dark hideout

The wreck in question was a long, low building, a simple old box frame only a couple of stories high and running the length of t
he block. It was sagging and dirty and covered in stains and graffiti, an eyesore that had to have been around since before the Second World War. A painted sign on the side of the building was barely legible: SULLIVAN MEAT COMPANY. The buildings around it were updated brownstone business district standard—but I noticed that no one who worked in them, apparently, had elected to park his car on the slaughterhouse’s side of the block.
I didn’t have to get out of the car to feel the energy around the place—dark, negative stuff, the kind of lingering aura that made people and animals avoid a place without giving much consideration as to why. City traffic seemed to ooze around it in a mindless, Brownian fashion, leaving the block all but deserted. Every city has places like that, where people tend not to go. It’s not like people run screaming or anything—they just never seem to find a reason to turn down certain streets, to stop on certain stretches of road. And there’s a reason that they don’t.
Bad things happen in places like this.


Skin Game Chapter 6, Page 33