“You never should have entered that house without a guide, especially with Mundanes.”
“What a callous thing to call a living person. I’ve lived much of my life without a guide. This was no different.”
----------------------------------------
My fingers grip the cool metal of my hilt as we ascend the stairs. With no railing, I hug the wall and keep my eyes upward to the second floor. Hannah and JJ quietly follow close behind me.
The second floor wraps around the stairs like a horseshoe, with two rooms on each side of the staircase. The absent railing creates a gaping hole down to the first floor. Every door is shut, hiding whatever awaits behind them. Three of them are painted white, which has faded to pale yellow, and one door is stained with a deep oak brown. The walls are adorned with old ornamental sconces covered with dust and cobwebs. Paint chips flaking from the walls cover the carpet and crunch under our feet with every step. A small accent table sits against the wall with an old photo hanging above it. In it, a cloudy white vignette frames a family of three in shades of brown.
“That must be the Wickhams,” Hannah whispers.
“Their daughter was so pretty,” I reply quietly. Our nerves have heightened so much we’re whispering in a house with no one in it.
Tap tap tap…
Light footsteps, like that of a child, suddenly scurry behind us. We quickly turn around and shine our flashlights against the opposing wall.
“Hello?” Hannah asks shakily.
“What the—” JJ exclaims. “The camera just died.”
“Did you charge it?” Hannah asks.
“Yeah, of course. Hang on. I’ll change the battery.”
Creeeeeeeeak…
Frozen in place, our flashlights fire to one of the white doors across from us. We watch in horror as it slowly creeps open. Fear tickles my head like a hundred long-legged spiders. I strain to search for any figures behind the door, but I can’t see any. If Shy Boy is over there, he’s hiding out of view. Is he playing with us?
“Holy shit,” Hannah breathes. “Hello?” She asks louder this time.
“We know you’re there Shy Boy,” I say.
No response comes. Something doesn’t feel right, like he’s inviting us to find him.
“Let’s go check it out,” Hannah says and grabs JJ’s hand. “Come on.”
“Wai—” I try to stop them, but just as I step past the brown door beside me, white-hot pain burns into my skull. I press my hands hard against my temples, and a wave of anger floods my senses.
“Dammit Hannah,” I shout. “I told you to wait.”
Then, as quickly as it came, the anger washes away, and I’m filled with embarrassment.
“Woah,” Hannah replies, timidly walking back to me. “Are you okay?”
“I—I’m sorry,” I reply. “I don’t know where that came from. This house—”
“It’s okay,” She grabs my arm and holds me steady. “We’ll go in together.”
Where are you Shy Boy? I think to myself. What are you trying to show me? I compose myself and lead Hannah and JJ to the open door. Whatever is in this room could be dangerous, so I’m the first to enter.
“Stay close to me,” I warn them.
My flashlight floods the room with stark white light, casting long shadows across the walls and revealing patterns of lavender swirls. The room has more furnishings than the others. A small wooden bedframe bears only a naked mattress guarded by tall wooden posts on each corner. Beside it sits a nightstand, and a skinny oval mirror reflects our bright lights back at us. On the other side of the room, an old upright piano sits against the wall.
“We all heard the piano playing, right?” Hannah asks.
After a confirming nod, we approach the piano to get a closer look. Its blotchy wood, draped in a blanket of dust and cobwebs, tells a silent story of songs that once filled the halls but abruptly fell silent. Hannah reaches out her hand and presses one of the faded keys. An uneasy note echoes off the walls with muted resonance, silenced by the painful creak of the ancient wood.
“This must be Daisy’s room,” I say.
“Maybe the toy soldier is in here,” Hanna replies.
She wanders the room to search, starting with the nightstand. JJ looks beneath the bed, and I check every corner of the closet. Nothing. Doubt begins to creep into my mind. I can feel the heavy weight of this house pulling down on me. But maybe it’s merely an echo and not some dangerous poltergeist.
“Damn,” Hannah sighs. “Time for the big guns.”
