“Call this one the Parlor,” Blake said. “All the other rooms will get names as we explore them. This is going to be base camp though. So let’s unpack and get all the cameras ready. Then we’ll start looking around.”

  Ellie stepped forward. “Do you want us to help you unpack and set stuff up?”

  Blake extended the telescoping legs of a short tripod. “Nah, we’ll get it faster on our own. But don’t wander off. Stay in this room.”

  With little else to look at in the Parlor, Shane found himself standing in front of the stone hearth, peering up at the pair of portraits. The one on the right portrayed a serious-looking man in an old-fashioned black coat and white shirt, standing with a book. He looked thin without being skinny, and his lip curled up in an ugly sneer. Everything about the man pretty much screamed that he was stern and disapproving. He must have been a blast at family functions.

  Shane had a great uncle Stan who’d looked a lot like the guy in the portrait, all spider-thin arms and legs and a massive scowl whenever kids were around. In fact, he had once yelled at Shane for a good three minutes because Shane had stood in front of the TV for a few seconds too long on Thanksgiving, accidentally blocking the uncle’s view of the football game.

  The other portrait was of a woman in a plain rust-colored dress with white frill around the neck and shoulders. She was pale and slender with a mouth pinched in disappointment, pictured holding a tiny dove in the palm of her hand. She just looked… sad. It was maybe the most melancholy painting he’d ever seen. Then again, it’s not like he’d really paid much attention to artwork.

  Shane set his backpack on the ground and slumped into one of the chairs by the fireplace. Dust exploded in a foggy cloud around him, making him cough several times.

  Blake chuckled from the other side of the room. “Yeah, you’ll want to be careful about the dust, little dude. Places like this are always crazy dirty. Maybe next time, try to take the dust cover off the chair before sitting on it?”

  “Thanks for the tip,” he snapped back. Seriously, would it have killed them to mention that before now?

  Still holding her own bag, Ellie carefully pulled the cover off the chair opposite him, set it gently on the ground, and sat down. “Weird. This one doesn’t seem so dusty.”

  Shane rolled his eyes. “Show-off.”

  Ellie smirked. “So what’s in the backpack? Did you bring anything good? I could go for some of that beef jerky.”

  He unzipped the top of his pack and pulled out a bag of dried meat labeled Super Economy Size. It was as big as a throw pillow, the kind of bag you got at one of those wholesale club stores where the macaroni-and-cheese boxes were sealed into flats of at least a dozen and the cheez-balls came in in barrels bigger than his backpack.

  Shane zipped off the perforated top and offered her the open end of the bag. “Here.”

  Ellie took out a strip, then ripped a piece off it with her hands and placed it in her mouth, eating the jerky with as much grace as anyone could manage. Shane, on the other hand, bit off a chunk from his strip and chomped down on the salty, leathery beef with gleeful abandon. Eating the stuff always made him feel like a cowboy for some reason.

  “What else did you bring?”

  “Nothing much. Like I said, granola bars, a clean shirt and stuff, a flashlight, a towel, and that old soldier figurine of my dad’s. Oh, I’ve got a tube of Pringles too.”

  “Why’d you bring that?”

  “So we could have chips that didn’t get smashed.”

  “No, not the Pringles, buckethead. Your dad’s soldier figurine.”

  His hand shot back into the bag and drew out a small wooden figure of a man mounted on a white horse. It was old, judging by the worn, flaking paint, but the intricate details carved into it by some long-ago craftsman were still easy to make out. “I…” He cocked his head, staring at the old-fashioned toy in his hand. “I don’t really know why I brought it, honestly. It was in that curio cabinet Mom has, displayed in the center, I guess in case Dad comes home. I was staring at it after I packed everything up for tonight and was on my way out. Before I knew it, I was taking it out and shoving it in with the rest of my stuff.”

  Ellie’s eyes flew wide again. “Get it away from me,” she commanded. “Get it out of here!” She stopped then, putting a hand up to her head.

