Chapter 1
Chapter 1
Present day
“ C ome on, Aim’s… You can afford it. Your talents have blown all those fake mediums out of the water. You’re the most requested medium like ever in history, and if there are any ghosts, you can just help them to move on.”
“I don’t know.” I say, staring at the screen. Just the photos of the house give me the creeps. “Even with its history, it’s still too low on the market to be real. It’s too good to be true. Plus, it’s huge, and it’s just going to be me in that big house.”
“What do you mean?” Suzie, my best friend since childhood, furrows her brows at me.
“I’ve seen haunted houses with worse histories go for more…” I turn to her, all humor wiped from my face. “With it this cheap, there are bound to be evil spirits. Or maybe a cracked foundation or—I don’t know. Maybe something worse?”
Suzie scoffs. “What’s worse than evil spirits?”
“Demons,” I say pointedly, and her eyes widen.
“Okay, okay… Let’s dig deeper.” She leans in, glances at the screen, and starts typing away on her phone. “It says here that it used to be a–”
“Frat house,” I interrupt.
Suzie sighs. “Okay, you’ve done your homework on the place. Of course you did, little Miss Nancy Drew. What else did you find that’s making you feel so nervous about this place?”
“Well…” I start. “It was owned by the House Corporation, as we know. After them, a couple purchased the house with big dreams of turning it into a small B&B. They stayed there for all of two days before they packed up and left.”
“What else?” Suzie asks, wide-eyed and leaning forward on the edge of her seat. Ever since she found out about me, she’s been obsessed with all things spooky.
“Another couple did the same thing. Except they were much older. The article I read said that they moved in, and after two days the husband had a heart attack and was rushed to the hospital where he passed away shortly after.”
Suzie gasps. “That’s so sad. Always two days?”
I nod. “It seems that whatever is in there, it waits two days to rear its ugly head.”
“Did anything happen to the first couple?”
Shaking my head, I turn back to the screen. “Well, the husband fell and suffered a pretty serious injury. Other than that, they both had minor cuts, or weird scratches and such. But they weren’t sure if those were just coincidences or not. Both articles say the couples saw, heard, and felt strange things. Though they didn’t go into much detail in the interviews. They were too spooked.”
“That’s wild! Maybe whatever it is just doesn’t like men. Who owned the house before the Alumni peeps?”
Shrugging, I turn back to her. “That’s where the trail goes cold. The records are sealed. I know the house was built in the late 1800’s, but that’s it.”
“Can we go see it?” Suzie beams at me.
“Do you want to die?” I ask with an incredulous laugh.
“Two days.” She grins. “It takes two days for them to even show themselves, and we’re females. Unless all that is just a coincidence…”
“There’s no such thing as a coincidence.” I shut the computer off and stand with a stretch.
“So?”
I turn to her. “We can check it out.”
“Yes!” She jumps up from her seat with a bounce and hugs me. “I’m so excited!”
Grinning, I fold my arms around her and give her a brief squeeze before pulling away. “But, if there’s anything even remotely off about the place, I’m out. Got it? There are some things I just can’t help…”
She nods quickly. “Got it.”
“Bedtime. We’re leaving early.”
She nods and groans. “Uhhh! Why did I have to agree to move in with my boyfriend! I would so move in with you instead if you got this place,” she says as she climbs into bed.
Rolling my eyes, I cross the room and fall into my own bed. My hair, still a bit damp from the shower, falls into my face and I blow it away from my mouth. “I’d charge you full rent.”
A pillow soars from across the room and hits me squarely in the chest. “No you wouldn’t” She chuckles. “You love me. You’d let me stay for free access to my Netflix.”
I can’t help but snort. “Girl, I pay for your Netflix… and also, not it!” I grin, initiating the game we play sometimes before bed, to make the other one turn out the light.
“Fine…” She sighs as she gets back up, turns out the light and climbs back into her bed. “But is that what you’re planning to do with the place if you get it? Turn it into a B&B?”
