Page 1 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
Chapter one
ThehouseonStaghornWay appeared extraordinarily normal. The stark white shutters wore a fresh coat of paint and Colin Hart’s polished shoes made hollow, hoof-like sounds on the sturdy, renovated porch. Unlike his typical business engagements, this particular house refused to breathe. Instead, it stayed entirely still, as if the bones that held its two floors, five rooms, and single occupier had gone brittle the moment an exorcist arrived.
Well, not an exorcist, exactly. Aspecialist, maybe. Someone used to the way a house wheezed and bent, watched and wondered. Someone who knocked precisely four times, and adjusted the high collar on his tweed coat, clutching a briefcase in leather-clad fingers. Someone who knew how to strike a smile as the door floated open, even when ice dropped like an anchor into his stomach.
“Bishop, I assume? Bishop Martínez?” Colin said, focusing on the slight, neatly dressed person standing in the doorway, and not on the strangely shaped body—skeletal, bruised, and curious—lingering over their shoulder at the top of the staircase. “I’m Mr. Hart.”
Bishop adjusted the square reading glasses perched on their handsome, hawkish nose, and nodded curtly. "Hi, yeah, that’s me.” They paused, scanning Colin from his onyx Chelsea boots to his high, round, freckled cheeks. "Oh, right—come in. Sorry, I… I’m not used to actuallyinvitingpeople inside. It’s been—"
“Inconvenient, I assume?” Colin stepped onto the cherrywood floor and watched the apparition peering at them from the second story wink out of existence. “Tell me about the house…” He turned his gaze to Bishop. “Do you prefermxormisteror…?”
“Bishop is fine, actually. They, them.”
Colin lifted an eyebrow. “He, him for me, thank you. If we’re embracing informality, call me Colin.” He glanced at the ceiling then the floor. “So, the house.”
Bishop closed the door and turned the lock, smoothing delicate hands over the front of their maroon long-sleeve. Colin took a moment to study the homeowner’s sturdy jaw and fine, tightened mouth. Bishop’s eyelashes flicked, chasing shadows along their cheekbones, and they straightened their narrow shoulders, aligning themself toward the decorative banister.Gentle, Colin thought, bemused,like a rabbit.
“Built sometime in the 1900’s, I guess. It’s been vacant for a while. Renovations called for patience most people on the market didn’t have, so post-foreclosure the bank auctioned it. I won, used it as a live-in project, started with the porch, then the kitchen, now I’m tiling the primary bathroom.”
Colin hummed, glancing at the high ceiling and the faded, floral wallpaper. Still, the house refused to take a breath. “And the peculiarities?”
Bishop wrung their hands. Their slender throat worked around a swallow. “I started losing track of my tools after the first two weeks, I guess. Found a socket-wrench in the freezer on a Tuesday morning. Nail-gun in the dishwasher; gardening shears balanced upright on the blades. Noticed the drawers in an old dresser turned upside down. Things got progressively worse after that.”
“Your email mentioned noises?” Colin traced the tall, white baseboards—new, certainly—and the blue tape surrounding one, two, three archways in the hall.
Bishop walked and Colin followed, listening and cataloging as they spoke. “Voices, sometimes.Disembodiedvoices is the proper term, I guess. My name…” They pointed upward. “…called from the second story. Pacing in the rooms upstairs when I’m downstairs; footsteps downstairs, usually in the kitchen, when I’m upstairs. I close more doors than I open,” they said, and paused in front of a peeking closet, grasping the knob and pushing until it clicked shut. “It wasn’t a big deal at first, you know. Livable.”
“And what made itunlivable?” Colin asked. He trailed Bishop into a spacious kitchen and set his briefcase on the floor beside a rustic barnwood picnic table.
The unmoored house leaned into silence. Colin did, too. He tipped his head and pushed a gloved hand through his short, auburn hair, attention pinned to Bishop’s dusty brown boots shuffling toward the stove.
“Tea?” Bishop asked, sighing over the word. “Or coffee? I’ve got beer, but you don’t look like an IPA before noon type of guy.” They quirked their lips and tucked their thumbs through the belt-loops on their blue jeans.
Colin lifted his brows. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
Bishop’s crooked smile broadened. “Beer it is.”
The time—11:03 a.m.—glowed on the microwave, but Colin stayed quiet as Bishop reached into the fridge, coiled their fingers around two frosty beers, and snapped the caps off each bottleneck. They handed one to Colin and sipped from their own.
For eight years, Colin Hart had made oddities his line of work. Ghost wrangling, poltergeist politics, spirit deliverance, demonic ascension, vampiric theft, occult displacement, seaside anomalies—anything and everything‘other’that accidentally or purposefully occupied a place it, technically, shouldn’t. Most folks didn’t have a use for him, but those who did, people like Bishop, never failed to reach out. And houses like this, houses with heartbeats, never failed to spark Colin’s interest.
Interest aside, he wasn’t partial to drinking in the morning. He sipped the skunky beer anyway and met Bishop’s wide-set brown eyes. “Where were we, Bishop?”
“Livability,” Bishop said, inhaling a long, drawn out breath. They drained a third of their beer in one pull and leaned their hip against the marble countertop, all swirling silver and cobalt gray. They turned toward a sliding door and the fenced yard beyond the glass. “I’ve started hallucinating,” they blurted, and closed their eyes, taking another deep breath. “I think I have, at least. I can’t sleep, I’m seeing things I shouldn’t, I caught myself having a conversation with… with nothing. Literally,nothing.”
“Or something,” Colin said, matter-of-factly.
“Yeah, maybe.” Bishop rested the bottle against their plush, pink mouth.
Colin course-corrected his thoughts—plush to poltergeist, pink to perpetual haunting—and sipped his beer, too. “Would you mind if I took a look around? I know we talked about it over email, but I usually like to stay with clients if I choose to work on a space. Especially a home. Do you have a spare room available? I’ll happily take the couch if—”
“No, no. The couch isn’t, like,bad, but it’s barely nap worthy. I’ve got a guest room ready. I’m happy to give you a tour if you’d like,” Bishop said, jutting their chin toward a cracked door across from the dining area. “Unless you need to, I don’t know,explore.”
“Please,” Colin said, extending his arm. “Lead the way.”
Bishop drank as they walked, tipping their buzzed head back to drain the rest of their beer. Colin plucked at his beige turtleneck and slid a compact leather notebook from the inside pocket of his coat.
“I can hang that for you,” Bishop said.
