A Haunting in Connecticut story.
God's Away On Business

Disclaimer: I do not and have not owned or stated I've owned anything involving the Haunting in Connecticut, and it shall stay that way. Even though I wish it didn't. I do not own the songs, "God's Away On Business" by the wonderful Tom Waits, "Funny The Way It Is" by the Dave Matthews Band, "Find My Baby" by Moby (mmm...moby..), or the song "Loosing My Religion" by R.E.M. Thanks!

Chapter One: Loosing My Religion
Rating: Tfor suggestive language.

"Okay, first, lets just start with the simple questions; What's your name and how old are you?" A camera panned over to a young girl with chocolate brown hair and eyes to match.

"My name is Ark Edison, and I'm 21." You could hear a hint of Britain ancestry in her soft, calm voice.

"Alright," stated the young man behind the camera. "Now, you lived in the old Aickman house with the Campbell's, correct?" She nodded her head. "Now, you are of no relation to the Campbell family whatsoever, so how did you end up living with them?"

Ark shifted in her seat, thinking of the right thing to say to answer this question.

"Well...what it basically comes down to is that...Matt Campbell and me were...really good friends."

"Oh? And how did you both end up that way?"

Ark sat there for a moment in silence.

"I'll just start at the beginning?"

The man nodded excitedly, about ready to hang onto her every word.

"Growing up, I didn't have to best of lives. My parents were great, don't get me wrong, but they died when I was fifteen. Nobody knew how they died, it was a freak accident that their car just randomly swerved off the road. But I knew, I knew all along that they were going to get my parents, it was only a matter of time."

The director looked at her questionably, "Who were going to get your parents, Ark?"

"Them. The ghosts. The ghouls, whatever they were, nobody could see them except me...i-it was because I was sick. I had Fatal Familial Insomnia, which ultimately leads to death about 7 to 36 months after symptoms begin. But within that time when you are diagnosed and when you die, it's like you're just mingling along that line between life and death. But when you're just a dead little girl and you can see all these dead little people around you...it's like, I can't even explain it. It drives you insane. And I was, I knew I was after my parents had died.

"I ran away, all across the US, I got into drugs and drinking...anything that would make them go away, but it only made me more vulnerableto them. So I got out of all that shit within a week, that's when I was in Ohio. I made my way to New York a few weeks after that. I had found it easier to ignore the ghosts after I found a few good friends and an actual boyfriend. I felt happy there, like nothing was the matter. Of course, I still saw them everywhere I went, but they didn't bother me. I think they drove me to do those things because I had tempted them by yelling and screaming at them.

"But there, I felt safe, like something was watching over me. I knew someone was watching over me and it wasn't God, I knew that. But days soon turned to weeks, and I was again starting to feel the pressure of the insomnia, and my behavior was reflecting on the ones I loved, or at least, I thought I loved..."

Ark sat at the edge of her window, reading one of her favorite books, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. It was a children's book, but she's loved it since she was once a child herself. Her mother had read it to her before she went to sleep. But that was when she could still sleep, and when her mother was still alive.

Thinking of her parents brought tears to Ark's eyes, so she barely thought of them ever. She hated crying.

She absentmindedly sipped at her coffee cup as she read about Lucy and Mr. Tumnus. Her eyes lit up every time she reached this chapter; it was her favorite. But her mind was brought from the wonderful world of Narnia by her cell phone ringing from across the room.

"Standing on a bridge, watch the water passing underneath,
It must have been much harder when there was no bridge, just water
Now the world is small, compared to how it used to be
With mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and star-"

"Hey baby." Ark answered, flashing her pearly whites.

"Ark?" She noticed her boyfriend's voice was sickly slurred, he was drunk. She inwardly sighed.

"What's wrong, Nikki?" She asked worriedly.

"Fuck it," she heard Nikki say to himself, and then heard people in the background cheering like drunken sailors. "Ark, I need to talk to you."

"...okay." Her voice was careful and she hung on his every word.

She heard the cheering fade and then Nikki started to speak once again, "You're a whore."

Ark double took herself for a second, had he meant her?

"W-what?"

"You heard me, you're a whore, you slut, I don't want to do this anymore." Tears ran down her face. "You're crazy, Ark. Are you listening to me? You're insane. I can't be with someone like that."

