Until now, I never really thought about what I was scared of. Usually the things that made my heart race and my palms sweat were day-to-day fears—deadlines, public speaking, or bugs that were larger than they were supposed to be. And then I suppose everyone has that innate fear of death, of pain and blood and finally coming to an unknown close.

But those weren't the things I thought about as the witcher and I made our way across the foyer. Something about the cold air and the tingling feeling of being watched made deep, buried fears stir up in my reluctant mind. The hills… a sickly sweet smell… a ditch.

"Jemille." I flinched and looked to him. He was staring at me, but it was hard to tell what his eyes were saying. "You see something?"

"No… why?"

"You started to slow down."

"I…"

"What were you thinking about?"

"Well…" I fought to recall what had gone through my head just seconds before, but it wouldn't come back to me. "I don't remember."

"Hm," the witcher grunted. "Well, if you do happen to remember, don't think about it."

"Why?"

"That's enough. Stay close."

I scratched my forehead and ran my hand through my hair as I cleared my head. My bag felt heavy from the things the witcher had given me. They were small pouches of what felt like powder. He'd told me that they were some kind of bomb to combat specters. They'd explode when thrown, so I had to be absolutely careful not to drop them.

We walked between the two curved staircases that hugged either side of the foyer. There was a wide pair of ornate wooden doors in front of us. The architecture was similar to Louise's house. Behind the doors should be a long hallway.

The witcher suddenly looked back. Startled, I did too. There was nothing. "Just checking," he mumbled nonchalantly before continuing on. I, on the other hand, followed looking a bit more perturbed.

We went through the doors, and I was right. There was a spacey hallway. Glass candle sconces dotted the entire length of the walls, which the witcher lit with a wave of his hand. On one side were a couple of doors. On the other hung a row of portraits. We walked past slowly enough for me to get a good look at all of them. There were five in all—one of each of the late Coviers. We passed by the paintings of Alani and her brothers. They were very well done. The artist and the oil paints captured them perfectly, but now in context they were nothing but creepy.

The last two were of the lord and lady of the house. We had just passed by Lady Covier's painting when we heard it—scratching in the wall behind us. The witcher whipped around to face it, his hand flying up to his neck. His medallion was buzzing so violently that even I heard it, thrumming like an angry hornet. The scraping stopped when we confronted it. The witcher remained on high alert. He walked over to the wall and pressed a hand flat against it. Then he lifted it and pressed it against another part of the wall as though he were feeling for something.

"You heard that too, right?" he asked me.

"Yeah. Was that…?"

"The boy? I don't know." His hand pressed tighter against the wall. "Hmm," he mumbled to himself. "This spot in particular…" He flipped his hand over and pressed the back of it to the wall.

As I watched him, the coldest chill ran through me. It made me actually shudder. Quickly, I looked from one end of the hall to the other and saw nothing. I glanced over my shoulder. Then I paused, and looked again. Slowly, I turned.

Before, each portrait had stared down at me with stern, even bored looks. Now they couldn't, because the eyes of each one had been scratched out. And across the top of Lady Covier's portrait was a word that was messily clawed into the canvas: IMPOSTER.

All I could manage was a soft, shaky, "Uh…"

The witcher turned and saw the torn portraits. He read the message over Lady Covier's head and gave his own a little tilt. "Why?" he asked, as if someone was there. And maybe they were.

Suddenly, Lord Covier's portrait jerked. It ripped from its fixture and smashed against the opposite wall. Above the sound, I could have sworn I heard a woman screaming.

The witcher stepped back as the portrait whipped by his head, tussling his hair. He reacted even before the painting hit the wall. I felt his hand grip my arm painfully as he pulled me behind him. The other hand had thrown a small, pouch-like bag. Upon impact, it showered the hall in a rain of shimmering silver dust. Then, as quickly as everything had happened, it all stopped. Silence filled the hallway as the dust settled over the carpeted floor.

Straightening up, the witcher muttered, "Damn." He had that same tone a friend of mine once used during a fishing trip whenever the hook came out of the water empty. His vice-like grip finally released my arm, though I still felt what I knew was going to be a bruise throbbing under my skin. He stepped over to the painting of Lord Covier and daintily lifted it by the splintered frame. He flipped it over to look at the ruined image.

"What do you make of it?" he asked me.

"An angry ghost vandalized it," I said unhelpfully.

"Yes, I know," the witcher sighed. He looked back at the portrait of Lady Covier and gestured a hand towards it. "What's the dirt on her?"

"Huh?"

"I know you lot must have gossiped up a storm about these people. What have you heard about her?"

"Most people just talked about how much young she was compared to Lord Covier," I answered. "They were around 15 to 20 years apart in age."

"That's not too unusual amidst the upper class," the witcher remarked.

"I guess not, but some have claimed she started out as his mistress."

The witcher looked at Lady Covier's portrait. The gashes across her eyes nearly tore straight through the thick canvas. "To be a mistress, there needs to have been a wife," he said quietly.

I didn't hear him, as I was staring at the woman standing at the end of the hall. "Who's she?"

