Escape from Windenburg | 11

In the days leading up to the weekend, Alejandro and I feigned an abrupt interest in adhering to a schedule of early morning rooftop yoga routines as an excuse to steal thirty minutes together without arousing suspicion. As we strained stiffly into the few actual poses we knew, we hashed out our plans in hushed voices. Both of us had been brushing up on our reading, attempting to cram years' worth of paranormal training into a single week. I didn't know about Alejandro, but I seriously doubted we would succeed in conjuring up any specters. Despite our best efforts, we were still amateurs. The odds were decidedly not in our favor.

The morning Enji and Aarti were set to leave, Rav caught us red-handed in the midst of our final scheming session. Although we shut up as soon as we saw her, there was no saying how long she could have been lurking in a corner somewhere, stealthily listening in. She observed our tortured movements with amusement and, I couldn't help but notice, a spark of mischief in her eyes. "You guys have terrible form," she said. "Come on. I know this sudden wellness kick is a load of crap. What are you really up to?"

"Nothing!" I exclaimed too immediately. Alejandro shot me an icy glare for my failure to play it cool.

Rav shoved Alejandro playfully, and they spent a minute or two poking petulantly at each other, just like real siblings. "You can trust me!" she insisted. "Tell me what you're planning right now or I'll tell Mom and Dad you guys are trying to buy drugs!"

Alejandro snorted at her lack of imagination. "Threatening us hardly inspires confidence," he shot back. "Besides, you've barely spoken to anyone except to insult them for months. Why should we trust you now?"

"I'm not above planting paraphernalia in your underwear drawer, you know."

"The last time I asked you to do this with me, you told me it sounded like, and I quote, the most braindead waste of time you'd ever heard of. You had your chance, and you blew it!"

Rav chuckled, having inadvertently forced Alejandro to give up the information she needed to connect the dots. "Oh my God, you guys are going to that stupid 'haunted' house you've been obsessing over forever, aren't you?"

The air quotes she placed around the word "haunted" were so forceful that Alejandro flinched backward, hissing under his breath as though personally wounded. "If you think it's so stupid, why do you want in so bad?"

Suddenly, she pivoted to me, sensing a softer target for her appeal. "This kid talks a big game, but he's afraid of his own shadow! He sleeps with a night light, for God's sake."

"I'm not scared of the dark," Alejandro began. "It's just-"

"If he actually sees something - or even thinks he sees something - he'll go absolutely apeshit. You need a skeptic to balance things out. You need a rational mind who can tell what's real from what's fake."

"And that's where you come in?" I asked uncertainly.

Rav smiled broadly, knowing she'd struck gold. "Exactly!"

I looked to Alejandro for a verdict. Half the color had drained from his face, and he chewed his bottom lip nervously. It seemed the mere mention of his fearful tendencies was already setting off alarm bells in his head. "Fine, pack a bag," he finally grumbled. "As soon as your mom and dad are out of sight, it's go time." Rav's grin grew even wider.

As we eagerly awaited the adults' departure, time seemed to slow to a crawl. I paced the kitchen, jittery with anticipation, stealing frequent glances in Aarti's direction as she assembled sandwiches for the road in what felt like slow motion. But as much as I silently willed her to move faster, she remained as patient and precise as ever. "So what are you crazy kids planning to get up to this weekend?" she asked, and my heart skipped a beat. She knows, my inner voice shouted frantically. Abort! Abort!

But of course she didn't know. She was only making small talk. I gulped and forced my voice into some semblance of normalcy. To my own ears, I sounded like a robot version of myself. "Oh, you know, drinking, partying, a little light vandalism." I laughed unnaturally. "The usual." Aarti chuckled and rolled her eyes at my joke, seemingly none the wiser, while I discreetly wiped my sweaty palms on the back of my pants.

As they finally made to leave, Alejandro all but shoved them out of the house mid-goodbye, watching their receding backs like a hawk until they were out of sight. Then the three of us grabbed our hastily packed bags and booked it faster than he could say the word, "Go." Rav may have succeeded in strong-arming her way into our mission, but we weren't about to let Rahul or Lux decide they needed to tag along, too. We'd learned in our research that there was such a thing as too many cooks in the kitchen when it came to convening with ghosts, and three was already pushing it.

