Chapter One
“That’s it?” Finn asked, turning to me in shock and doubt as we crunched to a stop in the driveway. “That’s our new house?”
I was quiet as I collected myself, both of us staring straight ahead, at the dilapidated monstrosity in front of us. “That’s our really, really, really old new house,” I sighed.
“Um…”
My sentiments exactly.
The gravel drive that led to the sprawling brick farmhouse had probably washed out sometime in the early bronze age, leaving it pitted and bumpy. A line of Aspen trees threw long slats of shade onto our path, with lurid stripes of scarlet showing between them. The sun was just beginning to set over the shady outskirts of Haven Hollow, and shadows were starting to pool in the meadow just beyond the trees.
It might have been scenic... if not for the house.
The thing was rundown as all hell and looked older than Keith Richards. The screen door was hanging off the hinges; some of the ginger breading that had once decorated the ornate porch was now lying in a miserable heap beside the house, looking like it felt sorry for itself. Yep, the porch hadn’t seen a paint job since… maybe ever; and I was fairly sure the entire thing was hosting a community of termites and had been for the better part of a century.
“Oh my God,” I muttered under my breath, fingers flexing around the steering wheel. This was what I got for buying the damn thing at auction. Then I did my best to force my usual megawatt smile and flashed it at my eleven-year-old son in the passenger seat. “This place will be just… great.”
Finn’s steely blue eyes stared back at me, flat and unimpressed. He’d bothered to look up from his Gameboy, which meant he was taking this whole thing very seriously. He hadn’t outright said it, but I could see the furious doubt stirring behind his eyes. I’d promised no more haunted houses.
“Mom…”
“We are going to love it here, Finn,” I responded, trying to convince myself, as well.
He looked at the house again. “It looks haunted.”
It really did.
“And what, exactly, does a haunted house look like?” I asked, going for casual skeptic, but failing.
Finn craned his neck at the three-story farmhouse with the wraparound white porch and pointed at it. “That.”
“What do we know about negative thoughts and comments?” I asked, not meaning to sound so much like my mother, but there it was.
“That thoughts are things and negativity only breeds more negativity,” Finn quoted, rolling his eyes.
“Right!” I pulled the keys from the ignition and opened my door. Finn shook his head, sighed, and opening his door, jumped down from the Wrangler. I exited as well, wrapping my arms around myself reflexively as the wind picked up, slicing through my parka like it wasn’t there, tossing my light blonde hair into my face. Oregon weather was going to take some… getting used to. But at least we were out of Los Angeles.
And ready to start over.
Finn watched me struggle to keep a smile with all the stern judgment he could muster, though I could see his mask cracking at the edges. His sweet, round little face rejected anger like oil on water. Even though he was nearly as tall as me, he still managed to look closer to ten than the almost twelve he was. And his braces didn’t help. Between the baby-fine blonde hair and the round cheeks that wouldn’t melt away until puberty, he looked more like a cherub than a preteen.
“Bought at auction, site unseen,” I whispered and took a deep breath as I shook my head and wondered what I’d just gotten us into.
This was exactly what I’d been worrying about for the better part of two weeks—that the house would be in this level of disrepair. But, that’s what I got when I bought a house at auction. Site unseen.
I followed Finn up the circular driveway to the front entry. The house stood in the center of the ‘U’ section of the driveway and greeted onlookers with what was once an impressive porch and a wide set of stairs that led to the front door and an immense bay window. To the left of the house was a large barn and to the right, a storage shed that was leaning so badly on one side, I was fairly sure the roof had caved in.
Great.
The grim black sign with gold calligraphy that spelled Hallowed Realty rattled on its chains as we approached. The only thing that didn’t look like it needed to be immediately torn down was the immense apple tree right beside the front porch. The thing was almost as tall as the house and covered in bright red and orange leaves and huge, round green and red apples. If we were lucky, they’d be Honeycrisp apples.
“Look, Finn, an apple tree! That means plenty of pies!”
He just looked at me and frowned, as if to let me know he was still unimpressed. So, I took a deep breath and faced the house again.
Ah, yes, the house.
Le Sigh.
Face it with a smile, that’s what my mother would say. I’d always taken that mantra to heart. Of course, my father always said smiling at a turd didn’t make it magically transform into a triple fudge brownie.
This house definitely wasn’t a triple fudge brownie.
“Let’s unlock the front door and look inside,” I said brightly.
“Let’s hope we don’t fall through the stairs on our way up,” Finn grumbled.
I walked just in front of him, not only to unlock the door, but to be the unlucky canary in case the coal mine collapsed. The door opened with a creaking sound, not unlike the cackling of a witch. A rancid odor wafted out, surrounding us in its putrid embrace. I made some sort of inarticulate sound just before gagging.
Finn waltzed into the wide foyer ahead of me, unperturbed by the smell. As a boy prone to an array of them himself, he’d probably been inoculated to the worst nature could throw at him. He craned his neck as he took in the massively high ceiling.
“What the hell died in here?” he then asked as he turned to face me and hid his nose and mouth inside his shirt.
“Language,” I coughed, eyebrows drawn together in disapproval. I couldn’t manage to wrestle the smell from the back of my throat.
I could taste it. God, what was that?
“Hell isn’t a bad word, Mom.”
“It’s not a nice word either.”
“Ah, whatever,” he said and then did a three-sixty as he started laughing. “Wow, you really did it this time.”
“What?” I asked, taking in the expanse of ancient brick walls, and even older planked wood flooring that appeared to be rotting in some places and sagging in others. “It’s… charming.”
“That’s not the word I’d use for it. Maybe ‘old’, ‘crappy’ or… seriously, Mom, what’s that smell?”
“That’s the smell of my soon to be empty bank account.”
All joking aside, the smell was probably an animal or several that had died during the many years this place sat empty. Lord knew how hard it was going to be to remove it.
“This place is totally haunted,” Finn said, shaking his head as he took a deep breath and then released it.
“Oh, come on. Not every old house is haunted!” Although, I wasn’t convinced he was wrong. Finn had the same Gypsy Traveller blood I did, but he didn’t possess the same affinity towards magic. No one knew why, but Y chromosomes just seemed to dampen magic. Witches, gypsy women, mediums, fae… all of us were almost always female.