Jason and Leo had been busy with the basement all day, trying to fix it up to be used if needed for tornado season or a playroom for the girls. It was dry and not full of any chemicals or mold, but needed touchups here and there. For hours, they focused on putting carpet down.

Jason kept as far away from the walls as possible, but sometimes he would bump into one and feel that unexplained warmness. It seemed to occur in only a certain area and never seemed to fade away.

"Whatcha thinking about?" Leo asked, smirking at his longtime friend. "The last time you zoned out like this was when you lost your vi-"

"Leo, inappropriate." Jason shook his head to clear his thoughts. "I'm just thinking about the house, is all. It's weird."

"Are those ghosts bothering you?" Leo teased, not believing in them himself. None of them had while growing up, never having had an experience to push them to. "Is little Jason afraid of the big, bad, scary ghosts?"

"There are no ghosts, Leo. So shut up." Jason snapped, his exhaustion mixing into his mood. He sat on the hard ground and put his head in his hands, trying to stifle a yawn. "I'm tired. I can't sleep in this place."

Leo was quiet for a minute before he plopped down beside Jason. "Why not? Are you and Piper fighting?"

Jason shook his head. "No, of course not. We're good. It's just... I have trouble sleeping. That's it."

"You've never had trouble sleeping before," Leo argued. "Are you saying you have nightmares? About moving into a new house?"

"No, well, yes, but no." Jason frowned at him. "Don't even say it. I'm not a child, and I can't help it. It feels weird here."

Leo held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. I'll humor you. What feels weird?"

"First off?" Jason gestured to the wall behind him. "The freaking wall is hotter than the freaking sun."

Leo reached back to where Jason was pointing and laid his palm against the wooden wall, his smirk dropping as he felt what Jason had. "Um,..."

"It isn't normal," Jason told him. "It isn't normal at all. Not to mention the freaking feelings I'm getting and the weird things I've been seeing."

"That can be from stress." Leo wrote off. "What I'm worried about is this wall... Do you have a blueprint of the house?"

"Where would I have possibly gotten that?" Jason questioned. "You saw what that realtor was like. She wanted nothing to do with this place."

"Can I try something?" Leo asked, his teasing manner having fallen away from the curiosity forming under his skin. "I'll repair something if I break it."

Jason looked at him for a long time before the curiosity got the better of him. "Fine. Can I help?"

"Yeah, your muscles will be useful." Leo ran to his toolbox and slammed it open. He pulled out a couple hammers, his signature smirk back again. "Which one do you want? The red or blue?"

"Leo, what are you planning?" Jason grabbed the red hammer and looked at the wall. "You're just gonna hammer it down?"

"Yep," Leo popped his lips at the end of the word before stalking over to the wall. "Ready?"

"Piper's going to kill me," Jason looked around the basement as if to make sure his wife wasn't down there. "You'll repair what you break?"

"Yeah, sure." Leo's voice held no indication if that was truthful or not. "Ready? On three."

Despite the childish way, Jason nodded. "One, two,"

"Three!" Leo brought the hammer up and struck the wall, watching as it went through the old wood with no resistance. Instantly, however, the atmosphere changed. It took everything in Jason not to turn around and run upstairs, and looking at Leo, he felt the same way.

"Maybe...maybe we shouldn't have done that." Jason managed. "All we accomplished was putting a hole in the wall."

"That's where you're wrong, Grace." Leo pulled the hammer back and looked into the hole in victory. "Looks to me like you've got a secret room on your hands."

"This isn't time for jokes, Leo." Jason grabbed his hoodie from by the staircase and put it on, his arm hairs rising on end from the sudden coldness. "We shouldn't have done that."

"What, scared it pissed off your ghost?" Leo rolled his eyes. "You can go back upstairs if you want but I want to finish. There's something back there, Jason. What if it's money? You know you need it."

"You are literally the personification of peer pressure." Jason rubbed his temples in exasperation. "You can continue, but I'm going upstairs. Piper's been alone all day and I don't want to be involved in this."

