"What's wrong, are you okay," August shouts as he sprints into the room with Emy right behind him, not stopping until he was kneeling in front of Milo. "Why are you screaming? What's wrong, Milo?" Milo stared at August with wide eyes, looking completely horrified as he pointed at his computer. Kady moves closer to get a look at what had Milo in shock and then slaps the back of his head for making her so scared. "What the hell are you doing?"
"He's freaking out because he doesn't have WiFi here," Kady snaps, crossing her arms over her chest.
"What?" August was angry now, eyes darkening as he rests his harsh glare on Milo. "You screamed because I don't have the internet up and running yet?"
"No," Milo scowls," I screamed 'cause I saw a creepy chick reflected in my screen." August's brow furrows and he stands quickly, taking a look under the bed, in the bathroom, and behind the bedroom door. "Didn't you see her, Kady?" Kady shakes her head, feeling uneasy that someone had been in the room without either of them knowing until Milo caught sight of her in his laptop screen.
"She couldn't have run out without me or Emy seeing her, Milo."
"I guess I was seeing things. Sorry for scaring you guys." Instinctively, Kady reaches out and gives her older brother's shoulder a squeeze.
"Maybe you should get some sleep, Bub, you look tired." Milo nods and watches as August and Emy walk back downstairs, the adults talking quietly. Milo had that look he usually got when he was brushed aside by August, like a puppy whose owner had just kicked it. It tore Kady apart to see that expression and she tried to think of something to get his mind off the experience.
"Hey," she says after a moment," how about we play Indiana Jones?"
"What," Milo asks, drawing himself out of his thoughts to stare incredulously at his sister. "We haven't played that since we were kids."
"Which is exactly why we should do it now!"
"No, I just want to smoke some pot and take a nap." He shakes his head, resisting even as Kady grabs one of his wrists and tries to tug him to his feet. "Kady, just leave me alone."
"Nope, you always get paranoid when you're high, so we're going to explore outside while Dad flirts with the new maid." He throws his head back, staring up at the ceiling for a few seconds, wanting to bug Kady before standing and nudging her towards the door.
"Put on warmer clothes and meet me outside, Kady-bug." He couldn't help a smile when he sees her sprinting down the hall to her room before he shut his door, moving over to the wardrobe to pull out some clothes. Even though she was only a year younger than him, Milo still thought of Kady as his baby sister and would chose her over anyone else any day. Milo dresses quickly, shedding his house colors in exchange for black sweats, a black sweater with 'Fries Music Netflix Wattpad Music' printed on it in white, a red beanie, sunglasses, and a beaded lion bracelet on his right wrist while his watch went on his left one.
Once that was done, he grabbed his camera and started downstairs where a little girl was playing in the front hall with a Barbie and stuffed dragon. "Do you think flattery will keep you alive, Burglar," she inquires in a deep voice, making the dragon bounce a little. Milo smiles down at her, bringing up his camera to snap a quick picture. It's not every day you find a kid that could quote Smaug with no problem. The flash of the camera has her huge brown eyes widening further as she stares up at him.
"Hey, kiddo, what'cha playing?" He kneels down in front of her, picking up the little Poly Pocket that was lying near his foot.
"Hobbit," she whispers shyly, dark hair hiding her face from view.
"Hobbit, huh? That was my favorite book when I was little, I had it memorized by the time I was ten."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh, my mother used to read it to me before I went to sleep, she did all the voices and everything." The little girl meets his gaze again, and takes the doll from him when he holds it out to her. "What's your name?"
"Amy."
"I'm Milo." Both of them look up when they hear footsteps on the stairs, finding Kady practically skipping down them if such a thing were possible. She flashes Amy a bright smile when she gets to the first floor, holding out a hand to help Milo up. "Have you met Amy yet?"
"This morning," Kady nods, but Amy was already hiding behind her hair again. "You ready, Milo?"
"I'm ready when you are." Giggling, Kady pulls him after her out the door and into the bright afternoon sunlight. He was blinded for a moment even with his sunglasses on, forcing Kady to stop until his eyes adjusted. The last thing he needed was to break his ass trying to go down the iced over stairs. When he could see again, he looked over at his sister to ensure she was actually dressed warmly.
She had changed into a dark red sweater, jeans, a pair of bright pink Converse with butterflies drawn on the toes, her bright red coat, black scarf, and sunglasses; her hair was loose and hung down almost to her waist in soft waves, her face was oval-shaped, her nose thin and turned up just the smallest bit, and her mouth was small. "Come on, Bubby!" She was already in the front yard, giggling again as she walked backwards a short ways.
