The Albion Inn by Alyx Barter
The Albion Inn in Savannah teems with ghosts, but they don't bother the innkeeper Jesse Hawthorne, until a TV crew comes to investigate.
Being in the Albion Inn was a bit like being in the woods in the deep of summer. Spirits buzzed incessantly in Jess's ear like cicadas, loud when he noticed them and white noise when he didn't, blending into the foliage until their absence became more noticeable than their presence.
That afternoon, the spirits had been particularly loud, as a visitor with negative energy had checked out just a few hours ago. The speculation was that she'd been a murderer, or something worse. Not that it was any of Jess's business.
"Hush," he muttered, as a chill went down his spine. Tabitha, the ghost of an old maid, swirled away irritably, but he didn't care. As the inn's clerk, he demanded few benefits, but not being touched by the dead was one of them. "Can't you go haunt some other room?"
"Hello? Check-in's at eleven, correct?"
Jess looked up, and silence fell, as complete and sudden as the woods when they sensed a bear nearby.
A predator had arrived.
A man stood before the receptionist counter, young and unassuming. He was tall - Albion's doorways, built in 1847, would have trouble accommodating him - and dusty-haired, with dark eyes that settled on Jess's with a puzzled expression, like Jess wasn't what he'd been expecting.
This didn't surprise Jess. The Albion Inn, a repurposed Victorian home, suited the ghost-hunters of Savannah, Georgia, perfectly. The exterior had an air of faded grandeur, all turrets and dark windows and a porch that sang of sweet tea and rocking chairs. The interior was a dark maze of hallways and rooms, staircases that creaked just-so and spiderwebs that clung ominously to corners.
Jess, meanwhile, belonged to the 21st century. Band shirt, pierced septum, Converse, hair that had been dyed purple but now faded to a dusky sort of color. He was never what paranormal investigators expected or hoped for. A grey-haired woman with a southern-belle accent and a giant cross hung around her neck would've suited the Inn's creepy aesthetics better.
But not many people could handle Albion's ghosts.
"Correct," Jess said. It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. One last orb fled, leaving him utterly alone. "Do you have a reservation?"
"Yes, under Chase Withers," Chase said, as though Jess wouldn't recognize him. "Two rooms. I'm with the Spirit Hunters. Have you heard of us?"
The Spirit Hunters was a paranormal investigative TV show that had popped up less than a year ago and blown up into an overnight sensation. They did okay work - mostly the ghosts seemed drummed up for dramatic effect, and Jess refused to believe that a spirit box bought off Amazon could actually communicate with ghosts.
But Spirit Hunters did more than investigate. They didn't just film ghosts and prove they existed - they helped them find peace. It was something Jess hadn't seen in any other paranormal show, and it intrigued him.
The other thing, really, that set Spirit Hunters apart from the rest of the paranormal investigative shows was Chase Withers. Tall and handsome, he'd acquired a massive following that seemed less interested in hauntings and more in him. There was a tortured past aspect to him that Jess had glossed over - something about parents that had died while he was tragically young.
Now he seemed determined to hunt down ghosts while running from his own.
"I've seen a few episodes." Jess typed into the computer, refusing to be impressed by Chase, though the ghosts certainly had been. It felt odd, working on it without Albion's newest ghost, a victim of a heart attack in the late 80s, standing at his shoulder. He always seemed baffled by the technology that came after him and liked to watch Jess type. "Rooms twelve and thirteen should be ready for you."
"Perfect," Chase said. "Room Thirteen will be a great episode name."
Jess hesitated. He'd been told to house them in room thirteen for that precise reason. But. "Room eight is more haunted."
Chase's gaze found his. "How so?"
Maybe it was the show's fame. Maybe Jess wanted to test Chase a little, see if he could rise to the challenge. Or maybe it was the silence that pounded through Albion like a heartbeat. The ghosts weren't gone. They were hiding.
Jess returned his attention to the computer, to hide that he cared. "There's a poltergeist in there."
There was a creak in the floor above them, as though to accentuate Jess's words. Chase drummed his fingers along the edge of the counter. "We'll have rooms eight and thirteen, then," he said, and nodded with finality. "I'll get the others."
It had taken Jess the majority of his childhood to figure out that most people couldn't see ghosts, let alone talk to them.
His mother had hated this. She'd hated that Jess could see vague shapes around people, signs that their loved ones stayed with them, or malevolent forces followed them. She'd told him to only speak about it in private, if he had to. To not let the rest of the world know that she'd had a haunt for a son.
His father told him to stop talking about the dead altogether. This was nonnegotiable.
It was why he got along well with the Albion Inn. Most employees had been unable to stand the creeping unease they felt in such a highly haunted space, unable to explain away some of the things they heard or the shadows that flicked across the edges of their vision. Where most places weren't haunted enough to affect the living, the Albion Inn was so full of dead that they wore the veil between them and the living thin enough that the living could notice.
Not that his job was made any easier for his abilities. He had the same power over the dead as he'd have over any living being he conversed with - that is to say, none. If a ghost listened to him, it was only out of grudging politeness. Mostly they sought him out for help, such as the ghost in room six.
The poltergeist was different. It wasn't a product of a death, a spot of history that lingered long after its time was over. Instead, it was energy, potent enough that it felt like its own entity. Sometimes it lay dormant, but other times it would rise to chuck objects at guests or blow cold air down the hallways in the heat of summer. Once, it had rattled knives in the kitchen while Jess had passed by, and Jess had religiously salted the doorway of room eight for weeks afterwards to punish the thing. But salt was only a temporary fix, and it eventually swirled out the window to drop a tree limb in front of Jess as he walked to the mailbox.
Jess thought that, if the rest of the ghosts of Albion feared Chase Withers, then perhaps the poltergeist would as well.
The Spirit Hunters moved quickly into their rooms. Belinda was put up in room thirteen. Laurie and Chase took room eight, wrestling the luggage trolley down the carpeted hallways. They were accompanied with a stream of curses and laughter that filled the Albion with a sense of life that, once they left for a dinner reservation, Jess noticed the absence of.
Once they left, Tabitha materialized in the lobby, arms crossed, expression stern.
"What?" Jess asked.
But the dead had nothing to say to him.
Albion was a different creature at night. As shadows fell across the inn, the darkness inside seemed to grow in intensity. The stairs creaked, though nobody walked on them. The sound of footsteps passed Jess's counter, though nobody moved through the lobby. The building seemed to inhale.
Possibility bled through the air, as though a creature lurked just around every corner, breath held, waiting for somebody to step into its embrace.
In the daytime, it was easy to dismiss the Albion Inn as another gimmicky stop for Savannah's ghost tours. In the nighttime, it was easier to remember the murders that had happened here, the deaths and disease and torment that seeped into the house's foundations.
Jess blocked it out with headphones that piped tinny, staticky music into his ears as he worked behind the counter, occasionally humming along to a lyric or tapping his fingers to the beat.
"HELLO?"
Belinda, a slight woman with freckles across her nose, stood on her toes to peer over the counter. It wasn't that she was short, or that the counter was tall, but Jess had stacked it with enough paperwork that needed to be refiled that tip-toes were required.
"Sorry," Jess said, pulling his headphones down around his neck. He hadn't been expecting anybody in the lobby at 2am. "Er, can I help you?"
Belinda's eyes crinkled with amusement. "You still use headphones?"
"As opposed to subjecting guests to my shitty music?"
"As opposed to Airpods." Belinda leaned across the counter and plucked at the wire leading to Jess's pocket. "I haven't seen a pair of these in years. What century are these from?"
Jess set the headphones aside. They'd been a gift from his mother, who he hadn't seen in... a while. "Can I help you?"
"Yes, I came down for another set of towels. There's a leak in my bathroom, and my towels got soaked."
A leak in room thirteen. Jess made a note of that and walked around the counter, headed towards the linen closet. "How's the ghost hunting going?"
Belinda bit her lip as she followed him. "If I'm being honest, we're only staying here for the B-roll. Chase likes the idea of room thirteen -"
"Eight," Jess said, then wanted to kick himself. It was rude to interrupt a guest.
Belinda looked puzzled. "No, thirteen. But we're in Savannah for other stuff. The cemeteries, mostly." She shrugged. "We might make an episode here, though. It's more haunted than I expected."
"More?" Jess pulled open the closet and peered inside. Gracie, the lone child that haunted Albion, giggled up at him and held a finger to her lips. Shhh. "I'd say we're about as haunted as the website advertises."
"That's the thing." Belinda held her hands out for the towels. "The website says this place is super haunted. You've had a bit of everything. Murders, plague, suicide... one of those things alone is enough to haunt a house."
"You think we're lying about the events of this place?"
Belinda gave him an apologetic smile. "Well, yeah. All of those things happening seems unlikely. And that's without considering the poltergeist, which usually isn't linked to historical trauma." She paused. "But... I can feel the weight of this place. I feel like I'm being watched. So some of it must be true, which means all of it might be."
Jess tilted his head, watching as Gracie stood and ran from the room. Her presence was light, undetectable, but a floorboard creaked and Belinda's eyes went to the spot just as Gracie skimmed past it. "I think it's like the chicken and the egg," Jess finally said. "This house was built on blood. That's all it knows. So bad things happen because bad things happened."
"I like the theory," Belinda said, "but then wouldn't bad things continue to happen? Best I can tell, the last death happened in the 1980s. So it's been a while since the house has been..." she paused, searching for the right word. "Fed."
Pages exploded into the air as something sliced through Jess's stacks of paperwork. A cold breeze gusted through the room, swirling tornadolike before it shot through the doorway and rattled up the stairs. Jess sighed and shut the closet door. He'd have to clean all that.
"That," Belinda said, as everything settled down, "is exactly what I'm talking about. Normal houses don't do that."
"I have to say, I'm disappointed in your poltergeist."
Tabitha, who had been painstakingly trying to teach Gracie to push a real broom across the lobby floor, vanished as a voice rolled through the doorway. Gracie followed suit, curling tight into an orb, so that the broom clattered uselessly to the ground.
