~June 20th 2016~
The big Victorian house was finally fully set and liveable, and the few days that Mel had spent living in it had been so calm and quiet that she even started to think that the encounter she had had with the ghost of Tate Langdon had been solely a dream; or maybe even a weird subconscious thing that meant to scare her off from the house. Yet, every time her brain so wildly came to think of that, the same kind of headache she'd had around Tate would start; and such would usually be around the time that the half demon would actually realize that none of it had been a dream. It was true; her house was the perfect description of a retreat for the paranormal.
Even as Mel sat down so peacefully in her kitchen with a delicious bowl of cereal resting in front of her, that morning, she could feel the ignorable pounding of a headache against her temple; it was so light that she could even think of what she needed to do for the house; like going grocery shopping, or even thinking about the many different ways that she could hopefully avoid the war that Tate had so fully said would be set upon her to try and be scared away by the ghosts. Maybe I can buy things for them. She pondered, leading the shiny spoon full of crunchy cereal up to her mouth. She could put up a chalkboard somewhere in the house to have them write down what they wanted her to buy and she'd make sure that she made it everyone's house and not only hers; after all, Tate had said that everyone who resided in the shadowy mansion thought the rights to the place were theirs. And, even though the papers clearly named the house fully to Mel, she was open to sharing it with a few tormented ghosts; it only seemed fair to be nice to the people she hadn't harmed in the name of all those that she actually had. Mental note: Thank Tate for all the advice about the house. Either way; Mel wanted to truly live in the huge Victorian place, not die like all the last previous owners had.
She'd done her research; even after the lengthy talk she'd had with Tate, she remained completely curious about every word he had confessed. So as curiosity remained, she searched. Montgomery, Langdon, Warwick and Harmon; those were all the names of the families that had died within the place she decided to call home. Owners, people that had once owned the place; she truly didn't want to end up like them. It seemed she found it a sad reality that the house rested haunted and full of death, especially because she felt right at home within it. How fucked up is that? She wondered; right before an abrupt wave of a not-as-ignorable headache started pounding like rocks against her head so suddenly, accompanied by the wary voice of a curious woman. The pain was too much, and as a groan left her lips and the spoon clattered against the bowl of cereal so loudly that Mel wouldn't have been surprised if any of the bowl's contents had splashed upon the counter, she lifted both her hands to press them as tightly against her temples as she could, almost as if the pressure would make the discomfort disappear. "Oh, bloody fuck!" She heard herself saying before she could even stop herself from it. "You little ghosts of hell!" Mel didn't really care who the ghost was, yet she could tell by the voice whose thoughts had so painfully reached her, that she hadn't met her. Though, the truth was that she hadn't met anyone other than Tate Langdon in that huge supposedly haunted house. "Who are you?" Mel called, continuing her annoyed manner as she turned to look toward the direction where she could hear the ring of the curious voice. "I know you're there; and if I were you, I'd show myself."
The woman, an average looking girl with dark red hair, felt her senses perking up as the wondering question of How did she know I was here? Stumbled inside her brain; so incredibly audible to Mel, who still looked toward the empty space where, after a few seconds of considering, the redheaded woman appeared; her eyes were astounded, yet curious, even as she spoke. "Hayden..." She muttered with genuine surprise. "My name's Hayden McClaine."
Mel's eyes remained posed on the redhead's still form as she pushed her bowl of cereal away from her, for the pounding headache had made her stomach turn. "Right." She noted. "Hayden. Hi, I'm Mel; new house owner." She said feeling quite silly at having chosen those words to speak, and even more silly when she stretched out a hand toward the other to shake. What am I doing? She wondered as a small frown appeared upon her forehead.
Clearly, as she tilted her head to the side, it became quite evident that the redhead seemed as astonished and taken aback by the brunette's actions as she did herself; nonetheless, she took a couple of steps closer to her with a polite grin crossing her lips. "New owner, huh?" Hayden questioned as her steps took her past Mel's hand and toward her now somewhat soggy bowl of cereal; all before her thumb quickly swapped into the bowl to take and pop a piece of flavoured crunchy substance into her mouth. "Been here long?"