As annoyed as he was that Kady wouldn't let him angst in his room, Milo couldn't deny that he'd missed playing the games they had deemed childish when he was ten and she was nine. Indiana Jones basically meant they would go exploring as they had in every house they'd ever lived in, and Allerdale Hall was the biggest by far. "Don't get too far ahead!"
"Slow poke!"
Milo rolls his eyes, but speeds up a little as he walks behind his sister. The lands surrounding their new home were sprawling for lack of a better word, it seemed like an endless expanse of white with soft rolling hills beneath his feet. Some of the snow drifts nearly reached his waist and he was starting to think he should've worn his snow camo to stay warm. A few yards from the house and nearly hidden was a crumbling stables where horses and carriages would have been kept once upon a time. While Kady was running towards the skeleton trees, Milo started towards the stables on the right, stopping a few feet away and eyeing the run-down, decaying wood warily.
Would it come apart while he was rooting around inside; crush him and muffle his cries for help? His old fear of being buried alive came to the forefront of his mind, the nightmares of a transparent coffin with dirt sprinkled on top making his breath hitch in his throat. His hands started to shake the longer he studied the failing structure, imagining being half-frozen in the snow with a crushing weight pressing him down.
Would Kady notice or would she be too far away to hear?
Could he shovel his way out if it collapsed on top of him or would he be knocked unconscious? His thoughts raced wildly and tears spilled down his cheeks as terror consumed him. He wanted nothing more than to run back into the house and curl up in August's lap like when he did as a child, but he was frozen in place. His sole focus was the stables, that terrible smell of damp wood almost making him gag when it reaches him. That's why he jumped so high when he felt something cold collide with the back of his head, his first thought being that the structure really was collapsing until his mind registered the giggle behind him.
He turns quickly, locking his gaze on his baby sister. She was a good five feet away from him and snow was beginning to melt on her palms. Snowball. When he didn't react by throwing one in return, a crease formed between her brows and she came quickly to his side. "You wanna talk about it?" Did she somehow know where his thoughts had taken him? "I mean, it couldn't be just stress making you see things since we've moved houses about six times since we were born." The woman in the computer screen, of course. Milo shakes the morbid thoughts of burial out of his head and offers Kady a smile.
"I'm sure it was nothing, Kady-bug." He could see the wheels in her head turning and knew she wouldn't let the subject drop until he distracted her. "Let's go see if there's any treasure in here." As much as he hated the idea, he pointed at the stables using his thumb. Kady stares at him for a moment, torn between questioning Milo further or letting him have a respite, then she shrugs and walks inside the stables.
The inside of the stables was as nasty as the outside, the smell of decay more pronounced and bits of moldy hay filling the stalls. Clearly someone had made a home here at one point if the old candy wrappers were any indication, and one of the back walls were scorched from a fire that had gotten too large. Most of the stalls had already collapsed and lay in hazardous piles on the ground and one of the side walls had caved in; in fact, the stables seemed barely upright, and even swayed with the hard winds.
Milo breathes in deeply, closing his eyes and thinking of happy things like puppies as he exhales slowly, trying desperately to calm himself. "Hey, I think I found something!" He opens his eyes at his sister's words, finding her kneeling beside the collapsed wall and looking at something beneath it. "Help me move this."
"No chance in hell," Milo snaps, walking over and jerking her upright and away from the wood. He could still make out rusty nails sticking out of it and didn't really want to listen to a lecture from August that he'd get if Kady needed a Tetanus shot. "Let's go explore somewhere else."
"What? But you're the one that wanted to come in here in the first place!"
"I changed my mind, now come on!" He turned to head back outside, but paused when he heard the creaking of the wood and a gasp behind him. "Goddamn it, Kadence!" He turned with a glare in his sister's direction, clenching his jaw when he spotted her back on the ground and trying to move the wall. With an angry sigh, Milo again joins her, but this time he jerks the wall up a few feet. Kady scowls up at him, but jams her arm into the small opening, feeling around for whatever caught her interest, the very tip of her tongue coming out as she focused on the task.
The wood was heavier than he had thought it would be, the damp seeming to make it heavier and his back was beginning to ache from the weight of it. "Got it!" Kady moved her arm out of the gap right as the wall split and fell back into the snow, crushing the spot where her arm had been seconds prior. Milo and Kady look at spot in shock, Milo still tightly clutching the bit of wood that had broken off in his hands. "Oh, that could've been bad."
"Ya think, Einstein!" She scowls at him again, standing up and brushing some snow off the knees of her pants. "What was worth a broken arm?" She opens her hand and they bend their heads together to examine the object closely. It was an old-fashioned bronze key that fit snugly in Kady's hand, the top of it made to look like a toothed wheel with smaller gears on top of it, layered intricately, and there were two gears a few inches below that on the shaft and one in the center of the bit. There was a silver chain threaded through the biggest gear and Milo used that to snatch the key out of Kady's hand.