  “Ell, what’s going on? Tell me.”

  “Nothing. I’m… I’m fine. Go put it in the van. It shouldn’t be here. It’s going to get broken or something. You know how your dad feels about that thing. He’ll go supernova.”

  “It’ll be okay, I’m sure. I thought maybe we could use a mascot or something tonight.”

  “If I wanted a mascot, I’d have brought a teddy bear. Put it away.”

  With a shrug, he slipped it back into the dark interior pocket of his pack. Ellie didn’t have to be all weird about it. He’d been doing stuff without a good, solid reason since he was three years old, when he poked his Snoopy spoon through his mom’s favorite wicker basket to see if he could make a hole big enough for his dump truck toy to fit. Both Ellie and Mom had to be sick and tired of hearing him say, “I don’t know” after they’d asked him why he’d done something he knew he shouldn’t have.

  But wasn’t that part of growing up? Sure, he was twelve now and probably should be getting past all that, but growing up sounded so boring.

  He glanced behind his chair at the older guys. Blake was twisting together a rod for some kind of large microphone, and Dom had a collection of little gadgets laid out in front of him. Shane huffed. They needed to hurry it up.

  “Did you bring anything interesting?” he asked Ellie, hoping to fill the empty space between them with something besides the awkwardness from her reaction to the wooden cavalryman.

  “No. A change of clothes is about it. I was hoping to sneak out a jar of peanut butter and some pretzels, but I could never get into the kitchen by myself. I have my cell phone, too, you know, in case there’s an emergency.”

  “Right. I can’t wait to make a 911 call from ‘that huge creepy house on the hill outside of town.’” He chuckled to himself.

  She pulled a glossy silver phone from her bag but then cringed looking at it. “Snails. No signal.”

  “No one probably ever put a cell tower out here on Creepy Mansion Hill. I guess that means no 911. You can play games, though, right?”

  “Duh.”

  “Let’s play something then. Or else I’m going to keep staring at these two pictures, and I can’t figure out which is worse. The old dude makes me want to apologize for everything I’ve ever done wrong so he’ll stop glaring at me, and the lady makes me think the sun might never come up again.”

  Ellie glanced up at the woman’s portrait as if seeing it for the first time. “She’s not that bad.”

  “If you say so.”

  Without adding anything else, Ellie handed the phone to him. “Here. Try not to use up all the battery. And don’t download any social media apps. My dad will have a fit.”

  “Don’t worry—no signal, remember?”

  The two of them traded the phone back and forth as the Trackers finished putting the gear together. Shane got an extra little kick from playing the Phantom Trackers ghost-hunting game as they waited.

  Finally, with the room began to darken to a charcoal gray as the sun disappeared in the west, Dom snapped on a florescent lantern. It flooded the room with an industrial, bone-white light that chased the shadows into the corners.

  “Okay, kids. Here are your personal camera rigs,” Blake finally said. “Slip it over your head. It’s a wireless camera that we adapted and fitted to these headbands. Don’t take it off, whatever you do. As long as you have it, we’ll be able to see and hear what’s going on around you, even if where you are is pitch-black. The laptop over there on the table monitors and records all of us.”

  Blake pulled his over his head and around his forehead. He clicked a button on the side, and a red LED bulb flashed on. “I’m recording. Check me.”

  His partner picked a camera without a band up off the table and clipped it to the side of his hat. After tapping his own red light on, he checked the laptop, moving his head from side to side and up and down. He looked like he was being tested for a concussion by following a penlight. “We’re both good. You’re up, kids.”

  Shane took a headband from Blake and pulled it down over his forehead. It stretched to a nice, snug fit without being too tight. His fingers fumbled around the square device hanging next to his temple until he located what felt like a switch. With a click, the same red light flared at the edge of his peripheral vision. “I’m on.”

  “Me too,” Ellie announced. Hers looked almost normal, like a real headband she might wear to hold her hair back, except for the camera box.