It was still early, so Jess had opened the windows to allow for the Georgia dawn to seep into Albion. The salty scent of the marsh lingered in the air, along with the low call of a heron. He enjoyed the peace, and Chase Withers approaching him before continental breakfast could be set out was not part of that enjoyment. To hide this, he kept his eyes on the ledger he was working through. "It's not my poltergeist."
"Belinda told me about last night. We didn't get anything like that in room eight." Chase leaned across the counter, smelling overwhelmingly of cedar and sage. "But at least now I know you're a believer."
Jess set the ledger aside. "Excuse me?"
"I couldn't decide yesterday if you were fucking with me. But you really think there's a poltergeist in room eight."
A cardinal lit on the window, peeked into Albion, changed its mind. Jess watched it fly away. "Because there is."
Chase exhaled slowly, as though he was about to explain something very obvious to a small child. "Where do you sleep?"
Jess's heart skipped a beat. "Pardon?"
"You've been here since at least yesterday morning, and Belinda saw you down here past two. There's no way you had time to drive home and sleep and change between then and now, so you must live here."
"Room seven," Jess said grudgingly. The inn tried to rent it out, but room seven got more complaints than the others. Drafts, footsteps, doors opening and closing at random times in the night. Jess had never had issues in it, so they let him stay there, part of his salary going towards rent.
"Right next to room eight." Chase let the weight of that hang in the air for a moment. This, out of everything, irritated Jess. Maybe Chase knew ghosts, but Jess knew Albion. "Do you think, possibly, the poltergeist isn't interested in the rooms, so much as who's in them?"
"No, because I salted -" Jess started, then stopped. The tree limb hadn't fallen until he'd left the inn. "Oh."
"We're filming at Colonial Park today," Chase said. "But when we get back, maybe we can have a little chat."
He walked away, but Jess couldn't suppress the shiver that ran down his spine.
The Spirit Hunters weren't the only guests staying at the Albion Inn. One couple in room three was here for a strangely spooky honeymoon. A writer was holed up in room four. After Chase left, Jess busied himself with making beds and resetting the complimentary soaps and conditioners Albion provided and making sure the TV in room six wasn't unplugged, as they had another guest arriving that night.
Tabitha helped, somewhat. But as Jess approached room eight, she vanished, leaving him alone to step through the door.
Room eight itself was inconspicuous as Albion rooms went. Two beds, a nightstand in between them, a television supported by an antique table. The wallpaper in each room was different, and eight was a flowery green-and-white print that stopped halfway down the wall, the rest of it wooden-paneled.
Ghost-hunting equipment was scattered everywhere. Jess toed a spirit box and smirked to himself, then stepped over it to make the first bed, smoothing out the blankets and making sure the pillows were arranged properly.
Though he went slowly, it only took ten minutes to finish both beds, fold and stack towels, and replace the soaps in the bathroom. Jess was too professional to rifle through the Spirit Hunter's equipment, but he did pause and whisper to the room, "Are you here?"
The dark green curtain by the window drifted out from the wall, as though blown by a gust of air, but nothing else happened. Jess waited a moment, then went to the wall, knelt, and explored the wood paneling behind the curtain.
There was nothing of interest
The light on the nightstand flickered on, and - there, insubstantial as a shadow, a handprint.
A chill ran down Jess's spine as he pressed his hand to the handprint. It had been a bloodstain, long ago. He could tell by the color. But years and soap had faded it so it was less a memory and more the vague sense that it was where a memory should be.
And it was small, half the size of Jess's own hand. A child.
Gracie had died of the Spanish flu in room three. As far as Jess knew, no other child haunted Albion. So who did the handprint belong to?
Troubled, Jess waited another moment, then stepped out the door and directly into the Spirit Hunters.
For a moment, Jess started to explain - he was working, he hadn't gone through their personal belongings - but then he saw the way all three of the Spirit Hunters looked over the cart he'd parked outside their door and at the garbage bag he held in his hand, coming to the most logical conclusion. Laurie, the shortest of the group, with glasses he had to push repeatedly up his nose, said, "Dude, do you ever sleep?"
"Sometimes," Jess said, flicking his gaze down the hallway in search of backup. But of course, the ghosts were all gone. "I have insomnia."
"Leave it," Chase said warningly, as Laurie opened his mouth. There was something in Chase's expression as he studied Jess, as though he could see the handprint coming from Jess's mind like a cartoon bubble. "There's not much daylight left, and you and Belinda need to go get more footage of Colonial Park. I think we're going to have to do a lot of voice-overs for this episode."
Laurie, Belinda, and Jess all looked at him. Belinda was the first to speak. "You're not coming with us?"
Chase shook his head. His gaze flicked to Jess, then to the door behind him. "I want to sort this poltergeist thing out."
Jess crossed his arms as Belinda and Laurie exchanged looks, then vanished into the room. Would they see the handprint? No, Jess had never noticed it before, and he'd worked here for... he focused abruptly on Chase. "How do you intend on sorting out a poltergeist?"
Chase lifted his backpack. "Does this place happen to have a basement?"
Jess reached overhead as they descended the steps of the basement, searching for the shoe-string tethered to the single naked lightbulb that reigned over the entirety of Albion's basement. It flickered on with a weak yellow light that cast a circle around it and left the rest of the basement up to the imagination.
The floor itself was made of gritty stone, the air shockingly cold against the summer sunlight they'd just left behind. "I told you there's not much in here."
Chase frowned and flicked on a flashlight, casting it into the darkness netting the corners. It lit upon a single spider that fled the light, and nothing else. "I guess you were right."
"What were you expecting?" Maybe Jess should've asked this sooner. But he'd been distracted by that handprint, that impossibly small spot on the wall that earmarked a death Jess didn't know about.
"I don't know. Something. But there's something weird about this inn." The light stopped on Jess, directly in his eyes. "There's something weird about you."
"Thanks."
"No, I'm serious. But I can't figure out how you and your poltergeist are connected to Albion."
"You thought the basement held all the answers?"
Chase shrugged, the flashlight sending a wobble of shadows up the wall. "The website said that somebody died when they first started building this house. They had to build it from the ground up."
"Probably." When Chase gave him a withering stare, Jess uncrossed his arms. "Yes. Somebody died when the house was first built. But I don't know where in the house he died. He won't -"
Jess caught himself.
The flashlight dipped. "He won't what?"
"Nothing," Jess said quickly, but it was unconvincing. Damn. That handprint had really rattled him. "Nevermind. It wouldn't make for a good episode anyways." Though it probably would.
"I'm just trying to help," Chase said.
"What?"
"You." Chase gestured at Jess. "Do you see any cameras here? I'm not in this basement for the show, I'm trying to help you. Clearly this poltergeist is bothering you -"
"I never said that -"
"You don't have to. It looks like you haven't slept in the past decade."
Jess stepped back and looked around the basement. It was true, this didn't look as interesting as the cemeteries and historical sites that Spirit Hunters usually filmed in. But it bothered him. "Why do you care?"
"About you?"
"The show. About helping ghosts."
Chase was quiet. The light from his flashlight highlighted his eyes, cheekbones, nose, so that he was a silhouetted statue, poised in the center of the basement like a forgotten god. Jess had seen him do this on the show before, letting silence build his case for him. Letting the viewers do the work. Jess tucked his fingers into his fists, suddenly cold. He wasn't going to do the same.
"My parents died when I was ten," Chase finally said, voice strangely fragile. "In a car wreck. I was with my grandparents when it happened - they were coming to get me."
"I'm sorry," Jess said, feeling a stab. How long had it been since he'd seen his own parents? He couldn't remember.
"It was almost twenty years ago." Chase shrugged. "It sucked, but I moved on. Or at least, I tried to. But they started visiting me."
"Your grandparents?"
"My parents."
Jess tried to make sense of it. This man with a flashlight pointing to the ground, a flicker in his eyes like a flame trying to reignite. "Your parents were ghosts."
Chase nodded. "I should've been happy. I was happy. To lose your parents and then get them back like that - it's all anybody grieving could want. But they weren't right. They were lost, and trying to find their way back to me."
Slowly, Jess said, "What's dead cannot be undone."
"I know that." Chase's mouth thinned. "But it can move on. No grieving child should have to see their parents like that. No grieving parent should have to see their child that way. So I studied, I read, I found psychics - real ones, not the kind on TV - and I sent my parents into the light."
Jess breathed gently into the quiet that fell in the wake of Chase's statement. He saw the selflessness of it, the cost of what Chase endured and how he used it to help others. "You've been helping ghosts ever since."
"I've been trying. The only ghosts I've ever seen have been my parents, so it was hard until I started Spirit Hunters and got the equipment I needed. It's the only reason for the show, I swear. Yes, I need the footage, and the ratings, but only so I can continue this path." Chase's voice wobbled, then regained strength as he said, briskly, "Your turn."
"Okay," Jess said, and shut his eyes. It shouldn't have been this easy to admit, "I can see ghosts."
Silence, so prolonged that Jess had to open his eyes again to see Chase, regarding him with incredulity. "You can see ghosts."
"Yes. Not just hauntings - like the poltergeist with my paperwork. I can see ghosts. Like Tabitha - she's the maid, she helps me with chores around here -"
"When did this start?"
"As long as I can remember. My mom..." Jess faltered, remembering her anger, now, here. When had she ever been here? "She didn't like me talking about it with other people. Said it ruined our credibility."
Chase considered this. Maybe it wasn't incredulity after all, Jess realized. Maybe it was amazement. Or hope that this episode would have an interesting turn. "Have the ghosts said anything about me?"
Jess shook his head, chasing away the handprint. The anger. "The moment you arrived, they vanished. They won't come out when you're around. They're scared of you."
"Why would they be scared of me?"
He lifted a shoulder.
"Interesting." Chase studied him. "Are you scared of me?"
