Author's Note: Like the story description says, if you haven't read Child of Spring (my other ROTG story), this story probably won't make much sense to you. That said, here's Chapter One, which is actually Interlude 6 of Child of Spring. I just thought I'd post it here, as it's part of the story.

Chapter One: The Old Parker House

It had been almost a decade since that fateful year that Pitch Black had gone (more) evil and tried to vanquish belief once and for all. Jamie Bennett had many adventures with one of his best friends, Jack Frost, as well as all the Guardians. Jamie always had the light of belief in his eyes, since he had met the Guardians themselves when he was at an impressionable age, and the memories stayed strong.

It had been hard for him when he grew older than Jack, and it was surreal for him that Lillian, the little spring spirit, would always look like she was six years old. Jamie still liked playing around with Jack and he was still up for a snowball fight as he was when he was a kid.

Although lately, he had started to get even more interested in the paranormal and had even decided to start up his own little paranormal investigation group. Thankfully digital recorders were pretty cheap, as were digital thermometers and emf detectors. His mom wasn't interested in donating to his funds, so he did what any teenager would do, he got a job.

Washing dishes wasn't all that it's cracked up to be, and he was a little annoyed when Lillian decided to follow him to work one day. He had a hard time explaining where all the spring flowers came from, and when Jack turned up at Pitch's request to fetch Lillian, he had no explanations on the suddenly frozen dish water, or why that patch of ice happened to appear under that waiter.

Nope, none at all.

But thankfully his manager didn't blame him for all these mishaps, so he was able to fund his ghost hunting hobby all by himself. Well, ghost hunting/UFO hobby.

They were out there.

Why, Burgess had even gotten some crop circles out in the country near the town! It was a sign!

Jamie huffed in annoyance as he thought of it.

Yeah, a sign that Jack and Lillian were bored.

Those two and their pranks!

But now Jamie was all set. He had a digital recorder, digital thermometer and an emf detector. He was all set to record ghostly voices and detect unusual cold spots and high emf!

He even had a house to investigate, which was a super creepy house that was abandoned. It was rumored to be haunted and that the last owner had died sometime in the 90s, which was forever ago.

Jamie had tried to get some of his friends to come along, and they had gone on many adventures in the past, but his friends tended to roll their eyes at things like ghosts and UFOs. Tell them about a new Seasonal spirit or one of the Guardians and they were all ears, but everything else? Nope.

Jamie had also wanted a mini-camcorder, but that was beyond his budget, so he was reduced to taking photos and videos from his phone. The quality was pretty good, but he knew that ghosts tended to drain the batteries on things and hoped that this wouldn't be the case for him.

So it was with excitement and a little trepidation that he walked up to the dilapidated house, that had rotting porch steps. He carefully picked his way around the holes in the boards and stood in front of the front door. The screen door was practically falling off its hinges and was dangling crookedly from its frame.

Just for the fun of it, Jamie rang the doorbell.

DING

DING

DING

Jamie shook his head with a smile at the clearly broken bell. He turned on his digital recorder and spoke into it.

"This is Jamie Bennett at the old Parker house, 11:59pm. So far all is quiet, except for the broken doorbell."

He clicked off the recorder and thought for a moment how silly this was. Here he was in the middle of the night talking into a digital recorder while he was planning to investigate some moldering old house that hadn't been occupied in decades.

But then he thought of collecting actual evidence of a ghost.. an actual ghost! And his excitement took over. He opened the door, which wasn't locked and wandered inside.

He clicked his digital recorder back on tucked it into his back pocket while he dug out his flashlight. He clicked it on and wandered around the living room.

"This is Jamie Bennett in the living room of the old Parker House, 12am. I am now trying to make contact with any paranormal life.."

Jamie took a minute to clear his throat.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" he called out. "My name is Jamie Bennett and I wanted to talk to you. Hello?"

He didn't hear anything, but that didn't bother him. He knew from his research (watching paranormal tv shows and searching the internet) that you often didn't hear anything when trying to obtain EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon), but when you played them back, sometimes there'd be an unexplainable voice on the tape.

