The house looked like something out of a horror movie. Huge chunks of siding were falling off the outside walls, piling up in rotten heaps among the snarls of vines trailing along the side of the house. As they pulled up into the dirt driveway that wound through the massive, unmowed front yard, Gabriella noticed the front porch looked like it was about to slide right off. The peeling paint on the front created grotesque patterns across the walls and one of the top floor windows was boarded up.

“Please tell me this place is abandoned,” Amelia muttered as they climbed out of the van and looked up at the building looming over them.

“No one has lived here since 2006,” Bradley said. “The house and the thirty-five acres around it are owned by a family over in Acton and they want to sell it.”

“But they can’t,” came James’s voice across Bradley’s speakerphone. “Because of the ghosts.”

“Even in this market?” Amelia asked.

James laughed easily, and something in Gabriella’s stomach clenched. He was the one that had hurt her, not the other way around. So why did she feel so uncomfortable right now, while the rest of the group readily accepted him?

“Alright, be extra careful inside,” Bradley said, not acknowledging James or Amelia. “I’m not going to the hospital today.”

Gabriella winced at this. He didn’t need to look at her or acknowledge her for Gabriella to know it was a dig meant only for her. Nor did anyone say anything in response to his comment. Maybe Robin had been wrong, and they weren’t ever going to warm back up to her after all.

Amelia started walking toward the front door. “Yeah,” she said, as she pulled on the metal screen door and it came off in her hand. “Yeah, let’s get this over with.”

Still holding the screen door, she turned back to where Bradley was strapping the camera to his chest. “Alright, James, Madelyn,” he was saying. “Do you have a visual?”

“Did Amelia just pull down a door with her bare hands?” James asked.

Amelia laughed. “See if you make fun of my coffee drinking habits again,” she said, waving the rusted door threateningly.

“Put it down,” Madelyn ordered over the speakerphone. “You’re going to need a tetanus shot.”

Amelia put the door down against the dingy storm window next to the now-empty doorway. Gabriella stepped up behind her, peeking into the dark doorway. Inside the house was even scarier than the outside. The electricity had obviously been off for years. As they opened the heavy front door, the movement stirred up a cloud of dust, stinging Gabriella’s eyes. She coughed and waved it off.

“You alright?” Amelia asked quietly from beside her.

“What?” Gabriella jumped, surprised.

“Just making sure you’re alright.”

“Yeah, I’m fine, thanks.”

Amelia nodded, then stepped past her into the dim kitchen. Gabriella followed and Bradley came in behind her. He left the door open, but the sunlight barely penetrated the room. In what little light filtered through the tattered curtains, Gabriella could see that the kitchen furniture was still sitting in the middle of the room. The table had the leaves unfolded and six chairs were neatly pushed in around it. Plates of different sizes sat at each spot and silverware was neatly arranged beside each one. In the center of the table stood a crystal vase holding a single flower. The crystal was tarnished almost to the point of being unrecognizable. The flower was desiccated.

“That’s creepy,” Amelia muttered.

“It looks like it hasn’t been touched,” Gabriella said. “Like they just left it.”

Amelia nodded toward the living room beyond the kitchen. “Look at that though.”

In the doorway, Gabriella could see that the living room furniture was covered in tarps. She stepped a little closer and peered inside. Every piece of furniture in there was covered or pushed to the sides of the room. The wooden floors looked original to the building and could have been beautiful, if not for the scuff marks and stains under a layer of dust.

That was exactly what she had expected to find when they came inside. Either emptiness or dust covers over everything. Signs that nobody had lived in this building in years.

She looked back at the table that looked like someone set it for dinner tonight. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Yeah, that’s creepy.”

“What’s creepy?” came James’s voice over Bradley’s phone again.

“It looks like we’ve got a dinner invite,” Amelia said, stepping further into the room. “Bradley, come in a little closer so James can see it. The table is set for Sunday supper while the rest of the house looks like it hasn’t been touched since the seventies.”

