A QUICK NOTE BEFORE GETTING THE STORY STARTED:
Hey there everybody! Wanna know how this story goes?
Well, picture Little Women's Jo March meets Ghost Adventures' Zak Bagans about her haunted house, and then she writes a novel about it.
Don't know who the heck I'm talking about? Well, lets say this is the story of a young, independent girl used to dealing with things by herself, who is forced to turn for help to a not-so-young, far-from-humble TV celeb used to having always his way.
It's a clash of titans turned love story. A challenge for both of them to learn to give in, to understand, to grow, in order to be together.
To meet halfway.
Far from a horror thriller, it's more of a coming-of-age journey, with a lot of paranormal stuff thrown in the mix as a catalist to push the plot forward... or twist it? You be the judge of that.
DUE WARNINGS:
* I'm not one for hasty starts.
This is a rollercoaster you gotta climb up before you can dive in head-on. Blame it on an acquired taste for slow-burns and coherent build-ups, but I like to start stories at the beginning. Meaning things are happening all the time, but I don't kick it off with the main chars face to face to avoid flashbacks and info dumps in the middle of the action.
* The story is told from a single POV, and it doesn't change over the whole book.
A trivia bit that blew me away:
I picked the setting rather randomly, and later on, I found out I set my ghost story a stone-throw away from where Lovecraft set The Dunwich Horror and The Color Out of Space.
Those coincidences I love about writing.
Okay, enough gibberish. I'm just gonna breathe deep and hope for the best.
Please let me know what you think with a rating, share and consider giving the story some gems! Any and all feedback is much appreciated!
♥ Hope you like it! ♥
* * *
A HUNDRED WORDS
We all know Brandon Price. We know he's a reckless trailblazer, just like we know he's charismatic, arrogant, charming, bossy, and every line of the long list of adjectives his critics and admirers from all over the world love to pin on him.
To me, he's the man who faced his worst fears and endured an excruciating pain only to help.
Because he didn’t need to come. I mean, let’s be realistic: there’s a hundred better locations for a season finale. Just off the top of my head? Waverly Hills, Trans Allegheny, Brushy Mountain State Pen. All of them worth a whole season, and one heck of a season finale.
But he came back to Blotter Manor. And he did it only to help me and an entity that had almost killed him.
Tell me about guts. Tell me about heart.
That’s why this is, actually, the story of how I got to meet the bravest man in the world.
And how I fell in lo
Nah, strike that out. I need to stick to the prompt and do what they asked me: a hundred words for a voice over on a post-credit montage. I can leave the rest for my journal.
Jeez. How many, already? Almost 170? Let's start over.
Book 1 The Shadow of the Haunter In the darkness of the nightWaiting for the light to comeWhen the demons in your mindRemind you of the damage done. Always talking, so much to sayLike a haunting ghost from the graveAnd Heaven seems so far away. —Daughtry, Changes Are Coming * * Sometimes, things have a funny way to happen before you can even realize what on earth is going on. Hi, I’m exhibit A. I was twenty-five back in the summer of 2023. I was living in Boston and I’d been waiting tables twelve hours a day for six months already, while trying in vain to find a job that would allow me to make ends meet. I couldn’t afford a rent all by myself, so I shared a tiny apartment in Jamaica Plains with two friends. And by the end of June, ruthless math said that such as I was, my dwindling savings wouldn’t last the summer. That was when the diner manager put on his sad face and told me they had to let me go. Great! Now what? I was wandering around, trying to clear my head and c
The footsteps sounded like somebody was walking down the second-floor hallway to the stairs, then down to the first floor and away toward one of the parlors.I held my breath, frozen in fear, my heart pounding like a drum. Until I recalled where I was: a wooden house in the middle of nowhere. It was the building settling, not a break-in. I rolled over and went back to sleep.It took me a couple of days to get bored of wandering up and down the Manor, exploring every room, studying every painting and every portrait of the Blotters, roaming the garden and the woods down to the Quabbin. It felt like I never had enough of gazing around and breathing deep, to fill my lungs with that pristine air that smelled of trees.The Manor had its particular smell, too. It smelled old, for sure, but it also smelled like home. At least, somebody’s home. I didn’t know why, but I felt welcomed and relaxed there.Monday through Saturday, Susan and Mike came every morning about nine and moved like stealth
