A/N – Welcome back! I'm glad this story took off. I know I shouldn't start ANOTHER one, but, here it is. Hopefully I'll have more time to write this summer and either get some major progress done or even finish up one or two.
Enjoy!
X
Chapter 2
Hiccup tiptoed into the hall and stopped just before the stairs. He saw nothing at the top, only the sunlight dappling in from the windows. The dust danced through the beams, downward toward the right, swirling – the kind of swirling not caused by gravity. It moved not of its own.
Something, or someone, had moved the dust on the second-floor hall.
Hiccup lifted his foot onto the first stair, keeping his eyes on the moving dust, waiting for something, anything. He inched his way, EVP on his collar, thermal imager in one hand, EMF detector in the other. So far, the EMF remained silent. The red needle hadn't moved past the normal.
He occasionally glanced down at the thermal, but kept his eyes ahead to keep himself from tripping. He held it to capture; he'd review it later.
Hiccup paused at the top of the stairs.
The hallways stretched out on either side of him, exactly as he remembered it. His bedroom door stood open, as did the others; he'd opened them to show his father around, and had left them that way.
He turned to the left, toward the room where he'd heard the thump above the parlor, the room where Astrid Hofferson had taken her last breath.
The previous owners had taken their furniture with them, but they'd left things that had been original to the house. They'd told Hiccup, once they were outside the house, that they were afraid to take it with them. They didn't want any spirits to follow them.
In Astrid's room, there was an old, solid, heavy vanity. A dainty stool sat in front of the dusty, dirty mirror that reflected a garbled image of Hiccup in the doorway. The bedframe was made from some dark wood – the real estate woman had been adamant about it, from Africa or somewhere – the dark posts spiraled up in a delicate pattern. The headboard had been carved by someone skilled at the craft.
The original wallpaper had faded, and had been peeled away some time ago. The room had been freshly painted a pale yellow, with crown molding on the ceiling and floors, and around the windows, too. The floor, the real estate agent assured, was the original.
Hiccup made a slow lap of the room, EMF outstretched. The needled moved only gradually, but never left the green zone. Green represented the normal magnetic field of the earth. Yellow represented a high reading. Red meant very high. Normal things gave off reads, like electric boxes or poor wiring, but sometimes, other things did too.
Nothing appeared on the thermal; everything in the room was a blue, green, or yellow. The warmer the thing on the camera, the redder it was. Cold showed up as blue. Living things appeared as red, or yellow in the distance.
"Hello?" Hiccup called softly into the room. "Is someone in here with me?"
No one answered; the needle on the EMF spiked into the yellow, then fell back into the green.
"I'm not here to hurt you," Hiccup said. "I don't want to scare you. I'm here to talk to you. My name is Hiccup Haddock. I've got a lot of experience talking to people just like you. You're trapped. You don't know where you're going or what to do. I know. Well, not personally, but I've talked to people like you before. It's what I do."
The needle rose into the yellow. The EMF whined.
Someone was there.
"I've written books about helping people like you," Hiccup said to the room. "And I would like to help you, too. But before I can help you, I need to know about you. Are you here?"
No one answered. The EVP on his collar recorded; he'd know if they'd spoke later. The EMF stayed in the yellow, firmly, not wavering as it normally did.
"Don't let this equipment frighten you," Hiccup said. "It's not here to hurt you. It's here to help me see you and hear you. If you speak to me, I might not hear you right now, but when I listen to this device," he fingered the EVP recorder, "I'll hear you."
Hiccup turned about the room, looking for anything – the disruption of dust, the shimmer on the air, the slight distortion – but he saw nothing.
Hiccup stood by the bed, EMF in hand, and turned toward the vanity. There, in the dusty mirror, stood someone in the doorway, someone in blue; Hiccup wore dark green. The shadowy figure, blurred by the grime on the mirror, stood tall, in a blue floor-length gown, or it might have been gray.
He turned, but the doorway was empty.
"I saw you," Hiccup whispered. "Don't be afraid of me, please."
He held the thermal on the doorway, but no heat signature appeared. The EMF went silent. Hiccup held the camera in front of him as he entered the hall again, but he saw nothing. The dust had settled elsewhere.
Hiccup performed a sweep of the entire house, including the unfinished attic, but he found nothing of the blue woman. He returned to the parlor, recorded the session in his notes, set the EVP on the desk to shift through later, and began the task he'd saved for after his father's visit; the wiring of the house.
