"Ah fuck. Jess, I think I forgot the batteries for the EMF. I might be able to scrounge enough from a few of the flashlights but that might only leave us with one."
Jess finished fixing her mane of hair up into a scrunchie and smeared an errant patch of lipstick from the corner of her mouth. "It's fine," she said, turning away from the mirror affixed to the cube van's interior wall. "I'm going in solo, and this is a lights-out kinda deal anyway."
The flipped latch and grating rumble of the van's door rolling upward cut Deek's protest off before he had a chance to begin.
"'S'matter with you?" asked Elle, flooded by the dim light she'd just released into the cool Spring air.
"She thinks she's going in alone," Deek said dismissively, obviously not looking to participate in the coming argument. He turned back to his cluttered workbench and pretended to fiddle with some gizmo before his mouth got the better of him.
"Oh, hell fucking no!" Elle protested, heaving herself up into the small cabin. The waifish pixie's shock of red hair didn't quite crest Jessica's chest, making her defiance laughably futile in the face of the taller woman's resolve.
"Get over it," Jess demanded, "both of you. File says the old girl's shy, so this is the best way to coax her out."
"What else does the file say, eh? You wanna talk about that for a sec?" Elle demanded.
"Enough," Jess threatened.
"Come on! Deek? You really just gonna sit on your fat ass and-"
"Don't drag me into this," the portly technician huffed, waving a dismissive hand over his head in reply.
"You're such a fucking bellend, you know that?"
Jess took advantage of her crew's developing row, slipping past her angsty A/V operator and dropping to the ground with a dull thud.
"I shouldn't be long! Don't come looking for me for at least a couple hours."
"You're fucked, you know that?" Elle hollered at Jess's back. "Fucked!"
"Yeah, yeah," Jess muttered to herself, crunching up the long gravel drive as a peel of predatory lightning rent the sky. The backlit flash of Lodavike Manor nearly impressed the seasoned Paranormalist. "That's the whole idea."
*******
As was her way, Jessica made her way through the place quietly, and by candlelight alone. The first lap was never meant to draw unnecessary attention; she'd need to know her way around a little in case a quick getaway became necessary.
The old Victorian manor house groaned in protest at her very presence; aged floorboards and joists strained loudly as she passed over them carefully. The report indicated heavy activity on the second floor, particularly the library, but she was shrewd enough to know that those very reports were often written by fools who'd bolted at the first bump they heard in the night. Besides, she had a thing for these old places and was selfishly curious to see what it looked like before she got down to business.
"Creepy," she said to herself; the sputtering candle cast unreliable light over a standing vignette above the fireplace in a drawing room. The photo itself was mundane enough but for the rabid tears across the visage of the place's long-dead master, Lord Egarton. His wife, the reclusive Annabelle Carrow, stood at his side, clutching at his arm dutifully. Her tepid sidelong glance betrayed the disdain she was reputed to have had for her erstwhile spouse. "I guess you weren't much of a fan, hey Annie?"
The house's old bones groaned in reply.
"I thought not," Jessica uttered, forcing herself to remain calm. It was all too easy to let fear get the better of you in places like Lodavike, and Jess knew she'd need to steel her nerves before making any concerted effort to establish contact.
"Let's get on with it then," she said, mounting the wide, curved stair to the second-floor gallery.
Where the first floor had looked relatively put together, Jess's first glimpses of the landing promised no such order would be found upstairs. Lithographed photos hung at odd angles on the walls, if they hung at all, and long scratches tore the floral wallpaper in gouges as long as she was tall. Several wall sconces had been ripped wholesale from their places, and the carpeted hall had a palpably restless pressure to it. The drafty impression of a chill cooled Jess from the inside out.
"Bit of a messy girl, aren't you?" Jess said aloud. It was obvious that the detrital remains of Carrow's essence had long since given themselves permission to wander the house freely.
As if in answer, an unseen door sighed on its hinges somewhere down the hall. This was the invitation, and Jess would be a fool to balk at such a brazen call now. A gusting rush of sourceless wind shoved at Jess's backside, blowing her airy skirt around clamorously.
"Alright, alright," she said, squinting into the dark. She decided to forego the effort of trying to relight her candle. She knew she should leave, but trust was a fickle thing with the ones beyond, and she'd not miss her chance at an encounter like this now. Bits of plaster and photo plate crunched underfoot as Jess bade the call of the decidedly restless dead.
