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“Hey what’s up you guys, my name is Janis–”
“And je m'appelle Sasha Fierce”
“Welcome back to our channel!”
Janis and Damian complete the introduction to their youtube channel after spending way too long fidgeting with the tripod, making sure everyone was on frame the way they had envisioned for this video.
“Today we have what could be the scariest challenge we have ever done” Janis wiggles her fingers to enhance how spooky the energy of the video is going to get.
“And of course, we brought our friends along to be tortured with us!” Damian chirps, pointing behind him. On his left, Gretchen and Karen represented ‘The believers’.
“From 1 to 10, how much do you believe in ghosts?” The shot cuts to Janis between the two girls, pretending to hold a microphone in front of Gretchen’s face who weirdly glances at the hand in front of her and to her friend, only to speak into the imaginary mic anyways.
“My abuelito would always tell me about how our family members that have passed away walks side by side us, only on a different realm, so I would say I believe in spirits a solid 8 out of 10” The short girl makes sure to stress the correction of the term while alternating eye contact between Janis and the camera held by Damian.
“We have an 8 out of 10 chat, okay what about you, Karen?” Janis turns to her taller friend, also bringing the invisible microphone up to her lips, which Karen grabs and holds herself, taking a few steps freakishly close to the camera.
“One time I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a woman in a robe and long blonde hair draped over her face standing over my bed and just staring at me” She narrates without pausing for air, eyes open wide. ‘’I don’t think I have ever slept right since” Her gaze is empty, like she is boring into the viewer’s soul while having nothing behind the eyes at the same time.
The camera comically pans to Regina.
“What?” She raises an eyebrow, too busy scrolling through her phone to have listened to what they were talking about. They cut so Janis can scold Regina for not paying attention during an important part of the video for viewer retention, and takes her phone, promising to give it back when they are done filming.
“Okay we will take that as a 10 out of 10” Janis moves next to Cady and Regina, who had quietly been observing and waiting for their turn in the intro. Their function in the video was to represent ‘The Skeptics’.
“What about you, Cads, have you ever had any experience with ghosts?” Janis scrunches her face disapprovingly at how nervous Cady’s widened blue eyes look, alternating between her and the camera before replying.
“With all due respect to the ghost hunting community out there” Her words sound measured, like she had been rehearsing what to say while Janis interviewed her friends. “I think there is a logical explanation to everything that happens and that most” She raises her hands to do air quotes “‘Evidence’ you capture can probably be debunked”
“Booo, boring!” Janis blows raspberries while shaking a thumbs down in the air, leaving Cady really offended and Regina, already annoyed from her phone getting taken away like she is a teenager again, to shoot daggers with her eyes.
“Last, and certainly least” Janis starts with a teasing smile. “What do you have to say about this, Reginald? Ever had experiences with the afterlife?”
Regina shoots the camera a charismatic smile before leaning her whole body weight on Janis’ shoulder to amplify their height difference.
“Well, Jacinto” Janis growls under her breath in response to the nickname. “As someone who was dead for 15 seconds I can confirm that there is no afterlife, there are no ghosts, no spirits, and no Gods. There is only darkness and quiet, which right now” She gestures to the place they are at, making it the perfect segue for the next segment of the video. “I’m wishing I had, instead of being in this fucking place.” As much as she didn’t want to be there, Janis and Damian’s videos always did better when she participated, as people thought her being so nonchalant was incredibly alluring (and also she was hot). The same went for Karen’s innocence (and she was hot) and Gretchen’s emphaticness (she was so hot). It was Cady’s first time on the channel so they were yet to see how their viewers would embrace her presence.
Damian fits himself back in the frame, extending his arm, and Janis moving back to her spot next to him. His voice is deep, lowering his face and looking threateningly through his eyelashes.
“Today we are spending overnight in the most haunted mansion in the state of Illinois” He announces what would most likely become the title of the video.
“But first, let us tell you a little bit about this place” Janis breaks out into the description given to them by the tour guide before they started recording. A terrible tale really, about a wife whose mental health had never been taken seriously, which led her to try to take her own life several times in different places of the house but her husband always managed to revert the effects of whatever she took or take her to a hospital before it was too late.
“They say with every failed attempt, a piece of her soul is trapped in the room and it is why, in the end, she felt so lost and fragmented that the only way out was to grab her husband’s gun and shoot him and then herself, forever bounding them to the house” Damian ends with a sad tone to emphasise the real nature of the story.
“Here is the plan for tonight” Janis is facing her friends while holding onto a bunch of ghost hunting equipment. They had moved from outside the house to its living room once they were satisfied with the introduction.”We are gonna go around the different rooms to try to make contact with any of the spirits that might still be here” When no one asks any questions, she continues. “At midnight we will do the dual Estes Method from opposite sides of the house”
“What’s gonna happen to the video when inevitably we capture…. Nothing?” Regina’s question makes everyone, except Cady, groan. In both the sceptics' heads it was something very valid to ask, however, since their expectations to actually see a ghost are zero to none.
“Then you guys better at least be funny during it” Damian brings out a scolding finger, a warning for everyone to put on their best camera personality.
Damian and Janis are just setting up a couple of cameras around the room, while their four guests are chatting away with their partners for the night, when a shriek from Gretchen alerts everyone.
“Babe, stop, that’s not funny” Karen moves behind her, hiding behind her high hair-do. Instantly, Janis grabs their main camera and starts recording the situation.
“What’s wrong?” Cady places a comforting hand on Gretchen’s shoulder, not for one second considering the noise had been related to their plans for the night.
