The program looked more and more like Ghostwatch.
Alaric Thomas had been a serious horror fan in his previous life and had watched almost every kind of horror movie he could find, including pseudo-documentaries and found-footage films.
That made the resemblance impossible for him to ignore.
Of course, Ghostwatch wasn’t American but British.
The original was a BBC Halloween broadcast presented as a live paranormal investigation, with television hosts and a camera crew entering an ordinary London home said to be haunted by a violent poltergeist.
The program Alaric had discovered wasn’t exactly the same, but its format was disturbingly similar.
The host was a paranormal blogger accompanied by a small film crew, and they had spent an entire night investigating what the website called one of Britain’s most haunted homes.
Even though the specific haunting wasn’t one Alaric remembered, the existence of the program itself revealed something important.
Supernatural incidents were clearly not limited to the United States.
Other countries had their own problems.
Japan alone had enough legends about ghosts, curses, haunted buildings, and strange urban myths to keep anyone awake for weeks.
Europe had centuries of stories involving spirits, demons, witches, and cursed estates, while America apparently collected every possible form of supernatural disaster.
Alaric was beginning to suspect there might not be a truly safe country left in this world.
For now, however, his most urgent concern was the United States.
Alaric opened several paranormal forums and websites filled with alleged eyewitness accounts, local legends, missing-person reports, videos, and supposed evidence of supernatural activity.
Most of it was probably fake, but he no longer had the luxury of dismissing everything as internet nonsense.
One discussion had been posted by a woman named Judith and concerned an old legend from the town of Ravens Fair.
It told the story of Mary Shaw, a ventriloquist who had died decades earlier and whose name remained connected to a series of bizarre deaths.
The replies beneath the post were evenly divided between people who believed the story and users openly mocking them.
Alaric wasn’t laughing.
He remembered the old rhyme immediately.
“Beware the stare of Mary Shaw.
She had no children, only dolls…” That was enough.
Dead Silence.
Alaric closed that discussion and continued searching, but what he found next was even worse.
One town had a rate of child disappearances and deaths far beyond the national average, while another report concerned a group of female explorers who vanished inside an enormous cave system.
Elsewhere, stories described an abandoned psychiatric hospital connected to disappearances, isolated roads where travelers never reached their destinations, and murders blamed on a child’s doll named Chucky.
One report by itself could easily be dismissed.
Dozens were harder to ignore.
Alaric couldn’t confirm every case, but several immediately reminded him of movies he had watched before.
Child’s Play, Halloween, Dead End, Hellraiser, Paranormal Activity, Ghost Stories, Antlers, The Possession, It, and The Descent all came to mind as he moved through page after page.
Those were only the incidents he recognized.
There was no telling how much remained hidden.
Until tonight, having Saw-Tooth and One-Eye inside his Ghost Cards had given Alaric a genuine sense of security.
Both cannibals were terrifying opponents against ordinary people, and either could probably overpower most human serial killers in a direct fight.
Looking at the information on his screen quickly destroyed that confidence.
The brothers were useful against humans.
They were almost worthless against powerful supernatural threats.
If Saw-Tooth charged something like Valak, the demon would probably tear him apart before he even understood what had happened.
Against intangible ghosts, curses, demonic possessions, or creatures with supernatural abilities, brute strength alone wouldn’t be enough.
Alaric suddenly understood that he desperately needed supernatural subordinates of his own.
A chill ran down his back.
Then something warm pressed against him from behind.
Jessie wrapped her arms around Alaric and rested her chin near his shoulder before glancing at the laptop screen.
“Why are you looking at creepy stuff like this right now?” she asked quietly.
“After what happened today, I really don’t need another reason to think something is hiding outside.” It was already close to midnight, and the motel parking lot beyond the window was almost completely dark.
After surviving a day of cannibal attacks and watching Francine die, Jessie clearly had no interest in spending the rest of the night reading ghost stories.
More than anything, she seemed to want reassurance that she was safe.
“Just curious.” Alaric closed the website and turned away from the screen.
Jessie had finished showering and was wearing a motel bathrobe, her damp hair still falling over her shoulders.
Her meaning became obvious when she remained close instead of stepping away.
“It’s late,” Jessie said.
“Come to bed.” Neither of them was a teenager, and after the terror of the previous day, neither felt much need to pretend the attraction between them didn’t exist.
Jessie leaned forward and kissed him, and Alaric responded before closing the laptop completely.
What followed stayed between the two of them, and for several hours, horror movies were no longer Alaric’s biggest concern.
…
The next morning, Chris was the only one who woke up early.
Alaric, Jessie, Scott, and Carly all slept much later than planned.
By the time everyone finally gathered downstairs at the motel, the sun was already high enough to make the previous night’s terror feel strangely distant.
Unfortunately, their first stop quickly brought reality back.
They returned to the sheriff’s station to ask about the investigation.
The answer wasn’t encouraging.
Deputies were still processing the reports from the forest, and one patrol officer who had gone into the area after their statements had failed to check back in.
Search teams were now trying to locate him while additional officers prepared to investigate the cabin and surrounding roads.
Alaric didn’t need the Ghost Cards to guess what had probably happened.
Three Finger was still out there.
The missing deputy had most likely encountered him.
For a moment, Alaric considered returning to the forest while it was still daylight and finishing the job.
He abandoned the idea almost immediately because the West Virginia wilderness was enormous, and Three Finger had spent his entire life hunting there.
Searching blindly for one cannibal would waste time while putting everyone else in unnecessary danger.
Alaric already had two brothers.
He could find the third one later.
The road trip was obviously over.
Jessie, Scott, Carly, and Alaric wanted nothing more than to return to Florida, while Chris still needed to deal with his ruined plans for Raleigh.
Nobody had the slightest interest in continuing what was supposed to have been a relaxing vacation.
Their original vehicles were unusable.
That meant renting another one.
Alaric paid without arguing about the cost.
His parents had left him a large inheritance, and even before recovering the memories of his previous life, he had never needed to worry much about money.
Compared with surviving cannibal attacks, the cost of a rental car barely registered.
Scott took the driver’s seat again.
This time, however, he drove like a man taking a final exam.
His eyes constantly moved between the road and the shoulders, and whenever anything resembling debris appeared ahead, he slowed down immediately.
The barbed-wire trap had clearly left a permanent impression.
Alaric was much more relaxed.
He leaned back beneath the sunlight while Jessie rested against him, enjoying the fact that they were finally leaving West Virginia behind.
From his perspective, the trip had turned out surprisingly well.
He had survived, learned how the Ghost Cards worked, and obtained two useful subordinates.
His next priority was obvious.
He needed ghosts.
Saw-Tooth and One-Eye could protect him from humans, cannibals, and many physical killers, but neither could punch an incorporeal spirit to death.
Considering how easily someone in this world could accidentally enter a haunted house or cross paths with a cursed object, Alaric wanted supernatural bodyguards as soon as possible.
The drive remained peaceful for several hours.
Then the sun began dropping toward the horizon.
As their vehicle passed an isolated estate surrounded by old trees, the temperature inside the car suddenly seemed to plunge.
Alaric had always handled cold weather well, yet the chill was severe enough to make him instinctively rub his arms.
It felt completely unnatural.
A tall iron fence surrounded the property.
Because of the Enhanced Vision he had extracted from Saw-Tooth, Alaric could see much farther through the fading light than the others.
For one brief moment, he saw what looked like a person standing motionless beyond the gate.
Then he blinked.
The figure disappeared.
Alaric’s expression changed immediately.
“No way…” He summoned a Ghost Card.
The response was instant.
Blood-red letters covered almost the entire black surface.
[Traces of Containment Target: Ghost Manor Detected!] [Traces of Containment Target: Ghost Manor Detected!] [Traces of Containment Target: Ghost Manor Detected!] The warning repeated again and again.
Despite the remaining daylight, Alaric suddenly felt colder than he had at any point in the West Virginia forest.
Whatever was inside that estate was powerful enough to make the normally simple Ghost Card alert behave as though it were screaming at him.
He didn’t need another hint.
“Scott, speed up!” “What?” “Just drive!” The urgency in Alaric’s voice frightened Scott enough that he immediately slammed his foot onto the accelerator.
The rental car surged forward and raced down the road while Jessie grabbed Alaric’s arm in surprise.
Nobody understood what had happened, but after yesterday, no one was willing to ignore one of his warnings.
Alaric kept watching through the rear window.
The manor grew smaller.
Then it vanished.
Not hidden behind a hill.
Not obscured by trees.
Gone.
Alaric slowly turned back around.
What the hell was that?
Jessie asked what was wrong, but he didn’t answer immediately.
The estate had reminded him of stories about haunted British manors where the living had no place at all, only restless spirits and malicious ghosts.
Whether it matched a movie he remembered or represented something completely new, Alaric had absolutely no intention of investigating it right now.
He had two cannibals stored inside Twos.
That wasn’t nearly enough.
Until he possessed something worthy of a King or Queen, Alaric would rather turn around and drive across the country than voluntarily walk through the gates of a place like that.
Curiosity was useful only when it didn’t get him killed.
Whatever secrets the Ghost Manor contained could wait.
Fortunately, nothing else happened.
The estate seemed to have appeared only briefly before disappearing again.
By the end of the trip, Alaric, Jessie, Scott, and Carly successfully made it back to Florida.
They finally separated once everyone reached familiar surroundings, and Alaric said goodbye to the others before heading home.
After days of forests, blood, police stations, and cheap motel rooms, normal streets almost felt unreal.
Jessie lingered longer than the others.
Their night together had been enjoyable, but neither of them officially became part of a couple.
Jessie had tested the possibility more than once, yet Alaric politely refused to turn a stressful attraction into a serious relationship.
He had no problem dating casually, but choosing an actual girlfriend was something he intended to think about carefully.
Eventually, Jessie left.
Alaric returned to his large family villa and finally relaxed once the doors were locked behind him.
The house had been left to him along with the rest of his inheritance, and compared with the motel it felt absurdly comfortable.
Even so, the strange manor from the road refused to leave his thoughts.
He opened his laptop almost immediately.
The Ghost Cards remained within reach.
If the system produced another warning while he searched, Alaric planned to close everything at once.
He had already learned enough about horror movies to know that researching the wrong supernatural phenomenon could sometimes be just as dangerous as physically entering a haunted location.
Fortunately, ordinary searches produced no immediate reaction.
After digging through obscure paranormal forums, archived news pages, and local legends, Alaric finally found several references that seemed connected to the estate he had seen.
Most were vague, and several contradicted one another, but one particular thread caught his attention.
It seemed to be about the secret of the Ghost Manor.