Mitch had been woken to a sudden text in the middle of the night, finding Shaun had messaged the new group chat that he was entered into with himself, Shaun and Emma
“Remember, we agreed tonight!” Shaun had sent with a myriad of emojis indicating excitement.
Mitch lay in his bed as he groggily looked at his phone. He had to read it a few times before he remembered that it was Thursday, the night that P.Normal was said to hold his press conference near carlow.
“Man, it's 4AM” He sent back before he quickly checked into the other group chat where Saoirse and Joel had been having a large almost 200 post conversation about the perfect horror movie.
He spent a moment adding his two cents on the topic with a few references to movies that he liked in the genre before another message from Shaun popped up saying “You better not be busy, we agreed!” Mitch could only chuckle and reacted with a thumbs up before he dropped his phone and passed out once more.
After school Mitch would have met up with them outside the school gates. “So how are we getting there?” Emma asked once Shaun arrived “You are the expert so you gotta sort travel.”
“I’ll be getting a lift from my grandfather, he wants to see it too.” Mitch explained as he leaned on the gate.
“Weird, I thought he was only in with the younger crowd.” Shaun said, but then moved on to transport “I asked my dad for a lift down, he agreed as long as I help out with his work on the weekend.”
“Well that’s that sorted then. Well what time should we all be there by?” Emma added.
“Well it should be at seven tonight. Everyone comes to my place by six.” Shaun explained before he made a correction “Except Mitch that is, we will meet you there at seven. Keep your phone on so we can find you.”
“Will do, seems easy enough.” Mitch said as he leaned off the gate to start walking off “See you both out there.” With a few goodbyes exchanged he would walk out back to the manor.
When he first pressed the buzzer at the gate there was no reply for a moment. Puzzled by this he pressed it again… Which led to a third and fourth press after long enough.
After what felt like 10 presses of the buzzer and about 5 minutes of waiting he finally heard Jasper say “Oh, sorry there Mitch!” as the gate began to open. “I was reading this book on anti-gravity, it was impossible to put down!”
Mitch just groaned as he knew it was coming the second he responded. He ignored the cackling from the intercom and just made his way up to the front door where Jasper was once again still laughing at his own joke, hunched over and slapping his knee.
“Yes, yes, you did something funny.” Mitch said as he walked past him into the lobby “But we have more pressing issues tonight to deal with.”
“Ah yes, that announcement that that silly little blog had.” Jasper nodded, following Mitch into the living area where he put out his homework onto the table.
“Yeah, by seven tonight they are having a live event at the manor and we need to be there to see what they are up to.” Mitch said sternly, as if he was the one in charge here while Jasper was still childishly hiding a laugh at his own joke.
Mitch decided to start on his work and wait until Jasper had gotten his little laughing fit out of his system before continuing this conversation.
Once Jasper had calmed down he asked “Aren’t you going to be meeting friends there too?” Surprisingly for once he didn’t sound like he was mocking or lecturing him.
“Yeah, one of them is big into the blog so it's a perfect excuse to head out.” Mitch explained.
“Two birds with one stone.” Jasper mocked, back to sounding how he usually does now. “Lara and I will go and look around then.”
“Well I gotta finish my homework before we get going.” He said, returning to his books.
“Alright, best of luck.” Jasper said, standing and slapping his shoulder before heading off.
He spent some time studying and writing on one of his end of year projects that was worth quite a large amount of his final grade for science. Eventually while he was working Lara would enter and take a seat across from him. “Good afternoon.” She said sluggishly.
“You look dead.” Mitch pointed out, sitting back into his seat so he could look at her while talking. “It takes some time to get used to the sporadic work schedule.”
She nodded and took a phone out of her pocket to check the time “Damn though It’s late…”
“You’ll get used to it. We got drinks and stuff to help with that too for days we gotta work.” Mitch casually explained before offering “Want me to get you one?”
“No thank you.” Lara politely replied.
She sat quietly for a while which prompted Mitch to return to his homework. She was still feeling nervous and very out of place in this large manor with what she could only perceive as professional ghost hunters. “How do you deal with this line of work?” She eventually blurted out after several moments of contemplating whether to talk or not.
Mitch looked up from his report and after a moment he dropped his pen onto the page he was looking at and closed it over to use it as a makeshift bookmark. He returned to that more casual position where he sat back in the comfy seat “That’s a rather hard question to answer.” he said at first, needing a few moments to think about it.
