Haunted House

By Willow Taylor

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"Sheesh, now you're even reacting to the harmless ones," chuckled Victor trying another door.

"No ghosts are harmless," muttered Shaper, stuffing his hands into his armpits. The door hadn't opened, so the slender man had knelt in front of it and produced several lock picks. "Uh, Vic, There might be a reason that door is locked, and I don't think you should open it."

"The reason that it's locked is the reason that I'm opening it," said Victor. There was a grating noise and he smirked to himself. "There." He twisted the knob, and this time the door opened. The slim dark haired man stood up and pushed it the rest of the way open.

"I would've thought that the study'd be downstairs, next to the library."

"It's not just the study," Victor said, shutting the door behind him, and glancing around. "Look, there's a bed over there. Somebody didn't leave this room much." He nodded to himself. "Makes this a good room to look in."

Shaper flopped down on a plain wooden chair. It was a little tippy but he figured it was safe. At least this room was quieter than the rest of the house.

It took several minutes for Shaper to realize that something was bothering him, as Victor pawed through the disorganized room.

"Why haven't any ghosts come through?" he asked the empty air - then braced for a reappearance. Loud footsteps tromped down the hall outside, and the door knob rattled, but even that was muffled. Shaper lowered his arms, which had been shielding his face, and looked around again. "Still no ghosts." He grinned broadly. "I LIKE this room."

"Well I don't." Victor slammed down the lid of the chest he was going through. "It is not being as helpful as I'd hoped."

"Well, why don't you break from looking like a madman for a moment, and tell me why no ghosts have come to bother us in here."

Victor sighed and rocked back on his heels, turning cool gray eyes on his friend. "Alright, fine."

Shaper lost his balance. "You will?"

"There's no guarantee we could reproduce it, though, so keep that in mind." Victor dug through his pouch as he wandered around the room a second time, paying more attention to the windowless walls than to the contents this time. At length he produced a bottle from his pouch and poured powder into his gloved hand. Shaper guessed what was coming and held his breath.

Standing in the middle of the room, Victor took a deep breath and blew a fine mist of the glittering dust around the room. It settled on every surface - and the walls. They displayed a twisting glittering lining of some sort of spidery writing.

"That's it. Nice and simple." Victor shrugged. "A warding spell lines the walls," He lifted a foot. "And the floor, probably the ceiling too, but that's take more effort than I feel like putting into it."

"Can you do that?"

"Me? Nah, I'm no mage." He shrugged, and automatically went for a clove. "Look at the doorknob. That's one fine piece of work there. The way it locks the spells into place. Probably took years to complete. Very impressive."

Shaper stared at the thin, elegant and completely indecipherable script that covered the walls. "Uh, yeah." He muttered, and looked down at the floor, where the glittering was the strongest. There was a wad of paper under one leg of the chair he was in. He wished he had another to make it more stable. "Impressive."

Shaper frowned and squinted. The dust, whatever it was, had settled over the folded wad of paper, as well. And... there seemed to be writing on the paper. He reached down and yanked on it, forgetting that he was sitting on the chair it was under. Finally he remembered to tilt up and removed the paper, unfolding it, and found it to be a few sheets of parchment. He turned it around a few times to try and figure out what it said, as Victor went back to his search.

"Hey Victor?"

"What is it now, Shaper?"

"You want to have a look at this?" Victor turned around to say something, and saw the paper that Shaper was holding between two fingers. He looked at the size and color of it, with the rough edge along one side, like it had been torn out of a book. Shaper smiled at Victor with the best innocent expression he'd managed in a long time. Angel managed not to snatch it away in a fit of pique, and take it quite calmly. A brief inspection proved it to be the missing page from the journal, that he'd spent the last four hours looking for.

"Thank you," he said between his teeth looking the other way. It wasn't often that he missed something - and less often that Shaper saw it. Shaper leaned on his hands and smiled at his friend even more broadly.

"Was that a thank you?"

"...yes. Enjoy it."

Shaper laughed for the first time since he'd realized what Victor was planning for the night, and clapped his hands together gleefully. "I was right! Oh boy!" His glee was short lived, because it threw him off balance - without the steadying wad of paper the chair tipped, and he fell to the floor with a crash.

"Owww..." Shaper rubbed his head and looked up, to see Victor offering him a hand up. He accepted it and was hauled to his feet. He brushed himself off, since the faintly glowing glittery dust was now all over him,

He looked up again, when he heard the door open.

"What? Victor where are you going?"

"I'm heading back downstairs." The smaller dark haired man stepped out into the hall, and Shaper followed him automatically.

"After all that effort, you want to go back downstairs?" Shaper demanded. "Can't we just stay in the safe room?"

"Yes, the fires are down there - and the coffee should be done." Not paying any attention to the blood, let alone the trailing marks that led down the hall to the stairs like someone had fled on hands and knees from their murderer, Victor started down the stairs. Shaper stood uncertainly at the top. Victor turned down the hall towards the kitchen, disappearing form sight. A ghastly silvery figure appeared, and grinned up the stairs at Shaper, smearing blood across his face, and then turning to follow Victor down the hall, disappearing as he faded into the darkness.

"This is not a good day..." Shaper whimpered. He put a foot forward to go down the stairs and a face rose out of the blood, mouthing 'help me'. Shaper whimpered again.

Victor sat back down on the stained couch, and set his mug of coffee down. It had taken three tries to get water, not blood or slime out of the faucets, but he'd gotten the mug rinsed out, and he wanted a second look at the journals he'd found.

Shaper ran past behind Victor, screaming at the top of his lungs, a severed head floating along after him. Moments later, he ran past in the other direction, still screaming, followed by a hand, also floating in space. Victor ignored it, and kept reading. Shaper kept screaming, running by again, pursued by what appeared to be a torso, walking on its arm-stumps. It wasn't even moving very fast.