Hiccup set a camera in each room of interest: Astrid's room, his new bedroom, the hallway, the entrance way, and the main living space which looked across the hall and into his office-parlor. He set the Shadow Detector in the upstairs hallway. If anything moved, he'd hear the beeping of the Shadow Detector.
Hiccup returned to his office – command center – a little after dusk. He had to meet with his editor tomorrow, and couldn't stay up that late, though he wanted to stay and monitor the cameras for the Woman in Blue, as he'd started calling her.
He couldn't wait to tell his editor about her, and the house. She'll be thrilled. Maybe there'd be another bonus in it for him.
Hiccup went upstairs, showered, changed for bed, and fell into the familiar mattress in the unfamiliar bed frame – he'd taken the old master suite. The bed frame in there had been hand-carved, as well, and looked fit for someone much more notable and famous than Hiccup, maybe a president in a bygone era.
Some people might have had trouble falling asleep in a supposedly haunted house, especially after witnessing one of those such inexplicable events, but Hiccup Haddock had no trouble. He fell nearly immediately into a deep sleep.
X
Hiccup woke to a hand on his shoulder. His mother, most likely, urging him out of bed before ten. She'd always been an early riser.
He'd set his alarm; he'd be fine. He wouldn't be late for the meeting.
The hand on his shoulder persisted.
Hiccup rolled over, and the bed let out a strange noise.
The new house. The new bed. It hadn't been his mother's hand.
Hiccup's eyes opened at once. The light from the windows was pale and gray – predawn. He sat up – no one stood in his room. He could feel the place on his arm where the hand had touched him, firm and solid.
"Hello?" Hiccup asked.
No one answered.
He sat for a moment more, waiting for someone to show themselves, but no one did. He reached over for his phone on the bedside table – he'd woken an hour early.
He couldn't go back to sleep, not after that awakening. He got up and walked down the kitchen, keeping one eye over his shoulder, and started the coffee. While it brewed, he returned to his office to record the occurrence with the hand.
If the Hofferson house kept this pace up, he'd have more than enough material for a book in less than a year. He'd have to call Fishlegs and tell him. He'll be thrilled.
Hiccup leaned back in his chair, stretching his hands above his head, when he saw it. The EVP recordings from the night before. He grabbed it and plugged it into his computer. He set his thermal camera footage beside it on the monitor. He could listen and watch at the same time. He withdrew headphones from the desk, and hit play.
The soft, fuzzy static sounded in the headphones. Each step he took thumped, heel-toe, on the wooden floors. The camera tilted has he scanned back and forth, but nothing showed up.
At the foot of the stairs, the camera did a sweep of the space. At the top of the stairs, barely in frame, was a heat signature. Everything around it was a cool blue or green. The camera moved – Hiccup slowed the footage. Just before the camera panned away, the heat signature moved. It moved in a very leg-like pattern, one first, then the other, and then they were out of frame.
The camera began to slowly make its way up the stairs, to where Hiccup had seen the dust moving about.
Whatever had moved had moved toward the opposite end of the hall from Astrid's room. That explained why she hadn't been in the room. She had gone the other way. Why?
Hiccup paused to scribble in his notes. He might be doing his EVP session in the wrong room.
The camera continued into Astrid's room.
His own voice came through the static, "Hello? Is someone in here with me?"
No one answered. The EMF spiked, then dissipated.
"I'm not here to hurt you. I don't want to scare you. I'm here to talk to you. My name is Hiccup Haddock. I've got a lot of experience talking to people just like you. You're trapped. You don't know where you're going or what to do. I know. Well, not personally, but I've talked to people like you before. It's what I do."
The EMF rose again, but between the creaking of the electronic whines, a sound he hadn't heard before chimed. It sounded distinctly feminine, but distant.
He went back a few seconds, to the tail end of his speech. He fiddled with the audio program, and downplayed the EMF static, and there, between the hush-hush of the recorder, he heard garble that might have been, "I'm not afraid of you."
That spot between his shoulder blades spasmed and he felt something cold along his back. It was a woman, young by the sounds.
"I've written books about helping people like you. And I would like to help you, too. But before I can help you, I need to know about you. Are you here?"
Amid the static if the EMF, she said, "Of course, I'm here. Where are you?"
