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Melinda had told Jim about her ability to see spirits before he had proposed to her. If anything, her ability to see ghosts actually cinched his desire to be married to her and call her his wife, but once he heard that Melinda had turned down Collins's offer of two thousand dollars, he jokingly told her to try and get it back. It was stuff like that that proved to her that she wanted to be married to him. After arranging her weekend absence with Andrea and Jim, she promised to be back by Monday and met with William at the train station. Before leaving, Jim got William to autograph a copy of his "Forever Immortal" novel and even warned the writer half-seriously what he'd do if Melinda did not come back. Collins then half-seriously warned Jim his mother was the descendant of a powerful witch from Martinique, and they left it like that – as sparring comrades locked in competition than actual enemies. A brief kiss to Jim and Melinda was taking the train to Manchester, New Hampshire with a brooding writer who acted as if he was her big brother.
Along the way, the two of them discussed and compared their respective pasts. Melinda described how her grandmother had the gift and told her about it. William described his life at Collinwood in Maine, one of the reputed most haunted structures in New England. At different times, the estate boasted somewhere between twenty to thirty ghosts from five separate time periods. They ranged from Josette DuPres, believed to have tossed herself from the cliffs near the estate to Reverend Silas Trask, a witch-hunter who had vanished on the estate around 1795. There was the ghost of housekeeper Beth Chavez in the attic, the ghost of governess Daphne Harridge in the East Wing, the ghost of the second Quentin Collins last seen back in 1968 and the ghost of tiny Sara Collins, who mysteriously vanished before the birth of William's sister, Sara Collins. Rumor was that Sara was the reincarnation of the younger girl. Melinda absorbed his family's ghost stories as if she was becoming a Collins family member herself. The deeper she heard of his family lore the more she practically felt she could be a Collins. She listened to his stories of being an investigator to the Hotel Overlook, Alcatraz, Hull House Mortuary, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Gracey Mansion, Waverly Hills Sanitarium and Vannacutt Sanitarium and studied his photos of those locations. Photos of shadow figures, anomalous human figures, faces in windows and portions of figures on staircases… she thought she knew everything there was to know about ghosts, but he taught her a few things… and she taught him a few things. Like remarking on the ghostly conductor on the train…
Little after five o'clock, the train rolled into Manchester and William's team was there to meet them. Henry Desmond was the writer and magazine editor who joked Melinda looked to be fifteen-years old. A contractor from Collinsport well-versed in the sounds that houses made naturally, Larry Wedekind competed with Steve Barnette, a former Boston police officer turned forensic detective who added his experience to supernatural cases, but then William played the big brother and neutralized their competing by informing them Melinda had a fiancé and was about to get married. Of Korean ancestry, Matthew Oh was the team's tech expert along with Nicholas Roshenkov, a huge human bear of Russian ancestry, borrowed from Doctor Harvey's team based in Friendship, Maine. Built like a American Marine but endeared with the compassion of a veterinarian, his chosen profession, he tagged along as extra help. Red-haired Andrea Welch and brunette Dawn Rochner were the eye candy of the group. Andrea claimed to be descended from actual 18th Century Romanian vampire-killers and witch-hunters, but Dawn was briefly jealous then fascinated that Melinda's ability was much more purer… that much more "clearer" than her own. Dawn could only sense ghosts as if she was describing them over the phone, but Melinda could see them like real people. Just how the Cyrus house an hour away would reveal itself to her was going to be an experience.