“I swear I saw someone looking at us from the door there” She points with a shaky hand to the big door that separates the living room from the main hallway. Instantly, Damian finds their SLS camera and aims it at the area Gretchen is mentioning, explaining that if there was a spirit there it would show up on the screen as a stick figure.
“Oh my god..” Regina rolls her eyes and Cady’s hand drops, concern fleeing her body and being replaced with the desperate need to find a reason behind what her friend thinks she saw. “Your eyes are probably just playing tricks on you because you’re scared” Regina concludes, trailing after Cady absentmindedly.
The other four partake in a series of futile attempts to make whatever Gretchen saw return, meanwhile, Cady and Regina walk around the big living room, testing reflections and how their shadows could have played a part in making the lights flash in a way it may have looked like a person was standing there. They are both dedicated to a debate about how there was a house plant on the other side of the hallway, only seen from a certain angle, that could have contributed to the scare.
“Uh… Guys….” Damian sounds genuinely unsettled, eyes wide, trained on the big screen of the camera rig he is holding.
“Holy fuck, what is that?” Janis points her camera to the screen to film what was happening live to avoid comments of things being added in post production. Regina and Cady quickly join the group around the camera, and right before their eyes there is a stick figure, tall, assertive, standing right under the door. It felt like it was observing them, questioning what they were doing in their house. Cady’s eyes flutter from the door to the camera.
“Point it somewhere else and see if you still catch anything” She instructs, and Damian does so, while Janis talks to the apparition none of them can see with their bare eyes, but feeling the crushing weight of its presence. Damian redirects the camera to several other spots in the living room, positively not catching any new figures, only when he points it back to the doorway, the stick figure is still there.
“Didn’t you say the husband hated having guests over? Maybe he is mad that we’re here” Karen holds onto Gretchen’s arm in silent promises of protecting each other.
“We are not here to upset anyone, we just want to understand what happened!” Janis gets full body shivers from talking to something that, through the camera, they can all see is there but when confronted directly there is nothing.
“Regina, will you go stand next to it so we can see if your stick figure appears and that one disappears?” Cady still tries to reason, though she was starting to come up short on explanations. The blonde obeys without much fight, herself wanting to get to the bottom of something she is finding ridiculously hard to believe. Her stick figure does come to life as soon as she enters the sensors, proving to Cady that the camera is functioning correctly.
“Regina, you should talk to it!” Janis prompts, urging her with her hand. Regina sighs loudly and crosses her arms over her chest with a roll of her eyes.
“If you’re really standing right next to me… I don’t know, throw me across the room or something” It makes Cady giggle while everyone stares in shock at her bravery and lack of concern for her own life. Needless to say, she didn’t get thrown across the room. “Ouch, what the fuck” Regina’s hand flies to her head, rubbing a specific spot in her scalp.
“You okay, Gi?” Cady is the first to ask, moving to her friend with haste, her stick figure too showing up on the screen now.
“Uh, yeah, that was weird, it felt like something pulled my hair” She explains with a displeased face.
“Maybe it got caught on your jacket” Cady suggests, hands coming up around her neck and running her hands through long blonde locks. Behind them, looks are exchanged when Regina’s cheeks start to turn bright pink.
“Yeah, I’m sure that’s it” She agrees, swiftly moving on with a shrug.
They both hear it. The footsteps to their left, that outside the living room leads to a staircase up to the first floor. They both look to the side. Neither of them choose to comment on the steady creaks.
“Wait it’s gone” Damian announces, peering over to the screen on the SLS camera and confirming that the only two stick figures present were Cady’s and Regina’s.
The two women face each other, silently agreeing that this was nothing but a strange coincidence, and deciding to move on.
After feeling like they had gotten enough ‘evidence’ from the living room, the group moves to the kitchen, a place where the wife is said to be seen quite often, as if she is stuck in a loop of her routine while she was still alive. Damian sets up a motion detector that plays the creepiest little music box tune when something stands in front of it, facing the big archway that makes up the entryway to the spacious kitchen. They all sit on the ridiculously big dining table, wondering why the couple would have splurged on mahogany wood and 16 seats if they were the only two people residing in the house. Regardless, a camera is set up on the floor, recording the motion detector, while another one is propped on a tripod, facing the friends. They also included two simple flashlights for a better chance at clear communication.
“Mrs. White, if you are here in the room with us, will you please step in front of our little music box” Janis starts, back straight, hands politely placed one on top of the other like she is at an important business meeting.
The room is deadly quiet for a few minutes. Karen’s eyes are closed after complaining that the room is way too dark as their only light source is the red light on top of Damian and Janis’ camera for added ambience. Gretchen is holding her hand under the table, rubbing circles with her thumb in comfort. Regina glances down and notices it, eyes immediately flying to Cady and her hand peacefully resting on her lap, then her face, finding she is expecting to see if any of the devices would go off.
The sound of eerie music grinding to a start makes her jump in her seat with a yelp.
“No.. No, stop!” It is Gretchen’s turn to close her eyes, scooting closer to Karen and clinging to each other for dear life.
“Oh my god, hey girl! Thank you so much for joining us!” Damian ignores his friend’s pleas, facing the camera with a smile.
None of them know that, under the table, Cady’s hand flew to Regina’s knee after her noise. No one knows that her heart rate instantly stabilises, even with the music playing on and off, like someone is genuinely walking past it.
“We have two common flashlights here, if you could tap one of them to let us know you want to chat, we will be able to ask you some yes or no questions.” Janis explains, gesturing to the small torches in the middle of the table that had, up until this point, yet to flicker on.
