A Ghost of a Chance

Say You'll Haunt Me

Laura starts recording with a huff. "Hello... err–– viewers," she growls. "Ever since I declared that I would find out what happened to Betty, weird stuff has been happening around the house!"

Carmilla, lounging on a nearby couch, snickers to herself.

"The first night, I went to take a shower and came back down to find that all my boxes had been unpacked. By a helpful entity? Heavens, no! All my stuff was strewn about the living room!"

Carmilla smirks at Laura's antics and shifts a bit to get a better look. Of course she's waving her hands around.

"Then I came downstairs and the curtains were pulled open and all of my food was thrown around the kitchen like some deranged animal went through all of it." Laura sighs and picks up her laptop, pointing it at the ground. "And there's some weird ass piles of goop being left around the house along the walls. Apparently LaFontaine works in a bio lab and has a way to maybe identify what it is, so I brought some over to them last night."

Carmilla knows that when she phases through walls, sometimes she leaves what's colloquially known as "ectoplasm" behind, so she normally just uses the doors. Unless she's trying to haunt the person living in the house. Then she uses the ectoplasmic effect to freak them out.

Except Laura seems more annoyed than freaked out. That's fine, Carmilla muses. More time for me to aggravate her.

"In the meantime, I've been mopping it up," Laura says with a shudder. "When I came home from their place, the furniture had been moved around. There was a stool right in front of the door and I stubbed my toe," she huffs.

"There's an idea," Carmilla mumbles, getting up and slowly turning Laura's laptop away from her.

Laura's eyes widen and she throws her hands up, showing her audience that she's not the one moving it. "It's not me!" she squeaks.

Carmilla laughs as she slams the laptop shut and Laura jumps. She studies Laura's face and is somewhat impressed that she doesn't look scared. If anything, her face is all bunched up in anger in such an adorable manner that Carmilla just wants to see how far she can push Laura. So she yanks Laura's chair back, earning a yelp from her.

"That's it!" she yells, pulling out her phone. "Hey, Danny, are you free? Can you come over?" she squeaks. "I'll, uh, explain when you get here."

Carmilla rolls her eyes. Yup, she'd pushed it too far.

~*~

"...And that's what's been happening," Laura finishes miserably.

Danny frowns. "So you're saying this house is haunted?"

Laura sighs and plops down next to her on the couch. Carmilla scowls at them from across the room. "Maybe? But I Skyped with Betty a few times while she was living here and she never mentioned anything." She lets out a gasp. "Unless she's the one haunting me?"

"Perhaps..." Danny shrugs. "But if she was haunting you, wouldn't she be trying to give you a message that her death wasn't from natural causes? And not just moving your stuff around?"

"Then what else could it be?" Laura asks, looking mildly defeated.

Carmilla looks somewhat uncomfortable. Yes, she had wanted to chase Laura from here before her mother could order Carmilla to take her as another sacrifice. But seeing Laura this down just made it seem like there was something wrong with the cosmos.

"Come on, Hollis," Danny suddenly says, snapping both Laura and Carmilla to attention.

"Oh, boy, Clifford the Big Red Dog here to rescue Emily Elizabeth's day," Carmilla grumbles.