“I didn’t mean to distract you too much, I am just curious.” Lara tried to frantically explain.
“Don’t worry about it” He assured her as he drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, leaning forward after a moment to rest his elbows atop his knees. “Well how I deal with it when I have to think about it, is that I just remember there is a reason for our work.”
“Is that really enough for you to be able to see these horrific things?” She asked, a worried look seeping across her face “That’s an incredibly mature way to look at it.”
“I wouldn’t call it mature.” He chuckled. “I just know if we don’t do it, these people will linger on and eventually become a danger to everyone else. It still shakes me up when I’m alone and remember all the things I’ve seen.”
When he saw the worry seep across her face again he added “Jasper told me that the best way to work in this field, is to learn to separate your emotions from your work. It is okay to be worried, or upset, once the job is done. If it happens in the middle of a job we could make vital mistakes, so I guess that’s just how I deal with it at the moment.”
“You sound incredibly professional when you put it that way.” She smiled, her worry still plastered across her face but she was at least happy to hear a solid answer.
“I wish, Jasper is the professional. I’m just the bumbling sidekick.” Mitch laughed, sharing a large smile with her. “We are both kinda in the same boat. I just have a bit more prep time.”
She seemed to ease back into her seat. Some of those thoughts that creeped into her mind last night were bothering her a lot, so her next question was “How do you know when you need to help, and when you need to run?”
“That one just comes from experience.” He replied rather quickly “I’ve messed up plenty of times. Hell, the job we are going to do tonight happened because I messed up.”
“What do you mean?” She asked, scratching at her leg as they talked. “I haven’t had all too much time to talk with Jasper after last night.”
“Well we are going out to investigate some blogger who said he has a public announcement to make. Truth is, the announcement he has to make is something to do with a Rune that I left in that manor last time we were there and forgot to erase.” He explained, slowly standing up once he finished “Speaking of, I need to wash up before getting ready to go.”
She pretended to know what he meant by nodding along and didn’t want to bring up that he didn't necessarily answer her question. She let it drop and followed him out into the lobby.
“I’ll see you in a bit.” He said as he quickly jogged up the stairs.
“What a weird kid…” Lara thought before she went back to her room following him up.
After a short while of preparation, Mitch stared at himself in the mirror, something he had been doing a lot lately. Often wondering how long it would be until he no longer recognised who was staring back at him.
After a hot wash, a change of clothes, and a quick check for his phone and keys he was off to the kitchen on the ground floor. Inside he found Sophia was brewing a pot of tea. “Good afternoon.” she said to him.
She began pouring the boiled water into their small metal kettle that had a few teabags sitting inside, the smell of the water infusing with the leaves from within the bags filled the kitchen and was a rather nostalgic smell with how often pots are brewed in both the manor, and his own household.
“Always working hard on the tea.” He smiled, walking over and grabbing the cups to help carry them into the dining room.
Lara and Jasper were already sitting inside the dining room looking over what notes that he had managed to dig up on the blog. “Nice of you to join us.” He said as he saw Mitch come in with Sophia “When I said go wash up, I didn’t mean to take an hour.”
“Oh shut up.” He quickly responded, walking over to take a seat next to Lara and Jasper on the end of the table where they sat across from each other. “What did you find?”
“Work, work, work, with you lot.” Sophia said as she put the metal teapot down. “I’ll save dinner for when you get back, it shouldn’t be too late this time, right?”
Jasper nodded “It starts at seven. I doubt it will go on very long at all.”
Mitch picked up one of the printed off sheets that Jasper seemed so adamant on having despite all of them having very easy access to phones that the information could be sent to. On it was a social media profile, like when he found Laras, but this one was for a man named Joseph Peters.
“That is the identity of our one, P.Normal blogger.” Jasper explained as Mitch read through the recent posts from his personal page that even linked his own blog with messages such as “BIG REVEAL LATER TODAY; be there guys!” and “Checked out ANOTHER house that was HAUNTED this weekend. Found evidence of REAL GHOSTS.” with the odd scared face emoji put at the end of any that had mentions of the word ghost, or haunted.
How he formatted his posts was enough to make Mitch think that he was crazy, especially since littered between his posts were images that were just white text on a stock image that tried to convey some form of motivational message.
