Denmark – Mathias Normann
Norway – Lukas Normann
Iceland – Emil
Scandinavia – Scandi
France - Francis
Hong Kong - Leon
Canada -Matthew
USA - Alfred
Seychelles - Shelly
"Mr. Puffin! Mr. Puffin!" His beloved Emil calls for his puffin that is walking around in the garden. Teaching tricks to a puffin is harder than Emil thought and the puffin has no intentions of bringing back the little ball the kid has tossed. His mother in law Scandi is sitting beside the kid and watches, a smile deepening some of the wrinkles in her face. And besides both of them turns the most precious thing in his live his head to welcome him with a faint hint of a smile. Mathias smiles broadly at him and stops in his tracks. The scene in front of him is just perfect and he wishes he had a camera with him. But he does not and so he waits for Lukas to stand up and walks towards him, leaving his little half-brother with Scandi.
"Where are you off to?" Lukas tilts his head and looks at his husband with piercing blue eyes. Of course he noticed the jacket over his arms and the car keys in the hand. Mathias takes a deep breath, preparing to try and lie to Lukas. He gives a soft smile and points vaguely in the direction of the car, forcing himself to not speak too fast.
"Uh, I just gotta run to the store for a few things."
Yeah… That's good. We need milk anyway, and he knows that.
His smile grows more confident but gets immediately crushed at Lukas' words:
"Why are you even trying…?"
Shit
Lukas stands in front of him, stemming one hand on his hip. Even if his expression did not change much, his voice, the lightly raised eyebrow and of course his eyes demand explanation. But Mathias tries his last chance.
Play dumb.
"What? What do you mean?" He scratches the back of his head and smiling sheepishly at him.
"In fifteen years, have you ever been able to lie to me?" is the blunt answer.
Mathias lowers his shoulders and his hand. He stares for a second to the ground, accepting his defeat and looking then back into Lukas' eyes to show him that he tells now the truth.
"Father Vargas called, he's got a case he wants us to look into." He looks almost sternly at his husband. "I said I'd go check it out myself." The last word he gave an insistent ring to it which Lukas did not miss. But he only walks past Mathias towards the car.
"I said myself." Reminds him Mathias.
"I'm going with you" answers Lukas, not even looking over his shoulder and as he is only a step away from the car he faces Mathias.
"I know you're worried it's gonna happen again." He looks at him with an almost sympathetic expression.
"Yeah, I am. I really am." Mathias steps aside him and opens the car. His eyebrows are slightly furrowed. Lukas steps in front of him again, blocking the way into the car and stares at Mathias, almost glaring at him. They remain like that, exchanging how they feel with only their eyes before Mathias exhales deeply and leans on the still open door of their car.
"Maybe it's just time that we take a break. Write that book." He looks at his lover with soft eyes but Lukas' remains cold.
"Do you remember what you said to me on our wedding night?"
Mathias' lips form a light duckface as he stares aside and thinks some. He looks at Lukas with a serious face again:
"Can we do it again?" With a cocky smile he watches how the poker face of Lukas slowly cracks and how he lowers his head and first tries to hide his smile but then chuckles with his eyes directed at him. Mathias joins the soft laugh until Lukas clarifies what he means:
"After that." A soft smile still plays around his lips and he looks loving at his partner before setting up a more serious one:
"You said that God brought us together for a reason, right? I'm pretty sure it's not to write a book."
Mathias nods slowly and smiles softly at Lukas before both get into the car.
Only an hour later the couple stands in a dusty but tidy attic.
"We've isolated the disturbances to the attic. Now I just want you to listen for a second."
Lukas stands in the middle of an attic with a rather uncomfortable looking couple. Even though the Japanese man seems stoic, Lukas does not miss the slightly trembling hands. His girlfriend, a young Asiatic woman clutches one of those shaking hands.
crrrr
The eyes of the young woman widen and she clutches now the arm of the Japanese who is looking alarmed to his right, from where the noise came from.
"Oh my god that's it," exclaims the woman with long chocolate brown hair and a nice rose dress.
Lukas who is standing in front of the couple with a flash light in his hand leans some into the same direction, to his left.
"Do it again, Mathias." The tall man obeys and shifts his weight on his left foot on the old wooden floor and the noise appears again.
"Right now it's just my weight, but if you take the water coming off the pipe combined with the wind coming through the broken window, and these boards are gonna expand and rub against each other." He gestures to the different pipes running through the attic and looks then again at the couple that is still holding hands. He taps against a pipe, running just above his head.
"You heard it all through the house because of these pipes linking to the radiator."
The small man with black hair watched Mathias and turns then again to Lukas.
"So the place isn't haunted?"
Lukas shakes his head lightly as he explains:
"No, it rarely is. There's usually some kind of rational explanation."
The young woman nods and it looks like as if a ton was lifted from her shoulders. She smiles and kisses her boyfriend who also looks relieved as far as Lukas can see it.
