Disclaimer: I own nada save the idea. And Mrs Hills and her journal entries, which I spent most of last night writing.

Note: Thanks for the continued support guys! I'm loving writing this fic at the moment. Updating the next day is virtually unheard of for me, I must be having a good time! This chapter is the 'explaining' chapter, so a little less action/interaction focussed. It overlaps chapter three.

Haunted

Four

Bella

Bella sighed as she waved Edward away and let herself into the house. She hated it when he left her like this, even if it was only for a few hours. It made her feel so pathetically human. Edward's family was facing crisis and Esme, sweet, caring Esme who already loved her as one of her 'children', was in peril from a vicious unknown, and there was nothing Bella could do to help. Then again... Bella's theory from earlier resurfaced in her mind. Perhaps he was not quite such an unknown after all.

"Hey Bells," Charlie called through from the living room. He was watching some kind of sport, but Bella had no inclination to find out which. "Good day?"

"Well, it was, erm, interesting." Just then her stomach growled loudly and she remembered just how long ago her lunch had been. Charlie peered round the door.

"Didn't the Cullens feed you?" he asked, eyes narrowed.

"Yeah, that's the interesting part. Mrs Cullen spent the afternoon in ER, so the family's a little tense at the moment and we kind of forgot to eat."

"Esme in ER? Is she ok? What happened?"

"She fainted in the store." It felt strange, knowing that it couldn't be true but also knowing that Charlie would find nothing out of the ordinary in her words. "She's ok. Carlisle's looking after her at home. I was going to get a pizza unless you left something in the fridge."

"There's tons of stuff in the fridge Bells. You always make too much for me, you'd think I couldn't cook or something."

"I don't think, I know." Bella went over to the fridge and put some leftovers on a plate, not really caring what she was eating, just anxious to get upstairs and get working on her research, grim as it was going to be.

"Well, I hope she's ok," Charlie concluded.

"Yeah, me too."

She bounded up the stairs and switched on her computer before he could say anything else. Finally the search engine loaded and Bella typed in the first thing on her mental list.

Charles Evenson.

Esme's first husband. Edward had glossed over his role in Esme's life but Bella was certain that he was a key element in this mystery. There were thousands of results, and Bella had to conclude that there had probably been more than one Charles Evenson in the United States since the dawn of time. She tried a different approach, and this time she found what she was looking for. It was a link to the archives of the Columbus Herald, specifically an obituaries page from 1923.

Charles Evenson, missing since May 1921, has been declared legally dead by authorities.

His death had never been confirmed. There was always the possibility that he had not actually died. There was always the possibility that he had been turned...

Bella typed in something different.

Vampire sightings in Columbus OH 1921.

Again she found a link to the Columbus Herald, and she followed it out of interest. It was only a short piece, towards the bottom of a page, but it served its purpose well enough for Bella.

After the discovery of another mauled body in the forests outside Columbus this morning, the third in as many months, authorities are organising a bear cull in an attempt to curb these tragedies before the game hunting season begins. Some superstitious locals, however, believe the animal attacks to be much more sinister in nature, some even blaming vampires for the recent bloodshed.

Bella sighed. She had evidence to suggest that Charles Evenson was still alive, and that he was a vampire, but nothing to link the two. In a last ditch attempt to find something she typed everything she could think of into the search bar, expecting either an error message or yet another link back to the Herald archives. She was surprised, therefore, when the first entry was someting completely different.

Fact or fiction, it read. Eyewitness accounts of supernatural and mythological occurrences.

Bella followed the link and found herself viewing the pages of an old diary which had obviously been scanned in. She read the caption that accompanied it.

Diary of Mary Hills, b. 1895 Columbus OH, d. 1967 New York City NY. Kindly donated by her great-grandson. Mrs Hills was known to be an avid reader of gothic literature, particularly the novels of Ann Reynolds. Her journal is of particular interest since it appears to blur her everyday accounts of life in Columbus and later New York, with her own imaginings, seemingly with no warning as to where the two converge, and no evidence to show that Mrs Hills believed there to be any difference between her imaginary, gothic world and the real one in which she lived. People who have read these journals believe this to be proof that such gothic phenomena truly exist.

Bella looked up to her bookshelf and her compilation of Jane Austen, eyes settling on Northanger Abbey, another tale of life and imagination blending together. She turned back and began scanning through the diary pages. Luckily only the ones pertaining to strange occurrences were posted – Mary's entires were daily without fail and extremely detailed. Finally she found what she was looking for.

