This will probably be all I post of this book. Not sure yet.

Chapter 2

Howard Lucas cracked open his third beer of the evening as he sat on the simple, black chair in front of his computer. Although normally a Labatt’s Blue drinker, today’s menu consisted of several shots of Jim Beam, spread out between a six-pack of Coor’s Light, sixteen-ounce cans. It had been that kind of a day. To start things off, the piece of shit minivan broke down, something about the transmission leaking or something, he wasn’t really sure, he left technical things to the experts and seldom payed any attention to what they said. After that, his wife Kimberly started ranting about him leaving his clothes in the middle of the floor. Like it mattered, they would be picked up eventually, just like always. Then came the topper. He received an email from Science World, a popular magazine to which he had sent a ten-paged, scientifically proven article about the phenomena of ghosts.

It was rejected without explanation.

Although he was used to being ridiculed for most of his adult life, by nearly everyone in the science world, Howard knew that ghosts were real. He had spent nearly thirty-years hunting them, ever since he saw his first ghost at an old bridge in Old Fort, Ohio when he was sixteen. He, unlike many other "ghost-hunters," used science first as a tool to prove, debunk, or expose fraud in any situation that he had been called upon. But his efforts were not enough to remove the label of "crackpot" from him.

Ghost-hunting had been a good career for the forty-four-year-old man, but a life of searching the unknown came with a high price. His sanity, and his wife. Although he still loved her, Howard was too wrapped up in his work to pay the necessary attention that is required in a relationship of that magnitude. It had worsened in the last six months when his workload diminished. All because of one case.

Howard slugged back his beer, downing a quarter of it in a single swallow as he forced his brain to stop thinking. It was time for work now, not weakness and remembrance. The computer came on with the press of a button, the black screen revealing to him his heavy, dark-circled, icy-blue eyes and the graying hair around his temples. What he wouldn’t give to have his youth back.

"Howard?" Kimberly’s voice yelled up from the foot of the steps in the two-bedroom house. Howard squeezed shut his eyes, he knew what was coming next, and he wasn’t going to like it.

"Yes, dear." He yelled in a deep voice coated with serenity.

"What are you doing?"

"Just checking out some stuff."

"Are you on that computer again?"

"Only for a minute, I’m looking through my emails."

"Would you please get off of that thing and come watch this movie with me?"

"Would you please get off my ass?" Howard thought, but he knew he couldn’t say that and instead yelled simply, "Just a minute, dear." Kimberly mumbled something but he wasn’t sure what she had said, but he had a pretty good idea. She was probably cursing him out under her breath, just loud enough to let him know she was displeased, as if he needed the reminder. For the majority of the last six-months, whenever he tried to escape from the world into the depths of his den, Kimberly pitched a hissy-fit. For the life of him, he didn’t know why. Ghost-hunting was all he had ever been good at, all he had understood. Why would she not let him have it? Dejectedly, and with a great deal of doubt about his wife raising in his mind, Howard shut the computer off and made his way out of the lonely confines of his den, back into the real world, with all of its glittering ugliness.

"What are we watching?" Howard asked as he stepped into the spacious, extravagantly decorated living room. Kimberly sat on the black love-seat in front of the fifty-two-inch, wide-screen televison; a bowl of popcorn neatly tucked away in her lap.

"Forget it," she said, as a series of previews streamed across the screen.

Howard was confused, he wasn’t sure why she was still mad, after all, he had come right down when she yelled. "What’s wrong, dear?"

Kimberly shot him a stare that would make the strongest man cuddle himself up in a fearful ball at her feet. Her sapphire eyes bore an anger in them that he had never before witnessed.

"If you are asking, then that is the problem!"

Howard stared at his wife as she continued to boil. She looked like a kettle-pot that had long since overheated and had run out of steam to blow out. Not good for Howard. Not by a long shot. "What is it?" He asked again, sincerely unaware of the source of rage that he was receiving.

Kimberly looked away, back toward the television screen. Howard recognized the slow guitar that had begun to play in the background. "Duh-dah-duh-dah, duh-dah-duh-duh."

It was the opening scene from the movie "What Dreams May Come," Kimberly’s favorite movie. But why was she watching it now? Howard was confused, they only watched it on . . .

"Our Anniversary! God Damn you, Howard, how could you forget!"