She drops her backpack on the floor and unzips it, then pulls out a long rectangular box. Ouija is printed across the top.
“Hell no,” I say.
I’ve never used a Ouija board. In fact, I doubt they’re anything more than a hoax. But Mom has ingrained her superstitions into me, and I know better than to test my doubts in a haunted house. Besides, I’ve seen enough spirits to know some can be mischievous. Shy Boy could take this as an open invitation to harm us.
“Oh come on,” Hannah whines. “We haven’t found anything yet, and you need a ghost to kill. If this doesn’t work, we’ll leave.”
“We have no idea how that thing works,” I argue.
“I do,” she replies solemnly, then opens the box and places the board on the floor. The alphabet is printed across it in decorative lettering, with Yes and No tucked in the top corners. All of the pieces have already been removed from their protective plastic packaging. “I used to do it with my sister. Just trust me, okay?”
“What if you get hurt?” I’m running out of excuses.
“Then you’ll just have to protect me,” she poses flirtatiously but drops her shoulders when I don’t react. “Look, we came here to pick a fight. Are you in or not, reaper?”
----------------------------------------
Hannah places small candles around the board like a miniature seance. JJ sets down the audio recorder beside a digital thermometer, then stands the camera up on a tripod and points it down at us. We turn off our flashlights and sit in a circle as the candlelight reflects off our faces. Each of us rests our fingers on the planchet. Then, we wait in uncomfortable silence, broken only by our shaky breaths and thumping heartbeats.
“Are there any spirits with us tonight?” Hannah asks.
We stare down at the board and watch the planchet, but it doesn’t move other than the subtle shifts of our nervous shudders.
“You don’t have to be scared,” she continues. “Come play with us, Shy Boy. We’re bored.”
The air shifts as if someone new now takes up the space beside me. I look around the room, investigating every dark corner. I expect a face to be staring at me, or two empty black eyes to appear in my peripheral, or maybe a shadow to leap just out of view. But nothing shows itself. I know someone is here. Why can’t I see them?
“The temperature just dropped two degrees,” JJ announces.
“Is that you?” Hannah asks. “Are you here Shy Boy?”
The planchet suddenly flinches beneath our hands. I look up at Hannah.
“That wasn’t me,” she says. I look to JJ. He shakes his head.
It bumps again and we let the planchet pull our fingers across the board until it comes to a stop.
Yes.
“Hi, Shy Boy,” Hannah replies with consternation. “Where are you from?”
Again, the planchet shudders and moves across the board. This spirit is right beside us but chooses to hide itself. I’ve seen Maggie disappear sometimes, but she knows I can see the dead. Other spirits don’t even think to hide from me, if they even know they can. But this one is intentionally hiding from me.
H-O-L-L-O-W
“Hollow,” Hannah reads aloud. “You’re from Cedar Hollow?”
“That makes sense,” JJ says. “If Daisy brought the toy from the woods she must have found it in the ruins.”
“Did you kill Hank Wickham?” Hannah asks, and once more the planchet slides over the letters.
I-H-E-L-P-E-D
“I helped,” Hannah says. “What does that mean?”
“Some spirits can manipulate our emotions,” I say, remembering Dr. Ward’s stories of evil spirits convincing people to end their lives. “If someone is in a dark place mentally, they can force a person to do things they never would.”
Suddenly, the planchet drags our fingers around the board like limp corpses swaying in a macabre waltz of the dead.
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R-E-A-P-E-R
Hannah looks up at me. “Yes, this is my friend Autumn. She’s a reaper.”
Something cold and small slides up my back until it tickles the bottom of my ear. My head twists involuntarily and I swat at my ear, hoping it was just a bug. But I know it wasn’t. We look around the room in quiet apprehension, glancing at each other for comfort. He knows what I am.
“Are you afraid of her?” Hannah asks to break the silence.
Scratch!
The planchet abruptly jerks out from under our fingers. We recoil our hands and stare down at the sentient piece of plastic.
No.
