“Being different is cool, right?”

*This story is underneath my folder titled “Paranormal Showgirl”. Please rid pinned comment! Gacha Club character designs are under my forum titled “My character designs<33[2]”. Enjoy!*

Chapter One-Rickety ol’ house

My childhood home is an old one, made sometime in the Victorian era, full of creaking floorboards and walls with peeling paint. My parents never got around to making the house look entirely spic and span. I mean, they always tried their best to keep the house as picture-perfect as possible, but there was never enough time to get rid of every broken part of the house. Our house was too big and my parents had too many things to do in their lives.

Not that I minded, though. As a thirteen year old girl who loved watching paranormal romance TV shows and imagining myself as some witch who lived in a cave and conducted spells that could either save or harm, I enjoyed living in such a house. Every little noise that came from the house inspired me to write my own spooky stories in my free time. Anytime that I wrote something, my head was filled with many ideas for my original characters and all the things they loved or wanted to do. Living in an old house gave me ideas, ideas gave me motivation, and motivation made me feel happy, important. Motivation fueled me to write, which I loved, because I believed that if I wrote enough stories, then I would have enough to send out to publishing companies and then I’d become a famous, world-renowned author one day.

My little brother, Aiden, didn’t like the house’s rickety bones and my parents certainly didn’t, but I did. I liked to pretend that it was haunted with ghosts who only wanted friends, because it brought some excitement and joy in my life to think that there were people who weren’t human that wanted someone to talk to, to confide in. Having ghosts as friends always seemed charming to me.

But there’s always at least one ghost who isn’t all flowers and blue skies. Not a whole lot of them, but at least one, just like how there’s always one annoying kid in class who has to ruin something nice for everybody with their…what word should I use? No, I don’t need to use a fancy word. I’ll just say…bad vibes.

Chapter Two-Behind the cobwebs

It was one cool July night when I first met them all. The house was making its little noises like it always did. I was in my bed, looking out of my window that I had cracked open just a little, letting the crisp night air waft into my room and staring at the moon hanging amongst the stars and the fireflies that blinked in and out of view, as though they were shy faeries. I listened to the sounds of the house and the gentle summer breeze, letting them both lull me to sleep along with the ideas that stewed in my head, when suddenly, amidst the familiar sounds, I heard something different:

A sobbing child. It sounded faint, but it was still there, hidden amongst all of the other usual noises. I knew it wasn’t Aiden because the cries sounded faraway, not entirely there, and they sounded like they belonged to someone much, much younger than my brother.

Though I felt twinges of fright within me upon hearing the disembodied cries of a child, I also felt terrible for lying in bed while a child was crying. Ghost child or not, the kid needed comfort.

So, I pushed back the covers and slipped on my black slippers with hot pink skulls on them (my favorite slippers I had when I was growing up), walked up to my bedroom door and made my way out into the hallway.

I didn’t know where the child was, so I did my best to follow the sobbing sounds. It’s a lot harder to follow where a particular sound is coming from than how it’s shown in the movies, because the sound moves up, down, and all around. The house being worn-down didn’t help much, either.

But I followed the cries until I made it to one of the many brown oak doors of the house and I turned the golden knob.

All of the doors in the house looked the same, but not every single door in the house was ever explored or opened until that one July night, when I followed a child’s cries.

The room I stepped into was riddled with thick, white cobwebs that zig-zagged in every direction. Coats of dust lay on every surface, I wrapped my arm around my nose so no one would hear me sneeze (also, it’s polite).

My dust allergies were not having it, but I persisted, determined to find the source of the crying.

I pushed back mounds of cobwebs, not minding the spiders that fell out of them, for I’ve killed many spiders in my room and I was ready to swat them to their deaths. My eyes were a little watery, but after pulling away enough cobwebs, I could see the peeling pink paint on the walls, the small bed with the white bedsheets, the white bed frame, and the lace canopy, the music boxes and the porcelain dolls, the picture books all neatly stacked in a little bookshelf…

This looked like a little girl’s room, with dainty, delicate things all crumpled up and decaying with time. I opened my mouth in awe, about to spend more time looking at the room, but the crying had gotten louder, so I persisted on.