Osment was a small town. Less than a town, more than a community, their one school only had five hundred kids, their town hall was above the courthouse on the same block as the barber shop and a small market and the sheriff knew just about everyone by name. The one bank was on the corner with a McDonald and a Burger King at opposite corners and the post office across the street. Melinda was enchanted by the small slice of Americana. It was like being transported into an old Fifties television show. After getting the keys for the Cyrus house from Deputy Ron Fife, the team from the Collinsport Ghost Society drove north past the drug store, the bank and several businesses and homes out to the one school, the garage down the street and then turned at the crossroads for the dirt road dipping off the highway for the Cyrus House. Comparing their psychic histories en route, Melinda turned from Dawn and looked out to the ramshackle two-story farmhouse. T was dusk when they left town, but early evening by time they reached it. Empty since 1967, the gravel driveway was lined with weeds with a random rabbit scurrying out the way of the team's two vans. The place might have been grand once, but now shutters flapped in the breeze or rest supporting the wall. No stars appeared in the overcast sky. Birds nested in the boards over windows, supports were missing from the balcony over the door and sections of shingles piled in eaves along the roof. Larry gave Melinda a hand as she stepped from the van. Matt got their mobile generator ready to run their equipment. William and Henry personally checked every camera, recorder, EMF detector and sensor. Nicholas pulled out Hal, the team's mobile camera unit operated by remote control.
"This is it?" Melinda looked up a bit chilled to be in its presence.
"Yeah, this is it." Dawn confided with Melinda. "I find its best to keep saying to myself, "It's just an old house. It's just an old house.'"
"It's that bad?" Melinda asked.
"Bad is going into Hull Mortuary or Vannacutt Sanitarium without flashlights…" Welch stood on her other side. "This place is like Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and then discovering the special effects weren't actually turned on." Melinda looked at her and then to the house. A piece of curtain fell back in one of the windows. The ghosts knew they had guests.
"When was the last time someone lived here?"
"Nineteen Seventy-Three." Andrea answered. "But the last caretaker passed away in Nineteen Ninety-Nine. He's yet to be replaced."
Melinda looked back to William looking for guidance. She trusted him, and he looked back toward her with a lot of faith in her. The main thought at the top of her head was who in this house requested her. How did they know about her ability? What was going to happen now that she was here?
"Melinda…" William came up. "Our routine is like this: one team out, one team in with a third team following on camera duty. Larry and I will escort you in first then Henry and Nick with Dawn following behind."
"Any advice?"
"Don't go upstairs without us." Larry added pulling on his CGS cap. "The floor is unpredictable." He led the way with a handheld camera. Melinda looked to William as he unlocked the door for them both.
The interior smelled musty like an old wet newspaper mixed with dust. Melinda could see two sets of sliding doors at her left and side, one set partially ajar to the dining room. Beneath the balcony stretching left and right above her was intense darkness but for the trace of diminishing light in a back room. She strolled forward slowly as the hardwood floor creaked and groaned under her feet. As she looked round, a fleeting shadow rushed from the far wall she saw in the dining room, surprising someone rushing to hide. Out the corner of her eyes, she saw figures sitting on the upstairs balcony… two little kids holding on to the railings with their heads sticking through and legs dangling through over the edge. They were there one second… and gone the next.
"Don't run away…" Melinda spoke as if she were their teacher. "I just want to talk to you."
"Wait a second…" William turned Melinda to him. "You saw something already?"
"Yes…" Melinda responded softly. "Two little kids… a boy and a girl in old period clothes on the landing…"
"She saw the kids! She saw the kids!!!" Larry excitedly responded and aimed his camera with the FLIR on and aimed it to the area she pointed. He didn't get anything but the white outline of the railing on the heat sensor in front of varied blue and violet shading. There was a faint red wisp fading through the area. Melinda strided calmly forward as if she were exploring.
"The last people to live here was in the Fall of 1973." William announced holding an EMF detector with a penny wedged in it in the "ON" position. "They said they experienced sounds and voices, footsteps and things moving around, but a week after the apparitions started, they decided to get out."
"No one moved in after that?"
"Well, they had a big mouth and sold the story to the newspaper which ruined the real estate company's chance for selling the place." William added as he tried pushing the doors to the parlor open wider. "It's been a hot potato since then passed from agency to agency. The "For Sale" sign out front keeps vanishing."
"And I'm gonna keep burning those signs!!!" A male voice sounded to Melinda and she spun round toward the dining room.
"Did you hear that?" She asked William and Larry. They looked at other.
"No…"
"But maybe we got it on tape." Larry spoke into his walkie-talkie. "Nick, check the tape before Melinda."