Cady glances over at the motion detector, trying to understand what could possibly be making it go off. The music wouldn’t play at any particular time interval, it had already confirmed it seemed pretty random. She gets up, much to Regina’s dismay, and resets the detector, cleaning the sensor and standing behind it as it recalibrates. From the small screen Damian turned in their main camera, they can watch Cady without having to turn around. The music stopped, pushing Cady to rule anything prior to it a malfunction from the flimsy device, only for when she returns to her spot on the table, the music returns at the same random intervals, like someone was walking about the room, not minding their presence.
“Strange” Cady whispers to herself, going through a million scenarios in her head trying to justify how this was happening. “Are you guys messing with it?” Cady’s question brings the steady stream of music that had started halt to a stop.
“What the hell dude, you think we fake our videos?” Janis’ tone shows she is way more offended than Cady had intended with the question.
“I wasn’t saying that, but how is the machine going off if there is nothing in front of it.” Cady gets up again, grabbing the detector and wiping the sensor with her shirt, resets it once again and once it calibrates, puts her foot in front of it. As expected, the music restarts. She takes her foot away, the music stops. It makes sense, the device doesn’t seem faulty. She walks around it, trying to understand what is the range, how far can she be from it until it sings again, would it play if she jumped? If they were shaking the floor somehow?
“Because it’s a ghost, Cady!” Karen opens her eyes, squinting at first to adjust to the lighting.
A flashlight starts to shimmer to life on top of the table.
“Cady sit your ass back down” Damian instructs. Cady grunts in frustration, plopping down next to Regina who shyly rests a hand on the ginger’s knee, a different type of comfort Gretchen had been providing Karen with, but comfort nonetheless.
“Mrs. White, if this is you, can you turn that flashlight off for us?” Janis attempts, but the light continues to shine bright in their eyes.
“It will let us know you want to communicate” Damian looks around, as if he would be able to spot anything in the darkness behind the camera. “You can take energy from our batteries, from our light…” Cady rolls her eyes, slumping in her chair.
The light goes off.
“I moved, that was probably it.” She quickly justifies, all eyes flying to her. Gretchen bounces her gaze from all the devices around them, connecting pieces of all the events in her mind.
“I think it wants to talk to Cady” The strawberry blonde concludes, prompting the music box to start playing after several minutes of silence.
“That’s ridiculous” Regina is the first one to comment since everyone else was just waiting for Cady to say something.
“It is.” The music box tune starts to play faster at the sound of her voice.
“What the actual fuck” Janis jumps up from her seat. “The motion detector has never done that” She approaches it, resetting the sensor several times, yet every time it is done calibrating, the song springs back to life, seemingly at an increased speed. Damian gets up as well, moving to the camera and restarting the clip, afraid that if the video got too long the memory card would overheat like it had done in the past. Only the camera won’t stop recording.
“Nah, this is too much.” Damian takes a deep breath, trying not to panic as he explains what is happening and causing more apprehension.
“Cady for the love of God, just talk to it!” Gretchen begs, an antsy feeling completely taking over her chest, her leg bouncing up and down aggressively and the skin on her nape beginning to form beads of sweat. Both flashlights light up, brightly like they have been put on the strongest setting.
“Fine!” Cady smacks her hands on the table, making everyone jump in surprise. The music box stops playing, both flashlights dim until they turn off.
“Uh.” Damian is able to restart the clip.
Cady and Regina share an unsure look. It is impossibly hard to believe that something like this is happening. In their minds, had they seen this on an actual video, they would probably justify it with editing. A bunch of unrelated events consequently happening while they are already in an uneasy state is bound to make anyone question themselves, but experiencing it in real life, right before their eyes, knowing that this isn’t some ruse for views was starting to make both women feel a little unsettled. Still, Regina offers Cady a reassuring nod and her hand, under the table, away from the prying eyes of viewers. The redhead accepts, before taking a few seconds to organise her trail of questioning and opening her mouth.
“If anyone here wishes to speak with us, turn on the flashlight on the right.” She decides having a specific system would make it harder for things to happen at random. Rapidly, the indicated torched blasts light at full force. Under the table, Regina squeezes her hand.
“Thank you” Janis and Damian say at the same time, and it makes both Cady and Regina’s eyes want to roll back to the back of their heads. The flashlight turns off. Regina can’t contain her chuckle. This felt absolutely absurd.
“Are you Mrs. White?” Cady, for some reason, feels something drop in the pit of her stomach with the question. “Use the flashlight on the right for yes, the one on the left for no”
Next to her, Karen can feel Gretchen’s body uncannily frozen. The flashlight on the left softly switches on and just as slowly off, making all of them audibly gasp.
“Are you– Mr. White?” She doesn’t know when the hand Regina isn’t holding started to shake, or when her breath became more ragged. The energy in the room felt heavy, like they weren’t able to take breaths deep enough to properly fill their lungs. Damian is starting to wish he hadn’t used the red light for this portion of the video, had he known this is how it would turn out.
The flashlight on the left, painfully leisurely, activates.
“I– I thought the wife and the husband were the only ones that lived here” Karen’s voice trembles in fear. They can all feel the looming presence of something darker, unfriendly, it’s sudden steadiness compared to the previous randomness like torture. Gretchen’s head tilts down, a headache overbearing all her other senses.
“That’s what the tour guide and the internet said.” Janis’ own voice showed she wasn’t having fun trying to convince her friends that ghosts are real anymore. This has been the clearest conversation they have ever had using the flashlights and it was not the lighthearted experience she was hoping to provide her guests.