I had gotten farther and farther until I was standing in front of a porcelain doll with golden hair tied up into pigtails with lace pink bows, in a white lace dress with pink roses and bows stitched throughout the seams, white socks and boots, staring up at me with big blue eyes, sitting on a white nightstand next to a pink lamp with a lace pink lampshade that curved just like a flower.

The cries were the loudest around that doll, so I felt that they were coming from it. I’ve never had tocomfort a crying person before, so I put on my softest tone and asked:

“Hey now, why are you crying? What’s wrong?”

The crying stopped. My thoughts twisted and turned with feeling glad that the crying stopped and also dearly hoping that the doll wasn’t like the dolls in horror movies who killed anyone unlucky enough to come across it.

“You can hear me?” A little girl’s sob-choked voice asked from where the doll was.

“Yes, I can.” I said, internally screaming at how small, how terrified she sounded. If what I was thinking happened to be true, then there was a little girl’s ghost inside of the voice. A little girl was dead.

It must have been only a few minutes, but the silence felt like it was stretching on and on for eternity, without any real end. It seemed to me that the little girl was processing my presence, a little shocked that I came all this way for her.

“What’s your name?” She asked timidly, breaking the rare silence of the house.

“It’s Stefania. What’s yours?” I asked, my throat slightly raspy from the dust built up around the room.

“I’m Fleur. Could you please pick me up and get me out of this room?” Fleur asked, a little confidence crawling into her voice.

No longer wanting the little girl to be stuck in that insanely dusty room (and not wanting to sneeze anymore), I picked her up and walked right on out of the room, through the billowing cobwebs and sprinkles of dust.

Chapter Three-A common fairytale

“Do you want me to leave you alone now or…?” I asked, unsure of what to do next.

I had just gotten out of the bedroom and was wiping my eyes like crazy from the poorly maintained room. One arm was cradling Fleur as though she were a baby, the other was connected to the hand that wiped at my teary eyes.

I was standing in the hallway, unsure of what to do next. I wanted to help her out as much as I could, but I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable with my words. From my experience, prying too much information out of anybody would make them want to decline into themselves to the point where they wouldn’t say anything at all. Besides, Fleur was only a little girl whom I had just met, so I wanted to be extra careful with how I acted around her.

“No. I like this. Take me to the library, please. That’s where my Mommy and Daddy are.” Fleur said, all sadness gone from her voice.

Our house was big enough to have its own library, something that my Dad is immensely proud of. I’ve been to the library sometimes, but I spent most of my time writing and reading stories in my room, so I’ve never noticed any ghosts before. To be honest, I think that even if I had been to the library I wouldn’t have noticed the ghosts, because people die all the time, so maybe they hide themselves well and are sometimes heard among the sounds of everyday life.

Either way, I was happy to help Fleur reunite with her parents and so, I walked towards the library, Fleur in both of my arms, the affects of my allergies fading away with the time I spent out of the room.

“How did you and your parents die? Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, unable to help myself. I had many questions swirling in my head, the loudest of them at the moment being about how Fleur and her parents died. I wanted to get closer to the ghosts in my house, so that I could live out my fantasies of being friends with ghosts.

Immediately after I wondered if I had made a mistake in asking, but then I heard Fleur say as though she had waited so long to say it:

“My parents and I were invited to a royal party at a castle. Everybody in town was invited. They were celebrating something important, I don’t remember what. I was having so much fun, but then I went too far in the castle and an old witch killed me and cursed me to be trapped in this doll. I think she’s here, in this house.”

I did remember learning in my history class that back in the nineteenth century in the town I lived in, there was this celebration at the Albrecht family castle. It was for Prince Cesare Albrecht’s twenty-sixth birthday, the celebration. I’ve heard that three people disappeared in that party. The two biggest mysteries of the story was how the royal family could invite the entire town to a birthday party and why three people “disappeared”.

When I thought about it, I supposed that Fleur and her parents were the ones who disappeared that night. She told me what happened with clarity and small hints of fear, but there wasn’t any cracking in her voice that would indicate tears. She was trapped for a long time and her cries had stopped when she knew that I heard her. I guess that her tears ran dry.