“This guy seems like every mom I have ever seen using this site.” Mitch responded as he put the sheet down, not able to stomach any more shared images that assure good luck as long as you shared and tagged enough friends.
“Hard to think this is the mastermind behind the P.Normal blog, isn’t it?” Jasper said, handing him the next sheet.
“Please tell me that was a joke.” Mitch replied, taking it to look over the recent posts that had been printed out from the blog so he could compare them.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
“It kind of is when you think about it though.” Lara added. “If you look at the website, It’s very well formatted and all the grammar is correct. Compared to his personal posts it seems like this was written by a professional.”
“Well you are one hundred percent sure that Joseph is our guy?” Mitch asked as he put the sheet down, having recently read the newer posts so he had no need to again.
“Of course.” Jasper nodded as he handed him another sheet with pictures of Joseph on the blog “He has never gone out of his way to hide his identity so it was very easy to track down who he is.”
“I guess if he is just some paranormal blogger he may not feel any need to hide that.” Mitch said, looking at them. “Still, Lara makes a point. The blog seems too well written for someone as annoying as this on any other media.” Checking any other sheet that went to video sharing sites, chat rooms, and social media he typed in that rather obnoxious format everywhere but on his blog.
“Perhaps, a ghost writer?” Jasper grinned, waiting for the reaction.
Mitch let out an exhausted groan while Lara tried to be more polite about her disgust with a half smile. “Come on, that was bad, even for you.” Mitch said.
“You just can’t appreciate true comedy.” Jasper replied, gathering up the files again “But it's getting close to go time. We should leave all our stuff here, especially daggers and any magic items.”
“So everything we take.” Mitch laughed, taking his notebook and dagger out of his pockets to leave them resting atop the table. “Should be an easy enough job.”
“I’m not sure what you two would refer to as easy.” Lara added as she got out of her seat, following Jasper's lead. “Last night was considered an easy job apparently.”
Mitch seemed rather confused by the statement but Jasper was quick to hurry them out the door before it could be dwelled on “Well come on, into the car you two!”
“Alright, alright, no need to shove so hard!” Mitch spat as they loaded out into the car.
It was only a few moments of startup before they were off into the streets towards the manor.
Mitch spent most of the ride dead quiet, lost in thought over what could happen here and how he planned to clean up the mess he had made.
Lara occasionally glanced into the front seats at the two but she spent most of the ride looking over the files that Jasper let her take along.
“When we get there, I split off to my friends and we watch it from as close as possible. One of the guys is obsessed with the blog so it won’t stand out if we do.” Mitch explained.
“Very good.” Jasper nodded “Myself and Lara will watch from a distance then.” A quiet nod was shared between the three and the ride continued quietly.
By the time they arrived by the manor they had ten minutes until the event was to start. There was a surprising amount of people around the forest surrounding the manor. “What the hell… There’s so many people here.” Mitch mumbled as he overlooked the handful of cars.
There were also several lights throughout the forest towards the manor that lit up the path towards the main gate which had been restored and locked since they last came here.
“It may be a bad idea to stay together.” Jasper mentioned, pointing to the same guard they saw the first time they came here standing in front of the gate. “He’ll recognise us as a group.”
Mitch quickly walked off from them and checked his phone, no new messages as of the last 40 minutes where the last was just “On our way!” from Emma.
Mitch quickly typed in that he was here and waited around between the trees until they arrived a few minutes later.
“You excited man?” He heard Shaun shout from the small crowd when they saw him with Emma in tow, she was clearly less interested than he was.
“I’m curious at best.” Mitch replied, pushing off the tree he was leaning on while checking his phone once again “Should be starting in a few minutes.”
“Then let's get up front!” Shaun quickly responded, grabbing his arm to pull him along at equal speed.
Luckily for Mitch, Shaun didn’t seem to care about the crowd and quickly pushed his way up towards the front of the line, quite similarly to Joel. Emma followed along as best she could and eventually they were all lined up outside the main gate of the manor.
Minutes passed and Shaun looked ready to burst with excitement. Mitch couldn’t understand how someone could be this excited over such a small blogger. If it was a celebrity that would be different, but this man was just a small-time ghost hunter with some random success here and there and even then none of it was proven to the normal folk.
