The night before the group meeting was relatively uneventful, just Kimberly's little family eating in her apartment and watching Nicky play. The dinner had consisted of mac and cheese with hot dogs cut up in it, simple and filling for the group of five that occupied the dining area. She and Steve had grown up with it, one of the few quick and cheap meals they could never grow tired of.

The conversation had gone from planning summer barbeques to family stories of summers past and everything in between. Eventually, they trailed off for a few minutes, watching on fondly as Nicky built a small cottage with his Lincoln Logs. They'd been a gift from Steve just last fall, an early birthday present that had earned him the title of the world's best godfather.

"So," Joyce asks with a smile, interrupting the peace," are you guys excited to go this weekend?" The other three adults share matching looks of not in the least. Unlike Joyce, they fully knew what that house was capable of and what spirits it liked to send out on scaring missions.

"About excited as I would be to give birth on the freeway," Kimberly answers with a wry smile. "Which I came very close to doing." That had been a day she'd never forget, the thirtieth of October ingrained in her memory for very painful reasons.

"Oh, come on, it can't be that bad. It's a dead cell!" It's only dead to people who aren't psychic. Emery shared the sentiment, scoffing at Joyce's words. He liked her even less than he did Steve, her flagrant disregard of how dangerous the house was only making his dislike increase. "Really, guys, it's going to be fun!"

"The only reason I'm coming is because I'm not letting Steve and Em go without me." She shifts slightly in her seat as Nicky runs over to her, arms outstretched in a pick me up gesture. She obliges, settling him on her lap with her arms wrapped around his middle to ensure he didn't slide off as he wiggled. The four year old seems content to play with an unused fork while the others talked, his curly blond hair tickling Kimberly's nose whenever he sat up straight. "Have you managed to recruit that one kid you wanted?"

"I'm not sure." Joyce bites her lip, tugging on one of her wild curls as she thinks. Kimberly looked between her and Steve, still not entirely sure she wasn't just using him to get to Rose Red because they have nothing in common. Even the Rose Red connection is different—Joyce is obsessed with it and thinks of it as a harmless kitten while Steve hates it and knows for a fact it's an untamed lion waiting to devour the first idiot that walks through its doors.

That must make us the biggest idiots on the planet.

"It's getting late," Steve points out. He's staring out the window, but not seeing it at the same time. His mind is elsewhere, maybe back at that monster of a house with all of their relatives. "We should get going so you guys can get little man to sleep." Kimberly nods, standing up with Nicholas still in her arms. "I'll see you guys tomorrow." He gives Kimberly a long hug, Nicky sandwiched between them until he started squirming and pushing at Steve's shoulder.

"I love you, Steve."

"Love you too, Kimmy." He ruffles Nicky's hair, grinning in spite of himself when the little boy shoves his hand away. "What do you say, kiddo, will you be my sidekick tomorrow night? I could use some backup at the college." Nicky shrugs his shoulders, brown eyes bright with excitement at the prospect of following the older man around.

"If you wanna do that, then you'll have to be extra good tonight, which means going to bed on time." Nicky gives his mom a quick hug before making her set him back on his feet, giving Joyce and Emery hugs, then sprinting off for his bedroom. "Wow, that works better than when we offered to give him money."

"It's because he loves me more." Steve gains a smug expression, though it disappears when Kimberly delivers a light smack to his chest. "Right, we'll just head out before you break out the flip flops."

"Be careful tonight, it's almost a full moon and all the crazies will be coming out."

"I'm always careful."

"Tell that to the broken arm you got when you thought it was a good idea to jump off a stack of hay bales at a haunted house."

~::*::~

The auditorium Joyce had booked for them was one of the smaller ones Beaumont University had to offer, though their assembled group wouldn't even take up a full row of seating had they been next to each other. As it is, they were spaced out amongst one of the sections of chairs, a ragtag group of people that looked out of place amongst the old brick and arched ceilings of the room.

