The Most Haunted Summer Ever

Welcome to The Spot Writers. The prompt for this month is to continue with last month’s prompt (a story told through a camera, any type of camera in any circumstance). This next story will be what happens AFTER what is told through the camera. 

This week’s contribution comes from Chiara De Giorgi. Chiara is an Italian author and currently lives in Berlin, Germany. She writes fiction, with a focus on children’s literature and science fiction.

  

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The Most Haunted Summer Ever

by Chiara De Giorgi

 

After acquiring the Gift of Sight, Elsa befriends the Squatters, a community of ghosts living in the abandoned house in her village, Willow. One day, they ask for her help in investigating the murder of Alistair, the ghostly brother of one of their own, Wilhelmina. She promises to help them but isn’t sure how to proceed, so she enlists the Stranger, a shapeshifter, and Lydia, a teenage girl who attends Elsa’s after-school creative writing class and shows her some strange photos taken at night that, apparently, depict vampires. That’s how Elsa discovers that Lydia can see ghosts and supernatural creatures.

 

~Entry 2~

Introducing Lydia to the Stranger was an experience in itself.

Lydia and I arrived at the library and a gargoyle enthusiastically greeted us from his perch. I froze. I had never realized the gargoyles were “creatures” too. Turns out they are, and they can be called Bert. Before I could process this new information, a cascade of water spilled from the gargoyle’s perch, pooling on the pavement before rising into the shape of a girl Lydia’s age. The Stranger.

Lydia gasped. Then smiled. Then giggled. Just what I needed: an unpredictable shapeshifter and a teenager with a crush.

I looked around frantically. No one on the (thankfully!) almost deserted street seemed to have noticed anything. Just another normal evening in Willow.

“Uh,” I said. “Hi.”

We sat down at the library café, where I struggled to make them listen to me: the Stranger was too busy doing funny stuff to make Lydia laugh, and Lydia… well, she laughed. After I scolded the Stranger for stirring her tea with a finger morphed into a silver spoon, snake-like strands of her hair slithered onto her shoulders, sticking out their tongues at me and winking at Lydia.

“Girls, please!” I said. “We have a murder to discuss.”

Lydia blinked, still staring at the Stranger’s hair. “Go ahead.”

“A ghost murder,” I reminded them. Yes: Alistair, explorer and would-be writer, as well as Wilhelmina’s brother, has been found catatonic in the Interplace, the spirit world’s version of a neutral meeting ground. Not dead dead (too late for that), just stuck. Enough to send the whole Squatters gang into a panic.

After some frantic research, I’d learned the only way to reduce a ghost to that state was to trap their essence in an object. Now we had to figure out who had done it, and why. That would hopefully lead us to the cursed object, so we could free him.

“Suspects,” the Stranger said. “We need suspects.”

“Anonymous,” I said after a while. “For all his act of being the Squatters’ leader, he’s been avoiding me since it happened, being all secretive and uninterested, while everyone else is panicking.”

“Madame LeClaire,” the Stranger suggested.

“Who?” Lydia and I asked in unison.

“The new lady in town. She owns the antique shop next to the ice parlor. I’ve seen the artifacts she sells: some are clearly linked to magic stuff.”

Being a journalist, I would have dismissed the magic stuff in a heartbeat until not too long ago, but the past twelve months or so have taught me differently.

Lydia nodded at the Stranger’s suggestion, then cleared her voice and added her own suspect to the list.

“Bartholomew,” she said. “The librarian’s assistant. He hates explorers, I heard him say that one bit him and turned him into a werewolf just because he wanted to know how humans tasted in this area of the world.”

I stared. My ability to take in new, weird stuff was being seriously tested, and not for the first time. At least, I don’t pass out anymore.

The Stranger’s hair turned into a detective’s hat and she tipped it at me. “This is going to be the best. Summer. Ever.” She winked at Lydia, who blushed and giggled again.

Before leaving the library, we agreed on our next step: we’re going to investigate all our suspects, who are a ghost, a werewolf, and a possible evil witch. 

The best summer ever? The most haunted, for sure.

Elsa

 

 

The Spot Writers:

Val Muller: http://www.valmuller.com/blog/
Catherine A. MacKenzie: https://writingwicket.wordpress.com
Phil Yeats: https://alankemisterauthor.wordpress.com/
Chiara De Giorgi: https://chiaradegiorgi.blogspot.com/