Kady sits in front of the trunk she found yesterday, eyes focused on the old fashioned lock that refused to be picked. She'd tried bobby pins, the tab of a Coke can, and kicking it, but the desired effect hadn't happened. So here she was, glaring and wondering why Thomas would lead her to a trunk and not give her the damn key. Wait a second…. Key! She jumps up and runs down the hall to Milo's room, not even bothering to wake him up as she starts rummaging around in his desk drawers.

"The fuck you doin'," he asks groggily, sitting up in bed and using the flashlight on his phone to illuminate the room.

"Looking for the key," she answers hurriedly, pushing aside his notebooks and papers before moving on to the next drawer.

"What key?"

"The one we found in the stables! Where'd you put it?" She heard him getting up and walking across the room, but she only stopped digging when he dangled the bronze key in front of her face.

"This key, Sis?" She smiles up at him, then starts laughing when she sees his hair was sticking up all over his head and his AC/DC shirt was half stuck in the waistband of his pajama bottoms. "Why do you need it so badly?" Kady stands up and tries for the key only to have Milo hold it out of her reach. "Take it, I don't want to stand here all night." Kady jumps repeatedly for the key, but Milo was taller by a good five inches and he managed to keep it just out of her grasp.

He dances away from Kady, light on his feet, but he doesn't expect it when she throws her weight against him and forces him to fall backward on the bed, straddling his chest as she tries to wrestle the key out of his hands. "Hand it over, Milo!"

"Not a chance, blondie!" Milo flips them, both of them falling off the bed and to the hard floor with twin grunts. Kady continues to struggle, slapping his chest and wrapping her legs around his to gain some leverage to flip them again. She knees Milo in the side, not enough to cause any harm, but enough for him to loosen his grip. The blow to his side seemed to daze him a little and Kady took full advantage to snatch the key from him

She lets out a triumphant noise, jumping up with the prize in hand. "I've got- Ahh!" Milo had tackled her to the floor again, sitting on her lower back and snatching the key away. "That's so cheating!"

"Cheating would be putting this on a high shelf and watching you come up with different ways to get it down until August gets onto both of us." Kady makes a sound of frustration, wiggling under him, but unable to push him off. Eventually she goes still underneath him, a sly grin making itself known.

"You can either get off of me and give me that key or I can start explaining, in-depth, of why Once Upon a Time is one of the best shows on TV, I'll be including quotes from Colin O'Donoghue and a few interviews I've memorized."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I think I'll start with the pivotal episode where Hook starts to wriggle his into our hearts—"

"Shit, just shut up and take it!" Milo jumps up and gives Kady the key once she was standing, the disgusted expression he had only making her grin broaden.

"Just so you know, I could kick your ass in poker because I just bluffed my way right out from under your bony ass." Milo makes a face and follows her down the hall, running his fingers through his hair along the way.

"What's so important about that key anyway? I mean, other than the fact that you almost broke every bone in your arm to get it."

"I think I know what it goes to." They were in her room now and she quickly knelt in front of the chest, the key held gently in her hands. "I really feel like we should savor this moment of suspense because who knows when we'll ever get a chance to do this again." Milo sits beside her and snatches the key back out of her hands, thrusting it in the lock and turning it.

"Or we could just open the damn thing and savor it later if there's gold or something in here." Scowling, Kady pushes the lid open and peers inside, Milo joining her and the two resting their heads together as they stare at the lone object in the trunk. It was disappointing to say the least, a simple stack of papers that had been protected from the ravages of time since they were locked securely in the trunk.

"That's definitely not gold."

"Someone needs to break it to Thomas that a stack of papers isn't something most teens aspire to find in mysterious locked chests." Kady nods in agreement, lifting the pages out and brushing the dust off them. "Crimson Peak," Milo reads aloud," a true story written by Edith Sharpe. I guess Grandma wasn't as nuts as we all gave her credit for." Kady flips to the next page of the manuscript, her and Milo leaning against the side of her bed as they took turns reading.

"When I was still a young woman, I made the great mistake of marrying a man before I truly knew him. His name was Thomas Sharpe and I had never met a man like him in Buffalo before, he was incredible and seemed so cultured compared to the men that surrounded me. I had thought him a god and put aside my father's numerous words of caution just so I could be with him, and it was something I continue to regret."

"The Sharpe siblings—Thomas and his elder sister, Lucille—turned out to be lovers and murderers, Lucille had manipulated Thomas, not only to her bed, but to marry wealthy women and drain them of their money before they were poisoned. Lucille put it in their tea, you see, they would grow sicker by the day and she would give them more tea, pretend to be their nursemaid, until they expired. Their belongings were hidden in the clay mines below the house and their bodies were thrown into the vats of scarlet clay."

"This would have continued had I been without help, but I had the other women and my good friend to thank for my escape, and surprisingly, I had Thomas in the end, as well. The murdered women appeared to me as apparitions, covered in the clay that soaked the grounds, the clay mixed with blood and dripping upwards as they were not from this realm. I don't suppose I could blame everything on Lucille and Thomas for they had terrible parents that often kept them locked away and the house wasn't only a house."