After a few more moments of waiting they finally saw him coming from the manor itself. He dressed just as tacky as Mtich was expecting, trying to look like some edgy caricature in his trench coat and leather pants. He had his short black hair slicked back with a near disgusting amount of gel that could be seen through any form of natural light bouncing off of it and most likely amplifying like a form of sick mirror.
To finish his cartoonish demeanour he covered the rest of his face with a simple Thalia theatre mask. He stopped by the gate for a moment and said “Thank you all for coming!” In a boisterous tone that could only imply a smug grin behind the mask.
He seemed to glance in Mitch’s general direction, but with the mask he wasn't able to tell if he was actually looking at him or not. He assumed it was Shaun most likely who looked like he was holding in, a children's party catered with only sugar snacks worth of energy in pure excitement.
“So you know I have a rather large announcement to make today, that you will all get to be part of.” He said as he put a hand onto the lock, pulling it off to let everyone in.
Mitch mostly felt stupid now that on closer inspection the lock wasn't even closed, just sitting there to make it look like it was.
“Do come along.” He said as the gates swung open. Shaun tugged on Mitch and Emma to follow along. It was hard to make much sense of what was going on since it was all one large rush to the stairs in the lobby.
He was able to make out the generators were still here, and it seemed like there were even more at this point. Along the stairs there were wires running along down the halls into some of the rooms they passed.
Though they had personally passed the spirit here he couldn’t help but feel a bit offended on his behalf. The man stuck around and protected his manor in death, and now some pompous fool in a mask barges in and takes over the place for the sake of his blog.
“Now, what we have in here is a discovery that could shake the world.” He started, walking them through the same steps Mitch remembered taking to get to the master bedroom. Inside was where the biggest tragedy occurred.
The wall from the master bedroom to the room behind it had been smashed down to make more room, along with the bed being removed so people could enter the room and watch. Shaun of course took a planted position by the front with Mitch and Emma while others flooded in, some entering through the back room door. It seemed like there was a lot less than Mitch thought, or were they only taking in so many people at a time?
Besides them in the front it seemed there was actually a camera crew here set up to record what was going to happen. “Can’t be a news crew.” He thought, rubbing over his chin to feel for the non existent stubble “Cameraman’s way too young, most likely students” He reasoned as he noted the boom mic was also being held up by a teenager. “Is he trying to make this look more important than it is?”
He traced the view of the camera to the rune on the floor which was quite obvious that's why they were here in the first place. Joseph took a moment to let everyone settle before walking up to stand by the rune. “So you may know I have written a post about this rune in particular that resembles several others that I have found.”
He took a stance over the rune once the students by the camera gave him the thumbs up. As he was preparing for this, Lara stood closer to the middle of the room with Jasper where she could hardly see over the crowd. What she could do though, was feel that something was off. “Jasper…” She whispered, not sure how to say it without alerting someone.
He glanced at her and just nodded “I get it, crowds are uncomfortable.” He whispered back “But it won’t be long.”
Once they were shushed by others in the crowd Jasper kept his gaze on Joseph who was hovering over the rune. He glanced first into the hallway where he seemed to get the go ahead from whatever part of the camera crew was out there before he looked out the window as well to the parking area below.
He nodded once again before he returned his gaze to the crowd “Well, here we go. I hope you are all ready to witness something that could change what we know about this world!”
The crowd fell silent as he paused for what only to be assumed dramatic effect. Once he was done wasting time he placed his hands down onto the rune, where Mitch could immediately feel something was wrong.
In an instant he felt the natural magic of the air swarm to him and seep down into the rune where it began to glow. The crowd ultimately let out some shocked “oohs” and “ahhs” as the clicks of cameras along with some flashes filled the room.
Chattering began almost instantly as Mitch tried to focus on what was being said, but most was drowned out by other chatter. The rune itself continued to glow for some time, even getting brighter as Joseph held onto it longer. He eventually let go of it where the odd glowing symbol would die back down into just a carving in the floor.
“Now I hope you see.” He said as he stood up, a bead of sweat dripping from behind his mask.
“There is something to these runes that hide a secret from us that we could figure out!”
Everyone went silent after he began to talk as he looked to the hall again, seemingly getting the go ahead again he nodded and said “With this, I implore anyone who wants to know the secret of these runes to join me online in the group I will be creating. Everyone here will be given a chance to give my associate outside their details to join on the way out.”
