𝐎𝐑𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐂 | (adj.) "Otherworldly."
In an alternate version of present-day Britain, ghosts who are deadly to the touch have been rising from their graves for the past fifty years. Adults cannot sense the ghosts, but children can, so teenagers hav...
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𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍'𝐒 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐈𝐍 overdrive the rest of the day.
She'd changed into a simple red sweatshirt and a pair of gray cotton shorts after taking a short shower. After, she had made notes in her personal casebook regarding the ghost they had encountered—Type Two, Spectre, burnt down a house while trying to be rid of it—but decided that she would return her casebook to the office downstairs at another time. Then, she'd gone down to the kitchen to gather as much of the research that George had found on Annabel Ward as she could and grab a glass of water. The intent was to bring it up to her bedroom, but before she could, her eyes were drawn outside, to the garden.
The kitchen window over the sink provided a lovely view. The grass was in need of a cut, but the space was otherwise nice. There were apple trees that seldom got picked and most of the fruit was lying at the base of the trees, rotting. Erin ignored it that as she walked past George, who was currently occupied with an unusual task himself—conducting experiments on a skull stuck inside of a silver-glass jar. The skull itself was a Source, and the ghost was tied to it, so despite most Sources being burned at the furnaces and thus ridding the world of the Visitor, this ghost was a slightly different case. George had stolen it from his previous employer, the Fittes Agency, and brought it with him upon his hiring at Lockwood & Co.
The ghost inside rarely displayed emotions other than disgust or annoyance at their presences, and it definitely didn't look pleased about being stuck inside the oven.
That wasn't what had caught Erin's eye, though. Through the window, in the dirt beside the apple trees, she realized that there was a small bush of flowers that she'd never noticed before. Letting go of the research and placing it back on the table, she quickly unlatched the backdoor and ran outside, inspecting the flowers more closely.
"Daises," she muttered to herself as she knelt in front of the small bush—just as she'd seen in her . . . dream? Vision? Whatever that point of communication was with Annabel's ghost, she'd seen daisies.
Erin picked a few of the flowers, bringing them to her nose. Its pungency was that of what one expected when it came to daises—mildly earthy but fresh. She frowned as she rolled the thin stems between her fingers. Surely, there was more of a reason that she had seen daises. There had to be—Annabel had needed her help somehow. Erin was sure of it.
She got up, taking the daises with her. As she breezed through the kitchen, got herself a glass of water, and picked up the research she had intended to take, ignoring George's confused and slightly concerned gaze as she left the room. Truly, Erin believed she should have been the one who was concerned—George had a silver glass ghost-jar in the oven.
But yes—she was the crazy one.
Sitting down on the floor of her attic bedroom, she spread the research out in front of her. The attic was spacious, full of dark wood and old furniture. Anthony had slept in that very attic as a boy, or so he told Erin when she moved in. Throughout the year and a half she had lived in the home, the room had adhered to her own tastes. The full bed was covered in her pick of bedsheets and a bedspread—shades of gray and white. She had tacked Polaroids up on the walls and in the cracks of her mirror's frame on the wardrobe. Mostly of her and her mother, her and her sister, some of her and Anthony, but mostly of random places she'd seen and designated worthy enough of a photograph.
