Love, Like Ghosts: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations Story

“problem”, and Adrian had blamed himself for the renewed rift between his parents. The psychokinesis he’d worked so hard to gain control over had begun to leak through again. He’d lost sleep to endless nightmares and watched his family fall apart right before his eyes.
He still remembered the moment of crystal clarity which changed everything. At three in the morning one rainy Sunday in April, he’d woken his mother and told her that he was himself, that no one made him who and what he was, and that she could either accept him as he was or not, but he would no longer listen to her or anyone else—including himself—assign blame where there was none. He’d turned away from her stunned expression, gone back to his room and fallen into an exhausted and dreamless sleep. The next day, his mother had called his father and Sam to talk. There had been no more blame, no more nightmares, and now Adrian’s mother nagged him about his love life just like everyone else’s mom did. It was nice to have a bit of normality in his life.
He flexed his well-honed psychokinetic muscle to pull a Carolina mug across the room into his hand, just to remind himself how far from normal he really was.
“Hey. Okay there, bro?”
Shaking himself, Adrian nodded. “Fine. Just thinking.”
“Thinking about asking out Mr. Cute Theater Major?”
Adrian laughed at the hopeful gleam in Sean’s eyes. “Good grief, you’re relentless.”
“That’s what Coach Rodriguez says too.” Behind Sean, someone called something Adrian couldn’t hear through the dorm room door. Sean turned and yelled for whoever it was to wait just a minute, then faced Adrian with an apologetic expression. “Some of the guys want me to go to another party with them.”
“So go on. You should be out having fun tonight, not sitting in your room videochatting with your stick-in-the-mud older brother.” Adrian grinned to show he was only kidding about the stick-in-the-mud part, even if he really wasn’t.
Sean narrowed his eyes, but didn’t argue. “Okay. Well, next time I talk to you I’d better hear about your date with Theater Guy.”
“Greg. We’ll see.” Adrian waved at his brother. “Night, Sean. Have fun.”
“Night.” Sean stood and leaned down into the field of view with his usual sunny smile. “Love you, bro.”
“Love you too.”
Sean’s image stilled on a fuzzy capture of him in motion, turning off the chat function as he straightened up. Adrian studied the blurred outline of Sean’s face, thinking about the things he’d said. As usually happened when Adrian thought about it, Sean’s words made sense. Would it really be so terrible to ask Greg out? Sure, it would hurt if Greg rejected him up front or said hateful things to him later. But he’d survived before. He could survive again, and come out the other side stronger for the experience.
It all sounded suspiciously like something the voice in Adrian’s head—his demon, he called it in his darker moods—would whisper to him. Maybe it was Sean’s evil twin.
Chuckling, Adrian switched off the videochat and clicked back to his paper. He could decide what to do about Greg later. Right now, he had work to do.

Chapter Two
    When Adrian arrived at Groome Castle the next morning, only one car sat in the circular gravel drive outside. Which didn’t necessarily mean anything. Many of the students working on the haunted house, including himself, preferred to walk. Freshmen weren’t allowed cars on campus in any case, and at least a third of the haunted house staff were freshmen. Still, the place seemed much more quiet than it had the day before.
    Frowning, Adrian tromped through the piles of crisp brown leaves and up to the wide front steps of the house. Maybe he’d misunderstood the time they were supposed to start work today. He’d thought Marisa, the project manager—or the director, as she preferred to be called—had said ten a.m., but he could be wrong. The high arched ceiling and stone walls of the castle’s tremendous downstairs hall magnified any sound above a normal conversational tone into an echoing boom. Having thirty-something people in the room all trying to talk over each other at once created enough noise to drown out even the loudest single voice, and Marisa had been on the other side of the room from him when she’d told them when to be back the next day.
    He found the heavy wooden double doors unlocked. They creaked as they swung open. “Hello?” he called,