Kimberly had watched each person come in and navigate their way to a spot; a young blonde woman and an older brunette sticking together in the second row, the former seeming shy despite her gorgeous looks and the latter's blue eyes shining with excitement behind her square-framed glasses. Behind them was a man that looked to be in his early thirties, skinny with blond hair that looked like he'd just rolled out of bed, seated in the third row by himself with a smile making the corner of his mouth tilt upwards just so. In the fourth row were Emery and an older man that might have been in his mid-fifties if Kimberly had to guess, gray hair tidy, clothing nice if a little worn, and a bolo tie to bring it all together.

Separate there wouldn't seem to be much special about them, but gathered together like this allowed anyone to feel the slight pulse in the air that came with a crowd of psychics. Even Steve, sitting on Kimberly's left in the first row, shifted in his seat from time to time as though feeling something he couldn't explain fully. Not rationally, at least.

"Alright," Joyce says, taking up her spot on the stage. Everyone's gaze was drawn to her immediately, her smile bright and comforting as the chatter dies down. "If everyone's settled, I'd like to begin." She looks around the room for someone in particular, but doesn't let her disappointment show when she doesn't find them. "Despite what some people may think, psychic powers have no moral gradient. They're neither good nor bad much like the technology we use is neither good nor bad." She makes the short walk over to the podium, stance confident after talking about this very subject for the past four years. "Houses are different. Shirley Jackson had it right that some houses are born bad." She presses a button on the pad in front of her and the lights dim, another button had a picture of Rose Red appearing on the screen behind and to the right of her. Vines clung to the sides of the bricks, climbing higher and higher until they reached the eaves. "Rose Red is the prime example of this."

"I knew it was big," the older woman says, almost laughing," but that's enormous." In fact, it's the biggest house in Seattle, still sparking ooh's and ah's from tourists whenever they file in to watch the leaves change. Kimberly couldn't wait to see it crumble into dust.

"Yes, Cathy, it's certainly that. It's also a dead cell, so we have nothing to worry about." She kept repeating that phrase like it was actually supposed to offer comfort, like no one here would learn how big a lie that was. The picture changes to another part of Rose Red, showcasing the pointed roofs and numerous chimney stacks. "There have been no overt manifestations in Rose Red since 1995 or so. I believe that houses have their own inner lights that may or may not be conscious. If Rose Red ever achieved consciousness, then it manifested itself early." Another picture in the slideshow, this one showing a busy street from 1906.

"The Seattle of one hundred years ago was a different world," she continues," more than any of us could imagine. Survival was an actual issue, not a TV show. Bandits were usually the ones to make any sort of fortune, including the man who commissioned Rose Red to be built. John P. Rimbauer is who I'm speaking of, an oil tycoon that had his home built at the top of Spring Street for everyone to see and to impress the woman he was courting. His company, Omicron Oil, brought in money all the way up to 1950, when his wife disappeared."

The picture switched to one of Ellen Rimbauer, one of the most beautiful women Kimberly's ever seen. 'Build,' a voice hissed in her head, insistent and harsh,' we must build, we must live.' Kimberly shakes her head, pressing a hand to her forehead as pressure began to build.

"…Trouble started even before there was a house," Joyce was saying, Kimberly only catching the tail end of the sentence. The picture had changed once more to the bare bones of the house, the wood structure reminding Kimberly of a skeleton. "Construction crews worked twenty-four hours a day, most of them Chinese who would work cheap, only stopping when they ran out of lumber. Even then, it wouldn't take long for more lumber to arrive and whips to be cracked.

"Unfortunately for the workers, the ground they were digging up seemed to drive people insane. On the same day John brought Ellen out to see the house for the first time, the foreman had an argument with one of the teamsters, which resulted in him getting shot. The teamster, Harry Corbin, dropped the rifle back in the wagon and took off to a Seattle saloon for a drink. The police found him there and dragged him off to jail where he later scratched his eyes out and bled to death. It's my belief that Harry Corbin may have been Rose Red's first victim. First male victim, that is."

"He saw Native Americans," Kimberly murmurs to no one in particular. "That's why he scratched his eyes out, to make the visions stop." Steve reaches out and rests a hand on her arm, giving a comforting squeeze as she forces herself to stay in the present. There was nothing she could do about what happened ninety-five years ago no more than she could change the fact that she had brown eyes.

"What was that, Kimberly?" She looks up and meets Joyce's gaze without flinching, the headache starting to shift into a full-on migraine.