“That fits the MO,” Bradley said, walking over to the table. He picked up a fork and inspected it closely. “Family members have heard the sounds of people downstairs when they’re upstairs.”

“Wait,” Gabriella said. “I thought nobody has lived here in years.”

“They haven’t,” Bradley said with what she thought was an unnecessary lack of patience. “But they still have to maintain the property, don’t they?”

“Plus, they own the property beside this one,” Madelyn added over the phone. “It looks like some relatives run a brewery and farm stand about two miles from here.”

“I could go for a beer right about now,” James said.

There was a murmur of assent from Amelia and Madelyn. Bradley set the fork he’d been holding back where he found it. “Anyway,” he said. “According to one owner, she was up there at one point and could hear and smell something cooking. Apparently one of the many murders that occurred here happened in the kitchen.”

“Great,” Amelia muttered.

“Alright, so what’s the plan?” Madelyn asked.

“Let’s ask Amelia that because Robin made a terrible decision putting me in charge tonight and we all know it,” Bradley said, circling the table. “I haven’t done any fieldwork beyond observations in months and I’m sure sexism had nothing to do with his decision.”

“I’ve seen your pay stubs and you’ve seen mine, so I think I’m alright taking that responsibility,” Amelia said. “Not like Robin’s here to argue it. Again.”

The look on Bradley’s face made it clear that Gabriella was missing some context here. There were obviously conversations happening lately that she wasn’t a part of. But instead of elaborating, Amelia just walked past the set table and into the living room.

“Alright, so this is where the Foundation said the apparitions appear the most, right?” she asked.

“Correct,” Bradley replied.

“So I’m thinking this should be where we do the actual ritual and then bubble it out to the kitchen. Then we’ll head out to the barn.”

The barn was the part that Gabriella was dreading most. If the house was this creepy, she couldn’t even start to imagine how bad the barn was going to be.

The moldy curtains and piles of garbage blocking several of the panes immediately dampened any sunlight that was streaming into the living room windows. It was a big room, and even in the dark, Gabriella could see even darker patches where other rooms branched off. There was a staircase on the far end of the room and Gabriella hoped they weren’t planning to go upstairs for any of this.

“Can we get those windows open?” Amelia asked, looking up at where they all seemed to be glued shut with grime. “I can’t reach over all of this stuff.”

Gabriella looked up at them. Amelia was at least a few inches shorter than her and she was pretty sure she and Bradley were about the same height. She reached over a wrapped pile of garbage and tugged on the window.

“I think it’s locked,” she said, grunting as the window stayed exactly where it was.

After several tries at several windows, they had to admit defeat. “Okay, this is still doable,” Amelia said. “That front door is still open, so there is an exit for the spirits if we can get them out.”

Neither of the others spoke as they set up a wide ring of salt in the center of the room, carefully avoiding contact with any of the covered furniture or belongings. Once the circle was completed, Amelia and Bradley stepped inside it while Gabriella hesitated on the other side for a second. Then Bradley huffed a sigh of frustration, reached out, and pulled her in as well.

Amelia pulled out a small notebook and started reciting something in Latin. Gabriella couldn’t catch every word, but she heard enough to know that it was a variation on an exorcism, similar to the ritual James had performed last time. She held a flashlight over the notebook, shifting occasionally to give Amelia a clear view of the text. Meanwhile, Bradley held a flashlight and rotated it around the room, intermittently illuminating every corner.

The whole room, previously empty, was now filled with faces. Every flash of the light revealed another distorted face watching them from the shadows. Some had grimaces spread unnaturally wide across their skulls, while others just stared blankly ahead. One made eye contact with Gabriella, who tried not to scream as it winked at her and melted away.

“Are you seeing that?” she whispered to Bradley, her heart racing.

“Yes.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he just continued to cast his flashlight over figure after figure. Amelia’s voice kept going, loud and confident, and eventually, the smirks slid into silent screams. The figures started melting together as the beam moved faster and faster over them.