Jess should've just answered an immediate no, but he was never the type to do that. Instead, he considered the moment he'd first met Chase, the impression that a predator had walked into Albion. The way the ghosts had fallen silent and fled. But he also considered the man standing before him now, determined to help ghosts, trying to help him. "Of course n-"
The house shuddered.
Dust rained down on Chase, and Jess had a split second to consider the implications of this before he shouted, an annihilated "No!" as he hurled himself at Chase, knocking them both off their feet as a piece of the ceiling collapsed onto the ground behind them. The air was dust, golden within the lightbulb's reach, ashen without.
Then it settled, and Jess found himself looking down into Chase's face, his forearm braced against Chase's shoulder, Chase's heartbeat like a jackrabbit against his ribcage. "Shit," he said, pushing away. "I'm -"
Chase propped himself up on his elbows and surveyed the damage around them. "That almost... that could've killed us."
"Yeah," Jess said unsteadily. "Us." But the plaster lay where Chase had been standing.
The ceiling groaned again, like a great weight had settled on the floor above them.
"Come on," Jess said, and jumped to his feet, holding a hand out to Chase. After a moment, Chase accepted, and Jess pulled him up, ignoring the warmth of his touch, his heartbeat, the pounding of blood through his veins. "Let's get out of here."
Dawn crested slowly over the horizon, running a pale strip of light along the edge of the marsh hours before the sun would emerge. Jess watched it through the window of the lobby as he pulled out the guestbook and painstakingly signed out the couple that had been honeymooning at Albion. The writer had checked out yesterday, leaving Jess entirely alone with the Spirit Hunters, who were sleeping off last night's chaos.
All around them, ghosts hummed with their activities. Tabitha fussed over a crooked curtain. Gracie rolled a marble along the edge of the doorway, fascinated by its progress along the crooked foundations of Albion. Room twelve's ghost hovered over his shoulder, watching Jess type into the computer.
"I hope you enjoyed your stay," Jess said, trying to hide the delay in checkout. Despite the early hours, the computer was already overheating, and it whirred with the effort of printing their receipt.
"We did," said the wife. "This place is absolutely charming."
"Lovely," Jess said. All normal, as though the ceiling hadn't collapsed last night, as though Jess hadn't found a handprint on the wall, as though Chase Withers and his expectant silences hadn't shaken Jess out of his routine.
A sudden banging sound erupted through the house. The couple flinched, reeling back with their gazes cast upward as though the ceiling itself was to blame. Jess shot to his feet, then hesitated. Was something else about to break?
Tabitha shook her head at him and held up six fingers. Oh.
"I have to go," Jess said, throwing the receipt at them before bolting up the stairs.
Quickly, lightly, as though footsteps on the stairs would wake the guests and not the shuddering booms echoing through Albion, Jess raced to the second floor and swung open the door to room six just as the builder was swinging back to pound on it again. He paused, midswing, expression flashing up to Jess's.
The air around him was vaguely blurry, like a sepia photograph, but the dark stain across his suit was unmistakable. Deep in the room, Jess caught a flicker of light from the television set.
"There are people sleeping here," Jess hissed at the ghost. "If you can't shut the TV off yourself, come get me. You know better."
At this, the builder scowled and folded in on himself, becoming smaller until he vanished in a flash of dazzling light. Jess strode over to the TV and shut it off, swearing under his breath. Maybe he needed a break from this place. When was the last time he'd left the Inn?
"Everything okay?"
Jess whirled. Chase stood behind him, blinking as sunlight shifted through the curtains. Though he couldn't have gotten more than a handful of hours of sleep - Jess had gotten none, of course - his eyes were clear and there was no indication of exhaustion in his posture. He may have just come in from a run, as fresh and springy as he appeared. "Of course. Why do you ask?"
Chase gestured into the room. "I heard an awful banging sound. Your poltergeist?"
"The builder."
"The one who died?"
Jess lifted an eyebrow. "They're all dead."
Chase coughed. "I mean, the first one."
"Oh." Jess hadn't forgotten Chase's interest in the builder, but it was hard to reconcile that with the irritable old man he confronted on a near-daily basis. "Yes." The first death of Albion Inn, a bad joke that hoped to become funny through sheer repetition. "He was mad because the TV got turned on."
"You're acting like he's an entitled guest, instead of a ghost," Chase said, a smile playing on the edges of his mouth.
"That's how he's behaving," Jess said. "It's because of the damn TV. Ever since they installed it, he's been pitching a fit."
"How did it get turned on?" Chase asked, stepping through the doorway. "Nobody's rooming here, are they?"
"Good question. No, they're not." Jess considered the room for a minute. It was possible a ghost had turned on the TV, but not plausible. Everybody who haunted Albion knew better. Except... the poltergeist. It was possible this was its handiwork.
Chase reached down and unplugged the TV. "There, maybe that'll -"
A shudder rippled through the Inn. It was faint, almost like Jess had imagined it, but the TV tilted a fraction of an inch.
Chase seemed to sense it too. "What on earth?"
There was a cry from next door. "Chase!"
Jess stood without realizing it, and together he and Chase charged out of room six and into room eight. "What is it?"
Laurie stood, waist wrapped in a towel, toothbrush in his hand, and gestured towards the bed. "Look!"
Jess's jaw dropped. The beds in room eight were typical midcentury fare, long and low with tall wooden headboards arcing over them and pressed to the walls, but the headboard on the bed farthest from the door had seemingly collapsed. "But - that's got to weigh over a hundred pounds!"
"Yeah," Laurie said, wielding his toothbrush like a scepter. "Chase, you just barely missed out on a pancake's fate."
"It must be the poltergeist," Chase said. "It tried to use the ceiling last night, and now this. I thought it was targeting Jess, but now it has it out for me."
Silence fell across the room as they considered this. Jess's gaze drifted past the bed, towards the curtain hiding the handprint. "How do we stop it?"
"We try to figure out which ghost is manifesting it," Chase said. "Poltergeists aren't ghosts themselves, but they source their energy from ghosts. Mostly ones that aren't using their full power."
"So that rules out the builder," Jess said, "since he used his energy to bang on the door. Tabitha was fixing a curtain this morning, and Gracie was playing with a marble. So it can't be them, either."
"How many other ghosts are there?" Chase asked. Laurie stared openly at Jess - so Chase hadn't told his teammates that he could see ghosts. Why?
Shaking the thought away, Jess said, "Eleven. Some are quieter than others. A few have been in stasis for a long time. A few may have moved on."
"So we have roughly eight more to investigate. We'll go to the library later, see if we can't find anything specific," Chase said, striding across the room to investigate the headboard. He tried to move it, putting all his weight into pushing it across the bed, but it only shifted a few inches before he gave up. "Shit, that really would've killed me."
"This is getting dangerous," Laurie said.
"That means it's getting good," Chase replied.
The laundry room wasn't necessarily in the basement, as the entrance to it existed on the opposite end of the house, but it was on a floor lower than the rest of Albion and subsequently one of the more private spaces in the inn. Jess really only ventured there when necessary, but he found the repetitive task of folding towels a break from the weirdness of the above floors.
It also gave him a chance to contemplate the events of the past two days. Not the basement or the headboard or even the silence following Chase, but the handprint on the wall. The memory of his mother, sharper now in the daylight, hauling him up the stairs of Albion. How old had he been? Ten? He remembered the headphones in his hands, the wires catching on the stairwell and nearly pulling his shoulder out.
And after that - darkness. Standing on a seawall and telling two tourists in a too-loud voice there was a ghost following them. Hiding from a man with several children haunting his footsteps. A swingset, bare feet kicking towards a sky framed with coniferous trees, nothing like what grew around Albion. Where had he grown up? He should call his mother and ask.
Later, something in him said. There were other problems to focus on first, like the poltergeist's new obsession with Chase Withers.
Perhaps the house hadn't fallen silent because it was scared of Chase. Maybe it had fallen silent because it was scared of the poltergeist, of what it would do as it pursued its chosen victim. It had already destroyed a part of the house in its pursuit, shaking the foundations themselves.
But it had been foiled by the TV, by the builder in room six. Which meant that, in a way, the poltergeist had saved him.
Then why would the headboard fall?
It's been a while since the house has been fed.
Floorboards creaked. Jess looked up and saw Chase standing in the doorway, watching him fold with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops. He should've been annoyed at the interruption, but instead - he was relieved. That Chase had come back, that he'd sought him out. He wasn't alone to figure this thing out. "How was research?"
"Fine," Chase said. Like the basement, the laundry room only had a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, and it cast interesting shadows across his face, highlighting his cheekbones and broad forehead in a way that made Jess focus on the towels. "No surprises in the library, but it's funny. Albion almost reminds me of the Harpson ghost."
"The Harpson ghost?" Jess asked.
Chase waved a hand. "Episode three, we had a particularly haunted house. Lots of paranormal activity, things moving, lights flickering, the whole gamut. But when we broke out the spirit boxes, nothing. Not a single ghost seemed to be present. It was the weirdest thing."
His voice had taken on a strangely lyrical tone, like it did when he gave voiceovers in his episodes. Jess kept folding and listened.
"Then Laurie made a breakthrough. He dug into the history of the house and found out that there was a ghost there, or at least, a recorded death. Marie Harpson. The next time we broke out the spirit box, we addressed her by name.
"The effect was immediate. The lights lit up, the curtains blew away from the windows, and it felt like the whole house was shaking. It was as powerful as your poltergeist here - because the ghost was channeling all her power into it."
"Like you said earlier," Jess interjected. "The less the ghosts use their abilities, the more energy they lend to the poltergeist. Or the more energy that gets taken."
Chase unhooked a thumb so he could point at Jess. "Exactly. But this one was worse than the rest - because Marie didn't know she was dead. That energy was completely untethered from herself."
Jess's hand slipped, ruining the crisp edge of a towel. He unfolded it and restarted. "How do you not realize you're dead?"
"I don't know. It's not like we could ask her." Chase leaned against the dryer, arms crossed, watching Jess fold. "But I'm wondering if that's what's happening here."