"No way in hell are you leaving me alone." Leo grabbed Jason's arm. "Nope, not a chance. We're doing this together."

Jason looked at him for a minute more, trying to think of an excuse to leave. Everything in him said that this was wrong, that he was going to regret taking that wall down, but he was also curious about why it was even up in the first place. What was it hiding?

"Fine, let's continue." he finally decided, grabbing his discarded hammer. "But I'm blaming you if something goes wrong."

Leo didn't answer, already having brought his hammer up to the wall again.


Nico was pissed, to say the least. He wanted to strangle the two idiots before him but knew it wouldn't do them any good. He needed the house to stay up, so he needed someone to live there for him. He just wished it hadn't been someone so curious.

Leo seemed to be the leading cause of Jason's annoying lack of respect for those that had lived there before. If a wall had been put up, it had been put up for a reason. If something was covered, it was best to remain from human eyes. There was a reason things happened. There was always a reason.

As they got that wall down, Nico's temper got the best of him and he disappeared from the room, unable to watch them find his lost memories.


"Do you remember how to play hide and clap?" Piper asked her daughter, needing to get their minds off of Octavia while she waited for Jason to come up from the basement. "We can play while we wait for dinner to get done."

"Yes! Yes!" Katie squealed with delight as she ran to her mother. "I'll hide, okay? You look for me."

"Just don't go in your room. Maddie's sleeping." Piper instructed. "Okay?"

"Okay," Katie smiled at there barely being any rules. "Can we start now?"

"Yeah, yeah." Piper moved a hand over her eyes. "Go hide now, Katie."

She heard the small girl sprint up the closest flight of stairs, sighing when she knew how there was so much area Katie could hide in. She should have put a limit on the third floor but hadn't thought of it before. Getting used to having a house you could get lost in seemed harder than you would think.

Piper took the hand off her eyes and slowly went upstairs. "First clap!"

Of course, it had to come from the third floor. Sighing, Piper headed for the next flight of stairs and headed up hesitantly. Once she was on the third floor, she walked a little bit before looking around. "Second clap, Katie!"

What sounded like a clap came from behind a large tapestry that clung to the wall along with a thick layer of dust. Frowning in confusion, Piper put a hand to it. "Katie...?" Instead of touching a wall, her hand kept moving back with the tapestry.

"Seriously, Katie? You hid behind this thing?" Piper smiled to herself as she busied herself with taking it down. "How did you possibly think I could do this with my eyes closed?" Once it was down, she found herself facing a short hallway with a single door at the far end.

"Got you," she crept up to the door and opened it slowly, wincing at the eerie noise it made. Fumbling around for a light switch, Piper entered the room in the dark. Once she got the light on, she looked behind her to find that the door had closed quietly.

"Katie..." Piper's heart sunk as she looked around the bedroom. It looked to have been a teenager's, with a twin poster bed and clothes laying around as if they had never gotten to be put away. A tie was lying closest to her feet and a pair of boxers laid by the bathroom, both articles of clothing covered with as much dust that clung to the walls.

"Katie, third clap." Piper managed, her hands clasped together in front of her. "Do your third clap, Katie."

The clap came from a door to the far wall, which had been cracked open ever so slightly. A light shone from the inside, where no doubt her daughter was hiding.

"I found you, Katie." Piper jogged to the door and opened it wide enough to step through, smirking in triumph as she walked into the old bathroom. "I won, Kati-... Oh...oh god..."

Katie wasn't in there, even if the clap had come from in there. Piper made sure to look in the cupboards and anywhere else the small child could have hidden. When she looked in the bathtub, she got so sick that she thought she might puke then and there. It was filled to the brim with dried blood, coating it to the point that no previous color could be seen.

There was nobody in the room she heard the clap from. Nobody around. When she finally screamed for Katie that she had lost the game, she found her daughter hiding outside by the swingset.