Listen, my love, as you pass by

As you are now, so once was I

As I am now, so soon shall you be

So come along, and follow me

Chapter One: The Empty House

With a creak, the door to Brave Vesperia's main office eased open. Yuri looked up from the newspaper, reminding himself to fix that damn door.

"Hello?" the guest looked around the dimly lit front room, eyes landing on Yuri. "This is Brave Vesperia, right?"

Before Yuri could answer, Karol ran in from the backroom. "That's right! We are Brave Vesperia!" Even after two years on the job, Karol still got excited when they got new missions. "Sorry," he said while lighting a gas lamp on the desk. "We've only just opened."

The potential client was a young man with blond hair matted down by the morning rain. He ignored the coat rack by the door and kept his dripping leather jacket on as he stood in the middle of the room, feet close together, eyes darting around the room. Yuri had put off giving the walls a fresh coat of paint for months, and now wondered if his procrastination was going to cost them a client.

"That's fine," the man said. "I wasn't even sure if you were open yet, but I wanted to come first thing in the morning. I've meant to come for the past few days, but when I let myself put it off, I always chicken out."

Yuri left his half-eaten toast on the table in the corner, because this sounded interesting. He leaned against the solid wooden desk while Karol tried to look professional behind it. The eagerness on his face wasn't quite the confident gravitas of the Don, but their client was spending more time examining the puddle he made on the floor than Karol so it didn't seem to matter.

"My name is Pavel Novak. I have a… monster problem, I think. Or, something like that. I, uh, I actually already went to the Hunting Blades but when I explained the issue, they laughed me out. I thought I might need a more specialized guild for this kind of thing, but I don't think there are any guilds that do this, and I thought… well, Brave Vesperia does anything, right?"

"Just what kind of monster problem are you talking about?" Yuri asked.

"It's…" he glanced between Yuri and Karol, daring them to laugh. "Ghosts. You see, I… there's this house I inherited from my great-uncle who recently died. I spent the night there last month because I was going to do some renovations and then sell it, but…" he shuddered. "There's something in that house. I kept hearing noises in the night and I had the most unsettled feeling. The Hunting Blades told me I was just paranoid and not to bother them about the sound of a house settling, but I really don't think that's what it was." He gave Karol a pleading look. "Please, you have to believe me. The one night I spent there freaked me out so badly I've been too afraid to go back. That house is haunted, I'm sure of it, and I can't do anything with it until this is taken care of. I'm not crazy; I really did feel something there!"

Yuri held up a hand. "Slow down. We believe you." He might have had more trouble believing this tale of ghosts and haunted houses if he hadn't spent time on a ghost ship.

Relief spread across Pavel's face. "You do?"

"Yeah, of course," Karol said. "So, you want us to take care of the ghosts?"

"If you could," Pavel said, clearly more relaxed now that he knew he wouldn't be laughed out. "I don't know if there's anything you can do about ghosts, but I thought I might as well ask."

"We don't have a lot of experience as ghost hunters," Yuri said, "but we've dealt with them before. It shouldn't be a problem."

"Thank you! I don't have a lot of money now, but if you take care of this problem, I'll give you ten percent of the sale of the house. Is that all right?"

Karol nodded. "Yeah, that'll be more than enough. We'll head over today and check it out. Can you tell us about the history of the house?"

"Um, yes." Pavel crossed his arms and shifted his weight from foot to foot. "My grandfather's sister, Melanie, married Cyril Danton about fifty years ago. Cyril's father had made a fortune as a merchant, but he died young and left his fortune to Cyril, who built a large mansion a few miles south of Dahngrest. It was a wedding gift to Melanie, but only a few months after they moved in, she fell ill. Melanie died and Cyril was devastated. He cut himself off from everyone, only keeping as many servants around as he needed to maintain the house. He eventually fired even those, so it was just him out there all alone. The only reason we found out he was dead was because a tax collector went to find out why he hadn't paid taxes in a few months. They found his body in the basement. Apparently he died of heart failure."

"That's so sad!" Karol clutched the desk with wide eyes. "He lived all alone for fifty years? He must have really loved her."

Yuri frowned. "I think that might be toeing the line from 'love' to 'creepy obsession'."