The owner's brow raised slightly as the boldness of the new ghost became astoundingly evident; yet her hand dropped and her head bobbed in a nod while keeping her eyes fully posed on the hand that had just stolen from her plate. "Sort of." Mel replied, for the reality of the boredom that had nearly overcame her during her genuinely short stay. "Or… no; not really. Only a week or so, it's not that long, yeah?" She reached for her spoon again. So far so weird, she thought before asking, "You been here long?"
Without waiting for an invite, the redhead sat in a swift motion on the stool right beside Mel's, being quite quick at stealing yet another bite from the soggy cereal. "It's been four years since this place and I have seen each other naked." Hayden quickly admitted with a light smirk on her lips.
"Blimey." The half demon expressed with a somewhat curious smile. "Sounds like a long time to be trapped in a house."
"How'd you know I can't leave?" Hayden wondered as she took another bite from the bowl.
"Because you're a ghost." The owner admitted whilst her eyes lowered onto the bowl the other seemed keen to feed from. "If you could leave, I truly doubt you would choose to stay in this place—do you want me to serve you some?" Mel somewhat annoyingly wondered as she reached her hand to pull the bowl of cereal that Hayden seemed to think had been okay to eat from, away from the hand that had just stretched again.
Only resulting in Hayden's amused chuckle as it echoed along the kitchen walls to accompany her shaking head before placing her now useless hand upon her lap. "Nope." She responded with a little grin. "I just wanted to steal what doesn't belong to me." A pause created a little silence between them, one in which a sardonic nod lit the brunette's features and the reality of what had just happened truly befell the ghost upon the remembrance that she had been meaning to ask her one little thing… "How did you know I was there?" Her eyes lifted to look at Mel curiously. "How do you know about the ghosts?"
Just like the time she had talked to Tate, the prominent headache had begun to soften; making it many times easier to pay attention to what the redheaded woman spoke, and even thought. Thus, of course, the full extent of her new questions became a little worrying; one thing had been sharing secrets with someone who'd already seen something that proved what her nature made her, and a very different one was to tell a complete stranger everything she'd told Tate without her having seen her in her darkest moments. So she ignored the ghost's first question without daring to speak a lie. "The only reason I knew you were dead was because of a talk I had with a young lad." Mel confided as she lifted whatever was left of the soggy substance in the bowl and drank it as quickly as she could. Ugh. She hated soggy cereal. "Tate, I think his name was?" Hayden's brows rose.
"Wow, you met Rambo already?" She asked with a tilting head. "I think he's under the impression that he's the un-dead realtor of this property."
"Does he?" Mel calmly stood from the stool she'd been sitting on, to walk over to the sink. "I mean, he was the first one to come say hi." And as she set the dirty bowl upon the sink, the memory of her own wonderings, previous to the near apocalyptic headache that had interrupted her, came tumbling like a marble within her head. "See, it's actually ace I get to talk to another ghost." Mel admitted as she opened the water tab, daring to look in the other's direction for a short moment. "I had an idea that I hope could work to try and keep peace in the house."
It was such a statement that truly brought forth the echo of an amused scoffed breath from the redhead's lips as her nails ran along the cool marble top of the counter. "Oh, really?" Even her eyes seemed to easily focus on the brunette with slightly more interest than before. "Wait till you meet Princess Harmon and her mommy." She stated. "I doubt your peace theory will apply to them."
The echo of such a last name made a soft wave of culpability crash upon Mel's insides when a replay of her first witnessed encounter between ghosts befell her; the blonde and his lover, something she definitely should not have come close to have known. "Harmon?" It was thus that the note with which she spoke escaped in a soft feigned innocence. "You don't mean… uh…" Of course, as Mel washed the bowl and tried to push away the sad scene, the narrowing orbs from a redhead ghost stared onto her back so deeply that she could feel them. Just how much did he tell you? The brunette heard loud enough within her head for the plate to slip from her fingers. "Violet…? Is that it?" Mel cleared her throat before turning slightly to look at Hayden. "I think Tate mentioned her." Understatement. Mel thought with a silent sigh.
