It's such a cliche.
It's Halloween, and here we are in a haunted house. Actually, it may be haunted, but it doesn't look it. It looks like a run-off-the-mill Thunder Bay house, with an upstairs and a downstairs. Average. Normal.
Or at least, it would be, if it wasn't for Cas.
"So, what's his backstory?" I ask Thomas as we make our way up the dust-carpeted stairs. "How did he die?" Thomas snorts.
"Didn't you do any research?"
"Not as much as I'd've liked," I admit, "but when you're staying with your eighty-year-old great aunt who hasn't used the computer since the nineties, the Internet tends to be a bit slow." He laughs.
"What about the library?"
"Actually, I tried that first, but the newspaper barely said a word about him. Just that he'd recently moved into the area and had gone missing. The only other thing I found was from about six months later, when they found his body up in the attic. The official verdict was suicide." But somehow, I didn't believe it. I saw Cas' photo next to the article. He did not look like the kind of person who wanted to die. There was so much in his eyes. Determination and a readiness to take on the world. People like that never kill themselves. I've met enough suicide ghosts to know.
"Bullcrap," says Thomas firmly. "They gave that verdict 'cause they were too weirded out to investigate further." I look at him.
"How much do you know?" It's not just because I want to up my chances of killing Cas. I really am curious.
"His full name was Theseus Cassio Lowood. He moved in with his mother and their cat to this house six years ago. Then he vanished. The police searched for six months. They went through the entire house in the first week and found zilch."
"Do you think the mother was involved?"
"I'm getting to that. So, yeah, they were on the verge of giving up when she called them one night saying she'd found his body. The police took it away; that was that."
"Only it wasn't."
"It wasn't," he confirms. "They said that Cas had run away, then come home and slit his wrists. But my grandfather, he reads minds like me, only he's way better. He was hanging around the house the night the body was removed to see if he could pick up on anything. And everyone there was thinking the same thing. It wasn't just his wrists. It was his entire body, and there was no way that cutting could have done that amount of damage. There were huge chunks of flesh missing. Plus there was no razor or knife. It- it was like he'd been eaten or something."
"That's awful," I murmur. "What do you think it was?"
Thomas shrugs. "I guess we're gonna find out."
Not the most reassuring response in the world. I squeeze the athame even tighter. Strange thing, this knife. It kills ghosts, but I haven't the faintest idea how. I don't even know where it came from. I found it in a parcel on my doorstep when I was eight. Before it happened. The parcel came with a note explaining what it was and what it did. I believed it because that's what you do when you're a child. I never found out who sent it, and I kept it safe and hidden for the next four years. Until- until I didn't need to hide it anymore.
"This is it." I pull myself out of the memories that threaten to swamp me and glance at Thomas. He's standing on a box that was lying around on the landing and is pushing at the trapdoor to the attic. I pull up a box of my own and together, we shift it and wrench the ladder down. He bites his lip and frowns, then a determined expression settles on his face. "I'll go first, see how it is up there." I smile.
"No, I'm the one with the knife. You don't need to protect me." His face goes scarlet.
"I- I wasn't-"
"It's okay. I'm not exactly ready for this." I sigh. "Can we just get this over with?"
"Sounds good to me." I scramble up the ladder, wishing I hadn't worn a dress. Jeans. I could have dug out some red jeans from somewhere. Or a t-shirt. How am I meant to fight in a flimsy dress?