I had made it to the library door and so, I turned open the knob, just like how I did to get to Fleur’s room, my head pounding with fear over who the witch that Fleur told me about may be and the whole, full truth of how Fleur and her parents died. I had a feeling inside of me that told me she wasn’t telling me the full truth, that there may have been some things she didn’t realize at the time that she died, but nonetheless, hoping that my questions could be answered when I opened the door and also hoping to free Fleur and her parents.

Because I knew that if me and my family were the ones trapped in a house as spirits, I’d want us all to be set free by a kind stranger.

Chapter Four-Helpful heart

The library looked like the kind of libraries straight out of a magical academy, with cherub renaissance painting ceilings and oak shelves with owls carved on the top. Only, it wasn’t ridiculously large. Yes, it was bigger than a public school library, but not entirely grandiose. All of the books were books with yellowing pages and a musty smell. They weren’t covered with dust, so I didn’t sneeze to death!

It looked just like how it always did, with the volumes of ancient books towering in their shelves, except, far in a corner of the room, illuminated by the moonlight in one of the windows, were spectral, lace-like visions of a woman in a cardinal red dress with a silver-droplet crown adorning her flowing black hair and a man in a black suit with a red rose in his blond, braided hair. Both of them were bleeding, both of them had claws and slit-eye snake pupils. This was new to me, for I had never heard of ghosts like them before.

But nevertheless, I handed Fleur to the woman with outstretched arms, pushing aside any lingering terrors that I had for the sake of the child and her family.

The expressions on the adults’ faces…oh goodness, they looked like they were in shock, like they were going to cry. I felt a twisting pain inside my heart like I had gotten stabbed with a knife, for seeing their broken faces became more real to me that they were ghosts, that they were destroyed by some great, deadly force…but what? Did I even deserve to know?

“Thank you. Thank you so, so, so much. You have no idea how long we’ve tried to be reunited with her. We could hear her, but we couldn’t go past the library. There’s this curse that-“

“Leave her alone, Mikayla. It’s no use telling a child about our curse. She’s done enough good already, with bringing Fleur to us.” The man said.

The woman-Mikayla-had a flicker of sorrowful understanding in her eyes. The man wrapped his arms around Mikayla, in what looked like an attempt to comfort her, but I was dying to know the extent of what they were talking about. An old witch? A royal family? A curse? These were the kind of things I’ve only ever read about in stories and even though I was becoming a little horrified, above all I was excited. Thrilled. I was starting to have my own ghostly adventure, just like the main character in a story.

Granted, I wasn’t just excited about going on an adventure. Seeing the family all together and looking as though they wanted to disintegrate into ashes, their eyes gleaming with tears, brought a heavy sense of misery in my heart, as though I had nothing left, not even loved ones, for miles and miles and miles.

I had just met the ghosts, but I cared about them. I imagined me and my family in their place, cries lost within the creaks and cracks of a tombstone house.

“No, I want to help. I’ve brought your daughter here and I know that you all exist. It’s not like I’m going to go to sleep and just forget that this all happened. I’m thirteen years old, not three. I know about things like death and corrupt people. I know that I’m young and that I just met you all, but please…I want to help in the best way that I can. What can I do to help?” I pleaded.

The ghost adults gave each other the look that my parents made whenever me or Aiden said something that was, in their eyes, utterly ridiculous. The look that said we didn’t “understand,” we wouldn’t “get it” and that we still had “much to learn”. Fleur couldn’t make any facial expressions since she possessed a doll, but I doubt she thought the same things they were possibly thinking. She was a kid who wanted to be free, they were parents who didn’t know much about me.

I wasn’t fuming mad at them for them giving each other “the look” like how I got with my parents, I was just…a little upset that even ghosts didn’t take me seriously. What did I have to do to prove it to them? To make them trust me? My heart broke a little that ghosts would doubt me, just like the living. That nothing changed in that aspect.

“Go get yourself a chair, I’ll tell you the whole story.” The man said with sigh, pulling me from my cascading thoughts.

I then grabbed the nearest armchair and sat down, prepared to listen with all my heart the story of the family that disappeared many centuries ago, a story that had long been buried away and was waiting to come to light.

Chapter Five-In the creaks and crevices of a cracking home

“Before I start this story, I want to know what your name is. Mine is Andrew.” The man said, folding both of his hands together.