Slivers of moonlight through high windows gave Jess just enough light to see by. The room was handsomely appointed, if dated by modern standards, with heavy bookshelves and writing desks set around the perimeter. The smell of rotting pages and crumbling velum reeked of decay, but the oppressive crush of ectostatic energy made the room truly uncomfortable. That, and the knowledge that she was far from alone.
Clearing her throat, Jessica slipped into her 'talking to ghosts' tone; commonly accepted scholarship dictated that the unliving were either jealous or outright afraid of those who possessed what they could not, and that a firm hand would yield the best results.
"Annabelle Carrow. I'm here to speak with you. My name is-"
Rolling peels of thunder announced a blowing gale that drove the paned window inward in ways it was never meant to. The wooden frame cracked around its tortured hinges with a terrible screech, and Jessica squinted against the debris that blew in, shielding her face against the leaves and bits of scree that pricked her skin.
"Hey, cut it out!" Jessica ordered, sure that this was no natural outburst.
As commanded, the assault abated at once and the room became still, as though nothing had transpired at all. "That's more like it," Jessica said, placing her candle on the nearest desk and brushing herself down.
"THAT'S more like it," came a viperous whisper from nowhere and everywhere at once, so soft that Jessica almost doubted she'd heard anything at all. The goosebumps on her flesh sold out the lie of her doubt surely enough. Jessica spun on her heel, sure that the thing had entered the room behind her.
Jessica swallowed hard, searching the room furtively for signs of the specter. She dared not speak to the thing again until she could determine a measure of its malevolence. Turning about, Jess's shoe kicked a wooden plaque on the hardwood floor. Silently, she mouthed the words on the placard at her feet: "Do not uncover."
On cue, the rustle of heavy drapery rasped noisily; what Jess had determined to be a curtained window revealed itself for what it was: a massive, heavy gilt pane of mirrored glass that stood at least 10 feet tall, or more.
"What in the- GAH!" Jess shrieked in outright terror as something plucked hard at a loose tress of her hair. There could be no mistaking the goading contact for what it was; Annabelle's potent spirit had ripped itself into the room in a mockery of corporeal constitution, and with enough force to affect the physical plane as she saw fit. Jess turned for the door, knowing full well it was futile; the heavy oak plank SLAMMED itself shut hard enough to splinter its frame. Jessica yelped in terror anew.
"Oh fuck, oh god!" she huffed breathily.
The thing gripped the bun of ruddy red hair on top of her head and yanked backward, hard, eliciting a strangled cry from Jess, who nearly fell back into the mirror altogether. She reached up to pry the incorporeal fingers free but was swatted away painfully by an icy club she couldn't see. "You fucking whore!" she sputtered. Icy fear gripped her heart as her legs turned to jelly.
From the mirror at her back, Annabelle Carrow's fractally segmented lips smiled in a hungry grin of satisfaction. The woman's terror would feed her starving need for decades at this rate. Probing outwardly, she blinked an ounce of herself into the cold wick of Jessica's discarded candle, filling the room with its timid light.
"THAT'S more like it-" the thing hissed again, drawing fresh shrieks from the woman whose hair she refused to release. It had been years since Annabelle had managed to manifest, possibly decades if the girl's outlandishly garish skirt was anything to go by.
"Let me go," Jessica pled, reaching toward the door with both hands. "You asshole!"
In reply, the spirit took a handful of the woman's skirt in its hand and yanked the thing away in one violent tear. As eager as it was to feed on the living thing's screams, echos of Annabelle's former predilections forced their way along the threads of time to tickle at her hastily collected bits of consciousness; the squirming bundle of life in her clutches was bare beneath the skirt, and it's ass rippled to and fro as it fought against their grip. Purpose, self, and a sense of being continued to assemble themselves back into the thing Annabelle had become over the years, but the first thing to return to her wholly was her thirst.
It was a thirst she'd been denied too often in life.
Clapping the memory of her hand alongside Jessica's head, the specter drove herself in and ate greedily. She ate well.
She bit the back of her hand as a square of light played profane pictures of women's tongues lapping between each others' legs in a dark room. She couldn't wake the ones she lived with, not with this on the screen. The man she was devoted to didn't know about this particular secret, and he wasn't the forgiving type. The rush of shameful pleasure curled her toes as her legs began to shake.
Annabelle moved on from her appetizer.