Something about the idea unsettled Jess. Not realizing you were dead... "I think most of our ghosts are pretty aware," he said, slowly. "But we can go talk to them."
"We can," Chase said, but he didn't move. Something about his gaze was expectant, like he was waiting for Jess to say something else. A strange silence settled between them as Jess searched for the right thing to say.
"You didn't tell Laurie that I could see ghosts," he finally said, reaching for the last towel.
Chase blinked. Oh. So that hadn't been what he was supposed to say. "It didn't seem like my secret to share."
"Thank you," Jess said, torn between salvaging this conversation and exiting it. He finished folding and set the towel on the stack beside him. There was nothing left to keep him in this room, and yet, something compelled him to continue. "I don't mind him knowing - it'll make fixing this whole mess easier. But I don't want anything about me on TV."
"That makes sense. Your mom didn't like you talking to ghosts." Chase tilted his head. "But what about your dad?"
"My dad..." Jess pressed his lips thin and cast himself back into his memories, fragmented as they were. One floated up, a dim voice saying something scathing at the bottom of a staircase. "I think he thought I was weird. I'm not really sure. My mom..." How could he have forgotten this? "We left him when I was little."
"Oh." Chase's hand settled on Jess's shoulder, warm through the fabric. "I'm sorry."
Jess swallowed and shut his eyes. "It's okay." He couldn't find his balance, here in this room smelling of detergent and cedar and sage. Too many things were flicking through his mind, a book being rifled through in search of the right picture to contextualize it, without understanding what he was trying to contextualize.
Maybe it didn't matter. In another two days the Spirit Hunters would leave, and Jess and Albion would return to their normal rhythms, rising with the sun and resting while the moon took sentry, whirling around the ghosts and their odd habits and quibbles with the guests. It was a pattern with no end.
The realization of it shattered through him, glass imploding, caught in midair as Chase's fingers flexed on Jess's shoulder. "You never answered me."
"What?" Jess opened his eyes, looking up at Chase, trying to reconcile the reality of the laundry room with the sudden truth pulsing through him like a heartbeat.
"When I asked if you were scared of me. In the basement, before the ceiling..." Chase gestured vaguely upwards with his free hand.
Jess blew out a breath. "I'm not scared of you."
It was true, but Jess still felt a flutter of something as Chase stepped closer to him.
It was true, even as Chase lifted his chin with one hand and pressed his mouth to Jess's.
And it was true when the light dimmed and sent them spiraling into darkness, and in that darkness Jess hooked one arm over Chase's neck and pulled him in, because the memories had waited for almost twenty years, and they could wait one night more.
It was true, it was true, it was all true.
They woke up in room seven. Well, Chase woke up in room seven. Jess was already awake, sitting at the window, staring into the garden as dawn rose over it. The bushes needed pruning and the flowers needed watering, but in the watery light it looked golden and untouchable.
"You didn't sleep," Chase said, voice low and muffled as he rolled over. One hand reached for him, but closed over empty air.
"I didn't need to," Jess said. "I don't think I ever did."
"What?" Jess could hear the frown in Chase's voice, and he couldn't resist turning to face him as he sat up. "What are you talking about?"
"Did Belinda tell you everything about our conversation?" Jess asked. "Before the poltergeist wrecked my paperwork?"
Chase squinted, partly in thought, and partly because the sunlight had snaked its way into the room. "It was about how so many people have died in this house. The builder -"
"1847," Jess said.
"The Confederate soldiers -"
"1864."
Chase narrowed his eyes. "The yellow fever -"
"1879." Jess held up his hand. "Tabitha died in 1898, after her husband cheated on her and she hurled herself from a window. Gracie in 1918, of the Spanish flu. A few others, of course. Eleven total, like we discussed yesterday."
"Right. What are you getting at?"
"The house takes somebody every ten to twenty years."
Chase considered this, then shook his head. "The last death here was in the late 1980s. A heart attack. Almost forty years ago."
"The last recorded death," Jess corrected.
"So you think the house took somebody else," Chase mused. "That lines up with my poltergeist theory - though how we're going to find a ghost that doesn't know they're dead, when there's no reports of any deaths in that timeframe, beats me."
"We don't have to find them," Jess said. "I know who it is already."
Chase's eyebrows shot up. "Who?"
Jess held out his hand, and this time when Chase reached for him, fingers closed around fingers. "I think it's easier if I show you."
Laurie opened the door to room eight with a scowl. "If you ever disappear on me again -" he started, then stopped at the sight of Jess next to Chase. There was a pause as Laurie took in the distance between the two, the fact that both were in yesterday's clothes, and then he said, "For fuck's sakes," and stepped back to let them both in.
"You'd better get Belinda," Jess said, ignoring the confused frown Chase was giving him. "I think I have some answers for her."
Laurie grumbled, but after a moment there was a knocking sound across the hall, and two moments later Belinda was in room eight, hand covering a yawn as she studied Chase and Jess with far less bemusement than Laurie had. "What's up?"
Jess pulled back the curtain and gestured for Chase to turn on the table lamp. "I found this the other day."
"A secret panel?" Belinda asked excitedly, and then, as the light revealed the tiny handprint, she said, "oh."
"I was confused," Jess said, "because the only child ghost we have here is Gracie, and this isn't hers. She died of illness, not of any real wound. But last night, while talking to Chase -"
"Talking," Belinda said. Laurie elbowed her.
"I remembered coming here when I was little, with my mom. We were on the run." Jess shut his eyes as another memory edged its way in. "From my dad. He wasn't... the greatest guy. And I wasn't the easiest kid, either. Mom was trying to get us to safety, and having a kid that speaks to ghosts made things complicated for her."
"What does this have to do with the handprint?" Laurie asked.
Jess stayed knelt by the handprint, but his eyes went to Chase, who was beginning to understand, and Belinda, who couldn't. "Rumor got out that a kid that spoke to ghosts was staying at the Albion Inn, and my father found us. My parents fought. I... died."
Outside, somebody shouted, and a dog barked joyfully, but inside, room eight was still and cold as a crypt. The memory of a lamp crashing down over his head made Jess stagger. Then, now, he'd placed his hand on the wall for balance.
"Jess," Chase said, unwillingly, "you're not dead."
"I don't think I am either. Which is why I could age, and work here, and..." Jess turned to look at Chase, the truth rattled desperately through him. "But you're right. Things weren't adding up. The poltergeist doesn't have anything to do with Albion - unless it's not following me, it is me. It's my ghostly power, manifesting because I've been too unaware of my own death to behave like a ghost."
"That's impossible," Belinda said. "You're not - you're nothing like the Harpson ghost. We can see you."
"Because I believe you can. I've always been able to see ghosts, so being dead didn't make a difference to me." Jess started to pace, because he couldn't think of anything else to do. Memories skittered through him like fragments of a glass bottle thrown into the street. His father, looming over him. His mother, stone-faced as his father dug a hole in the gardens below room seven. The other ghosts creating room for Jess, letting him grow up in a way they couldn't have. Disbelief was nearly as powerful as death.
"Dead is your type," Laurie snorted. "I'm sure the viewers will love that tagline."
Chase stepped into Jess's path to stop him. "Jess. Please. Start talking sense."
Jess lifted his gaze to Chase's. "You said you wanted to help the ghosts."
"I did," Chase said. "I do."
"But we're not the ones that need help," Jess said, and took his hand. "Albion wants you next."
Jesse Hawthorne, aged 11, went missing in 2005 amidst a domestic dispute that resulted in his mother, Francine Hawthorne, fleeing her home and traveling north to family. When she arrived, her family asked her where her son was, but she'd been unable to answer. Though she'd been the prime suspect in the case, no evidence had ever been found in regards to Jesse's whereabouts.
Belinda read all this on her phone as the Spirit Hunters and Jess sat on the front porch of Albion Inn, looking out at the marsh and the rays of setting sun, heady with the scent of gasoline and saltwater. Jess sat in the shadows, unable to escape the chill that had stolen over him since his realization.
"It was almost twenty years between Albion's last death and mine," he said, as Chase rubbed his thumb over his knuckles, as though trying to give him some of his warmth. "I think... the house had something to do with it. My parents fought, but they always fought. When Dad found us, he was angrier than I'd ever seen him. Mom was sadder. It magnified their emotions, and then..." He shivered. "The house was fed."
"It's been almost twenty years since the last person died here," Belinda said, putting down her phone. "That's why the ceiling collapsed. And the headboard. The house wants you, Chase."
"You don't know that," Chase said. The scent of gasoline bled through the air, along with the sad note in his voice.
"Yes," Jess said. "We do." When Chase had first stepped foot in Albion, the house had fallen silent. Jess had thought it was because Chase was the predator, come to hunt his ghosts, but now Jess understood - Albion had been the hunter, silently stalking this man with death already on his hands. "If you leave, it'll just take another guest, another life. It won't stop until it's fed. Unless we destroy it."
Chase pulled him closer, pressed his forehead to Jess's, closed his eyes. Jess let him, if only because he was selfish, because he was hungry for one last shared breath, for the spread of warm fingers against his back. "Come with us."
And because he was selfish, because he was hungry, because he hadn't slept for years and hadn't left the Albion for far longer, Jess had the strength to step away from Chase. "I can't." He had to make sure the house burned. He owned the ghosts of Albion Inn that much.
Laurie struck a match. It flickered in his fingers like the fireflies that danced in the Albion's gardens at night, a fallen star against the patch of darkness that surrounded the house. Behind him, the car the Spirit Hunters had arrived in waited, packed for their next trip, their next episode. "Chase, it's time."
Chase inhaled shakily, then nodded. Jess watched him step off the porch, watched Belinda put an arm around his waist and walk with him towards the car, a four-legged monster striding away from the Inn on unsteady legs. A lump formed in Jess's throat. He wanted to go with them - this was the future that had been stolen from him.