More tears ran down her face silently, she made no movement. "...fine." She told him, muttering up her voice and she hoped it sounded the least bit strong.

Ark heard him hang up and she slowly pulled the phone down and sat on the edge of her bed.

More tears fell down her cheeks as she sobbed. Ark felt a presence next her and she only expected it be one of them. She gripped her phone tight in her hands, holding in her anger.

"It's all your fault, you fucking ghosts, it's all you fault!" A shadow appeared on the wall in front of her. The anger pursed through her in beats of sweat and she threw her phone to the wall and it shattered in pieces as it disappeared.

Whispers all around her, she clutched her ears with her hands. A pressure on her shoulders drew her to the ground and she whimpered with her face in the carpet. Ark crawled over to her stereo and but a CD in, turning it up all the way to drown out the voices.

"I'm gone find my baby
Whoah
Before that sun goes down."

The stanza played over and over again until she heard an unfamiliar voice.

"Leave this place Ark!"

Ark had never heard this voice, she had heard all the other voices before. They were previous tenants that had died in her apartment. But this was no previous tenant. It was a young male voice and he sounded urgent.

"Leave this place now!" She heard from the voice again. Ark slammed her hand on several buttons, hoping to catch the 'stop' button.

Silence filled her apartment and then the voices started up again louder and louder, but she only heard the boy's voice telling her to leave over and over again.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

The voices stopped, even the boy's, and Ark ran to answer the obnoxious knocking. She ripped open the door to reveal a short and stout Chinese woman in an off-pink, dirty bath robe with a scowl upon her brow. The ever-so-cheerful Elska Ruan, who had to be at least 200 years old, in Ark's opinion and always smelled of cats and burnt coffee.

"Keep a dat racket down, you hooligan!" Her thick accent sputtered through toothless gums, and chapped lips.

Ark gave her a small sympathetic look, "I'm sorry, Miss. Ruan, just trying to clear my head. It won't happen again." Normally she wouldn't close the door on her so loving neighbor but she wanted to hear the boy's voice again. Slamming the door, she heard the woman curse in Chinese, or Japanese, or whatever-ese as she walked back to her room of lover-cats.

Ark rested her back against the door, tiredly sighing. She wiped the sweat and tears from her cheeks and then she realized she must've look like a fool in front of Miss Ruan. But she couldn't care less.

"Alright. Who are you?"

No answer. She gritted her teeth.

"You just talked to me." There was an eerie silence, she knew the ghost that held the voice was watching her, her senses keen to the feeling.

More silence. Ark grunted as she lifted herself from the door and walked over to the window and grabbed her beloved book, held it in her hands gently.

"You told me to leave, boy. Why?" Her own slight British accent leaking through every word.

Silence. Again.

Ark sighed, he obviously didn't want her to leave that bad. She sat on her window seat once again and opened her book to read.

"You're not safe here." The voice of the boy interrupted her reading.

"...No shit." She scoffed in sadness, she wasn't safe anywhere.

"Leave, Ark." The boy said just as the other voices of men and women filtered around her and she threw her book down in fright.

They had never sounded so loud, Ark's head ached within seconds.

She screamed and climbed from the window and over to her closet, pulling out her dark green bag pack. She started to pack the few clothes she owned and her most precious items.

"Hurry!" She heard the boy say and so she hurried. Ark didn't quite know why she was hurrying, but something about the fear in his voice struck a familiar chord within in her telling her danger was close.

Slipping her bag on her back, she grabbed her guitar, suitcase, and all the money she could find and her car keys and ran down the stairs and loaded her car.

Once Ark open the drivers door, she heard a large explosion implode over head.

Her eyes met the building and she saw the whole forth floor windows had busted out and vicious orange, red, and yellow flames curtled and she heard screams of terror from the occupants of that forth floor as they perished in the flames. The floor was gone in minutes. Her floor was gone in minutes.

The firetrucks came and the police came in hopes of trying to save those in the forth floor, but Ark knew that the occupants of forth floor wouldn't survive that. Miss Raun wouldn't survive.

But Ark survived, all because of that boy, who ever he was, he had saved her. She owed her life to this dead boy.

She looked at her apartment building once more and climbed into the driver's seat, and left.