Page 1 of Burn Like An Angel
PROLOGUE
TWIN SIZE MATTRESS – THE FRONT BOTTOMS
XANDER
Present Day
Have you heard about those people who poke around abandoned buildings, waving around their bullshit ghost detectors and speculating as to the horrors the decrepit ruins they’re violating may hold?
They pay off some cash-strapped security guard to sneak into the site without being arrested, usually by scaling chain-link fences or burrowing through boarded over entrances, carrying backpacks full of flashlights, energy bars and fancy cameras to document their exploration.
And that’s where the show begins, right? We’re sucked into the fascination from behind our phone screens, hearts pounding and palms sticky, awaiting the next dark twist in the story as they inch forward.
Hook, line and sinker.
I know we all watch those videos.
Not many of us can say that we were once the ghosts to haunt the halls now immortalised on the internet. The flip side of the coin. Part of the fabric of the abandoned husk, and by extension, its story.
Our lives are a mystery that society then monetises and sells off to the highest bidder for entertainment. The human stories interwoven with the tragedy are erased. Written over. Forgotten. That’s what happened to us.
Crouched low with the collar of my thick coat turned up to hide my face, I find myself in the paradoxical position of breaking into the institute I was once incarcerated in.
Now I’m the violator. Not the violated. I haven’t returned to Harrowdean Manor in the last decade. Tonight is different. I’m saying goodbye for the final time.
Everyone thinks this tale has already been told. The book closed long ago for the short-term memory spans of the disinterested public. Once the uproar died down, the world continued to turn, and Incendia was forgotten.
We were forgotten.
One by one, each of the six private institutes that once fed the wealth and depravity of the corporation have been demolished. It’s taken ten years to see the process through, and now Harrowdean is the final institute to fall. It’s set for demolition at daybreak.
Most don’t know this place still exists. It’s kept off the books and quiet for this exact reason—the government and those in charge of the cleanup don’t want curious bloggers poking around with their cameras. Instead, the place has been left to quietly rot.
In the pocket of my thick coat, I feel my mobile phone buzzing. I know who it will be without needing to check. Sighing through my nostrils, I answer the incoming call.
“I told you to leave me alone.”
“You can’t just storm off like that, Xan!” Lennox huffs in his gravelly, sonorous timbre. “We need to talk about this.”
“I’ve made my position perfectly clear.”
“Where are you?” he demands. “We’re going to sit down and discuss this together. As a fucking family.”
“Do what you want. I have nothing else to say.”
“Ripley had every right to sit down with that journalist?—”
“No,” I interrupt him. “She didn’t.”
Hanging up, I pocket my phone. I may not be the stone cold, level-headed analytic I once was, but I’m not going to sit here and write some shitty pros and cons list to make this decision. I said no.
We’ve never entertained any interview requests before. I certainly won’t be doing it now.
Creeping through long grass that’s almost as tall as I am, the loading bay comes into view. Weeds have long overtaken the concrete foundation and brick pillars, cloaking the institute’s rear entrance in a coffin-like, green shroud.
I hop up onto the platform, heading for the bolted door where deliveries once took place. My backpack slides off my shoulder and into my hands. After unzipping it, I sift around for the compact pair of bolt cutters I stashed inside amongst my other supplies.
The irony isn’t lost on me.