REI Co-op Studios. Maybe this wasn't museum at night.

Awkward mannequin in to this little dusty museum at night.

Awkward mannequins in old uniforms lean toward you in the bright narrow beam of your flashlight

and cast long black shadows behind them.

Faces from old black and white photos loomed intently staring at you.

Animals taxidermy generations ago squirm and writhe again as the strong light moves across

their glass-bed eyes glittering with almost with life. And there are sounds, sounds that don't come from the creek of the

lonely floorboards under your feet, little sighings that you tell yourself for just the old

building settling down for the night, but then come noises across the ceiling.

Noises like footsteps on the floor above. They move in a

pattern just like footsteps all the way to the top of the stairs out in the lobby

like there's something out there

someone coming down right now

you hold your breath and frozen silence, but no one comes. There's no one there. Just your

imagination, your nerves. You shake those thoughts away.

Shake your head in the darkness and you get moving again.

There's nothing here to scare you.

Nothing real anyway.

Just, you just need to get what you're looking for. Grab it and get out of here.

It's not a big place, this little country museum. You weave in and out between the displays,

your flashlight throwing jerking, jumping shadows in front of you, and you're telling yourself that stillness returns when you pass that

there's nothing jerking and jumping up behind you

...