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As the sole custodian of Secrets of Vollmond, the small town’s only history blog, Faust has held himself to one firm principle: Never lend your research to paranormal enthusiasts.
At least, that was before a teenager conned him.
“What’s up, guys? It’s Shino, and I’m here with our first ever episode of—Mitile, add in the explosion effects here—Supernatural Quest.”
Shino, a short raven-haired youth, flits about a narrow dirt trail cracked by weeds, training his phone camera on the decaying house before him. The structure is an unremarkable thing; two stories of sun-bleached and weathered wood, leaning shutters and sagging eaves left unpainted and unadorned. The tattered roof pitches steeply downward, coming to a high point that pierces the belly of the low-hanging sun, eclipsing the house in shadow and giving it a dejected feel, like a beast cowering from hunters in the shadows. A porch snakes around the shade, its splintered railings like broken teeth, and the overlooking windows stand so darkened that their panes may as well be made of stone.
All the remaining light gathers in the adjoining field, yawning with tall sunflowers that surround the home like a protective moat, dappling the horizon in every direction. They hug the sides of the road and span as far as the eye can see across the surrounding acres. The smallest among them paint the edges of the house’s shadow, standing as still as sentinels in the balmy late-summer heat.
Rumors are valuable currency in a town like Vollmond, whose most notable features are its stretch of half-empty shops in the town center and the decaying wreck of an abandoned shopping mall—and plenty of rumors haunt the sunflower field. Land developers claim that no matter how many times they tried to rip the sunflowers from the earth, they came back the next day to find the stalks had grown back overnight. Trespassers who broke into the house claimed sightings of a woman in black, chasing them out or sealing them in rooms, tormenting them until they, according to their testimony, just “barely” escaped.
Odd places like this only attract fools seeking unearned fame, looking to be heroes.
Shino stops before the porch, prattling on to his phone. “We’re here at The Sunflower Witch’s house with exclusive access to the property, which is rumored to be cursed by—”
“Those rumors are unverified,” Faust cuts in from where he stands behind Shino, out of sight of the camera. “For all we know, it’s just an old house unconnected to any misfortune.”
Of course, Faust had read the opines about the Sunflower Witch’s curse in last century’s newspaper, rife with claims that townspeople and their loved ones had been cursed by the sunflowers. Perhaps too cowardly to approach the “witch” themselves, the townspeople isolated her from the rest of the town proper, and the road to the home and its sunflower field was cordoned off by a wall of stone, now crumbled and pushed aside into the brush.
The only remaining record of the woman’s life is her obituary—her remains, found in the sunflower field many years after her death by reporters in search of their story, were nothing more than fibers of rotted clothing and strands of hair hanging off her bones. A few sympathetic and anonymous townspeople had moved her body to the cemetery with her family.
Shino lowers his cellphone away from his face, presumably abandoning his recording. He sends Faust a glare that could spit fire. “You’re the researcher, not the host. Researchers do the boring stuff, not the intros. Now I have to start all over again.”
From beside Faust, Heathcliff, who had been hiding behind his flaxen bangs, as if willing them to swallow him up, steps forward with a worn sigh. “Shino, please be respectful.” To Faust, he offers an abashed, “Please don’t mind him. I’d like to hear about the house.”
“Whose side are you on, Heath?” Shino asks, shoving the phone at him. “Help me get this intro done before it’s too dark.”
They shuffle away in the dirt, with Shino pulling faces at Heathcliff’s continuous chiding. As fast as the disagreement came on, it quickly dissipates, with Shino pointing out something in the field and earning hushed laughter from Heathcliff.
Nero, hired security for the property, is suddenly at Faust’s side with such hushed footfall that Faust jolts at the sight of him. A brief flash of humor shines in Nero’s eyes, a shade of citrine that nearly rivals the sunflowers for brightness.
“Are these two for real?” Nero asks, leaning in close enough that their shoulders touch.
Faust studies him from behind the tint of his round glasses and the wide brim of his black hat, dismally aware that Nero’s shrewd gaze could easily pick him out of a crowd on the streets. No one had ever seen the mysterious author of Secrets of Vollmond, who goes by the pen name “from_the_ash.” By day, Faust Lavinia is a dispassionate man who works at the town library and wears knit sweaters and pretends his whole life is sworn to the circulation desk. Luckily, Nero doesn’t seem partial to the company of books.
“Unfortunately,” Faust says, watching Heathcliff and Shino drift toward the sunflowers. “I’m surprised you agreed to let them in.”
Nero shakes his head. The gathered tuft of his pale blue hair swings alongside the gesture. “I’m not the one who answered the call, but my partner and I thought this was going to be a real television crew. Not two high school kids with a phone.”
When an email had arrived in Faust’s blog inbox, a very rare occurrence, he had thought the same. Not many wished to track, as he had, every threadbare rumor to faded articles on microfilm and contemporary anxieties. But a user named “sherwood414” had read his article about the sunflower field and had an offer for him.
All Faust could discern about “sherwood414” was that they did not favor proper grammar or punctuation and claimed to be a “Content Producer.” They had gotten permission to film inside the house and wanted Faust to lend some details for their documentary about the sunflower field. Would he meet them onsite to point out some details? They could pay generously—and Faust was late on rent.
And perhaps, he was somewhat curious to see a place that had only existed in his mind as floor plans and speculation.
“I will tell you what I know so long as I am off camera,” Faust had written, “and my identity is kept confidential.”
“Weird but ok,” came the reply from “sherwood414.”
When Faust had driven up the dirt path stretching through a quarter mile of sunflowers, past several warning signs about surveillance, he had thought the two teenagers sitting on bikes in front of the house were just trespassers—until Shino had tapped on his car window and introduced himself and his companion, Heathcliff.
“Are you ‘sherwood414’?” Faust had asked as he got out of his car. He glanced around the desolate drive. “Where is your film crew for the documentary?”
“We’re the film crew, and we’re documenting ghosts.” Shino held up a small square of paper with brightly colored block lettering beside a picture of two large pepperoni pizzas. “Is pizza good enough?”
“What?” Faust asked, which felt like the only appropriate response to everything Shino had said.
“Pizza,” Shino reiterated. He had the nerve to sigh impatiently. “Are you good with payment in pizza, or not? I have a coupon for two large ones with two toppings—”
Faust had climbed back in his car and shut the door, only persuaded by Heathcliff to roll down the window to a litany of apologies and a vow that his parents would pay Faust for his troubles.
As Heathcliff pleaded, Faust looked between the two of them—the defiant Shino and diffident Heathcliff. One phone and a few flashlights between them. No tools, no crew, no supervision. Only research and curiosity.
A boy with a braces-filled smile and long silvery hair filled his thoughts. The mud spattered on his polo and khakis his parents had forced him to wear, torn on a broken window they had climbed through to enter the abandoned house at the end of the street; the long shadows cast by the flashlights they had taken from kitchen cupboards; their pounding hearts and footsteps as they rushed out the back door and into the thin woods at the sound of tires on gravel, following the trail of the winding creek back to the bridge that led into town and collapsing in the grass with breathless laughter.
With a sigh, Faust had turned his key to shut off his car. “Who knows what kind of animals have made their home in there, and there might be broken glass. I can’t send children in by themselves.”