She was too far for me to see her clearly. All I could really make out was her long black hair and simple dress. The witcher turned and looked at her. He must have recognized her, because a soft, "No," escaped his lips, frail and frightened.

Then, all of the candles went out.

I was too terrified to move. In that single, fleeting moment of darkness, I could have sworn something touched me. And then the hallway was filled with light again. I blinked. It was just the witcher and I standing there. The woman was gone.

His breathing was labored, I realized. He turned and looked at me, around me, and then back down the hall. His eyes were wild with anger. He suddenly smashed his fist through the wall. I jumped, afraid. What had gotten into him?

"You think that's going to stop me?" he shouted into the air, yanking his fist out. Wood splinters and plaster crumbling to the floor. "You just made a big, big mistake!" Only silence responded.

With a shaking sigh, the witcher lowered his hand. He turned to me. I was still wide-eyed and paralyzed. "Jemille," he said slowly. "When you start to think about it, stop right away."

"What…?"

"When you start thinking about things that scare you, things that get under your skin, you stop. It could be things you haven't thought about in years, or things you didn't even know you were scared of. They'll start getting drawn out. It's trying to learn. That's how it gets you." The witcher gave his head a sharp shake and pressed his fingertips against his temple as though he were trying to ward off a bad headache. "So don't think about it."

I gave a wordless nod. The witcher gave his head another rough shake and turned. "Let's get moving," he said. "Upstairs, to Lord Covier's study. Maybe we can get some answers there."

As I followed him, I didn't dare voice my question. Had this thing, this seemingly corporeal monster, discovered the witcher's fear? I thought about the woman we had seen and the witcher's reaction to her. Why had he been afraid to see her?

A soft scuffling caught my attention. Still close to the witcher's heels, I looked back just in time to see something small retract back into the hole the witcher had punched into the wall—a child's hand.

"Keep up," I heard him say, and turned back.

The hallway made a sharp left and continued on to the door at the very end. I wondered if the witcher had already gone through the doors we passed when he was on his own, or if he was simply just ignoring them. The door at the end opened to a wide room, a bit like the foyer but smaller. Doors flanked either side of this new room, and a straight stairwell leading up was on the opposite end from where we emerged. The entire layout of this manor confused me. Directing myself around in large buildings was never my strong suit, and the first year at the academy had consisted of day after day of conquering mazes.

We hurried up the stairs, which led to a second floor of walkways that framed the edges of the room. I rested a hand on the painted wooden banister and looked out at the wide, crystal chandelier that hung from the center of the ceiling.

"Which way is the study, do you know?" the witcher asked me. I looked around the room. There were four doors—one on each wall. So many damn doors.

"Not sure," I answered. "But if I had to guess, it's either deeper in or one of those doors." I pointed towards the doors to the left and right of the stairs.

"Then we'll check those first, and then—." A soft creak and delicate tinkling caused the witcher to stop. We both stared at the center of the room. The chandelier had begun to swing gently. The crystal teardrops that hung from it clattered together like rods on a wind chime. As the chandelier swung to the side, I could see past it for just the briefest of moments. Someone was standing on the walkway across from us.

No, wait. The banister was behind them. They were floating.

Something was wrong with them. It was their head. They were holding it up like something wasn't quite right with their neck. A dirty gown billowed over their body, stopping just at the ankles where bare feet hung under. The last thing I saw before the chandelier swung back was a yellow grin and black eyes fixated on me.

The chandelier swayed out of the way again and the figure was gone.

The witcher wasn't convinced. His sword was poised in one hand, his other holding up a sign I couldn't recognize. He ordered me to get away from the edge. I hurried away from the banister and pressed my back against the wall.

The chandelier had stopped swinging, but now it was shaking. The witcher immediately cast something around it, some kind of glowing series of runes that formed a circle. The shuddering crystals immediately slowed as if time itself had begun to decelerate. Then, the witcher threw the same small pouch and covered the chandelier in a cloud of silver. Amidst the dust, I saw something appear.

A small figure was crouched in the chandelier. I thought it was a child, a boy maybe. As soon as the dust settled, it uncovered its face. It was indeed a child, but its cheekbones jutted out and its eyes were sunken. The dead skin over its face was stretched too tightly over its skull.

Exposed, it began to wail a shrilly, ear-splitting screech. The screech was drowned out by an explosion, loud because it happened around me. It happened so quickly I didn't even have time to move. I only saw the explosion of plaster and the two arms that burst out from either side of me.

My vision was obscured as one arm came over my face. The other I felt locking over my neck, forcing my scream down as I was suddenly yanked back through the wall.

The skin over my face was icy cold. My feet scraped uselessly against the ground as something dragged me back too fast for me to fully regain my footing. I heard the witcher cry out. Behind me, I could hear a rattling wheeze like someone trying to draw breath through a damaged throat.

The arm shifted and fingers pressed painfully into my face as though they were trying to dig through my skull. My hand came up, just barely able to fend the fingers away from my eyes.