"I'm on it."
"I think it was in here." Melinda rolled the door open wider to the dining room where the table and chairs were covered in sheets and the old candelabra on the table was covered in dusty cobwebs. She saw five male figures at the end of the table, but to her eyes, the candles were burning. She saw one man with a thick dark beard and baldhead glancing up to her at the head of the table. Two younger men who resembled hired hands, one with a gash or wound in his bloodstained white shirt, sat on Melinda's side of the table and looked back to her without a word then back to their game. The other gentlemen were an old black man with white hair and a thin, gaunt figure in black on the other side of the paper. Though they appeared lifelike, they had an otherworldly quality to them as if like they house they were trapped in time or covered by the fine dust of the ages. The older man was holding old cards in his hands and passing them out to his ghostly compatriots.
"Will…" Larry pulled off his headphones to his recorder latched to his belt. "What does that sound like to you?" He was getting a noise from out of the air.
"That's like…" William thought a second. "Playing cards rapped on a table?" He looked to Melinda moving around the empty table without hitting any of the chairs in her way. She looked around something before her as Larry tried getting a reading.
"Boys, we got guests again…" The old overseer spoke.
"Just ignore them…" The family patriarch dealt their cards and took his hand.
"What are you playing for?" Melinda asked.
"The deed, the property, the moonshine in the cellar…" The patriarch spoke. "Over the years, we've each owned the house at least twenty times each."
"Not much else to do." The overseer responded as William and Larry scanned the room.
"If you're buying the house, you better not dig up Claire's garden…" The young man with the bloody shirt responded. "She gets mad whenever someone talks about paving it over."
"I won't pave it over…" Melinda responded. "You know… I can help you all pass over."
"My god…" Larry reacted and turned to William. "She talks to them as if they were real people."
"She probably sees them like real people." William answered back as he tried seeing signs of whom she was speaking to at the table. "She's got to be the most pure psychic we've ever encountered."
"Where's Claire?" Melinda asked.
"Second floor…" The patriarch looked up from the head of the table. "She's expecting you, Miss Gordon…"
"She never comes down…" The undertaker spoke.
"I want to speak to Claire…" Melinda turned round the table to William.
"Claire…" William lifted his head a bit in the scant light. "Melinda, I've researched all the known history of this house. I've identified eight possible separate surviving consciousnesses and ten place memories possibly haunting this house. There is no Claire."
"Well," Melinda smiled at him. "You made a mistake. She never leaves the upstairs." She headed for the staircase, but William stopped her.
"There's a good reason for that." Larry held his flashlight up and aimed it up. There was a large gapping hole of missing stairs five steps up to the top landing. Where the steps connected to the top, a large mouth of wooden teeth folded inward toward a dark gullet ready to swallow another person stupid enough to invade the house.
"October 31, 1999…" William knew the reason behind the hole. "Eighteen year old Michael Musso and his girlfriend came here for sex. On the top landing, they crashed all the way through to the basement. They were finally found three days later. He lost the use of his legs… she had to have the lower part of her left leg amputated."
"We didn't do it!!!" Three voices called out in unison from the back of the house.
"The back stairs are safe." The phantom little girl clung briefly to Melinda and faded away again. She looked to the little girl just as she faded away.
"The back stairs are safe." Melinda told William and Larry and lead the way under the stairs to a dimming light. She walked upon a kitchen lit by a kerosene lamp on the table. While William and Larry treaded through complete darkness and adjusted to the shadows, their cute brunette guest was lighted by spectral lights showing the way. While there was an old dingy lamp covered in dust at the table, it was not lit for their eyes. Melinda noticed the two children seated at the table playing in coloring books. A housekeeper in an old dress turned round excitedly by her arrival from the cast iron wood-burning stove. She seemed flustered at first then bowed to be in Melinda's presence.
"My lady…" She pulled back blonde locks from her face. "Welcome to Cyrus House. If you are so inclined to living here, we promise not to scare you."