  Dom nodded back at them. “You’re both good too. Are you guys ready to see what’s been hidden in here for two hundred years?”

  Shane grinned. The moment was finally here. “Holy snails, yes! Let’s go!” So much anticipation had built up in him that containing it was like trying to hold back a rodeo bull. His hands were shaking, his mouth was dry, and if they didn’t start moving now—right now, in the next few seconds—he was going to jump up and down because he simply could not keep all that energy inside. He felt like a balloon blown up so full, it was straining not to pop.

  He was scared, too, of course. Terrified, really, with the reputation of the house and the sun going down. But it all swirled together in one big, adrenaline-filled pot, the excitement and the fear, the expectation of walking through a real haunted house. And that pot was about to boil over.

  Now, at last, it was time.

  Chapter Five

  Shane

  “You’ve got lights attached to the cameras too. The switch is here on the bottom.” Blake tapped the floor-facing edge of his gadget, and another LED, this one white, flashed on. “They’re about as bright as the sun on Saturday morning, so don’t shine them right in anyone’s face.”

  Standing by the doors that led back out to the entryway, Dom added, “We’re going up to the top of the main tower first. There’s supposed to be a room there. After that, we’ll check out the second floor then this one. Then we’ll figure out where we want to hang for the night, based on which room seems to have the most paranormal energy.”

  “After we check out the cellar, though,” Blake said. “I’m not skipping the cellar, and I don’t care what they say about it.”

  Dom rolled his eyes. “I don’t know. I think we should stay out of there. Remember the last time an owner told us to stay away from someplace? It was the attic three floors above the Five Aces Saloon.”

  Blake gave him an innocent shrug. “They should have told us the floorboards were rotting instead of saying to stay out. And I ended up fine.”

  “Only because you got luckier than anyone has a right to be. You fell through two floors and would have cracked your head open on that player piano if you hadn’t managed to grab the bed canopy on your way down.”

  “But if we hadn’t gone up there, we wouldn’t have found the diaries where the owner confessed to killing his partner in 1872! We got fan mail for weeks from that!”

  Shaking his head, Dom sighed hard. “Fine. We’ll check out the cellar too. But you’re taking the fall when things go upside down. Everyone ready?”

  Shane, still feeling like his insides were about to burst out through his skin, nodded quickly in agreement.

  “Yeah, okay.” Ellie’s near whisper stood in sharp contrast to his enthusiasm.

  “Let’s go.”

  Blake and Dom stepped out into the foyer, which was now bathed in total darkness. Now that night had fallen, the house had gotten colder and somehow quieter, too, even though Shane had noted the eerie silence before. Their footsteps across the entryway, which had been muffled by dust in the late afternoon, now pierced the air and echoed off the walls.

  The space between Shane’s shoulder blades itched uncomfortably, as if some predator was eyeing them, waiting to pounce from the shadows. The drop cloths over everything added an additional element of unease, as each covered item seemed to take the shape of something vile and monstrous. Half-thrilled and half-terrified, he eyed the nearest vaguely shaped piece of furniture, his pulse hammering.

  “Whose ideas was this?” Ellie muttered from beside him.

  “This is awesome,” he whispered back.

  “Whatever. I would never have done this if you hadn’t begged me to sign up.”

  “Shhh,” Dom ordered. “Listen. We need to know if there’s any sounds or noises we might want to record later for EVP. You can cry later.”

  Shane clamped his mouth shut. If they were hoping for some electronic voice phenomenon worth recording, he didn’t want to talk too much and make them miss some trapped spirit trying to communicate.

  After crossing the entry, the group started up the sweeping spiral steps in a slow, methodical motion. Blake stepped with extreme care, pausing and listening between each one. Dom let Shane go next, and Ellie followed before Dom, who came last in line.

