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After a few minutes of chaos, Principal
White was forced to try and get things back in order. “Okay
everyone, that’s enough. Let’s get back to our places so Miss
Harper can breathe!” She clapped her hands, which was a familiar
move of hers that signaled she wanted attention. “Let’s go, kids.
Back to your places.” The crowd dispersed and Alma was left still
crying in the center of the room.

Blair held Alma’s hand as she spoke. “We’re
lucky to have you, Alma, and we thought this was a good way to show
it.”

“I still can’t believe this,” said Alma.

“Miss Harper,” said the reporter as she
stepped back into the middle of the room. “I’m Rachel Knight, with
Channel 7 News.” She reached out to shake Alma’s hand. “We’re
honored to be a part of this, and I just have to ask, how does this
feel?” She put the microphone in front of Alma.

“Oh my gosh, I can’t even think of how to
say it. Look at me,” she held her hands out in front of her and
watched them tremble. “My hands are shaking. I’m stunned, shocked,
overwhelmed, absolutely in love with all of you.” She raised her
hands and shouted out to the students, parents, and fellow
teachers. They reciprocated with another round of applause. “Thank
you all so much.”

Mrs. White stepped beside Alma and rubbed a
circle on her back. “I don’t think you have to worry about spending
your spring break putting together a new music room!”

Alma pulled the principal in for a hug. “You
got me, Helen! I can’t believe you did this.”

“It was my pleasure,” said Mrs. White.
“You’re a good teacher, and we want to keep you around here for a
long time.”

“Well, this was a pretty good way to do it,”
said Alma.

“Good,” said Mrs. White. “Then my plan
worked.” They both laughed and embraced again.

The reporter interviewed Alma about how she
felt, and what it was like to be surprised this way. They discussed
how Alma had always wanted to be a music teacher, and that this was
the best day of her life. Then the reporter asked if Alma had any
siblings, which seemed like an odd question, and Alma struggled to
answer. “No, not exactly. Why?”

“No reason, just curious,” said the
reporter.

“So what’s next?” asked Helen White. “Do you
need to interview Alma any more?”

“Oh please say no,” said Alma. “I’m a total
wreck right now.”

Rachel laughed and shook her head. “Don’t
worry. We don’t have to do anything right away. We’d still like to
get a follow-up interview with you, but we can do that later. We’ll
just need you to sign a few release papers, and then we’ll spend
some time getting exterior shots and maybe speak with a few of the
kids. If you want, we’d be happy to buy you dinner tonight for an
interview. That way you can have a chance to relax and absorb all
of this.”

“That’d be great,” said Alma.

The man behind the reporter lowered his
camera. He set it on the floor and then wiped off his sweaty hand
before offering it to Alma. “Hi, I’m Stephen.”

“Hi,” said Alma as she shook his hand.

“Do you mind if I just ask you one quick
question?” He didn’t wait for permission before asking. “Are you
the same Alma Harper that was involved with the Widowsfield
incident in 1996?”

Rachel put her hand on the cameraman’s chest
and pushed him backward. “Not now, Stephen.” She smiled at Alma.
“We’ll talk to you tonight. Okay?”

Alma nodded.

All of the joy of the moment dissipated at
the mere mention of Widowsfield. Alma’s hands still shook, but now
it was for a new reason.

CHAPTER TWO

Family Reunion

Widowsfield

March 14th, 1996

“How are you feeling?” asked Kyle’s mother.
She placed her palm on his forehead, and then his cheek to check
his temperature.

“Pretty yucky,” said Kyle. He pulled the
covers close to his chin as he shivered. It was an odd sensation to
be cold and sweating at the same time, as if he were standing
outside on a chilly day after someone had sprayed him with water.
No matter how many blankets were piled on top of him, he never
seemed to get any warmer.

“You feel pretty hot. That’s not a bad thing
though. I think your best bet is to let the fever try to burn away
the sickness. I bet you’ll be up and running around again in just a
few days.” She tucked the covers down around him and then started
to collect the used tissues that littered his bed. “In the
meantime, I want you to stay in this bed and drink lots of water.
Can you do that for me?”