"I said Corbin was seeing Native Americans in his cell after being found guilty. He felt cursed because he'd been working on top of an old Indian burial ground." That's where all the problems stemmed from, disrupting the peace of ancestors far more powerful than some human with a thirst for money. "Sorry to interrupt, Joyce." She gives Kimberly one last look before continuing with what she'd been saying.

"There's always been a difference with how the men and women were treated."

"How do you mean," the blond man asks.

"All in good time, Nick." The picture changes to one of a happy family the day of a wedding, the faint sound of clapping heard echoing in Kimberly's mind. Ellen and John were in the middle, impeccably dressed; four little girls stood in front of them, a preacher in the back, and a young couple to their left. "John Rimbauer and Ellen Gilchrist were married on November twelfth in 1907, just three years after Ellen's younger sister married Frederick Airey, an up and coming lawyer that worked at Omicron Oil. There was a twenty-year age gap between Ellen and John, nothing too unheard of or scandalous back then.

"By the time they said their vows, Rose Red had been under construction for a year and had already seen three deaths on the property aside from the foreman. One man was decapitated by a sheet of falling glass, another fell from a scaffold and broke his neck, and the third choked to death on a piece of apple." The picture changes to a completed version of the house, capturing its former beauty. "This is what the house looked like when it was initially completed in 1909 and, in case your memory needs refreshing, this is what it looks like now." An aerial view, showing the sagging roofs, overgrown ivy, and crumbling chimneys; it was larger than the last picture, larger even than the pictures from the 1950's.

"It's as if it metastasized," the pretty blonde woman says, confusion plain in her voice. Kimberly would be confused too if she didn't know the history of Rose Red forwards and backwards.

"How many rooms does the house have," the old man asks, the sound of a pen tapping against paper audible.

"Depends on the day," Steve says, speaking up for the first time all night. He was slumped in his seat, Nicky settled comfortable in his lap and half-asleep. It was way past his bedtime, but he was making a valiant effort to keep his eyes open. "You can count on Monday and come up with seventy-four only to come back a week later and get eighty-seven.

"But that's impossible," Cathy says, not sounding so sure.

"That's Rose Red, sweetheart. It likes to keep people on their toes."

"Exactly how many people have disappeared," Nick asks, derailing Joyce's schedule even further. There was frustration in the woman's eyes, her tense shoulders growing tenser the further off-subject the group goes. "Surely there's an accurate account of that."

"Twenty-three since the end of the first World War," she answers.

"I'd say that was impossible if my wife wasn't so thorough in proof-reading your work," Emery says, Kimberly smiling sheepishly. She had a tendency to think out loud, which led to her keeping her husband awake until three in the morning while she tried to remember the exact amount of disappearances in total while reading over Joyce's research.

"I believe I apologized for that already. I brought you a cake the next morning, remember?" Kimberly sure did, she'd ended up falling asleep using her slice of cake as a pillow when her chin slipped off her fist. "Altogether, five men died and eighteen women disappeared. Rose Red has always been particularly fond of the ladies." Kimberly pinches the bridge of her nose, not entirely sure why Joyce had chosen to keep that particular line in her speech. "Please," she hurries on to say," remember that we're speaking about a house that fell dormant years ago."

"It better be," the blonde woman says," because five thousand dollars isn't enough if it isn't." Amen to that.

"When was the last disappearance," Nick asks. His British accent was nice, reminding Kimberly of her and Emery's first date; they'd curled up on the couch at his house and watched Jane Eyre, his mother ranting in the background about how Kimberly was a tart who would never steal Patricia's son away.

"About thirty years ago," Joyce says, impatience coloring her tone. "There have been no observable phenomena since—"

"Who was the last one," the blonde interrupts.

"We've got a lot to cover, Pam, so we can't focus on that right now—"

Steve interrupted her this time around, fingers absently tracing the pale blue veins of Kimberly's wrist. "It was a woman on the Historical Society's annual tour. She was with the group when they went up the stairs and no one realized she was missing until the tour was completed. They didn't find her, but they did find her purse."

"It was torn to shreds and bloody," Kimberly adds, seeing it as though it was playing out right in front of her. "She heard a little girl singing in one of the parlors and figured a kid was wandering around without supervision, so she went to find her. I don't know what got the lady in the end, but it wasn't very nice."

