Yesterday, as soon as the house had calmed down, we had summoned its current owners and presented them with this choice.
Olivia looked very unsure. “W-well, um… It sounds like the house only ever wanted to be friends with us…? That it was really just sweet and innocent and never meant us any harm?”
Well, yeah. That was pretty much verbatim what I had told her.
You might think the house was in disarray, but in fact it was already back to normal. We just tried asking politely, and the house put everything back as if the tempest had never happened.
“Yeah! There was never anything to be afraid of. The house actually cared for the people living in it,” I said.
That was why the little girl’s room had been the only one that was undisturbed: because she always said exactly what she was thinking, and it was easy to tell what she wanted. As for grown-ups like me and Olivia, if we made any requests clear to the house, it would try to help out.
“Are…are you sure?” Hesitantly, Olivia stepped inside. “So…so if I said, ‘Please make the kitchen look good’…it would do it?”
The moment she made her request, there was a clanking from the kitchen.
“Eek!” Olivia yelped. But then she covered her mouth and her eyes went wide. The outdated old kitchen had been swapped for one that looked completely modern and new. “My goodness!” she said. This time it was a sound of admiration and not horror.
The only thing that had been missing between us adults and the house was simple words.
“W-well, all right. Would it be possible to refresh the living room as well? I’ve been thinking that the sofa is getting old, and I’d love to have it repaired! Oh, and the dining room table, too!”
The moment her first wish came true, Olivia’s eyes lit up with happiness and she began talking volubly to the house. The house, for its part, promptly did everything she asked. If you just told it what you wanted, it was happy to oblige.
Think how long it had taken us to realize that simple fact.
“How wonderful,” the old lady said as she saw the joy on Olivia’s face. Or maybe it was the house that made her smile, eagerly changing the forms and shapes of everything within itself.
I had to make sure to say thank you to her.
“Thank you very much,” I said. “Because of you, we were able to solve the mystery of the strange happenings.” I clasped the old lady’s hands and grinned.
She, though, looked a bit confused. “I didn’t do anything special, you know,” she said modestly.
Sure!
“If you hadn’t prayed your prayer, this house would never look so good now. And if you hadn’t shown up right when you did, we probably would have let your prayer go for naught.”
We would have assumed the house was hostile instead of harmless and disenchanted it. What could have been a bigger waste?
“Well, in that case, I’m glad,” the old woman said with a refined chuckle. She looked content, as if remembering the richness of the life she had led here.
That was when little Carrie trotted over and said, “Granny, come on in!” She looked at the house’s former occupant with nothing but innocence.
“Heavens, I couldn’t. I don’t live here anymore,” the old woman said, still smiling.
“Please, it wouldn’t be any trouble,” Olivia’s husband said with a shake of his head. “In fact, if you’d be so kind, there’s an awful lot of things we’d love to ask you.”
“Oh, no…”
The old lady was still hesitating—but at that moment, there was a low grumble from the house: Hnnnghh.
This was followed by a bump as a weathered doll landed in the entryway.
This house couldn’t speak; it could communicate only through its actions.
“Goodness…”
I didn’t personally know what significance the doll held—but it wasn’t hard to guess. The old woman’s face said it all. Slowly, fondly, she looked at the doll, her smile as innocent as a little girl’s.
“Well! I guess I did a pretty good deed,” I said, nodding to myself right there in Riviere Antiques. You could almost say I’d been the star of the show yesterday. It was enough to have me walking on air.
That’s when I heard the laughter from behind me.
“Hoo-hoo-hoo…”
Hrrm…
“What is it, Miss Riviere? What’s so funny?” Surely I could be allowed to pat myself on the back every once in a while?
I turned toward Riviere, letting my protest show clearly on my face, but she only said, “Huh?” She sat at her desk, giving me a funny look. “What are you talking about?”
What was I talking about?!
“You just laughed.”
“No I didn’t.”
Hrrrrm?
“I definitely heard somebody laugh.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.” Riviere shrugged.
For a moment, neither of us said anything, just staring at each other. She didn’t have to speak for me to know exactly what was going through her mind.
There was one more little memory from yesterday that I still had to recall…
“My goodness… Goodness gracious. Did you drive the ghost out of this house?”
It was just after Olivia’s husband and Carrie had led the old woman inside. Or, put another way, it was right when Riviere, Elaina, and I were feeling relief and accomplishment at a job well done. We looked at the house with fresh, loving eyes.
That was when another old woman appeared.
“Wow, who’s the crone?”
“Stop that, MacMillia.”
This woman was nothing like the refined, kindly old lady who had shown up first. She was a lot more, uh…kind of weird-seeming. We frowned at each other. At least, Riviere and I did; Elaina was watching her with interest.
“This woman… She smells like me,” Elaina said.
“Would that be the smell of a no-good troublemaker?” Riviere asked.
“How rude. It’s the smell of a pure, innocent, and wonderful person,” Elaina replied.
“I am a spiritual medium,” the woman said.
“I take it all back. She’s the opposite of me.”
Wow, talk about a quick change.
Riviere and I glowered at Elaina, but the new old woman asked us, “Are you the ones they asked to get rid of the ghost?”
In other words, this woman was the medium Olivia and her family had hired before they came to us. Now it all made sense.
“Oh, you must be the fraud!”
“I’m no fraud. My powers are the real deal!”
“So what brings you here, Miss Fraud?”
“I’m telling you, I’m the real thing!” The woman sighed dramatically and glared at me. “I was just getting a little worried. I thought I might stop by to see how things were going.”
But as she could see, the paranormal phenomena were done; now the house was changing itself to suit its owners’ desires. It was obvious that there had never been any ghost.
The old woman nodded. “I must say, I’m very surprised.” Then she turned to me. “Getting the evil spirit to attach itself to you instead? Not bad, girl, not bad.”
I’m sorry…um.
“What?”
“Hmm? Isn’t that what happened?” Looking squarely over my shoulder, the old lady informed me that a woman’s ghost was hovering right behind me.
I remembered a few other things, too.
“Miss Riviere?”
“Yes?”
“That house, right? Before the old lady lived there, it belonged to a murderer, didn’t it?”
“That’s how the story goes.”
“And she died there, didn’t she?”
“So they say.”
There was one more thing, something that seemed stranger the more I thought about it.
“Miss Riviere…”
“Yes?”
“Miss Olivia said, didn’t she? She said sometimes she heard unsettling laughter?”
“Yes, she did.”
“But the sancta house never laughed, did it?”
“No, it…didn’t.”
We both went silent.
I started to get goose bumps. It was only the two of us in the shop, but for some reason, I thought I could feel another presence.
Then the laughter came again. “Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…”
Ahhhhhhh!
“M-Miss Riviere! Help! I’ve brought something terrible with me!”
Didn’t we have any sancta that could get rid of ghosts?! Please! I was begging her.
“You know that’s not really my specialty…” Riviere lost no time in putting some distance between the two of us.
“Don’t run away from me!”
“Don’t come any closer!”
“Wait!”
“Seriously, stay back!”
“Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo…”
“Noooooooo!”
My despairing scream filled Riviere Antiques. For some time after that, I was going to learn what it was like to be beset by true paranormal phenomena.