“Did you see that?!” Shaun said to Mitch once Joseph left the room. Mitch didn’t respond for the moment as he noticed that he walked down the opposite end of the hall to where they came from.
“Yeah, it was… just a light show?” He asked, trying to sew any seed of doubt that he could. He knew he couldn’t go after him, even in spirit form at this point with so many people around.
“Awh man, you can’t tell me that's just a light show!” He replied, turning to Emma “What do you think?” almost shouting to be heard over the crowd.
She was in thought for a few moments before she said “It certainly did seem strange, why would this one light up at his tough and not the other ones?”
“Don’t tell me you buy that.” Mitch laughed, starting to move once they were being funnelled out of the room by the bouncer that had been at the gate once he arrived.
Emma shrugged in response and said “Well, I don’t know. It didn’t look like any lights I had ever seen. Did you not feel that warmth when it happened?”
“Can’t say I felt anything of the sort.” He casually replied.
By the front door there was a line where another man was waiting, taking down the details of anyone who was willing to join this group that Joseph had mentioned. Shaun went over to the line quickly and Emma was surprisingly close behind him. “Come on.”
“God dammit…” Mitch thought as he saw them prepare. It would be best to become part of the group as it were to keep tabs on them.
“Name, social media?” He heard the tall man asking each person that got up close to him and took down their information to use later. “Shaun, Shaun Douger.” He seemed rather excited when his information was taken down, where Emma would do the same.
Eventually it came to Mitch who looked at him a bit blankly. The man stared at him before waving his hand slightly “Name and social media?”
“Ah, yeah. Mitch, Mitch Wright.” He said. The man looked at him with a cocked brow but took it down before waving him off.
“What’s this guy's deal?” He thought while they left the main hall of the old dilapidated manor.
The group was very quiet at this point after watching this all. Shaun shook his head and stepped in front of the two, hands out wide as he said “I told you guys it would be worth coming out here.”
“I guess, it’s something to think about.” Emma replied vacantly, checking her phone as they all did at the same time.
“Well, wanna go out for food tomorrow?” Mitch would ask once he read the mood in the air.
Emma seemed rather surprised he asked but was quick to respond and even answer for Shaun “Yeah, we would love to.”
“Let's say six, meet at the school?” Mitch planned, setting an alarm on his phone while the two also made an alarm.
“We should probably get home, dads waiting.” Shaun said, slipping his phone back into his pocket. “Thanks for coming out tonight guys.”
“It was certainly an experience.” Mitch chuckled half heartedly before waving them off and heading back to the car.
Lara and Jasper were already in the car with the engine running. Lara was laying down in the back seat which led to Mitch asking “What’s going on?” as he looked back in the rear view mirror.
“We don’t want them seeing us together.” Jasper explained, starting to reverse down the path “We saw the guard recognise you from that night we came.”
Once they pulled out into the main road away from the crowd of cars trying to leave they felt it was time to talk. “What the hell was that…” Mitch said first.
“Seems like he was able to half activate a rune.” Jasper sighed. “It looks like we are dealing with a bigger threat than I thought here, I’ll have to tell the family about this.”
“What does the family do about something like this?” Lara asked from the back seat.
“That will depend on what Rin says about this case.” Jasper explained. “Lara mentioned she could feel something in there.”
“Yeah.” She was quick to reply. “Just before he cast the rune, the room was cold.”
“Probably the feeling of him absorbing magic.” Jasper reasoned “From what we know of your ability so far, you can sense mana. Makes sense you could tell he was drawing it in.”
“Wait, what sense?” Mitch asked rather shocked, especially with how casually they talked about this without telling him anything.
“Oh yes.” Jasper replied with a grunt “I forgot to tell you, Lara seems to have some form of ability to sense spirits and mana. We found it last night on the mission we went on together.”
“It’s just like a cold feeling down my spine.” She explained, “It’s not very advanced.”
“Sounds like one of those TV mediums.” Mitch tried to joke but he was tensing up the more he thought about it. “But on a serious matter…” He clasped his hands together and just fiddled with his thumbs “The guys from school were very into what was shown. They signed up for that group without much hesitation.”
“This could become a problem down the line.” Jasper said “We can’t do much about it until we get word from Rin. Keep an eye on your friends and see what they are up to.”
“That’s all I really can do now…” He sighed.