"How about Claire?" Melinda walked past the children creating pictures of red schoolhouses and sunny field of animals. "Does she scare anyone?"
"Miss Claire runs the house…"
"I'm getting a spike in EMF here." William paused at the stove and checked the old water pump at the sink. "It's at 1.5… 1.8… 2.1… 2.5…"
"Melinda, keep asking about Claire." Larry unwittingly and unknowingly walked through the housekeeper. "Whoa, I just had a cold chill down my back!"
"You just walked through one of them. I hope you know that." Melinda turned to the back mud porch and looked up the back stairs to complete darkness. She felt a dark chill down her back. Something about the second floor was more for-bidding… she wasn't sure she wanted to go up there, but she could not stop herself from stepping on the first step and placing her left foot on the next step. Whatever was up there was colder… darker than the rest…
"Melinda…" William placed his hand over hers on the railing. "Floor?"
"Can you feel that?" Melinda looked to him. "I'm feeling a very powerful presence up there. I don't see how these spirits survive here."
"Well…" William looked to Larry and back to her. "Melinda, spirits absorb energy, and this house is close to the center of three very powerful interlocked electrical towers in the area plus a very strong creek beyond the old Cyrus family cemetery on the property. Sometimes, spirits draw energy from electromagnetic as well as elemental energies."
"Somehow…" Melinda moved forward. "I get the feeling Claire's getting most of it."
"If this Claire exists…" Larry responded. William looked at the outline of his shadow and headed after Melinda carefully taking each step at a time. There was not a sound in the house except for their shoes on the wood steps, the creaking of the wood under their feet and Melinda's breath as she draped away cobwebs in her path. She wasn't seeing a seeing a sign of droppings of any sort of this house was abandoned for as long as it had been. It was as if the vermin that might infest this place was afraid of it as well. If only William's team was that smart.
"William…" Nicholas's voice squawked through their walkie-talkie. "Are you in the west end of the house?"
"No, we're on the back stairs." William followed Melinda to the top landing and the main hall running the length of the house. "Why?"
"We're in the family cemetery." Nick answered. "We saw lights in the master bedroom from out here."
"I'll check it out."
"Claire…" Melinda was bathed in darkness for the first time. She couldn't see her hand before her face, but at the end of the hall, she saw the outline of a figure standing before a window at the far end. She stopped William from passing her, and Larry stayed behind them listening to the ambient sounds of the house. What was that noise he was getting? It sounded like… an old Victrola record player? He got William to hear it.
"Melinda, I've been waiting for you…" Claire's shadow spoke.
"Who are you?" Melinda asked unafraid as her eyes strained to see through the dark. She had been lit all this way; why not here? "Why did you call me here?"
"Come closer…" Claire extended her arm toward Melinda coming closer.
"What do you want of me?" Melinda glided down the hall trying to see this matriarch closer. She seemed younger than she suspected. She had very long dark hair down her head, shoulders and back. Her period dress was long and white, but diminished blue-gray in this darkened night setting. The center of it was splattered with something dark as if she had been shot point blank to the chest with a shotgun. The floor creaked loudly under Melinda's foot. William looked round for her.
"Melinda, not another step!!!" He yelled at her.
"Claire…" Melinda strolled forward. "Let me help you…" She reached Claire stepping into the moonlight streaming through the house. An evil grin to her face, she looked exactly like Melinda!!! Melinda's foot stepped on to a moldy section of carpet and crashed through the rotten floor underneath. Her body sunk through the floor and the rotten carpet, but William jumped to the floor and slid close enough to grab her about the shoulders. The lovely Grandview psychic had just a split second to whirl around and grab William from falling to her death. Falling only as far as her arms, she heard Claire giggling under her breath with a cackling little satisfied grimace before vanishing. William was holding on to her under her arms.
"I got you!" He told her. "I got you!" Larry raced up and lent another hand, bracing his foot against the wall, reaching down and lifting Melinda up out of the floor. She was hysterical and scared to death.
"Why does she look like me?" She screamed and shook William with tears in her face. "Why does she look like me?!!!"
