Chapter 2

"May I present Mr. John Casey to everyone," Ryerson said somewhat needlessly, as everyone in the room seemed to recognize him for one reason or another. Casey surveyed the room calmly, before turning his gaze to Chuck and Ellie.

"So, you're Horace's niece and nephew. It's funny. Never put the name together."

"Really, Casey?" Chuck asked, somewhat annoyed by this completely unforeseen development. "Cause there are so many Bartowski's out there?"

Casey shrugged, then turned to greet Penelope. Seeing Ryerson motion to an empty seat at the table, he shook his head. "Thanks. Ate on the way."

"Casey," Chuck said, still confused and somewhat perturbed. "How on earth did you know my uncle?"

"We worked together," Casey responded, pulling out a cigar and lighting it. "Back in the day."

"Wait, our Uncle worked for the…" Ellie's voice trailed off, her eyes briefly darting to Ryerson and the other strangers. "He worked for the Government?"

"More of a contractor, really. His unique area of expertise came in handy occasionally."

"And uh…what expertise was that?"

Casey looked at Chuck as if he was an idiot. Chuck hadn't seen that look directed at him much since the first few missions they'd had together. He almost missed it at times. "Why, ghosts of course."

"Excuse me?"

"You didn't know?" Penelope asked. "Your Uncle was a well-renowned expert on ghosts."

"You mean, like a parapsychologist?"

"Oh no," Dr. Stanislov interjected. "Hardly that. Horace believed that the existence of ghosts invalidated the entire idea of science."

"Funny," Ellie muttered. "I thought it was the other way around."

"Seriously, he's making this up, right?" Chuck asked Sarah.

"Don't bother asking your better half," Casey remarked. "She doesn't have the clearance level to know."

"Sorry, Casey. There's nothing you could say that would make be believe any of this."

"Really," Casey replied drily, removing the cigar from his mouth. "How about this. Collinston."

As soon as Casey finished pronouncing the word, Chuck's eyes turned gradually wider as the flash washed over him. With each successive image, he shrank back further. At the end, he squeaked, "Ok, I believe you."

"Now, since everyone's about finished with dinner," Ryerson interrupted. "I think we should adjourn back to the sitting room and get started."

Chuck stood up slowly, but quickly moved to grab his glass of wine. Sarah gave him a concerned look as they followed the crowd out of the dining room.

"I'm ok. Just a bit of a headache from the cartwheels my entire worldview is doing in my brain right now."

"Next time don't be so quick to judge," Casey commented from behind him. "Are ghosts really that much harder to believe than geeky spies with computers in their brains, or inexplicably occurring bouts of amnesia?"

Chuck chose not to respond to that, and instead dropped down a couch between Sarah and Morgan. Everyone else also found a seat, other than Casey who remained standing and the lawyer who had vanished again. A moment later he reappeared, carrying a large sealed envelope and a small wooden box.

Ryerson placed the box down on a side table, and removed a small knife from his pocket. He opened the envelope with the knife, cleared his throat, and began to read.

"I, Horace Hooper Bartowski, being of sound mind and body, hereby bequeath my entire estate as follows. I leave my entire fortune to be divided equally among my living descendents – my niece and nephew Eleanor and Charles Bartowski, my dear secretary Penelope Rothman, my Doctor and confidante Martin Stanislov, and my longtime friend John Casey. However, in order to inherit their share, each person must spend the night here at my house."

"Well, that seems easy enough," Morgan commented.

"And, must still be alive at 7 AM the next morning."

"Ok, that last part's a little weird."

"Are we really sure about that 'sound mind' part?" Devon asked.

"Oh, Horace was as sane as I am," Dr. Stanislov rumbled.

"Not really much of a reassurance," Chuck whispered to Sarah.

"Any questions?" Ryerson asked.

"You mean that's it?" Ellie asked. "Spend the night, and split the fortune. He didn't tell us anything else?"

"That's the entire will."

"Wait, what about the box?" Morgan stood up and approached the small box that Ryerson had carried in with the will.

The lawyer shrugged. "I don't know. Horace had instructed me to bring it in when the time came to read the will."

"Well, it's an interesting looking box. Maybe there is more information inside." He fumbled with the box, trying to open it. "It's locked." He turned it around a few times, looking for an opening.

"Don't shake it, Moron."

"Hey, there has to be a lock somewhere. Oops." Morgan bent down to pick up the pieces of the broken box. "Huh, guess there was nothing in it. Chuck, your Uncle really was nuts."