Another bear attack today. Bears my foot. There haven't been bears in these parts for months. No, something much more evil is at work here. We'll prove it. Speaking of evil, Charles Evenson is still missing. It's not like when Esme left. There's no sign of him, no sign of where he's gone. It's like he's just vanished into thin air. Maybe he was kidnapped. Good luck to them I say, no-one round here's going to pay ransom for a man so awful he forced his wife to leave the state. Oh, I know what they say, that it was Esme's fault, she was playing around and got into trouble but I know our Esme. I know her husband. She'd be dead as soon as look at another man. I was scared of Charles Evenson, and I wasn't the one who had to face him behind closed doors after a couple of drinks...

Bella's breath caught in her throat. No wonder Edward hadn't lingered on Esme's story. Her marriage wasn't unhappy, if Mary's account was anything to go by, it was downright life threatening. She skipped a few pages to the next entry mentioning Charles.

Of course, Mary wrote, no-one believed me when I said I'd fainted because I'd seen a man who's been officially dead these past two years. They all attributed it to my condition... Here she broke off into some details about the progression of her pregnancy that Bella skimmed over impatiently. But still, I'll maintain till my dying day that I saw Charles Evenson this morning. His eyes... I've never felt so much fear in my life. All the old uneasiness was increased tenfold as I stared into those eyes, and I'll swear they were blood red. Then everything went black, but I knew it was a warning. I prayed for Esme this evening, not that I don't always. I still think she's out there. Something in me refuses to believe that she's dead. Please Lord, never let their paths cross again. Keep her safe from the new monster that the old monster has become.

That settled it. Bella pulled out her cell phone, double checking her facts against Mary's theories. Charles was the rogue vampire worrying Forks, and Esme had seen him. Like Mary, she had fainted. Bella bit her lip anxiously as she keyed in Edward's number. If that was Charles' gift, the gift of fear, then the battle would not be so easily won.

"Hi." Edward's voice answered the phone. "What's up?"

"Edward, I've found something, the rogue vampire, it's..."

"Charles Evenson," Edward interrupted quickly.

"Yes." Bella didn't waste time wondering how he knew, putting it down to finally accessing Esme's mind. "But that's not all. Edward, you've got to come and see this." She didn't trust her rickety computer to send an email so easily lost in cyberspace, and Edward could probably be at her house in the time it took her to send it.

"I..." Edward paused. "I'm on my way."

They hung up at the same moment and Bella tagged the page, going on to read more of Mary's story. There were still two more pages she was interested in.

I saw him again, another entry read, a few months later. And, of course, I fainted again. But Roger was with me this time. He didn't faint, and I thought he'd make fun of me but no. He said he felt it too, and he never really knew the man like I did. He caught me when I fell, but other than that he couldn't move, he said. It was like he was transfixed by those eyes, jet black this time, more like the eyes of the monster I knew before. He felt the fear as well.

"Oh no." A voice behind her made Bella jump, then she felt Edward's arms come down either side of her and his chin rest on her shoulder. "Go back."

She clicked back and let him read the other diary entries she had marked.

"Does that help?" she asked.

"Well, we know what we're up against." Edward sighed. "A vampire who can inspire paralysing fear, this is worse than we thought." He placed his cold hand over Bella's on the mouse and began to look through the entries again, scanning through the pages so quickly that Bella's human vision couldn't comprehend them.

"No wonder Esme's got it so bad... It was worse for Mary than for her husband because she was already scared of him. Esme... she must be petrified, worse than petrified..." Edward pulled away and dialled his home phone, and Bella clicked to print the entry that she hadn't had chance to read. He shook his head when there was no reply, trying different numbers one after the other, his fingers a blur over the keys. No one was answering.

"Alice, why is no-one picking up? Charles inspires fear, that must be his gift, ring me back as soon as you get this message!"

He repeated the same message to Carlisle and Emmett before sitting down on Bella's bed heavily.

"What do you think has happened?" she asked tentatively, sitting alongside him.

"I don't know Bella. I honestly don't know."

TO BE CONTINUED

What's happened at the Cullen house? All will be revealed soon! Sorry for another cliffie Anne Lynn, hope your heart holds out!

(Ann Reynolds' most famous work is 'The Mystery of Udoplho', and Jane Austen references it several times during Northanger Abbey.)