Cady’s shoulders feel stiff, like something was applying pressure on top of her. Regina shoots her a worried look and it only gets worse when Cady faces her, visibly terrified at the feeling.
“Who the fuck are you then? And what do you want with Cady!” Regina yells out. She isn’t sure of what to do or how to argue with something that she doesn’t even believe is there, but she does believe that Cady is scared and she can’t stop the need to try to fix it and make it all better for her.
The flashlights both turn on at the same time, blinking steadily at them while the motion detector spurs into life, first horrifyingly slow but steadily going faster and faster, making the grinds inside the machine work overtime, audibly straining its functions.
“Dude what the hell!” Janis gets up with a huff, growing annoyed at the sound the device plays and whatever is trying to break it, however, the sound appears to become louder at her frustration. Gretchen covers her ears, closes her eyes and rocks back and forth whispering prayers to herself in spanish. Damian and Karen observe her horrified.
“Gretchen is like– Getting possessed!” The man squeals. Gretchen opens her eyes and pays him an annoyed glare.
Finally, Janis turns the motion detector off and that seems to have influenced the lights as well, since they also deactivate.
The room falls into a petrified silence. Karen believes she will never be able to sleep again after this, while Gretchen is considering burning the music box she gifted Regina a few years ago when they were still teens. Janis and Damian survey each other, hesitant about how to move on from what they have just witnessed.
A loud cackle echoes through the walls of the kitchen.
“Wow, that was incredible.” Regina wipes tears from her eyes from laughing so much. “Those were some serious good effects you guys!” She claps towards Damian and Janis, not an ounce of sarcasm in her voice, just genuinely impressed. With a scoff, Damian gets up to cut the camera.
“Regina.. This wasn’t us..” Janis tries, brows furrow in disconcert. She couldn’t believe that after going through what for her had been undeniable proof they just talked to something that wasn’t visibly there in the room with them, Regina was still under the impression that this had all been their doing for the video.
“Right, no yeah for sure” She shakes her head, evident that she didn’t believe that one bit. She turns to face Cady, who although was still processing everything, was also finding it hard to believe that this must have been done by her friends, and if not, then by the owners of the mansion to sell the whole haunted narrative even more.
“You two are dicks” Karen declares, getting up with Gretchen and taking her outside for fresh air, her headache still making itself agonisingly known.
As time was getting late and restaurants would close soon, they decided to order food to the mansion and eat it together in the living room, agreeing that no one wanted to go back to the kitchen unless they absolutely had to. The options are scarce, due to being away from the city, luckily for them, pizza is always available everywhere.
Damian and Janis discuss how to continue the video over dinner and the food helps Gretchen with her headache, thankfully.
“So that was crazy, uh!” Regina is the one to strike conversation with Cady who is quietly staring at her pizza slices.
“A little too crazy, wouldn’t you say?” She replies without changing her focus. Inside Cady, there is a turmoil: either this establishment has an incredible production and cameras everywhere and they can somehow manipulate Janis and Damian’s devices, or they really just interacted with something that isn’t in the same realm as them, like Gretchen had put it. And the redhead isn’t sure how to deal with that information. But she knows what she felt, that chilling pressure on her shoulders, how the flashlights were lighting up intelligently.
“Don’t tell me you’re becoming one of them!” Regina nods her head over to Karen and Gretchen. When Cady contemplates her, she does it with a mixture of fear and a type of sadness that Regina can’t quite place.
“Would you hate me if I did? Become one of them?” Her voice is quiet so only the two of them can hear it.
“Cady I could never hate you” – Because I love you, is the part of the sentence she doesn’t say out loud. Clearly Cady is going through something and dumping that on her right now wouldn’t be right. Perhaps it might never be right, in which case Regina is ready to carry it to her grave, a possibility she has considered a lot of times and seems more and more appealing.
How do you tell your best friend of seven years that you fell in love with them the first time your eyes landed on them, but you had so much internalised homophobia you couldn’t bear to accept the fact, so you swallowed it for years. Then you do come to terms with the fact that you’re gay but now it’s been so long that the timing just feels off and their friendship is simply too important to tarnish.
“Whatever happens, we’re in this together, okay?” Her words do mean beyond tonight, further than a couple years, maybe, in the off chance that there is an afterlife, she would still wish to be there for Cady.
Cady offers her a small smile before resting her head on Regina’s shoulder. The blonde freezes in place, panicking at the contact.
“Dude, you look like you’ve seen a ghost” Janis chuckles as she walks past the two of them.
–
In better spirits, the group continues filming. Vaguely following the same route as the tour guide had, they decide to investigate the first floor. There is an overall eerie vibe to the sheer age of everything, the floors creak with each footstep, the doors are heavy and the long hallway is really dark, even with the filming light mounted on the camera. There are two rooms where it is claimed that the woman had tried to take her own life, in one of them succeeding, which is also where she killed her husband and that, disturbingly enough, is their own bedroom.
“For those of you who don’t know, the Alice Box has like, a dictionary, and the spirits can manipulate the frequencies or whatever and say words to us” Janis briefly explains, handing the device to Gretchen who analyses it with interest.
“But how does that–”
“Just go read the website if you wanna know more” Janis interrupts Cady waving her off. Cady grumbles under her breath that they aren’t allowed to use their phones, or else she would.
“And we also have the spirit box which is basically like a radio that goes through the channels super fast and the entities can make it say what they want” Damian hands the small device to Regina who holds it by its antenna in disgust.
