Misery County

Chapter 8 - Part 2

Her pulse was pounding in her temples, and she felt short of breath. Was it time to run? There was no shame in that. She could leave now, stay safe, and come back with Eric, whom she'd probably be able to convince to tag along after what she'd heard. No. To hell with Eric. She could do this on her own. She'd faced worse odds than some impotent ghost that seems to have gotten its haunting techniques from Shakespearean theater.

Steadying her hand, Cassie set out to check the house room by room. Already having reached the far end of the hallway, on the other side of the front door that had been standing in her way not too long ago, she took one of the front rooms. It was spacious. She imagined this was where the family that lived here would spent their days and entertain guests back when it was in use, though there was no sign of any of that left now. The last people to move out had done it right; there was no furniture in the house anymore. The only decorations left in the house were sprawling spider webs that lined all the walls and ceilings and got especially wild in corners and crevices.

Another metallic rattle shook Cassie to her core. Again she flailed her flashlight around wildly, and again she saw nothing. Was she overreacting? Could the sounds just be the house settling? No, why would it sound like metal? She hated to admit this to herself, and she'd certainly never admit it to Eric, but the ghost she'd faced in Massachusetts... well, Eric had been right. She hadn't done a whole lot. The priest did all of the heavy lifting. Cassie just observed. Her experience wasn't worth a whole lot in this situation. She didn't know how to track a ghost down or lure it out. She had a way to destroy it nestled away in her handbag, but that meant getting close to it – real close – and she feared that her ignorance of a ghost's capabilities may end up putting her at a severe tactical disadvantage.

There was no sense worrying about it now, though. She was already immersed in the middle of it all. Stressing about something that was no longer within her control would only dull her faculties and worsen her chances at taking down whatever was haunting the house – and that's if there even was anything haunting the house.

Taking a deep breath, she left the room she was in, crossing the hallway and going into the other front room. What was waiting for her was beyond grotesque and caused her to nearly jump out of her skin, her eyes glued to what was propped up against a wall.

The flashlight illuminated a burnt corpse wrapped in thick chains, chains that glistened prettily in the light. Was that silver? Cassie was certainly familiar with the type of silver chains that one wears around their necks, but never a chain so thick made entirely of silver. Could it have been silver-plated? Would it matter to a monster? Why would it? If colloidal silver could take them down, then why not a silver-plated chain?

Cassie's head was spinning. She had so many questions, but it didn't seem like she'd find the answers any time soon. The corpse couldn't have been human, but she was sure it wasn't a werewolf either. Even underneath the silver chains, he should be showing some signs of his affliction. Of course, this was all assuming that he was killed during the full moon a few nights before. That was a stretch. He could have been killed at any time. Was it even a he? The corpse was so severely burnt, that it was hard to tell whether it was male or female, let alone whether it was human or monster.

Yes, it was severely burnt, and yet, neither the wooden floor nor the wallpaper it was propped up against showed any sign of the same. Could the corpse have been burnt elsewhere and then moved to its current position? No, that wasn't it either. The chains looked like they went down through the floorboards and into the walls. Surely that meant that the body must have been burned in place. Unless... there were so many possibilities.

Cassie decided the only way she was going to uncover anything was by taking a closer look, so she held her breath and leaned in really close. In doing so, something that she hadn't noticed caught her eye. The burnt remains of the upper lip of the body were being pushed up by something. Covering her finger in a tissue from her purse, Cassie pushed the remains of the lip aside to look at what was underneath it.

Fangs.

The bizarre thing was, they didn't look like werewolf fangs at all. Well, the fangs looked enough like werewolf fangs, but the other teeth didn't. Cassie knew that werewolves have three pairs of incisors on each jaw – this specimen only had two, just like a human. Furthermore, werewolves only sprouted their wolf teeth when they'd transform, whereas this corpse looked largely human, though it wasn't easy to tell with its current sad state.