“If it’s not a ghost, then it must be a sancta’s doing,” said Olivia.
Wow! Very definitive.
“I grant that it’s impossible to rule out a sancta from what you said,” Riviere said, furrowing her brow. “But you have to admit, it really, really seems like a ghost…”
“But the medium said she couldn’t deal with it.”
“Couldn’t that just mean, say, that the spirit is so evil that it’s beyond her powers? Like I said, I don’t know too much about these things…”
I agree, Miss Riviere!
“Plus, there’s always the possibility that the medium was a fraud,” I said. “Why don’t you try a different one?”
“We can’t!” Olivia exclaimed. “We can’t take any more of this! We finally get our own home, but strange things keep happening, and we don’t know why! We’re going to go crazy if we can’t do something about it!” Then she burst into tears.
“Mommy, are you okay?” The little girl sitting next to her, Carrie, offered her a handkerchief.
What a sweetie, I thought. Olivia’s husband, sitting on the other side of their daughter, bowed his head. “Please, we’re both asking for your help. The phenomena occurring in our house could be completely natural, or they could be a sancta—or maybe it really is a ghost. It’s hard to go on; we don’t even know what’s causing the problem.”
People fear things they don’t understand. For example, suppose you see eyes gleaming in the dark. You don’t know what’s lurking there, so you’re paralyzed with terror. When you discover it’s just a stray cat, though, maybe you’ll even crouch down and offer it some food.
The unknown is frightening. Once you know what it is, it’s not so scary. If they could at least find out whether this was a sancta at work, that knowledge alone would improve their situation.
“Please. We’re begging you. Could you at least come look at our house?” Olivia’s husband asked, his head low.
“Yes! Please!” Olivia added, bowing, too.
Even sweet little Carrie, perched between them, bowed to us and said, “Pretty please?” The family of three almost looked like they were praying.
At that, Riviere finally heaved a deep sigh. She still wasn’t upset, and she no longer looked unsure of what to say. “All right, fine. But a look is all I promise.”
It was a sigh of resignation.
After that, we went straight to Olivia’s house. It wasn’t even that far from Riviere Antiques—a thirty-minute walk, maybe. It stood on a pretty nice piece of land not far from Cururunelvia’s main thoroughfare. It couldn’t have been cheap, I thought.
“That’s it,” Olivia said, pointing at a weathered old two-story. The brick walls were covered in creeping vines that shivered gently in the modest breeze. At first glance, it didn’t look like the sort of place where you would expect to see a ghost. In fact, it was a very attractive house.
At least, I thought so. Beside me, however, Riviere seemed to be observing something else entirely.
“At least we know that medium of yours was the real deal,” she said, and she looked at Olivia and her family with another small sigh. Then she went on: “A sancta’s aura is radiating from this house.”
Now that we knew what was causing the problem, it should have been simple enough to break the curse and get rid of the paranormal phenomena. Riviere possessed the ability to remove the power of prayer from objects imbued with it, so a quick disenchant should have been all we needed, right? My feeling was that we should go ahead and help these people, and I suggested as much.
Riviere, however, replied, “I’m afraid not. I can’t do anything without knowing where the sancta is.”
Apparently, it wasn’t as simple as that. Riviere had to know what the object she was disenchanting actually was, but the aura emanating from the house was just too strong.
“This sancta must have had a very powerful wish placed upon it. Its aura is too overpowering for me to be able to tell exactly where it might be.”
And so there was nothing she could do.
We had determined that the source of the matter wasn’t ghostly, but once again we found ignorance standing in our path.
Still, knowing that it was definitely a sancta at work was a step in the right direction. I looked at Olivia. When Riviere gave her the rundown, she looked at the ground and almost groaned out, “I see. So that’s what’s going on…” Then, with a small smile and a sort of Eureka! look, she said, “Could we ask you to live here for a while, then? Surely you’d be able to figure out what’s causing this eventually.”
I cocked my head and said, “Uh.”
“We would be perfectly happy for you to live here as long as you needed to find the source of the problem! Our family could stay in a hotel in the meantime!”
“Listen, we—,” said Riviere, nonplussed.
“Isn’t this wonderful, my love? Carrie! The nice antiques dealer is going to help us!”
“Um, excuse me…,” I said. This conversation seemed to be getting away from us.
“Yay! Thank you so much, miss,” Carrie said.
“Yes, I simply don’t know how to thank you! We’ll pay whatever you ask, just please help us!” Olivia’s husband said, shaking my hand.
So it was that, somehow or other, by means I didn’t fully grasp, we ended up as the new residents of Olivia’s house, starting that very day.
Riviere and I stood in the silent entry hall.
I didn’t say anything.
She didn’t say anything.
At least not for a moment.
“Of all the ways I thought this would go, this wasn’t one of them,” Riviere groused.
“Well, that makes two of us,” I said with a sigh. The sound of our voices seemed to filter through the whole big house.
So it was that the staff of Riviere Antiques had found ourselves involved in trying to untangle the strange phenomena occurring in Olivia’s house.
It was then that we heard a voice, neither mine nor Riviere’s.
“Excuse me…”
Who in the world could that be? We looked at each other.
A girl was standing there.
“Not that I care, but why did you drag me along for this?”
It was Elaina, looking very annoyed.
There was a pause as we both looked at each other again.
“You just seemed like you had time to kill,” I said.
“Also, I was oddly annoyed by the thought that we would be the only ones staying in this haunted house,” Riviere added.
“You’re just taking it out on me!” Elaina said.
So it was that the three of us would face the paranormal together.
Riviere had me and Elaina sit down on the sofa, then talked at us—our standard working arrangement.
“I think we should split up to do this job,” she said. She was the same cool, collected Riviere she always was; she seemed immune to the fact that we were in a freaky house afflicted with some kind of haunting. “First, I’ll try to pinpoint the sancta that’s causing these phenomena. If it’s really in here, then all I should have to do is search the whole place and disenchant it.”
“Sounds good.” I nodded.
Elaina asked, “And what are we supposed to do?”
Guided by Riviere’s cool, collected example, we, too, went about our business as if we weren’t in a freaky haunted house.
“You can assist me with my work. MacMillia, I want you to search this house from top to bottom. It’s possible the sancta is somewhere that isn’t immediately obvious, so make sure to take a good look.”
“I’m on it!”
“And, Elaina, I want you to investigate the previous occupants. If there is a sancta in this house, there’s every chance it was left by the last people to live here, or someone associated with them. Go to the real estate office and see what you can dig up.”
“Roger that.” Elaina nodded—but then she immediately gave a tilt of her head, puzzled. “What you’re saying is you want me to search outside the house.”