When they open the door to the first room, a study with a thick wooden desk in the middle of it, a carpet that is at least 50 years older than any of them, and bookcases with more books than anyone could read in a lifetime. They walk around the room, Cady taking a special interest in deciphering some of the book titles under all the dust that has accumulated over the years, Regina and Karen are entertained making fun of some of the paintings on the walls and Gretchen is scolding them for it, while Janis and Damian introduce the room for the video and some of its history.
“Based on the hospital records, Mr. and Mrs. White would spend a lot of time here. He would be tending to his business from home while she would read, and rumour has it that it was in some of these books Mrs. White plotted more of her ideas to end her life.” Damian articulates the piece of script they had written with all the information they could find. “In this room in particular, it is believed that Mrs. White tried to poison her–”
A loud beep reverberates through the room.
“Lie.” Says an uncanny robotic voice coming from Gretchen.
Everyone widens their eyes, Janis immediately scrambling for the camera and aiming it at Gretchen, who is holding the Alice box as far away from her body as possible. Karen takes a few steps back and Regina follows her, glancing at Cady who is watching everything from the other side of the room.
“They’re calling you out” Janis extends her arm to film herself and Damian. “She just said your research is wrong, Damian” She laughs at her own joke and the man can’t help but chuckle too.
“So rude for interrupting me like that!” He exclaims, holding onto his chest pretending to be hurt.
“Remorse.” The robotic voice speaks again after the beep.
“Aww, you made her feel bad!” Regina joins in on the joke, earning more laughs from the pair of friends.
“Or maybe she feels remorse for what happened to her.” Cady intervenes, all eyes now focused on her instead of the talking machine. There is silence, as if they are waiting for the box to agree or disagree, but after two minutes of sitting in that creepy silence, Janis urges Regina to turn on the spirit box.
They all sit in a semicircle on the old carpet, Alice box and spirit box in the centre of it. Karen suggests they also include the REM-Pod, as it is one of her favourite devices to watch in their ghost hunting videos.
“So it detects anomalies in its electromagnetic field?” Cady asks, poking her finger in and out of the invisible safezone and making the cylinder light up all types of different colours the closer she gets to the antenna. “That seems easy enough to understand.” She says mostly to herself, since she hasn’t been able to fully grasp how any of the other devices work, or, well, she knows how they work, she just doesn’t understand how they have been working without human intervention.
“Desecrated.” The robotic voice from the Alice box speaks up.
“Ew, I hated that” Regina rubs her arms after getting goosebumps.
“Sounds like a good enough sign to get started” Janis announces, turning on the spirit box which instantly blares the sound of radio static before scanning the various channels it can reach, though nothing about it seems to jump to their attention yet.
“Mr. White, Mrs. White, we were hoping we could talk to you tonight.” Damian talks to the ceiling, closing his eyes like he is trying to embody the spirits himself. For a brief moment, the spirit box plays a little tune, clearly belonging to a song that was playing on the radio and it goes straight back to static.
“You can talk into our little boxes here, and we will hear you, or you can touch the red light in the centre of the room and we will know you’re here” Janis looks around the room, hoping for any evidence of ghostly presences. Gretchen, who had been staring into the lap, suddenly raises her head.
A single beep from the REM-Pod vibrates their entire soul.
Regina and Cady glance at each other, agreeing it could perfectly be a coincidence, since it hadn’t even been that on cue.
“Can you use one of the boxes to tell us who is here with us right now?” Janis asks, her heart racing with the excitement of their equipment working.
“Bzz— Bzzz- Bitch– Bzzz–” It was loud and clear for everyone in the room, how the spirit box had interrupted its cycle to utter the word.
“She is a bitch, you’re so right!” Regina is way too amused at the thought of a ghost insulting her friend.
“Gi, don’t.” Gretchen warns.
“Sorry, just trying to be the comic relief.” Regina raises her arms defensively.
“Could we just talk to Mrs. White, please?” Karen fiddles with her thumbs nervously, wishing she could hold hands with her girlfriend instead but unsure if she should do it on camera or not.
“Heresy.” The Alice Box enunciates.
“Does this only say religious related words?” Cady wonders, making mental notes of all the words that have been said. Remorse could easily be related to sinning, she considers.
“No, we have gotten all types of random shit from it, like names, foods, numbers, places” Damian explains and Cady nods. Weird, but not undeniable, undebunkable stuff.
“So we can’t talk to Mrs. White, what, because she didn’t believe in religion?” Regina tries to play along and piece everything together.
“Or because the wrong person is asking.” Janis suggests, both for the sake of making the video creepier and also noticing that one of her friends has been uncharacteristically quiet, but paying very close attention. “Gretch, why don’t you ask something.” Janis raises her eyebrows, urging the woman to speak.
Before she can say anything, the Alice box gives them something new to discuss.
“Repentance.”
“Kinda similar to remorse” Cady observes. The REM-Pod beeps once. Then twice, like it is asking them to continue. Gretchen takes a deep breath.
“I know you’re really sad.” She isn’t sure where to look, so her eyes stay fixed on a random book on the wall. “And that’s why you’re still here, right? Because you feel bad about what happened?” Gretchen chews on her lip nervously.
“Bzzz–Bz-Bzzz- Please– Bzz- Bzz” The deep voice of a man makes itself known through the spirit box. The word doesn’t come out as a plea, but charged with sarcasm.
Cady feels completely entranced by how empathic Gretchen appears to be, even if maybe she is just projecting her own emotions to the words being randomly said. Everyone else, however, shares the looks of people who are completely freaked out.
“Coercion.” The Alice box continues. It is Cady’s turn to take a deep breath.