Then, with a flash of fire lighting up the corner of the room, they were gone and Amelia was silent. They all stayed where they were for a few seconds, the only sound in the room their uneven breathing in the darkness.

“Update?” James asked over the speakerphone. “I can’t see shit.”

“I think it worked,” Amelia said.

“I think so,” Gabriella agreed.

“Alright, let’s finish this off so we can get out to the barn,” Bradley said. “Amelia, you stay in the salt for a few minutes and keep watch. Gabriella, you get the holy water. I have the incense. Let’s not cut any corners.”

Gabriella cringed and hoped it was too dark to see it. Amelia said nothing, but she could hear Madelyn’s voice on the speakerphone. “Bradley,” she muttered.

Bradley ignored her. “Come on,” he said to Gabriella. “Every corner of the first floor. Then we should check on the second floor. If there’s just a few wispies left, the owners don’t care. It might be shocking, but they were mostly concerned about our friends in the corners.”

“The report here says there has been no activity reported on the second floor,” James said. “Did the Foundation request energy readings?”

“Not that I’ve been told,” Bradley said. “They don’t seem overly concerned about that whole thing these days, but I’ll take them and send them over anyway.”

He motioned for Gabriella to join him. She followed silently, splashing holy water into each corner as Bradley waved incense. He didn’t say anything to her as the smoke curled through the house, and she was grateful for it.

“Upstairs,” he said, making his way over to the stairs.

She hesitated and he stopped. “What?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Bradley looked like he wanted to say something, but then just turned and headed up the stairs. “Walk carefully,” he called down to her. “Flashlight won’t show everything.”

Upstairs they stepped into a long, narrow hallway. “Do you have a visual?” James asked over the speakerphone.

“No, it’s completely dark,” Bradley said. “Hang on.”

He shined the flashlight down the hall, carefully sweeping through the corners and the two doorways on each side. “I’m not seeing anything,” he said.

“I don’t like this,” James said. “Are you armed?”

Gabriella felt her lunch rising back up her throat. But she could almost hear Bradley roll his eyes. “Yeah, I walked in completely unprepared. Fuck off, McManus.”

“Shut up and answer the question.”

“Yes, I have a knife.”

“Gabriella?”

She jumped. “Yes.”

“Good.”

Gabriella half-expected James to say something more to her, but he didn’t. Instead, she heard him say “I’ve got visuals” before the line clicked.

Bradley pulled out a small device and turned it on. It began blinking in the darkness. “What’s that?” Gabriella asked.

“EMF,” Bradley replied, scanning the area. “You should have reached that module.”

What she should have done was just not open her mouth, apparently. Instead of answering, she waited with the holy water in one hand and a flashlight in the other, following him as he ran the device through all the darkened rooms of this floor. Thankfully the atmosphere up here was less terrifying than downstairs. There were signs of human life in the empty bedrooms and that demonic feeling was gone.

“Alright,” he said. “I’ve got what I need. Come on.”

They made their way carefully down the stairs. “Barn’s next,” Bradley said as they got back to Amelia.

“Any murders in there?” Amelia asked.

“Plenty, don’t worry,” James said. “Brad, you got the details?”

“If you never call me that again,” Bradley replied.

There was a pause, then Bradley sighed. “Yeah, there were three murders in that barn over the course of fifty years. All back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.”

“Any connection?” Amelia asked.

“The same family’s owned the property since 1840, so yeah.”

Amelia made a face at him that Gabriella could see in the dim light. “Got ourselves a little New England Conjuring House, don’t we?” James asked.

“I think the actual Conjuring House is the New England Conjuring House, but sure,” Madelyn said.

Madelyn and James laughed while Bradley narrowed his eyes. Gabriella felt that feeling in the pit of her stomach again. Maybe this had been a mistake.

Removing malicious spirits from an old barn full of sharp farming equipment should have been terrifying enough to distract her, but Gabriella couldn’t stop feeling like she was on the outside of the group, even more than she had been before. Amelia and Madelyn were being polite enough to her, but Bradley didn’t even bother to hide his disdain and James hadn’t said a word to her outside of the weapon confirmation.

