The sky was clear, the cloudless L.A sky stared at me right in the eyes, it mocked me, it slapped me with the freedom it had and stared at me as I lay prisoner of this brick eternal cell. It'd been four years now, since my life had ended in this place, four years, two of which I had spent hidden in my room. I hadn't left unless my mother wanted to talk. Or unless we had to scare off a new potential owner. It was an endless loop. A loop that was sure to end now that the word of "hunted house" roamed around the world when it came to this place. I could see the birds flying away from one of the trees in the garden. Their wings spreading wide as they propelled themselves onto the sky; flying away from the craziness of this place. The darkness that lurked even out of the shadows in this house. They can fly away when things go crazy the shadow of the memory of Tate's voice echoed in my head, reminding me once again that he was gone. That I had send him away. I rolled to lie on my back, the dilated pupils of my eyes stared into the ceiling and its white endlessness. How could you? A little voice asked inside my head. A voice that had been talking to me since the day I said goodbye. You selfless bastard, it repeated.

It was moments like these when I wished Tate hadn't done what he did. When I wished it'd been all a bad dream, and... If not alive, I was at least alone with Tate. My parents gone, both of them, free of this darkened endless place. Tate... Innocent. Clueless, just how I believed he'd been. It was strange, how I had forgiven him, even if it wasn't my crime to forgive, when I found out about the Westfield massacre. How easily my heart changed from fear to pure love. Or at least that's what I thought it was. It'd been easy to convince myself that he had changed. That he wasn't a murderer anymore. That his crime had started and ended with the death of those teenagers. The Dead Breakfast Club a mocking memory shone in my head.

But reality was... It hadn't. He had killed Chad and Patrick. Without doubting it he'd raped my mother... And the fact that she'd died giving birth to his son was his fault too. It had to be. It was. A frown crossed my forehead. I could still feel bile rising in my throat at the very thought of him and my mother in bed. It was wrong. Very wrong; sick, even. I mean to think my own mother had given birth to my boyfriend's son... ex-boyfriend that annoying voice reminded me from the deepest parts of my mind. Well, of course ex-boyfriend, I thought in response, he's a psycho. But you love him the voice of my subconscious said again. "Ugh" He raped my mother. End of the story.

"Gross" I said out loud. My own voice pulling me out of my dark-filled reverie, all my senses worked again and I could hear the loud echo of The Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" isolate me from everyone in the house. Creating a caring bubble around me as the music slipped from my earphones to my ears. Even in death music was still an escape. An escape I'd discovered too late. The room was cold, as it always was, but even like that I hadn't left the room in about... A long while. Exactly how long was unknown to me. Time passed endlessly around me. And an eternity of hell faced me every time I looked. Minutes seemed like hours, hours seemed like days.

But I had seen the brightness of the sun disappear a couple of times through those glassy windows. Maybe it had been days. I felt like I hadn't left this room in an eternity. Yet there was more endlessness right in front of me. Fucking ironic, isn't it? To be honest I didn't want to get up. I wanted to just... Stay here. Forever hidden, forever watched. Like a cat inside a shelter's cell. Because that's how I felt. I felt like a pair of deep brown, almost black eyes were watching me from the shadows of my room. Hiding somewhere where they couldn't be seen. I was really losing my shit this time.

I felt safe when I knew Tate was watching. Or when I thought I knew he was watching. It also made me mad. It angered me to know I gave so much thought to the fact that he could be watching. It was wrong. And sick. How could I know if I really loved him? Really? Ever since that day... The day when I killed myself.

I groaned at the thought and sat up on my bed. Well, ever since that day I had been crying a lot more, any little thing made me want to cry. Any small sad or angry thing made my eyes want to spill those unshed dead tears, and weeks after my unknown death, Tate had given me a proper reason. When he showed me my rotten corpse he'd said I'd died crying. Makes sense I thought. That's why I cried so much now. I actually wanted to curl up in a ball and cry now. But then... I'd also died thinking I loved Tate. Did that mean that what I thought was love now was only the ghost of what I thought was love when I was alive? Or was it real? I knew I had forever, and forever was a long time. Even in a house as big as this one... I knew I couldn't avoid him forever. I had sent him away, but that didn't mean he'd be gone forever. He couldn't. He was pretty much a huge part of the darkness that roamed in this house.

So what could I do? I couldn't hide forever. Just like he couldn't stay away forever. Just like we were stuck here forever. My eyes shifted to look at the door of what had been my room for all this time. I guess it was ironic that this same room had been his. And not only that, it was also the room he died in. The music in my earphones changed, and Carina Round's voice echoed in a harmonious voice in my ears. I needed to get out of here. The room at least, I needed to roam around the house and hide somewhere else. Maybe I'd be morbid and go on to that dirty crawlspace where the remains of what once was my body lied.