“Bzz–Shut–Bzz–Whore–Bzz–Bzz–”
“What kind of radio station is saying whore!” Karen gasps in outrage and secret curiosity. Maybe she should start listening to the radio, sounds like they’re spilling some hot gossip right now. Cady and Regina quietly note that she makes an excellent point.
“I think.” Gretchen’s voice is shaky and her eyes are glassy with tears. “I think Mrs. White didn't want to kill her husband.” She swallows dry with a big gulp, her eyes focus on the REM-Pod as the red light stares back at her. “And I think they weren’t the only ones living in this house.” Her breathing picks up. Cady looks between her friend and the cylindrical device while Janis and Regina went off on how crazy her theory sounds, the blonde especially expressing how she believes that this is a wild assumption to make based on a couple of sparse words.
Her rant, however, is interrupted by the blaring sounds of the REM-Pod, lighting up in circular motions, green, blue, purple, never giving them a break from the tune the beeping makes.
“Holy fuck” Janis covers her ears, getting up from her seat to reset the equipment.
It only takes a few seconds for it to resume its blasting of beeps and colours.
“Janis turn that hellish thing off!” Regina yells out, her body filled with goosebumps. She can tell how the energy in the room had shifted, from the sadness of Gretchen’s theory to the eeriness of the kitchen.
The noise ceases. Six bodies are stuck in place.
The warning of the Alice Box pierces their ears.
“Bedroom.”
“Now– Bzz- Bzz” The spirit box adds just as the other device is done.
“I don’t think we should do what it says” Karen, with bigger concerns than being on camera, holds onto Gretchen’s arm.
They could all tell that the voice that spoke through the spirit box wasn’t the same as the man who was calling them bad names. And they all believed no one should mention that out loud.
Damian gets up to stop the recording.
They go to the bedroom anyway.
—
They are all starting to feel a little drained after being in the study. Cady absentmindedly leans on Regina’s body, who wraps her arm around her shoulder, bringing her closer, while Damian and Janis go through the awful events that took place in that room.
“So this is the part where we tell you that we are all gonna be spending the night in different rooms, and this will be one of them.” Janis dramatically turns around to face her friends. “And Dam and I thought it would only make sense if the Skeptics team took this room, aka the most haunted one” Her eyes bounce between the two women, waiting for complaints, but they never come.
“Wait, shit it’s almost midnight!” Damian gasps, grabbing the extra spirit box, headphones and blindfold from their equipment backpack.
“Fuck, okay, screw investigating this room together, we gotta do it now!” Janis scavenges for the other set of headphones and blindfold while Damian guides Gretchen and Karen out of the room, as they would do their session in the mansion’s cellar.
“Be safe” Cady holds onto Gretchen’s arm before she leaves.
“You too, Cady.” Gretchen gives her a kind smile and a reassuring nod before getting dragged out of the room.
Regina ignores the pang of jealousy that runs through her body at the interaction, even if Cady had just been glued to her side.
“Okay, so, I think Regina should go under and Cady asks the questions” Janis suggests, gesturing for the blonde to sit on the incredibly old bed.
“Why me?” Regina groans, sitting down nonetheless.
“The ghosts are answering Cady well, and you have a lot of bottled up anger so maybe they’ll like it, I don’t know!” Janis hands her the blindfold and the headphones, spirit box already blasting the cursed static.
“We will be right here, Gi.” Cady places her hand on her shoulder, squeezing it lightly with affection. “And we will pull you out if things start to get weird.”
It takes everything from Regina to not visibly melt. After the encouraging words, she goes under. Cady makes sure to check the time Janis has been recording for, so that Regina doesn’t stay with the headphones on for more than ten minutes. What she had to do might be simple, just repeat the words she hears from the static, but with the loud sound stopping her from hearing her friends and her vision taken away from her it is like being tortured through sensory deprivation.
“Fuck off” Regina mouth is agape, because of how clear that had sounded to her, compared to experiencing the spirit box without the headphones.
“I don’t know if that’s Regina being Regina or if it was a spirit” Janis admits and it earns her a delighted giggle from Cady.
“Hi, I’m Cady” The redhead starts, having watched these parts of her friend’s videos countless times. “What’s your name?”
They wait a couple heartbeats until Regina speaks.
“You whore!” She says it with an angry tone. “Like in the voice of a man, ew!” She adds, clearly it being Regina talking, not a spirit. Janis smiles and Cady tries to stay professional during this portion, though her lips fight off her own smile, hard.
“Who am I speaking to?” Cady tries again.
“Please stop” Regina repeats what she hears, voice much softer than when it had been when the man was speaking, leaving them to believe it must be another voice. Cady grows a little frustrated, as she agrees that, at least in the kitchen, it seemed that whatever, if anything, was there it was interested in her.
“It’s just a bunch of fighting, I can barely make out what they’re saying!” Regina explains way too loudly.
“Maybe they don’t see us” Janis points out. “Maybe what Regina is hearing is the fight they had before… you know” She makes a gun with her fingers and pretends to shoot herself in the head.
“Janis that is so messed up” Cady cringes, focusing back on Regina, who had started to rock back and forth slightly. “What is she doing?”
“I had to do it” Regina says in a monotone voice.
“Some people start doing that when they get into a deep meditative state” Janis remembers the times she has seen herself do the same on videos, knowing that this is when more things start to come through.
“It made me do it”
“What made you what?” Cady inquires.
“Run” Regina’s breath is starting to pick up a little, the rocking now more visible.
“What do you want us to run from?” Cady continues to try, glancing over to the camera, she checks that only four minutes have passed since they started, but Regina’s leg had started to bounce and she wasn’t enjoy the words being said to them.