Strangely, my moment of blinding panic disappeared and suddenly I could think straight. Maybe it was the shot of adrenaline that helped. I told myself that I needed to get out of this thing's grip before it tore my face off. There was only one way to do it.

I had a baby cousin who didn't like being picked up. He was on the verge of turning two and had decided that he preferred to stumble around on his own two feet. He had a method to escape pesky arms, and it worked most of the time.

I stopped struggling. I ignored the pain of nails digging into my skin. And then I let my legs go limp and dropped down on my bottom. My weight pulled me away from the arms and I hit the ground. Flipping onto my knees, I scrabbled onto my feet and ran blindly. And then I tripped over something.

I think that saved me, though. One of the thing's feet kicked the back of my head as it soared over me, lunging at where I used to be. It moved impossibly fast.

As I stood, it noticed where I was and turned. One of the bombs was in my hand and I threw it in a way that would have made an athlete laugh themself to death. But it hit the thing and shot silvery powder everywhere. The thing, just beginning to lunge again, moved slowly like the chandelier had. I had a good look at it for a second, though I wish I had just run instead.

Twisted with inhuman rage, I was looking at the face of a woman. Not the same one we'd seen in the hall. That one had looked normal, albeit out of place. This woman was dead. Her stained teeth were bared and dark trails leaked out of her mouth. Her hair surrounded her head in dry, spidery wisps, and I think her neck was broken. That was the only way her face could've tilted so far.

Common sense returned to me and I bolted. I burst through doors and hallways, unsure of where I was going or how many turns I had taken before I stopped. My lungs were on fire. There was either blood or sweat on my face.

But at least the thing was gone. And so was the witcher. I was alone.

I paused to look around and listen. Everything was silent. I didn't dare call out for the witcher in case the manor's other inhabitants would hear me as well. Looking around, I noticed that I was in some sort of guest room. There was a simple queen-sized bed with its headboard to the wall. A nightstand was next to the bed and a wardrobe stood at the opposite end of the room.

With a quick glance around, I walked over to the nightstand. I wasn't quite certain what I was looking for, but I looked anyway. The top of the nightstand was bare, but when I opened the single drawer, I found two pieces of paper. An edge on each was ripped and fuzzy. They had once been together. I laid both out on top of the wardrobe and lined the torn edges together.

The paper was a death certificate. It was dated 26 years ago. I didn't recognize the name. It was male, and the surname was Covier. The cause of death was some kind of accident—I couldn't tell exactly what. Five long lines smeared the ink down the paper, obscuring most of the words. They looked kind of like…

I opened my hand and hovered it over the paper, lining my fingers with the top of the smears. Then, I moved my hand down the paper. Yeah, they looked a lot like—.

Something flew out from below the nightstand. A tiny hand scrunched the paper and quickly dragged it back under. I jumped back from it, ducking down to peer underneath the nightstand. The space between its legs was empty.

When I straightened up, something knocked into the top of my head. I let out a squeak as I swatted wildly at it and whirled around. It was a rope that dangled from the ceiling.

More specifically, it was a noose.

I looked around the empty room. That thing had not been in here seconds earlier. I would have noticed such a macabre detail. Reaching up, I gave the loop a curious tug. I couldn't help it. The thing suddenly came loose from the ceiling, showering me in tiny pellets and crumbles of plaster. I sputtered, brushing chalky pieces from my face and lips. Then, I looked down at the limp rope in my hand and dropped it. It crumpled to the floor.

I didn't know why, but the air was suddenly peaceful. It didn't feel cold. I almost felt… safe. My mind started wandering as I stepped over the rope and made my way to the window. Outside, I could see the sprawling landscape beyond Trivent's borders. The grass rolled in lazy hills.

Hills… a sweet smell. And then a ditch.

Is she okay? What happened? Where did all those scratches come from?

She's fine, just a little shaken up. They were playing out in the hills behind the barn, her and Louise. The dirt gave away and she slipped down into a ditch.

I saw some of the town guardsmen rush out there.

There was something else. Do you remember Anton?

The vagabond drunk?

Heard some people say he'd gone missing. Seems he was out there in that ditch for a while—Louise said they had smelled something strange.

He was in that ditch when…? That's awful! She must have seen him!

She was still passed out next to him when I got there.

Do you think we should get a doctor? Just in case? That experience won't sit well with a child.

I think we should get a mage. Have them suppress it down.

Won't that be dangerous?

It's more dangerous to let her live with the memory.

My eyes fluttered open. I was still standing at the window. What a strange hallucination. Yet at the same time, it all felt familiar. I think… I was starting to remember something.

A deep, rattling breath caught me attention. My eyes opened wide and I turned.

She was standing behind the doorway. Her yellow teeth were exposed and her dangling head twitched violently. Before I could do anything, what felt like a gust of powerful wind hit me and threw me against a wall. All sensation left my body and I could only sag onto the ground.

Propped against the wall, I could still see her. But she didn't move. The door suddenly slammed shut, and I was alone in the room.

Only, I wasn't alone.

Still paralyzed, I saw something underneath the bed stir and begin to drag itself out.