  Shane swung his head from side to side, eyes peering out into the dark surrounding them, ears straining for any noise out of the ordinary. If something weird or strange happened, he didn’t want to miss it. A successful paranormal investigator had to be keenly aware of his surroundings at all times. Finely tuned senses of sight, smell, touch, and—perhaps most importantly—hearing were the cornerstone of anyone who wanted to make a career of chasing ghosts.

  Shane was so focused on catching even the slightest thing that when the floor creaked beneath Blake’s foot two-thirds of the way up, it took him by complete surprise. The sound and its accompanying echo boomed through the space, shattering the silence. Shane’s entire body jerked in surprise at the noise, forcing him to grab the back of Blake’s shirt to keep from falling backward into Ellie.

  Blake’s hand shot and gripped his arm, helping to steady him. “Sorry, Shay-man. You okay? Didn’t see that one coming.”

  “Look! There!” Dom yelled from behind them. “What’s that?”

  They all turned to look where he pointed over the railing. A large mirror hung from the wall opposite them, and between them and the mirror, an ornate crystal chandelier swayed softly. The reflection of four startled people huddled together on the steps shot back at them from behind it.

  “What’s what?” Blake demanded. “It’s just a reflection of us.”

  “Didn’t you see it?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “A person. Or maybe a shadow. But there was a flash or movement in the mirror. Something besides us. Something dark and very, very quick. And why is the chandelier swinging like that? Could the something have… pushed it?”

  “Was it a woman?” Ellie asked. “Or a man?”

  Dom pushed his cap back and rubbed his forehead. “You know how sometimes you’ll see something out of the corner of your eye? It was like that. I couldn’t see any details. Dark. And fast. It was dark and fast.”

  Shane looked from him to Blake. “Maybe we should go back and check the video on the laptop?”

  Blake shook his head. “No. It might have been something, but it also could’ve been Dom’s mind playing tricks on—”

  Dom nearly exploded. “Mind playing tricks? The chandelier is still swinging. You all see it. I didn’t make that up.”

  “Dom, you know how this goes,” Blake said. “if we go back and check the video every time we think we see something weird, we’ll never finish the first pass of the house. We gotta keep going for now. Then we’ll look at the video when we finish. That’ll help us decide where to focus. Good work, though, buddy. Way to keep your eyes open.”

  With that settled, they all stood in place for a full minute, watching the grand mirror, barely breathing, waiting for the mysterious shade to shoot across again. Assuming, of course, it was anything more than a trick of the shadows.

  A chill ran through Shane. It couldn’t have been nothing. Dom was right—hanging light fixtures didn’t just move on their own. Just looking around this place, how could anyone not believe there was some tortured soul here?

  He glanced back at Ellie, who seemed even more pale than usual. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine. I’m sure it was nothing.”

  “No way. I bet it was a banshee or something.” He made a screaming face.

  “If you keep trying to freak me out, I’ll show you how to scream like a banshee, buckethead.”

  He laughed. When the chill wore off, though, he was stung with a hollow sense of disappointment, a twinge of jealousy. Dom did this stuff all the time. It wasn’t fair that he was the one who got to see whatever was in that mirror. Shane wanted to be the one seeing the freaky stuff.

  “Stay focused,” Blake said. “Look all around. Stay close to me. And watch that creaky step.” He started up the stairs again, one cautious foot after another.

  Three steps higher, though, he stopped again, putting a hand up in the air. “Shhhh,” he hissed.

  The others stopped.

  “What?” Shane couldn’t help but ask.

  “Listen.”

  Shane closed his eyes, trying to focus on his sense of hearing in the hope of catching whatever wispy thread of noise had gotten Blake’s attention. At first, there was nothing. Nothing, of course, but the quiet, abnormal absence of the sounds he accepted as part of modern-day life: the hum of a heating or air-conditioning system, the roar of traffic passing by somewhere outside, the activity of neighbors, the drone of the television, the beeps and buzzes of personal electronic devices. There was none of that here. More unsettling than that, there was no chirp of crickets or twitter of birds or croak of bullfrogs outside.

 

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