The House
“Did you see that?”
Lucian is already frantically scribbling in his book, a rough approximation of the young woman taking form under his pen. He balances the lantern on the top of his case and rummages in his satchel, producing a glass thermometer wrapped in a handkerchief.
“Was that the ghost?” asks Berend. With one last look around the stable, and no movement apparent in the body of the horse, he shuts both doors and places the wooden plank across the metal brackets on the outside.
“Not sure.” Lucian gives the thermometer a shake and frowns at it in the dim lamplight before wrapping it back up and returning it to his bag. “I’ll have to take a few more readings. What did you find in there?”
Berend picks up his lantern and sweeps it over the grounds. Nothing moves but the wind. “Dead horse,” he says. “I don’t think it’ll get up again, but this should keep it in if it does.”
“Good thinking,” Lucian says, but his attention is already on another instrument, something with a coiled spring and what looks like a watch face affixed to the front.
The grounds are quiet, and there’s no evidence of the chaos and destruction Berend expected from a haunting. Any bodies that might reanimate, except for the horse, are locked in the family crypts—he can see the edges of the austere stone structures now, if he holds up his lantern. This isn’t a battlefield or a plague-ridden village. He supposes he should feel relieved, but there’s only a cold, sickening dread.
He draws his pistol again, keeping his thumb on the hammer.
As soon as Lucian’s devices are all put away, Berend leads him on a circuit of the house. They pass between carefully kept garden beds, strangely devoid of late-summer flowers. A closer look reveals that the blooms have all been neatly severed at the top of the stem. Hundreds of white roses lie rotting in the earth, their petals curled and yellowing like the pages of an old book. The plants themselves are still green and healthy, except for in the bed by the rear door to the house, where they have begun to wither.
Berend studies the shrubs for a moment. He can hear raspy, unearthly moaning from the crypts now, and the sound of the stone doors shaking, and he does not want to linger.
He knows nothing about gardening. He’d tried his hand as a farmer, after the Sons were disbanded, using his severance to buy a stretch of land. Two failed seasons later, and he was back to mercenary work. Were the plants dying with no one to tend them, or was this the work of the restless spirit? Would the other flowerless beds start to wither as well?
With a nod to Lucian, he moves on.
There is a tool shed, in disarray but with no obvious signs of supernatural meddling. Berend notes the presence of a shovel. If all this was caused by an improper burial, he might need it later. The house also has a well, a small circle of stones with a shingled wooden roof to protect it. The sound of something splashing into it stops Berend in his tracks.
He raises his lantern. There is a bucket lying in the grass, a rope tied around its handle and affixed to the pulley underneath the shelter. As he examines the mechanism, he hears the rusty metal squeak, but the pulley does not move.
“Mr. Warder?” Berend says. His voice sounds flat to his own ears, as though the air had suddenly gone still.
Lucian cocks his head to one side, listening. He taps the watch face and peers at the hands. Berend wonders if the device has a function, or if this is all a show.
There’s another splash. Lucian adjusts his satchel and case, pushing them behind him, and leans over the side of the well. Even with his lantern held out as far as he can reach, there is still blackness at the bottom.
He pulls himself out and sets down his lantern, and then tosses the bucket down. The rope unspools, and the pulley creaks, but there is no splash.
Lucian gives a short hum of surprise. “Would you mind?” he says, indicating the various burdens he carries with a tilt of his shoulders.
Berend sets down the lantern and holsters his pistol again, not before taking another look around. Why couldn’t they have done this during the day?
He pulls on the rope. The pulley turns with only a little complaining, bringing the bucket up into view. It’s empty. Half of it is smeared in fresh mud.
“Seems the well’s dry,” Lucian observes. He tugs on the strap to his satchel, redistributing the weight, and makes another note in his book.
Berend picks up his lantern. “Is that a new development?”
“Mr. Belisia didn’t mention it to me.”
“Hmph.” Berend glances over his shoulder again. “Anything on those devices of yours?”