The subject of our investigation was an old wreck of a house formerly known as Guidry Manor, and over the past few days, Alejandro had been cramming my head full of its unlikely history. Decades ago, it had been home to a wealthy shipping magnate. Then business stalled, and one by one the ports shut down. The magnate not only lost his fortune but soon after died in some freak accident that could never be fully explained. Since then, the house had remained vacant. It was now officially condemned, left to rot behind barbed wire and a 10-foot tall gate, which apparently wasn't half as secure as it looked, as trespassing teenagers frequently swapped stories of the alleged paranormal activity they'd encountered inside. Of course, there was no real evidence, but that only hastened the spread of spooky rumors.

While Alejandro and I brainstormed a method of attack, Rav leaned idly against one of its sturdy posts, taking in our impassioned back and forth with an amused smirk on her face. It was beginning to seem like she'd only crashed our weekend plans for her own entertainment - except that as her shoulder pressed into the metal, the door began to creak slowly open, its rusty hinges emitting an eerie screech that Alejandro and I didn't even register. It wasn't until Rav made it halfway across the yard and shouted over her shoulder, "Are you guys coming or what," that we glanced up and realized what she'd done.

Inside, it became clear immediately that there was definitely something off about the place - or, at least, that someone had worked very hard to make it look that way. Creeping out from behind a dusty brocade sofa was a strange and unwieldy growth of jagged, glowing crystals unlike anything I'd seen outside of the Magic Realm. My heart skipped a beat. Could they be a ward of some sort, protection against an invisible, lurking evil? And if that were the case, had they even worked? Alejandro seemed shaken by the crystals, too. At that moment, our mission suddenly became real.

The deeper we explored, the more curiosities we found. The entire house was a museum of carefully curated oddities. Long before his death, Claude René Duplantier Guidry had been known as an eccentric. He'd hosted psychics and mediums for lavish salons, where they offered tarot card readings and performed seances for an elite audience of his wealthy acquaintances. It was rumored that his mysterious death resulted from a failed attempt to revive these parties, though all the records surrounding the investigation were sealed.

Where other parts of the house appeared largely untouched since Guidry's death, the kitchen was a different story. It had apparently been repurposed as a dumping ground for various unwanted detritus, much like the alleys and parking lots of Evergreen Harbor itself, including several large industrial barrels plastered with hazardous waste warnings. With a chill, I pointed out that the bizarre-looking plant inexplicably growing out of a countertop bore a strong resemblance to the image painted on the side of one of the barrels. For the moment, we chose to ignore the implications and soldier on to the house's second story.

Rav made it up the stairs first and immediately stopped dead in her tracks. "Well, well, well," she said slowly, drawing out each syllable for maximum dramatic effect. "It looks like the last wackos who were in this place left behind their crystal ball for you. How generous of them!"

"Wait, wait." She clutched at her temples theatrically as Alejandro and I passed. "I think I'm receiving a communication right now. The ghosts are in the room with us as I speak, and they'd like to deliver a message to you two: let us rest in fucking peace, you stupid meddling kids, or you'll forever rue the day you stepped foot on our turf."

"And they conveniently left you out of that little diatribe?" I asked, rolling my eyes.

She shrugged nonchalantly. "They must be able to sense I'm only here as a neutral observer. You two are the enemy, and I'm just Switzerland."

My eyes were drawn to the artwork adorning the walls, particularly the massive painting that stood as the centerpiece, which appeared to be a portrait of Guidry himself. He was clearly an ostentatious fellow, just as odd and charismatic as the stories Alejandro had told me suggested. "Wouldn't it be crazy if we could get this guy to show up?" I wondered aloud. "I mean, he died here, right? It only makes sense that his spirit would still be hanging around."

I'd noticed Alejandro's spirits flagging from the moment we stepped into the house. All throughout our tour of the place, he remained suspiciously quiet. Finally, when we were back downstairs, all of his pent-up anxiety bubbled to the surface. "What are we even doing here?" he exclaimed. "How could I ever believe this was a good idea? All I've done is read a few books! Nothing is going to happen because I'm obviously barely qualified to do any of this! And if something does happen, it'll be even worse. I don't know the first thing about how to protect us from any of the crazy shit that could go down!"

From the sofa where she was placidly working on her knitting project like nothing about our surroundings was unusual at all, Rav piped up. "Trust me, dude, there isn't going to be any crazy shit going down. Do you really think you're going to be able to conjure up an actual ghost?" She snorted derisively. "I hate to break it to you, but ghosts aren't even real! So get your ass upstairs, perform one of your little rituals, give yourself the creeps, and have your fun. The sooner we can get out of this hovel, the better."

"If you don't want to be here, then why'd you even come?" Alejandro muttered dejectedly, but I could see that her words had put a flicker of determination back into his eyes.

