I follow Doug around behind the dual staircases on the main floor. Several huge works of art adorn the McAllister mansion’s walls. If it’s not an album cover from Iron Maiden, I couldn’t tell ya who the hell made it.

“We’ll start over here.” Doug lifts his small notebook toward the large room ahead.

The seasoned hunter takes cautious steps into a dark hollow space. His voice bounces around in the dimness. “Damn damn damn” Doug’s button nose dives in on a flickering lamp on the nearby wall.

“Take a look at these sconces!” He seems ecstatic.

My sneaks pad over the ancient but soft rug.

Doug: “They must me from the turn of the twentieth century. Gas powered, I think.”

A small flickering yellow bulb sits atop an iron talon. “Depressing, if you ask me.”

Dougie scribbles in his pad while I examine the massiveness further. “And, why keep the drapes shut?”

Bending light. Long shadows bend and contort along the towering shelves. Book spines of every color and thickness rest on them. “What can you tell me about McAllister?”

Doug looks up from the marble fireplace. “Who? Henry?”

I nod.

“Well, he was a doctor at first. Henry later became a partner in a railroading outfit here on the east coast.” He scratches something else into his Steno. So much concentration in that baby face. “Let’s see. If I remember right, McAllister also owned a trans-Atlantic shipping company that made all of this possible. He was a powerful man.”

Hypnotic dance of light. Like a moth, I make a slow advance to the sconce on the opposite wall. “So, why all of the hauntings?”

The ghost hunter eyeballs the room, estimating its dimensions. “I’m still trying to figure that one out.” He walks to the tall gray drapes and peels them back a little. “From what I know, McAllister had been accused of multiple counts of murder in the early 1900s. The locals took to calling this place Castle Death.”

Me: “Bullshit, Doug.”

Doug: “It’s the God-honest truth!”

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

The lying sack of shit strides to a far corner and measures an angle.

“Henry held all sorts of swanky parties up here,” Doug says in a flat tone. His eyes lock with mine.

Maybe he’s not lying.

“People started to go missing.” Doug returns to the archway into the library. “The cops could never find any evidence to pin the crimes on McAllister.”

He motions for me to follow him out. “Maybe he bribed the judge.”

Doug shrugs. “Not out of the question.”

Back to the foyer and up the curving staircase, we go. The second floor is just as huge as the first. “How big is this place?”

“Just shy of 11,000 square feet.” Dougie darts off toward the same back west corner of the house – right over the library.

“You seem to have a plan for this.”

He mumbles in accord and marches off into another elegant chamber. A grand piano sits near its center. “There have been multiple accounts of full torso apparition sightings up here in the music room.”

Tall angled shadows form crosses on the floor. Sunlight is a welcome change.

Doug examines the piano and makes a note of its location. “One report from the local paper in the 1950s said that a former groundskeeper saw a young woman standing in that very window.” His ballpoint targets the big window behind me. “When he inspected the home, he found it empty.”

My throat tenses. “Weird.”

“No,” Doug says with force. “Weird was that shit you did last night, yacking up water. That’s weird, man.”

He taps a key on the Steinway. “No. That’s not even the half of the strange shit that’s happened here.”

Curiosity killed the cat. “What else, then?”

Okay, so, I’m a cat.

“Oh, you know,” he says, strolling over to the window behind me. “A fourteen-year-old girl hangs herself in the tree out front for no real reason, a little boy gets ran over by a milk truck, rumors of automatic writing sessions gone wrong. That sort of stuff.”

I join him at the glass. Decayed rows of old fruit trees bend over the hill and out of sight. “Holy crap.”

Dougie smiles. “That’s putting it lightly.”

“Hello?” a familiar voice echoes from downstairs as the front doors slam shut. “Doug? Where are you, dude?”

Jake’s back.

“Up here, man!” Doug trots off toward the stairs and gallops down to meet his compadre.

They’re rapping up their secret handshake when I reach the bottom.

Doug: “What did you find out?”

Jake: “There’s more to those séances that we thought, man.”

Jake holds up another Steno with a crease down its center. “Henry’s teenage daughter had,” his eyes fall to me, “the gift, too.”

Dougie’s lower jaw flaps open. “No shit.”

“Nope.” Jake flips his pad open and recounts his research. “Evelyn McAllister kept a journal with all of her automatic writing sessions in it. They all happened in the sitting room, just like the other accounts said.”

Jake glides an unsure hand through his long black hair. “The shit that’s in that journal,” his green eyes widen, “whoo!”

Doug’s fist pumps. “We’re doing the overnight investigation tonight.” His wild stare scans the foyer. “We’ll need to shut the power down to this place to make sure that no electrical anomalies interfere with our readings.”

Jake’s wavy red curls shake. “Dunno. I took a look at the power box yesterday, and if we shut it off it might decide to stay that way.”

We plod off into the breakfast room. Excitement radiates from both of them.

Doug pulls a flashlight from one of their duffel bags on the table. “That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”