“Then why don’t you show yourself?” She taunts.
The throbbing pain returns, concentrated in the space where the back of my head meets my neck. It spreads through my skull and burns like a migraine.
“Ah,” Hannah groans and reaches her arm over her shoulder, pressing against her back. She squirms anxiously.
“What’s wrong?” JJ asks.
“I don’t know,” she replies. “My back feels like it’s on fire.”
“Let me see,” JJ requests, then rushes to inspect her. Carefully, he pulls the back of her shirt up, and his face turns pale. He lifts it higher and higher until it reaches her neck, then looks at me.
“Autumn,” he finally says with a gulp.
I grab my flashlight and join JJ.
“Uh, anyone want to clue me in? I feel like a dog at the vet right now.” Hannah begs, but I don’t have the words to answer her.
Her skin burns with bright pink as hundreds of tiny scratches cover her back. The fresh cuts swell and overlap one another as if some demented cat just attacked her.
I can’t stop the concern, panic, and anger that rushes into my mind. I consider if the spirit is putting these emotions in my head again, but no. This rage is mine. I’ve put Hannah and JJ in real danger. Shy Boy knows he can hide from me, and now he’s put his hands on Hannah right in front of me. The fucking arrogance.
Tap tap tap…
Little footsteps scurry out of the room, followed by childlike giggles. I close my eyes and open my mind to the darkness. I can feel my inner storm churning, begging for release. When I open my eyes again, ribbons of silver fill the room and float around me. They stretch out the door and twist over the stairs until they disappear into the brown door across the hall. A little child’s face ducks behind the door as I hear it click shut.
“Stay here.” I turn to look at Hannah and JJ but catch my reflection in the mirror. The whites of my eyes melt away into black oil, and a web of dark blood vessels crawls down my cheeks. Those eyes once terrified me. Now they are familiar, like a piece of me I’ve always known but kept hidden.
“Autumn wait,” Hannah pleads.
But I won’t wait. The world has a habit of taking away the things I love in life. My innocence. My childhood. Dad. I’m in control now. I won’t let Hannah and JJ be another victim. I won’t be an omen of death.
I shut the door behind me and march down the hall. Just as my hand wraps around the cold brass doorknob, the throbbing pain returns in my neck. I attempt to shrug it off, but it persists as a sign of the darkness that lingers beyond this door.
The door releases a long painful creak as I pull it open. Behind it, the bright white beam of my flashlight reveals a narrow wooden staircase ascending to the third floor. This must go up to the study. I turn off my light and place it in my pocket, then retrieve my hilt. I ignite it, and silver light bursts around me, weaving into a thin blade.
After a slow breath to build my courage, I charge up the stairs, prepared to swing at the first silhouette I see. The third-floor study is a single room built like a self-made prison meant to shut out the rest of the world. The walls tilt inward to meet the sharp peak of the roof, squeezing the room like a noose. Two narrow windows on the opposing wall peer out into the empty darkness. A solitary desk, covered in tall spider webs stretching up to the rafters, stands as the room’s centerpiece.
In the middle of the room sits a small boy hunched over himself, crying. His subtle gasps and whimpers echo in my head. I lower my sword and take a step closer.
“Monster,” a boy’s voice whispers into my skull. My muscles lock up like solid ice.
“What?” I breathe.
“Reapers are monsters.” The boy looks up at me. His black empty eye sockets send an icy chill across my skin. His ribcage is ripped open. Bright crimson blood glistens in the light of my blade as his black intestines spill from his chest cavity.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“You are mockeries of God,” he says, tilting his head slightly.
“You killed an innocent man,” I argue, holding my sword up. I feel my nervous heartbeat in my fingertips.
“I rescued a family from a monster!” He shouts.
Silver strands pulse overhead and light up a scene behind the boy. A cloud of dust forms and coagulates into flesh and bone. Then, a man appears with a woman standing before him, resembling Hank and Abigail from the picture on the wall. Only now Hank’s fingers twist around Abigail’s neck.
