The headache started right when Anya stepped into the building. The nagging that had made her come here turned into an overwhelming thumping Anya was sure the others could hear too. She looked back at Lily and Sam. Sam was pulling at the sleeves of his truly awful hot pink sweater, but both of them looked confident. Anya nodded at them to hopefully signal that it was safe. Everything was fine. For now, at least.

The inside of the shack was wonderfully disappointing. Everything was covered in dust. There was a smell of burning and the air was oddly warm.

The walls were lined with old bookcases, the singed covers of the books still smoking. Lily tied her short hair into a small ponytail, starting to look into the books. Sam pushed past Anya and started trying to turn on the Electromagnetic Field meter Carla had given him.

Anya was staring at a staircase. Not that there was anything inherently interesting about staircases, especially this one. No, the staring wasn’t because it was a beautiful staircase or even an ugly one. She was staring because there could have been no way this house could fit a second floor. She exited the shack, looking it up and down.

No way it could fit a second floor when it looked too small to even hold what was actually in it. It didn’t even look as burnt outside as it seemed inside.

But when Anya went back inside, the stairs, the bookcases and the burnt smell was still in the air. She looked over to her friends trying to see if they had noticed the strangeness. Lily had completely disregarded the fact that she was wearing a while dress as usual and was sitting on the definitely dirty floor. Sam was sitting on a cabinet, messing with his brown bowl cut as he slowly moved his arm around trying to get the EMF reader to pick up anything.

No harm in asking if they noticed the strangeness, right?

“Hey guys? Does this place feel a bit… wrong to you?” Both twins looked up at Anya, then at each other.

“I mean, it is a haunted house, that’s kind of the whole point.” Sam replied setting the device down on the cabinet for now.

“Sam is right, you have to be a bit more specific than that.” Lily brushed off some dust from her dress, only succeeding in spreading it out more.

“I mean, there is no way all of this would fit in here right? You saw the building from the outside, it’s barely big enough to fit one piece of furniture.” Anya pointed towards the door like that would help them remember. But she was also getting unsure. What if this was just an elaborate hallucination? Did lack of sleep even cause hallucinations? Anya rubbed the circles that she knew were under her eyes.

Sam jumped down from the cabinet, taking the EMF reader with him. He walked over to Anya, swinging his tanned arm around her.

“It’s okay Anya, it really is. Let’s not worry about proportions of houses and just try to find a ghost, okay?” Anya laughed dryly. Sam had his own brand of comforting that was strangely effective in situations like these.

Anya rubbed her eyes again, putting her hands in the pockets of her overalls. Sam took a deep breath, looking at Anya expecting her to follow suit. She did. Lily had moved over to the pair, unsurely looking at them. Anya reached her hand out and pulled Lily into a hug.

They hugged for longer than anyone expected. Perhaps the both of them needed some support. Perhaps they just liked hugging.

“Now let’s go up those stairs and find ourselves a ghost!” Sam announced, pulling his sister away from Anya. Anya just laughed and followed.

---

The trio stared at the EMF meter in shock. The bright red light shone in their faces, indicating at the very least extremely strong electromagnetic signals. Maybe ghosts, if one happened to believe in such things.

The light disappeared before any of them could say anything.

“Okay so. What the fuck?” Sam said looking up at the two girls. They both looked just as confused as he was. “I mean, we can all agree that was really weird right?” He looked right at Lily, who was the only one of the three that didn’t believe in ghosts. Anya nodded in agreement.

“Maybe it was an outlet somewhere?” Lily suggested.

“Does this house really look like it has working electronics to you?” Sam retorted.

Anya left them to their own devices, walking around the impossible second floor. For such an old looking house, none of the floorboards were creaky, she noted. Anya started looking around.

The second floor was even more ruined than the first one, to the point Anya was surprised it hadn’t collapsed. The furniture was all ashes, the floor covered in thick black soot. Anya quickly mulled over how dirty her sneakers were going to be until she moved on to more pressing thoughts, like the ghost.

Rounding a corner, she found nothing but more ashes and an open door. There was a window introducing daylight to the dusty room, illuminating the room in orange light. Anya however could have sworn it had been completely cloudy outside. She looked out from the window.

For a moment Anya was sure she could see the ocean, before everything became blurry as the pain in her head spiked and she felt like her head was going to split in two. Backing away from the window in shock, she looked at the floating dust in front of it for a moment before turning to the open door.

Anya could have sworn she saw someone she knew exit through a glowing circle. The person had brown hair, they were short and looked like they had an eyepatch. But as soon as Anya blinked and looked again, both the person and the circle were gone.

