by Dave Ferraro
***
Krystal slammed the door shut behind her as she entered the mansion, then stopped cold. She tilted her head and listened to the stillness of the house. It was dark without the electricity, and suddenly the lanterns that they’d put out in the hall and various rooms weren’t enough to ward the chill that had crept over her. She shivered as she took a hesitant step toward the main living area. “Hello? Guys?”
She heard a creak and paused. “Hello?”
No one answered. Where was everybody?
Skulking along to make as little noise as possible, she ducked her head into the main room. The monitors were on, but nobody sat in front of them. Frowning, she crept forward to get a better view of the screens and saw Serene in her bedroom with a book in hand. Relief flooded her limbs. She never thought she would be so happy to see the siren, but just knowing that she wasn’t alone was comforting.
Foregoing trying to be quiet, Krystal went up the stairs to Serene’s room, hoping to find the others around as well. She didn’t want to waste any time pooling their resources in an effort to track Steven down. They just had to find him.
She passed by a few unused rooms, dim lanterns set low to chase away the shadows, although much of the furniture was still covered in sheets to protect them. At the third door, she paused, the icy feeling of fear returning to her chest. She could have sworn that in the last room, she had seen something crouched low to the floor in the far right corner. She imagined that it was a trick of the light, but for peace of mind, walked backward to the door frame to verify. She swallowed hard and before she had time to change her mind, looked into the room.
A woman stood in front of the doorway in a flowing white dress, her back facing Krystal. She had pigtails with blood glistening in her hair, and blood dripping from the ends of her fingers.
Krystal knew immediately that she was a ghost, and if she’d been thinking rationally, she would have tried to communicate with her, but instead, she let her fear take hold and ran from the room as fast as she could, letting out a scream that brought Serene into the hallway with wide eyes.
Krystal flew into Serene and pulled her back into the bedroom, closing the door behind them and leaning against the door, her chest heaving. She took a moment to calm down before feeling silly, like she’d overreacted. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen a ghost before. And this one hadn’t made any threatening move toward her. She shook her head and offered Serene a wary smile. At least the mute siren wouldn’t be telling anybody about this.
“Sorry,” she told the siren. “I saw the ghost. Just freaked out for a second there. I’m better now.”
Serene looked startled, but nodded as Krystal opened the door. She followed Krystal back down the hall to where she’d seen the apparition, but the ghost was gone.
“It’s this spooky old mansion,” Krystal said, scoffing. “It’s making me crazy.”
“Krystal?”
She looked up to see Jade at the top of the stairs, briskly walking their way. “I was in the bathroom and heard a scream,” she explained. “Everything alright?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Krystal nodded. “Serene just overreacted is all.”
Serene glared at her and she laughed.
“Just kidding,” Krystal turned to Jade. “Actually, I saw our resident-“
She stopped as a loud beeping resounded through the hall.
Jade cocked her head. “What is that?” She looked at Serene. “Is that your…?”
Serene lifted her hair and showed it to Jade, and Krystal could tell that the sound was emanating from the tracker in her neck.
“Why’s it going off?” Krystal asked, frowning. “I thought it was only supposed to do that if she was far away from Hunter.” She looked around. “Where is Hunter?”
“He’s at the monitors,” Jade said, feeling around the tracker delicately. “Damn, it’s getting louder. It’s going to release the sedative soon.”
Serene sighed.
“He wasn’t at the monitors when I came in,” Krystal said. “Nobody was.”
Jade blinked at her for a moment. “Damn.” She grabbed Serene’s hand and yanked her down the hallway.
Krystal followed them, scrambling down the stairs after them. “Where are you going?”
“Her tracker will get quieter the closer we get to him,” Jade called back. At the bottom of the staircase, she ran toward the front of the house, then stopped and yanked Serene in the opposite direction as the signal grew louder.
“What is he doing?” Krystal asked aloud, to no reply.
“There!” Jade announced, pointing to a doorway that was wide open, revealing a pitch black room.
Krystal slowed as they approached it. “What is it?”
“The basement.”
Taking a step back, Krystal frowned. “No way.”
“Yes way,” Jade retorted. “This door was firmly closed earlier tonight. He went down there.”
“But why?”
They exchanged looks and Krystal sighed. The sound of the tracker was so loud that it was making it hard to think. It was worse than a car alarm. She would even venture into the basement if it meant making it stop. “Fine.” She grabbed a lantern from the floor nearby and together, they passed through the doorway, Krystal in the lead. She searched the darkness ahead, slowly descending the stairs when she was sure there was nothing ahead that was going to eat her. “How could he find his way down here?” she asked. “It’s completely dark.”