“Little redhead over there”
“What–” Cady looks at Janis who is just as confused.
“Don’t be scared”
“No one here is scared.” She answers with determination. Even if it was Regina saying the words, it didn’t feel like Regina at all.
“She doesn’t believe. Ahahaha” Regina gulps, her head shaking a little. From the outside, Cady and Janis could hear that something came through and that Regina had chosen not to repeat it.
“Why don’t you make me believe then?” Cady feels her own heart rate pick up significantly. If any of this is real, she is treading on dangerous territory.
“Cady.” Regina shakes her head again. “Cady, Cady, Cady” Regina says it like it is a song and somehow, the ginger can feel herself getting pulled in.
“What are you gonna do to me?” Her voice comes out just above a whisper.
They can hear a loud cackle coming from the headphones and some other words, yet Regina yanks the headphones out of her head and lifts the blindfold from her eyes.
“Absolutely not, we’re done.” She announces, throwing everything onto the bed and getting up, pacing around the room.
“Gi, hey, what’s wrong?” Janis stops recording, setting the camera next to the rest of the equipment and moving to her friend.
“Look, I don’t know what kind of game we’re playing here but that is fucked up!” Regina’s voice gets increasingly louder, by the time she is done talking, she is screaming in Janis’ face.
“I told you, it’s not a game! This is all real, Regina!” Janis tries to argue without raising her voice, understanding whatever she heard had deeply affected her.
“I wanna do it” Cady interrupts the arguing, making both of her friends face her.
“Cady are you su-”
“No.” Regina decides for her.
“What do you mean, no?” Cady’s eyebrows are knitted together.
“Cady I don’t believe in any of this shit but that was so beyond fucked up that I will be unpacking it for the rest of my life, so no, I’m not letting you go through that.” Regina explains, walking to Cady and placing both hands on her shoulders, shaking her, trying to bring any sense into her head.
“If you don’t believe it, then there is no reason to be scared of” Cady argues. “Besides, I know you will be here. I know I’m safe.” Cady grabs a hand from her shoulder and holds it instead. “Whatever it was, it wants to talk to me, Gi.”
Regina’s brows furrow in worry, eyes filling with tears she refuses to let spill.
“That’s what I'm afraid of.”
Cady insists on going under. Janis receives a text from Damian, announcing that they are done filming and that they are going outside to decompress because Gretchen is super upset. He also mentions he will start bringing in their sleeping bags and air mattresses.
“Put five minutes on your phone. She is not staying for longer than that.” Regina orders, arms crossed over her chest tightly. Before they even ask anything, Cady is already repeating what she is hearing.
“Aw.” She cooed. “Gonna miss you blondie.”
“That is fucking disgusting.” Regina feels sick to her stomach, unable to shake off the feeling that something had seen inside her brain and knows her deepest, darkest secrets.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing” Janis isn’t sure if she is supposed to cry or to laugh or to run for her life, but regardless she was going to film it all.
“What do you want with Cady?” Regina asks with a deep breath.
“Brain easy to pick” Cady replies. “Pretty girls are always the easiest.”
“This fucking bitch–”
“Watch it.” Cady, who isn’t really Cady, warns. “She wanted this.”
“No, you wanted it and made her believe she did too!” Regina argues.
“She wants to believe, I’ll make her believe” Cady hugs her own torso, goosebumps all over her arms.
“Who are you?” Janis herself getting extremely uncomfortable with how everything is going, considers pulling Cady out for the sake of her sanity.
“Why Mrs. White, of course!”
“We don’t believe you” Regina rolls her eyes at the chirpy way Cady had said the words.
“Smart for a blonde” The tone is clearly teasing.
“So who are you?” Regina insists, ignoring the previous comment. Cady starts rocking back and forth, much faster than Regina had started with.
“She likes you.” Cady’s leg starts bouncing. Her tone stabled into something monotone, like any essence of the ginger had disappeared and she was nothing but a speaker to the voice.
“You like her, she likes you. I could make it happen, if you wanted.” Janis looks confused between her two friends, especially when Regina bites down on her bottom lip nervously.
“Yeah, I know you’re thinking about it.” Cady’s breathing grows fast and audible.
“No I’m not.” Regina wants to stomp her feet, her brain feeling once again like it is being peered into.
“Shush.” Cady orders. “Not you.”
Regina and Janis look at each other, and with a nod, move to pull Cady out of the headphones.
“Stop. I am still talking to her.” Cady raises her hand, actually making her two friends stop mid footstep.
“Regina, always about Regina.” The blonde gasps, taken aback by the words she is hearing. There is a twisted thought in her head that makes her want to believe that this really is Cady talking, Cady admitting that she is always thinking about her and not some ploy from a demon, or worse, the management of the place fucking with them.
They can hear words being spoken but Cady isn’t repeating them anymore. Her lips are parted and her tongue is flush against the roof of her mouth, but no sounds are coming out.
“That’s enough.” Regina fights through all the thoughts in her head and yanks the headphones off of Cady, making the ginger jump back into real life. She doesn’t motion to get the blindfold off, so Regina does it for her, much more gently than she had with the headphones.
“Hey, sweet girl.” Regina crouches in front of Cady, grabbing her hands and running her thumbs over her hands when the redhead doesn’t say anything.
“I don’t remember anything.” Cady croaks with knitted eyebrows, sparing glances between the two friends. Janis sighs with relief. Regina doesn’t believe her one bit.