It was creepy, but cool. He was also interested in experimenting with Jack and Lillian on recording them, since he wanted to see if adults could either see or hear them, or if only kids (or teens.. or adults!) that believed in them would be able to see and hear them.

"What's your name?" he asked after a pause. "What happened to you?"

He left the recorder running as he wandered over to the stairs. In the pitch dark they looked pretty ominous. As he neared the bottom of them he shivered as the temperature suddenly dropped. With a gasp he quickly rummaged around in his bag that he brought and got out his digital thermometer. He checked the temperature of the room and slowly moved the thermometer through the cold spot. The temperature was significantly lower! Alright!

And he knew there was no way it could be electrical interference since there was no power to the house.

"Hey, uh.. if you're here.. I want to talk to you. Can you give me a sign that you're here?" Jamie asked the cold spot. He knew that cold spots indicated the presence of a ghost.

After he finished talking, he waited a good minute in total silence. When he was about to give up and head upstairs he suddenly heard a woman's voice.

"..No.. no please..! Don't..!" the voice cried out.

Then there was a loud noise, that Jamie thought sounded like could be a slap? Maybe.. and then the sound of someone falling down the stairs. Jamie backed away from the stairs hurriedly as the noise of something falling came right towards him. He almost thought he felt something brush his feet as he backed away.

He quickly exchanged his thermometer for his phone and put the flash on and then took a few pictures of where the cold spot had been, at the foot of the stairs. As he looked at his phone battery, he saw that it was more than half gone already and he had made sure it was fully charged before he left the house.

With his heart practically in this throat, Jamie waited for any other signs, but didn't hear anything.

"H-Hello..?" Jamie called out timidly.

This was kind of freaking him out. A lot.

He went back to the foot of the stairs, and waved his hand around where the cold spot had been, but he couldn't feel it any more. With a deep breath, he wandered upstairs.

"Th-this is Jamie Bennett.. now heading upstairs.." he said to the voice recorder he still had sticking out of his back pocket.

He wandered down the hallway and came to a bedroom on the left. He quick peeked inside with his flashlight and saw that it was a master bedroom. There was a good layer of dust over everything, but the bed was still made with a flowery bedspread that was very worn.

Jamie wandered inside hesitantly and instantly felt a heaviness that he couldn't explain. He was filled with dread just wandering into this room and he didn't know why. This room also seemed darker than the downstairs and more oppressive. He looked around in alarm, almost expecting to see a Nightmare come whinnying out of a dark corner, but he knew that was impossible. They had finally defeated all the Nightmares ages ago.

Besides, he still had the power of belief on his side if it did turn out to be one last stray Nightmare.

"Now in the master bedroom.. It's.. ah.." Jamie glanced at his watch, only to see that the battery had died. He shook his wrist, but the watch didn't move. Didn't he just replace the battery last week?

"..Well, my watch stopped so I'll just say it's late." Jamie continued. "Now trying to make contact.. Hello? Anyone there?"

That was when Jamie heard stomping headed right in his direction.

"What are you doing here?!" a male voice thundered at him. "GET. OUT."

Jamie found himself backed into a wall from the stomping and something knocked his phone right out of his hand, sending it skittering across the floor. He saw the flash go off as the camera was accidentally activated and Jamie let out a shriek of fright.

This definitely wasn't supposed to happen!

"How many times have I told you to stay out of my room you little brat!" the male voice boomed out at Jamie and Jamie felt something grab his jacket and physically shove him towards the door.

"..I..I'm sorry..!" Jamie cried out at the voice. He ducked and ran like crazy to the corner where his phone was and scooped it up, before hurrying right out of the room. As soon as he left, the door slammed closed behind him and he thought he heard some grumbling coming from inside the room.

Feeling his heart practically beating out of his chest, Jamie thought about abandoning his task. He already had plenty of evidence and even the bravest ghost hunter would have run right out of the house.