Judging by the weird chill that he had just felt enter the room, Chuck wasn't so sure.

"I trust you'll find your bedrooms to be comfortable." Chuck was standing in the foyer, watching everyone look at each other uncertainly. The cook and other servants had just left, leaving only Ryerson left with the potential beneficiaries. He briefly wondered if the lawyer was going to stay to referee things.

"I'll be back in the morning," Ryerson answered Chuck's silent question. "I'll be here a little after 7 to check attendance and pulses. In the meantime, I must warn you that every door and window in the house will be bolted from the outside. Also, the drawbridge linking this island to the mainland will be raised, per Horace's instructions."

Chuck looked over the lawyer's shoulder up to the grandfather clock standing in the corner. He didn't need to see its hands to know exactly what time it was. The clock's menacing chimes had sounded eight times a few minutes ago. If the worst he had to look forward to during the next eleven hours was to be repeatedly woken up by those chimes, he would consider himself lucky.

The lawyer turned to Morgan. "Um, since you're not actually a beneficiary, there's no need for you to stay. Besides, we don't have a room for you here."

Morgan clapped Chuck on the back. "Chuck is my best friend, and I always have his back." Chuck felt a brief swell of admiration for his stalwart friend.

"And besides, I'm sure he and Sarah won't mind if I bunk with them."

"So now what?"

Everyone was back in the sitting room. Chuck thought he felt the strange chill he'd first noticed when Morgan had broken the strange box. Or maybe it was just the waves of distrust and fear everyone was feeling.

"Well, this all seems ridiculous to me," Devon said. "All everyone has to do is go up to their room, and go to sleep. I hardly think there's any danger, and I for one don't believe in ghosts."

"Then you would be a fool," Dr. Stanislov countered, his gravelly voice dripping with contempt.

"Took you only a couple of hours to figure that one out, Stanny?" Casey commented, working on another cigar.

"I'm a bit more worried about more earthbound dangers," Sarah pointed out. "There's a lot of motive here for making sure the number of inheritors shrinks."

Chuck looked over at the Doctor and secretary. Both seemed harmless enough, but who could say.

"I think maybe what we should do first is make sure there aren't any deadly weapons lying around."

"And what are we supposed to do with them when we find them?" Penelope asked. "I'm not going to just hand them over to you, so you can bump us off so your husband can inherit everything!"

"I'm not going to…"

"Wait, I have an idea," Ellie interrupted. "I think I saw an old coal chute in the kitchen. We can drop any weapons down there. It should lead outside, so none of us can reach them."

This idea seemed to satisfy everyone, so Sarah made another suggestion. "We should split up. Nobody should be alone."

"Great," Devon said. "I'll go with Sarah and Ellie."

"Probably a good idea," Dr. Stanislov said. "They could use the protection of a big guy like you."

Chuck bit his lip to avoid laughing at the thought of Sarah needing protection. Though he was a bit annoved that she didn't make an effort to team up with him. "I'll, uh…take Casey. He seems to know a lot about all of this."

Casey grunted his best 'I don't think so' grunt. "No way, Bartowski. You'd probably try to knock me off so you could get my share to buy more Star Wars dolls. I'll go with Doc Stanislov and Penelope."

"I guess that leaves you and me, Chuck," Morgan said.

Not feeling reassured, Chuck grabbed Sarah's arm. "Are you sure about this?"

"Ellie and Devon need my protection, Chuck," she answered. "Besides, you've got the Intersect to keep you safe. Nobody else does."

"Not sure kung fu's going to work all that well on ghosts."

"Forget the ghosts," Sarah rolled her eyes. "And keep an eye out for that secretary and the quack. I don't trust either of them."

Chuck watched his wife leave with Ellie and Devon, trying to ignore the concern in the pit of his stomach. Still, he almost jumped when he felt someone grab his arm. "C'mon," he heard Morgan say. "Let's go search the kitchen first."

"Chuck's going to be fine. Whatever the Intersect hasn't taught him about protecting himself, you have."

Ellie's words made sense, but they only comforted Sarah a little. "I know, it's just…I have a bad feeling about this place."

Sarah, Ellie and Devon had chosen the upstairs to do their searching. They'd peeked through a couple of bedrooms and found nothing, and now were searching the library. So far they'd added two letter openers and a pair of foreboding-looking brass bookends to the pile of potential deadly weapons.

