Haunt | Chapter 2

Chapter 2, First Encuonters of the Non-living Kind

The heavy doors of the mansion creaked with age and were not a particularly easy task to open. They seemed resistant to the normal way of opening doors, and when Techna managed to finally squeeze through with her vacuum and self-intact, she noticed Redstone compartments and missing wires and comparators from parts of the grand door structures. Obviously intended to be opened by the operation of Redstone levers or buttons, but from where, she couldn't tell. With what she saw outside of the mansion, she couldn't see any sign of a lever or way to open the doors from the outside. She disregarded it, assuming the Contractor got rid of it so strangers can't trespass in the property or steal, but from the looks of the missing Redstone pieces, maybe that wasn't the case.

Reaching into a special compartment box of her vacuum and clicking it open, she retrieved a decent-sized flashlight, spare batteries available in the same compartment just in case she were to run out. Turning her source of light on, she shined it over the various items, paintings and decorations of the room.

While the interior and exterior matched in detail and appearance, it felt more homely and somehow larger than it looked on the outside. Dusty and cobweb ridden corners, dust on the paintings and furniture, there was enough dust to spread a whole layer over the entire world, and boy was it not good for Techna. The sneezing and coughing began. She admired the foyer ground as she walked forward, lovely furniture, couches and small coffee and decorative tables placed symmetrically in the room on either side. It looked like the person who decorated and designed the room was a bit of a perfectionist.

Tech reached the end of the foyer room and entered the next.

A large staircase to a platform split into two different directions as it neared the second floor was centered in the middle of the room in front of her, a simplistic yet grand design made it seem so much bigger and detailed than it actually was. Hallways split off and continued down further into the mansion grounds, paintings, art and fine décor plastered the walls, covering the bland color and design of the wallpaper.

She followed the hallways that led behind the stairs, leading her to be face-to-face with an even larger living room. Typical couches and small tables were placed in separate areas of the room, except she noticed an interesting design choice in the room; an in ground pit, three steps into the floor filled with bean bags, cushions and comfortable-looking pillows. This confused her.

The Contractor informed her that murderers lived here, while admitting they were younger, why would they have a house so large like this? Even if it's in the middle of nowhere, it's visible if you looked close enough as the roof of the building peeked over the tree tops. And theoretically if they built this place, would they really have spent THAT much time and effort to put detail into it? Unless of course they started out as kids then slowly over time got worse and worse, the Contractor never did say anything else about them and that to Tech was kind of suspicious.

She examined the room further. It's not the design choice that threw Tech off or the fact that murderers would have a 'kid-pit', but it felt so out of place for a mansion this grand and intricate in its design. Techna also noticed a strange odor in the current room, hesitant, she inhaled a deep breath through her nostrils, immediately regretting it and gagging, a lump in her throat growing and gaining the urge for her to vomit, "What the hell is that?!"

Forcefully she swallowed down the urge to puke and inhaled again in an attempt to find where the scent was coming from. Confusingly, the scent led her to the fireplace, but it looked clean and… well, looked like a general fireplace. Tech edged closer to the structure, inspecting the brick surface and soot floor, reaching her hand out to touch the back wall…

"SCREEECH! SCREECH!"

Techna jumped back with a yelp as a group of transparent bats with white auras surrounding them dashed out of the fireplace, scattering around the living room ceiling to relocate their peaceful location. Swiftly retrieving her SpiritHoover and automatically turning on the correct mode needed, aiming and began sucking up the bat spirits. They struggled against the current of wind and were rid of easily, one constantly moving around but eventually tired out and was dragged into the machine.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Techna took a second to recover from the fright the damn bats gave her, bursting out of nowhere and scaring the crap out of her. A minute passes and her heart calmed down, her brain processed the scare that occurred, and all seemed calm in the mansion. Retracting her vacuum head back to the SpiritHoover pack, she began making her way to another room.

