A/N: Hey! So. This is my first story ever to release online, so... I'm scared! :D

Now, I've never really shown any current things I write to anyone I know, so I am definitely not promising its good, but I'll be damned if I say it's bad! Heh.

So yeah. Idea isn't that original, the chick's a hunter, she meets the guys, and yadda, yadda, yadda, things happen! Despite the fact that it is a tad bit rudimentary, I like it. And that's why I'm doing this. I'm showing what I like to the world, and pray it likes it too!


While normal nights in Wisconsin weren't particularly strange, this one inflicted an itch upon one's spine, setting everyone observant enough to pick it up on edge.

As a young woman, of perhaps twenty-three, studied the old abandoned shack before them; she supposed that feeling of impending dread was beneficial, considering her line of work.

"You ready?" Came the clipped tone of an older man, maybe in his late fifties, his gruff voice grating and his scruffy, unshaven, mustached face hard in agitation.

The woman only rolled her eyes and muttered, "Does a bird fly?"

The man - her father - practically sneered at her lame attempt at a joke and marched purposefully towards the abandoned old shack.

Well then, I guess he's the 'stomp away' kind of angry with me... She thought bitterly, watching him walk away with a wrinkled nose at his attitude. She hoisted the two large bags of salt from behind her mother's car, an old but well-kept blue 1970 LTD Brougham. With a huff, she joined her father at the shack to pour a perimeter of salt - her usual job.

After researching for days, the woman had finally had come up with credible information on the entire reason they had driven to a little worthless town in the middle of nowhere that was vaguely in Wisconsin.

The woman had been checking her usual online news sources when she came across a death of a completely healthy and squeaky-clean young lady of the town the duo was on the outskirts of.

The lady had been asphyxiated, but there was no bruising, no evidence whatsoever of strangulation other than being found pretty much as purple as a grape. The death had been ruled a heart attack, of all things.

A "natural death" of a heart attack, in the case of a woman with a practically perfect ticker.

The woman heaving salt knew, though... She knew that it was anything but natural.

When they got to the town, no one seemed to know anything about the mysterious death of Abigail Bart... Everyone was so sickeningly sweet and smooth at avoiding questions about it, though. It made the dark-haired member of the duo even more on edge than this biting chill of the night.

But, after noticing some slip-ups between the stories, she finally figured out what tied the whole thing together. Abigail was a young kid, but had moved out of her parent's house, and into an abandoned but admittedly amazing looking old Victorian house... with an unknown and ugly story behind it.

Let's make it more cliche by just saying, there was a damn good reason the house was abandoned and leave it at that.

With her usual technological magic, the woman had pieced together who the ghost possibly could be. She found out that he was a free-roaming spirit, if the past deaths ALL over the town proved correct.

And that was just gr-ea-t.

"...O-phel-ia."

By his snappish, jolting tone, he must've had to repeat himself one too many times, the poor baby.

"What? Yeah. Sorry. What is it?" Her tone was forcibly polite, but she felt as if each word was as if she was willingly gouging her eyes with a dull spork.

He gave her a brief glare and shook his head, mumbling a nevermind, stalking off around the shack to check for anything interesting.

This brush-off stoked a fire in her.

How can he even try to be professional if he was too busy being a mopey little bitch?!

Stop.

Take a breath.

Restart.

Right.

Ghost. Bad ghost.

Right.

While grumbling to herself, she took out her moderately sized buoy knife and sliced open one of the bags of salt to pour around the house stealthily.

Not stealthily enough, apparently.

Ophelia let out a shout of surprise as an invisible force threw her into a tree and held her there, blocking air from entering her lungs.

"D...-! Da...-!" She couldn't get anything else out. She helplessly clawed at her own throat, though nothing was present to scratch at.

Her legs were moving on their own accord, thumping against the tree violently in attempts to free herself or to make a sound to alert her father-she didn't know anymore.

As her throat convulsed with the need to swallow air, her lungs ached, and her brain seemed to be pounding against her skull to the beat of her erratic heartbeat.

This is how I die, she thought in the inner chaos of her thoughts. This was how she would die, and he wouldn't even care.

Hell, she wouldn't even care.

She calmed down her legs the best she could in her frenzied state, as her body was beginning to shut itself down anyway. She saw thousands of spots dancing across her eyes and blackness cloud the edges of her vision.

The shack was in a clearing in the woods, and at the break in the trees, the luminescent light of the moon stared uncaringly down at her, almost mocking her situation.

Her blood was rushing through her ears like a torrent as her movements became more and more sluggish against the tree, at least a full seven feet from the ground.

She had had both hands clutching at her own throat, but now her right one felt as heavy as lead, and it fell to dangle along with her twitching legs.