"Oh c'mon, you're not actually taking what Casey said seriously?" Devon asked.

"Well, no. Not exactly. But it's just…this place, I guess."

"You married into a family of weirdos, Sarah. No offense, Babe."

"None taken," Ellie responded. "Look at all of these books on the occult. Raising the dead, voodoo, necromancy. Uncle Horace was definitely a weirdo."

Devon joined his wife at the bookshelf. "Hey do you suppose this is like one of those old movies, where you move one book and it reveals a secret passageway? That would be awesome."

"That old cliché?" Ellie replied, rifling through desk drawers. "I doubt it."

"Hold on, check this out! Every book on this shelf is about magic or ghosts or something like that, other than one." Devon pointed to the binder of one book in the middle of a waist-high shelf. "50 Shades of Grey! Has to be fake!" He removed the book.

Nothing happened.

"So much for your secret passage theory," Ellie commented. "I guess Uncle Horace was a fan."

"Apparently," Devon said drily. "There are a lot of dog-eared pages in here."

"Yuk."

"Hey, do you suppose he used to read this with Penelope?"

"God, Devon, please!"

"We really should focus on finding any weapons and get out of here," Sarah interrupted, still worried about Chuck.

"Whoa, I think page 138 must have been a particular favorite," Devon said, nonplussed, as he flipped through the book. "I bet ol' Horace and Penelope re-enacted this one a few times."

Ellie grabbed a book off of the shelf and threw it at her husband. Devon ducked, and the book sailed over his head, hitting the wing of a brass eagle hanging on the wall. A clicking sound echoed through the room, and the bookshelf shifted to the right.

"Let's hear it for clichés," Sarah commented, peering at the dark passageway that the bookshelf had been hiding.

"Sh-should we go down there?" Devon asked uncertainly.

"Could be a way out. Could come in handy in an emergency."

"I would think an exit would have more light coming from it, not less."

"Well, we should check it out anyway," Sarah said resolutely. "But, we should probably grab some more candles."

"…I'm just sayin' that we shouldn't necessarily be buying into the Parker Brothers hype. I mean, say you're Mrs. Peacock, this old, lonely widow. You want to do in a big due like Mr. Boddy, you do it from a distance. You use the revolver, or maybe you poison him. You're not going to go up to him and hit him with a candlestick! Too risky.

"Ok, maybe if you're Colonel Mustard. You're big and strong, you could probably kill somebody with it. Heck, maybe they've had military candlestick training, so they can fight off North Korean insurgents in a Bed, Bath and Beyond if necessary. I should ask Casey about that some time."

"Morgan…"

"And let's just say, for argument's sake, that you would kill somebody with a candlestick. What kind of a house has only one candlestick in it? Don't they usually come in twos. Or twenty-nines," Morgan added, looking around at the menagerie of candles surrounding the kitchen.

"Morgan, for the love of God!" Finally getting his friend's attention, Chuck pressed on. "I get that you don't want to collect every candlestick in the house, but we have to focus."

"Well, it's not like we can just leave the candles without them. Although, maybe your Uncle Horace figured the fire would be what would kill us."

"Morgan, please. I'd like to be able to hear any screams or moans. Here," he said, handing Morgan a disturbingly large kitchen knife he'd found in a drawer, "put this in the box."

"Now this is a noif." Morgan said in a bad Australian accent.

"You find anything else deadly in here, other than your Paul Hogan?"

"Let's see." Morgan peered into the box. "Two corkscrews, a meat thermometer, and a couple of rubber bands I wasn't sure about but figure could do some damage if shot into an eye. More importantly, have you found any food? I'm still starving after that 'dinner'."

Chuck opened up a cabinet door near his head. "Clearly, there was no danger of running out of Spam tonight," pointing out several stacks of identical metal tins. "Other than that, not much."

"Great." Morgan jumped up and down a few times, struggling to reach another one of the high cabinet doors. Finally, the door popped open, and a bottle nearly fell on the bearded man's head. After fumbling around for a moment, he managed to grab the bottle before it hit the floor.

"Pickled newt juice?" Morgan read off the label.

"Strong stuff. I wouldn't recommend it." Chuck shut the cabinet door, and gave the kitchen a once-over. "We should finish up in here, and move on. There are a lot of rooms in this house, and clearly being in here is just making you moan and groan."

"I wasn't moaning, or groaning for that matter," Morgan protested. "I'm just a bit hungry is all."

