Notes: Thanks to LilyBolt for helping me bounce this idea off of her and for leaving a review (not to mention a warning that the formatting had gone wrong. Darn Macs!). This chapter, we get to the meat, and this takes place in about December of 2014, by my estimations.

It'd been a stressful year.

It all began with the dead body they found in the school. Identified as former student Monica Gonzalez, it had been in an old freezer since 1983. She'd gone missing in '81. She had one surviving family member, a sister named Giselle.

We all thought that was it. Nobody expected the girl's spirit to hang around. But that's exactly what happened. She began hurting teachers, trying to send the message that she was still there. Monica was furious.

We'd been out of school for weeks, and no more people had been hurt. Most teachers had taken their classes onto the Internet, where they posted assignments and notes for their students. My fellow seniors and I were told we'd be top-priority; we would definitely be graduating on time, and we'd still be able to get in the college of our choice. Didn't change the fact that we were livid.

One thing I wasn't expecting, though, was the new boy. Ben had only recently moved to Memphis, yet he was the first person besides the police to investigate what had happened. He came to me with it, and we found out from a former student about the fourth floor.

There were maybe two or three months left until the "school year" was supposed to end. We gathered the materials we'd need—salt, shotguns, empty rounds to pour the first item into. Ben even equipped me with a special knife.

I didn't want to use violence, so I didn't. I sat down and talked to Monica, showed her some of the stuff I'd brought. A yearbook with her picture, an official police report I'd gotten hold of showing that her body would be left with her sister, who would most certainly treat her well.

And so, even though Ben had said it would be a "salt and burn," in other words lighting a corpse on fire, I was able to negotiate with a poltergeist.

I still got into my favorite university, still got my full-tuition scholarship. I'd expected to leave the hunting world behind. Ben didn't want me to at first. Finally, we compromised. When I graduated college, he and I would team up and expel poltergeists all over the country. He would've been two years out of high school by then.

College started off pretty great. My roommate seemed cool—a sweet girl, African American, with long, natural, springy hair. Her name was Aaliyah. She'd grown up in Alabama, and she wasn't used to Memphis. I took her to all my favorite haunts, and she said I should visit her hometown.

By the end of the semester, Aaliyah decided to move rooms. We had frequent arguments; she liked to stay up late, and I preferred to keep an early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule. We decided we could still be friends, but that she and another person would switch rooms. We always talked, and our friendship only grew.

To my surprise, my new roommate was even better. She respected my boundaries, and even though she stayed up late, she wasn't loud like Aaliyah had been. Her name was Rebecca, but she asked me to call her Bec. I respected that—I myself prefer to be called Ella, instead of Isabella, Izzy, or Bella. We probably first bonded over that similarity.

Bec was always nice. Even though she and I were polar opposites, we never fought—if we disagreed, we decided that both were right in some capacity.

One strange thing about her, though, was her interest in the paranormal. I might have expected it from a theology major if I didn't live in the Bible Belt.

She was constantly studying religious symbols and drawing them. She frequently taped papers filled with them to the walls; I had a feeling she would've painted them right on if it weren't for dorm rules.

When she learned about Ben and I's adventure with the poltergeist, she was oddly interested. Afterwards, she began sharing her own numerous paranormal experiences.

I didn't really pay attention to those for a while. I knew some people were more sensitive to those sorts of things; I figured she was one of them.

When the tortures started, Bec was oddly interested. She always visited the scenes afterward. I was slightly surprised when she started making one of those weird crime-tracker boards in our room, tacks and evidence and string, the whole bit.

Of course, I figured it was just a normal, CSI superfan kind of deal. I never thought she'd find a pattern, or that she'd go to the next one.

Or that she would see me there.

Notes: Thanks for reading, and please leave a review! Next time on The Outlier, Ella recounts her second paranormal encounter - this one a bit more stressful.