Jade didn’t answer, but Serene’s tracker finally went quiet.
“Thank god,” Krystal murmured, looking back to see a relieved look pass over the siren’s face.
“That means we’re close,” Jade nodded. She led them along a hallway into part of the basement that seemed neglected, with small bare white rooms that probably hadn’t been used even when people had populated the building.
Krystal clung to Jade the further they traveled, noticing dead mice on the floor here and there as the hunters had reported earlier, along with plenty of droppings. They were probably all over down there. “Disgusting.”
“You can say that again,” a voice said, thick with relief. Hunter squinted as they approached with the light.
Jade snorted when they reached him. “What the hell, Hunter?”
Hunter looked visibly shaken. “I don’t know what came over. Or how I found myself down here. I would assume it has something to do with whatever’s inhabiting this house.”
“Did you feel anything?” Krystal asked. “Were you aware of yourself as you came down here?”
“No. I was completely-“
He stopped and cocked his head as they all heard it at the same time. Scratching.
“What…?” Jade grabbed the lantern from Krystal and moved it along the wall, trying to identify the source, because it was way too loud for mere mice to be making. She stopped along the wall a few feet away, where it seemed to be loudest. Then the sound stopped.
“That’s interesting,” Hunter said, pushing his glasses up his nose. “I would say-“
A loud pound startled them all. Krystal backed up against the far wall, staring at the spot the pound had come from like something was going to come tearing through it. Then she remembered why she was there. To find out about this ghost, discover what it wanted. She hadn’t listened to it upstairs, but she had a second chance now.
Closing her eyes, she felt her power reach out, filling the basement, touching the dead things around them. And there was a lot of it. Mice, the dead dog they’d found earlier, but something else as well…
Her brow furrowed in concentration as she focused on the wall ahead of her. At first, she felt nothing but empty space. A lot of empty space with more dead mice littering the floor. And…was that a dead goat?
A hidden room, she realized, with some satisfaction. But still, she felt nothing to warrant the attention of ghosts.
She pushed her power, fee
ling sweat bead on her forehead with the effort, and then very suddenly, she felt it, but unexpectedly beneath the floor. Just a fingernail at first, caked with blood, telling her a story of anguish, of clawing for its life, trying desperately to find some handhold, anything to escape its prison.
And then she felt more, deeper in the hole in the ground. A human body. And as if the discovery had fed her power, it seemed to have a mind of its own all of a sudden, for it kept expanding, revealing another body, then another. She swallowed hard as she realized she’d touched at least half a dozen bodies before she’d regained control again.
“Okay,” she said, opening her eyes. She stared at the ghost of the girl in the white dress, who stood floating between Jade and Serene. As she watched with wide eyes, the ghost turned toward her. Her fingers still dripped blood, but Krystal could see cuts and gashes at the tips, a few of her fingers missing their nails. The blood had come from trying to pull herself out from her cell in the ground. She looked up at the ghost’s face then, relieved to find no mutilated features. She looked like an ordinary black woman, older than she’d assumed, perhaps in her forties. And her eyes were tired, but suddenly looked relieved. She smiled before fading from sight. “We just found what we’ve been looking for.”
It took Hunter fifteen minutes to find tools in the basement to help them uncover the false wall, but once they had a sledge hammer and pickaxe to work with, they quickly tore it down, revealing the hidden room.
“This has been torn down and rebuilt several times,” Jade observed, looking over the doorway. She looked up at Hunter. “Whoever hid these bodies kept coming back to this place to add more, it seems.”
Hunter frowned, but they continued into the room, the air stale with the smell of decay. It was dark, but the lamplight plainly illuminated a stone well in the middle of the floor. Although they couldn’t see very deep into it, Krystal could feel the bodies resting at the bottom, having waited years to be discovered. They must have been trying to climb up and out of the well when they’d been alive. That was why the ghost had bloody fingers. And why they scratched and pounded at the walls. They must have been screaming as the culprit was sealing the wall behind him, hiding his sins. A shudder ran through her body.
“A serial killer?” Krystal asked softly.
“I rather think not,” Hunter replied, holding the lantern up.
Krystal stared around the walls of the room, noting the skull of a goat hanging on the wall ghoulishly staring down at them with vacant pits for eyes, its curling horns looking more sinister than they probably should, in the flickering light, almost like a demon.
There were pentagrams also, drawn in charcoal, and runes, and other strange symbols and words that made Krystal sick to the stomach to even look at. This place felt evil. How could they have been living here for these past few days and not felt this awful hidden room before?
“Magick,” Jade scowled. “I hate magick.”