_{. . . m o a n . . .}

She stopped. The sudden moan triggering her alert and caused her to pay closer attention with her ears. Patiently waiting for the ghost to make another noise, looking at her SpiritHoover's radar for ghost based on noise and their aura…

_{. . . m m o o o a a n . . .}

She sprinted. Following the sound on its tail, her radar's beeping gradually growing rapid, guiding her to her target's location. Her loud footsteps echoed against the walls and the empty, unoccupied hallways and corridors. Another moan echoed in the house and Techna's legs only carried her faster towards the destination, not paying attention to the rooms she was passing by and through, eventually leading her to a door, slamming it open leaving her in the entrance to the side of the backyard.

The environment was all green, the only answer to how it survived this long was the occasional rainy season to water the garden. Trees held bountiful amounts of pure green leaves, some with fruits growing within the branches, patches of flowers and shrubbery were scattered around the garden in an organized fashion, some patches of dead and dry plants were visible, but it was barely noticeable within all the flowers and plants. It looked pleasant.

A shift in a nearby tree a part of the Dark Oak forest rustled, Tech's eyes snapping toward the direction of the noise. Her stern and direct eyes practically pierced through the leaves and to the unknown that lurked in fear. Without warning, the blue-aura creature dashed into another hiding spot closer to the house, and Tech with equal speed retracted her SpiritHoover's hose and the machine began to swallow the ghost. Well it would, if it stayed in one place for five damns seconds.

The ghost was resilient and extremely quick, dashing from one part of the area to another, hiding behind bushes, trees and in the leaves of the nearby Dark Oak forest, even trying to hide in large flower patches but quickly escaped those too. It flew from tree to bush to tree to flower beds, the vines on the house, it was all over the place. Finally the ghost was cornered and was flying away from the suction current for their dead life, their tail slowly edging closer to the SpiritHoover's head, as soon as its tail is caught, it's game over for the dead. It came closer, closer, and closer, anytime now-

WHEEZE!

The ghost flew off into another tree just barely escaping it's doom and Techna was left standing in the garden, with an overheated SpiritHoover. The one thing the newer models are good for screws her chance at catching her first victim of the case. She took the pack off her back and placed it on the grass floor, finding a way to fix it. As she worked on getting her machine back in order, Tech could feel the presence of the same ghost somewhere in the area, watching her tediously trying to repair their key to death, "I know you're still here!"

Tech closed the panel to her device and placed it back over her shoulders, holding the hose out ready to attack again, "Just stay still so I can get this over with and you will be out of your misery!"

She scanned the area again, her radar continued to make a rapid noise in the silence of the garden. Why wouldn't the ghost leave at this point? Tech had obviously tried to kill them, why stick around with the chance of not being so lucky again?

"… I know what that machine does. We're not idiots."

Taken back by the soft yet toughen voice, Techna carefully watched and continued to search for the voice, her radar beeped at the fastest rate and she wasn't going to get a difference from it if she tried to get any closer. She scoffed, "Oh yeah? What would you know? You're dead."
"And you don't think we've seen that kind of technology before? That there were others before you who have come here to do the same thing to us?"

Others. There were exterminators before her? The Contractor had said otherwise. Was it a mistake in his words or was there something bigger to the picture he was hiding? Lowering her vacuum head and reattaching it to her pack, she stood there in silence, the obnoxious sound of the radar continuing, but she ignored it, even going as far as to turn it off. She looked out to the garden in hopes of keeping the ghost present, "I talked to the Contractor, the man who owns this property, before I came here. He told me I was the first, that my services didn't exist twenty years ago and where it did, it was a pain in the ass to get. So if that's his side of the story, explain yours."
"What more is there to explain? I've nearly died forty-two times in the past decade, and I've lost count for the amount of times in the past twenty years. There were tens, even a hundred exterminators that came here before you."
"So… I'm not the first."
"Well, you are the first to talk instead of continuing to try and kill me."

Techna stood in the center of the garden space, she sighed, "Can you show yourself?"