"Don't let this equipment frighten you. It's not here to hurt you. It's here to help me see you and hear you. If you speak to me, I might not hear you right now, but when I listen to this device, "I'll hear you."
"Why should I believe you?"
Her voice had come through clear as if she stood right next to him.
Hiccup jerked his head up from his desk, and glanced about this office. He saw nothing. Yet he had the strange sensation that he was not alone in the room. He knew he wasn't alone in the house.
The camera panned over to the doorway where he'd seen the reflection of the Woman in Blue. Someone stood in the doorway. A very clear heat signature of a woman in a period dress stood in the doorway.
"I saw you," Hiccup said on the recorder. His voice sounded weaker than it had a moment before. "Don't be afraid of me, please."
"Why would I be afraid of you?"
The static garble took over.
"Aren't you going to say anything else?"
The heat signature tilted her head, then turned and walked away.
The EVP session ended, and Hiccup saved the audio file as Day 1.
X
Hiccup washed and dressed without incident or sighting. He left the house with time to spare. He drove to the city and to his editor's office, which was an office suite in a five-story building which had been converted from an old factory. Hiccup was pouring himself a cup of coffee in the lounge when his editor walked in.
"Heather," Hiccup said in greeting. "Good morning."
"Hiccup?" she asked. Her dark, well-groomed brows rose. "You're early. Is the sky falling?"
"Nope," Hiccup said. "I just work up early. I couldn't wait to tell you the news."
"You moved into the Hofferson house," Heather said. "Come on, talk to me in the office."
Hiccup followed Heather through the quiet floor to her office. One wall held every book she'd ever worked on. She didn't have as many of some of the older editors, but she had quickly built a reputation in the paranormal publishing world. She'd discovered Hiccup Haddock and his amateur ghost hunting team, after all, which had led to three best sellers in four years.
Hiccup was banking on selling number four.
"What possessed you to take on that project?" Heather asked. She took a bottle water from the little fridge beside her desk, whose top she'd started using as an extension of her desk.
"The house is beautiful, and in great shape," Hiccup said. He hesitated for anticipation, and then said, "and it's haunted."
"For real or is that just an excuse the owners used?"
"No, I've seen it in action," Hiccup said. He told her about his experiences so far in the house. "I call her the Woman in Blue. The Hofferson house is a goldmine."
"Are you sure?" Heather asked.
"Yes," Hiccup nodded. "I've already started recording. I've got cameras set up in the important rooms."
Heather leaned back in her chair, debating. "Alright. Write me up a proposal and sample chapter. I'll see what I can do with it. Tomorrow, if you're feeling up to it."
"Tomorrow it is," Hiccup said.
The meeting went into the typical sale figures. His books were selling wider and wider with each month. He had graduated from 'local author' to 'regional author' and his recent figures showed his books being bought in stores from Atlanta to Amarillo and all the way up to St. Paul.
"I've got this offer on some an ABC offshoot. They want to do an interview with you. It's exciting. It's not quite national television, but it's a start. Next stop might be a TV show," Heather said. "Yes or no?"
Hiccup hesitated. National television? The thought settled somewhere in his stomach like a rock. "I-I'm going to say no."
"I thought so, but I thought I'd ask first," Heather said. She wadded up the request and tossed it into the trash. "I'll let them down gently."
"I've got another one, an online magazine and podcast, Exploring the Paranormal with Steven and Mark," Heather said, reading from her notes.
"I'll do that one," Hiccup nodded. He wouldn't be seen on a podcast.
Hiccup Haddock left Heather's office in high spirits. His odds of getting his next book published were high. It felt strange to think that people were requesting his presence. It felt like only a few months ago that he was sending out query letters of his first ghost hunting book.
He didn't drive straight home. He stopped for groceries and the necessities, including batteries, bulbs, and a zip drive with plenty of space for everything on the Hofferson house.
Driving home, he felt the same jittery nerves that he'd felt going into his first "official" ghost hunt with Fishlegs. It was the thrill of something new, something he'd always wanted to do; his dreams were at his fingertips. He could tell that there was something different about the Hofferson house, something unlike any other house he'd hunted in. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew that he soon would.
X
Vocab –
EVP – Electronic Voice Phenomena
EMF – Electromagnetic Field Detector
A/N – I'm not making any of this ghost hunting equipment up. I've watched a lot of Ghost Hunters in my day. At one point, it was my favorite show. These are all devices that they used.