There were still a couple rooms to investigate upstairs however, so he wandered down the hall and peeked into a small room on the right. It was a bedroom, obviously a child's room since the bed in it was pretty tiny. Half the frame had actually collapsed and part of the mattress lay on the floor.

Trying to calm himself down, he saw a few crayon drawings taped up to the walls. He wandered over to see a picture of a family: a mom, a little girl and way off to the side was a drawing of a man with a frowny face. Jamie thought of the angry male voice in the master bedroom and decided this was an accurate depiction.

"Ok.." Jamie said to the recorder in what he hoped was a more calm voice. "Now I'm in a kid's room.. I seriously hope I don't run into Pitch here. This place is creepy enough. Now trying to initiate contact. Hello? Is anyone there? I-I mean.. anyone.. not creepy? Or angry? Someone friendly."

Jamie shot the doorway a nervous glance, as if he was expecting the angry male voice to come storming in any minute, demanding that he, Jamie, get out of his house.

But no angry voices did come storming in, and Jamie breathed a small sigh of relief. This was instantly followed by sharp intake of breath as he heard the woman pleading at the top of the stairs again, followed this time by the man's angry yelling and the loud SLAP. There was a terrible scream and the sound of someone falling down the stairs, and then.. nothing.

Jamie gulped. He had enough. He took one last look around the room and then bolted out the door. He made it to the top of the stairs when something roughly shoved him from behind and he almost fell down the stairs himself. He had to drop his flashlight, but he managed to grab a hold of the railing at the last second and stopped himself from falling. The staircase was a long one and looked treacherous to fall down.

As it was, he stumbled down a few steps before catching himself, and then he was off running again. He grabbed up his flashlight on the way down and almost flew to the door. He jumped the few porch steps down to the ground and took off running into the night.

He was later disappointed to find out that he had been in the house for not even half an hour. He had gone straight home after that, and after spending some time in the kitchen with a relaxing cup of tea (a habit he had somehow picked up from Jack, as Jack always said that tea calmed him down), he went upstairs to review his evidence.

What he saw almost made his hair turn as white as Jack's. He remembered hearing someone fall down the stairs and that he had snapped a picture of the cold spot right after this had happened, and so he plugged his now dead phone into his computer and waited for it to power up.

When it did finally turn on, he went into the pictures and found the one he was looking for. He was expecting maybe an orb or an unusual shadow or nothing at all, but what he saw instead was something right out of a horror movie.

There laying at the foot of the stairs was the body of a young woman. Her head was bent at an unnatural angle and there was a pool of blood seeping from her head. She had dark hair and her eyes were closed. As Jamie stared at the picture, some small part of him thought she looked a little familiar..

Then after trying to compose himself a little, Jamie rewound the recorder and pressed play. He heard himself talking into the recorder and the strange sound of the woman falling down the stairs. Then he heard the disembodied male voice yelling at him when he was upstairs. It was when he was in the child's room that things got really creepy.

He heard himself say he was in the child's room, and then the noises started up again. Only this time he could hear the man shouting at the woman and the sound of a slap, and then.. he heard something he hadn't heard at the time.

He heard a little girl's voice.

"Mommy!" the voice cried out. He heard the sound of running footsteps, light steps, like a child's and then from farther away he heard the child cry out again.

"Mommy, wake up! Wake up..!"

The voice sounded so heartbreakingly familiar, but no.

It couldn't be.

Could it?

He heard heavier footsteps thunder down the stairs and then there was another SLAP and the sound of a little girl crying out.

"Shut up!" the man roared. "She's sleeping and she won't ever wake up! Now get back upstairs!"

Jamie heard the sounds of a little girl sobbing and felt his heart clench. He knew it was possible that events that had happened long ago, especially traumatic events could keep playing themselves out over and over, like a tape.

He stared down at the digital recorder and thought about the voice he heard.

It sounded just like Lillian's.

Author's Note: Stay tuned for Chapter 2!