The ghost didn't reply, and it was silent for a minute before Techna felt it's aura and turned around slowly. The blue aura outlined the shape of a figure before fading to reveal a defined person. The striking feature that made it identifiable was its short, bright ginger hair covering a part of her right eye, since there was nothing else recognizable about the passed being, their body was pure white and ghosts don't have legs and instead have tails-ends, like a mermaid without the fin to help them swim. And an odd detail Techna has noticed, is the ghost's constant panting and need for air. It's face seemed a bit more blue than anywhere else, and she wasn't talking about the ghost's aura.
But that hair, Tech could have sworn she saw that hair before. It looked so strikingly familiar that it was killing her. She came to the quick assumption that it was possibly one of her workmates or a citizen she saw before that reminded her of them.

They simply stared at each other for a few seconds, the ghost's constant panting and the wind being the only audible noise between the two, until the silence was broken by the ghost out of nowhere drastically gasping for air. She looked weak, exhausted, "I'm surprised you haven't tried to attack me, given I tried to kill you."
"You didn't cause my first death, I have no reason to hurt you when I have nothing to do with you. And even if I wanted to, I'll just go right through you. Unless I could possess you…"
"I'm not willing to be the test dummy for that. But the Contractor didn't have any nice things to say about you when I spoke to him."
"Like what?"
"Well.…he said the people that lived here were 'murderous little creeps' who caused trouble."

The ghost paused, the cog in her mind turning before her face swiftly changed to anger, "Why that no good liar!! Of course he goes off and spreads those rumors and lies about us! We're dead! We can't do anything to change their minds because- oh, I don't know, we're ghosts and no one likes ghosts!"

Tech stood there watching as they continued on ranting in anger about how the Contractor was the only one going to be suffering from her wrath, "Why would he lie about something like that?"

The ghost stopped amidst her temper rant, and focused on Techna's question, "I can only assume he uses it to scare people off. Unless he wanted to give us a bad reputation in our afterlife.""But why would he go out of his way to lie about something like that?"
"Simple; he wants to protect the property. But why, that I don't know. My memory is not what it used to be. But, I wonder…"

Tech cocked her head and crossed her arms at the ghost, waiting for her answer, watching as the ghost started to drift into the air and their body tilted. It was like watching a man in a place with no gravity, "What? What do you wonder?"
"If we could get more help!"

They burst off into the air, doing loops and tricks excitedly at the thought, "But… you're dead."
"No not help from alive people! Well with the exception of you, of course. Did you forget there were eight of us living in this mansion? They're all still here! Each of us trapped in a part of the house where we felt comfortable and the most familiar with to distract ourselves in the afterlife!"

The ghost calmed down to a stop and began to approach the house before turning to Tech with her hand out, "My name's Blue," Tech reached and tried to grab their hand, only to phase through. The pair awkwardly pretended to shake each other's hands and Techna returned the introduction to Blue.

Techna didn't notice a strange flash in Blue's eyes at the mention of her name, but the dead being shook it off, "Now, a place I believe someone may be is within the west wing of the house, don't quote me on that, but if we look around, that beeper of yours will help us detect anyone else in this place."
"Wouldn't it scare them off?"
"Tech, we've been stuck here for twenty years, we know how to handle exterminators when they come and by this point, we just hid instead of trying to explain or ask for help. We never showed ourselves and it kept us alive. We'll see their aura and your radar will help to find the room."

Blue pointed to Techna's turned-off radar, she kindly asked Blue to press on of the colored buttons next to the radar to turn it back on, hearing the slow noise indicating it has started up again. The two made their way to the same door Techna entered the garden, opening the door and entered a hallway, sticking to the left side of the building. While Techna felt more confident and refreshed yet nervous for her new mission, Blue began to dread.

Blue worried that maybe an exterminator did get one of their pals. They were scared to search the house and be disappointed to discover if someone was taken away from them and they weren't able to say their goodbyes or anything at all. Blue had somewhat lied to Tech about someone being in the west wing of the house, she didn't know nor couldn't find out. Though Blue liked to stay in the west garden, they did attempt to look for others in their first few years dead. They were unsuccessful in finding anyone. Not even their auras were visible. Blue had  given up searching, because after trying for years, they knew they weren't getting anywhere. But with a new ray of hope, someone who could actually make this work, Blue believed in themselves and their exterminator acquaintance.

Techna and Blue began their search for the remaining ghosts hidden among the mysterious manor.