But Albion had to be stopped. Jess would be the last life taken to water the cursed foundations of this house. This one thing he could give the dead he'd been tasked to guard, years before he'd ever joined them.
Jess shut the door.
Laurie dropped the match.
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
That afternoon, the spirits had been particularly loud, as a visitor with negative energy had checked out just a few hours ago. The speculation was that she'd been a murderer, or something worse. Not that it was any of Jess's business.
"Hush," he muttered, as a chill went down his spine. Tabitha, the ghost of an old maid, swirled away irritably, but he didn't care. As the inn's clerk, he demanded few benefits, but not being touched by the dead was one of them. "Can't you go haunt some other room?"
"Hello? Check-in's at eleven, correct?"
Jess looked up, and silence fell, as complete and sudden as the woods when they sensed a bear nearby.
A predator had arrived.
A man stood before the receptionist counter, young and unassuming. He was tall - Albion's doorways, built in 1847, would have trouble accommodating him - and dusty-haired, with dark eyes that settled on Jess's with a puzzled expression, like Jess wasn't what he'd been expecting.
This didn't surprise Jess. The Albion Inn, a repurposed Victorian home, suited the ghost-hunters of Savannah, Georgia, perfectly. The exterior had an air of faded grandeur, all turrets and dark windows and a porch that sang of sweet tea and rocking chairs. The interior was a dark maze of hallways and rooms, staircases that creaked just-so and spiderwebs that clung ominously to corners.
Jess, meanwhile, belonged to the 21st century. Band shirt, pierced septum, Converse, hair that had been dyed purple but now faded to a dusky sort of color. He was never what paranormal investigators expected or hoped for. A grey-haired woman with a southern-belle accent and a giant cross hung around her neck would've suited the Inn's creepy aesthetics better.
But not many people could handle Albion's ghosts.
"Correct," Jess said. It felt like the air had been sucked out of the room. One last orb fled, leaving him utterly alone. "Do you have a reservation?"
"Yes, under Chase Withers," Chase said, as though Jess wouldn't recognize him. "Two rooms. I'm with the Spirit Hunters. Have you heard of us?"
The Spirit Hunters was a paranormal investigative TV show that had popped up less than a year ago and blown up into an overnight sensation. They did okay work - mostly the ghosts seemed drummed up for dramatic effect, and Jess refused to believe that a spirit box bought off Amazon could actually communicate with ghosts.
But Spirit Hunters did more than investigate. They didn't just film ghosts and prove they existed - they helped them find peace. It was something Jess hadn't seen in any other paranormal show, and it intrigued him.
The other thing, really, that set Spirit Hunters apart from the rest of the paranormal investigative shows was Chase Withers. Tall and handsome, he'd acquired a massive following that seemed less interested in hauntings and more in him. There was a tortured past aspect to him that Jess had glossed over - something about parents that had died while he was tragically young.
Now he seemed determined to hunt down ghosts while running from his own.
"I've seen a few episodes." Jess typed into the computer, refusing to be impressed by Chase, though the ghosts certainly had been. It felt odd, working on it without Albion's newest ghost, a victim of a heart attack in the late 80s, standing at his shoulder. He always seemed baffled by the technology that came after him and liked to watch Jess type. "Rooms twelve and thirteen should be ready for you."
"Perfect," Chase said. "Room Thirteen will be a great episode name."
Jess hesitated. He'd been told to house them in room thirteen for that precise reason. But. "Room eight is more haunted."
Chase's gaze found his. "How so?"
Maybe it was the show's fame. Maybe Jess wanted to test Chase a little, see if he could rise to the challenge. Or maybe it was the silence that pounded through Albion like a heartbeat. The ghosts weren't gone. They were hiding.
Jess returned his attention to the computer, to hide that he cared. "There's a poltergeist in there."
There was a creak in the floor above them, as though to accentuate Jess's words. Chase drummed his fingers along the edge of the counter. "We'll have rooms eight and thirteen, then," he said, and nodded with finality. "I'll get the others."
It had taken Jess the majority of his childhood to figure out that most people couldn't see ghosts, let alone talk to them.
His mother had hated this. She'd hated that Jess could see vague shapes around people, signs that their loved ones stayed with them, or malevolent forces followed them. She'd told him to only speak about it in private, if he had to. To not let the rest of the world know that she'd had a haunt for a son.
His father told him to stop talking about the dead altogether. This was nonnegotiable.
It was why he got along well with the Albion Inn. Most employees had been unable to stand the creeping unease they felt in such a highly haunted space, unable to explain away some of the things they heard or the shadows that flicked across the edges of their vision. Where most places weren't haunted enough to affect the living, the Albion Inn was so full of dead that they wore the veil between them and the living thin enough that the living could notice.
Not that his job was made any easier for his abilities. He had the same power over the dead as he'd have over any living being he conversed with - that is to say, none. If a ghost listened to him, it was only out of grudging politeness. Mostly they sought him out for help, such as the ghost in room six.
The poltergeist was different. It wasn't a product of a death, a spot of history that lingered long after its time was over. Instead, it was energy, potent enough that it felt like its own entity. Sometimes it lay dormant, but other times it would rise to chuck objects at guests or blow cold air down the hallways in the heat of summer. Once, it had rattled knives in the kitchen while Jess had passed by, and Jess had religiously salted the doorway of room eight for weeks afterwards to punish the thing. But salt was only a temporary fix, and it eventually swirled out the window to drop a tree limb in front of Jess as he walked to the mailbox.
Jess thought that, if the rest of the ghosts of Albion feared Chase Withers, then perhaps the poltergeist would as well.
The Spirit Hunters moved quickly into their rooms. Belinda was put up in room thirteen. Laurie and Chase took room eight, wrestling the luggage trolley down the carpeted hallways. They were accompanied with a stream of curses and laughter that filled the Albion with a sense of life that, once they left for a dinner reservation, Jess noticed the absence of.
Once they left, Tabitha materialized in the lobby, arms crossed, expression stern.
"What?" Jess asked.
But the dead had nothing to say to him.
Albion was a different creature at night. As shadows fell across the inn, the darkness inside seemed to grow in intensity. The stairs creaked, though nobody walked on them. The sound of footsteps passed Jess's counter, though nobody moved through the lobby. The building seemed to inhale.
Possibility bled through the air, as though a creature lurked just around every corner, breath held, waiting for somebody to step into its embrace.
In the daytime, it was easy to dismiss the Albion Inn as another gimmicky stop for Savannah's ghost tours. In the nighttime, it was easier to remember the murders that had happened here, the deaths and disease and torment that seeped into the house's foundations.
Jess blocked it out with headphones that piped tinny, staticky music into his ears as he worked behind the counter, occasionally humming along to a lyric or tapping his fingers to the beat.
"HELLO?"
Belinda, a slight woman with freckles across her nose, stood on her toes to peer over the counter. It wasn't that she was short, or that the counter was tall, but Jess had stacked it with enough paperwork that needed to be refiled that tip-toes were required.
"Sorry," Jess said, pulling his headphones down around his neck. He hadn't been expecting anybody in the lobby at 2am. "Er, can I help you?"
Belinda's eyes crinkled with amusement. "You still use headphones?"
"As opposed to subjecting guests to my shitty music?"
"As opposed to Airpods." Belinda leaned across the counter and plucked at the wire leading to Jess's pocket. "I haven't seen a pair of these in years. What century are these from?"
Jess set the headphones aside. They'd been a gift from his mother, who he hadn't seen in... a while. "Can I help you?"
"Yes, I came down for another set of towels. There's a leak in my bathroom, and my towels got soaked."
A leak in room thirteen. Jess made a note of that and walked around the counter, headed towards the linen closet. "How's the ghost hunting going?"
Belinda bit her lip as she followed him. "If I'm being honest, we're only staying here for the B-roll. Chase likes the idea of room thirteen -"
"Eight," Jess said, then wanted to kick himself. It was rude to interrupt a guest.
Belinda looked puzzled. "No, thirteen. But we're in Savannah for other stuff. The cemeteries, mostly." She shrugged. "We might make an episode here, though. It's more haunted than I expected."
"More?" Jess pulled open the closet and peered inside. Gracie, the lone child that haunted Albion, giggled up at him and held a finger to her lips. Shhh. "I'd say we're about as haunted as the website advertises."
"That's the thing." Belinda held her hands out for the towels. "The website says this place is super haunted. You've had a bit of everything. Murders, plague, suicide... one of those things alone is enough to haunt a house."
"You think we're lying about the events of this place?"
Belinda gave him an apologetic smile. "Well, yeah. All of those things happening seems unlikely. And that's without considering the poltergeist, which usually isn't linked to historical trauma." She paused. "But... I can feel the weight of this place. I feel like I'm being watched. So some of it must be true, which means all of it might be."
Jess tilted his head, watching as Gracie stood and ran from the room. Her presence was light, undetectable, but a floorboard creaked and Belinda's eyes went to the spot just as Gracie skimmed past it. "I think it's like the chicken and the egg," Jess finally said. "This house was built on blood. That's all it knows. So bad things happen because bad things happened."
"I like the theory," Belinda said, "but then wouldn't bad things continue to happen? Best I can tell, the last death happened in the 1980s. So it's been a while since the house has been..." she paused, searching for the right word. "Fed."
Pages exploded into the air as something sliced through Jess's stacks of paperwork. A cold breeze gusted through the room, swirling tornadolike before it shot through the doorway and rattled up the stairs. Jess sighed and shut the closet door. He'd have to clean all that.
"That," Belinda said, as everything settled down, "is exactly what I'm talking about. Normal houses don't do that."
"I have to say, I'm disappointed in your poltergeist."
Tabitha, who had been painstakingly trying to teach Gracie to push a real broom across the lobby floor, vanished as a voice rolled through the doorway. Gracie followed suit, curling tight into an orb, so that the broom clattered uselessly to the ground.