"It's alright, I get it. I didn't eat much either."

"Hey, I swear, I…" Morgan paused. "Wait, I heard something too! From out there."

Chuck listened again, and realized Morgan was right. There was a sound coming from outside. "Uh, should we check it out?"

"Er…Maybe we should stay here."

"Someone could be hurt." Chuck tried to push any memories of the Casey-induced flash out of his mind. "We should look."

"Ok," Morgan sighed. He reached into the box and retrieved the corkscrew. "After you."

"I can see why you'd want to hide a place like this," Ellie commented, as she followed Sarah and Devon down the dark stairwell. "Not really something you'd want to highlight on the Realtor's tour."

"I don't know. Seems to be the hip hangout for spiders," Devon looked up at the cobweb-laden walls. "And probably worse," he added looking down at the floor.

"What is this place?" Sarah carefully waved the candle she was holding around the room. The room was filled with tables and shelves, all covered with dusty objects. In one corner stood what appeared to be a gurney. Avoiding that, she went over to one of the shelves and studied the contents. "Yuk," she said. "Is that a fetal pig in this jar?"

"Well, at least bacon's an option for breakfast."

"I think I'll pass," Sarah replied.

"Jinkies!"

Sarah and Devon both turned to see Ellie flipping through a stack of musty tomes atop another shelf. "You find something?"

"Hmm?" Ellie looked up. "Oh, no. I just remembered that Jinkies was the name of the pizza place on Hamilton. It'd been bugging me all night." She looked back down at one of the books. "Though these are a bit odd. Old Horace must have liked his experiments. Look at these," she added, flipping through one particularly daunting-looking volume. "Old medical books. I've heard of some of these, too. All discredited."

"Odd thing to have, for someone who didn't like science."

"Well, that's part of why they were discredited. Not much science, but a lot of…other stuff."

"Hey, check this out." Sarah was leaning over a desk at the other side of the room. "Looks like a hand-written journal or something. Unfortunately, I can't read it. It's in Latin."

"I thought you were good with foreign languages?"

"Just the living ones." She moved aside and let Ellie take a look. A moment later the neurosurgeon reached into a pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses. "For reading," she explained apologetically. "It's no big deal. Not like I'd be fumbling around in the dark if I lost them." She studied the book silently for a moment. "Huh. Spiritus ego dimittam vos, et vade vexatum alteri placent. Don't really remember that phrase from medical school."

Sarah hugged herself, trying to wade off a sudden chill, and looked through the desk drawers. "A lot of other stuff in here. Some of it in English too."

"Newspaper clippings," Devon said, looking over her shoulder.

Sarah glanced at one. "It's about a gangster in the 1920's, Joey Santello. Ran with Capone in the 20's."

"Alright! Go Chicago!"

Sarah gave Devon a glance, and read on. "Says he died in 1931. His body was found in a car at the bottom of the Chicago River. His, uh, head was found elsewhere. According to the article it was suspected he'd been talking to the FBI."

"Great, but I'm not sure why Uncle Horace cared about it."

"Maybe your uncle was a mob fixer, Babe."

"Tonight I'll believe about anything." Ellie took another clipping. "This one's about a family. Jared and Alice Scott, and their son James Henry. Died in a fire at their mansion in Northern California in 1976."

Sarah read another. "Alicia Le Fanu. Wife of Brandon Le Fanu. Died suddenly in 1951, at age 28. According to the article, she was quite…popular with quite a number of men in New Orleans. It also implies that her death was a bit mysterious. Husband suspected, nothing ever proven."

"Can't say I think much of Uncle Horace's morbid scrapbooking, but I guess everyone needs a hobby."

"He was definitely one weird dude. Wait, did you hear that? That sounded like…"

"A scream. Chuck!" Sarah turned to the exit. "You guys stay here. I'll see if he's ok!"

"Morgan, for God's sake!"

"Sorry, Chuck. But if you're going to tell me that I was loud enough to wake the dead, I gotta tell you I'm 0 for 1 so far."

Sure enough, Morgan's high-pitched effect had had no effect on the body lying on the hallway floor. Doctor Stanislov, or at least his body, was face down on the carpet, his limbs splayed about him. His gray hair was matted with dark red blood.

"Might have known where I'd find girly screams I'd find Burbank's version of Abbott and Costello."

Chuck and Morgan turned to see Casey standing at the base of the spiral staircase, a slight smirk on his face. "Looks like there's one less person to share the loot with now," he said, pointing down at Stanislov's body.