In the swirl of my joy, I had forgotten about the crucial part of introducing myself to the ghost parents, so I was about to tell them my name, but Fleur went along and cried out gleefully:

“Her name is Stefania!”

I jumped a little from hearing Fleur shout so suddenly, but Mikayla and Andrew chuckled lightly with each other, just the kind of chuckle that my parents would give me when I was little and I did something that amused them.

“So it is.” Andrew said with a warm smile.

His green snake pupil eyes shone with a tenderness that I hadn’t seen in him until that very moment. Both him and Mikayla were looking back at me as though they wanted to shield me from all of the horrors, as though they wanted me to run back to my room and hide under my covers, safe from all harm, as though I couldn’t possibly comprehend what they went through. I felt both touched and disgusted by their facial expressions, for I loved that they cared about me to a degree, but loathed that they took one look at me and thought that I “couldn’t handle” whatever they went through.

But then the tenderness blinked out of their faces, replaced with melancholic expressions, and thus, Andrew began with the story of how he and his family had ended up at the broken, battered state they were in:

“When we were all alive, we were invited to the birthday party of Prince Cesare’s twenty-sixth birthday. We came along with the whole town, for everyone in town was invited. Nobody knew the reason as to why everybody in town was invited, but we were all content to be at a royal celebration…”

Andrew swallowed hard, as though he were trying to keep down his sobs, but then, he continued:

“I thought that we’d all be able to stay together, but Fleur ran off in the middle of the party and then we started searching everywhere for her. Nobody seemed to notice that she was gone. We asked for others to help, but they didn’t know where to look. So, me and Andrew kept searching, until…”

Mikayla paused as though she wanted to collect herself, then she said:

“We went into this hallway that was far away from everyone else. There was the Queen and her son, the Prince. There was also an old lady, Josephine, holding a little porcelain doll, telling them both that the doll held the soul of-held the soul of Fleur-and that the soul would give them happiness. We thought many things about Queen Clara and Prince Cesare, but having a witch by their side was not one of them! Though we didn’t quite know how we could save her, we both jumped right in and then…then…Josephine twisted her hand around, without uttering a single word and killed us both. Just like that. Not a hint of human emotion in her eye.” Mikayla spat, anger and sorrow mixed on her bleeding face.

I leaned back on the chair, folding my hands as I did so. The ghosts were all talking to each other in a murmur and still, I didn’t know all of what happened. I could have just let it go and gone up to my room, but I already promised that I would stay and listen to what they would say, even if they were ghosts I just met that night.

The only problem was that I still didn’t know how I would help them all.

“Josephine, said that she, the Queen, and the Prince needed me and my parents to help them all with “getting happiness”. She said it to me after I got in the doll. I didn’t know what she meant by it and I still don’t know now, but I still think about what she said. I think you should go upstairs to the attic and stop her. I think that Queen Clara and Prince Cesare are in the attic too. I think you need to-“

“That’s enough, Fleur. Stefania has already helped enough with bringing you to us. We can’t ask for help without knowing what Josephine and the others want. We’re-“

“Daddy, we do know what they want! They want to make us sad! They’re keeping us trapped here because it makes them happy and maybe if Stefania tells them to go away, they will!” Fleur cried out.

Andrew folded his hands and brought them up to his face as though he were trying his best not to lose his composure, trying his best to collect. I didn’t understand why he was getting so pent up about it because I only wanted to help. Fleur and Mikayla wanted me to end their imprisonment and the more I listened to them, the more I wanted to fix things up and make them all happy.

“I don’t know if telling them to “go away” will be enough to free us, Fleur. We’re with you now but we’re still going to be trapped in this house.” Andrew said, notes of defeat in his voice.

I didn’t appreciate how he was so ready and willing to give up. If it was true that Josephine and the royal people trapped them in their house, then I’d work hard to figure out the full extent of the truth and free the family. I was confident that I would understand things soon, that I would be able to help the ghosts, just like in many stories that I read.

I got up from the chair and stormed towards the door, Andrew and Mikayla calling out to me, asking me where I was going and what I was going to do. Fleur didn’t call my name out, but I knew that she wanted me to help.