“Keep that insolent daughter in line or I will do it for you,” Hank shouts. “I will not have this house be made into some Godless spectacle. We are a respectable family and she will behave accordingly.”
Their bodies melt away into ash and form a new grotesque scene. Hank sits at his desk with a glass decanter beside him filled with liquid amber. He presses his hands against his head and groans. Shy Boy must have tormented Hank’s mind, and he drank to escape it. He scratches at his skin and rips his shirt open, begging for relief, revealing layers of cuts across his chest. Just as his drunken madness leaves him vulnerable, Abigail appears. They tumble to the floor in a heaping mass of rage and sorrow. She wraps her fingers around his throat and squeezes as tears pour down her cheeks. Then, as Hank’s body falls limp, the vision fades.
“I hunt monsters,” the boy says softly. His eyes narrow with disdain.
“So do I,” I reply, squeezing my hilt.
Suddenly, shadows erupt from the boy. The empty room instantly fills with a crowd of new faces, each with a horrific wound to match his. Their empty black eyes glare with restless anger. A woman in a ripped dress and a dirty white bonnet steps toward me. Her jaw hangs by a strip of bloody skin.
“You will reap what you sow,” her condemning voice whispers into my ear.
“Whoever sows to please their flesh,” says an old priest, split down the middle like a tree. His feet stumble forward uneasily.
“From the flesh will reap destruction,” Says a woman crawling on the floor with one leg dragging behind her by a single ligament. More corpses appear, closing the space around me. A hand grabs my shoulder and I twist around to find a woman reaching for my face. Her bloody fingers wrap around my throat, and I shriek.
Wildly, I swing my blade. Lightning cracks around the room as it cuts into her flesh. I feel the blade stick as her bones crunch and pop. This isn’t like the prison. The skin on her face boils then cracks. I watch in horror as she crumbles apart into a cloud of ash.
“The cannibal is your destruction,” the boy whispers. His voice bounces around my head. “Your penance is your soul.”
Tap tap tap tap!
Bony feet smack the floor as the corpses charge. The priest stretches out a long arm toward me. I raise my blade and plunge it into his open eye socket, feeling the blade stick as it punctures his skull. Just as he melts into a cloud of ash, hands wrap around my leg and pain explodes from my ankle. I look down to find a woman sinking her rotting teeth into my skin. I whip the blade around and stab it into her back. As her body disintegrates, blood drips from the new bite mark on my ankle.
My lungs sting with every breath. My heart slams against my chest again and again. I flail the sword around me and it collides with another corpse. Lightning bursts from the blade as it crushes a man’s rib cage. Then, a pained scream echoes through the house from behind me. I immediately recognize Hannah’s voice.
“Autumn!” JJ’s desperate cry quickly follows.
My heart shudders. This was always a trap. He wanted to separate us.
A new figure appears and I cut it down, but it’s quickly followed by another, then another. Their limbs twist around my body in a tangled mess of rotting flesh, and fingers pull and puncture my skin.
“Get off me!” I shout.
I close my eyes and search for my storm. It rushes through me as I throw my arms out. A wave of energy explodes from my body, sending the corpses tumbling away from me. The house shakes beneath my feet.
Crack!
I feel the weak wood snap beneath me and my heel suddenly plunges into the floor. My heart sinks into my stomach as the world flips around me. I drop my arms, hoping to catch myself, but there’s nothing to catch myself on. I’m over the stairs.
I violently tumble down the hard wooden steps. My body careens down the narrow stairway and out onto the second floor. Without any railing around the main staircase, nothing is there to stop me from falling off the ledge and dropping to the first floor. I dig my fingers into the old carpet. God it burns. I feel the skin on my fingertips melt. One of my fingernails breaks off. The sword deactivates as my hilt drops from my hands and rolls away. But I come to a stop, hanging off the ledge.
Kicking my feet at the wall below me, I scramble to get up. My tangled hair falls over my face, sticking to the sweat on my forehead.