Pavel shuffled his feet. "Yeah, that's sort of what I thought, too…. I never met him, but he didn't have any other family and my parents died a couple of months ago… I'm the only relation left, so it fell to me. I don't really know anything else. I can't imagine how he lived there alone for all these years, though. Within hours of staying in the house, I started feeling like someone was watching me. There's this weird door, too, that I couldn't get to unlock even though I have all the keys for the house. Please be careful, you guys."

Yuri shrugged. "Don't worry about us."

Karol nodded and added, "Yeah, Brave Vesperia can handle anything!"

"I can't thank you enough."

"Just pay us and we'll be even," Yuri said. "Now go home and get some rest; you look exhausted."

When the door shut after Pavel's departure, Yuri turned to Karol. "What do you think, Boss?"

Karol rubbed his chin. "I'm not sure. I definitely believe in ghosts after what we saw on the Atherum, but maybe this guy is just really skittish."

"We won't know until we check it out."

By early afternoon, they stood at the front gates of Cyril's estate. A stone wall marked the edge of the property, and the rusted iron gate hung open. Paving stones marked a path straight to the front door, but so many weeds had taken root in the gaps between them it was hard to see the path. No gardener had passed the gate in decades, leaving the grounds free to return to wilderness. Metre-high weeds covered the lawn with splashes of colour from wildflowers.

"Well," Judith said as the group stood at the head of the path, "it certainly looks like a place that might be haunted."

Repede growled in agreement. His ears stood straight and his tail twitched in tight jerks.

"No use standin' around," Raven said, folding his hands behind his head. "If there are any ghosts, we're not gonna find 'em out here." He'd offered to join Brave Vesperia when he heard about the job, considering how unusual it was.

"The old man's right." Yuri didn't wait for anyone else to take the lead and strode toward the house.

The first floor walls were made of slabs of brown stone, while the top floor was in Dahngrest-style half-timber. The shingles had probably once been neat, but decades of neglect had left the reddish wooden pieces to rot. Yuri climbed the stone steps leading to the front door. The weeds overtaking the path rustled as his friends came up behind him.

"Here goes nothing." The door was unlocked, admitting them to the entry hall. Light spilled through the door across beige tiles. The tall windows hadn't been cleaned in years, and the chandelier hanging from the ceiling was home to more spiders than candles. "Hello?!" Yuri's voice was far too small to fill the house's emptiness. "Any ghosts in here? If you want to show yourselves now and save us the trouble, I'd really appreciate it."

Karol, who stood closer to Yuri than was usually expected, hunched his shoulders. "Are you sure you should be doing that, Yuri?"

"Relax." Raven wandered toward the grand staircase. "Even if there are some spooks, they'd be nothin' we can't fight."

"We might as well explore," Judith said. "The house is probably pretty big. Perhaps we should split up?"

"No way!" Karol gaped at her. "Don't you read? Splitting up in a haunted house is the worst idea!"

"Tell you what," Yuri rested his hand on Karol's shoulder, "we'll send Repede with your group. He'll keep you plenty safe."

"That sounds fine with me," Judith said with a smile. "Let's go, Karol. We'll explore the second floor. Let's meet back here in an hour."

Karol still seemed hesitant even as Judith and Repede led him to the staircase. He gave Yuri a nervous look from the landing before Judith dragged him away.

"Looks like it's you and me, Old Man."

"Yeah, yeah," Raven grumbled.

They made their way to a door on their right. "What, not happy with me?" The room they entered was a sitting room that had once been themed with green rugs and furniture, but now everything was slightly grey from dust.

"Nothin' against ya, kid, I was just hopin' that some scary spook would startle Judy right inta my arms."

Yuri raised an eyebrow while Raven smiled to himself. "Do you really think Judy would spook that easily? She'd more likely find you in her arms after a scare."

"That's not true!" Raven ran a finger along the mantle, leaving a trail through the dust. "I ain't afraid of no ghosts."

"That so?"

"Sure!" His grin slipped and he glanced over his shoulder. "Out of curiosity, why do ya ask?"

"No reason." From the sitting room, they walked into a study. Cyril may have only died recently, but he clearly hadn't been keeping his house clean with all the dust everywhere. Yuri yanked velvet curtains aside to let light into the neglected room and fell into a coughing fit from the cloud of dust that burst in his face.