“We don’t need your permission,” Shino grumbled. “We’d just go in without you.”
“Do you want me to call Heathcliff’s parents now?” Faust asked. “Or would you rather get your footage?”
Fifteen minutes and some awkward small talk later, Nero had rolled up in a beaten and rusted van stenciled with “Two Guys and a Gun: Trust Us to Keep Your S**t Safe” in purple lettering.
Faust will need to add several disclaimers to his Contact Me section, after this.
As Faust watches Shino crouch and lean to get a shot of the house from multiple angles, he asks Nero, “Is the property owner really all right with letting them in like this? I doubt they had the money to pay him, or the permissions to film.”
He had tried to interview the property owner about the house many times for his blog, but the owner, an enigmatic scholar and philanthropist who had bought the house on a whim after it was slated to be demolished, wouldn’t answer his messages.
Nero shrugs, shoving his hands in the pockets of his deep blue coveralls, rolled down to his waist and tied at the arms. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
Faust turns an incredulous look upon him. “‘Sure it’s fine’? You mean you didn’t ask him? And you manage security?”
“Look,” Nero says with a smile blunted at its edges, “the owner doesn’t even remember to pay us on time. Besides, the little guy over there told my partner he had a coupon for two large pizzas and a basket of wings. Pretty much sold the deal with that, in this economy.”
He shrugs, and Faust realizes that his coupon never included any wings.
“It’s all make-believe, right?” Nero adds as he approaches the front porch. “They’ll film for an hour, get bored, and leave. They’ll never come here again.”
The shadows cast by the eaves smother the sunlight, plunging the front door to the house in a pool of shadow. Faust can’t see anything beyond the dirtied windows, stained by dust and bird droppings and splotches of mud likely kicked up by storms.
Why would a scholar preserve such a place? Would it not be merciful to lay it all to rest?
He takes a tentative step up onto the groaning porch. Nero retrieves his ring of keys from his pocket, and Faust can see a flash of bronze and gold and silver, some keys rusted and others finely polished. And there, at the end of the ring, are some other tools—a long, thin metallic prong with a fine point and some oddly shaped keys.
Nero blocks his sight line with his back. “You should hurry it up before it gets dark. I’m not sure I could fend off all the critters that might be running around these woods.”
“We’ll be careful,” Faust says as Nero gets the door unlocked and forces it open with a light shove. He wipes at his brow with his sleeve, the shade providing little comfort in the stale and oppressive heat. “I won’t let them stay too long.”
“Glad they found a responsible guy like you.” Nero smiles at him over his shoulder, the light of his eyes veiled by the shadows. “Good luck with your ghosts, and all that.”
They step into the darkness of the foyer. The sunlight barely trickles in past the dirtied windowpanes, etching faint patterns against the bare wooden walls and lighting up small wedges of the room. A sculpted balustrade topped with a carved sunflower at the base of a staircase; a frayed rug sewn with deep greens; cobwebs stretching between the iron arms of a modest chandelier.
Shino and Heathcliff come up the porch behind them with creaking footsteps. Faust spots a sunflower, taken from its stalk, tucked into the front pocket of Shino’s jeans. He frowns disapprovingly.
“What?” Shino asks, catching his look. “You said it’s all rumors, right? And if not, maybe it will make the witch show up. She liked sunflowers.”
“I told him not to,” Heathcliff insists, which earns him a sulky glance from Shino.
It’s probably harmless—and wouldn’t the owner be glad to know people were coming to her fields again, willing to carry the joys she had tended to after being spurned for so long?
Breaking the awkward lull, Nero says, “I’ll go to the fuse box so you can get some light in here.”
“No way,” Shino says. “We have to do this in the dark. Turning on the lights will scare the ghosts. Right, Faust?”
Faust says, “Don’t ask me. It’s your production.”
Heathcliff clutches his flashlight to his heart like a ward against evil. “Maybe we should get some light in here.” He looks between them all, catching their gazes. “For safety. We don’t want to trip and fall, and we should get some footage of what the rooms look like with everything inside.”
“All the valuables are long gone now, so it ain’t much to look at,” Nero says. “It’s just all the junk and old furniture left in here. None of the good stuff.” Faust glances over at him, and Nero adds a quick, “Property owner’s words, not mine.” He clears his throat. “Anyway, you can go anywhere you want on the first floor, but the second floor is off limits.”
“Why?” Shino asks, turning on his flashlight and swinging the beam around. The light scatters off the chandelier, projecting oblong shadows across the wooden floors.
Nero shrugs, looking through the dancing light. “Wood up there is a little weak. I’ve almost fallen through the banister before.” He turns to Faust and says, “And those critters I warned you about . . . you never know what’s made their home in here.”
The words stir up a memory—a family of possums, blinking in the glare of Faust’s flashlight; the authority in his voice as he turned to his friend and chided him, because he had told him it was just an animal, and not a restless spirit roaming the attic.
“If you want to do this in the dark, I won’t stop you,” Nero is saying when Faust tears his gaze away from the ceiling. “I’ll be waiting outside to lock up when you’re done.”
Heathcliff visibly bites back a protest, and Nero pats him reassuringly—or pityingly, perhaps—on the shoulder as he moves back to the doorway. The dust stirs in his wake, followed by the sound of the front door settling against its weathered frame. With the light vanishing, Heathcliff switches on his flashlight, and Shino hands one to Faust.
“So, give me the rundown,” Shino says. “What’s on the first floor?”
Faust trails his light across the foyer, catching the central staircase, positioned against the right side of the wall. Some of the railing’s balusters are split in half, missing the banister running along the top.
Hopefully Two Guys and a Gun have insurance if the property owner ever decided to sue for damages.
“From the floor plans on record, the kitchen is through here,” Faust shines his light on a small door at the other side of the foyer wall, blending into the wooden paneling. He turns the light to the left of the room, where another door stands closed. “The study and a library are this way.” Then, to the right, a similar door. “And the sitting room and dining room are this way.”
“That’s it?” Shino murmurs. “They must have been bored a lot in the past.”
“People used to spend time together in the sitting room, Shino,” Heathcliff says, before glancing at Faust. “Is that right, Mister Faust? I heard that people used to play music and card games together in rooms like that.”
Mister Faust? That’s a new one. He’s used to, “hey, can you put this book back” or “excuse me, where can I find . . .?”
Faust obliges, saying, “It was built over a century ago by the family. At the time, it was only one story tall, but the family rebuilt it themselves to accommodate their granddaughters. The sunflower field was expanded by the sole survivor, Miss—”
Shino sighs loudly. “All the history will come later. Let’s start investigating, first. Heath, we’ll take the study and library. Ghosts always haunt libraries. And Faust, you can take the sitting room and dining room. The easy stuff.”
Several statements, uttered so confidently by Shino, earn Faust’s criticism—research always comes before investigations, ghosts do not always haunt libraries, and sitting rooms are an excellent window into how people lived their lives. But investigating?
Faust reaches for Shino, gripping him by the arm to stop him from wandering off. “Hold it. I said I was here to provide historical information, not investigate.”
