Page 27 of Crazy Spooky Love

“Did you never see your family at all afterward?”

“My mother sent for me shortly before her death.”

“She did?” I whisper in the darkness. “What did she want?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t come.”

I can’t make Isaac out in the low light and his monotone delivery tells me precisely nothing. I don’t know if he regrets not coming back to hear his mother’s final words, or if he’s still furious and would do the same again if he had to make the choice right now.

I don’t get much time to dwell on it though, because the cellar door above us suddenly slams decisively shut and plunges the place into complete darkness aside from our phones.

“Oh no!” I yelp loudly, horrified by the sudden Hammer House of Horror turn of events.

Artie makes a similarly shocked sound, while Marina’s choice of words is far more explicit as she grabs hold of the hem of my T-shirt again and winds it around her fist to make sure we remain right next to each other.

“Is this the bit where we all get murdered?”

Her shaky whisper only scares me more. Marina does not, repeat not, get scared.

Neither do I. I see ghosts, remember? I am officially hardcore.

Isaac is the only one who seems completely unmoved, most probably because he’s the only one among us who isn’t preoccupied by the possibility of imminent death.

“Let me go and see what the devil’s going on up there,” he says, agitated, and then he disappears into thin air, dispensing with his usual habit of observing the rules of the living because speed is of the essence.

“This is the first time I’ve ever wished I was a ghost,” Marina whispers when I tell them that Isaac has gone upstairs to investigate.

“You might be in a few minutes,” I joke, but unsurprisingly she doesn’t laugh. She goes to snip back, but I shush her because I can hear voices.

“Isaac is arguing with someone…Lloyd, I think?”

“What are they saying?”

“Shush,” I say, flapping a hand in the darkness as I strain to listen.

“I can hear them too,” Artie says suddenly, clutching my arm. “Oh my God, I can hear the ghosts, Melody!”

Marina lets go of my T-shirt. “Sorry, Artie. Unless we’ve both been bashed over the head and died at the same time, there’s living, breathing people up there, because I can hear them too.”

She pauses, and for a moment all I can hear is our own labored breathing.

“Women, I think?”

We all struggle to hear. She’s right. Behind Isaac and Lloyd’s heated debate, there are quieter female voices too.

For a moment I fear Gran has turned up to meddle again, but why the hell would she lock me in a cellar?

I listen harder, and no, it isn’t Gran, or anyone else I know well enough to recognize.

“I’ll just go up there and hammer on the door.” Marina stomps toward the steps but I hang onto her arm.

“Wait, let’s listen. They must know we’re here, which means they probably shut us in deliberately. Babs is hardly inconspicuous, is she? Let me go and see what I can suss out.”

I inch up the steps in an exaggerated way and lay my ear to the door.

It doesn’t help me that I can hear Isaac’s and Lloyd’s raised voices over the top of the hushed female ones.

Bloody Isaac! If he’d just pop back to this side of the door, we could probably get everything sorted out a damn sight faster.

“Why didn’t you stop them, you stupid old fool?” I think that was Isaac.

“Perhaps because I’ve been dead for over forty years?”

“Well, you could have tried to frighten them, distracted them, anything but let them lock the door,” Isaac roars. “Admit it. You were perfectly happy to see those children locked down there.”

I bridle a little at the word children. We’re the best hope he’s got of sorting this out; would it kill him to afford us a little more respect? But then I suppose he was born in 1887, so maybe I’ll let that one slide.

“Well, you should have made sure Miss Bittersweet and her cohorts closed the door behind them if they didn’t want people to know where they were,” Lloyd sulks.

“I damn well would have if I’d have thought for one moment that someone would come and lock them in. When did they get here?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Like hell you didn’t.”

“It’s true, actually, Isaac.”

“Lloyd and Isaac are arguing, and Douglas has just joined them,” I say for Marina and Artie’s benefit.

“Lloyd was watching that billiards game on the television with me,” Douglas says. “Someone scored the most possible points from what I can gather. Quite tense, actually.”

I wince and decide it’s best not to mention to Marina that she’s just missed a maximum break.

“Well?” hisses Marina. “Who is it?”

I sigh with frustration. “I can’t hear them over the argument about whose fault it is that we’re locked in. Oh, hang on…”

I step away from the door as Isaac finally materializes throughit.

“You took your time,” I grumble under my breath. “Who’s out there?”

“Bloody twins, they should be ashamed of themselves.” He shakes his head in disgust.

“Isaac, please. I don’t have time to talk about Lloyd and Douglas right now. Who locked us in?”

“I’m not talking about my brothers,” he says. “Those girls locked you in.”