phantoms / joshler

6

the snow was picking up again as tyler was leaving his bedroom. his feet were slapping against the wooden floors as he entered the hallway. it was cold in the house. 

he had to find josh.

he started in the upper east wing. tyler entered all of the bedrooms, the music room, and all of the bathrooms, flinging open every single door. he was only met with dark rooms, the smell of dust, and an empty space before him. 

the curtains were billowing as tyler rushed past them. floorboards creaked beneath his feet as he stumbled to the upper west wing. the study was up there, a room tyler had never set foot in, and he opened the door. 

one of the lamps that sat on the desk was turned on and there was a book sitting on the desk. 

he cautiously approached, peering at the book. it was a book on ghosts - more specifically, the afterlife, and tyler picked it up. there were fresh finger marks on the caked on dust.

it had to be josh.

he was frantic. setting the book back down, tyler shut off the lamp and closed the door behind him. next was the library that resided upstairs. why the library and the study were two separate rooms, tyler had no idea.

he entered and looked around. josh wasn't there, and the room was mostly undisturbed, but maybe it would hold some answers. there were close to a dozen different bookcases, each with multiple shelves. books littered the floor in piles. it was stuffed to the brim. the carpet that covered the wood floor provided some much needed relief from the cold of the wood to his feet.

tyler scanned the shelves. the smell of old books was overwhelming to him as he ran his fingers along the spines, studying the titles and stopping dead in his tracks when he finally ran across a row of ones about the supernatural.

tyler pulled out a book. there was no author on it, but it was inscribed with how to access the afterlife on the front of it, and he sat down cross legged onto the floor. it was a handwritten book, no doubt written by one of the previous owners of the house.

a plume of dust shot up when tyler folded back the front cover. he stared down at it as he vaguely remembered the realtor mentioning the original owners were obsessed with the dark and macabre. she had also mentioned that one of them studied psychiatry, specifically, the human conscious. 

maybe they knew more about this than tyler could ever understand.

he scanned through the first of the pages. they were more of an introduction than anything, explaining what the afterlife was thought to be. he was looking for how to join josh.

tyler sat for the better part of an hour and read. the wind howled against the window in the room, and he was thankful he was wearing a sweatshirt. it was freezing. the heat must've gone out due to the storm. 

the first book held no true information that was useful to him, so he pulled out the next. it had the same name, but had a vol 2 scribbled hastily next to it. 

opening that book, tyler continued. it was an immediate continuation of where the first had left off. it took a bit to understand, thanks to the old style of writing and also the loopy cursive that the author had written it in.

finally, tyler stopped.

there was a pair of shoes in front of the book, and tyler looked up to see josh. josh gave him a smile and a nod, and when tyler blinked, he was gone again.

a smile came across tyler's face. he was going in the right direction. 

for those wishing to join the deceased, the book read, it is no easy feat.