One morning, I went out for a walk earlier than usual, not feeling like being around while Susan and Mike were at the Manor. Don’t ask me why, the moment I got to the Quabbin, I didn’t feel like sitting to listen to some music and just stare into nothingness, like I used to. I felt I needed to learn more about communicating with ghosts and all that, so I decided to watch some of what Trisha had called the pros.I’d noticed that YouTube ghost hunters talked a lot about one Brandon Price, leader of a team called Haunters, like he was the grandfather of paranormal investigation, even over the Warrens and Hans Holzer. A quick search taught me that even though Haunters hadn’t been among the pioneers of that particular TV niche, they already had nine seasons and counting. And they were considered the best of the best.Before subscribing to the streaming platform that hosted all their seasons, I searched for anything about them on YouTube. Didn’t find any episode for free, but I did find a t
Susan and Mike didn’t say a word when they found small motion-activated cat balls in every single room, from the first-floor foyer to the third-floor study. I ignored the look they traded and offered no explanation.After a whole month of living in Blotter Manor, I’d learned that even though the Blotters had their own parallel timeline, the space coordinates remained the same. The cat balls helped me keep from disturbing their routines, like walking into the east parlor while Lizzie was home-schooling the twins, or disturbing Joseph or Edward when they were reading in the library. This way, they only needed to move a hand near any of the balls to trigger the lights and let me know I was intruding in some way. At the same time, they used them to let me know if one of them joined me in a given room. Then the app would tell me who it was.It was nice, getting together with them before dinner. By the end of August, I was almost getting used to the TV turning on by itself, whenever the twi
The thuds went on through the night, about every hour, for as long as the sky remained dark. They sounded like distant muffled bangs from my room upstairs, but they woke me up anyway. Every time I jolted awake, the ball on the chest of drawers near the door would flash, to let me know I wasn’t alone and Lizzie was right there, keeping me safe. That was the only reason why I didn’t sleep in my car.Only by sunrise, when the thuds subsided, I was able to get a few hours of good sleep, so the Collins were already in the house by the time I got up. I came across Mike on the first-floor hallway.“Morning, Mike. I need the basement key,” I said, still rubbing my eyes and feeling exhausted.My voice drew Susan out of the kitchen. “Good morning, Miss Garner. Breakfast is…” She trailed off, noticing her husband visibly upset.“The basement key?” he repeated, taken aback. “I can go get you anything you ne
I settled on the couch across the room from the fireplace and the useless TV and set all my stuff on the coffee table. To compensate for the phone app being off, I opened the new text app.“You guys here?” I asked.“All of us.”I showed them how to use it and left it on the table. A moment later, my eyes were like grapefruits, watching the virtual keyboard being tapped, then the speaker icon.“It’s nice to use full sentences,” said the dull electronic female voice.“Yeah!”It amazed me how they displayed more and more skills to manipulate things. I had no idea if it was because they were growing comfortable doing it in front of me or if they were getting the hang of all this technology that didn’t exist when they were alive. I didn’t care, either. All the way around: it helped me feel I wasn’t crazy, talking to empty rooms and dubious apps.&
I found the Collins in the kitchen, talking in whispers while Mike tried to sip a tea before his shaky hands spilled it all on his shirt. Speedwell, no doubt. God knew I needed a gallon.“Go home, guys,” I said to them, feeling so overwhelmed I sounded soft. “Take the rest of the day off.”Susan turned to me like I was a serial killer covered in her mother’s blood.“You talk to them!” she cried. “You talk with the ghosts!”Her accusatory tone took me aback. “Well, yeah. Hard to overlook them, being so many all over the place.”“You’re evil like them!”A chair was roughly knocked down behind me. I didn’t even glance at it.“They’re not evil, Susan. Please go home.”Mike grabbed his wife’s hand and pretty much dragged her out the backdoor, that slammed shut behind them.“Thanks,” I murmured, grabbin
The thuds went on all night again, so Lizzie came upstairs with me and promised to stay until sunrise, to help me feel safe. Edward was down in the basement, keeping an eye on the shadow, and his last report was that it was in its corner, banging the boards and growling, but he didn’t think it had enough energy to keep it up much longer.“Maybe my fear feeds him too,” I said to Lizzie, getting in bed.“Yes, it’s possible,” she replied.Another reason to face it. I didn’t know why, but I was sure that doing it would help me figure out the whole situation.“We need to contact a medium or something,” I muttered, searching my phone.Of course Trisha was still awake. She freaked out when I told her what was going on, minus the Blotters part, of course, and volunteered to help me find somebody that could at least advise me. She thought I needed the kind of psychic able not only to fe