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Author's Chapter Notes:
heavyweight curse lifting
Of course, the kids all came back a couple hours after the deputy shooed them away, drifting back to the scene in ones and twos.

And, of course, Travis Tully returned, as well, having just as much luck convincing them to leave as the last time.

“They’re probably all dead by now,” Travis taunted them. “My old man says nobody comes back from that house! You should… just… give…”

He faltered as the entire mansion rocked on its foundations. Windows cracked and shattered. Doors and shutters banged and flapped. Several shingles popped off the roof, spinning away in all directions, and the front doors flew wide open. An unseen force pushed everyone back a couple steps with all the strength of a hard gust of wind.

In that moment, both the children and Travis stood there in awe-struck silence as the whole place fell still and quiet.

None of them were sure quite how long they stood like that, waiting for something, anything, to happen in that eerie calm.

Then, just as they were starting to pull themselves back together, Shades stepped out of the looming darkness of that doorway, Melissa in tow. The other kids gave such a might cheer, that if Travis had anything to say about this most recent upset, no one heard a word of it. For good measure, Melissa held the ball over her head in triumph, sticking her tongue out at the bully who dared her to go fetch it in the first place.

“But… how?” Travis stammered. “No one’s… ever…”

“I thought I told you to take a hike.”

“I thought you said ