For a second, I held my breath, gazing around. I half-expected a guard dog to come out barking at me or an intruder alarm to start blaring, but nothing happened.
“I’m saying that it can’t be a coincidence.” Austin threw his hands in the air, exasperated. “There’s a reason no one comes here, and it’s not because it’s such a well-kept secret.”
“So, you think it’s ghosts?” Emlyn followed my example, pulling herself up until she was on top of the fence. Sitting on top, she looked down at Austin and shook her head. “Listen, if you’re going to whine the entire time, you better stay over here.”
Austin narrowed his eyes. “Don’t come screaming to me for help when you’re face-to-face with a ghost.”
“Come screaming for help to you?” Emlyn laughed and jumped down the fence on my side. “Last time we watched a scary movie, you screamed your ass off. I don’t think either of us plans to come running to you for help. No offense.”
Austin sighed. “Faye?”
Whenever Emlyn was pushing for something Austin didn’t want to do, he always came to me for back-up. But this time, I wasn’t about to give in.
I needed to get inside Ash House.
Something about that place was pulling me toward it, something beyond regular curiosity. This time around, Austin’s complaints couldn’t stop me. Even if the two of them bailed on it, I would still go inside the mansion and find out if my suspicions were right or not. I didn’t have a choice, not if I didn’t want Ash House to haunt my dreams for the coming decade.
“I’m going in,” I told him. “With or without you.”
“Come on, what’s it going to be?” Emlyn put her hands on her hips and looked at the third member of our little gang. “If we have to wait here much longer, we’ll start growing roots.”
“Fine.” Austin hoisted himself over the fence. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Emlyn rolled her eyes, turned around, and started walking toward Ash House.
Austin looked paler than a ghost, but at least he stopped nagging and followed the two of us.
I couldn’t help but gawk at the place. The house must’ve looked majestic once, but the closer we got, the more it became obvious that a catastrophe had torn it apart from the inside out. The windows on the right side were all boarded up, and the stones around the windows were charred black, much darker than the overall brown color of the house. The fire had raged most severe in this part of the building, I assumed.
“It’s so quiet,” Austin whispered. He kept on rubbing his arms as if he was freezing cold, a contrast to the nice spring weather.
I wanted to scold him that he was being ridiculous, but at the same time, he did have a point. It was quiet here. No birds sang, the grass barely moved in the wind. No noises from outside the forest ventured far enough to disturb the silence of this place.
A tomb. That’s what it felt like. A graveyard.
It reminded me of the silence lingering over the graveyard whenever I visited with my mother to put flowers on my grandparents’ graves. The tranquility there was soothing, whereas here the silence was almost ominous.
Maybe Austin was right, and this place was haunted after all.
“Do you know what exactly happened all those years ago? How the fire started?” A hint of uneasiness had crept into Emlyn’s voice.
The knot in my stomach tightened. If even Emlyn is feeling on edge…
“All I could find in some old newspapers is that the cause was never determined,” I replied, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “No one from inside the house called the fire station either, so by the time the people in town noticed the smoke rising above the forest, the house was already ablaze. There was only so much the firefighters could do.”
“Apparently, they could still salvage the building,” Emlyn remarked. “A bit strange that no one called 911.”
The silence became oppressing, and part of me wanted to turn back and rush toward the fence, eager to get out of here.
“Maybe they didn’t have phones,” Austin offered. “Were cellphones even invented back then?”
I snorted. “Of course, they were. Besides, even so, there’s still something called landlines.”
“Then, why didn’t anyone call 911? When the entire family was still in the house?” Emlyn slowed her pace so that Austin and I were now walking next to her.
“I have no idea.” I shrugged. “Maybe the smoke got to them before they could make a call, or maybe the fire was a cover-up for something else.”
Austin’s skin turned a sickly green. “Do we really have to go in there?”
I didn’t want to admit to him that even I was getting second thoughts about setting foot inside the Ash House. Something about this place didn’t feel right. It could be my imagination stirred up from all the ghost stories about this place, or it could be Austin’s fears reflected on me, but the thought of turning on my heel and run as far away as possible became more appealing with every passing second.
On the other hand, I knew running wouldn’t help anyway. The house had haunted my dreams for as long as I could remember, and I had to know if my dreams had any truth to them.
In my dream, I started out in the front yard, almost in the same position as I was now, wading through the grass to reach Ash House. The house looked exactly the same as it did now, down to the charred stones and the slightly tilted roof. Even the sun, slowly creeping behind the horizon, was an exact replica.
But in my dream, I entered Ash House. The entrance was