Howard’s mind raced with an unholy fear like which he had never before known. He had really screwed himself this time and had absolutely no idea of how to fix this. Sensing his minds dramatic turmoil, Kimberly turned to him and delivered one last, heart-stabbing sentence. "Your gift is in the kitchen."

Howard was thankful that his wife was sitting on the couch, at least it should still be warm in two hours, he thought as he realized that would probably be where he would end up sleeping tonight. He thought about arguing but quickly purged that idea from his head. He knew he had screwed up badly, and to try and deny it would only make matters worse. Instead, he took a seat next to Kimberly without saying a word. She scooted away from him as he sat. Why was he even bothering anymore, Kimberly began to wonder, but quickly realized that she was too pissed off to think right now, she just continued to lose herself in the movie, wondering why her husband couldn’t be more like Robin Williams?

Howard closed his eyes as he frantically searched for a way to make up the blown Anniversary to Kimberly. He fell asleep there, right on the couch, just like he expected. When he woke up the next morning, Kimberly was gone.

Chapter 3

Chandler Crowe thanked God a million times a day. Today, that number would be nearing four-million, he guesstimated. Three million or so of them coming on the drive back from the small, rural community of Bettsville, Ohio.

He had passed seven cars stranded in the bad weather along Routes twelve and thirteen, two narrow country roads that led him daily back to his house that was just beginning to make its way into his vision. Right now, it only appeared as a blotch of dark-blue paint stretched out across a flat, white, landscape, but that would be changed shortly.

Today Chandler was especially thankful that he bought the midnight-blue Escalade that he drove right now last year, even though the payments were beginning to take a dent out of his decent, weekly wage. Who knew that managing a gas station would land him almost five-hundred dollars a week? Couple that with his wife’s three-hundred-dollars a week from her job as a nurses-aide, and they were doing pretty well for a couple of red necks living in the middle of nowhere.

A big, brown buck darted off into a copse of trees behind the three-bedroom home while the snow crunched beneath the Escalade’s tires as Chandler steered into the drive. At least, he hoped it was the driveway, it was nearly impossible to tell with all the snow.

The crunching of the tires on the snow finally subsided as the Escalade stopped and Chandler removed the keys, carefully stepping out onto the white ground. The alarm system beeped as he shut the door behind him and pressed the button on his key-chain.

From his vantage point, he could already smell supper. If his nostrils served him correctly, and they rarely failed him when it came to food, it smelled like burgers and french-fries, the perfect meal for a good snowstorm.

A white door with a wreath suspended from the top of it, greeted Chandler as he climbed to the top of a set of slightly-worn series of three stone steps that led inside. Christmas was right around the corner. That was his favorite holiday, as he guessed was the case for several billion people, but it wasn’t because of gift-giving and family gatherings. Chandler loved the Christmas season because of the customers at Fred’s-One-Stop. They seemed a little more gracious and appreciative of his efforts to get them out of the store and on their way as fast as he could. The tips were better, the complaints came less frequent, and people said "thank-you" more often and seemed to actually mean it for a change. Patricia smiled at him as he closed the door gently behind him. It was his favorite kind of smile, the one that meant that later on tonight, she wouldn’t be as eager to fall asleep as she usually was.

"Hey, babe." Chandler said as he leaned in and kissed the blonde-haired beauty in front of him. Although they were both in their forties, Patricia didn’t show it much, other than a few wrinkles on her face. She had the body of a twenty-year-old and looked like a slightly older version of Jessica Alba. One more thing that Chandler had to be thankful for.

"Hi, you," Patricia said as she leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, before returning to getting things organized for supper. "Call the kids down, dinner’s ready."

"Do we have to feed them today?" Chandler asked with a grin.

"Only three more years, honey. Then they become the problem of some far-off college."

"Think Bobby can get into Ohio State?" Chandler asked. His son knew more about football than he thought was humanly possible, and he was good at it too, but he wasn’t sure if Bobby held the mental toughness required to chase his dream. He was a little too dreamy at times, as if lost in his own private world where no one else was allowed. When Bobby was younger, Chandler had wondered if he was slightly autistic, but the tests said no, in fact, they revealed that Bobby was extremely intelligent. He was just . . . odd.

