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Crates and boxes were stacked as far as the eyes could see. It would be difficult to make our way around them but it wasn’t our first investigation that involved a cluttered attic.
The dangerous part would be the shelves to the right lined with glassware and knickknacks that looked like they could break easily. If the ghost went on a tantrum they’d ruin thousands if not more worth of Bellmore history.
A loud clang echoed in the quiet and I shifted my light toward a giant grandfather clock resting against a beam. It was beautiful and made of intricately carved wood then polished to perfection. Somehow the clock had escaped the dust the rest of the items were coated in.
Each turn we made exposed more and more collectibles and random heirlooms. I had never seen so many expensive things in one place, especially not discarded items like this.
“Oh look, it’s their Christmas collection,” Ben said. “It’s like a Christmas tree farm.”
They had no less than ten trees standing in the back, barren of their decorations. How they managed to safely tuck them away in the back was beyond me.
“Maybe it’s a good thing Ethan and Brea didn’t come up here,” I laughed. “We wouldn’t need to worry about the ghosts knocking shit over, they’d do it for them.”
“I’m afraid to breathe up here,” Ben said drily. “I can’t say anything.” He jumped and rubbed a hand over his hoodie, trying to scare off the spider that landed on him.
“You’d think they would store them differently instead of letting the spiders have them,” I mused.
“I doubt this is all of them. They’re tucked in the back and this castle is way too big to have only ten small trees.”
“They do seem the type for a twenty-foot tree in the foyer,” I agreed. He turned and walked further into the attic.
We needed to get started before the others finished. This attic would be a killer on Brea’s asthma.
“Where do we want to start?”
“I snagged Brea’s recorder,” he said, clicking a button and holding it out. “Is there anybody up here who would like to talk to us? Maybe tell us a little bit about yourself. Who are you, and how did you wind up in Bellmore Castle?”
There was an unintelligible whisper in the air, something we couldn’t quite catch. Ben stopped recording and rewound, playing it again.
“It’s my home,” a low, female voice said. His eyes shot to mine, wide and excited and his dimple deepening as he grinned.
This was the kind of evidence we lived for.
Once the recording ended, Ben hit the button again.
“Why are you still here? Do you not want to leave? Are you alone here?” I asked. We both knew the answer to that question thanks to Brea’s abilities, but the Darklings didn’t know about all that.
The sound of something rolling caught our attention. I scanned the room slowly, looking for whatever it was until I saw a small object moving towards us. It didn’t stop until it bumped against my black boots with a soft thud.
I bent down to pick up the object and held it in the beam of my light.
“Is it a crystal ball?” Ben asked, letting out a surprised laugh.
“It seems a little small for that. To me, it looks like one of those orbs that David Bowie played with in the movieLabyrinth.” Brea had made us watch that one enough he knew the reference.
There was a clink, a thud, and then more glass orbs were rolling towards us, one hitting Ben’s shoe, the other mine.
Again, we both went down and picked them up. This time, I didn’t wait for more to come our way before walking further into the attic, following the direction they came from.
I scanned the floor with my flashlight as we looked for the source. It didn’t take long to spot the collection of glass orbs that had spilled free from their basket. There were several more inside, and one by one, they started rolling out until they all hit our feet.
When the last had dropped, Ben crouched down, fixing the basket and putting all of them back inside.
It would have been a death trap for anyone trying to come up here, especially Brea. That woman could trip over nothing.
“Did these belong to you?” Ben questioned, holding the recorder in front of him again.
“Do they have a special meaning?” I tacked on as I inspected them.
