Lena, Nicholas, and Sarah slip into the abandoned factory after dark and find signs they are not the first to enter. Then a light moves in the shadows above them.
Dusk had already settled over the town when Lena led Nicholas and Sarah through a gap in the broken fence. Beyond it stood the old factory, its windows punched out, its brick shell drowned in weeds and shadow. People in the village avoided the place after dark. Lena had always wanted to know why.
Her torch cut a thin, shaky path across the yard. Every step they took rang out against the concrete, too loud, too final, as if the empty building were listening.
"Do you really think anyone comes here?" Sarah asked. She tried to sound casual, but her voice gave her away.
Nicholas gave a crooked grin and shoved his hands deeper into his sweatshirt pockets. "Old Jarek said you can see lights in the upper floor," he murmured. "Sometimes even when the power’s been off for years."
Lena stopped beside a rusted pipe and crouched. Something pale lay half-buried in dust near the wall. She picked it up and turned it in her hands: an old camera, scratched and yellowed with age. The body was warm.
"Someone was here recently," she said quietly. "Not long ago."
Before either of them could answer, a metallic crash shattered the silence above them. Sarah flinched and grabbed Lena’s sleeve. Another sound followed, slower this time, a dragging scrape across the floor overhead, like something heavy being moved from one side of the building to the other.
Lena lifted her torch toward the staircase. The beam trembled, caught on peeling paint, then on something else. A light. Weak, unsteady, moving just beyond the landing.
A breath of cold air slipped through the corridor, and with it came a sound so soft Lena almost thought she imagined it.
Not everyone should come in here.
Then the footsteps started.