“I guess so,” said Kyle as he wiped his nose
on his hand. “Can you bring up the VCR?”

His mother rolled her eyes and hesitated
before answering. “You know how I feel about you watching
television all day.”

“Please? I’m so bored.”

She finished collecting the tissues and put
them in the overflowing Spiderman trashcan in the corner of his
room. “What about your comics?”

“I read them all.” Kyle looked at the stack
of Image comics that his mother had picked up for him at the
Jackson Comic Shop where he had a file. They filled the file each
week with his various favorite comics, and he’d fallen behind on
picking up the newest issues. Wednesdays were the day that new
comics were released, and if his file hadn’t been cleared the
shop’s owner would’ve stopped saving them.

“You read all of those?” She looked at the
stack of bagged and boarded comics on his nightstand.

“Yes, I told you, I’m bored. Can you please
bring me the TV from the den with the VCR in it? I want to watch a
movie.”

His mother sighed and then capitulated.
“Fine, but just one movie. Okay? I don’t want you rotting your
brain in here. You know how I feel about having TVs in the
bedroom.”

“I know, but I feel like sh…” he almost
cursed, but caught himself before he did, “…shadoobey.”

His mother smirked at his nearly foul mouth
and muttered as she carried his trashcan out of the room. He
coughed, despite not needing to, in hopes his mother would hurry to
get the television if she felt bad about how sick he was.

She eventually brought the 19” television
with the built in VCR and set it on his dresser. He asked her to
let him watch his father’s copy of Goldeneye, but she laughed off
the request and put in Toy Story instead. He didn’t complain.

Somewhere around the point in the movie
where the toys go to Pizza Planet, Kyle closed his eyes. He didn’t
mean to fall asleep, but the next thing he knew he was waking up on
a cold pillow that was wet with his sweat and drool. He wiped off
his cheek and looked around in confusion. The television displayed
snow, the movie long over, and the clock on his nightstand revealed
that he’d been asleep for over two hours.

3:14

“Mom,” he said and rubbed his eyes.

He glanced out the window and saw that the
previously bright afternoon had turned dark. At first he thought a
storm had come through, but then he recognized that it was fog he
was looking at. The fog flashed with green light and he pulled the
covers up over him tighter at the sight. The flash of electric
green light rippled through the fog as if he were watching
monochromatic Northern Lights.

“Mom,” he said with more insistence.

Something moved beneath his bed.

He leapt into a sitting position and pulled
the covers up closer to him as he yelped. There was something
scratching at the floor beneath him, and it seemed to get excited
by his voice.

“Mom, help!”

She didn’t answer. The green light flashed
outside and cast devilish shadows across his room.

“Mommy!”

The scratching got more intense, and then
the creature under the bed started to groan. It made a guttural
sound, like the gasps of a choking victim shortly before they
succumb.

“Mommy, please help. There’s something under
my bed. Mommy!”

He continued to scream as the scratching got
worse. He was terrified of getting off the bed, afraid that
whatever was hiding below would grab at his feet and pull him
under. Yet, despite how loud he screamed, his mother wouldn’t
answer.

He turned and pulled one of the wooden
swords off the wall above his bed. He held it tight against his
chest as he stood on the bed and prayed. Then he gathered his
strength before leaping off the bed in the direction of the door.
His bare feet slapped against the wood floor and he wasted no time
fleeing. He only dared to look back once he was safely in the hall,
far from whatever had been hiding under him.

Kyle saw the top half of his mother’s head
on the floor, with her fingers sprouting from the wood like the
tops of carrots. She was scratching at the floor and he could see
the top of her head wiggling as she tried to speak. Her body was
fused with the floor, and as he reached the stairs he could see the
bottom half of her body hanging from the first floor ceiling,
beneath where his bed was.

“Mommy,” he said in shock.

She gurgled and scratched before her legs
went limp, dangling from the ceiling.