“A few knocks, here and there, but nothing definitive,” says Lucian. “I suppose we’ll have to go into the house to find where our spirit is hiding.”
Of course we will. “We should check the crypt, first. I don’t want any reanimations following us in,” Berend says.
“After you, sir,” Lucian replies with a smile and a gesture with his lantern.
Berend starts off across the grass. This was probably a lovely place, before, he reminds himself, with the roses in bloom. It’s hard to picture now.
He doesn’t like how cavalier Lucian is being about this. The primary danger—any bodies left around to reanimate—is safely behind stone doors and, as it turns out, secured with a heavy chain and a padlock, but that doesn’t mean that the place is safe. The man isn’t even looking where he’s going, his eyes on his notebook and the various contraptions he pulls out of his satchel.
Lucian hasn’t opened the strange case yet. It’s heavy and awkward, and when he holds his lantern up there’s a red mark visible where the strap rubs against his neck.
“Well! I’m quite glad they’re in there, and we’re out here,” he says brightly. “The spirit doesn’t seem to be terribly active outside the house, though. Curious that the dead are so lively.”
Berend tries not to sigh in frustration. “It looks like the door will hold for the time being.”
The crypt is pale gray stone, carved in sharp angles only a little smoothed by weather. The words Honor, Duty, Valor are etched above the shaking door. Judging by the size, there are several generations of Belisias inside; and judging by the noise, quite a few of them are walking again.
“Have they been burying people here without the correct rites?” Berend asks. It might explain the reluctance to get the church of Ondir involved. He would feel much better if they had a Sentinel, but a contract is a contract.
Lucian shakes his head. “Unlikely. This only started, what, two weeks ago? None of the family has passed on so recently. No, I believe something else has occurred here.”
Berend waits, expectantly, but Lucian does not elaborate.
“Who was the girl?” Berend asks. “In the stable?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. One of the staff, perhaps?” Lucian nods toward the house. “After you,” he says again.
They go in the back door, by the withering flower bed. The hinges groan, and flakes of rust drift down into the light cast by Berend’s lantern. As soon as it illuminates the wood floor within, hundreds of vermin—mice, roaches, and some things too fast to identify—scatter into the corners. Lucian inhales sharply through his teeth, the first sign of fear and surprise he’s shown all evening.
Berend kicks at a mouse as it runs over his boot. It disappears into a wisp of vapor and then reforms, several inches away. It passes into the exterior wall and does not reappear outside.
Holding the lantern up, Berend clenches his jaw and steps into the room. It’s a kitchen, or it had been, at one time. The stove is caked with burnt residue, the basins full of black grime; the few copper pots hanging from hooks are a sickly green. Debris in the corners and against the dusty baseboards suggests that not all the vermin were incorporeal. The place looks like it’s been abandoned for months, maybe years.
“How long did you say the Belisias have been gone?” Berend asks.
“A couple of weeks,” says Lucian. He holds up the glass thermometer to the light again, refracting bright shapes onto the filthy walls. “This would be our spirit’s doing.”
Berend doesn’t like the possessive. He wants no ownership over this. He thinks he can hear something heavy being dragged over the threshold, but when he turns to Lucian, the other man is engrossed in his devices and makes no indication that he’s noticed. He shuts the door behind them and makes sure the latch holds.
The pantry is in a similar state, crawling with real and spectral mice, the vegetables rotten and maggots crawling in the flour barrel. The windows, too, are clouded with soot, a detail Berend hadn’t noticed from the outside.
Berend goes first into the dining room, lantern and pistol raised, but there is only the grand table, covered in an inch of dust, and a portrait of a Belisia ancestor on the wall, stained gray and purple with some kind of mold. The fireplace is choked with ash.
There’s nothing here, Berend says to himself as he leads Lucian and his instruments into a reception room with moth-eaten furniture and a decaying rug. Just filth and neglect and rot.