"Time will tell," Patricia whispered mysteriously before disappearing down a short hallway that led into the kitchen. Chandler heard the plates landing on the wooden table as he strode toward the base of the steps.

"Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, food’s on!"

Chandler rarely called his children to dinner by name. He discovered long ago that when you yelled for a child by name from downstairs, they usually thought that they were in trouble for whatever they were doing upstairs, and they usually didn’t respond quickly. The monster names seemed to work and Chandler smiled to himself as he heard Abigail’s bedroom door open. "Hi daddy," Abigail said as she hustled down the stairs and jumped up to give her father a kiss on his fuzzy cheek.

"Hi, Angel." Chandler said as Abby released her father and headed toward the kitchen. Bobby followed her enthusiastic greeting up with a simple: "Hey, dad."

Chandler shook his head, grinning at him as he followed his son and daughter into the kitchen. He smiled again as Patricia finished placing the plates covered with hamburgers and fries around the table. He liked being right all the time. Of course, he knew that deducing the smell of french-fries and hamburgers hardly put him in the field of "World’s most amazing achievements" but it made him feel good nonetheless.

Chandler sat and looked over at Bobby who had already guzzled his way halfway through his hamburger. Abigail hadn’t even started hers yet and she looked over at him disgustedly. "You are such a pig."

Bobby promptly responded with a quick opening of his mouth, revealing the mysterious properties of the half-eaten burger to his smart-ass sister with a grin. "Robert James Crowe," his mother said as she sat.

"Come on Bobby," Chandler added.

Abigail shot a quick grin at her twin. Bobby rolled his eyes at her and continued eating, he would have his revenge a little later. "So, what did you two do all day?" Chandler asked before the children could continue their fighting any further.

"Nothing," was the simultaneous answer. Chandler looked the pair over cautiously, their mouths might have said nothing, but their eyes revealed guilt.

"Abby has a Ouija board." Bobby offered as Chandler eyed him firmly. "What?" Chandler and Patricia both said together. "You’d better not, young lady," Chandler warned. "I don’t want those things in my house." Abigail rolled her eyes, simultaneously kicking Bobby in the shin. The kick caused him no pain and he smiled back at her.

"It’s not mine, Dad. Besides, what’s wrong with them?"

"They are tools of the occult. The Bible says to stay away from the occult."

"But Dad . . . "

"Don’t "But Dad" me Abby. I want that thing out of here tomorrow, got it?"

"I was going to take it back then anyway," Abby answered defiantly. "That thing is creepy."

Chandler eyed her as he chewed on a mouthful of fries. Abigail looked down at her sandwich and picked it up nervously.

"Did you mess with it?" Chandler asked, looking from Abigail to Bobby and back again. Both of their eyes failed to meet his, and he had his answer. His hand went to his forehead and he swallowed his food in one gulp. Why did all children find it necessary to do things that they knew aggravated their parents? Was it encoded in their DNA?

"Of all the things we buy for you two, why would you play with a Ouija board?" Chandler asked.

Abigail shrugged. "I don’t know," she said. Bobby had that far-off look in his eyes again and said nothing.

Chandler shook his head. "Did it do anything?" He had watched enough movies in his life to know about Ouija boards. He believed that they were real, too, after all, it was preached against by the church, so there must be something to it.

"We talked to Jack," Bobby said, a strange infliction taking over his normal voice. Chandler, Abigail, and Patricia all stopped and stared at him. Bobby’s eyes still held that distant look to them and the room grew quiet.

"Jack is back." Bobby said, his pitch dropping barely above a whisper. "He wants to continue his work."

"Where’s the board?" Chandler asked as he looked to Abigail, a worried look on his brow. Abigail, stunned by her brother’s strange antics, had to be asked again before she could find her voice. "Under my bed," she answered weakly. Chandler rose from the table and disappeared from the room. When he returned a few minutes later, he held the box in his hand and stared at his daughter. "Who did you borrow this from?"

"Annie Michaels."

Chandler took a twenty-dollar bill out of the pocket of his wrinkly jeans and handed it to Abigail. "Give this to your friend! That should cover it!"

"What are you doing?" Abigail asked.

"Getting rid of this damn thing before anything else weird happens."

