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She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I came over here alone a couple of times, while you were at work. I was clearing out things and getting the house ready to start the renovation. The first time I was in here alone, I felt like somebody was watching me. I thought, no big deal—everybody feels that way at some point in their lives. Big empty house, unfamiliar neighborhood…you know. But the second time…I began to hear things.”
“What kind of things?” Camille asked.
“Children laughing, like they were taunting somebody. And someone…a man with a deep voice, whispering to me. But when I’d stop to listen, the sounds would vanish. I thought my imagination was working overtime.” She hung her head. “Then it got worse.”
“Worse? How?” Chase was taking notes and so was Delilah. Camille and Morio were listening. Rozurial had parked himself by the archway into the kitchen, and had put himself on guard duty, by the looks of his stance.
Abby raised her head. “Worse as in…I began to hear footsteps on the second floor. They echoed, like heavy boots. Another time I caught a glimpse of children playing in the yard but when I looked again, there was nobody there.”
She accepted a tissue from Camille and wiped her eyes, then turned back to Fritz. “That’s why I begged you to take the time off so we could get this place done together. It wasn’t just because I’m in a hurry to move in. The house began to scare me. I can’t stand the thought of living here now—especially with what’s gone on in the past month.”
“Why don’t you tell us what’s been going on since February?” Morio said. “And do you remember the day it started?”
Fritz, looking pale, nodded. “Yes, actually. I do remember because it was the day after Valentine’s Day. We came over and were stripping wallpaper in this room when…” He hesitated.
“Tell him. Or I will.” Abby pressed her lips together. I could read her energy clear as a book. She was fed up, and now that help was potentially at hand, she wasn’t going to let it go by untouched.
Fritz shrugged. “It’s simple, really. Whatever this ghost or spirit is, it tried to kill us.”
Morio straightened up. “That bad? What did it do, ex-actly? We need to figure out what spirits we’re facing.”
Abby let out a pained breath. “Shortly before Valentine’s Day, we started renovation. I’m not sure if that’s what stirred up the spirits or not. As I told you, until then, the hauntings were limited to footsteps, laughter, stuff like that. But after we started steaming off the wallpaper and taking down the lights, the activity increased and we began having major incidents.”
“What was the first? Wasn’t that when the hammer flew across the room? Or did I miss something?” Fritz shivered.
“No, I think that was the first.” Abby pointed to the ladder. “The hammer was over there, sitting on the top of the ladder, where Fritz had left it. He was taking a break—I’d made sandwiches—and as he walked toward me, the hammer flew across the room and missed him by just a few inches and hit the wall” She nodded to the opposite wall. There was an eight-inch hole in the drywall, exposing the boards beneath. “It almost put a hole through Fritz’s head.”
“At first, I couldn’t believe it.” Fritz crossed to the wall and fingered the hole. “By then, Abby told me about the noises—she heard most of them. I believed her, but part of me wanted to put it down to the creaking of an old house. Then, when the hammer came spinning by…the only reason it didn’t hit me was because I moved a couple of inches to the right, just before it sailed past. It could have killed me.” His dark eyes glimmered with fear. “After that, I couldn’t ignore it. I had to admit something was going on.”
“Poltergeist, maybe. What else happened?” I had learned far too much about ghosts over the past few months. It bothered me that I could name off as many types of spirits as I could.
“We took a break for a couple of days,” Abby said. “I think we were both afraid to come back. But this house is ours and we couldn’t just walk away. So a week later we returned. For two days it was quiet. On the third day, we decided to work on the attic. I hadn’t cleaned it out yet, so we hauled several old trunks out of there. One belonged to the monks and contained a few old robes, and some documents. I’ve made sure they were sent to the Order. But the other trunk…”
“The other trunk contained the possessions of a little girl,” Fritz broke in. “From babyhood to about age ten. When I opened the trunk, it felt like…almost like something slipped out of it—a shadow or something of the sort.”
Abby nodded. “I felt it, too. As we started to carry the trunk down the stairs, something shoved me from behind. I dropped my end—I was at the front—and fell down the stairs. If Fritz hadn’t held on to the trunk it would have come tumbling down on top of me.”
“Right before she went sprawling, something cold swept past and I heard a man laughing. He had a deep voice. And then, Abby screamed and the trunk almost yanked me down the stairs when she dropped it. I thought…when I saw her lying at the bottom of the stairs, I thought she’d snapped her neck.” He broke down, shaking his head as he rubbed his temples. “I thought she was dead,” he whispered.
“I strained an ankle and fractured my little finger. But it could have been far worse.” Abby picked up one of the cookies and bit into it. A crumb of chocolate stuck to the corner of her lip and she wiped it away. She had pale pink lips that curved in a lovely bow, and it struck me that she really was pretty. Her eyes were an arresting shade of blue that twinkled like marbles in the sun.
“What did you do after that?”
“I took her to the hospital, and we stayed away again until this week. Finally, we agreed that we weren’t going to be chased out of our own home. I did some research and saw that you’re supposed to use sage to cleanse energy. So we came back yesterday and smudged the house. Everything seemed to lighten. Then, we were up in the attic this afternoon when we saw a man.”
“He was horrible,” Abby chimed in. “We couldn’t see his face, but he was angry—so angry. And he was watching me, and then…I don’t know how to describe this but he…he…”
“He attacked her.” Fritz’s voice was harsh. “I couldn’t move. It was like I was paralyzed. I was sitting on the floor, working on a light fixture and I looked up and all of a sudden, I couldn’t move. I saw Abby go flying onto her back and something yanked her shirt open.”
Abby began to cry. “Whatever it was, it tried to unzip my jeans, and I was kicking and trying to get free of it. My arms were pinned over my head. I don’t how. He had to have four or five hands to do everything he was doing to me. I thought that it was going to…But then something different swept around me. The spirit let go and I felt him follow it—almost like he was chasing whatever the energy was. I heard a little girl laughing, and then a growl and then…then they were gone.”
“What did you do then?” Chase asked.
“We ran downstairs—Fritz could move again—and called you from the car. We only came back in when you got here.” Abby looked around, terrified. “I can’t stand this house now. I loved it so much when we found it, but now I hate it. We didn’t know what to do, so we called Chase and he called you.” She began to cry again, and Fritz wrapped his arm around her shoulders and kissed her on the head.
Fritz glanced up at me. “We’re at our wit’s end. We need help or sooner or later, we’re going to die. Or lose our money when we walk away and abandon the house. The spirits here are out for blood. Our blood.”
As he finished speaking, a low laughter filled the room, and then—all hell broke loose.
