Page 94 of Real Fake Hauntings

“I will.”

After putting the phone on vibrate, I waited for the footsteps to pass by the door, then slipped back out.

“Let’s go, Fluffy,” I whispered, slinking along the corridor. It was as dark as the rest of the house and carried a dusty smell, but it wasn’t quite as creepy. There was a sad, aging atmosphere permeating the non-public zones that tugged at my heart.

Not that I’d stay here a second longer than I needed to.

After a bend in the hallway, the dark wallpaper gave way to plain, painted brown walls—clearly the part of the house visitors never got to see. An open doorway into a set of stairs going down had been roped off, dangling Staff Only sign included.

“All hope abandon, ye who enter here,” I murmured. Grabbing Fluffy, I slipped under the red rope and made my way down the steps. This was definitely servants’ territory—cracked plaster on the walls, cracked old tiles on the floor, a distinct lack of decoration. Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, I let Fluffy down and studied our surroundings.

The basement might be as old as the house, but it had been renovated at some point. A couple of fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, metal doors had been fitted to a couple of original open archways, and plywood ones to the rest of the rooms.

I tried the metal doors first and found them locked. Then I tried my luck with the wooden ones. The first one opened into a storage room filled with shelves and props, the second was labeled as Office and was understandably locked. Four doors left. The next opened into a staff room with a couple of lockers, a big table, a kitchenette, and a poster of a snowcapped mountain range to act as a window.

Three more doors before I had to look up on my phone how to break and enter without making too much noise.

The next room was another storage space, this one filled with boxes, then came a small bathroom.

One left.

Fluffy yipped softly, and I reached to pet her and gain some much-needed courage.

“Almost there, Fluffy.”

Trepidation made my hand shake as I grabbed the handle. With a strong tug, I threw the door open.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Empty.

The room was empty but for an ancient closet and a few folded chairs stacked on the opposite wall.

Deflating, I stepped back into the hallway. I’d have to figure out a way to open the metal doors.

Unless…

I leaned back into the room, giving the closet a second look. How did the story go? She dragged the man into a closet in the room and left him to rot?

I eyed the old closet doors.

No. No way. Surely someone would’ve boarded up the thing if they’d found a corpse inside? Then again, rich people got rich by being stingy, didn’t they? Why get rid of a perfectly fine storage space just because someone had been horribly murdered inside?

“Brace yourself, Fluffy,” I warned, stepping up to the closet. I grabbed both handles and tugged. The wood groaned, moved a bit, then got stuck. Time had warped the edges and they didn’t quite fit. Pulling harder, I got the doors to move, and they sprung open.

“Hah,” I whispered triumphantly, scanning the insides greedily with the flashlight app of my phone.

It contained no shelves, no bulky items. No pentagrams. No Desmond Crane.

Then I glanced down and almost dropped my phone.

Someone had drawn a pentagram in dark red, then added a thick ring of dark brown soil around it. Depressions corresponding to each point of the pentagram marked where crystals had likely been placed. The faint scent of herbs and rust reached my nose as I crouched to examine it closer, very much against my will.

Because in the middle of the pentagram laid a bloodless finger.

Oh, Good Mother Earth.

I swallowed hard, then stopped Fluffy from sniffing the pentagram and soil.

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