Before his doubts could return, he marched back up to the seance table to put his self-teaching to the test. Still feeling insecure, he forbade Rav and I from joining him, but I couldn't help creeping upstairs after a few minutes to spy on his progress. Unfortunately, despite the presence of a clearly haunted doll directly beside him, he couldn't seem to get any spirits to take his bait. Maybe they needed to warm up to us first, or maybe they didn't exist at all. I couldn't say I was particularly eager to meet a real live ghost, but I also didn't want to not meet one, for that might mean my quest to get my mom back was truly a lost cause.

Alejandro caught sight of me watching him and pushed back from the table to sulk off dejectedly. "You can't give up already!" I insisted. "It was never very likely to work on the first try, anyway. If it were that easy to commune with the dead, everyone and their mother would be able to call themselves a medium."

"Save your breath," he mumbled, shoulders slumping. "I shouldn't have wasted my time. What if I'm just not cut out for this?"

Eventually, though, I managed to convince him that what he needed was a partner. We decided to take the good cop/bad cop approach. Alejandro stuck to the carefully-scripted appeals he'd memorized from his reading materials, trying to keep his voice as even and steady as possible, while I unleashed all the fury I could muster in the hopes that it would rile the spirits up. "Come on, ghosts!" I shouted. "Get your asses out here! What, are you really afraid to show your faces in front of a couple measly mortals? I dare you to show us what you're capable of!"

"Whoa," a voice exclaimed abruptly from behind us, and we both jumped so high we nearly fell out of our seats. But it was only Rav, her curiosity finally peaked enough by my shouting to come investigate what we were up to. "Sounds like you guys have got a real party going on up here. Any guests of the see-through variety grace you with their presence yet?"

"No," Alejandro grudgingly admitted. "But I think Rowan might actually be scaring them off instead of inviting them in. Maybe you could stand to tone things down a bit?"

"Tone things down?" Rav snorted derisively and slid into the seat across from me. "If anything, I don't think she's going hard enough. What if we gave it to them from both sides at once?"

I looked to Alejandro for direction, but he just shrugged his shoulders and leaned back from the crystal ball, indicating that it was ours to command if that was what we wanted. I took a deep breath and continued my ranting and raving, while Rav soon piped in with her own.

"This is your last chance, ghosties! I know I said I was neutral before, but, damn it, I want you to come out and play! Get over here and knock me from this chair! Brush your clammy little fingers against the back of my neck! Grab hold of my hair and rip it straight off my head!"

After a while, things got so out of hand that Alejandro had to shout at the top of his lungs for us to shut up and leave him alone again, before the ghosts decided we were far too ungrateful for their presence to even bother trying to haunt. He needed to try again on his own, if only to prove to himself that all those hours spent reading had been worth it.

 "I'll grab snacks," I said, heading downstairs to rifle through the horde of junk food we'd brought with us. "We should at least try to stay properly fueled."

"And I'll be back at my knitting," Rav said, spotting a comfy-looking couch around the corner and swinging in the opposite direction. "Shout if you need me."

We'd only parted ways for a few minutes before all the lights in the house started flickering ominously. I abruptly dropped the bags of chips I was carrying and thundered back up the stairs, my heart pounding like crazy. "Was that you?" I asked Alejandro, gaping at the illuminated circle of flames that floated above the crystal ball in front of him.

He didn't seem to hear me. Instead, his head swiveled in the opposite direction. "Who's there?" he shouted in a shaky voice, clearly spooked by something (or someone) I wasn't seeing.

"What's going on?" I insisted.

Just as suddenly, the lights were steady again. Alejandro breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "I don't know," he admitted in a whisper. "I could've sworn I saw something... hovering out of the corner of my eye. But thank God. There's nothing there." But we had been left spooked enough to spend the rest of the evening on edge. We decided to put our seance attempts on pause until our nerves calmed.

We tried to keep our minds off what we'd just experienced by laying out our sleeping bags and changing into our pajamas. "Do we really think it's a good idea to spend the night directly across from the seance table?" Rav asked. "That just feels like we're asking to be fucked with."

"But isn't that exactly what we want to happen?" I responded. "We came here seeking out the paranormal. Shouldn't we embrace it rather than run away?"

"Besides," Alejandro added, "I thought you were supposed to be our resident skeptic. You sure look scared for someone who doesn't actually believe in ghosts."

Rav only rolled her eyes in response and stormed over to her own sleeping bag. "Of course I'm the one who's left staring directly into the dead button eyes of that spooky-ass doll," she muttered before squeezing her eyes shut and forcing sleep to come.