“Are you scared?” Shino challenges, and he has an infuriating little smirk on his face. “Don’t worry. I can protect us all. I’m actually trained with a—”
“Forget it.” Faust releases Shino’s arm. “I’ll wait right here. Hurry and do your investigation yourself.”
Shino narrows his eyes, his brow knit in a petulant rut and his lips pursed. Ultimately, he offers no further commentary as he takes Heathcliff’s hand and wanders through the doorway to the left. Faust watches the beams of their flashlights swing around the doorway, listens to the sound of Shino starting his introduction for the camera.
Out of sight of Shino’s scrutiny, Faust finally expels one long, hissing breath. How does he always come into the company of such stubborn people? He’s never answering another email again without some very specific clauses.
As Shino and Heathcliff’s chatter grows farther and farther away, Faust wanders about the foyer, keeping his steps light to avoid interfering with the investigation. The last thing he needs is Shino chewing him out for creaky steps.
He’s a researcher, after all. It wouldn’t hurt to take some notes to amend his article.
True to Nero’s word, the walls are barren. The wood is bleached from the sun, leaving darkened squares and rectangles where photographs and paintings had once rested, their nails peering out from the boards. What could have been displayed here for visiting guests, seeking refuge of the shade in overbearing summers? Photographs? Portraits?
The family, made up of generations of farmers, had once supplied vibrant decor for town meetings and weddings, festivals and holidays. The town’s gardening club was known to have met in the home, and travelers from far and wide would come to see the field of sunflowers and make wishes for good health and love amidst the rolling waves of gold.
Here, in this foyer, the eldest daughter continued to receive guests long after the passing of her parents and sister, continued to ferry travelers through the fields and let them gather flowers and hope. Fortune seemed to smile upon her, for even without her family, she imparted abundant joy to others, imbued in petals on the wind and their sturdy stalks.
The field only bred happiness—until one of the gardening club member’s sons fell sick after playing in the sunflower field, never to recover. His mother had taken ill, too, and the virus continued to spread, likely a form of the flu.
But the people of Vollmond, always quick to their rumors, turned to the sole remaining heir. The illness had come from her field, and wasn’t it odd that her parents and sister had passed so young?
How quickly the warmth of others can wither.
Faust traces circles in the dusty floorboards. He's admittedly curious about the second floor, but he heeds Nero’s request, drifting off toward the right-side doorway and turning the bronze knob. One walk-through of the sitting room to pass the time wouldn’t hurt.
The hinges murmur lightly in protest, and Faust steps into the darkness beyond. His heartbeat quickens, sentiments he thought he had buried rising in his chest. The excitement of sneaking into an old home, undetected by the strict watch of the adults in their small, far-flung hamlet, holding their breaths in the silence for something to make itself known.
Searching for spirits had never been Faust’s passion. He had been the one to collect notes from their paranormal expeditions, dictated by his friend in a breathless rush and placed in a binder with a disclaimer embellished in blue marker: TOP SECRET PROPERTY FOR A.G. & F.L. ONLY.
Faust had kept the binder underneath his bed, pushed to the far wall in the recesses where his grandfather wouldn’t immediately find it if he pried around his room. His grandfather was convinced Faust’s friend was a bad influence, and his suspicion was never satisfied, leaving him in perpetual search of evidence by which to confirm his doubts.
For one summer—one that now seems so whimsical, belonging to the fantastic and otherworldly, memories smudged and bright like watercolor—Faust and his friend had filled the binder with all they could find about the paranormal. Myriad newspaper articles they cut out about unsolved mysteries and urban legends; the posts they came across on forums filled with users’ self-proclaimed unexplained experiences; photographs of dilapidated houses that his friend’s parents, amused by their adventures, had developed at the corner shop; notes of their own dreams and thoughts and beliefs about the afterlife, of their adventures wandering through the churchyard cemetery and sneaking into old houses in the abandoned edges of their hamlet.
His grandfather had found it all, after the incident. Their last and final adventure. Faust never had a chance to write any of it down before his grandfather burned everything in the hearth and torn Faust away from the ash.
He wonders who lives in that house now, in that little hamlet that crushed dreams in its fallow fields and left them to die in the frost.
Faust grips the flashlight and drags its light around the room, leaving no cover for the darkness. He takes inventory. Furniture draped with soot-stained drop cloths, forming odd shapes around the room. A sofa and a coffee table, arranged near the hearth, set atop grooves in a patterned area rug. Several broken chairs, piled against the wainscotting. Multiple shelves, standing like soldiers along the walls, barren of the books and trinkets that were once loved. A dormant hearth, set into a column of brick.
He aims his light at a tarnished chandelier, its arms mottled with dusty cobwebs that weep like hanging ivy. Even the home’s smallest inhabitants had taken up residence elsewhere, it seems.
Why guard such a place so tightly, preserved under ages of rot? There had to be some reason to keep it in such a state of slumber, as if the former residents would soon stroll through the front door and clear away the dust, bathing the house in light and warm laughter.
A loud sound rattles through the walls.
“Shino?” Faust calls. He hesitates. “Was that you?”
“No,” Shino answers from far away. “I thought you fell down in the dark.”
Faust suppresses a retort and returns to the foyer just in time for the sound to tear through the house again, louder this time, causing the chandelier to sway on its chain. Heathcliff jumps as he comes through the opposite doorway, fumbling for the flashlight as it bobbles between his palms and falls back against his chest. The light illuminates a cloud of dust flooding down from the ceiling, a forced exhale from weathered lungs.
“What the hell is that?” Shino asks as he steps into the foyer, aiming the phone camera up toward the light.
The sound beats around them in a pulse-like rhythm. Faust listens to the steady sound with skepticism despite Heathcliff’s trembling, which scatters the light around the room and catches its recesses in frenzied glimpses.
There was a time where Faust had occupied the role of cynic, always looking for logical explanations to his friend’s supernatural conclusions: a rush of cold air traced back to a hole in the window frame, flickering lights linked to faulty wiring, disembodied voices coming from older boys messing around behind the creek.
There are myriad explanations for the sudden noise. A shutter swinging in the breeze upstairs, left unlatched. A branch tapping on the siding. One must always seek a worldly explanation before resorting to otherworldly theories.
But when the noise comes again, it is from the other side of the room, in a series of three. Then, from the center in twos.
“It’s a ghost, isn’t it?” Heathcliff asks haltingly, wrapping his arms around himself. “And it’s angry, right? It’s angry, and we’re going to be stuck here, and—”
Faust narrows his eyes, watching plumes of dust swirl around the light as if to swallow its intrusion and return the house to its darkened solitude. Whatever is moving up there, it is doing so with measured force, with calculated movements.
Shino inches forward with the phone raised in his steady hand. Faust is rather impressed.
“I’ll go look,” Shino says, deepening his voice with an authority that fits him like an oversized coat. “Faust, stay here with Heath.”
“No,” Faust says as he moves to the stairs. He gingerly rests a boot on the first step. It groans under his weight, yet it holds, allowing him to start his ascent. “Remember what Nero said. The upper floor could be unstable, and the boards could collapse.”
Shino takes a step closer, features hardened by the harsh shadows created by his flashlight. “What happens if you fall?”
“Then please at least call me an ambulance before you go off to your pizza party.”