"Too late," Bobby whispered, his eyes still vacantly staring off at nothing as he slowly chewed on his food. Chandler stopped and looked at his son. Where was he? More importantly, what the hell was that supposed to mean? A thick chill ran down Chandler’s back, reigniting his urge to get the board the hell out of his house. Ignoring Bobby’s weird behavior for the moment, he walked through the back door into the now star-reflecting fields of white, dumping the board into their burn-barrel. He would burn it in the morning, tomorrow was Saturday, his off day.

Back inside the house, away from the cruel elements of nature, but swirling in the arguably worse conditions of the supernatural, Bobby Crowe found himself alone in a darkened, empty room. He wasn’t exactly in the room, he was only aware of its existence, if that made any sense. He knew it didn’t, but that was the only way he could describe it to himself. The room held an aura of some ageless horror to it. Being no expert on history, Bobby guessed that it was from sometime in the eighteen-hundreds. It was definitely not from this century, or anywhere remotely close. The walls were worn, made of crudely placed, cracking bricks. They radiated a feeling of fear that caused him to shiver.

"Bobby," A voice whispered from the shadows. It was a deep voice, carrying an English accent. Bobby looked around, but saw nothing but the bare walls.

"Back to work, Bobby," the voice said again.

"Who are you?" Bobby whispered.

"Bring me a top-hat, Bobby."

"Who are you?" Bobby asked again, a little louder this time.

"A top-hat and a cane."

"Who are you?"

"Maybe a black-trench, as well." As quickly as Bobby’s vision began, it ended and he snapped back to reality.

Chandler shook Bobby furiously, trying to shake him loose from whatever trance held him. "Bobby! Bobby!" Chandler yelled. He stopped shaking his son when he saw his eyes return to normal, before they had seemed to be staring off miles away, now they held the look of fear and confusion.

"Dad?" Bobby asked as he looked around, amazed to find himself on the floor with his family surrounding him. They stared at him in horror, even Abigail, which he found remarkably odd. Normally she was emotionless and uncaring.

"Bobby, are you all right?" His mother asked, her hands trembling over her chest.

"I think so," Bobby answered. He wasn’t really sure if he was, but he had to comfort them somehow.

"What happened?" Chandler asked.

What happened? How the hell should I know? Bobby shook his head after clearing his thoughts. "I don’t know, Dad," he admitted.

Chandler studied his son before turning to Patricia. "We should take him to the hospital."

"No!" Bobby spat angrily. He hated hospitals. The last time he had gone to one was when he tore up his ankle playing basketball. The right side of it had swollen up to the size of a softball. The inner part had inflated only to the size of a baseball. Obviously he had hurt it pretty badly and what did the Doctor do? He twisted it, turned it, moved it all around, and then asked the dumbest question that Bobby had ever heard. "Does it hurt?" Eight years of medical school and that was the best he could come up with? Go to the hospital, Dad? No thanks, my brain might end in a blender. I’d rather take my chances with the strange visions.

"Bobby," Patricia said, "You should really go, that looked like a seizure."

"I’m fine," Bobby said as he lifted himself off the ground and performed a little side-step-dance.

"See? Besides, with all the snow out there we might get in an accident on the way." The three looked at Bobby closely. They seemed to be convinced that he was fine, for the most part. Chandler placed his hand on Bobby’s muscular shoulder and spoke. "All right, Bobby, but if it happens again, you’re going."

Bobby nodded. If it happened again, Bobby wasn’t planning on telling anyone. This was something he was going to have to handle on his own. Whatever it was that he had just experienced, he was pretty certain that no doctor would be able to explain it.

After a few minutes, everything seemed to be returning to normal. Patricia collected the plates and glasses and threw them in the dishwasher. Abigail excused herself and headed upstairs for her nightly read. Chandler burped and went and laid down on the black sofa in the living room.

Bobby walked across the kitchen floor and grabbed a handful of french-fries off the cookie-sheet on the stove. He could never get enough of them and he gobbled them down like a beggar who had just been given a hot sandwich.

Upstairs, Abigail opened the door to the room of pink and stepped inside. Her heart jumped to her throat as she closed the door softly and turned around. On the bed in front of her sat the Ouija board.

Abigail swallowed hard and stepped closer to the bed. The top of the box was off and the pointer, completely intact, weaved small circles around the board. A cold breeze blew past her and she screamed.