"The house was a monster in itself, it was a horrible thing that was alive and fed on the madness of the Sharpe family. I fear that all descendants will be cursed to die within the confines of its drafty halls, I fear that the child within me will share a fate similar to that of its father. I carry the last of the Sharpe family, but I hope to break the chain by changing its surname. From now on, it shall be Alexander McMichael if it is a boy and Alexandria McMichael if it is a precious baby girl."

"I will protect my family from the insanity, I will die knowing they will be safe and far from England, far from Allerdale Hall where all Sharpes become damned."

"And to think," Milo says, still staring down at the thick stack of pages," that was just the introduction."

"At least our ghosts don't look like something out of a Stephen King book."

"Keep reading, Kady, Grandma's got me curious about what happened here." And so Kady continued to read, unaware of what was going on up in the attic.


Lucile Sharpe missed few things about life, but the one thing she missed most of all was the pulse of adrenaline when she killed someone, the way her heart beat faster and she felt a flush of warmth in the otherwise frigid house. She missed the way fresh blood felt on her hands, warm and wet and everything this house fed on. She needed it like an addict needed Laudanum, she was drawn to bright living souls.

That's where August and Emy came into the picture; for her plan to work, she needed to possess the both of them. She needed a physical body to commit her crimes against the people that claim her bloodline. They were not her relatives, they belonged to Edith Cushing and her traitor of a brother, but killing them would give her the added boost of power. She would absorb their souls into herself until she was solid again, not a cursed wraith that can't even step outside.

She would kill everyone in the house to gain control again and it would be an added bonus of revenge against Thomas since she knows he cares for Milo and Kadence. He betrayed her, forced her to kill him, helped Edith murder her, and the two children he cared about would pay for his sins.

Emy had started out as a way to draw energy into herself, but had slowly evolved into a viable option of becoming Lucille's physical body—she was fairly attractive and shared Lucille's fine bone structure, and she was perfect to seduce August Hastings into moving him and his family all the way here. August didn't have a strong will like his children did, his wife's death left an emptiness inside of him that made him vulnerable to possession. She just had to break him down a bit more and she would have the strength of his body to murder his children.

The poison was taking too long if the oldest children were drinking it at all, but Amy was almost to the point of death. Barely six years old and half a ghost already, her body growing weaker after every cup of tea. Kady had tried to tend to the child, but it became impossible when Lucille convinced August to tell his children to stay away. She smiles wickedly at the thought of the two children, caught between choosing which one to murder first.

Milo was physically stronger than his sister, but Kady had the brighter soul and would lend Lucille enough strength to banish her brother's spirit for good. She had the rest of it planned out, she would possess August and kill his two children while Emy took care of her daughter, and then she would give August full clarity back to see the good work he'd done. The sight of his children lying at his feet and his hands slick with their blood would be enough to drive the poor man to suicide. Maybe she could convince him to go down the narrow tunnel to the mines and drown himself in one of the vats she kept full of fresh clay.

Squeaking floorboards makes her look away from the wriggling moth she was pinning in place with a sewing needle. August stood in the doorway of her attic room, hazel eyes cloudy as he stares at the wall across from him. He was so weak now, no sign of the caring father he had been before coming here. That first trip was all it took; she was able to sink her claws in him just enough that he convinced himself it was his idea to restore Allerdale Hall to its former glory. His face had more wrinkles now, paler than it had been, and his lips were pressed together in a thin line—the only sign of him fighting hard against her.

She could feel his subconscious mind rebelling against her commands, wailing for her to kill him and spare the children because they were all he had left of the life he'd lived. On the days he was too weak to fight, he would bombard her with his memories, memories of spending time with his children and wife—spending hours in Kady's sickroom, drawing with her, or taking Milo to his swim meets and cheering him on from the stands. Sometimes he would be dancing with his wife, Estelle's hair the same shade of dark brown as Thomas's had been as a child. In short, he loved his family and would do anything to protect them, but he no longer had that ability.

Soundlessly, Lucille stands and sets aside her project before crossing the room and joining August in the doorway. He moved when she asked it of him, his back to her as her hands rested against his broad shoulders. Had anyone been watching they would have said it was like watching Lucille turn into small bursts of light as she disappeared into August, the older man only letting out a faint gasp as she fully possessed him, stamping down on the memories and protests before they could toss her back out. It was only when August gave a calculating look around the room that Lucille felt truly victorious, and she decided who her first victim would be.

It was dark by then, only three hours from Christmas, and she moved quietly down the stairs to the second floor before moving down the hallways to the last door on the left. Moonlight illuminated the messy room, shining in through the large window above the desk and helping her see as she made her way to the four-poster bed and perched delicately on the edge. With the old rush, she reaches out with August's hands and wrapped them around the slim column of exposed flesh, squeezing tightly even as the body beneath her began to struggle.

Milo's eyes flashed open and he beat at the hands around his throat, but Lucille was too close to her goal now to be deterred.