16 Years Later

March 9th, 2012

Alma was anxious about meeting with the
reporter, not because of the story they were going to run, but
because of the offhanded remark by the cameraman about her relation
to the mystery of Widowsfield. It had been nearly 16 years since
that awful day, and she tried for all that time to forget as much
about the investigation that tore her family apart as possible. She
would’ve refused to meet with them, but wanted to make sure her
past wasn’t going to be part of the story. The last thing she
needed was to be contacted by her father about why she had allowed
reporters to discuss their family’s dark history.

“Alma.” Rachel waved at her from across the
small dining room. She was seated at a table with the cameraman,
Stephen. The meeting was set up at a local Chinese Buffet
restaurant, and the smell of sticky sweet chicken and pork sickened
Alma. She’d been a vegetarian for years, not for any altruistic or
health related reason, but because the thought of eating flesh
sickened her. It had bothered her since the day her brother
disappeared in Widowsfield, 16 years ago.

“Hi.” She stared at Stephen’s plate, which
was loaded with fried pork covered in a fiery orange glaze and
mixed with rice. It was steaming, and the sauce clung to his chin
as he smiled up at her. He wiped his lips off on a red napkin that
had been in his lap before he got up and pulled out a chair for
her.

“Want me to get you some food?” he asked,
trying to be nice.

“No, thank you.” She sat down with Stephen
to her right and Rachel across the square table from her. The
reporter had a sparse amount of food on her plate, and no meat.

“Not hungry?” asked Rachel.

Alma shook her head. “Not really.”

Rachel tilted her head and sympathetically
asked, “Not a fan of buffet food? Me neither. This was his pick.”
She pointed her thumb in Stephen’s direction.

“I thought you’d have the camera equipment
here,” said Alma. “Aren’t we supposed to be doing an
interview?”

Rachel smiled and squinted as she bobbed her
head as if about to apologize. “Well, that’s not really the case.
We’ve got everything we need for the story. I guess I should just
come out and admit the truth. You see, Stephen and I have a side
project going on that’s been gaining steam lately, and we thought
you might be able to help out with it.”

Alma was confused and looked back and forth
between the two of them. “How?” she asked with suspicion.

“Stephen started a website last year about
haunted houses. It was sort of a pet project for us, and we filmed
a few Youtube videos to put up on the site, never really expecting
much of anything to happen.”

Stephen wiped his mouth again before he
interrupted Rachel. “Yeah, it was just for shits and giggles
initially, but now we’re starting to pull in serious numbers.”

“Okay,” said Alma, afraid of why they were
talking to her about this. She could guess where the conversation
was headed, and didn’t want to go there.

“A couple months ago, Stephen caught
something on camera in a house out near Pittsburgh,” said Rachel.
She absently stabbed her fork into a piece of fried zucchini on her
plate. “We didn’t even see it at first, but one of our viewers did.
Stephen was calling out the name of a little girl that was supposed
to have died in the house and in the corner of the room you could
see the shadow of a figure. It’s hard to really tell what it is,
but the net just went bonkers over it. We split the video up to
just show that scene, and it’s gotten almost a million hits
already.”

“Okay,” said Alma, hesitant to let the
conversation continue, like she was being forced to watch a movie
she’d seen before with an ending she hated, but didn’t want to
spoil it for the others around her.

“We’re trying to make sure that we take
advantage of the exposure and put up new content on the site that
can get people to keep paying attention to what we’re doing,” said
Rachel.

Stephen was quick to continue. “You’ve
probably seen all of those shows on TV these days about ghost
hunters and stuff, right?”

Alma nodded.

“That’s sort of what we’re trying to do, but
with a more serious take on it. We want to go to places that have
ghost stories, or unsolved crimes with a supernatural feel to them,
and do a story about them.” Stephen dropped his fork and flung
syrupy red sauce in an arc across the wall behind him as the
utensil bounced off the edge of the table and fell to the floor.
“Shit, sorry,” he said as he retrieved it. The glazed pork had
collected a wealth of carpet fuzz when he picked it up. “Gross.” He
put the fork on the plate and covered it with his napkin.

“Smooth,” said Rachel in jest.

“So, you two are partners in this website?”
asked Alma.