There was something here though... I could feel it. Cold brushed across the fine bones of my face, sank into every joint and made them throb painfully. Or maybe that was just the reality of being in your early forties in an Oregon autumn. Yeah, I’d go with that for now. I really didn’t have the patience to deal with more ghosts.
Besides, there was no going back now. So, we might as well make the best of it.
“Do you want to check out the rest of the house and pick out your bedroom?” I asked, trying to maintain some level of enthusiasm.
Finn looked up the staircase and swallowed hard. “Will you come with me?”
“Sure.”
As we ascended, I could spy water damage on the walls. At the far end of the hall, the bare bones of the house showed pale in the fading light. The drywall was gone and whatever pipes had once resided within had been gutted.
Great...
My only consolation was that between the sale of the house in Los Angeles and the passing of Great Aunt Margaret, I had enough money to remodel this place and open my shop, if I approached both carefully.
Luckily, I’d bought this house for next to nothing, owing to the fact that the bank wanted it off their books. And I’d walked away with a hefty amount of cash from my inheritance. I could break even if did this right. Heck, if my new ‘holistic medicine’ shop took off, I might actually be ahead.
I was busy trying to break my teeth on a smile as I noted cracks, uneven floors, missing fixtures and more. Finn trailed his fingers through cobwebs and dust, wiping both away on his blue and black Spock t-shirt that said ‘Trek yourself before you wreck yourself’.
“This room is too small,” Finn said as he walked into the first room on our right. I glanced inside and figured it might make a nice office.
An office I would be putting to use as soon as I could open my store. I’d already found the perfect location—a smallish storefront in the middle of the busiest street in town (which wasn’t very busy considering the population of Haven Hollow was only 680. Well, 682 now). The potential store was the only reason Finn and I had moved to Haven Hollow. Because there weren’t any witches laying claim to this tiny town.
I knocked on a peeling wood banister immediately after the thought and even crossed my fingers.
No witches. Please, please, please.
Witches were territorial and they could make your life hell if they so chose. I never wanted to cross one, if I could help it.
The next room was larger than the first and featured a giant window that revealed a lovely view of the street below and acres of open land beyond. Our nearest neighbor was at least a quarter of a mile away.
“This isn’t bad,” I said as we walked out of the room and back into the hallway. I was immediately enveloped by cold and goosebumps popped along my arms.
Nothing other than cold weather and your aging bones. Cold weather and aging bones...
“Wait… There are only four bedrooms up here?” Finn asked as he counted the rooms off the hallway on his fingers. He didn’t seem to notice the drafty hallway, so I didn’t say anything. Yep, I needed to whip up a cleansing potion and then a consecration potion… post haste.
“Right, the fifth bedroom is downstairs… the guest bedroom.”
He nodded. “I want my room to be right next to yours.”
“Okay, well I think this is the master,” I said as we entered the last room.
It was really beautiful with the high ceilings and crown molding. Well, beautiful if you could ignore the dust and canopy of spider webs. Numerous windows overlooked the street below and the apple orchard off to the right. I walked into the master bathroom and turned around, taking in the view through one window, which showed off the orchard again while the east-facing window revealed a wide expanse of… cemetery?
Oh, no.
Finn was still in the bedroom as I stared out the window, and cursed my bad luck. A cemetery? Bordering the back yard? I walked to the window and yanked it up, the old paint on the wood breaking away in my hands. But I wasn’t concerned with it at the moment. Instead, I leaned out to get a better look at the overgrown and ratty plot of land that was home to at least twenty headstones. As I studied it, I watched a woman emerge from behind a copse of trees. She walked between the tombstones and paused before one, kneeling down. The setting sun behind her obscured most of her, bathing her in bright yellow light, making it difficult to see.
“Hey, Mom, did you see this little closet in here?” Finn called out. I turned to look at him, where he stood at the far end of the bedroom.
“Just a second,” I said and turned back to face the woman in the graveyard. But, when I looked again, she was gone. Yet… there was something still there. Something that appeared dark in the setting sun, almost clouded by a shadowed mist. Regardless, it was much larger than a human and almost misshapen. It moved quickly, but its gait was lopsided and strange. The rich yellow light of the dying sun continued to play tricks with my eyes, so much so, that I thought I was looking at something with huge antlers and long forearms that dragged along the ground as it moved between the stones. I leaned out the window a bit more, trying to get a better visual.
Is it a deer? I asked myself.
Come on… it’s way too large to be a deer! Plus, it’s walking upright. Sort of.
“This is a pretty big bathroom, Mom,” Finn said from right behind me. I immediately pulled back and slammed my head into the wooden window frame as I turned to face him, being careful to block the view beyond the window.
“Are you okay?” Finn asked, but I couldn’t answer. I was too worried about what he might see behind me.
I turned around and looked back at the cemetery, but the creature was gone. So was the woman. And the setting sun was throwing all sorts of shadows across the tombstones, which littered the ground like uneven, rotted teeth.
It wasn’t real, I told myself. Just a trick of the light and shadows. You had to be imagining it because… monsters aren’t real.
“What are you looking at?” Finn asked. I turned around as he focused on the view behind me. “Um,” he started. “What’s that?” He pointed out the window, and I was suddenly afraid the thing had resurfaced.
I swallowed hard and looked out at the empty graveyard, relieved when only the stray tombstones met my eyes. “A cemetery?”
“Why didn’t you tell me the house was sitting on a cemetery?” he demanded, his voice growing louder as he threw his hands on his hips and glared at me. One thing he’d been adamant about was that we move to a house with no ghosts.
“Because I didn’t know it was sitting on a cemetery,” I started. “The bank left that little, inconvenient detail out. And so did Google Maps.”
“Moooom, this place is totally haunted,” Finn said as he shook his head. “It’s going to be just like our last house which means… I don’t want to live here!”
“Just because there’s a cemetery at least a football field’s length away doesn’t mean the house is haunted!”
I only hoped I was right.
Chapter Two
Finn and I piled into the Jeep after locking up the house.
Why even bother locking it? I chided myself. Are you afraid another rodent is going to break in and die, adding to that horrible smell?