"Yup." Hayden admitted with a risen brow. "Also known as, or as I like to refer to her as, Nightingale flower, Miss Innocent, Itty Bitty Vivien, Tate's owner; the list goes on and on since I have an eternity to make it." Mel couldn't stop the short scoffed breath and the following smile that left her lips as she finished washing the bowl. "So what exactly did Psychotic Latex Obsessed Teen Tragedy tell you about that 'situation'?" Hayden wondered with a smile and lifting hands that made little air quotes.
Mel, of course, had started wondering if Hayden would ever try to give her a nickname; given that she seemed to do so for everyone, and she wasn't one to stand in the way of other haunted soul's entertainment. Will she ever call me 'black eyed bitch'? She wondered with an ironic smile as she thought about the side of her that Hayden obviously didn't know. "Oh, not much." The thing was that Mel didn't know exactly how much she was supposed to know; unfortunately the more knowledgeable ghost had left her side before she could even ask him the limits. "Just the basics of why he was stuck here and how he—loved Violet a lot." Her eyes went a little wide as she walked over to a cupboard to place the bowl in its place, wondering if Hayden, behind her, had noticed the little pause she'd made. Mel had been about to say "how he blamed himself about everything that had happened to Violet." But such was obviously not her story to tell or to know. And she figured; if he'd trusted her enough with it, she would not ever even come close to talking about it with anyone else other than Tate himself.
Hayden's look deepened and changed from soft and comedic to a more hardened, focused feature as she attempted to try and pin down what Mel could be thinking about in her entirely too many silent moments. "That's all?" She blinked a couple of times without daring to move her eyes away from Mel's back. "I always wondered why Rambo's gracious body never had bullet holes in it." Hayden admitted as her head tilted once more. "Then again, those Goodwill Grandpa sweaters… but hey…" She sloppily lifted a hand to tap a fingernail to her temple. "I lack my own shovel-induced death scar, so." She shrugged.
"Shovel?" The owner finally walked over to the kitchen island to sit on a stool across from Hayden as she focused on the reality that the opinion the woman across from her spoke about the few ghosts she'd mentioned could, in the end, give Mel a small sense of why Tate had so dramatically told her war could be ensued in this enormous place.
"Mmhmm." Hayden murmured without much of a notice. "A shovel; a fedora wearing fucker came outta nowhere. Killed me and my…" she stopped talking, but Mel could see the memory clear in her head: the moment the pregnancy test came positive, remembering the face of a smiling man; one that came with the feeling of being… Violet's father. Ben fucking Harmon. Hayden had thought; her hands balling slightly into fists.
"Oh." Of course Mel didn't want to explain the way she knew about the baby, or about who the father was; especially since Tate hadn't even told her any of it. Of course, it hadn't been his story to tell, but it remained a bid deal; thus, instead of asking about the baby (one she had to pretend to know nothing about), she asked about the killer. "Do you know what happened to the fedora wearing tosser?"
Watching the stranger's reactions to her story, both surprised Hayden and didn't; the truth was that if the girl before her had actually talked to Tate, she expected that he would've used his way with words to get the owner to hate her just as much as nearly everyone else in the house did. Yet, Mel remained, sat before her, talking to her; so it seemed, for the moment, she rested safe from any kind of hate from anyone. For now. "Far as I know, he's in the big house." Hayden finally admitted as she tried looking into Mel's eyes. "He confessed to something, apparently." And then a wave of light amused laughter left her lips as she flipped up her fingers to make little air quotes once again. "He had a 'get your groove on' kinda thing for Tate's dear old Momma."
And as Mel realised that the redhead had decided to give in to her conversation, there rested a sense of hope growing within the brunette that made a smile take over her lips; for, maybe things would not be as hard as the blonde teen had promised they would be, maybe peace could be achieved.
She had hoped for such way too soon.
To Be Continued.