Late on the same day, Francis is in the bathroom as everything is silent in the house. He looks at his body and notices one more purple mark which is as big as a child's hand on his arm. It is the third that appeared together with the one on his shoulder blade and on his chest. All of them are roughly the same size. He opens the little mirrored cabinet over the sink and takes out a little bottle with a sigh. He takes out two pills and swallows them quickly and reads again the inscription on how to use the pills against iron deficiency.
He slowly walks back to the bedroom and just lifts his shirt some to undress as he hears distant giggling. He stops in his movement and looks at the door slightly frowning and listening. A second passes and he hears two claps coming from out of the room. He sighs and lowers his hands again.
"Guys, its way past your bed time…"
Francis enters the dark and silent hallway and looks around. As he sees nobody, he walks to the room of Shelly and checks on her. She is lying on her belly and has a hand under her cheek, the blanket only covering her to her waist. Francis steps closer and pulls the sea blue blanket over her shoulder and leaves the room. He opens next the doors to Alfred's and Matthew's room but both of them are deeply asleep.
As Francis walks further down the hallway, he switches on the lamps that are hanging over the stairs so he gets at least a bit of light and so he does not have to watch his steps so much. He gets to the next room and checks on Leon. And just as he steps in, a lout crashing noise accompanied with a child's giggle is to be heard through the whole house. He turns around and walks to the source of it.
Every single picture hanging over the stairs crashed down and glass shards and splinters of frames are lying around. One or two images managed to stay on the wall but are now lopsided and in such an angle that they too could fall down every moment. With a pounding heart from the shock, Francis walks down the stairs, stepping on the shards. Luckily he got his house shoes on and he proceeds unhurt until he reaches the last step and arrives at the dark and silent ground floor.
Francis leans forward and switches on the light but stays on the stairs, alert to a possible intruder. Everything is silent. Only the grandfather clock gives out soft clock clock clocks
Silently, Francis walks to the living room and switches on the lights there too. But again, nobody is there. Francis proceeds to the other side, to the kitchen.
Dong
Dong
Dong
The grandfather clock rings three times as Francis peeks into the dark kitchen.
Clap,clap
Francis jumps and turns around, his blonde hair spinning around. He walks down the hallway and sees the door to the cellar half opened. He shouts with an angry but yet shaky voice:
"Who is that?!"
He gets to the door and suddenly he hears music playing, stemming from a piano. It must be the old piano they discovered when they found the cellar. He steps closer and looks into the pitch black little room where the stairs are located. He raises his hand and pulls some on a chain, connected with the light bulb to switch it on and enlighten the two square meter of room. He steps in and directs his gaze down on the stairs which still lie in the dark, even with the light in the little room is switched on. He leans forward and switches the other light on too so the stairs and the entire cellar are enlightend.
He takes the two first steps and crouches then down to control if there is anybody down there but all he sees is the dusty rubbish. Quickly he steps back and up again, still looking down.
"Whoever is down there, I'm gonna lock you in now!" He shouts down and just turns to the door as it slams right in his face, knocking him backwards against the wall. As Francis slams his head on the back wall, he can't do differently than stumble, getting near the edge of the stairs and eventually tumbling them down with a loud scream. At the end he hits the back of his head again on a pillar, before rolling on the floor against the piano. He hits his back hard on it and the hit instrument answers with a dark sounding note as several strings in it got moved.
Francis groans and slowly rolls on his side, a stinging pain in the back of his head hitting him. He already knows that he got several blue marks from his fall and curses under his breath. Carefully he sits up, pressing his hand against his waist and lower back and looks around. But again, no one is there. The cellar lies calm and dusty as ever there in the dim light. The only light source, the newly set in light bulb lets the boxes, old chairs and furniture and other old things cast long shadows and creates dark corners.
Francis pants lightly and looks around, little tears formed at the corner of his eyes from the pain. Just as he leans forward, to get up and walk up the stairs, a ball gets thrown out of nowhere and bounces on the floor until it halts at the other end of the room. Francis jolts up and runs as fast as his aching limbs allow up the stairs and as he reaches the middle, the light bulb explodes. Everything is dark and Francis nearly hits his head again at the door, if he didn't have his hands in front of him. As he feels the wood he slams his fists against it.
"HELP!" He screams and continues but only after some seconds he stops, remembering the box with matches on the first step of the stairs. In the distance he could hear again a child's giggle if he wasn't so occupied with fingering out a match and lighting it on. As suddenly the small flame sparks on the match he turns towards the stairs, panting and near wheezing. But the small light does not enlighten somebody on the stairs. They are as empty as they should be. The flame grows bigger until it hits Francis trembling fingers and burns them. With a flinch he lets the match fall down and the flame dies. Hastily he enlightens yet another match.
Still nothing but darkness can be seen. Francis just decides to calm down as a voice of a child whispers right in his ear:
"Hey, wanna play hide and clap?"
Francis is completely frozen in place, his chest rising up and down. He waits for it.
CLAP CLAP
Two hands appear out of nowhere and clap right on the other side of where the child's voice came from and he screams out of his lungs. He throws himself again against the door, screaming for help.