Mezzanine

| 11 |

Branches scratched against the walls as the wind whipped them around outside. Rain pelted the roof like tiny stones, and a flash of lightning lit up the small windows of my living room.

Lola and Carter sat on either side of me on the worn blue couch, the three of us staring at the items laid out on the antique glass coffee table.

"What's this?" I picked up the yellow box sitting next to the two flashlights I'd found in our kitchen drawer. The heavy device looked like the love child of a car battery and a calculator. "Some sort of ghost recorder?" I passed it between my hands, feeling its weight.

"Be careful with that." Carter snatched it from me and placed it back on the table. "And no. It's a Geiger counter, and it's my mom's. She doesn't know I borrowed it, so don't break it."

"I'm not going to break it." The thing looked pretty much indestructible.

"You break everything you touch, Jay," Carter responded.

"Okay, that is not true. When have I ever broken anything?"

"You broke your pencil taking that algebra test on Tuesday." Carter started counting on his fingers. "You broke your toothbrush that one time you stayed over my house."

"Oh!" Lola jumped in. "You broke that doorknob when we were trying to run out of the factory. You might have broke Andy's nose when you punched him."

"You broke—"

"Okay, enough from the peanut gallery," I cut Carter off. "I get it. I won't touch the delicate, fragile Geiger counter." A pause. "What do we need it for, anyway? Isn't it for finding radiation or something?"

"It's for measuring it, yes," Carter replied. "And we need it because who knows what that cult was doing down there in the basement of that factory. Something started that fire. If there's any radioactive shit going on, I wanna know about it before growing a third arm."

I shrugged. "Okay, fair point."

"What about these?" Lola pointed to the pair of copper, L-shaped bars resting next to the overgrown calculator.

"They're dowsing rods," Carter said. He picked one up, demonstrating how it turned in its handle with the slightest shift of movement.

"I thought those were for finding ground water or something," Lola said.

"Yeah, that's what they are for originally, but I've seen them use these on those ghost hunting shows Cathy always watched, so I figured it'd be worth a try."

"Can I see it?" Lola held her hand out to him.

Carter gave it to her, and she twisted it around between her fingers, watching as the bar swayed back and forth.

"It's neat," she finally said, placing it back on the table next to the other one.

"So, we have a Geiger counter, a pair of dowsing rods, and two flashlights with a questionable amount of battery left. Perfect." I slapped my hands on my thighs like I was preparing to get up off the couch. "Let's go investigate a satanic cult in an old, haunted, possibly radioactive factory."

"Oh wait! I have two more things." Lola reached into the small maroon backpack resting at her feet. "I brought snacks!" She tossed a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips and a box of chocolate chip cookies onto the table between the Geiger counter and the dowsing rods.

The three of us stared at the table for about a minute in silence. The only sound was the crash of thunder and pound of rain from the storm raging outside.

Shit, Carter finally thought. We're totally fucked.

"You can think that again." I grinned at him.