Surprisingly, we slept quite soundly through the night - or at least I did, anyway. But as soon as we awoke the next morning, it became clear that something in the house had shifted. The energy of the place felt tangibly yet indescribably different. But more immediately and  more disconcertingly, Alejandro's body had been wrapped in a hazy violet glow. For a terrifying minute or two, all I could do was stare at him, my eyes wide in shock.

When I was finally able to stammer out a few barely intelligible words, he only laughed and said dismissively, "What do you mean, I'm purple? Of all the crazy lies you could concoct, that's the best you can - aaaahhhh!" Midway through his sentence, he'd finally glanced down at his arms and realized I was telling the truth. He leapt from his sleeping bag in alarm. "What the fuck is happening to me?"

"Don't freak out!" I exclaimed, jumping up after him in an attempt to calm him down, though I was hardly feeling calm myself. "I'm sure it's nothing! It'll probably fade away in an hour or two."

"Fade away? But what does it even mean? Have I been marked?" He gulped miserably, and all the color slowly drained from his face. "Oh, God, the ghosts have marked me! They can see I'm the weakest, and they've decided to come for me first. Am I going to die, Rowan? Oh my God, I'm going to die!" It wasn't long before we both devolved into incoherent babbling as our minds reached for the most terrifying explanation.

"Wait, the painting," Alejandro finally managed to gasp out in the midst of our panic.

I was confused enough to momentarily forget I was terrified. "What are you talking about?"

"The portrait. Guidry." He nodded his head in the general direction of my shoulder. "Right behind you. Please tell me you see it, too."

"See what?" I demanded, swiveling slowly toward the painting I'd noticed last night, which, as far as I could tell, had just been a regular old portrait of a slightly irregular man. I did a double take when I saw what Alejandro might be seeing, a ghostly little blob in the right-hand corner that was almost... cute. Surprisingly, it brought me a certain measure of relief despite its unexplainable appearance. Was that all we were dealing with here, squishy little creatures that looked like they belonged in a children's cartoon?

"What's all the ruckus about?" Rav suddenly exclaimed from behind us, having slept through - or at least pretended to - all of our unintelligible shouting. Once we caught her up to speed on Alejandro's new look and the odd addition to the painting, she remained maddeningly nonchalant. Apparently, she'd come to terms with the spookiness of the place after spending all night with that terrible doll. "That's what's got you guys all worked up?" she asked with a sneer in her voice. "God, I thought you'd seen Bloody Mary herself. Well, I'm starved." Her eyes darted between Alejandro and I expectantly for several long seconds. Then she sighed in defeat. "Guess breakfast is up to me then."

While she was busy firing up the rusty old grill that had been dumped in the garbage-strewn front yard and muttering about our uselessness under her breath, she failed to notice at first the arrival of a new friend...

It wasn't until she was halfway through eating that she caught sight of the inexplicably adorable ghost over her shoulder. "Oh, hey, little guy," she murmured, and the ghost bobbed happily in response. Then she raised her voice and shouted to us, "Breakfast is on! And I think one of your little buddies has decided to join us."

We were stunned by the sight of a real live ghost at first, but this strange spirit was so cute and seemingly harmless that we quickly lowered our defenses. We just let the little creature swoop and bounce over our heads as we ate. Alejandro embraced his new glow, and as Rav went to clear our plates from the table, he took one glance at her and cracked up. "Oh my God, I can't believe it!"

"What?" she snapped abruptly before realization dawned slowly in her eyes. "Wait, don't tell me-"

"You're purple now, too!" he exclaimed, unable to disguise his amusement at her expense.

Strangely, even though I'd been horrified earlier, I now found myself feeling disappointed I'd been singled out as the only one of us who wasn't glowing. "Why do you think they've left me alone?" I asked, walking up to the ghost for a closer look. "Did I do something wrong? Don't you want to be friends with me, too, little buddy?" But the ghost didn't have a response, at least not one I was capable of understanding. "Well," I said, finishing the last few bites of my breakfast, "what do we do now?"

"I have no idea," Alejandro admitted sheepishly. "My books didn't say anything about this." Neither had my books, when I still had them, at least from what I could remember, which left me with one question. If this experience was somehow supposed to lead me closer to the knowledge I needed to bring back my mom, what exactly was I meant to be learning? It was hard to see any kind of relationship between my dead mother and this surreal, cartoonish blob bouncing merrily before me. Was all of this just some silly diversion I'd managed to convince myself was the key to everything when it so clearly wasn't?