Chandler jumped up from the comfort of the sofa as Abigail’s shrill shriek echoed down the stairs. He rubbed away the sleep in his eyes that had nearly taken him to dreamland and burst toward the stairs. Bobby had beaten him there and was already halfway up when Chandler arrived. Patricia was close behind, wiping off her hands with a towel that she threw down in a panic upon finishing.

Bobby blew through Abigail’s door, barely allowing himself enough room to fit through before charging in, scraping his left shoulder across the doorframe.

Chandler was right on the heels of his son, trying to overtake him, but he was too fast. Abigail had backed up into her three-drawer dresser along the wall, staring in fright at the board on her bed, her long fingernails ripping into the wood.

"What in the name of God?" Chandler said as he looked from the board to Abigail, then back. The board hovered over Abigail’s bed, spinning in slow circles as a dark cloud began to form over it. As the entire family stood in silent amazement, the dark cloud began to thicken and shape itself, growing larger with each second. In less than the blink of an eye, the figure of a tall, gaunt man materialized before the Crowe family.

Chandler and Bobby both stood in front of Abigail and Patricia, as if they were able to protect the women from the ghostly figure in front of them. The dark shadows around the apparition faded away, leaving them staring at a semi-transparent man in a dark suit, a knife clutched in his slender, pale hand, glinting in the darkness.

"In the name of Jesus Christ," Chandler shouted as the figure turned its pale face toward the four of them, revealing a set of wickedly colored, yellow tinted eyes, set underneath a protruding brow. The figures sunken cheeks pulled his thin lips back into a smile that sent chills down the backs of the entire Crowe family, especially Chandler, who was petrified so fiercely he was unable to finish his homemade exorcism.

"Who are you?" Chandler managed to finally mutter as the ghost appeared to be waiting for some form of communication from him. With a bowing of its head, enough so that Chandler could only make out the sickly, yellow eyes, the spirit answered.

"I’m Jack." The apparition spat out with a thick, English accent, one that carried with it the slightest hint of insult. "Who are you, boss?"

Chandler noticed that some of the dark, shadowy essence that had brought forth this creature remained near its feet as he scanned the length of it.

"What do you want?" Bobby asked before Chandler could. Chandler looked at his boy in shock. Bobby was usually shy, almost always the last person to speak when meeting someone new. Apparently though, ghosts were another matter entirely.

Jack refocused his grim stare, turning it onto Bobby. Strangely enough, Bobby seemed to have removed all fear from himself and stared back stoically, as if glancing nonchalantly at a harmless fish in an aquarium.

"Work Bobby, I’m anxious to get back to work. I’ll fix them, Bobby, I’ll fix them good this time."

Jack, upon finishing his sentence, sped toward Abigail’s window and disappeared through it, off into the night air as the four watched in awe.

Turning, finding his wife and Abigail trembling, and Bobby staring vacantly off out of the window, Chandler quickly scooped the board up in his hands, slamming all of the contents into the box before turning and nearly running from the room.

This damn thing is going now! Chandler thought as he stopped in the kitchen to grab a bottle of Charcoal fluid. The bottle was full, and Chandler intended on using every once of it as he stepped outside and threw the Ouija board into the burn barrel. Chandler removed the top from the box and set the board and pointer on top before proceeding to drench the entire thing in the flammable liquid he held in his hand.

With a quick flick of his wrist, Chandler threw a match to the barrel and it erupted with an enormous burst of flames. Chandler stood with his chin in hand, and watched quietly as the flames began to lick the sides of the board. They changed from orange to red, then to blue, and finally to white as the heat grew too much to bear, and he had to back away slightly. As he did, the voice of a woman cried out from somewhere in the darkness.

"You old cock! What have you done?"

Chandler jumped at the sound of the voice. It was a high pitched, angry squeal that held an English accent. He glanced around the fields, hoping that someone else was out here with him, but he knew that was not the case. The voice had come from the board as the last bits of it melted away.

Upstairs, Bobby Crowe hugged his mother as she wiped away the tears from her face. The experience had clearly left her nerves a wreck and she was shaking horribly.

Abigail seemed to be faring better, but she was hard to read. Bobby was fairly certain that she was just as bad as their mother, but she suppressed it better.

As Bobby stood trying to comfort Patricia, Abigail looked over at him and whispered. "I saw him too."

The lights in the house flickered twice, then fell from existence. The power was gone.