APRIL 2007: IN THE PAST
Tate and I argued for the first half of 1998. He was being typical moody Tate, once again getting more joy from torturing others than from being with me; and I was trying desperately to preserve what little friendships I had in the house by ignoring him. By the middle of summer, we were right back where we started: stuck together.
An anthropologist's family moved into the house the next year, in 2000, and I spent the majority of that year looking over their shoulders at reports, trying to figure out a way to free myself from Murder House's clutches. I slit my wrists open, I shot myself with an old handgun, I jumped off the roof onto the rough concrete… None of it worked. Each time I'd just open my eyes back up to see the dingy basement floor above me. Eventually I stopped trying.
The new millennia brought about no great change whatsoever in the house. The world came to no electronic end as Constance had been complaining about, and I was kind of disappointed. If the entire earth stopped existing, surely Murder House would perish, too.
On a spring day in 2007, it became apparent that someone new was in the house. There was a strange presence moving through the empty rooms, completely shifting the atmosphere.
We didn't know it then, but these would be the last people to enter Murder House before everything changed.
"They're here with Marcy," a voice stated from behind me as I looked out the front window. I turned to see Maria, and smiled at her. She was always sneaking up that way, quietly approaching from a dark corner right when I needed her help.
"We have to get rid of them," I replied, walking with Maria down to the basement where I knew Tate was.
When we finally reached the dirty cement floor, we saw that he and the other spirits were already onto the issue. Everyone was gathered together in the middle of the darkened room, talking quietly together. Maria immediately left my side to join Gladys, while I went to stand beside Tate.
"We're going to scare them off," he stated simply as he smiled down at me. "The usual thing."
The usual thing was something we'd done before. It was a basic haunted house routine – doors being opened and slammed with no cause, phantom voices in rooms as the people walked by, that sort of thing. And it worked, every time without fail.
This time was no different.
As the couple ran off through the front door, meeting Marcy outside where she had been speaking with Constance.
Though it quickly became obvious that Constance's nearby presence was not a good thing because, as the couple briefly argued with Marcy before getting into their car, she came storming in the front door of Murder House, screaming for Tate and I.
"Hi, Mom," Tate stated dully as we both appeared in the entryway behind her. She jumped as she turned around, and I had to stifle a laugh at the fact that she was always startled when one of us did that.
"Why did you chase those people off?" she questioned, her eyebrow rising. "They could have made this house worth something again! They could have gotten me back in here! Don't you understand that?"
"They weren't right for this place," I explained to her simply. "No one wanted them, so we took care of it."
"Yeah," Tate agreed. "Not even Beau wanted them here. And we need to protect him before we worry about you, Constance…. since you sure as Hell don't care about your children."
She looked ever the picture of insult in that moment, feigning to misunderstand why anyone would think she didn't love the children she'd essentially abandoned.
"Why, Tate," she breathed out, hand on her chest in an act of disdain. "You know I love you."
"No, actually," he scoffed. "I don't. And we don't love you either, Constance."
"Well," she nearly shouted now, already heading for the door. "You all honestly need something to fill out your days, something other than cause trouble for me."
She was right, of course. But no one could've predicted that something would take on the form of two dead husbands and a 15-year-old girl.
Chapter Title: Because Of The Times - Kings of Leon - released April 2007
A/N: The end is nigh. Two more chapters, which will be posted before New Year. I love you all for your support and inspiration, and for telling me to get my ass in gear. I'm incredibly fond of these final two, and I hope you will be, as well. x