I went into a room covered in dust to save a haunted doll. I’m allergic to dust. What difference would it make to go to an attic where possibly evil ghosts resided?

Chapter Six-Keeping company

I was walking up the stairs to the attic, the stairs making wheezing noises as I stepped further up them. The library had seemed so silent when it was just the ghosts that were talking, as though we were all in another house or another dimension. But after the ghosts talked to me, the usual noise resumed.

My parents were still asleep, for the creaking of the house and the wind from outside wasn’t so loud, like blaring sirens, but the kind of noise that one would hear if they stewed in their thoughts for too long and let them bite away at the corners of their brain. Also, our house was so big that it was more of a manor and not a house. Their bedroom was somewhere in the expanse of the house and far off from the staircase leading up to the attic. They wouldn’t hear me just like they did when I went to what I took as Fleur’s room and brought her to the library.

I would have thought that the ghosts would get out of the library to try and stop me, but they didn’t. So, I supposed that the parent ghosts were bound to the library and that Fleur couldn’t do much while being trapped in a doll. Then I thought that the ghosts would use a frightening amount of ghost power to try and scare me off, like make hands reach out at me from the moldy floral wallpaper or better yet, scream and moan until it all got into my head and I scrambled to my room, begging for it all to be “just a dream”.

Then I reminded myself that the ghosts I spoke to weren’t poltergeists and that if they were, they probably would have done something already or at least shown hostility to me. Matter of fact, they probably wouldn’t have been willing to talk to me. I was just overthinking. All I had to do was go up to the attic…and do what? Talk to the other ghosts? No, they wouldn’t listen to me. They were responsible for making the ghosts in the library dead. But then, what would I do once I got to the top of the stairs? It hadn’t occurred to me that I was facing real life malevolent ghosts until that very moment. I had no idea on what I should do and no supernatural powers, but I didn’t want to make the ghosts in the library feel bad. I didn’t want to back out and let them down, especially Fleur. She was counting on me. I would figure out a plan as I walked up the stairs. Perhaps I could confront the ghosts in the attic.

But how would I confront them? What if they were hiding? What if they would kill me? What if-but no, it would turn out alright, in the end. I just needed to figure out a means to end the malicious ghosts in the attic. My parents were asleep, Aiden was asleep. Nobody would bother me, I would be able to concentrate just like with my writing and-

“What are you doing?”

I froze. I couldn’t believe it. I knew that annoying, know-it-all voice, the voice that called me “strange” and made such corny jokes, but I still couldn’t quite believe that it was true, so I turned around and…

And it was. With tousled black hair, gray shorts and a tee shirt with some kind of alien creature on it, it was none other than the little rat demon that I equally despised with every fiber of my being and loved with all my heart, my little eleven year old brother, Aiden Reed.

“What are you doing?” I asked back, for what on Earth was a small child like him doing up so late?

“I asked you first!” He snapped.

Yes, he did ask me first. But did I really want to tell him what I was doing? I mean, he believes in ghosts, just like me, but he’s not as trusting of ghosts as I am. To this day, he finds the whole idea of ghosts to be eerie and it takes a lot more to convince him that a ghost has good intentions.

So did I really want to tell him? Did I really want to freak him out?

No, I didn’t. But I couldn’t come up with a believable lie on the spot. For someone who could type out the most outlandish paranormal stories in only a few minutes, I couldn’t come up with a good lie to tell my brother.

“This house is haunted and I’m going up to the attic to get rid of the evil ghosts so that I can help the good ghosts be free, because the evil ghosts are trapping them here. Now, you. What are you doing here?” I asked, crossing my arms, hoping that he would just leave me alone and let me save the ghosts.

Aiden blinked as his mouth slightly parted in surprise, registering my words. I think he only stood there for a few seconds, but to me, it felt like it stretched on for an unnecessary amount of hours, with each second being a wasted one that could have been used to go up the attic stairs.

“Ghosts? You’re helping ghosts? Why? Do you even know them? Do you-“

“What are you doing, Aiden? You said that you’d tell me.”

“I was just going to get a glass of water! Now I’m scared that you’re going to do something bad!”

