[Blood Archive Entry]
The sun shone high in the sky, casting its radiant light everywhere, but one place remained under a constant sense of darkness and oppression. The trees were long dead, only their barky husks left behind. Dust lifted from the gentlest gust of air.
The air whistled as it passed through the broken windows.
The eerie choir broke when a black car intruded on the somber quietness of the abandoned property.
From inside the car, two figures emerged.
A child and a blonde woman both had this ethereal air that clung to them.
"Somehow this is exactly what I expected from a haunted house," the child joked.
"It could do with some décor, yes," the woman quipped back.
They both studied the house in front of them.
Moldy wooden walls, cracked glass windows, and the paint had long since withered away. Parts of the roof had crumbled inwards. Vines slithered all across in a possessive embrace.
"Can you get our lethal pokers, Rebekah?" Darian spoke with a teasing tone.
"Keep this up, and I'll leave you here," Rebekah threatened with narrowed eyes.
He chuckled but said no words of apology.
She huffed and grabbed a pair of pokers and some silver cutlery before handing him his part of the 'equipment'.
The two got up on the porch, the wood creaked and cried under their weight, and the fragile door whined as they opened it.
The interior of the house was even more dusty than the outside; everywhere one looked, it would be covered in the beige hue of abandonment.
Darian sneezed when the dust reached his sensitive nose. Rebekah giggled softly.
He shook his head and walked inside the house; his eyes glowed a soft red as he analyzed every detail of the entryway.
"Should we split up?" Rebekah asked, earning herself a dry gaze from her companion. "What's that look for?"
"You have some sort of trauma or deep-rooted fear of ghosts—so much that you wouldn't even tell me anything about it—and now you're suggesting we split up inside a literal haunted house." He looked at her with the driest look he could muster; she blushed furiously under his gaze.
"Right… I get what you're saying… so where should we look then?"
"Did Mom tell you where her corpse was found?"
She nodded. "The bedroom."
"I see… Let's leave that for last, let's look in other places first."
"Why?"
"In case we can find something important."
"So where to?"
"Let's check the kitchen."
"I don't think moldy food would do your stomach any good, Darian."
His eyebrows twitched, a vein popped on his forehead, and she giggled, seeing his irritation.
He said nothing else and just went forward, looking for the kitchen, while also familiarizing himself with the house, noting every room along the way.
Once they reached the kitchen, which was in the same deplorable state as the rest of the house, Darian opened cabinet drawers, peeking into everything.
Rebekah eyed his every move with curiosity.
Darian looked at her, visibly annoyed, his eyelids twitching. "Will you help?"
She shrugged and answered, "I don't even know what we are looking for. Also, what do you need my help with?"
He eyed her for a split second before turning his head sideways and speaking in a muted tone, but one she could still hear. "I'm not tall enough to reach the cupboards…"
She giggled but decided not to push him further and proceeded to open the cupboards.
Out of nowhere, a mess of piano notes echoed, and one of the cupboards behind Rebekah shot open, and a plate flew out. It was aimed directly at the back of her head. She turned with unnatural speed and caught the plate midair. The thing vibrated faintly under her fingers, seemingly fighting to escape her grasp.
Darian's eyes glowed softly. "Seems the host isn't too keen on us snooping around…"
Rebekah snorted, "understatement of the year."
Darian looked at the plate curiously. "But one thing I can confirm is that the ghost can't materialize during the day, otherwise it would have directly attacked us. Would've been more efficient that way."
"It seems so…"
Then the two got back to snooping around the house, not finding much of interest, but every now and then, something would be tossed at them violently.
Then the two finally arrived in the room where Elizabeth's corpse was found.
As soon as Darian got inside, his nose started twitching, his nostrils flaring again and again.
He closed his eyes and sniffed the air, ignoring the cloud of dust that danced inside the room.
Rebekah, though with her eyes wide open, could see the cloud of dust moving unnaturally. For but a moment, the dust swirled into the faint outline of a woman in a veil—and then collapsed as if it had never been there.
"What are you sniffing for, Darian? Did you smell something?" She asked.
"You can't smell it?" He asked, befuddled.
"Smell what? I can only smell the mold and dust in the air…" She said in frustration.
"Blood," he simply said. "Lots of it… It's almost overwhelming." He kneeled on the ground, brushing against the ground, brushing the dust away, and revealing faint dark stains on the floor. "I think domestic violence was an understatement; this is more like domestic torture."
"Couldn't it be because of her death?" She asked.
"No," he shook his head, "she hanged herself, remember?" She nodded her head. "Besides, all of these scents belong to the same person, but not all are from the same time."
"You mean?!"
"Like I said… Domestic torture is much more fitting."
Then his eyes flared red, his head shot sideways with so much speed a normal person would have snapped their neck.
He got up from the floor, moving with steady steps to the side of the bed.
The furniture piece moved towards him, almost as if coaxing him to stop whatever he was about to do.
He pushed the bed aside and stopped when he was in front of the wall. Forming a fist with his hand, he punched straight through the wood, and his hands grasped a round, flat object.
When he yanked his hand back, he was holding that very object.
Rebekah's eyes widened when she saw what he was holding.