Faust tests another step. The wood creaks in warning, daring him to continue upward. Heathcliff winces, his hand fluttering to his lips as if he will protest, but Faust moves forward regardless, placing his weight where the board feels most sturdy.
As Faust climbs, the noise grows louder and louder, punctuated only by the dull murmur of Heathcliff and Shino’s chatter below. Faust reaches for the banister at the top of the landing and lets his flashlight flood the boards for any missing planks before turning it upon the long hallway. At the end, the light catches on the top of a narrow staircase—the one connecting to the kitchens, with a back door for perishable deliveries and access to the sunflower field.
All the doors are shut except one, left slightly ajar, right next to the staircase.
Dust motes crowd around the doorway noisily, as if protesting the disturbance, and Faust hushes his light with a hand. The noise continues in an erratic rhythm. Two beats from the left. A pause. Three beats from the right. Another pause. The vibration travels up from the floor and into the sole of Faust’s boots, and he throws the door open before the noisy guest collapses the floor and sends them both plummeting down to the dark.
The door swings open with a creaking like a banshee’s wail, and Faust lets his light fill the room, catching a very solid form in the corner. Blue fabric, bunched at the waist. Pale blue locks—and an even paler face, blanching in accompaniment to a sharp curse.
“Shit,” Nero stammers, “was I making too much noise? I was just—I saw a raccoon in the window up here while I was going out to the van, so . . .”
Faust aims the flashlight down to the pair of overly large black rain boots that Nero now wears. “And you needed a costume change for that?”
Nero laughs weakly, hand fluttering to the back of his neck before he awkwardly drops it at his side. “Can’t be too careful around critters that can bite.” When Faust doesn’t respond, he offers, “You know, because of rabies.”
He looks up expectantly, as if hoping Faust will let it slide and chalk it up to a bit of good fun. How many of the proper productions were likely staged in a similar manner, anyway?
Faust lets the silence linger over them, settling as heavy as the stale scent of dust and rotting wood, burning at his nose and eyes.
Finally, Nero says a meek, “Sorry. I just thought it would help them out a little. Give them a little bit of evidence other than cobwebs and all.” Faust continues to hold his gaze, and Nero sighs and adds, “And I thought it would be a little funny to scare them a bit. Come on, you see what I’m getting at, right? It might stop them from doing dumb crap like this again.”
Faust purses his lips in preparation to scold him—and promptly presses them together in thought, because he can’t say he doesn’t understand the point. Sending them running and questioning their choices would be a fine deterrent for future escapades in abandoned houses.
But he thinks of Shino’s steady hand, and he can only laugh.
“From what I can tell, that might work on Heathcliff,” Faust says. “But if you think you’re going to scare Shino, then you’re a fool. If anything, you’d just be giving him a reason to come back.”
Nero stares at him in his oversized boots, dust motes fluttering above his hair as if they are a laughing audience reveling in his naivety. Finally, he leans back against the wall, which creaks so loudly Faust thinks it will break.
“This is what I get for trying to do a good deed,” he says, before flashing a sheepish grin. “Can you at least keep a secret, Mister Ghost Expert?”
“I’m a researcher,” Faust says in reproach. “And my credibility is on the line, so I won’t be an accomplice to your schemes. You’ll have to go back to your other guy and your gun.”
Nero scowls, a retort bubbling on his lips—but a horrified scream eclipses his words, reverberating through the old floors of the house.
Heathcliff.
Faust leaves their banter behind and rushes for the stairs, careful to keep his steps as light as possible. Nero’s footfall crashes behind him, laden by his comically large boots, and Faust prays the floorboards will hold long enough for them to get back to the ground floor.
The steps bow with a terrifying give under his heels, but remarkably, he survives the trek—followed immediately by a fierce crack and a yelp. Nero tumbles the last two steps behind him with an ankle snagged in a splintered board, wood broken around his boot like the jagged teeth of a beast bent on dragging him down into its maw.
And Faust is dragged backward in time with it.
Widened blue eyes, frozen in disbelief. Fluttering strands of silver swallowed by the dark. A hand outstretched. And the silence as his friend fell, and fell, and fell, and Faust had stared into the dark abyss stretching between the broken floorboards, had dropped to his knees beside the edge and screamed, nearly ready to pitch his body in after him, and—
Faust reaches for Nero’s arm and yanks him forward. And then, Nero is falling toward him, and the most exercise Faust gets is lifting a stack of books some students left abandoned on a library table.
They stumble down onto the landing and slam up against the wall, with Nero’s momentum sending their bodies sprawling across the floor. Faust hisses out in pain at the ache along his arm and hip, which will sport an ugly bruise by nightfall, no doubt.
“Fuck,” Nero says. “Thanks for that. Damn, I hope the owner doesn’t find out.”
Faust swipes his hat up from where it had fallen and wrenches Nero’s arm into his grasp. “I heard there’s a raccoon infestation,” he says, dragging Nero toward the trail of a flashlight that spills from the sitting room. “Now hurry, we have to move.”
He expects Nero to retort something flippant like, What, you seriously don’t believe this shit about ghosts, right? To his surprise, Nero remains silent, following close at his heels.
In the sitting room, an abandoned flashlight is turned toward Heathcliff, illuminating him in its cold glare, his form crouched on the ground with his hands over his ears. His shadow flickers against the far wall.
Shino kneels beside him with a hand on his back. “Heath, it’s all right. There’s nothing here.”
“No,” Heathcliff manages between a thin gasp. “No, I saw it—I saw her.”
Faust shifts toward the light, beside them both. “Her?”
Shino turns sharply, gaze narrowed and tense like that of a cornered cat. He squints against the glare and relaxes once Faust draws closer. Still, he keeps Heathcliff close to him, drawing both arms around his shaking shoulders. He furrows his brow, about to answer just as Heathcliff feebly raises his head.
“A woman in black,” Heathcliff says, voice so soft Faust thinks he might faint. He raises a shaking finger and points behind Faust and Nero. “Over there.”
Nero scoops up the abandoned flashlight and spins its light about the room and all its shadows, revealing layers of dust as thick as a carpet of snow and cobwebs abandoned by their architects. “Don’t see nothing. You know, we were just talking about how there could be—hey, Faust, watch it!”
Faust tears his gaze from the bones of the room and sends a sharp look Nero’s way. “Watch what?” he asks, nettled. “I haven’t moved at all.”
“You brushed my arm.” Nero turns the light upon him in accusation, leaving Faust to shy away with a scowl. “I know you’re pissed at me for the shit upstairs, but—”
Silence spreads across the distance between Faust and Nero.
“Oh,” Nero remarks.
Something flickers from behind him. Nero swings the flashlight around, illuminating a mottled face, bruised and waxy, its eyes two dark and empty sockets. Long tangled hair knots itself over wiry shoulders and a torn black frock, and a skeletal finger raises, pointing toward Nero, reaching for him—
Nero swipes out with a pocketknife, its blade tearing through the outstretched hand.
No, phasing right through it.
The hand bleeds from the world around them like the snuff of candle smoke. Nero moves the light wildly about the room, hilt of the small knife clutched so tightly in his hand that his knuckles are nearly as white as bone.
“What the hell was that thing?” he says.