“I’m not. I’m just helping the ghosts. If you’re going to criticize me then you can just leave.” I said, turning back towards the stairs.

I was getting increasingly irritated, but I didn’t want to yell too much, because then Mom and Dad might have woken up.

“I’m coming with you.” Aiden said, his footsteps following me up the stairs.

I turned around to face him, surprised by his bravery. It wasn’t something that I was used to seeing and I would have been happy for him if it wasn’t for the fact that he didn’t have faith in me over what I was trying to achieve.

“And you’re going to do what? Stop them? It’s not like you can protect me or anything.” I retorted.

Aiden seemed displeased by my answer, but I could have cared less. I spoke the truth. Aiden had noodle arms and wasn’t a fighter, so how would he stand a chance?

“I’m going to provide moral support. Plus, you can’t really stop ghosts either. You’re just-“

“You can come with me if you stop criticizing me.” I said. My patience was running thin and my head was starting to hurt from all the talking and the dust motes that must have migrated to my brain, but I tried my best to keep my voice down.

“I’m not criticizing you, I’m just-“

“Aiden. I don’t want to hear it.” I said.

That shut him up real quick, but that didn’t stop him from giving me a dirty look. No matter. He wasn’t a teenager yet, he didn’t have the authority to roll his eyes and give dirty looks. He was just an eleven year old boy who still had a lot to learn.

But even with my overall frustration with him, I was glad that he was coming with me. I wouldn’t be alone! I wouldn’t have to face them by myself!

Speaking of which, I was standing right in front of the door. I had made it to the top.

I turned the knob.

Chapter Seven-What’s upstairs, anyhow?

The attic was just like every other attic in horror movies. The walls and floor were infested with dust and miscellaneous items, there was only one window and it was all boarded up with only cracks in the wood letting the moonlight slip through. The room was insanely stuffy, but right in the middle of it was a pink box with kittens and puppies painted on it, black lace gloves, and an illustrated book of animals, all of which were connected by streams of lime green light, which led and swirled to…

The ghosts of Mikayla and Andrew were bloody and clawed, but the things that I saw connected to the three items took the cake on creepiness.

Three pairs of skeletal hands were all emitting green trails of smoke that connected to the items on the ground. All three of them were draped in jewelry, except two of the hands looked as though they had more refined jewelry while one of them looked like the kind of jewelry that didn’t seem like it followed a particular style, a particular pattern.

I figured the two pairs with the neat jewelry belonged to Queen Clara and her son, Prince Cesare, and the one with the wild jewelry belonged to the witch, Josephine.

But why were their hands in the attic? And what was those other three items? What was the light? What-

“You’ve crossed a line.” A husky, serpentine voice that vaguely sounded like a woman snarled right in our ears as we were pulled by back by claws that dug deep into our skin…back…back…further back…

Chapter Eight-Scolding, in trouble

I found myself tied up by green streams of light, Aiden right beside me and tied up in a similar manner. We were both tied to a wall and standing in front of us was a young man dressed in a suit that had a sweeping cape, his brown eyes were surrounded by rings of dried up blood, his hands were covered in blood cuts, and he wore a gold crown adorned with red jewels on the top of his head. Next to him was an old woman in a light blue dress with a white scarf tied neatly around her neck, and the one other person was an even older woman in a darker blue dress, except she had black sandals that snaked up her legs and pink tropical flower atop her gray hair, as though she were trying to present herself as someone younger than she actually was.

The woman with the flower in her hair spoke, the one I took to be Josephine, her smooth brown eyes laced with anger, and then she said:

“I don’t appreciate you children coming up here and trying to ruin what makes us happy. You can have all the wealth and money in the world but after a while, it gets lonely. These good people right here needed happiness and so I gaveit to them. Why would you want to take it away?”

Happiness? What happiness? What was the nonsense they were all saying about happiness? Fleur downstairs was talking about it, but she didn’t quite know what it meant. So what did it mean? What did they all really want?