It was still early, so Jess had opened the windows to allow for the Georgia dawn to seep into Albion. The salty scent of the marsh lingered in the air, along with the low call of a heron. He enjoyed the peace, and Chase Withers approaching him before continental breakfast could be set out was not part of that enjoyment. To hide this, he kept his eyes on the ledger he was working through. "It's not my poltergeist."
"Belinda told me about last night. We didn't get anything like that in room eight." Chase leaned across the counter, smelling overwhelmingly of cedar and sage. "But at least now I know you're a believer."
Jess set the ledger aside. "Excuse me?"
"I couldn't decide yesterday if you were fucking with me. But you really think there's a poltergeist in room eight."
A cardinal lit on the window, peeked into Albion, changed its mind. Jess watched it fly away. "Because there is."
Chase exhaled slowly, as though he was about to explain something very obvious to a small child. "Where do you sleep?"
Jess's heart skipped a beat. "Pardon?"
"You've been here since at least yesterday morning, and Belinda saw you down here past two. There's no way you had time to drive home and sleep and change between then and now, so you must live here."
"Room seven," Jess said grudgingly. The inn tried to rent it out, but room seven got more complaints than the others. Drafts, footsteps, doors opening and closing at random times in the night. Jess had never had issues in it, so they let him stay there, part of his salary going towards rent.
"Right next to room eight." Chase let the weight of that hang in the air for a moment. This, out of everything, irritated Jess. Maybe Chase knew ghosts, but Jess knew Albion. "Do you think, possibly, the poltergeist isn't interested in the rooms, so much as who's in them?"
"No, because I salted -" Jess started, then stopped. The tree limb hadn't fallen until he'd left the inn. "Oh."
"We're filming at Colonial Park today," Chase said. "But when we get back, maybe we can have a little chat."
He walked away, but Jess couldn't suppress the shiver that ran down his spine.
The Spirit Hunters weren't the only guests staying at the Albion Inn. One couple in room three was here for a strangely spooky honeymoon. A writer was holed up in room four. After Chase left, Jess busied himself with making beds and resetting the complimentary soaps and conditioners Albion provided and making sure the TV in room six wasn't unplugged, as they had another guest arriving that night.
Tabitha helped, somewhat. But as Jess approached room eight, she vanished, leaving him alone to step through the door.
Room eight itself was inconspicuous as Albion rooms went. Two beds, a nightstand in between them, a television supported by an antique table. The wallpaper in each room was different, and eight was a flowery green-and-white print that stopped halfway down the wall, the rest of it wooden-paneled.
Ghost-hunting equipment was scattered everywhere. Jess toed a spirit box and smirked to himself, then stepped over it to make the first bed, smoothing out the blankets and making sure the pillows were arranged properly.
Though he went slowly, it only took ten minutes to finish both beds, fold and stack towels, and replace the soaps in the bathroom. Jess was too professional to rifle through the Spirit Hunter's equipment, but he did pause and whisper to the room, "Are you here?"
The dark green curtain by the window drifted out from the wall, as though blown by a gust of air, but nothing else happened. Jess waited a moment, then went to the wall, knelt, and explored the wood paneling behind the curtain.
There was nothing of interest
The light on the nightstand flickered on, and - there, insubstantial as a shadow, a handprint.
A chill ran down Jess's spine as he pressed his hand to the handprint. It had been a bloodstain, long ago. He could tell by the color. But years and soap had faded it so it was less a memory and more the vague sense that it was where a memory should be.
And it was small, half the size of Jess's own hand. A child.
Gracie had died of the Spanish flu in room three. As far as Jess knew, no other child haunted Albion. So who did the handprint belong to?
Troubled, Jess waited another moment, then stepped out the door and directly into the Spirit Hunters.
For a moment, Jess started to explain - he was working, he hadn't gone through their personal belongings - but then he saw the way all three of the Spirit Hunters looked over the cart he'd parked outside their door and at the garbage bag he held in his hand, coming to the most logical conclusion. Laurie, the shortest of the group, with glasses he had to push repeatedly up his nose, said, "Dude, do you ever sleep?"
"Sometimes," Jess said, flicking his gaze down the hallway in search of backup. But of course, the ghosts were all gone. "I have insomnia."
"Leave it," Chase said warningly, as Laurie opened his mouth. There was something in Chase's expression as he studied Jess, as though he could see the handprint coming from Jess's mind like a cartoon bubble. "There's not much daylight left, and you and Belinda need to go get more footage of Colonial Park. I think we're going to have to do a lot of voice-overs for this episode."
Laurie, Belinda, and Jess all looked at him. Belinda was the first to speak. "You're not coming with us?"
Chase shook his head. His gaze flicked to Jess, then to the door behind him. "I want to sort this poltergeist thing out."
Jess crossed his arms as Belinda and Laurie exchanged looks, then vanished into the room. Would they see the handprint? No, Jess had never noticed it before, and he'd worked here for... he focused abruptly on Chase. "How do you intend on sorting out a poltergeist?"
Chase lifted his backpack. "Does this place happen to have a basement?"
Jess reached overhead as they descended the steps of the basement, searching for the shoe-string tethered to the single naked lightbulb that reigned over the entirety of Albion's basement. It flickered on with a weak yellow light that cast a circle around it and left the rest of the basement up to the imagination.
The floor itself was made of gritty stone, the air shockingly cold against the summer sunlight they'd just left behind. "I told you there's not much in here."
Chase frowned and flicked on a flashlight, casting it into the darkness netting the corners. It lit upon a single spider that fled the light, and nothing else. "I guess you were right."
"What were you expecting?" Maybe Jess should've asked this sooner. But he'd been distracted by that handprint, that impossibly small spot on the wall that earmarked a death Jess didn't know about.
"I don't know. Something. But there's something weird about this inn." The light stopped on Jess, directly in his eyes. "There's something weird about you."
"Thanks."
"No, I'm serious. But I can't figure out how you and your poltergeist are connected to Albion."
"You thought the basement held all the answers?"
Chase shrugged, the flashlight sending a wobble of shadows up the wall. "The website said that somebody died when they first started building this house. They had to build it from the ground up."
"Probably." When Chase gave him a withering stare, Jess uncrossed his arms. "Yes. Somebody died when the house was first built. But I don't know where in the house he died. He won't -"
Jess caught himself.
The flashlight dipped. "He won't what?"
"Nothing," Jess said quickly, but it was unconvincing. Damn. That handprint had really rattled him. "Nevermind. It wouldn't make for a good episode anyways." Though it probably would.
"I'm just trying to help," Chase said.
"What?"
"You." Chase gestured at Jess. "Do you see any cameras here? I'm not in this basement for the show, I'm trying to help you. Clearly this poltergeist is bothering you -"
"I never said that -"
"You don't have to. It looks like you haven't slept in the past decade."
Jess stepped back and looked around the basement. It was true, this didn't look as interesting as the cemeteries and historical sites that Spirit Hunters usually filmed in. But it bothered him. "Why do you care?"
"About you?"
"The show. About helping ghosts."
Chase was quiet. The light from his flashlight highlighted his eyes, cheekbones, nose, so that he was a silhouetted statue, poised in the center of the basement like a forgotten god. Jess had seen him do this on the show before, letting silence build his case for him. Letting the viewers do the work. Jess tucked his fingers into his fists, suddenly cold. He wasn't going to do the same.
"My parents died when I was ten," Chase finally said, voice strangely fragile. "In a car wreck. I was with my grandparents when it happened - they were coming to get me."
"I'm sorry," Jess said, feeling a stab. How long had it been since he'd seen his own parents? He couldn't remember.
"It was almost twenty years ago." Chase shrugged. "It sucked, but I moved on. Or at least, I tried to. But they started visiting me."
"Your grandparents?"
"My parents."
Jess tried to make sense of it. This man with a flashlight pointing to the ground, a flicker in his eyes like a flame trying to reignite. "Your parents were ghosts."
Chase nodded. "I should've been happy. I was happy. To lose your parents and then get them back like that - it's all anybody grieving could want. But they weren't right. They were lost, and trying to find their way back to me."
Slowly, Jess said, "What's dead cannot be undone."
"I know that." Chase's mouth thinned. "But it can move on. No grieving child should have to see their parents like that. No grieving parent should have to see their child that way. So I studied, I read, I found psychics - real ones, not the kind on TV - and I sent my parents into the light."
Jess breathed gently into the quiet that fell in the wake of Chase's statement. He saw the selflessness of it, the cost of what Chase endured and how he used it to help others. "You've been helping ghosts ever since."
"I've been trying. The only ghosts I've ever seen have been my parents, so it was hard until I started Spirit Hunters and got the equipment I needed. It's the only reason for the show, I swear. Yes, I need the footage, and the ratings, but only so I can continue this path." Chase's voice wobbled, then regained strength as he said, briskly, "Your turn."
"Okay," Jess said, and shut his eyes. It shouldn't have been this easy to admit, "I can see ghosts."
Silence, so prolonged that Jess had to open his eyes again to see Chase, regarding him with incredulity. "You can see ghosts."
"Yes. Not just hauntings - like the poltergeist with my paperwork. I can see ghosts. Like Tabitha - she's the maid, she helps me with chores around here -"
"When did this start?"
"As long as I can remember. My mom..." Jess faltered, remembering her anger, now, here. When had she ever been here? "She didn't like me talking about it with other people. Said it ruined our credibility."
Chase considered this. Maybe it wasn't incredulity after all, Jess realized. Maybe it was amazement. Or hope that this episode would have an interesting turn. "Have the ghosts said anything about me?"
Jess shook his head, chasing away the handprint. The anger. "The moment you arrived, they vanished. They won't come out when you're around. They're scared of you."
"Why would they be scared of me?"
He lifted a shoulder.
"Interesting." Chase studied him. "Are you scared of me?"
Jess should've just answered an immediate no, but he was never the type to do that. Instead, he considered the moment he'd first met Chase, the impression that a predator had walked into Albion. The way the ghosts had fallen silent and fled. But he also considered the man standing before him now, determined to help ghosts, trying to help him. "Of course n-"
The house shuddered.