"Are you two finished," Joyce asks, raising her brows. Kimberly and Steve share a look over Nicky's head, then shrug and look back to his girlfriend. "The lady's name was Liza Albert. Since her disappearance, the house has been closed to tours. Only the descendants and groundskeeper are allowed on the property. Without the psychic energy to feed on, it seemed fall into a coma. Now it's classified as a—"

"A dead cell," Emery finishes, probably as sick of hearing that as Kimberly was.

"That's right." If that place is a dead cell, then I'm Elvis. "Rose Red wasn't finished when John and Ellen got married and they were in no hurry to set up housekeeping. They passed the time with a year-long honeymoon that took them all over the globe from Egypt to Paris and everywhere in between. John's favorite part of the tour was Africa." This picture was of John standing in front of a dead elephant, hunting rifle propped against his shoulder as he smiled broadly. "Ellen didn't enjoy it quite as much. In fact, she nearly died."

"Was it malaria," Pam asks.

"Probably not. In her diary, she called it 'an unmentionable disease carried by men and suffered by women'." The next picture is of John with yet another hunting trophy to line the walls of their home. All that death made Kimberly sick to her stomach, not understanding the sport in the slightest. "Doesn't exactly look prostrate with worry, does he? Thanks to one of the natives in the village named Sukeena, Ellen recovered. When she and John finally took up residence in Rose Red, she was pregnant." No she wasn't, she didn't get pregnant again until they were fully moved in. Kimberly had read and reread the letters and diaries of the Gilchrist daughters, including a passage that said Ellen's first pregnancy ended in a brutal miscarriage somewhere in France. "January 1909, that would've been.

"John thought the house was finished, but he didn't know the house would never be done. Not in his lifetime, not in hers. What makes Rose Red one of the world's most fascinating psychic artifacts is that the house continued to grow until its death in 1995 or 1996. Until 1950 changes and additions were made according to the will of Ellen Rimbauer, and her will was iron. After 1950, Rose Red grew on its own. A month after they first moved into Rose Red, Frederick and Beatrice Airey joined them, their own manor house burned in an awful fire. In the fall of 1909, Ellen Rimbauer gave birth to a son."

"Grampy," Steve remarks, not overly thrilled about it.

"Your grandfather, really," Pam asks, the smile clear in her tone. She was a happy person, probably great with anyone she met if she was given enough time to get a read on them.

"I'm afraid so."

"In her diary she wrote,' I have called him Adam, for he is the first'," Joyce says. "Sukeena saw her through the difficult labor and Beatrice a year after that, who gave birth to a son she called Alfred. In her diary, Ellen never refers to Sukeena as her servant. First she calls her a friend and later her sister. Ellen's next child was born in 1911, a daughter with a withered arm she named April. She blamed the defect on her African sickness and her husband's sexual appetites, she wrote,' In my mind they are one. Damn all men'.

"In the years following the birth of April, Ellen became convinced that her fever, which recurred periodically, would kill her young. That made her easy game for Madame Stravinsky, otherwise known as Cora Frye to police in San Francisco. Not even Sukeena could convince her the old lady was a fraud. Fake or not, Stravinsky changed Ellen's life in August of 1914."

"What did she tell her," Pam asks.

"That Great-gram wouldn't die until the house was finished," Steve answers, bored. "Great-gram told her it was finished and Madame S. told her,' It isn't finished until you say it's finished. Until you say'."

"Ellen took it seriously," Joyce continues," probably she was right to. Everything else aside, she never had another attack of her African fever."

"It was probably just psychosomatic," Emery grumbles from the back.

"Probably just PMS, right, Em," Steve mocks.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised."

"'The remedy for my affliction is most unpleasant,'" Kimberly recites from memory,"' though as I understand it, is far less worse than it is, or will be, for John, who has no doubt undergone, and will continue to undergo, a series of injections to an area of the male body that is also unmentionable.'" She turns to look back at her husband with a sarcastic smile, just a faint upraising of the corner of her lips. "That still sound like PMS to you, babe?"

"Sounds like Steve better watch out since diseases jump around on his side of the family."

