lifting the hair off of my forehead. Shadows pulse in and back, eventually oozing into the gaping darkness that settles just under the doorway. My head pounds with the rush of air and release of pressure.

"It's cold," Lucy mumbles, securing Pablo's arm more firmly around her. Pablo's eyes are glowing while mine stare straight into the darkness. A fear grips my chest—my family's first and last vacation to Disney World we spent a day on the beach; the first time my eyes wandered out into the open ocean from the safe threshold of rocks, imagining barracudas and sharks circling just beyond sight in the deep blue murk, and feeling so vulnerable and small—terrified of the deep. Now three hazy beams shine forth to penetrate the shadows, trapped and swirling in the thick dust.

Jason looks back and grins at us. "Stay close," he says, and steps through the doorway. Paige lingers at the back with me, frowning in concentration at the ground as she moves, avoiding all but the tiniest pieces of glass.

"It won't be that bad." My voice is directed at the pink flamingos on her shoes. Then, hoping to clear any of what she could misconceive as malice in my voice, "You don't have to come."

We're through the doors, our footsteps echoing around the walls of the foyer.

"Your sympathy," she replies hotly, "doesn't exactly do much for me now, does it?" She looks up abruptly, her eyes muddled with fear and disgust. "Try about five hours ago—it would have counted then."

My mouth falls open to retort, but suddenly a light streams into my face and stings my eyes.

"Dude, seriously Damien," Jason barks while my arm flies up to block my eyes. "Don't provoke her. I will separate you."

"Shut up, Jason…get the light out of my face."

He makes a threatening face he means as a promise, but lowers the flashlight, turning it back to the entryway of the sanatorium. Just like the outside, it's apparent this building must have once been almost stately—but now it's gutted and ugly, the floor littered with that same film of glass, dirt, cigarettes, and brittle paint chips like toxic snowflakes. My curiosity guides me across the chipped tile floor to a mass of glittering crystal; the smashed remnants of a fallen chandelier, half its chain dangling limply from the rotted ceiling. What Braden said about the whole place coming down flashes through my mind just as a small voice sounds in my ear, insistent and pleading.

"Go home."

My jaw tightens. "I thought you said it was too late for that."

"Huh?"

The person nearest to me, Pablo, is looking at me expectantly. "You say something, Grant?"

My eyes slide past him. Paige is on the other side of the foyer, her arms crossed tightly across her chest, shivering slightly in the cold. She feels my stare and sharply raises her eyebrows, annoyed.

A/N: Ooo spookeh! Thanks for reading! I'll try to have a new chapter up within the next week. You have full permission to send me (Black) nasty e-mails if I've not put up the next chapter by next Saturday-ish. Drop us a comment, whether you loved it or hated it or were completely neutral about it. :D