Dust rained down on Chase, and Jess had a split second to consider the implications of this before he shouted, an annihilated "No!" as he hurled himself at Chase, knocking them both off their feet as a piece of the ceiling collapsed onto the ground behind them. The air was dust, golden within the lightbulb's reach, ashen without.
Then it settled, and Jess found himself looking down into Chase's face, his forearm braced against Chase's shoulder, Chase's heartbeat like a jackrabbit against his ribcage. "Shit," he said, pushing away. "I'm -"
Chase propped himself up on his elbows and surveyed the damage around them. "That almost... that could've killed us."
"Yeah," Jess said unsteadily. "Us." But the plaster lay where Chase had been standing.
The ceiling groaned again, like a great weight had settled on the floor above them.
"Come on," Jess said, and jumped to his feet, holding a hand out to Chase. After a moment, Chase accepted, and Jess pulled him up, ignoring the warmth of his touch, his heartbeat, the pounding of blood through his veins. "Let's get out of here."
Dawn crested slowly over the horizon, running a pale strip of light along the edge of the marsh hours before the sun would emerge. Jess watched it through the window of the lobby as he pulled out the guestbook and painstakingly signed out the couple that had been honeymooning at Albion. The writer had checked out yesterday, leaving Jess entirely alone with the Spirit Hunters, who were sleeping off last night's chaos.
All around them, ghosts hummed with their activities. Tabitha fussed over a crooked curtain. Gracie rolled a marble along the edge of the doorway, fascinated by its progress along the crooked foundations of Albion. Room twelve's ghost hovered over his shoulder, watching Jess type into the computer.
"I hope you enjoyed your stay," Jess said, trying to hide the delay in checkout. Despite the early hours, the computer was already overheating, and it whirred with the effort of printing their receipt.
"We did," said the wife. "This place is absolutely charming."
"Lovely," Jess said. All normal, as though the ceiling hadn't collapsed last night, as though Jess hadn't found a handprint on the wall, as though Chase Withers and his expectant silences hadn't shaken Jess out of his routine.
A sudden banging sound erupted through the house. The couple flinched, reeling back with their gazes cast upward as though the ceiling itself was to blame. Jess shot to his feet, then hesitated. Was something else about to break?
Tabitha shook her head at him and held up six fingers. Oh.
"I have to go," Jess said, throwing the receipt at them before bolting up the stairs.
Quickly, lightly, as though footsteps on the stairs would wake the guests and not the shuddering booms echoing through Albion, Jess raced to the second floor and swung open the door to room six just as the builder was swinging back to pound on it again. He paused, midswing, expression flashing up to Jess's.
The air around him was vaguely blurry, like a sepia photograph, but the dark stain across his suit was unmistakable. Deep in the room, Jess caught a flicker of light from the television set.
"There are people sleeping here," Jess hissed at the ghost. "If you can't shut the TV off yourself, come get me. You know better."
At this, the builder scowled and folded in on himself, becoming smaller until he vanished in a flash of dazzling light. Jess strode over to the TV and shut it off, swearing under his breath. Maybe he needed a break from this place. When was the last time he'd left the Inn?
"Everything okay?"
Jess whirled. Chase stood behind him, blinking as sunlight shifted through the curtains. Though he couldn't have gotten more than a handful of hours of sleep - Jess had gotten none, of course - his eyes were clear and there was no indication of exhaustion in his posture. He may have just come in from a run, as fresh and springy as he appeared. "Of course. Why do you ask?"
Chase gestured into the room. "I heard an awful banging sound. Your poltergeist?"
"The builder."
"The one who died?"
Jess lifted an eyebrow. "They're all dead."
Chase coughed. "I mean, the first one."
"Oh." Jess hadn't forgotten Chase's interest in the builder, but it was hard to reconcile that with the irritable old man he confronted on a near-daily basis. "Yes." The first death of Albion Inn, a bad joke that hoped to become funny through sheer repetition. "He was mad because the TV got turned on."
"You're acting like he's an entitled guest, instead of a ghost," Chase said, a smile playing on the edges of his mouth.
"That's how he's behaving," Jess said. "It's because of the damn TV. Ever since they installed it, he's been pitching a fit."
"How did it get turned on?" Chase asked, stepping through the doorway. "Nobody's rooming here, are they?"
"Good question. No, they're not." Jess considered the room for a minute. It was possible a ghost had turned on the TV, but not plausible. Everybody who haunted Albion knew better. Except... the poltergeist. It was possible this was its handiwork.
Chase reached down and unplugged the TV. "There, maybe that'll -"
A shudder rippled through the Inn. It was faint, almost like Jess had imagined it, but the TV tilted a fraction of an inch.
Chase seemed to sense it too. "What on earth?"
There was a cry from next door. "Chase!"
Jess stood without realizing it, and together he and Chase charged out of room six and into room eight. "What is it?"
Laurie stood, waist wrapped in a towel, toothbrush in his hand, and gestured towards the bed. "Look!"
Jess's jaw dropped. The beds in room eight were typical midcentury fare, long and low with tall wooden headboards arcing over them and pressed to the walls, but the headboard on the bed farthest from the door had seemingly collapsed. "But - that's got to weigh over a hundred pounds!"
"Yeah," Laurie said, wielding his toothbrush like a scepter. "Chase, you just barely missed out on a pancake's fate."
"It must be the poltergeist," Chase said. "It tried to use the ceiling last night, and now this. I thought it was targeting Jess, but now it has it out for me."
Silence fell across the room as they considered this. Jess's gaze drifted past the bed, towards the curtain hiding the handprint. "How do we stop it?"
"We try to figure out which ghost is manifesting it," Chase said. "Poltergeists aren't ghosts themselves, but they source their energy from ghosts. Mostly ones that aren't using their full power."
"So that rules out the builder," Jess said, "since he used his energy to bang on the door. Tabitha was fixing a curtain this morning, and Gracie was playing with a marble. So it can't be them, either."
"How many other ghosts are there?" Chase asked. Laurie stared openly at Jess - so Chase hadn't told his teammates that he could see ghosts. Why?
Shaking the thought away, Jess said, "Eleven. Some are quieter than others. A few have been in stasis for a long time. A few may have moved on."
"So we have roughly eight more to investigate. We'll go to the library later, see if we can't find anything specific," Chase said, striding across the room to investigate the headboard. He tried to move it, putting all his weight into pushing it across the bed, but it only shifted a few inches before he gave up. "Shit, that really would've killed me."
"This is getting dangerous," Laurie said.
"That means it's getting good," Chase replied.
The laundry room wasn't necessarily in the basement, as the entrance to it existed on the opposite end of the house, but it was on a floor lower than the rest of Albion and subsequently one of the more private spaces in the inn. Jess really only ventured there when necessary, but he found the repetitive task of folding towels a break from the weirdness of the above floors.
It also gave him a chance to contemplate the events of the past two days. Not the basement or the headboard or even the silence following Chase, but the handprint on the wall. The memory of his mother, sharper now in the daylight, hauling him up the stairs of Albion. How old had he been? Ten? He remembered the headphones in his hands, the wires catching on the stairwell and nearly pulling his shoulder out.
And after that - darkness. Standing on a seawall and telling two tourists in a too-loud voice there was a ghost following them. Hiding from a man with several children haunting his footsteps. A swingset, bare feet kicking towards a sky framed with coniferous trees, nothing like what grew around Albion. Where had he grown up? He should call his mother and ask.
Later, something in him said. There were other problems to focus on first, like the poltergeist's new obsession with Chase Withers.
Perhaps the house hadn't fallen silent because it was scared of Chase. Maybe it had fallen silent because it was scared of the poltergeist, of what it would do as it pursued its chosen victim. It had already destroyed a part of the house in its pursuit, shaking the foundations themselves.
But it had been foiled by the TV, by the builder in room six. Which meant that, in a way, the poltergeist had saved him.
Then why would the headboard fall?
It's been a while since the house has been fed.
Floorboards creaked. Jess looked up and saw Chase standing in the doorway, watching him fold with his thumbs hooked through his belt loops. He should've been annoyed at the interruption, but instead - he was relieved. That Chase had come back, that he'd sought him out. He wasn't alone to figure this thing out. "How was research?"
"Fine," Chase said. Like the basement, the laundry room only had a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, and it cast interesting shadows across his face, highlighting his cheekbones and broad forehead in a way that made Jess focus on the towels. "No surprises in the library, but it's funny. Albion almost reminds me of the Harpson ghost."
"The Harpson ghost?" Jess asked.
Chase waved a hand. "Episode three, we had a particularly haunted house. Lots of paranormal activity, things moving, lights flickering, the whole gamut. But when we broke out the spirit boxes, nothing. Not a single ghost seemed to be present. It was the weirdest thing."
His voice had taken on a strangely lyrical tone, like it did when he gave voiceovers in his episodes. Jess kept folding and listened.
"Then Laurie made a breakthrough. He dug into the history of the house and found out that there was a ghost there, or at least, a recorded death. Marie Harpson. The next time we broke out the spirit box, we addressed her by name.
"The effect was immediate. The lights lit up, the curtains blew away from the windows, and it felt like the whole house was shaking. It was as powerful as your poltergeist here - because the ghost was channeling all her power into it."
"Like you said earlier," Jess interjected. "The less the ghosts use their abilities, the more energy they lend to the poltergeist. Or the more energy that gets taken."
Chase unhooked a thumb so he could point at Jess. "Exactly. But this one was worse than the rest - because Marie didn't know she was dead. That energy was completely untethered from herself."
Jess's hand slipped, ruining the crisp edge of a towel. He unfolded it and restarted. "How do you not realize you're dead?"
"I don't know. It's not like we could ask her." Chase leaned against the dryer, arms crossed, watching Jess fold. "But I'm wondering if that's what's happening here."
Something about the idea unsettled Jess. Not realizing you were dead... "I think most of our ghosts are pretty aware," he said, slowly. "But we can go talk to them."
