The Shadow Hunt: The Shadow Hunt Series Book 1

Prologue

Droplets of blood splattered on the floor. Each one hit with a gentle thwap like a fat drop of rain. Solomon was trying to be quiet, but the flow of blood was not something he could control. The only way to silence it would be to slow down, and he could not slow down.

Sometimes, during a storm, the wind found its way through warped wood and moaned down the wide, empty hallways. It wound through cracks and crevices and groaned like a disembodied voice while the whole house creaked and shifted.

No storm raged outside that night. No wind snaked in through forgotten holes in walls to give voice to the empty passages and dusty rooms. It should have been quiet.

Solomon paused to listen, the flow of the blood from his wounds running down his body and saturating his clothes. Footsteps in the distance caused the distended floors to creak and squeal. The weight of a body sliding the wood up and down rusty nails was like an abrupt, inhuman shriek. Solomon waited as still as a statue, listening to where the sound came from and, more importantly, where it was going.

The noise of old hinges screaming as a door was opened in the opposite direction caused him to whip his head back. They were on both sides of him now. He was running out of places to go.

Solomon quietly made his way down an empty, unlit hallway to a set of stairs. He didn’t want to risk leaving the house and exposing himself in the yard outside. He feared they would see him from the window, or that they had left someone outside to keep watch. The people pursuing him were thorough and relentless.

The basement of the house was pitch black. The power hadn’t worked in years, and there were no windows. There was one way in and one way out. All he had to do was stay out of sight until they were gone. He could hide from them down there. There were a hundred shadows, a hundred more dark corners, and concealed places. He could hide from the devil himself down there.

He descended the steps without a sound. He was like a shadow, unseen and unheard. They would eventually come looking for him, but if he stayed hidden, they would give up. They had to.

Something thumped, and the sound was much closer than he expected. They would reach the stairs soon, and he needed to be elsewhere. He was good at hiding. They knew that, though.

The basement was partially finished. There were many rooms down there and a maze of hallways were littered with clutter. It had become something of a dump over the years, the forgotten corner of a forgotten spot, layered with memories of a dozen people’s lives.

The basement dated from a time when nobody had basements. Before the invention of the steam shovel, it was almost unheard of for someone to dig out a foundation under their home. It must have taken many laborers weeks to clear the space under the house when it was built.

This was no mere root cellar. This was a fully functional floor with stone walls. It was made with a purpose. Later owners had no idea what that purpose was, but Solomon knew. Dark intent was worked into the building’s structure from the ground up. He knew the basement was a good place to hide because it had been built as a place to hide things.

Boxes were stacked to the ceiling in some places, and there were shelves full of ancient lamps, dusty dinner sets, rusted tools, and crumbling books. Other corners were piled with decayed heaps of fabric, what had once been drapes and tablecloths and even tapestries. A fortune of ruin had been hidden away in the darkness, now home to dust and mildew and memories no one remembered.

Solomon weaved through the detritus looking for a spot where no one would think to look. A furnace was down there somewhere, and a well that was hundreds of years old. Hidden away behind a secret shelf, there was even a room where the stone walls had long ago been stained brown with the blood of too many people whose screams were never heard by those upstairs.

More hinges screamed, the door at the top of the basement stairs this time. Solomon moved faster, his eyes searching in the blackness of that horrible place until he settled on a passage that allowed for quick movement between rooms when someone didn’t want to be seen. A secret passage once used to give a person the ability to spy unseen on the occupants down there.

Solomon crouched low and hid as best as he could. No one would know where to find him. No one alive knew of the passages, nor had anyone known about them for a century.

He heard the creak of footsteps coming down the stairs. Heavy feet, straining the wood as they descended. The stairs were weak and had not seen much use in decades.

Two people, Solomon thought. Maybe a third. He was unsure how many were in the house.

Once in the basement, they moved about quietly. The stone floor offered little opportunity for Solomon to hear his pursuers coming. He had to trust that they would have no luck in their hunt. He hadn’t left a trail; he never did. He hadn’t understood how they’d tracked him so far. How they’d tracked any of them.

Solomon strained to hear them. The hidden passage muffled sound, the thick stone providing insulation from the outer world in more ways than one. He had to trust that he would be fine.

He was alone now for the first time in a very long time. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been by himself. The image refused to come to his mind. There was no time or place he could recall when he had been alone. The others had always been with him.

There was a time when he wasn’t in the house. He knew it in the way he knew the sun was on the other side of the world at night. Because he’d been told and because it made sense. But he had no proof. He had no firsthand experience. He couldn’t remember ever being anywhere else. Not anymore.

Something metallic tapped on a wall. Solomon resisted the urge to move. Fear was there, buried in his gut like a living thing. He wanted to flee, to run from the house and across the yard to the distant trees. He wanted to run until he found that sun on the far side of the world, in some distant land he’d only read about long in the past. But that could never be. He was trapped.

The metallic thing tapped again. One, two, three times, like someone testing the stone. Solomon stayed where he was and waited. They weren’t close yet. They were just looking. They were thorough; it was what they did.

When the strangers first arrived in the house, Solomon didn’t know who they were or what they wanted. But he had always been cautious. He wasn’t angry or confrontational. He held back and listened as they confronted Brewster.

Brewster owned the house. Or he had a long time ago. He still liked to think it was palatial, a mansion worthy of fine people with good social graces and solid upbringings. He never saw it as a rundown trash heap. And he hated trespassers.

Brewster approached them right away. threatened and howled like a wild animal. And they tore his head from his body.

Solomon had not seen anything like it in all his years. It was quick and so nonchalant, like no one even cared. Brewster’s head came off like a cork in a wine bottle.

Chaos erupted then, and Solomon was not the sort to waste time. He had always been quick on his feet. So he fled. One didn’t stop to ask for an explanation from people who removed heads, they just ran. So he ran.

He had heard them catch up with Lottie and how she begged for help for all of three seconds before her voice cut off with a sudden and final abruptness. He hadn’t seen her, but there was no mistaking the sound. He knew he would never see her again.

These people, whoever they were, had come to destroy everyone in the house. They came to kill; it was as simple as that. They were hunters. And now he was the only one left.