So she was basically going through the motions as the same scene unfolded. Same demonic figures popping up in the corners, same bloody illusions in the flickering light of Bradley’s flashlight. This time, instead of smirking visages, there were flashes of murder, like snapshots that burned themselves into her retinas.

And then, just as quickly, it was over. The barn was silent except for the wind slapping some broken shingles.

Half an hour later, they were back in the car. Bradley had insisted on being meticulous about wrapping up the case, to the point where Gabriella was pretty sure the overkill was being directed at her. He’d inspected every corner of the barn twice, ran an energy sensor over it at least three times, taken EMF readings and EVPs, and then went back to the house and did the same thing in every room all over again. Finally, he’d declared himself satisfied and they went back to the van.

“Robin’s not back,” James said over the speakerphone as Amelia pulled the van out of the farmhouse’s driveway. “So I guess we just debrief each other.”

“What is Robin’s deal lately?” Amelia said, untying her ponytail and shaking her head. She pulled onto the main road and sped up the van. “He’s being a wicked dick.”

“It’s weird,” Madelyn said over the phone. “He’s so mad, like, all the time.”

“He’s chewed me out twice for the smallest things,” Amelia said. “Yesterday he said I wasn’t doing my entire workouts. Which is ridiculous, I do extra workouts, you all know that. But he pulls me into his office and basically says that if something happens on a case because I can’t pull my own weight, it’s on me.”

“He’s being ridiculous,” Bradley muttered. “It’s like he’s looking for things to get mad about and if he doesn’t find them, he’ll make them up.”

He didn’t look at Gabriella, but once again, the implication was obvious. She sat silently in the middle seat, next to the equipment. Robin hadn’t been mean to her at all. If anything, he had been overly friendly lately. He’d been warm and welcoming, like a favorite teacher back in high school might be. Maybe he wasn’t quite that way toward the others, but it was weird that there would be this much of a discrepancy between how he treated them versus how he treated her.

“Has something changed?” Madelyn asked over the speakerphone as Amelia stopped at an empty red light between two fields.

“Not really,” Amelia said. “Even whatever he thinks happened with James doesn’t add up with this new shit he’s pulling. Madelyn got tossed off a building and he didn’t start vanishing for days at a time and yelling at everyone.”

Why was Gabriella even still working here? They all clearly resented her for this. That wasn’t going to change, and none of it was her fault. She hadn’t asked for the thing to be under her bed or for Robin to act as her mentor. She hadn’t asked for any of it, but apparently they weren’t going to let her forget that they blamed her.

Something must’ve shown on her face as Bradley turned around to search through the bag beside her in the middle seat of the van. “Don’t even start,” he muttered.

Something flashed in her chest, hot and sudden. “Start what?” she demanded.

He looked at her for another second, then just rolled his eyes.

“Brad,” James said over the speakerphone.

“Call me that again and I lead you into traffic on your next field mission,” Bradley muttered.

“I’d have to get back in the field first.”

James sounded more bitter than Gabriella had ever heard him. Over the past couple weeks he’d avoided her, but kept some semblance of humor with the others. But even with the distortion of the speakerphone, it sounded like a mask had slipped, just for a second.

“He’s got me doing my own job, plus yours,” Bradley said. “He better get you back into the field soon.”

“Look,” Amelia said, her eyes still glued to the road, “Let’s just agree that Robin’s being a jackass, we don’t know why, and we’re all tired of it.”

The others chimed in their agreement, but Gabriella still sat awkwardly silent in the backseat. It didn’t feel right to start shit-talking Robin too, not after everything he’d done for her. Amelia either didn’t notice or didn’t care, but Bradley’s eyes flicked up to the rearview mirror to glance back at her. Avoiding eye contact, she looked out the window toward the dark fields passing by as they drove back to headquarters.

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CONTINUE TO CHAPTER 18