"Nicholas," Steve instructs," cover your eyes really quick." Nicky does just that, unable to see his godfather holding up the finger that is considered rude in polite company. As it is, Emery just scoffs and slouches further in his seat. "Alright, Nicky, you're good." The baby giggles, lowering his hands to play with the buttons of Steve's shirt.

"That's nice," Joyce says with a disapproving frown.

"Sorry, Dee, please continue with what you were saying." She narrows her eyes at him for a moment, probably not believing he was completely finished at first.

"A new wing started going up the next week."

"What did her husband have to say about that," Cathy asks, amused.

"Nothing," Steve answers again. "She gave him a son in 1909, a daughter in 1911. She had a withered arm, but the son was fine and his heir was all John Rimbauer actually cared about. In his mind, I'd say Ellen had fulfilled her function and could do as she pleased. Would you agree?"

"Yes," Joyce allows. "Besides, he had affairs of his own to tend to. Ellen continued to make additions to the house until her disappearance in 1950; over forty years of well-financed eccentricity. When she ran out of conventional things to build, she hired a series of contractors and architects to build unconventional stuff."

"Such as," the old man probes.

"The so-called Tower Folly was completed in 1921. John jumped to his death from it two years later."

"Was it suicide," Nick asks," or did he run into something he couldn't deal with?"

"The certificate claimed it was an accidental death."

"The gossip said suicide or ghosts," Steve says.

"And my Great-gran's diary suggested Ellen and Sukeena played a role in it," Kimberly adds. "Beatrice didn't go into any detail, but she said that the other two weren't very sad after the funeral. Neither was she, to be honest."

"In any case," Joyce interjects," during its active years women in Rose Red had a tendency to turn up missing, and men had a tendency to turn up dead."

"The bad days are over," the old man comments. "You're certain about that?"

"I'm positive, Vic."

"Than what exactly do you want from us," Nick queries, asking the question that was on everyone's mind." She presses a button and the lights come back on, almost blinding after spending the last ten minutes in the dark.

"First off, how about we all get on a first-name basis? That'll make things a little less difficult between all of us. After all, this is a difficult enough field without us adding to it. People either don't understand our goals, or refuse to credit our findings. Some people are actively cruel…." She looks lost in her own head, a painful memory that was dragging her down and away from all of them.

"Research goals," Steve prompts, getting her back on track.

"Right, yeah. My research goals specify measurable psychic phenomena. Hard data, telemetry readouts, and anomalous energy levels. I want readouts that even the most stupid, sarcastic, obtuse member of this so-called scientific department will have to accept. If I get a little crazy on the subject from time to time, please forgive me. I've put in a lot of long days."

"If Rose Red is a dead cell, how much proof can you expect to find there," Cathy asks.

"Rose Red is much like a dead frog, apply enough electricity and you're sure to get a twitch. In this case, you people are my electricity. My goal is a modest one, I just want a single twitch. If I get that my reputation will be secure for the rest of my life. More importantly, together we can legitimize a branch of psychology that has been treated like a poor relation for far too long."

"Better get it this weekend," Emery quips," 'cause Stevie's saying bye-bye after that."

"Tech-Star Condominiums, the future," Steve says, ignoring the sarcasm. "Soon Rose Red will be a distant memory and the ground will be someone else's problem."

"You're gonna let them tear it down," Cathy asks incredulously. "But it's a piece of history."

"History don't pay no rent the kids are broke. It may not be a noble reason, but it means I can keep my apartment and my godson has food on the table for another two months." He runs his palm over Nicky's back as he talks, gaze softening as the baby gives him a toothy grin.

"Are we the whole team," Vic enquires.

"I was hoping for one more, but that's looking iffy," Joyce admits, gaze still roving around the auditorium. "If I have to make do with you six, then I'll count myself lucky. I'll see you this Friday at two PM sharp in the parking lot. I'm sure it will be a Memorial Day weekend you won't soon forget."

For all our sakes, I hope you're wrong about that.

"The remedy for my affliction is most unpleasant, though as I understand it, is far less worse than it is, or will be, for John, who has no doubt undergone, and will continue to undergo, a series of injections to an area of the male body that is also unmentionable." —Page 55, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red