It was the type of key you'd see in a movie like Cinderella, used to lock up trunks or castle doors and held by the owner of the house. The thing Milo was wondering was why it would be all the way out here instead of in the house. "What's that thing, Bubby?" Kady wasn't even interested in the key anymore, and Milo followed where she was pointing until he spotted something sticking up out of the snow a few feet away from the house. He couldn't fathom how it had caught his sister's attention, but it gave him an excuse to get out of the stables without telling Kady about the phobia he thought he'd left behind in prepubescence.
"I guess we should go find out." But Kady was already running towards it before Milo could finish his sentence and he was left to follow in her dust, tucking the key away in the pocket of his sweats. When he reached her, Kady had already pushed most of the snow off the thing, revealing a lump of old metals all melted together. "What do you think?"
"I think our house used to belong to a mad scientist."
"They was crazy," a high voice called to them, drawing the siblings' gazes to where Amy was standing with her dragon clutched tightly to her chest. "The man built lots of stuff out of metal and his sister murdered little kids so they could have supper." At this point, Milo wasn't above believing that his ancestors had been the type to eat children and drink the blood of innocents to survive. It'd seal the deal if this was a gingerbread house. "Mister August said he wanted Kady to make food now." It wasn't until Milo looked at his watch that he saw it was nearly dinner time.
"Tell him I'll start it after I get cleaned up." Amy gives a quick nod before turning and running back inside, slamming the front door shut behind her. "Do you really think Amy was telling the truth?"
"That our ancestors were cannibals way back when," Milo asks, only half-joking," Nah." Last thing I need is her having nightmares about Hannibal Lector again.
Later that night, Milo was immensely grateful for the soft bed in his room as he fell back onto it, kicking off his shoes. After dinner, he and Kady were charged with rearranging the furniture in the parlor so that it would mirror their old game room back in the States. August had busied himself with dishes, Amy had been sent to her room for a bath, and Emy was packing up the leftover Alfredo from dinner. Despite hating the chore with a burning passion, he and Kady knew it would earn them no brownie points if they argued, so they had disappeared into the parlor and began the job.
At first, they tried to make it a game to see who could move the heaviest piece of furniture—an old oak cabinet meant to hold video games and DVDs—the farthest, but then the exhaustion caught up with them and they just tried to keep each other awake. It took them both three hours just to get the cabinet against the far wall and the leather sectional across from the TV, but not so close that their Wii Fit board couldn't fit comfortably in the space. The real work would be tomorrow when they were expected to move in the other stuff—pool table, air hockey table, putting in shelves to hold pool cues, and then hooking up the flat screen that weighed more than he and Kady combined.
He hurt everywhere and the constant cold of the house only served to make it worse, he didn't even feel up to changing into his PJ's, let alone taking a bath to wash off the sweat and grime. I'll do that in the morning. He lets out a sigh, his relaxing muscles making him ache further as he laid over the plush comforter beneath him. He was almost asleep when he felt the end of his bed dip down under someone, his first thought being that Kady was too cold to sleep by herself.
"Can I help you," he asks without opening his eyes, expecting the answer to be Kady curling up next to him. Instead he heard a woman's voice, the hard tone sending shivers down his spine.
"You can, actually," the woman replied, her lilting accent making him think of Irene Adler. He cracks his eyes open, finding the woman at the end of his bed to be a complete stranger. She was tall and sat so straight that he almost asked if she had a stick up her ass, her dark brown hair was done up in a severe bun, and her cheekbones could be classified as a dangerous weapon. Then his eyes traveled downward to her attire: a high-collared dress in a blood-red shade that only served to make her appear paler than the bone white she already was.
"You're the woman from earlier…" She was in my room and I didn't even realize it until I saw her reflection in my computer screen. Is she a ghost? Should I call Ghostbusters or an exorcist? "What the hell do you want with me?"
"I want you to assist me in getting a little revenge." She gave him a horrible smile, full of dark promise that sent his stomach to twisting. Part of him distantly realized that he was feeling aroused, but most of his thoughts revolved around how off this woman felt. It was like his rational mind was rebelling against her presence screaming 'Not human, not human!'
"And I want you to get the fuck out of my room." Her expression darkens, if that was possible, and Milo began to rethink his choice of words. Is there a polite way to tell a ghost to fuck off or should I just be blunt again?
"You shouldn't spurn me, Milo," she murmurs, her lips feeling like velvet against his ear. "Not when I'm stronger than I have been in years." And then she was gone and Milo was left staring at the stop she'd occupied, colder than he had been when he first went to sleep.
Did I just get propositioned by a ghost hooker?