"We can," Chase said, but he didn't move. Something about his gaze was expectant, like he was waiting for Jess to say something else. A strange silence settled between them as Jess searched for the right thing to say.
"You didn't tell Laurie that I could see ghosts," he finally said, reaching for the last towel.
Chase blinked. Oh. So that hadn't been what he was supposed to say. "It didn't seem like my secret to share."
"Thank you," Jess said, torn between salvaging this conversation and exiting it. He finished folding and set the towel on the stack beside him. There was nothing left to keep him in this room, and yet, something compelled him to continue. "I don't mind him knowing - it'll make fixing this whole mess easier. But I don't want anything about me on TV."
"That makes sense. Your mom didn't like you talking to ghosts." Chase tilted his head. "But what about your dad?"
"My dad..." Jess pressed his lips thin and cast himself back into his memories, fragmented as they were. One floated up, a dim voice saying something scathing at the bottom of a staircase. "I think he thought I was weird. I'm not really sure. My mom..." How could he have forgotten this? "We left him when I was little."
"Oh." Chase's hand settled on Jess's shoulder, warm through the fabric. "I'm sorry."
Jess swallowed and shut his eyes. "It's okay." He couldn't find his balance, here in this room smelling of detergent and cedar and sage. Too many things were flicking through his mind, a book being rifled through in search of the right picture to contextualize it, without understanding what he was trying to contextualize.
Maybe it didn't matter. In another two days the Spirit Hunters would leave, and Jess and Albion would return to their normal rhythms, rising with the sun and resting while the moon took sentry, whirling around the ghosts and their odd habits and quibbles with the guests. It was a pattern with no end.
The realization of it shattered through him, glass imploding, caught in midair as Chase's fingers flexed on Jess's shoulder. "You never answered me."
"What?" Jess opened his eyes, looking up at Chase, trying to reconcile the reality of the laundry room with the sudden truth pulsing through him like a heartbeat.
"When I asked if you were scared of me. In the basement, before the ceiling..." Chase gestured vaguely upwards with his free hand.
Jess blew out a breath. "I'm not scared of you."
It was true, but Jess still felt a flutter of something as Chase stepped closer to him.
It was true, even as Chase lifted his chin with one hand and pressed his mouth to Jess's.
And it was true when the light dimmed and sent them spiraling into darkness, and in that darkness Jess hooked one arm over Chase's neck and pulled him in, because the memories had waited for almost twenty years, and they could wait one night more.
It was true, it was true, it was all true.
They woke up in room seven. Well, Chase woke up in room seven. Jess was already awake, sitting at the window, staring into the garden as dawn rose over it. The bushes needed pruning and the flowers needed watering, but in the watery light it looked golden and untouchable.
"You didn't sleep," Chase said, voice low and muffled as he rolled over. One hand reached for him, but closed over empty air.
"I didn't need to," Jess said. "I don't think I ever did."
"What?" Jess could hear the frown in Chase's voice, and he couldn't resist turning to face him as he sat up. "What are you talking about?"
"Did Belinda tell you everything about our conversation?" Jess asked. "Before the poltergeist wrecked my paperwork?"
Chase squinted, partly in thought, and partly because the sunlight had snaked its way into the room. "It was about how so many people have died in this house. The builder -"
"1847," Jess said.
"The Confederate soldiers -"
"1864."
Chase narrowed his eyes. "The yellow fever -"
"1879." Jess held up his hand. "Tabitha died in 1898, after her husband cheated on her and she hurled herself from a window. Gracie in 1918, of the Spanish flu. A few others, of course. Eleven total, like we discussed yesterday."
"Right. What are you getting at?"
"The house takes somebody every ten to twenty years."
Chase considered this, then shook his head. "The last death here was in the late 1980s. A heart attack. Almost forty years ago."
"The last recorded death," Jess corrected.
"So you think the house took somebody else," Chase mused. "That lines up with my poltergeist theory - though how we're going to find a ghost that doesn't know they're dead, when there's no reports of any deaths in that timeframe, beats me."
"We don't have to find them," Jess said. "I know who it is already."
Chase's eyebrows shot up. "Who?"
Jess held out his hand, and this time when Chase reached for him, fingers closed around fingers. "I think it's easier if I show you."
Laurie opened the door to room eight with a scowl. "If you ever disappear on me again -" he started, then stopped at the sight of Jess next to Chase. There was a pause as Laurie took in the distance between the two, the fact that both were in yesterday's clothes, and then he said, "For fuck's sakes," and stepped back to let them both in.
"You'd better get Belinda," Jess said, ignoring the confused frown Chase was giving him. "I think I have some answers for her."
Laurie grumbled, but after a moment there was a knocking sound across the hall, and two moments later Belinda was in room eight, hand covering a yawn as she studied Chase and Jess with far less bemusement than Laurie had. "What's up?"
Jess pulled back the curtain and gestured for Chase to turn on the table lamp. "I found this the other day."
"A secret panel?" Belinda asked excitedly, and then, as the light revealed the tiny handprint, she said, "oh."
"I was confused," Jess said, "because the only child ghost we have here is Gracie, and this isn't hers. She died of illness, not of any real wound. But last night, while talking to Chase -"
"Talking," Belinda said. Laurie elbowed her.
"I remembered coming here when I was little, with my mom. We were on the run." Jess shut his eyes as another memory edged its way in. "From my dad. He wasn't... the greatest guy. And I wasn't the easiest kid, either. Mom was trying to get us to safety, and having a kid that speaks to ghosts made things complicated for her."
"What does this have to do with the handprint?" Laurie asked.
Jess stayed knelt by the handprint, but his eyes went to Chase, who was beginning to understand, and Belinda, who couldn't. "Rumor got out that a kid that spoke to ghosts was staying at the Albion Inn, and my father found us. My parents fought. I... died."
Outside, somebody shouted, and a dog barked joyfully, but inside, room eight was still and cold as a crypt. The memory of a lamp crashing down over his head made Jess stagger. Then, now, he'd placed his hand on the wall for balance.
"Jess," Chase said, unwillingly, "you're not dead."
"I don't think I am either. Which is why I could age, and work here, and..." Jess turned to look at Chase, the truth rattled desperately through him. "But you're right. Things weren't adding up. The poltergeist doesn't have anything to do with Albion - unless it's not following me, it is me. It's my ghostly power, manifesting because I've been too unaware of my own death to behave like a ghost."
"That's impossible," Belinda said. "You're not - you're nothing like the Harpson ghost. We can see you."
"Because I believe you can. I've always been able to see ghosts, so being dead didn't make a difference to me." Jess started to pace, because he couldn't think of anything else to do. Memories skittered through him like fragments of a glass bottle thrown into the street. His father, looming over him. His mother, stone-faced as his father dug a hole in the gardens below room seven. The other ghosts creating room for Jess, letting him grow up in a way they couldn't have. Disbelief was nearly as powerful as death.
"Dead is your type," Laurie snorted. "I'm sure the viewers will love that tagline."
Chase stepped into Jess's path to stop him. "Jess. Please. Start talking sense."
Jess lifted his gaze to Chase's. "You said you wanted to help the ghosts."
"I did," Chase said. "I do."
"But we're not the ones that need help," Jess said, and took his hand. "Albion wants you next."
Jesse Hawthorne, aged 11, went missing in 2005 amidst a domestic dispute that resulted in his mother, Francine Hawthorne, fleeing her home and traveling north to family. When she arrived, her family asked her where her son was, but she'd been unable to answer. Though she'd been the prime suspect in the case, no evidence had ever been found in regards to Jesse's whereabouts.
Belinda read all this on her phone as the Spirit Hunters and Jess sat on the front porch of Albion Inn, looking out at the marsh and the rays of setting sun, heady with the scent of gasoline and saltwater. Jess sat in the shadows, unable to escape the chill that had stolen over him since his realization.
"It was almost twenty years between Albion's last death and mine," he said, as Chase rubbed his thumb over his knuckles, as though trying to give him some of his warmth. "I think... the house had something to do with it. My parents fought, but they always fought. When Dad found us, he was angrier than I'd ever seen him. Mom was sadder. It magnified their emotions, and then..." He shivered. "The house was fed."
"It's been almost twenty years since the last person died here," Belinda said, putting down her phone. "That's why the ceiling collapsed. And the headboard. The house wants you, Chase."
"You don't know that," Chase said. The scent of gasoline bled through the air, along with the sad note in his voice.
"Yes," Jess said. "We do." When Chase had first stepped foot in Albion, the house had fallen silent. Jess had thought it was because Chase was the predator, come to hunt his ghosts, but now Jess understood - Albion had been the hunter, silently stalking this man with death already on his hands. "If you leave, it'll just take another guest, another life. It won't stop until it's fed. Unless we destroy it."
Chase pulled him closer, pressed his forehead to Jess's, closed his eyes. Jess let him, if only because he was selfish, because he was hungry for one last shared breath, for the spread of warm fingers against his back. "Come with us."
And because he was selfish, because he was hungry, because he hadn't slept for years and hadn't left the Albion for far longer, Jess had the strength to step away from Chase. "I can't." He had to make sure the house burned. He owned the ghosts of Albion Inn that much.
Laurie struck a match. It flickered in his fingers like the fireflies that danced in the Albion's gardens at night, a fallen star against the patch of darkness that surrounded the house. Behind him, the car the Spirit Hunters had arrived in waited, packed for their next trip, their next episode. "Chase, it's time."
Chase inhaled shakily, then nodded. Jess watched him step off the porch, watched Belinda put an arm around his waist and walk with him towards the car, a four-legged monster striding away from the Inn on unsteady legs. A lump formed in Jess's throat. He wanted to go with them - this was the future that had been stolen from him.
But Albion had to be stopped. Jess would be the last life taken to water the cursed foundations of this house. This one thing he could give the dead he'd been tasked to guard, years before he'd ever joined them.
Jess shut the door.
Laurie dropped the match.
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