I shake my head and turn onto my left side, facing Suzie, even though I can’t see her. “I don’t know for sure yet. But you know how I love helping people. Maybe it could be a safe place for others to live until they get back on their feet? One side for girls and the other for guys. Or hell, I could just rent it out and stay in one of the upper rooms.” Suzie yawns, and it forces a yawn out of me.
It doesn’t take long for silence to fall between us, and I lay there daydreaming about all the possibilities of the house. I wonder if there are actually ghosts, and then quietly laugh at myself. There are always ghosts.
The alarm on my phone startles us awake. Suzie groans at me, but then quickly pops up and rushes around the room to get ready.
“Gonna see a ghost today, gonna see a ghost today!” she chants, and I can’t help but laugh at her excitement.
“Two days, remember?” I say, smirking.
“You never know!” She grins, shoving her phone into her pocket before collecting the portable charger from her nightstand. “Just in case the phone needs a boost while I record.”
“Thinking of getting into ghost hunting are you?” I ask, rolling my eyes. “So many people get seriously injured or killed doing that stuff. And half the time they never even catch any real evidence.”
Suzie stops in the middle of pulling her socks on. She lets out a big sigh as she sits on the edge of the bed and gives me an incredulous look. “They didn’t have you .” She smirks.
“True, but I’m not all powerful. If we get overrun by entities, good or bad—I can’t protect you from all of them. Especially if we split up.”
“This isn’t my first time in a haunted house.” Her voice sounds defensive and it makes me wince.
“Look, I know it’s not, and I know you’re fully capable. I just have a bad feeling about this house. I can’t put my finger on it…”
“You’ve never even been there.”
“The photos…” I start, but shake my head. “It’s just better if we go in, check it out, and leave. No need to stay any longer than we need to.”
“I didn’t see anything in those photos besides an old house with lots of possibilities–” She stops, cutting her gaze to mine. “Did you see something?”
I nod. “I think so, but I can’t be sure.”
Suzie whips out her phone and punches away at the screen. “Show me, which photos?”
I take her phone and flip through the images, stopping on one specific picture titled ‘Basement.’ “What do you see here?”
Suzie leans in and blinks a few times. “A basement. That’s it. A clean basement with bricks, wood, wires, and outlets–”
“It’s black.”
“What?” She furrows her brows at me.
“The photo. It’s black to me. Pitch black.” I let out a breathy sigh. “I thought so. You see all that, but all I see is a blank photo. I didn’t think they would put a black photo on their website…”
“That’s… spooky.” She stares at me. “Why is it black to you?”
“Because that whole basement is shrouded by something that doesn’t want me to see it.”
Suzie shivers visibly. “That…” She bares her teeth at me and sharply sucks air between them. “That’s so scary. So whatever is down there is strong enough to shield itself, even from you?”
I nod. “This thing is strong.” I shrug. “It could be more than one, but however many there are, they definitely don’t want psychic types seeing them.”
“Do you still want to go?”
Nodding once more, I hand her phone back and start packing a few things for the trip. “Maybe I can help them.”
“Oh, Amelia… You’re too good for this world. Too good for the living, and too good for the dead.”
I smirk at her. “I’ll still charge you full rent if things don’t work out between you and… Mark, was it?”
She snags a pillow from her bed and pulls it back to throw it, but stops herself. “Jerry.” She frowns. “I’ve been with this one for two months. It’s officially my longest relationship. You didn’t approve of the others, so I kicked them to the curb.”
A grin splits my face. “I’m not your mom, you know. You can sleep with whoever you want.”
The pillow finally hits me before dropping to the carpet. “You make it sound like I’m a whore…”
“You took it that way, it wasn’t my intention. But my point still stands. You can be with whomever you want, Sooze. If they hit you though, I’ll send them to hell.”
Suzie rolls her eyes and laughs. “Yeah, right.” She grabs her purse. “Ready?”
I nod, snatching my wallet off my dresser and making sure to grab a bag of graphite dust as well. “Yup. Let’s go say hello.”