"Easy." Raven slapped his back and Yuri blinked tears from his eyes as the dust cleared.

"Man, this guy could really use a maid. How could he live here?"

"Maybe… he didn't." Raven raised his hands and wiggled his fingers. In a voice that begged for an accompanying campfire, he intoned, "Fifty years ago, Cyril committed suicide over his grief at Melanie's passing. The servants who kept it up in the old days thought they were keepin' the place clean for their reclusive master, who was, in fact… a ghost!"

Yuri listened with a subtly arched eyebrow. "Yeah, but the taxes suddenly stopped a month ago. Why would his ghost just suddenly decide to stop being a lawful citizen?"

Raven scrambled to make his story fit. "Because he wasn't the one payin' the taxes for all these years."

"Oh, yeah?" Yuri rested his fist on his hip. "So who was?"

It would probably be impossible to make any discussion about tax paying sound spooky, but Raven tried his best. "That's the real question, isn't it? Whoooo was payin' the taxes?"

"Maybe it was the Ghost of Taxes Past," Yuri said on his way into the next room. He wasn't sure what this room was for, because he would have called it another living room but the slight difference in furniture from the first one meant it was probably something different. Yuri had grown up thinking that having four walls and a roof was the height of luxury, so he just didn't know what to make of people who needed a designated room for every activity.

"In all seriousness," Raven said examining a portrait on a sideboard, "ya can't deny this place is creepy. Imagine ol' Cyril roamin' around for fifty years, all alone. He musta been some kinda crazy."

"You're telling me. If anyone was so in love with me that they gave up on the rest of their life because I died, I wouldn't think it was romantic. That's just unhealthy." He doubted Cyril's deceased wife would have found it romantic either. If he ever turned into an obsessed hermit following someone's death and pined after them for fifty years, he wouldn't be surprised if that person's love faded away. How could you continue to love someone who'd gone so far over the line into creepiness?

"What are we even searchin' for, anyway?"

"I have no idea. Anything that indicates the presence of ghosts, I guess." Whatever that looked like. "Hey, Old Man, do you believe in, you know, actual ghosts?"

"Eh?" Raven looked over in confusion. "What d'ya mean 'actual' ghosts? We ran inta plenty on the ghost ship, didn't we?"

"No, not like that. Those were more like monsters. I'm talking about actual, sentient, spirits of the dead. People who've died and their souls linger on."

"Hm…" Raven scratched his chin. "That's a tough question. I'd like ta think so, ya know? All this life inside all of us has ta go somewhere after ya die."

"Yeah, maybe." Yuri examined a portrait sitting on a small table, wondering if the couple portrayed was a young Cyril and Melanie. The man wore a handsome suit and a huge grin, while a demure young woman clung to his arm with black hair piled in a bun atop her head. "But retaining a consciousness?" Yuri had never put too much thought into what happened after death. He was too busy concentrating on living, and figured he'd worry about the possibility of life after death when he got there.

"Maybe. If it is possible, well, I like ta think that means the people ya love can keep watchin' over you even after they pass on." Raven was idly gazing at the crown moulding, his mind drifting into the past. "It's a nice thought."

"People from the past, huh?" Yuri wiped dust off his hands with his shirt. "I guess it depends on the person. I'm pretty sure most of the dead people in my past wouldn't be too happy to see me." He'd assume he'd defeated Zagi for good at Tarquaron. The last thing he needed was for a screaming lunatic ghost to try to kill him.

Raven chuckled and they walked into the next room. Did this place have any hallways? All the rooms led from one to the other and they'd already skipped a few because they chose to keep going in a straight line rather than branch out. This room was almost entirely taken up by a grand piano, refreshingly free of dust.

"Suppose he played?" Yuri trailed his hand along the ivory keys, filling the silence of the room with a low scale.

"Must have, to bother keeping this place clean. So, you don't think there are any ghosts at all you'd like to see?"

A couple of faces swam into view: Flynn's mom's eyes wrinkling with a smile as she patted his head, or the Don's iron resolve in his final moments. He toyed with the idea of meeting them again from beyond the grave, but if that meant seeing some of the less savoury characters as well… Cumore's face swept the vision of the Don aside, and he was shortly joined by Ragou and Alexei. They'd been difficult enough to deal with when they had physical bodies he could hurt. "I think I'd rather people stay dead, as a rule. Why, you want to see some people again?"