—
Regina wishes they didn’t have to spend the night in that hellish room, but content was content and it didn’t seem like Cady had been too affected by their session. Or maybe she was just really good at hiding it.
Gretchen and Karen beg to sleep in the living room rather than the study like it had been previously organised, as it felt like it was the safest room in the house and management had been kind enough to light the fireplace for them.
It does make it a little more reassuring when Janis hands out walkie talkies to each group so they can reach out if anything bad happens, but if not, they were to rely on their pair.
The only thing that lit their room was the moonlight and the red LED that tells them the time lapse night vision camera is recording. Regina and Cady, though in the same air mattress, were tucked into their own sleeping bags, staring at the ceiling.
“If any of this was real, Gretchen is definitely a medium” Regina is the first one to break the strange silence they had fallen into once Janis and Damian had wished them goodnight.
“Did you notice how she would always already be looking at the REM-Pod before it went off” Cady adds as an agreement to the statement.
“Oh my god, that was so weird! Like how do you explain that?” Regina wiggles around in her sleeping bag so she can face Cady. She can see the other woman shrug.
“Gut feeling? Coincidence? I don’t know Gi, so many things happened today that I don’t know how to explain.” Cady sighs, also turning in her bag to face Regina.
Regina’s face softens when she sees Cady’s eyes reflecting the moon. In the middle of all these inexplicable, infernal events, at least her face was still heavenly.
The voice that was Cady’s, but didn’t really feel like her starts echoing in her mind. The voice that had her convinced that deep down in Cady’s mind she feels the same for her.
“Regina, are you okay?” Cady sits up slightly, concern growing when she sees a single tear fall from Regina’s eye.
“Totally, this happens sometimes when I’m lying down” She ends with a light hearted laugh and wiping her tear.
Before Cady can inquire further, a steady beep rings in the room. They check the walkie talkie, assuming it was how it showed someone was trying to contact their channel, but the sound didn’t come from there.
“Can we have a break! Please!” Regina whines. With a chuckle, Cady gets up and walks around the room in her tiptoes, so the floor doesn’t creak as loud.
The beeping sound becomes loudest when she approaches Regina’s bag. With a nod from the blonde, Cady opens it, only to find the spirit box as the source of the sound.
“Why did you bring the spirit box to the room with us?” Cady doesn’t glance at Regina, just turns the equipment off and sets it back inside the bag.
“What? I didn’t bring the spirit box with me, do I look insane?” Regina gets up, and as she does, the device beeps again.
“Look” Cady takes it out the bag again, examining it and pushing the button she could have sworn she just turned off again.
“Uh, it’s a temperature drop warning.” Regina takes it from Cady’s hand, opens the back of the box and snaps the batteries out, promptly making it go quiet. “I didn’t put it in my bag though.”
They both agree Janis or Damian must have put it there as a prank, and return to the air mattress.
“It does feel like it got kinda chilly in here.” Cady rubs her arms, even with her hoodie the bitterness of dawn-y weather was starting to show.
“Maybe we should open up our sleeping bags and stack them, for extra heat.” Regina suggests, realising her true intentions a little too late.
“If you wanted to cuddle you could have just said so.” Cady teases, rolling her eyes and doing what the blonde had suggested.
Regina never thought the first time Cady Heron would be tucked under her chin, breathing steadily against her neck would be in a haunted house after one of the scariest experiences of her life. Yet there she was, arms wrapped tightly around the ginger, afraid if she let go even the slightest, Cady would disappear forever.
“Regina.” Cady startles her out of her thoughts. “During the Estes Method, there was something the voice said to you that you didn’t repeat.”
“Cads..”
“Tell me..” Cady nudges away from Regina a little bit so she can cup a soft cheek with her hand. “Please.”
“What if I say it out loud and it becomes true?” Regina pulls Cady closer, moving her hand from her cheek and holding it tight instead, fingers interlocking.
“It’s not real, Regina. It can’t hurt us.” Cady looked her in the eyes, with so much sincerity she felt like crying again. Hesitantly, Regina closed her eyes.
“Whatever it was, it laughed in my ear, like an evil laugh, and it said ‘Cady Heron will believe once she dies.” Regina keeps in all her tears with a whimper.
“Am I crazy for thinking that’s not… that bad?” Cady’s concern grows for herself now, maybe she has actually, finally reached insanity.
“Cady, before I really got in the zone, I could still kinda hear you and Janis talking.” Regina holds back a sob. “I heard you presenting yourself and.. You never said your full name ”
Oh. Cady is unsure of how to react. There is nothing in life that really teaches you the correct thing to say or feel when such words are said to you. So she just stays quiet.
“What did it say to you that you didn’t say back to us?” Regina prompts, desperate to move on from the thought of Cady dying.
“It was really weird.” Cady clears her throat. “It felt like I got transported somewhere that wasn’t this room anymore.”
“Yeah, I get that.” Regina rubs her back in comfort.
“And then, it was like, it was inside my brain, like it knew everything that I was thinking and was using it against me.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“You. I wanted to talk to it to tell it to back off from you. That as long as you were safe it could tell me anything or do anything to me” Cady tries to hide her face in the crook of Regina’s neck but the blonde lets go of her hand to hold her face in place.
“Why would you do that, Cady?” Regina searches blue eyes with everything in her. There wasn’t an ounce of fear anymore. Cady had been determined to protect her, no matter the cost.
“Because I would rather kill myself than let anything happen to you.” The words come out so easily out of her mouth. Her eyes fall so familiarly down to her lips. Her breath feels so warm against her face.
One kiss was all it took to change their lives forever and for history to repeat itself.