"Excitable isn't he?" asked a voice beside Victor. Victor took a sip of his drink, and turned a page thoughtfully. Shaper fled from a pair of legs.

"I wonder if a whole body would get that reaction." He mused, glancing over at the severed head that was sitting nonchalantly beside him on the sofa, like a twisted sort of throw-pillow.

"Oh, give it a few more passes... here comes the other hand..."

Victor turned as Shaper went past and snapped. "Shaper! BREATHE!"

"*gasp* AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!" continued Shaper, boots thumping as he ran away from the grasping fingers.

"I think he may be broken."

"Nah, he was always like that."

Hands came over the back of the sofa, and picked up the head, settling it on the neck of a torso. Grisly ribbons of blood trailed from every line in the ghost's picture puzzle like form.

"Give him a moment to catch his breath would you?" Victor said, turning the page, and re-crossing his legs in the other direction. "When you're done with this pass."

"Boy, you're cold."

"Victooor!" wailed Shaper over the sounds of the haunting.

"What is it?" demanded the investigator, setting his coffee cup down on the floor, and standing up. "I've almost got this worked out!"

"I found the basement!"

"And this should mean something to me, why?"

"Because I'm going to fall in if you don't help me!" sobbed the risen. "So could you please come here before something grabs my feet?"

Shaper had indeed found the basement, or rather, the trap door that led to the basement - unfortunately it was hinged on the wrong side, if it was hinged properly at all, and he'd missed the narrow, steep stairs that went down. And there was a child ghost poking him with a stick.

"Aw, shoo," Victor said, fighting the urge to laugh. "Can't you see when a guy is down on his luck?" He flapped his hands at him. The child looked up, and blinked, then disappeared. Angel reached down and grabbed Shaper's wrists, hauling him upward. Shaper ended up mostly in Victor' lap and gave him a hug.

"That was scary!"

"You're starting to worry me." Victor pushed Shaper away with one hand.

"Sorry," Shaper pouted. Victor leaned over and stuck his head down into the basement. He sat up, blinked a few times and looked again. "Something good?" Shaper asked, smoothing his hair down.

"I don't think so - can you go grab a lamp from the kitchen?"

The stairs were so steep they were practically a ladder and Shaper was not making it easy to go down it, by staying right behind Victor.

"Do I ever get a say in what we do? No! Why can't we fight monsters in the sun, with sand, and surf and lifeguards in small swimsuits?" he grumbled under his breath. "We always do what you want to do."

"Oh shut up."

"No!"

They reached the bottom of the stairs fairly quickly, the cellar wasn't too deep. Victor spread another handful of the powder, and the walls started to glow with writing. Victor turned in a slow circle, while Shaper breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh good. No ghosts in here." He sighed again, and rubbed his arms. "But it is damn cold."

"It's not the same spell, Shape." Victor said quietly. "Besides, can't you feel it? We're practically swimming in homogenized spirit."

"That would be that funny feeling dancing up and down my spine and into my gut that I'm carefully avoiding," Shaper replied with a false cheer. It was not improved by the mist of his breath. It really was freezing down there. "But what would do that?"

"A well of lost souls," Victor breathed, mist coming out. "I've heard about them but I've never seen one attempted." He pointed to the low point of the cellar, where a roughly circular patch glowed with somewhat more intensely than the spell writing and with the silvery ghost light that the ghosts upstairs had.

"Great. What does it do?"

"It fills."

"Great. What does that mean?"

Victor sighed. "It draws in lost souls and concentrates them. This one has been going for too long- it's full, which is why there are so many ghosts in the house - but they can't escape, and more spirits keep coming, because of the pull of the well."

"So why are they all in such a nasty mood?"

"I'm not sure." He lit another clove, and recounted. When had he smoked those other three? "But the ones upstairs are drawing off this pool of energy, which is why they're all so strong and solid looking. Your average ghost doesn't have that kind of power. It also explains the general feeling of disquiet in the house."

"Well if this thing has to be made, then why wasn't it used?" Shaper asked, hunching down in his shirt again, and rubbing at his arms. "You said it was a tool, so why wasn't it used, and left to keep filling?"

"My guess is that the man who built the spell, and if what I've managed to cipher out in that journal, the house as well, died, and hadn't told anyone what he was doing. After a while, possibly no more than a few weeks, the house became too full of psychic backlog for anybody even marginally sensitive- and most people are, to come into comfortably. After that, it kept building up until it reached the level it's at now."

"Do you have any idea how pompous you sound when you do that?"

"Shut up, Shaper." Victor sat down on the bottom step, setting the lamp down beside his boot. He took a draw off of his clove, and held it in for a few moments, eyes dark and unfocused as he thought. Shaper stared into space and wondered if there was any booze in the cellar, or just a spirit still. The risen grinned to himself over the amusing concept, and briefly pursued the mental image of distilled spirits.

"Pompous, huh?" Victor said at last. Shaper jerked into the now.

"What? I thought you were thinking about serious stuff - not how stupid you sound when you expedite the plot."

"Christ Shaper, what in hell do you mean by that?"

"Storytellers! You've heard the stories - strange, powerful entities that control your destiny into order to weave tales for their own amusement."

"Don't be stupid Shaper, who'd want to read about us?" He brushed it off. "I was thinking about the well, but... pompous?"

"Yeah, like a big overstuffed college professor."

"Yeegh." Victor made a face and stubbed out the his clove. "Gotta remember that."

"It also makes me feel like an idiot," Shaper added helpfully.

"Well there's a logical reason for that, Shaper."

"Oh?"

"You are an idiot."