A/N: Maybe some of you have noticed that the summary keeps changing. Well, I posted the first chapter on a whim, and I'm getting new ideas as I go along. I don't know about you guys, but I wish FFN allowed us more room for our summaries. It's hard to fit the boiled plot of a story into 255 characters!

P.s. Thanks-a-many to Paperhearts101, ANMProductions, and Sorceress Damia for their reviews.

Chapter 2

Wendy brushed her hair away from her face and yawned. She looked at the crazy owl-shaped clock above her. She'd been at the library for almost an hour and a half.

When she and Matt and Billy had come home from school earlier that afternoon, Aunt Sara had told them that Uncle Peter was meeting with some colleagues, and that they should go out and do something so they would not be at home to disturb their business.

Wendy knew for sure she did not want to go see Fatal Attraction with Matt and his girlfriend Carrie for the third time. So here she was, at the library, peacefully researching things she didn't need to know, secretly enjoying the quiet Beethoven symphony that whispered from above.

She wondered if she'd gotten hooked on researching their house and the town's history while she and her cousin were tracking down the mystery of Jonah and Ramsey Aickman. She clicked past newspaper archive after another, watching the white pages and blotchy black words whir by her, until she spotted something she found interesting. The house probably still had a spell on her. She was still determined to find out every secret of its every corner, even though it was technically not the house anymore.

June 20, 1927.

Funny. That was dated two days after the article on the five people dead and Jonah's "disappearance."

MORE DRAMA SURROUNDS SUSPICIOUS MORTUARY. —GIRL FOUND DEAD, POISONED.

Goatswood, CT—Only three days ago, the Goatswood Gazette reported the five baffling deaths and the disappearance of one after a séance held in the local mortuary, owned by Ramsey Aickman. Now, more unexplainable horror unfolds within the building as yesterday the body of 16-year-old Virginia Hayes was discovered dead in an upstairs bedroom, having poisoned herself with formaldehyde, used to embalm bodies.

But Hayes was not the suicidal type, says her friend, Lucy Anne Patterson. At least, not until just days before her death.

"She was very happy…until news reached her that our mutual friend had turned up missing after a deadly ritual," Patterson told the Gazette. "It seems as though she went crazy with grief…and she broke into the house to try and find him. I tried to stop her, but she went anyway, in the dead of night."

And true it is, sources have confirmed, that Hayes was an acquaintance of renowned boy medium, whose name is Jonah, although his last name has not been revealed.

Could the missing Jonah have anything else to do with this new mysterious death?

Police say no, because they'd searched the house a few nights prior, and could not find him. "He's obviously fled," says the local Sheriff.

So should the death of Virginia Hayes be ruled as just another tragic teen-age suicide? Or should police dig deeper into the mystery?

Police and the Gazette will keep the Goatswood residents updated.

Wendy's breath caught and she shakily brought her hand to her mouth. She didn't know what to think of it. She wouldn't let herself think of what to think of it. Had this Virginia girl been haunting the place, too?

She recalled an experience from a previous month that she refused to tell anyone about, especially now that things had calmed down. She didn't want to bring the awful memories and stress back. But one morning, as she stepped out of the shower—the real shower horror came later with the curtain incident—but that morning, she stepped out into the muggy air, and stifled a scream when she saw that the fogged-up bathroom mirror bore the words, Watch out for him, pretty girl. That same night was the night the bird flew in through her window, and she saw what she now knew was the ghost of Jonah. Who was it that wrote it on the mirror?

Virginia…

Well, if it had been her or not, it was safe to assume that Virginia—along with all the other spirits, sans Jonah, who decided he'd stick around—had passed on, too. There was no need to worry about her, right? Who says she was even one of the ghosts to begin with? Maybe she passed on right away, like you're supposed to.

Maybe…

----

Matt pulled his new car to a stop in Carrie's driveway. Well, it wasn't a new new car; it was used, but it was his first. He loved being able to drive, now that he was healthy and strong. He'd resumed his old passion—basketball. He was on varsity this year, as a senior, and he had a beautiful girlfriend and a no-longer-haunted-except-for-peaceful-Jonah house.

Life seemed perfect.

He and Carrie shared a long and sweet kiss. He relished the feeling that he got inside him when he kissed her—it was like being freed of cancer over and over again. Perhaps it was an exaggeration, perhaps not, but one way or another she always swept him off his feet and warmed his heart.

"I had a really fun time, Matt," Carrie murmured.

"Even though we did the same exact thing we did last time, and the time before that?"

Carrie breathed out a slow, girlish chuckle. "We had no third wheel this time. We could make out in the back of the theater like the clichés we are with no one else to think about."

Matt agreed, and a few minutes later pulled into his own driveway, just as Wendy and Mary were parking their bikes and Billy was dropped off by his friend's mom.

Wendy stared at the yard and gravel driveway. She caught Matt's arm and whispered to him, "Look at all those tire tracks. Your dad had a lot of people over." She swallowed. "I know it's none of my business—not at all—but sometimes I wonder what they're doing, you know? Don't you ever…imagine? And why is it our house all the time, where they meet at?"

Matt took a few moments to consider these points she'd made. Truthfully, he pondered all the time. "Yes, I do wonder…but like you said, it's none of our business. I think it may even be top-secret. Like government stuff."

"UFOs? Military weapons? Doomsday preparation crap?"

"I don't know, Wends…" He gently took her arm. "Come on, let's go inside."