"Uh, Casey, you didn't…"

The ex-Colonel rolled his eyes. "Of course not. Just came down here now."

"Then Penelope?"

"That's one theory."

"A rational one," Chuck replied. "and I think I'll stick with it for now. Do you know where she is?"

Casey shook his head. "I left her and the Doc upstairs, searching the bedrooms. Figured I needed some heavy artillery, considering what we're up against."

"Heavy artillery?"

"CIA issue, specially designed for combating the non-corporeal."

"Hold on, John," Morgan objected. "You trying to tell me that the CIA is in the ghostbusting business?"

"Only those with the right kind of training. Beckman spent several years battling spooks herself." He smirked. "Why d'ya think she named our base of operations after William Castle?"

"Sorry, Casey, I'm not buying this. I mean why would a ghost kill Stanislov? And for that matter, how? I mean wouldn't they just float right through him?"

Casey shook his head in disgust. "This isn't that friendly Casper Hollywood BS. Ghosts are the spirits of people that died suddenly, with unresolved issues. So that makes them pissed, and motivated. And as for the how, a ghost can always possess another person, or even an inanimate object if it needs to. Then all they have to do is grab something like this," Casey bent down to the ground and grabbed a candlestick lying on the floor, "and whack!"

Morgan peered at the reddish stain at the end of the candlestick. "Guess I owe the Parker Brothers an apology."

"It's a lot more common than your naïve worldview would have you believe, Bartowski. Pretty much all of the Soviet Prime Ministers were possessed by Rasputin. Made our jobs a hell of a lot more difficult." Casey turned back to the body. "Now, all we have to do is get this out of here."

"Why? Is it going to…rise up?"

"Don't be an idiot, Bartowski. It's just rude. This isn't our house." Casey put down the candlestick and headed towards the front door.

"Wait, aren't you going to help?"

"Course not. Gotta go to the bathroom."

"Seriously Casey? Now?"

"It's where I left my equipment. Safest place in the house."

"The bathroom? Seriously?"

"Of course. Ghosts hate it there. Reminds them of all the stuff they can't do anymore." Casey headed towards the far end of the hallway. "Anyway, I'm sure you two can handle one little dead body, right?"

"Whew. You know, Chuck, when I volunteered to come with you this weekend, it was for moral support and brotherly advice. Not manual labor."

They had just finished dragging Doctor Stanislov into the sitting room the will had been read in. As soon as they had finished, Morgan had collapsed onto the couch.

Chuck's difficulties had less to do with the body itself, and more with the Intersect. His brain-gizmo apparently included several tips for disposing of dead bodies, and it had taken quite a bit of self-control to keep them from kicking in. Of course, it had also helped that there weren't any shovels or band saws in the immediate vicinity.

"So now what?"

"Now, we find Sarah and the others. They need to know there's a killer on the loose."

"Right." Morgan followed Chuck towards the door. "Uh, a living one or a dead one?"

"I'd say I could give a pretty good description." Chuck had stopped in his tracks as soon as he'd pushed the door open. Standing in the hallway, her black dress now stained with blood, was Penelope. Chuck wasn't sure whether he was more disturbed by the wild look in her eyes or the axe currently in her hand.

Morgan looked over at the axe, and then down at his own corkscrew. "It would have been nice if she'd told us where the good weapons were," he whispered.

"What are you doing in my house?" the woman asked.

"Well, technically, it's not your house yet…"

"Morgan!"

"It's my house." The woman's voice was cold, but also unusually high-pitched, as if coming from a child.

"Ok, ok." Chuck held his hands out in a calming motion. "It's your house. It's a lovely house. All nice and…goth-y. I appreciate you letting us visit. Just, don't you think it would be a good hostess-like thing to put down the axe?"

Penelope's eyes narrowed. "Don't tell me what to do. My mommy and daddy told me what to do. I hated that."

"Yeah, that's not helping," Morgan whispered.

"Ok, sorry. I didn't mean to offend you, or bring up any daddy issues. Morgan," Chuck whispered. "Remember that suit of armor we saw in the study? With the sword? Could you go get it?"

"Right," Morgan whispered back. "Uh, just the sword or the armor too?"

"Just go." Chuck sighed. This time he knew he couldn't push aside the flash when it hit.

As you can see, I'm not above throwing in a reference my own earlier "Bloodcurdling" stories.

Chapter 3 will be up in a couple of days.