Raven leaned against the red wallpaper, arms crossed. "There are some faces I wouldn't mind seein' again. Apologies to give and goodbyes that were missed…" He shrugged. "I never really got a chance ta resolve things with Casey. It'd be nice ta see her again."

"You wouldn't be nervous about seeing her again? I mean, what if some of that unresolved stuff isn't too pleasant to talk about?"

"I figure there's no point worryin' about that. Anythin' I regret happened ta some other guy. Ol' Raven brought nothin' inta this life but the good memories."

"That's a good way to see it." Yuri toyed with the keys, plunking out a random tune to carry the conversation away from any potential questions about his own unresolved issues. It would be nice to be able to start over and leave all his skeletons in a past life's closet, but the lives he'd taken weren't something he could just walk away from. He thought about Ragou every time he crossed the Dahngrest bridge or every time he lay awake wondering if he could still consider himself a good guy who did questionable things, or if he was a villainous person who sometimes did good things to feel better about himself. How many questionable things could he do before becoming a questionable person?

He and Raven continued into the next room, which had a billiards table hidden under a sheet. Out of the corner of Yuri's eye, something moved. His sword was out before he had time to register that it was just a spider climbing its thread to the ceiling. They wandered from this room to the next, and then through another series of sitting rooms, tea rooms, smoking rooms, reading rooms, and rooms that existed for no discernible purpose. The most exciting thing they found was a cupboard that seemed to be rattling, but when Raven slammed it open while Yuri stood ready to fight whatever ghoul came out, all they found was a squirrel.

After forty-five minutes of wandering through a crazy old man's dusty house, Yuri was starting to wonder if Pavel was just paranoid after all. In the kitchen, one of the few rooms still maintained, Yuri scanned the cupboards for non-expired food. They were planning to stay the night, and had been told to help themselves to anything in the kitchen. Yuri was just planning what kind of meal he could put together from a bag of croutons and a pile of potatoes when a scream pierced the house's quiet.

Raven's head snapped around while the potato dropped from Yuri's hand with a shout of, "Karol!"

Without a second thought, they raced to the stairs. Yuri bounded up two at a time, cursing himself for letting his guard down and thinking Pavel was exaggerating. Maybe they shouldn't have split up after all. If the ghosts were real and attacked Karol and the others, could he even fight them?

Around a few twists of hallway, he spotted Karol leaning against a wall next to Repede. Yuri's sprinting slowed when he saw Karol in one piece. "Hey," he called, jogging the rest of the way. "You all right?"

"Oh, uh, hi." He blushed and lowered his head. "Guess you heard that, huh?"

Raven panted as he came up behind Yuri. "We ran all this way and you're not even hurt? Geeze, kid, some of us aren't as young as we used ta be! This old man's heart can't take the drama."

"What happened? Where's Judy?"

Karol jerked his thumb at the door he stood beside. "In there. I really am sorry for worrying you guys. We went in and everything was dark because the curtains were closed. It was hard to see, but I could make out some sort of shape on the bed. I thought it was a pile of blankets, or maybe a squatter sleeping here. So, I went to check it out, with me axe in hand just in case, but when I reached out and poked it, there was a skeleton!" Karol squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered. "When I moved it, the head rolled off the pillow and onto my foot and I just freaked out. Sorry for scaring you."

"A skeleton? Whose?" Yuri assumed Cyril's body would have been removed, and if he'd only been dead a month, it would be a lot messier and smellier than a skeleton.

"I don't know. I panicked and ran out."

Yuri walked through the door and found a dimly-lit bedroom. A pattern of flowers wrapped in ribbons covered the faded lilac wallpaper and he almost retched from the repugnant odour of roses. Pulling his shirt over his nose, he approached Judith by the bed. "Where's that smell coming from?"

"Some kind of perfume." She didn't seem bothered by the stench, but Yuri had learned a long time ago that finding something that bothered Judith was a challenge. "He probably got into the habit of spraying the room with it during the months the body still reeked. Or, maybe she just really loved roses." She gestured to a vase by the bed filled with wilted red roses. An identical vase sat on the other side of the bed.

"She?" Raven came close enough to look down at the corpse. "So, ya know who this was?"

