CHAPTER 23

KATHERINE. The orientation video had said Renfield Hall was one of the oldest buildings in Blackwood but it had failed to mention that it also looked haunted as fuck. ‘...Am I in the right place?’ I glanced over my shoulder, as though I might have missed the real hall, but according to my map and the iron gates a couple of feet behind me which declared that this was Renfield Hall, I hadn’t. ‘What the actual fuck?’ Renfield Hall was a massive building. Its four stories seemed to have burst out of the ground like an abomination, full of disorderly protrusions and jumbled ledges. More than two dozen black windows overlooked the entryway, which consisted of three broad-stone steps leading up to a wooden-arch double door. The stones of the pillars supporting the awning were all old, worn down, and speckled with green-and-gray lichen, and weeds choked the spaces between the stones of the flagstone path. Many of the building's windows were dark and had cracks or holes in them, while plants