The woman with the crown on her head, Queen Clara, spoke up, her voice holding less sparks of emotion than Josephine, but nonetheless, still had hints of displeasure within:

“Me and my son were just trying to find that kind of happiness that the common folk had. We tried and tried, but it was oh so hard. Then, one day, Josephine came to us with the most wonderful idea, right on Cesare’s birthday! We could invite all the common folk to our castle for his birthday, Josephine would search for those with the most happiness, and then she would kill them to take their energy and give it to us! We owe her the whole world for what she gave us! Those people happened to be a little girl and her parents. The little girl was youthful and had more happiness that needed to be preserved, that was why Josephine made her a doll. We were happy for a bit…”

Queen Clara went quiet, her blue eyes alight with sadness. Prince Cesare put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and for a moment, I felt pitiful for them both.

But then I remembered that they killed a family to obtain happiness and my pity evaporated.

“The happiness didn’t last though, because they were dead and gone. So, Josephine held the little girl she turned into a doll in her arms and used the energy from the little girl like a compass to find her house. She took us to the house and there, we stayed. It hurt my heart to watch the Kingdom go in ruins without us, but I wouldn’t leave my mother and Josephine. We stayed in their house to take more and more of their happiness from the very walls of their homes. Josephine cooked food and made us beverages, she really knew how to make the best meals…I would have been glad to take more happiness if I hadn’t gone to the library by myself…the parent ghosts killed me! They would have killed Josephine and my mother too if Josephine hadn’t trapped their souls in the library to keep them away! The little girl couldn’t do anything, but Josephine kept her all locked up in her bedroom just in case. She and my mother lived long enough to old age. I waited for them to die and when they finally did, I knew we’d all go to Hell. Hell wouldn’t understand us, Hell wouldn’t appreciate us.” Prince Cesare said, crossing his arms and looking down as though he were trying to figure out the best way to word whatever he was thinking.

I was listening intently to their stories, looking for a loophole that would reveal how me and my brother could save ourselves and the ghosts downstairs. If there was one thing I learned that night, it was that ghosts loved to tell stories once they were seen and heard by the living, as though they wanted to be relevant again.

I looked over at Aiden to see if he was paying attention. He was, but he looked completely bored. Stories were never really his thing, but I thought he’d ought to have had a better attitude because the stories told had the hidden answer to save our lives.

“But I went around and found items that belonged to the family, then put them up here to take the energy from the items. I took the hands from our bodies and used my magic to connect them to the items, that way we could always feel happiness. You’re both living, you both seem like you live safe and sound lives, so we’ll take your energy!” Josephine beamed.

The three ghosts disappeared from view, but I still felt that they were around, watching us, waiting for us to die. The green streams of light were bearing down on us hard, I could feel my own energy seep away.

But I knew how they were doing things. I just had to find a way to get us all out of the situation we were in.

Chapter Nine-Out with a bang

I tried to pull myself away from the green light streams, but they kept holding on, keeping a firm grip on me. Aiden was trying to do the same thing next to me, trying to wrangle his way from the streams of light, but it was to no avail. The light was weighing down on us heavily and doubt was starting to creep up in my mind. I was watching the items from the family have their energy be siphoned away from me without any real idea of what to do, of how to save everyone, but then-

The attic floor started shaking as though there was an Earthquake, but only the floor shook. Debris fell from the ceiling, but it wasn’t falling down in clumps at extreme speed. It was just enough to make the floor shake so hard that I felt my wrists go free from the green streams of light and then, I rushed towards the items from the family and shouted out to Aiden, who had just gotten himself out of the green tangles of light:

“Grab the book! I’ll grab the gloves and the box! Maybe if we sever the connection, their souls will be free!”

I wasn’t sure if Aiden would follow through, if he would care enough to help me. If he happened to leave then I would have grabbed the other items myself. I was already holding the box, which I took to belong to Fleur. I just wanted the both of us to be able to do something important, though.

He came, he grabbed the gloves and book, the green streams lines disintegrated, I heard three people scream with garbled, decaying throats behind me, and I watched as Mikayla, Andrew, and Fleur’s spirits shot up to Heaven like rockets, Mikayla and Andrew having lost their demonic qualities and the blood on their bodies, and Fleur going up to the sky as a little blond girl with green eyes, just like her Dad, dressed in a prim pink dress and bow. All three of them gained angel wings and glowing halos.

The shaking stopped. In a span of a few seconds, the ghosts, both good and evil, were gone.