Getting out of the van proves a little harder than getting in had been, long legs and short ones alike all twisted up in a rush to breathe fresh air. Bear was the last one out, walking alongside Annie as though he thought protecting kids was his sworn duty. Kimberly wasn't going to complain, smiling as Annie plays with some of the fur atop the dog's head.
This close, the house seemed even bigger compared to her five feet and five inches, the brick carrying a rosy hue that probably helped Ellen conceive its name. She moves over to the large fountain in the center of the circle drive, plucking a few dead leaves out of the dry basin and letting them float to the ground on a faint breeze.
"Hey, Kimmy, a little help," Steve calls. She nods, wandering over to where the others had gathered behind the van, divvying up the equipment.
"What are these," Nick was asking as Kimberly joined them.
"House plans," Steve explains, handing a case off to Kim and another to Joyce. "They're probably about as useful as a fourteenth century map of Africa. Nick hands the rolled up plans off to Annie with a kind smile, the teenager accepting them without a word. She was closer to earth it seemed, but still far above the others.
"Flashlights," Kimberly asks, taking another case from him.
"Yes, and a coil of rope just in case." The rope is passed on to Cathy, equipment slowly moving down the line as Steve looks down to Annie. "How are you doing, sweetie?" The teen just looks up at him, like she could see everything whirring around in his mind despite the practiced smile to keep the worry at bay. Steve lets out a sharp breath, staring up at one of the upper floors as though lost.
"What is it," Nick asks in concern. "What do you hear?"
"It knows we're here." Kimberly follows his gaze, trying to find anything that could scream loud enough that her cousin could hear it. There wasn't a psychic bone in his body, but maybe Rose Red was on a wavelength only he could hear. Well, she amends with a glance at the girl standing just behind her, Steve and Annie, that is. "It wants us here. God help us. It wants us here."
She strained to hear anything that Steve could, using all of her senses as she stared up at the house. It wasn't until she reached out to grasp Steve's hand that it happened. It came at her all at once, a jumbling of words spoken in a harsh whisper that seemed to echo around them like firecrackers.
'Houses are alive,' came a strange, feminine voice. It rose and lowered as though on a breeze, only allowing Kimberly to catch parts of the sentences. 'News from our nerve endings… Having bad dreams…. Blind hate of our humanity.' It faded away gradually until not even Steve could hear it.
"It stopped," Nick says, looking over at the cousins. "I heard it too, but it's gone now."
"What," Joyce demands. "What did you hear?"
"There were words, but they weren't clear."
"They were jumbled," Kimberly supplies. "It was like people were trying to talk over each other."
"Exactly. Except it was all the same person, I think, a woman or… I dunno, it was hard to grasp onto. What about the rest of you?"
"I might have heard something," Cathy says, laughing nervously. "It might've just been my imagination, though." She was clutching at a carpet bag like it was the only thing keeping her from bolting, but Kimberly was doing much the same to Steve's hand. She goes to release it with an apologetic smile, but he holds it tighter. There was panic in his eyes, the olive green darkening as his emotions run riot.
"But what was it," Joyce demands again, impatient as she turns her gaze back to Steve.
"How should I know," he asks defensively. "You know as well as I do that the only psychic claim I have is guessing who'll win on America's Funniest Home Videos. You've got the test results to prove it." He meets Nick's stare, trailing off with furrowed brows. "What?" Nick shakes his head, a knowing smiling turning up one corner of his mouth.
"Pam, can you come with me?" Kimberly looks away from the two men and over at the women as they head to the front doors, then down at her shoes. They were simple black flats, the same ones she's owned for going on three years now and would only throw away when they broke down completely.
"Kimmy, are you okay?"
"I'm about as good as you are," she answers, picking up the case she'd dropped earlier. She hadn't even realized it at the time, but now she was hoping nothing inside was damaged that would be taken out of Joyce's paycheck.
"Emers, old boy," Nick calls, light tone breaking the growing tension," why don't you come give us a hand? It seems to be the butler's day off."
"Don't call me that," Emery frowns, grip tight on the straps of his pack.
"Hey, I helped the two of you move into your apartment and set up Nicky's crib," Steve snaps," the least you can do is carry a couple of these boxes." Emery grumbles under his breath, grabbing one of the larger cases almost violently and stalking back to the front doors. "You'd think he'd be a little nicer to the man that watches his kid every other Sunday."
"You just love tormenting him," Kimberly replies," and he loves tormenting you, it's your thing. I'd rather you two stop the bickering and make it to the pumpkin pie before the fighting starts, but at least you haven't killed each other yet."
"They're about to spend three days together in one house," Nick quips," so you'll know what happened if one of them and a shovel turns up missing."
"That happens and I murder whoever survived."
"There's plenty of space for you to dispose of them."
"You see, Stevie, me and Nick have a game plan, so you two better keep your tempers in line." Steve musters up a smile, barely more than a twitching of his lips, but it was a smile all the same and Kimberly would take it. "What you heard just now, with all those voices, it's probably just because of your family ties to this place. It should stop again when we leave."
"Comforting, isn't it? You get to leave your demons behind you while ours cling to us like spider monkeys." Nick was only joking, the gleam in his eyes made that clear. It was dry like all the others, but appreciated. They all needed a good dose of humor if they were going to survive the trauma of this place. "So, how old were you when you got lost in there?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Steve deflects, straightening up from setting another case on the ground.
"You must have been around seven since your cousin was six in her memory. Strange how they intertwined like that, each meeting a relative that was lost on the grounds. Kimberly's experience wasn't as haunting as yours was since it was out in the open, but you were trapped in a room with colored light. You felt as though you might choke on the smell of sawdust."
It clung to everything, Kimberly remembers, his clothes and memories, like it didn't want to let him go.