In that house many years ago, Faust’s friend, his best friend, was falling, falling, falling—and before him, a human form, barely a smudge of light upon the world, stood with the faintest outline of a hand held above the gulf below. And though its face was nothing but a blur, though it had no eyes or lips, Faust could feel it looking upon him like a tyrant, could feel its breath on his ears and the rasp of its voice inside of his head, harsh and gravelly.
Leave.
Those words had followed him as his grandfather moved them to Vollmond, checked Faust’s room for any strange books, and forbade him from going out with other classmates.
He had given that all up. He would never again peel behind that veil, because what if someone else got hurt?
And yet here he is, guiding another era of fools through another hostile house.
“An apparition,” Faust says, and his voice is soft, as if his words are coming from somewhere so deep within him that they can barely find their way past his lips. “Likely the spirit of the rumored witch.”
“A what?” Nero asks haltingly. “No way. You got cameras in here, and some guy is going to come out and laugh at—that bastard Brad put you up to this, didn’t he? How much did he pay you?”
Shino helps a strikingly pale Heathcliff up to his feet. “Who the hell is Brad?”
The door to the sitting room slams shut, kicking up a large plume of dust. Shino cuts his flashlight through the cloud, illuminating the knob as it turns, slowly, before audibly clicking. Locked without a single key.
Nero draws closer, crouching low to the ground and running his fingers along the dust. “Where’s the string? How many objects do you got wrapped up?”
He’s silenced by a sound swirling around them, an eerie humming slithering through the shadows. The notes, high in pitch, linger in the dusty air and flutter with delight, relishing their cornered prey.
Overhead, the chandelier stirs with light, dimmed from the clotted cobwebs. It sputters, struggling to breathe, a feeble flame fighting against a strong wind. A hum of electricity runs through the room with a frenzied buzz—in and out, in and out. The chain holding the chandelier starts to swing, rocking back and forth with a treacherous creaking sound and tearing cracks along the wood. The ceiling shakes, and dust rains down upon them, the walls trembling and thudding.
Distant laughter stirs alongside ages of dust. The spirit, its silhouette pale and watery, shades the space before Nero once more, its frock fluttering on an invisible wind. The air around its form shimmers as it slowly lifts its hand, raising it over Nero’s head.
Faust’s thoughts race through the nonsense that he and his friend had written in that binder, the rituals they discussed over dismal school lunches, tucked away in the cafeteria out of earshot of all the other children who just couldn’t understand them.
How to purify spirits: salt, fire, iron, steam—
“Move! Cursed Blood Strike!”
Faust turns back toward the sound of Shino’s voice just in time to watch him rush past, a blur of light and shadow. Nero gives him cover with his flashlight, illuminating the spirit as Shino comes to a halt, stance widened, both hands gripped around the base of a stick-like object. He swings, and the spirit melts away like a breath against a sable winter sky.
The chandelier falls dormant, and the room settles into a stifled stillness. For a few uneasy seconds, only the dust motes move, scurrying through the light and fleeing toward darkened corners.
Shino turns and hoists an iron fireplace poker, twirling it with a nimble grip. “Make sure you get all this on camera, Heath!”
Heathcliff holds Shino’s phone up in front of his face to hide his chagrin as Shino continues to spin the poker between his fingers. Shino braces himself in a defensive position, crouched with squared shoulders, as if guarding them all from peril like an errant knight.
“Are you one of those band kids who tosses the baton?” Nero asks as he rises to his feet.
“Nope,” Shino says, keeping his gaze on the room before them. “I’m a tenth-level fighter with a cursed scythe that only hits its mark if it gets a drop of my blood. It can talk, too.” He smiles smugly. “I’m a big deal in our LARP group.”
Nero looks back at Faust, who only shrugs. From beside them, Heathcliff withdraws further into himself, his blush nearly bright enough to light up the entire room.
“No idea what the hell you just said,” Nero says, “but good for you.”
Heathcliff sobers their mood with a quiet, “It’s real, isn’t it? It’s a real spirit?”
Faust waits for Nero to scoff or Shino to offer some rude commentary. But neither one of them speak, instead turning toward him, eyes illuminated in the wake of each other’s flashlights. Nero’s gaze holds steady, and Shino’s lips just barely force back a grin in anticipation.
With a nod of his head, Faust says a resigned, “So it would seem.”
“I knew it,” Shino says with an enthusiastic little pump of his fist. “I knew it just by looking at this creepy place.” To Faust, he adds, “Next time, you should listen to me.”
“I don’t think I will,” Faust answers, turning away from Shino’s scowl to let his gaze sweep the room.
He recalls all the silly books and outlandish magazines about how ghosts were created, why they clung to the world of the living. He had once found them a foolish bit of entertainment. Now, he desperately tries to remember the words of the articles that were shoved in his face, punctuated by a spirited, “Faust, Faust, look at this!”
“The woman who lived here was isolated and blamed for an illness that befell the town,” Faust says, voice tight. “The possibility that her spirit could be vengeful is likely.”
Heathcliff inhales sharply. “So—”
“So, it could kill us?” Shino finishes.
Nero murmurs something under his breath, and Faust turns a shrewd glance upon him.
“Do you have something to add? You know the property owner.”
“Aside from this being a stupid prank?” Nero asks, running a hand through the back of his hair. When Faust doesn’t react, he sighs and offers a little shrug of his shoulders as if to signal him playing along. “I told you. The property owner ends any conversation about this place with a check before we can ask any questions.”
Shino shines his flashlight directly in Faust’s eyes. “You think the guy got freaked out by the ghost?”
“Get that light out of my face,” Faust says. When Shino obliges, not without muttering something, Faust continues. “I have no idea what he’s thinking. If he hasn’t torn this place down and doesn’t want anyone asking questions, he might be hiding something.”
Heathcliff draws closer to them, phone still clutched in his hands. “Like what? Do you think he knows something he doesn’t want anyone to find out?”
“Like a supervillain?” Shino adds.
Faust lets the silence brew between them. It’s a good question. He can’t say for certain, but the property owner is either a cruel, conniving man with gruesome interests, or he is a savior working to free the woman from her curse. Or both. But could anything really free her from her despair?
No, there must be something else keeping the spirit here, inside the house. Or perhaps . . .
“Shino, look out!” Heathcliff calls, low and with such tenacity Faust looks toward him to make sure he hasn’t been possessed.
Heathcliff barrels forward with a loud cry, toting an abandoned broom and swinging it wildly toward Shino, who stands with the spirit at his back, reaching for him with hands bruised like rotting fruit.
Shino turns just as Heathcliff swipes at the spirit with the broom’s bristles, which are clotted with dust and cast whiskered shadows upon the wall like a pouncing beast. Upon the rush, the spirit’s wispy form flickers and blinks out of view, retreating into darkness with silence left in its wake.
“Heath,” Shino begins, eyes widened.
“I know,” Heathcliff says, somehow retaining his grip on the phone throughout all that. Faust would have probably chosen to throw it instead. The glow of Shino’s flashlight illuminates Heathcliff’s reddening cheeks as he says, “That was embarrassing. I just thought it was going to hurt you, and so—”
A proud grin spreads across Shino’s face, eyes glimmering. “That was so cool, Heath. You should have seen yourself. You looked just like Lord Sapphire.”