The room itself only had a desk and some shelves, and a large skylight showing the clear sky above. But unlike outside of it, there was no dust or ashes whatsoever. The room actually looked taken care of.

Anya moved her attention to the desk. It was made of polished dark wood, and it seemed study enough to sleep on with delicate flowers carved into the drawers and doors. There were some papers scattered around, but Anya didn’t pay much attention to them. There was a leather box which caught her interest, and she opened it to find multiple bottles of a strange glowing liquid. Anya furrowed her eyebrows but let those be for now.

She started looking at the boxes. Most were titled ordinary things, like “bills” and “Christmas things”. Anya didn’t bother looking at those. The books on the shelves interested her for a moment, but Anya opened them to find that the text was completely unreadable. Maybe it was code for something? Either way it didn’t keep her attention for long.

Looking over to the side, her headache momentarily spiked. Taking this as a sign of “keep looking there” instead of anything else, Anya stubbornly tried to focus on what was on the shelf there.

There was a book and a smaller box. Anya moved over to be able to read the label. After all, it was making her head hurt, so it must have been something close to “radioactive waste”.

The box was titled “For Anya”.

---

Anya couldn’t hear Lily and Sam anymore. All she could hear was hear own heartbeat, her own breathing. Anya felt her hands drop the box onto the desk, her feet stumbling as she backed away to the other side of the small room. She felt her headache decrease with every step she took.

Calm down, there are more people than one named Anya in this world, she told herself. But she didn’t feel any less panicked. Why was her name on it? Why here?

What was going on?

Sinking down onto the floor Anya continued staring at the strange box. While all the other boxes looked like they would have been pulled out once or twice, the one with her name had a thick layer of dust on top. It looked like it had been put onto the shelf once and left there, which only made the whole situation stranger.

The words she remembered from her dream flashed through her head.

Queen.

King.

Eye.

Worry.

Death.

Did they have anything to do with the box? Anya frowned, looking at the floor. She didn’t even know what was in it, how could it relate to dreams she had had for years?

But what if?

Slowly pushing herself up from the floor, Anya started taking steps towards the box. Slow, slow steps. With every step she could feel her head pounding more and more, making Anya close her eyes and stand still occasionally before taking the next step. White-hot irons were splitting her head in two by the time she got to her destination.

She forced her eyes open and, taking a deep breath, she opened the box.

Anya immediately had to scrunch her eyes closed, dropping the lid to hold her head. Her ears were ringing, and it felt as if someone had taken her brain out and was jumping on it. She hit her temple a few times, as if that would help, and pressed her fingers down on the same spot. Anya stayed like that for a few seconds, taking deep breaths to try and alleviate the pain. It took her eyes a bit to focus after opening them, and a bit longer still for her to be able to look at the contents of the box.

It was truly disappointing inside. There was a letter written in the same strange language or code as the book she found earlier, a flask, a wire crown of some sort and a locket. Nothing that warranted a headache.

Anya immediately dismissed the crown and letter, as they were the least interesting and quite frankly, made no sense. Looking between the remaining two items, she decided to pick up the locket first.

It was a small, gold, oval shaped pendant covered in leaves and flowers, delicately carved into the surface. Seemingly it had once been shiny, but the time it had been in the box had taken its toll, making the surface faded. Anya picked up the chain, only for it to slip through the loop on the pendant. She picked it up and to her surprise found it had been broken in the middle.

Turning her attention back to the pendant, she tried to open it. It took a while before Anya could figure out how to twist it before she could get the pendant to open. Excitedly, she turned it around to find a blurry picture.

Anya was disappointed. This was probably the biggest clue to whatever she was trying to find, and she couldn’t even see the picture properly. Anya tried bringing it closer to her eyes, moving to another spot in the room with light and taking a picture with her own phone in order to zoom in on it.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

Making a noise of frustration, Anya put the locket away and moved on to the bottle.

The medium sized glass bottle was also covered in leaves and flowers made delicately from glass, and corked and sealed with wax. Anya turned it a bit to see the shimmering liquid moving inside the bottle, catching the light from the ceiling in a quite magical way. Not that magic was real of course, Anya reminded herself.

Anya had a strong urge to tip the bottle back and drink the glittery liquid. Not the same kind of urge that had made her to find the house, but just a primal urge to drink a strange liquid. Swishing the liquid around for a moment, Anya put the bottle down on the desk and started peeling off the wax holding its cork in place.

Plopping off the cork, Anya looked at the drink for a moment before sitting down on the floor so she wouldn’t hit her head badly in case she passed out. You know, from drinking abandoned house drinks. She stubbornly ignored her growing headache.

Cursing the internet for ruining her self-preservation skills, Anya downed the entire bottle.