"It didn't, Kimberly." She glances over at Nick again, grip on the cases tightening a fraction. Mind reader, then. Good to know. "It wanted him back then. What happened to you in there, Steve? What did you see that made you so frightened?"
"Nothing," he says, trying to sound firm. "I didn't see or experience anything." He grabs up one of the heavier cases and stomps off to the front doors, Nick and Kimberly watching him go. Nick steps up to Annie, patting her shoulder with a smile.
"You know, don't you? As do you." He glanced at Kimberly over his shoulder, the knowing smile front and center. "You can't quite make it out from all the memories you have stored away in little boxes, but you know it's there."
"Sawdust," she says, nodding," and something about high turrets or maybe it was towers." She shakes her head, squinting up at the manor house. "My great-grandpa never smelled like that when I met him."
"He smelled like flowers that bloom in summertime."
"Yeah, exactly."
"It means he was a good person in life. The good ones always smell like our favorite things." Kimberly smiles at the thought, searching through the vague memories that weren't hers and usually finding the blond man with a smile aimed at his wife and children. "Come on, let's go join the others." Nick leads the way to the front doors, Kimberly and Annie following behind without a backwards glance.
"What were you two talking about," Emery asks when she's standing beside him. He wasn't jealous, not the type for that, just curious as she meets his gaze.
"Psychic stuff," she answers honestly. "And about how we could bury you and Steve in the backyard if you both keep fighting."
"You can't bury me in the backyard, I'm the only one that can get our son to sleep."
"I knew there was a reason I kept you around." The front doors swing inward, revealing to everyone a massive entryway. Stone columns supported archways far above their heads, the floors made of fine wood with black marble cutting through it to make large squares, a beautiful chandelier hanging above three short steps that led to a raised portion of the room. There was a sturdy table set up there with more equipment already set out on it, two curving staircases seeming to grow out of the floor and meet again at the second landing, and a short hall stretching on between the two.
On the walls of the entryway, visible between the massive columns, were paintings of the Rimbauer family; Ellen, John, Adam, and April all dressed in their best clothes and smiling for a painter long since dead. Closer to the table was a painting of two small children, a little boy showing off a missing tooth as he grins and a younger girl with a dimple in her cheek. Where the little boy favored the Gilchrist looks with dark brown hair and gorgeous blue eyes, the girl resembled her father with hazel eyes and blonde hair straight as a pin.
Alfred and Ellie Airey, eight years apart even if they didn't look it since Alfred still boasted a youthful face. He would be ten in the picture while little Ellie, named for her aunt and godmother, was two. Ellen had probably been behind the painting being done, spoiling all the children as much as she could get away with.
There were animal heads mounted along the walls as well, a parlor branching off on the left that had more doors that led to even more rooms. The house was like a labyrinth, stretching on and on forever with no hope of reaching its center. On the raised portion of the floor were marble statues in little alcoves along the walls and a grandfather clock that looked pristine, the wood dusted and gold-inlayed hands polished to a shine beneath the glass.
"My aunt and uncle used to play in here," Kimberly murmurs to no one, turning around in a slow circle to take it all in. "They'd chase each other up and down the stairs and under the table until they couldn't breathe."
"And then they'd beg their mother for a snack," Steve adds with a laugh. "If their parents were anything like ours, then they weren't allowed those snacks until they promised to calm down." Steve's attention drifts to somewhere on Kimberly's right and she follows suit, finding Vic holding up the remote that opened the gates. "The caretaker must have left it here when he let in the guys that brought the equipment."
"Won't he miss it," Vic asks, shaking the remote a little for emphasis.
"Francois probably won't even realize he left it here. He's pushing eighty and we're lucky if he remembers to come by every two weeks to check that the place is still locked up. Besides, the gates will be gone after September."
"And so will the house," Kim states, setting the cases down on the floor. "Thank God for small miracles." It's not until she felt Steve nudging her that she looked away from Vic, catching the tail end of a dirty look from Joyce. The woman hated that Rose Red would be turned into condos, but she also didn't have random ghosts showing up in her living room either.
"There's a flashlight for each of you," she says, changing the subject. "I suggest you keep it on your person at all times." Steve hands them out, pulling them from one of the cases he'd brought in.
"The power's fine most of the time," he explains," but it's fickle."
"I have a feeling that looking for the fuse box wouldn't help us any," Nick quips.
"Puget Sound Energy wouldn't do us much good either."
"But what about the equipment," Cathy asks worriedly. "Wouldn't a power outage ruin anything you document?"
"No, everything would switch over to battery," Joyce assures her. "I think it's time we got started." Kimberly glances up at the second landing, spotting a faint shadow as it darts down the stairs, her gaze following it to the doors at the other end of the room right as a strong breeze started up. The psychic wind carried dead leaves inside with it, blowing Annie's hair this way and that while Bear's fur remained untouched.
"Where's Annie," Sister panics. She spins on her heal in time for the doors to slam shut with a resounding crack through the entryway, the wind disappearing the second the task was finished. The teenager was unbothered by the noise, her only reaction to reach out a hand for Bear to nuzzle against.
There's a softer noise and then Joyce is speaking into her tape recorder. "Friday afternoon, 3:17 p.m. We've just experienced our first paranormal phenomenon—a phantom draft." She clicks stop on the recorder and pockets it before looking to the rest of the group. When the wind had started up, everyone shuffled closer to each other and ended up almost shoulder-to-shoulder. Birds of a feather, indeed.
"Joyce, how about a tour," Pam suggests. The timid expression pointed towards the blonde wanting nothing more than to run as far and fast as she could, but there was an excitement beneath it that Pam was falling back on comfortably.
"Right, let's begin."