“Lord Sapphire?” Faust and Nero echo.
Shino gestures to Heathcliff, whose blush has bled down his neck. “Heath’s paladin. Lord of the Azure City and one of the coolest heroes around. Just like Heath—”
Heathcliff covers his mouth, only to pull back with a horrified, “Shino, don’t lick my hand! Do you know how much dust and grime we’ve touched in here? What if you get sick?"
Nero leans in toward Faust and murmurs over their banter. “Do the kids not just go down by the creek and smash bottles and light stuff on fire anymore?”
Faust forgoes answering him, turning back toward Shino and Heathcliff, where the spirit keeps pointing toward. What if it was trying to communicate something? Something it wanted them to find?
He approaches the hearth behind them and crouches down in the dust and soot, trailing his light around the charred and uneven brick. Nothing etched in the walls, no traces of anything out of the ordinary.
The mantle shelf is empty, caked in dust and dirt, stained with rings and squares where treasured objects must have once stood. But Nero had said all the valuables were removed, which means any trinkets that once stood here are long gone by now.
Faust raises his light toward the brick above. There, bent and rusted, still clinging to the wall, is a small nail.
“Nero, did the owner ever mention a painting here among the valuables?” Faust asks.
“Nope,” Nero says. “Not that I remember.”
Faust trails his light toward the wall where the remaining furniture is wrapped and stacked up. A long and flat rectangle is leaned up against one of the curio cabinets.
Maybe Nero had overlooked something—a treasure left behind.
The chandelier flickers wildly. That wicked humming returns, notes curling around them like a creeping fog. Through the dust raining down from the ceiling, the spirit’s form bleeds against the shadows like ink upon a canvas, its bony finger extended toward Shino.
“Stand back,” Shino says, raising the fireplace poker. “I’ll deal with it.” He swings the poker in a few exaggerated motions before posing in a crouch. “It’s time to seal this evil and restore balance to the world.”
But the spirit points emphatically, even as Shino rears back to strike.
“Wait,” Faust begins.
And the spirit turns its bloated and disfigured head toward Faust, and though it has no eyes to look upon him, Faust can swear their gazes are locked.
The warmth of a tame hearth brushes against his back, and the aroma of sunlight on dewy grass fills his senses. Around him, the room flickers with soft light. The chandelier, free of its dusty trappings, illuminates every darkened corner.
Bits of life adorn the softened room. The immaculate ornate rug underneath a polished coffee table, piled with a hand-painted teapot and chipped saucers; a portrait of a young woman with sunny braids who watches a younger girl, whose head rests in her lap, with a fond smile; a bouquet of sunflowers resting upon the hearth.
A tempestuous wail cuts through the room, sharp with sorrow and limned by tears. The threnody sets the hair at the back of Faust’s neck on end.
Through it all, a harsh whisper reaches him through ages of grief.
Why? Why have they done this to me?
The room rapidly flickers between a barren ruin and its former treasure.
Give it back. You have no right to take it. Give it back, give it back, give it back—
Cold darkness seeps back in, and Faust watches Shino bring the poker down while yelling another ridiculous string of words that remind Faust too much of his youth.
“Shino, stop!”
To his surprise, Shino listens, halting the blow just shy of the spirit’s head. It blinks out of reality before reappearing at the back of the room, half-hidden in the shadows like a fearful creature. Nero tightens his grip around his knife, and the spirit draws back, vanishing through the far wall.
Shino and Nero turn sour and confused looks upon Faust.
“Why would you stop me?” Shino demands. “I almost had it.”
“It will keep spawning,” Faust says. “You won’t bring it to rest.”
“Spawning?” Shino frowns. “Like monsters on the map?”
Faust doesn’t understand, but Shino seems to, so he offers a hesitant, “Sure. There has to be something in this room that it wants, something it keeps pointing to.”
“And . . . if we give it to the spirit,” Heathcliff says, tinged with hope, “it will rest?”
“It’s possible,” Faust says. “Any object could be the source of the attachment.”
“Wait, the junk could be haunted?” Nero asks, and Faust can see the color blanch from his face as Shino rudely points the flashlight at him.
“I’m not confirming anything.” Faust shakes his head. “But, for all we know, there could be other spirits attached to the valuables the property owner removed.”
“Ah,” Nero says weakly, brow furrowed. “Right. Yeah. The owner is in deep shit. I’ll have to tell him . . . the owner.”
Faust stares at his odd expression. “Who else would you tell?”
Nero purses his lips, but a disembodied cry fills the room, guttural and wrenching at something in Faust’s chest, threatening to tear it apart. The spirit appears with its ghoulish outline like clouded water, its jaw slack and its hands outstretched as if to wring the life from the room. It raises from the ground, its limp hair streaming behind it, and lurches forward with a wrathful screech toward the huddled Shino, Heathcliff, and Nero.
Shino pulls Heathcliff out of the way, ducking them both behind the corner of a bookcase. Nero jumps to the opposite side of the room with a loud thud from the soles of his heavy boots.
“Over here,” Nero calls playfully. “Unless you want me to carve some nice graffiti on your walls, Miss Witch.”
The spirit slowly turns toward him, neck swiveling too far on its shoulders with a crackling and popping noise. It reaches for him, fingers overextended and features twisted in fury.
“Fuck,” Nero says, moments before he sprints across the room, the spirit soaring toward him with Shino and his fireplace poker in pursuit. Heathcliff remains behind the bookshelf with his eyes closed, the phone extended around the corner.
“Keep distracting it,” Faust calls.
“Hurry the hell up!” Nero yells frantically as he jumps and rolls forward, just missing a curio cabinet that topples behind him with unseen force.
Faust yanks the cloth off the object in the corner, expecting some sort of hidden treasure that the owner had overlooked in the move. A flash of light reflects off the surface in front of him, and he starts a little, drawing back. It takes him a moment to realize the light is his own flashlight bouncing off the glass of an antique mirror, foxing splotching it with distortions. The wide, gilded frame is stained with patina, consuming various carved embellishments along its edges.
Still, it’s rather beautiful. The craftsmanship, even in such a deteriorated state, is so careful and intricate, and Faust can’t fathom how anyone could have left such a thing behind. Really, if he had seen the mirror discarded anywhere else, he might have taken it with him.
“Damn it!” Shino calls, voice thready with hints of panic.
Faust glances up to see the spirit whirling on Shino, who is sprawled along the floor, poker spun out of his grasp and tossed across the room. Shino scoots back along the dusty floorboards as the spirit points down at him in accusation, gesturing toward—
Realization slams into Faust with sobering clarity. Before he can stop himself, he charges forward, raising the mirror to let the spirit get a good look at itself.
The spirit halts its pursuit of Shino, a choking sound sputtering in its throat.
Faust hoists the mirror a bit higher with arms outstretched. “This isn’t who you are, is it, Bianca?”
The spirit twitches, lowering its arms and relaxing its fingers until its hands are held outward to receive, as if to brush the mirror in a sorrowful lament. It brings its skeletal fingers to its face.
“It’s all right,” Faust says softly. “I have something to give to you.”
Nero offers some breathy comment about how crazy Faust is, how he’s trusting a “homicidal dead lady,” of all things. Still, Faust moves closer to Shino, who rises to his feet as he looks between Faust and the spirit, wide-eyed and seemingly at a loss for words.