He walks slowly, placing his feet one step at a time. There’s no immediate danger, but there’s a prickling feeling on the back of his neck, and the silence presses in on his ears. It’s a feeling he recognizes from many dark evenings spent waiting for an ambush to spring: the feeling of being observed for the slightest lapse in his guard. As empty as the house is, he’s convinced someone is watching.
“Anything?” he whispers to Lucian.
Lucian shrugs. “My readings are stronger inside the house, but it’s hard to find precisely where it’s coming from.” He’s whispering as well, sweeping the watch-face device back and forth. He stops with it aimed at the door on the east wall, beside another crumbling fireplace. “Let’s try over here.”
Berend opens the door, holding the lantern and turning the latch with his thumb. Light spills into a small study. A desk and a high-backed chair sit among shelves of books and portraits in grimy frames.
Something moves in the corner of his eye.
Berend ducks without thinking, shoving Lucian back and down with his elbow. Something heavy sails over his head and cracks into the wall behind.
“What was that?” Lucian asks in a panicked whisper.
Berend shakes his head. He holds up the lantern, sweeping the study with his pistol. The room is still.
He gets to his feet. Lucian is already intently studying his thermometer, so Berend goes back into the reception room to see what nearly hit them.
It’s a book, a dusty but otherwise well-maintained copy of The Blessings of the Seven, with gilt-edge pages and a blue leather binding. The spine has broken near the front, and the book lies open to one of the first flyleaves. A family tree is inscribed there in elegant, flowing calligraphy. At the bottom are the Belisias’ three children: Herard, Hybrook, and Adella. Underneath Hybrook’s name is a tear, raked into the parchment as if by a claw or the point of a knife. It’s neat and clearly deliberate. If it were ink, and not a hole in the paper, it would match the pattern of lines to indicate offspring elsewhere in the chart.
Berend leaves the book where it lies. He doesn’t want to touch it.
He goes back to the study. The desk is covered in dust, and the books are no longer in neat rows, sagging under their own weight as they rot. There might be worms moving among the pages, but Berend doesn’t look too closely. He raises the lantern above his head and sees that the eyes of the stern figures in the portraits have been torn out.
Lucian scribbles more notes in his book. “Fascinating,” he mutters.
Berend does not share the sentiment. He’s had enough dealings with the dead in the past two days to last him a good, long while.
The door to the north leads to a staircase, and the one to the south a parlor, its wide windows blackened. Berend chooses the southern door. He’s resigned to having to search the upper floor as well, but he wants to make doubly certain that nothing will follow them upstairs.
The parlor must have been a pleasant place to sit, before, with the sun coming in the windows or a fire in the hearth. It’s no different from the rest of the house. Dust clogs the fireplace, vermin scurry beneath the furniture, and the upholstery is ragged and filthy. The room feels close and suffocating instead of open. It’s like a weight on Berend’s chest, or like his doublet is too tight or his breastplate badly dented. He takes a deep breath and tries to ignore the pervasive musty smell.
His throat constricts. He can feel fingers pressing into his neck and tightening like a vise. He cannot breathe.
Gasping, unable to take in air, he moves his arms to fend off the invisible assailant. His flailing meets with nothing. There is no one else in the room but Lucian, and he has dropped his thermometer and clutches at his neck with one hand. His face is turning red.
Panic grips Berend as his chest tries and fails to expand. Darkness is pressing in on his vision. The door seems as though it is falling away from him, even as he stumbles toward it.
What little he can see of the room is spinning by the time he reaches Lucian. His ears ring and pain knifes through his chest. He’s dropped the pistol. With his free hand, he grabs Lucian by the collar and drags him out of the room.
The pressure on his neck relents. He takes an excruciating, glorious breath.
“What happened in there?” Lucian is on his hands and knees, his lantern in front of him. His voice is hoarse.
Berend shakes his head. “You’re the expert.”
He can see better now, and he’s managed to hold on to his lantern. His pistol lies a good five paces into the parlor, on the floor beside a moth-eaten armchair.
Thanks for reading! We’ll finish up the haunted house next time. See if you can figure out what happened in the house before Berend does.
Space Whales Press 
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