Yeah... that was actually an okay idea. And it wasn't strange either. Really, sometimes I could catch that whore Hayden standing on the gazebo where she said her body was buried. Even Moira did that sometimes. Of course, by now my body was nothing but bones and clothes. And I had to admit it was ironic that all I could think now whenever I thought of me being dead was how much I loved that sweater I died in, and how it was horrible that I didn't have the guts to take that off from my rotting body.

I stood up from the bed, the iPod secure in my hands as I exited the room. I had to admit the house had a somber tone to it, now more than ever. Maybe it was because no more living people would enter unless it was on a dare to see if the house really was haunted. It was amusing to see their faces when they got scared when the twins, Troy and Brian scared them. The wood creaked under my feel as I walked calmly the hallway of the house that led me to the stairs, and as I walked I remembered that one year that I had spent out and about in the house. I had met every ghost that ever hid here, Troy and Brian were my favourite. They were funny and were always trying to prank someone. Of course, I never expressed my amusement, they would only turn against me and take me as their next prank-ing target . But it was funny to see Hayden getting pissed at them when they threw tomatoes and fruit, previously purchased by themselves on the previews Halloween, at her. Or even more funny was seeing my mom trying to get them to behave. Please, if they had died of curiosity and destruction, they wouldn't behave now that they were dead.

Then there was Nora, she cried a lot. And she was the most confusing of all the ghosts, there were times where she thought I was alive, when she asked me what I had done to her house, and even worse, when she asked me where her baby was. Those were the times when I'd just turn the other way and ignore her. But there were other times where she'd be kind and talk to me for a while. She was nice, maybe one of the purest souls in this house after Moira. Well... at least that's what I thought until my mom told me how Nora'd tried to steal her baby... my actual brother, not the one fathered by my ex-boyfriend. And with Nora there came Charles... now he was the one I avoided a lot, especially when I went into the basement, like right now.

He was maybe one of the two ghosts that freaked me out a little. Charles was always asking me if I'd seen any dead bodies around, cats, rats or whatever animal, just so that he could dissect them. The craziest shit was when he asked me if I could let him dissect my body. Of course I said no. It was crazy, he was crazy. And I told him, obviously. Not even in his dreams.

The creaking of the wooden stairs under my weight echoed around me, I felt like the house was alone, but I knew better, probably all the ghosts were hiding somewhere. Thank fuck for that. I didn't feel like facing anyone today. Not even my own mother. I headed right toward that small room that had the wooden rotting and breaking door. I found it a weird mirror of what hid inside it. I took the flashlight that I'd hidden behind a pile of wood a while ago and moved. I was reaching toward the chair in the room to climb over to the crawlspace when out from the shadows the shadowy figure of a red rubber ball rolled toward my feet from the darkness behind me. I looked back, my hand resting softly on the edge of the backrest of the old chair as my eyes wondered in the darkness. Beaou. He was the purest soul in the house. I didn't exactly know his story, apart from what Tate had once told me about him. He was Tate's brother, and all he did was roll his little red rubber ball toward people. It seemed relaxing to play with him... sometimes...

"Not now, Beaou. Later." I couldn't see him. I never could. Well... never except for that one time he had come out. But this was not my goal today. The rubber ball stayed on the floor untouched as shaky digits opened the wooden door that was eye-level with me. The stench... Ugh. I couldn't believe how even after four years the smell was still somewhat strong. Not as strong as the first time I saw it. It smelled disgusting, rotten eggs and rotten cheese where only a couple of ways to describe it. But up I went. I knew the way by hear now, not because I had come here often, because I hadn't, but because I never could take that sight away from my mind. Let alone the way there.

I could hear Beaou's groan of disappointment as I closed the door behind me. I placed the still resounding iPod in my sweater pocket and pushed myself forward in the dirty crawlspace, letting the faint light of the old flashlight illuminate the small space in front of me. The dirt felt as if one layer of sand had been sprayed inside this place under my hands, it was strange, and it made me want to sneeze, so as the dirt lifted with my movements, I did. The sound echoed around me and I thought I heard a gasp somewhere near. I frowned. I was really close now, I could see the old dirty rope that had scared me that first time, and then I stopped.

All I could see at first was the outline of his body against the faint light of the flashlight. He didn't move, he stayed sitting there as if he hadn't heard me. As if he were hypnotised by what his eyes were surely looking at. But then I realised his body was tense, it had been his the gasp I'd heard before. He knew it was me. Yet he didn't leave. "What are you doing here?" I asked, the tone of my voice coming colder than I truly intended it to.

"I came here to see you, Violet." Tate's voice said, breaking slowly between words as if his voice hadn't been used in a very long time. And it hadn't. He had been here all this time.

To Be Continued.