"I believe it was Melanie."

The lacy duvet had been pulled back enough to reveal a pink nightgown covering the bones. Yuri grimaced and turned his attention to Karol's footsteps creeping behind him as he returned to the room. The grinning skull was once again on the pillow, and Yuri silently thanked Judith for picking it up so he wouldn't have to do it himself. He was no stranger to death, but handling a dead woman's skull wasn't high on his list of priorities.

"Why would she be here?" Karol asked, forcing himself to look at the body. "She died fifty years ago. Did he just… forget about her?

Raven looked around with a frown. "I don't think Cyril forgot her. Look how clean it is in here. There's no dust on the mirror and the roses are fresh. He didn't forget her – he kept her."

Yuri couldn't help wrinkling his nose. "He kept his dead wife in his bed for fifty years?" They were past the point of 'creepily obsessive' and into full-blown insanity territory.

"If it helps," Raven said, "I don't think he slept here with her. Traditionally, in wealthy households, the man and woman have separate rooms. Based on the interior decoratin', I'd say this was the lady's room."

Judith spoke, her eyes never leaving Melanie's grinning face. "He couldn't bear to part with her, so he kept her in bed and cleaned her room so he could pretend she never died."

"That's…" Yuri was not often at a loss for words, but he couldn't find anything to sum up how deeply disturbing this room was. "Really fucking weird."

"No kidding," Karol said weakly. "So… what do we do with her? We can't just leave her here."

"Leave her for now," Raven said. "When we get back ta Dahngrest, we'll tell Pavel what happened and let him make arrangements for his great-aunt. It's not like she's actively rottin' anymore, so let's just close the door and ignore this room for tonight."

"I'm good with that plan," Yuri said, leaving the room. Back in the hall, he found Repede standing by the doorway with his fur standing up. "What's wrong?"

Repede growled, tail twitching.

Yuri glanced back in the room as the others left. "Yeah, there's something really creepy about that room."

Repede's growl turned into a slight whimper, and then he looked up with one pleading eye. He obviously wanted to leave, and his agitation put Yuri on edge. He hadn't seen anything to indicate the presence of ghosts, but something had Repede riled up and he was smart enough to not ignore his dog's instincts.

"Did ya find anythin' else up here?"

"Yeah, there's one other weird thing," Karol said, forcing casualness to hide how creeped out he was. "Follow me."

They started to walk away, but Yuri couldn't help turning back to the bedroom door when he felt eyes on the back of his neck. Nothing was there, of course. He was probably just jumpy from how creepy Melanie's bedroom was.

Karol led them through a twisting configuration of hallways, doubling back more than once because he got lost. They passed a hallway of guest bedrooms along the east wall and then turned a few corners past a writing room and some bathrooms. The long corridors had squeaky wooden floors covered in long rugs. Based on the wear versus dust, Yuri could guess which hallways Cyril never used.

"Sorry, it's easy to get turned around up here," Karol said after five minutes. "It's just around… here, yeah." He stopped at the end of a short corridor. It had no other doors except for the simple wooden one at the end. Based on the wear on the rug, Cyril had been down this corridor often.

"So, what's through the door?" Yuri asked.

Judith crossed her arms. "We're not sure. We couldn't open it. I think it's the door Pavel mentioned."

Yuri crossed the ten feet of the hall and tried the brass knob. He rattled it a few times, but it seemed to be looked. "Karol, did you try picking the lock?"

"I did, but I couldn't get it. Nothing seemed to work."

"Huh…" He pulled his hand away because the brass froze his palm. Pressing his hand against the middle of the door revealed it to be chilly as well. "What do you think is making it cold?"

"Maybe the room on the other side isn't insulated?" Karol suggested. "Sometimes doors to cellars are cold like that."

"Yeah, maybe, but… we're in the middle of the house and on the second storey."

"I don't know," Karol said, shrugging. "I can't think of anything."

"Weird."

Raven crossed his arms and looked up and down the corridor. "This whole house is weird if ya ask me. Gives me the heebie-jeebies."

Repede growled his agreement. He stood with Raven at the intersection of the halls, pointedly not taking a single step closer to the door.

Yuri turned around to face his friends, unable to shake the feeling that turning his back to this door was leaving him exposed. "Well, so far we've found a lot of heebies and jeebies but no ghosts. But, we promised Pavel we'd spend the night so let's set up camp in some of those guest bedrooms."