She stared at the moon, wide ice-blue eyes illuminated by the orb in the sky, the sheen of her watery eyes made the orbs look startlingly clearer than they already were and showed her fear and vulnerability.

She was going to die.

And no one cared.

Unable to do anything else, she just closed her eyes and waited for her abused lungs to finally give up their fight, and her brain to shut down.

But that never came.

There was a startled yell from below, a familiar voice, but she didn't listen.

There were words, vaguely sounding alike to curses, but she didn't hear them.

She felt herself fell forward, and forward, and forward... She didn't really notice the uncomfortable strain of her ribcage and the thump of her head making contact with the leaf-piled floor of the woods. She needed to breathe.

Nothing made sense as she just tried nothing but to breath, but was only able to hack to the point of coughing up blood.

Her windpipe was raw, and her head was throbbing and spinning as she tried to move.

She heard multiple shots from gun, and then nothing, save for her coughing.

"Ope!" She heard. But she didn't believe she had. She hadn't been called that for a very long time by the voice that had shouted it.

She didn't open her eyes, but she did curl up around herself, uncaring of the dry, filthy leaves that clung to her thick onyx hair.

"Ope!" It sounded closer now, before footsteps sounded further away... Then in front of her.

Nothing makes sense.

"Opie," it was calmer than the voice had previously been, but she still didn't open her eyes.

She felt something grip her chin gently and a cold shape met her lips.

"Drink," the voice said. And she tried.

It was hard, and the first few attempts almost made it worse - made it feel like she was drowning, actually - but her body finally stopped convulsing.

Somebody lifted her and maneuvered her to sit-up against the very tree that she had almost been killed against.

She opened her eyes and saw her father.

That couldn't be right...

Her brows were furrowed as the pair shared a heavy silence.

Now is as good of a time as any, I guess, she thought morosely, despite the whole situation.

"Dad," she rasped out, her throat severely resisting her attempts at speech.

She cleared her throat forcefully. They were gonna talk about this, damn it.

"I'm sorry," she managed, succeeding in adding serious emotion to her hoarse voice.

Her father's face grew cold, then resigned.

"It wa'n't a liar's argument, kid," he conceded softly. "It was the truth." His lips were in a contemplative frown, his ridiculously large handlebar mustache looking as if it was protruding off of his face more than it was.

Ophelia stared at the man before her... Her father... And snapped.

Pretty much literally.

Still not entirely in charge of her extremities yet, both of her weakened fists flew up to strike the man before her, uncharacteristic tears of rage clouding her vision. The man had caught her weak fists easily, but was startled by her sudden movement.

"How can you say that?!" Ophelia screamed as best as she could. To her ears, it was pathetic. Cracking and hitching and scratching.

"After all of this time, wh-hy?!" The last syllable of the last word was lengthened by a half-delirious sob. She wrestled weakly with her father's grip, trying to hit him again.

Her father's steel-gray eyes were hard, but she could see also see him reigning in his potential harsh responses. He let her say her piece, which surprised her, but she pushed on.

"What I said?" She paused, waiting for acknowledgement. He nodded. "Was horseshit," she practically spat. She could see her father open his mouth to reprimand her for her foul language, but he had stopped himself.

"I was mad! And we both know I talk absolute crap when I am mad!" A new wave of a new series of emotions hit her. With her voice thick and trembling, she murmured, "It was just as much my fault as it was yours."

She paused again to cough violently, and rasped out in disbelief, "You really believe it was your fault?"

She glared up at her father, who's grip on her clenched fists was practically loose, as he stared down with his cold steel eyes looking like a rainy day.

"Yes," he murmured, setting her hands on her lap. "I do, Opie."

Ophelia's breath caught in her throat at the use of her childhood nickname on his tongue. She hadn't been dreaming.

"Daddy..." she cried softly, her voice had reached a higher octave, one of shock and a sadness she hasn't felt in a long time.

He stood suddenly, leaving her to choke back tears in utter disbelief.

She quieted herself, allowing the silence overtake her, her hands going to surround her father's canteen that had been forgotten in her lap.

She finished the water, placed the canteen beside her and stood, leaving the shack, leaving her father, and leaving the Brougham her mother had named Wanda when Ophelia was just eight-years-old.


A/N:I did it! I posted the first chapter! Mwhahaha.. So, this WILL be a Sam/OC, because, DAMMIT, Opie can FIX HIM!... *cough* But, believe me, it was pretty difficult to decide which to pick... HEH. ANYWAY.

So yeah! Leave a review if you like it, getting responses on what I write makes me happy!

Thank you for reading, and have a great day/night/other!