We needed to look in that house. Elizabeth cleared a path to the door through the greenery, using her lich powers, and we started the search. It wasn't a big place, but people had obviously lived here once. The skeletons of furniture remained. I headed upstairs. There was a bathroom, although it didn't have plumbing, just an old bath and a broken wash basin. And two bedrooms.
I looked in the master bedroom first. Not much there beyond the remains of the bed. If anything was hidden in there, I figured it would be under the bed. I was kind of right. There was a loose floorboard down there, and hidden under it was a diary with a name on it. Ann Deltrose. I only glanced at it for the moment, as there was the other bedroom to look at. Three beds, the remnants of old toys, and some odd black scorch marks above one of the bed.
I was almost down the stairs again, when Michael caught fire. I panicked, obviously, and tried to put the fire out with my hands and wings, which probably wasn't too pleasant for Michael. And I couldn't figure out why miss frosty lich hands was picking this moment to continue her aggressive shipping instead of using her magic to put the fire out, until the flames disappeared and I realised it had just been a vision. Something in this house really didn't want us to be here. There was a presence here with natural fire magic. Not taught like Elizabeth's magic, but something inherent. Like mine, except I'd certainly know if there was a demon in the house. As it was, it was Elizabeth who seemed the most aware of it.
Eddie had found a photograph of the family who used to live there, and between that and the diary, we decided we had enough for the moment and got out. We had a look around outside instead. There was a big tree at the back of the house, with the remains of what must have been a rope swing still tied to one branch. And one single rope.
I went up the tree to see if I could see anything interesting. I spotted the way into the cellar, which Elizabeth cleared away with a bit more necromancy. Sometimes I think she only does that when she wants a facelift. Anyway, the cellar didn't seem to like us much more than the rest of the house, and it was a long time since any of us had slept. Eddie, for one, seemed to be falling asleep on his feet. So we decided to give it up for the night, told the scout leaders to keep everyone away from that area due to sinkholes, and went home for some sleep.
The next morning, the photo and the diary got us some answers. The family in the photo were Jack and Ann Deltrose, their twin sons William and Arthur, their adopted daughter Samara, and a dog. I guess back then alarm bells didn't start ringing at the name Samara. Jack and Ann had married in the 1890s but struggled to have children, and eventually adopted Samara, who was the survivor of an orphanage fire, and I'm really starting to appreciate all the important lessons that horror movies have taught me. Much better than Doctor Who's approach to time travel, which wasn't helpful at all. And then had their two sons, about ten years later.
We went looking through town records, and much to our surprise, Jack and the two boys didn't die in a fire, but in a boating accident. We couldn't find graves for them in the cemetary, and it seemed pretty likely that those two crosses under the tree were grave markers. No record of what happened to Ann or Samara. We got Ann's maiden name, Welch, and as it happened there are still Welches living in Wicker Valley. We had a little chat with them, using the excuse of our museum, as of course we would want to feature the history of local families there.
But we still needed to figure out what was going on at the scout camp, so we packed up anti-ghost supplies and headed out. Things clearly weren't going well there, with several kids going home after unpleasant encounters. It was certainly sounding like ghosts. We decided to try the tree first. The spirits of the boys seemed a bit friendlier than Samara. There were some questions from the scout leaders about what exactly we were up to with all the candles and stuff, but between me and Adam we managed to convince them we were doing a geological survey to check for the release of underground gases, with the candles serving as a visual warning of carbon dioxide.
The boys were pretty sweet. One was pretty nervous and hung onto the dog, but the other talked to us. Their father was there too, which didn't surprise us as Michael had managed to find the third cross on the far side of the tree, although he stayed hidden. The dog was keeping people away from them. They were scared of Samara, which didn't surprise us. We asked about the boating accident, but it didn't seem to involve anything particularly suspicious like the boat catching fire.
We knew now what had happened to Ann. Sadly it came down to that single rope hanging from the tree. That poor family. And now we were going to have to go up against Samara. Ghost, firestarter, both. Either way, this was one battle that was definitely going to have theme music.
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