For dinner, they ate a bowl of croutons, baked potatoes, and grilled cheese. Luckily, Cyril had kept the kitchen and breakfast room clean so they didn't have to eat surrounded by cobwebs and dust. After dinner, they settled down in the only sitting room they could find that had been maintained.

Repede spent the evening curled tightly at the foot of Yuri's armchair. He'd made it clear he didn't want to be in the house, but he wasn't going to leave Yuri, so forced himself to stick around. In the confines of the sitting room, chatting with friends, the eeriness of the house seemed far away. Even the sky had cleared, so they got a few hours of sunlight through the window before nightfall.

Just as they were thinking of turning in for the night, Repede bolted upright, fur standing on end.

The sudden movement nearly gave Yuri a heart attack, and when Repede started barking he leapt to his feet. Repede gave him a look and then dashed out, Yuri and the others hot on his heels. It wasn't often he saw Repede so worked up, so he expected to see an undead monster around any corner.

Repede led them upstairs and ran straight to the hallway with the locked door. He came up short at the intersection and leaned forward, tail pointing straight out and lips snarled.

Yuri held out his sword, but it only took seconds to realize the hall was empty.

Karol, fear in his eyes, looked around. "Repede? What is it?"

"He heard something," Yuri said, lowering his sword but not sheathing it. There was… something not quite right. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something about standing here made his stomach squirm.

Repede's eyes were still locked on the door, which Judith slowly approached. Karol, Yuri, Raven, and Repede braced themselves to attack if anything ambushed her, and Yuri didn't breathe as she reached for the doorknob.

The handle rattled, and the door didn't even budge. Judith turned back to the others with a shrug. "Seems the same as before."

Yuri watched Repede carefully, lamenting his friend's lack of speech. He could usually figure out what Repede was trying to communicate, but it got trickier with precise details. It was clear that Repede's message was 'I do not like this door or this house and I feel very strongly that there is something bad going on here', but until Rita invented a way for dogs to communicate in human speech, he'd have to figure out the details on his own.

"Ok…" Karol spoke slowly, carefully balancing how freaked out he was with the need to be confident as the guild boss. "I think it would be really naïve of us to pass this off as nothing just because we don't see it. Clearly something spooked Repede. We need to get some sleep, so let's clean up one of the guest bedrooms. We'll stay in the same room and sleep in shifts, just in case."

"Sounds like a good plan to me," Yuri said. He considered suggesting they take the master bedroom, since that one had been in use recently and wouldn't be covered in dust, but it was directly connected to Melanie's bedroom, and no one wanted to get too close to that room.

They found a bedroom near the main staircase that had a pair of double beds. They changed the sheets with spares found in the closet, did a bit of dusting on the dresser and desk, swept the wooden floors, and called it good. It wasn't the kind of room Yuri would decorate, with little purple flowers in neat vertical rows covering the wallpaper, but with the lamps lit and white curtains pulled aside to let moonlight gleam on the mirror of the vanity, it was almost cozy.

"Only two beds," Raven pointed out. "We'll have ta double up. What d'ya say, Judy, care to sleep with ol' Raven?"

"I don't see why not."

Raven pumped his fist in the air. "All right! Score one for the old man!"

"Looks like we're sharing, Boss," Yuri said. "Just promise me you won't take up the whole bed."

In no time, they'd gotten ready for bed and tucked in under the covers. Repede, still restless, was taking the first watch and would wake Yuri in two hours. Yuri settled in to sleep, already feeling Karol spreading his limbs out to inevitably take up three-fourths of the bed. There was nothing to worry about, he told himself. Repede was the best watchdog a man could hope for, and so far they had nothing to be afraid of but a weird feeling and a long-dead skeleton.

He was just spooked, that was all. Cyril was a sad, lonely old man who'd done something really freaky with his wife's remains, and coupled with Pavel's story, Yuri's mind was eager to fill in the blanks with ghouls and monsters. Repede had everything under control and he let himself believe the sounds he heard were just his mind playing tricks on him.

It was just the wind, he insisted as he wavered on the edge of consciousness. Still, just before falling into sleep, he found himself thinking, but why is the wind calling my name?