“Autumn!” Hannah’s blood-curdling scream pierces the air.
I whimper as my arms burn and my feet struggle to get any foothold. The boy at the Davidson house flashes in my head and I think of his body disintegrating in front of me. I failed him, and now I’ve failed Hannah. What cruel God gave someone so worthless these powers?
“Why can’t you just be normal?” My mom’s cutting words twist my heart.
I’d love to be normal. I’d love not to be a freak. But right now this freak is all Hannah has. So fuck normal. I desperately reach my hand out and rip into the carpet. Pain twists up my muscles, and with a strained wail, I pull my body upward. I reach out another hand and pull again until I can lift my knee over the ledge.
I reach the top and roll onto my back. My chest leaps with ragged breaths, but I don’t stop to calm it. I grab my hilt and stand, then run toward Hannah’s screaming. My fingers wrap around the door knob and twist, but it doesn’t budge. It’s locked. How? I didn’t—
Shy Boy must have locked it. I slam my shoulder into the door, but it holds firm. I know what to do, but I can feel my energy waning. I don’t have time to think about it. I close my eyes and release a long breath, knowing I have to get this right the first try. I find the storm inside me and feel the wind rush around me. Then I throw my hands forward.
The door bursts open and swings wildly. I charge into the room to find Hannah suspended in the air. Her body arches backward as she hangs over JJ’s head. Her arms hang limp and bright red blood falls from her nose and drips down her cheek.
“Do something!” JJ pleads.
I shake myself from the shock and grip my hilt. I tilt it forward and activate the sword. Sparks burst from the hilt then sputter out. And the sword dies before it forms. No. No, please no. I try again, but nothing forms.
I look up at Hannah. Tears build in the corners of my eyes and a sob swells in my chest, but I swallow it. No Hannah, you can’t die. Then, I spot a bundle of silver threads extending from her back. Shy Boy is inside her, possessing her body. Suddenly, Hannah turns her head toward me, dripping blood onto the floor.
“You do not know loss, but you will.” Hannah’s voice isn’t her own.
“Fuck you!” I shout through my tears.
I rush across the room and grab the silver threads. Memories burn into my head as my fingers wrap the strands around my hands. Memories of fear, loss, and trauma. But I don’t follow them. I grip the threads tightly with both hands and pull as hard as my muscles will allow. The boy rips from Hannah’s body and slams onto the floor. Dust bursts into the air as his body tumbles across the wood. Hannah drops on top of JJ, who wraps his arms around her and drops with her to break her fall.
Shy Boy looks up at me with seething rage. I follow the threads that extend from my hand and stretch around the room like a web. All of the threads meet in a twisted bundle beside the bed, where they disappear into the wood panel flooring. I look back at the boy and see his eye sockets widen with panic. I know now what I’ve found.
I rush to the bedside and drop to the floor, then press my hands against the wood panel where the threads vanish. It shifts forward and out of its pocket. I pry my fingers between the new gap and lift the panel up, revealing a small cavity. In it is the wooden toy soldier. Its blue uniform has faded to a pale gray and its musket is snapped in half. None of the details remain on its face.
The glistening silver threads wrap around it, weaving into elegant knots. The knots look just like the weaving patterns from Dad’s notebook. The boy’s spirit must be bound to this toy. If I cut these knots, he’ll die. I grab the toy and hold it in the air.
I turn and spot the boy standing beside JJ, who comforts Hannah, seemingly unaware of the boy’s presence. Shy Boy looks at me with a smile. Panic creeps in as I realize I have no way of cutting the threads. I used all of my power, and my sword won’t activate.
The boy tilts his head and reaches his hand around Hannah’s neck. My skin burns hot as fury surges through my veins. I close my eyes and desperately reach for whatever darkness remains inside me. I search through those foreign emotions of the dead prisoners, but stumble upon something else, something mine. Suddenly, the storm within me erupts into golden flames. I twist my fingers around the toy like it’s my hilt.
“Burn,” I say through gritted teeth.