Once they'd entered the kitchen, and Wendy had inquired the kids on how their play-dates had gone, Matt approached the refrigerator to fetch himself a can of Coke.

"Oh, nice," he said, noticing the quickly scribbled note from his mom taped to the fridge. Went out with your father. Be back by nine. Wendy's in charge. "Mom's not even here. It's just the four of us."

"Sweet!" Billy yelled. He and Mary stampeded upstairs for a worriless game of hide-and-seek, before Wendy could remind them not to be monsters and break anything in the brand new house.

Wendy reached in and got an apple from the fridge. Even though it'd been quite a while since the paranormal events of the Aickman House, it was obvious even to Matt that she still hesitated before taking a bite. "I'm going upstairs…I've got some homework to do."

"And you couldn't have done it at the library?" Matt teased. Wendy was such a brainiac.

She grinned. "I had other things to do at the library—" she broke off, and her grin faltered somewhat, and he couldn't figure out why she was suddenly uncomfortable. He decided to shrug it off and trudged downstairs.

He cracked open his Coke. "Good evening, Jonah…" he muttered under his breath, glancing towards the locked-up old embalming room.

But, as it turns out, unbeknown to Matt, the spirit was no longer present…

----

Sara threw her arms up in frustration. "Then why don't you go get him and prove that I'm his wife?" she snapped. Peter had told her to, "Come and see this—this miracle, you won't believe your eyes—he's beautiful," but it made the task rather impossible that the guards wouldn't let her in or believe she was his wife.

After the ritual, they'd taken the comatose boy and brought him to a tiny, tiny hospital, in a room far off and secluded from the others, and kept the entire hallway and doorway to the room guarded. Of course Sara understood; they'd just reincarnated a kid from the 20's, for God's sake! They couldn't exactly go waving their arms around boasting about it. It had to remain super top-secret.

Would they even be able to tell their kids?

"Don't worry guys, she's mine," Peter suddenly stepped in and took Sara's arm, ushering her past the guards. He kissed her forehead just to prove it.

The couple power-walked down the hall to the room bustling with secrecy. As they walked, Peter rambled, "Oh, Sara, you have got to see this. That kid—the dead boy Matt was telling us about—he's there, he's in that room. And by God, to just watch him there, to see the spikes on the heart monitor and to watch his chest with his breathing… it's a damn miracle!"

Peter showed the guards at the door his ID hanging around his neck, and told them that Sara was with him. The two proceeded into the room.

Sara looked in and numbness shot to her fingertips. All the times she'd seen her son out like a light and perfectly still in a hospital bed—never comatose, but very much out—came rushing back to her. And according to that very son, this boy right here was the reason why she never had to see anything like that again.

He cured me, Mom! I helped him help the spirits and so he cured me…

"Not like you pictured him, is he?" Peter said gently, putting his arm around her.

No. Sara had pictured wild blonde hair and a twisted, angry face, with a big nose and big forehead. This boy with long, albeit neat, black hair and a serene, pale face seemed much too calm and loving to be responsible for terrorizing her family, yet it made sense that this beautiful kid had cured her own son's cancer. She couldn't get it straight in her mind that it was the same ghost that did those things.

"You should see his eyes, Sara," Peter said. "Huge and blue. And I mean blue… a bit eerie, but still brilliant."

Sara, though, had only absorbed the "huge, blue" part, and hadn't paid attention to the rest. A disturbing, sorrowful thought had come to her. She turned to her husband. "Does he have a mother?" she asked, surprised to find that her voice was choked.

Concern suddenly filled his eyes as he glanced at the boy, at his busy heart monitor. "Come on, Sara…he's supposed to be seventy-something years old…his mother would be in her nineties if not older…"

She would not admit it, but for a moment, she pictured herself with a dark-haired woman that looked considerably like her son, and they would go window-shopping and out for ice cream while their boys hung out or played basketball together. She loved making friends with her sons' friends' mothers. She'd even borrowed Carrie's mom's sweater!

But Sara quickly realized that this fantasy was utterly ridiculous, if not flat-out insane. This woman, Jonah's long-lost mother, was either dead or very, very near it. Then she thought about how, when Matt would wake up from naps or surgeries in the hospital, she was the first person he asked to see.

Womanly, motherly empathy filled her up until she found herself taking the boy's hand and sobbing.

"Peter?" she asked her husband, who was behind her, rubbing her back. "Where's he going to go when he wakes up? I mean—come on…no parents, no relatives that we know of…We can't exactly set him into the world, because of…this. We have to keep him fairly sheltered…"

He sighed, catching the hint that the crazy girl wanted to keep the kid. Like when Billy brought home the stray puppy. He pictured them taking Jonah in. The kids would get spooked, Matt especially, and with Wendy and Mary, did they really have the resources for another kid? "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, honey…"

"How long till we administer the potion again?" Peter asked the Reverend, who was keeping round-the-clock watch on Jonah.

"When he's reached twenty-four hours alive—"

He was cut off by Sara's wild gasp. She still held Jonah's hand in hers. "Peter! Reverend!" she shouted. "I—I felt him twitch. His hand twitched. It was like he squeezed back for a split second—And again!"

The reverend took a few steps closer until he was looming over the bed. The boy's breathing had quickened. His facial expression had seemed to change, and his left eyebrow twitched. "This—I have no idea what's happening here." He reached and brushed some hair away from Jonah's face. "Prepare the doctors," he commanded.

But not one medic had time to move a muscle or say a word before a pair of eerie blue eyes were opened and glancing timidly up at them all.

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