The Many Adventures of the Avengers and Friends

💛💧✨ Ghosts Are Real (Part 1)

~New York, 1887~

Ghosts are real. This much I know.

The first time I saw one, I was 10 years old. It was my Mother's. Black cholera had taken her, so Father had ordered a closed casket, and asked me not to look. There were to be no parting kisses. No goodbyes, not last words.

In a little cemetery, a small crowd dressed in black had gathered around a large headstone with a closed casket sat in front of it. Amongst the crowd was a middle aged man with a loose arm around the shoulders of a little brown haired girl. Both of their expressions were relatively blank aside from tears shining in their eyes.

That is, until the night she came back.

Later that night, the little girl was curled up in her bed, unable to be claimed by sleep. The rain outside pattered on her window as the doorknob rattled. Then, the door creaked open. The girl didn't move to look at what had opened her door, but she could feel a tender hand on her shoulder, black wisps of some smokey substance emerging off. When the figure spoke, it sounded like the girl's mother, though her voice was hollow and raspy.

"My child, when the time comes, beware of Crimson Peak." It said.

At this, the girl screamed and whirled around in bed. The spirit was nowhere to be seen, though the girl's door remained open. In the hallway, a light slightly flickered.

It would be years before I again heard such a voice, or understood its desperate warning, a warning from out of time. And one that I came to understand, only when it was too late.

***

~14 Years Later~

The streets of Buffalo, New York were in a bustle as the morning sun drenched the market in a warm glow. Train whistles could be heard from a distance as horse drawn carriages clattered down the dirt streets.

Crossing one of these streets with a stack of papers in her arm was Olivia Iridottir, now 24 years old and a woman grown. The dirt of the road lightly dirtied the lower hem of the yellow dress she wore that mirrored the glow of the town. She had a set destination to find and deliver the stack of papers to. Maybe today would finally be the day she would get her book published. She was an aspiring author trying to make her way in a man's world.

Finding the large building she was looking for, Olivia entered with a determined expression. She confidently climbed the stairs before being intercepted after the first flight.

"Thor, when did you get back?" Olivia asked the young man, a friend of hers since she was young. A doctor, an ophthalmologist, to pe precise.

"Two weeks ago, I thought Natasha had told you?" Thor said.

"No, I-I hadn't heard." Olivia stammered.

"Ohh, she made a conquest in London."

"What are you doing here?"

"I'm setting up my practice upstairs."

"I'm to meet Beck at 10, to see if he wants to publish my manuscript." Olivia held up the bundle of papers to prove her words.

"You do know it is only 9 o'clock?"

"I know, but I couldn't wait any longer, and I wanna make some corrections anyways."

"If you have any free time, please come and visit." Thor said as a group of women came upstairs, chattering excitedly.

"We met him at the British museum last fall when we were visiting Thor." Mrs. Odinson, Thor's mother, said.