“Give me the sunflower,” Faust says to him.
Shino starts in confusion, hesitating as he glances at the sunflower peering out of his pocket. He grabs for its stem and hands it to Faust with a wary expression. Faust passes him the mirror, looking at him sternly.
“Can I trust you to keep holding this?” he asks. “Keep it trained on the spirit. Do not move a single inch.”
Firmly, Shino nods, gripping the mirror resolutely. Faust pats him on the shoulder before turning toward the spirit, the sunflower held out like a benediction. The spirit stands as still as a stalled breath. The air seems to be thinning, and Faust’s words are clouded wisps against the darkness.
“No one ever gave anything to you in return for your kindness,” Faust says, moving to keep the mirror in view of the spirit. This has to be right. This has to be it. “Please, take this, and be at peace knowing that people will find joy in what you have grown here once again.”
In Vollmond, there are many superstitions. The only one Faust has been unable to track to any point in history is this: if you break a promise, you will suffer a disastrous fate.
Perhaps Bianca had heard of it, perhaps it will prove his sincerity, ruined fate be damned. He has lives resting on this choice.
He lowers his voice. “I promise.”
The spirit reaches for the sunflower, brushing its fingers along the petals.
In the reflection of the mirror, the image of the room distorts, revealing the bright and immaculate sitting room Faust had seen moments before. He can almost smell smoke and burning kindling, can hear the melody of a gentle hum, soothing and dreamlike.
Within the frame, he can see the portrait of a young woman, her face shrouded in shadow, golden tresses gathered up in two braids draped across her shoulders. Her bright white dress gathers all the light of the room, brighter than the gleaming chandelier. She runs a hand lovingly across the sunflower petals before pressing her freckled cheek to them, wrapping her hands around the stem in a tender embrace.
She sighs—an aching and trembling breath, a stifled sob breaking free.
And then she is gone, the sunflower along with her, and the mirror shows the true nature of the ruin around him, cold and still. The door to the room swings open upon its hinges like a grip falling slack.
“Is it over?” Heathcliff asks, and though his voice is barely above a whisper, it still startles Faust out of his thoughts.
Faust turns from the mirror and looks the three of them over in the glare of the flashlights. “Yes, I think so.”
“You said you don’t do ghost hunting,” Shino says with an accusatory stare.
Faust shrugs, gaze falling to the dust motes waltzing through the wedges of pale light. “I don’t. Osmosis from research.”
Silence settles around them. Faust looks up to see three dubious faces—Shino and Nero with audacious scowls, and Heathcliff with the tiniest furrow of his brow.
“I will not be scrutinized,” Faust says tersely, “by two children who lied to me and their parents, and a security guard who let someone in for pizza without consent of the property owner.”
Shino’s scowl blossoms into a glower as he leans the mirror up against the wall. “I didn’t lie. I just—”
“Shino,” Heathcliff admonishes, voice sharpened by lingering fear. When Shino falls silent in a contemptuous pout, Heathcliff offers Faust a doleful, “We’re sorry for the trouble.”
Nero shrugs. “Hey, don’t be too hard on them, Faust. You decided to come in too, you know.”
Faust’s ears prickle with heat. “Do not turn this around on me.”
“I’m just saying,” Nero begins, only to stop as something thumps along the floorboards from directly overhead.
Shino pulls Heathcliff closer to him as he raises the flashlight toward the ceiling. The chandelier sways gently, dislodging trickles of dust. Faust shares a glance with Nero, and both are moving in front of Shino and Heathcliff, Nero’s knife returned to his hand and Faust crouching to pick up the fireplace poker where Shino had dropped it.
Another spirit? Or had someone else come in during their skirmish?
“Faust,” Nero says, voice coiled low in his throat, a blade waiting to be let loose.
To Shino and Heathcliff, Faust says, “Stay here, you two. Nero and I are going to check upstairs.”
The patter overhead grows more frenzied, unlike Nero’s solid steps had been. It's scratchy, as if broken nails are biting into the wood, dragging across the floor.
“No,” Shino says adamantly. “We’re going with this time.”
The noise comes closer, the chandelier rocking heavily.
“We should stay here, Shino,” Heathcliff says. “We caused enough trouble for them.”
The fiber of the wood starts to tear apart with a horrifying groan.
“Get back!” Faust yells, pushing Shino and Heathcliff against the wall with his body shielding them. Nero is at his back, a warm hand braced around Faust’s side.
The wood gives, and the chandelier plummets along with it, slamming into the coffee table below with a thunderous clash and a wave of roused dust churning around the room. Faust presses Shino and Heathcliff’s faces against the front of his coat before tucking his head against his shoulder and closing his eyes. From behind him, Nero coughs, cursing through a wheeze.
The noises subside, and Faust raises his head, lenses of his glasses blanketed in dust that speckles his vision. He can feel Shino and Heathcliff pulling back from his shoulders.
“Are you both all right?”
“What was that?” Shino asks, just as Heathcliff answers, “I think we’re fine, but . . .”
“Nero?” Faust asks.
Silence greets him.
Faust glances over his shoulder, finding Nero standing perfectly still—too still, shoulders stiff and posture too straight for someone who had been slinking through the house.
“Guys,” Nero says, pointing to something in front of them. Something that hisses. “We need to get the hell out of here as fast as we can.”
Faust struggles to see around him. “What? What is—”
Shino raises his flashlight and illuminates something perched atop the fallen chandelier, teeth bared. Gray fur. Two black stripes painted across two beady eyes. A ringed tail.
Oh, shit.
The raccoon hisses and rears back, and Nero is yelling for them to run as Faust is shoving Shino and Heathcliff forward. Nero brings up the rear in his ridiculous boots, and they are yelling to each other in disjointed words and thoughts, hurried strings of, “Go, go, go!”
They stumble down the porch—Nero falling as his heel catches on the front step—and rush to Nero’s van, swiveling around in a breathless rush. Shino grips Heathcliff, who has a hand clutched around the hem of Faust’s coat. Bashfully, Heathcliff retracts his hand, murmuring a soft apology.
The doorway remains still and darkened, the raccoon abandoning its chase. Nero picks himself up and brushes dirt off his front with a glower and reddened cheeks.
“If that had been a killer,” he says, “good to know you all would have just left me to die.”
Faust rolls his eyes. “Next time, wear better shoes.”
Nero scowls at him, but says nothing, his blush darkening in the warm light of the waning sun. The corners of Faust’s lips twitch, and he just barely bites back a soft laugh.
“Heath,” Shino says, fist braced against the side of Nero’s van as he catches his breath. “You got all that on camera, right?”
Heathcliff looks down at the phone still clutched in his hands like a vestige against lingering danger. “Oh,” he says, looking down at it rather timidly. “Yes, I think so.”
Shino doesn’t seem to notice the way Heathcliff trails off, for he makes a motion for Heathcliff to pass him the phone with a conceited grin. “We’re going to be so famous after this. I bet all the television producers will be calling us up and—wait.” He brings the phone closer, furiously swiping. “Heath, what are these? These aren’t videos.”
