I woke up to the sound of rain and the echo of voices moving down the hallway. I groaned half-heartedly and prayed I’d fall back to sleep. However, after a few minutes of just lying there, in the cold, rough sheets listening to the heavy patter of rain and the distant thunder, I knew it was a lost cause. In fact, I wondered how I’d been able to sleep at all in such an uncomfortable bed.

Getting up, I quickly changed into warmer clothes and glanced at the disused fireplace. In this day and age what kind of house didn’t have proper heating?

I rubbed my eyes, cracked my back, and put on a bonnet. This is what you get for owing someone with strange relatives a favor. When Monica had invited me to her aunt’s house on the countryside, she had said, “We’ll just have to clean it up a bit but it’ll be a nice place for us to escape everything for a while” She hadn’t reminded me of the favor I owed, nor had she told me her that actually, her aunt had passed away a couple of months back. She hadn’t said anything about the part where we would have to clean her mansion-like house and get it ready for resale. She only said it when we were like a good two hours out of the city and turning back was no longer an option.

I walked down the cold hallway lined with paintings, mostly family portraits and landscapes__and paused at the top of the stairs.

I could hear Shannon and Monica in their room. The one right next to mine. But if they were in there who had I heard going down the hall just a few minutes ago? I shivered and it had almost nothing to do with the cold.

A flash of lightning lit the house and thunder clapped right over us. I screamed.

I’ll put up with a lot of shit, but if Monica had brought me to a haunted house our friendship was totally over…