Heathcliff peers over his shoulder, and Nero leans in, too. Even Faust cannot resist curiosity’s lure, drawing up behind Nero to get a glimpse of multiple blurry photos of a hand, presumably Heathcliff’s; several shots of abject darkness; and one singular photo of Heathcliff, face contorted in a terrified scream, with Nero and Shino’s blurred forms behind him. Faust finds himself in the background, glasses reflecting the glare of the camera’s flash.
“Heath,” Shino begins in disbelief.
With crimson cheeks and ears, Heathcliff says, “I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t know what to do!”
“You’re such a scaredy-cat.”
“I am? Look at this photo, Shino. You’re yelling, too!”
Nero turns away to cough into his shoulder, but it comes out in a hysterical wheeze, his entire back shaking from the force of his laughter. Faust clears his throat and lightly kicks him on the ankle, earning a muffled, “ouch.”
Faust rests a hand atop Heathcliff’s head, and then Shino’s, waiting for him to swat him off. Shino doesn’t—he simply stews in his misery, his arms folded over his chest and phone tucked under his arm.
“Even if you had been filming, spirits don’t show up on modern cameras very well,” Faust says. “There is no guarantee you would have gotten clear footage.” He pats them both sympathetically. “You were brave, though. For two investigators without any experience, you handled yourselves very well. You should be proud.”
Heathcliff settles, glancing surreptitiously at Shino, who is oddly silent for someone who had been mouthing off to a vengeful spirit.
“He’s right,” Nero says, joining Faust in reassurances with an awkward clap of his hand on Shino’s shoulder. “Don’t look too down. This sorta stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, anyway. Look at guys like Mister Ghost Nerd. He’s so broke, he’d take pizza as payment. Just stay in school, okay?”
A sharp glance is all Faust offers Nero for the barb before Shino raises his head, looking at them both. For a moment, Faust thinks Nero’s self-deprecation had some effect, that Shino had seen a glimpse of his future in Faust and decided to flee.
“Do you think,” Shino says, “if I got a really old camera, like from the time you two were born, I might be able to catch a ghost on film?”
“Shino,” Heathcliff says weakly under his breath, earning an incredulous look from his companion.
Nero’s expression sours. “Hey, we’re not that old. Do you think we’re geezers, or something?”
“Disposable camera with film old,” Shino says, and though Nero purses his lips to argue, Shino continues, louder this time. “Having to take your photos into the store to see them old.” He shrugs. “I heard about it from Heath’s parents.”
Faust catches Nero’s glance, a hint of defeat in the gesture. Well, they did do that. Perhaps they are older than they think.
“I meant that you need proper equipment, not just cameras,” Faust says. “If you’re going to be seeking ghosts, you must be prepared.”
Shino leans forward. “Can you show me how to—”
“No.” Faust looks at Shino and Heathcliff both, watching them blister under his firm rejection. “And we are not going to be taking any pizza coupons.”
Around a sigh, Nero murmurs, “Sorry, Brad.”
“We’re going to have a discussion with your guardians, first,” Faust says.
Heathcliff lowers his gaze, color blanching from his cheeks. Shino doesn’t look away, keeps staring directly at Faust with both betrayal and chagrin in the narrow of his eyes.
Ah, he knows that look. He remembers the last time he saw it, framed by the smell of antiseptic and the rhythmic beat of a hospital monitor. A bouquet of sunflowers clutched so tightly in his hand he could have crushed them; and sharpened blue, brighter than the summer sun, alighting on him in disbelief as Faust ran from that room and never saw him again.
“And if they are all right with it,” Faust continues, voice softened, borrowed from somewhere faraway, “then I will allow you to accompany me for more research. No investigations until you understand what you are getting yourselves into.” Shino and Heathcliff trade astonished glances, and Faust clears his throat. “If you insist on pizza in celebration, I know a better place. My treat this time. Nero can get the next one.”
Nero sputters, “Hold on, who said I was part of this? I’m a security guard. I don’t do ghosts and all that.”
Faust pats him on the shoulder. “We need to talk to the property owner about this place. You can bring your boots to the meeting, if they make you feel safer.”
Nero’s blush could put even the most vibrant reds to shame, and Faust almost pities him. “Shut up,” he says, sharpness of the rebuke diluted by the high pitch of his voice. “I’m throwing these damn things out after this.” To Shino and Heathcliff, with a sense of defeat, he says, “Your bikes can fit in my van. Teach here can follow us.”
Teach? Faust bristles, scowl on his face, but Nero is already yanking the dented side door of his van open to reveal a wealth of tools inside, with big and bulky stacks, square like crates, hidden by stained tarps. Perhaps Two Guys and a Gun also do home restorations.
“I’m just bringing you guys home,” Nero is saying as he helps the children lift their bikes inside. “You don’t want a lousy guy like me hanging around.”
“But you’re so nice, Nero,” Heathcliff insists.
“You swung that knife really cool, too,” Shino adds.
Faust turns away with a smile, listening to the sound of Nero’s protests as he heads for his car. A gentle breeze drifts through the field, stirring up the sunflower stalks in a sibilant chorus, carrying the chatter of birdsong from somewhere nearby. The sunflower petals sway shyly beside the dirt road in a parade of golden goodbyes.
The thrum of the car’s sputtering engine runs through the seats and rattles the cupholders, shaking Faust’s flip phone—the same one he has had since middle school, one he hardly uses nowadays other than to contact his sister and check in on his mother whenever his grandfather is teaching at the church.
He reaches for it, navigating to his contacts list, settling on one name that still haunts the list, one he had blocked long ago when his grandfather had torn him away, a face he had searched for every day between the library stacks.
With shaking fingers, he unblocks the number. Stares at the phone. Waits for something—a call, a message, anything. Nothing. But of course, there would be nothing. It’s been so long. He turned his back on him. He’d never reach out to him, after all this time.
He looks at his messages: one promising his sister he would meet for dinner on Saturday, and one telling his landlord that rent would be a few days late. A few taps, and then he has a name he used to send texts to with ease headlining a message, his cursor blinking at him.
What could he say, after all this time? Remember when you broke your leg and a few ribs, and while you were in the hospital, I disappeared from town ages ago? He presses the space key and watches the character count go from zero to one, watches the cursor staring at him in judgment after that feeble step forward, as if asking, What the hell are you thinking?
Something raps on the door. Faust jerks, clutching the phone closer before he throws it, thumb pressing down. A resolute beep chimes. Shino yells, beyond his driver’s side window, “Hurry up! Follow Nero!”
And then Shino is gone, and an animation of a message is flying off at high-speed across Faust’s phone screen, and he is seized with the urge to vomit.
No, no, take it back, delete it. How does he delete it . . . can you even delete it?
He tosses his phone back into the cup holder, trembling hands on the steering wheel and a cold sweat lining his back, pressed against the hot leather upholstery. Nero’s van is waiting for him at the end of the dirt drive, and Faust keeps his gaze fixed on Nero’s plates, stomach churning and heart thudding.
In the rearview mirror, the house stands shuttered by time, a camouflaged beast hiding its wounds. The golden sunset slips between the shadows just right, just enough to brush the windows and light up every pane, bright against years of dust and grime.
Faust’s phone rings out with a two-toned chime, shaking in the cupholder like a revenant of its own.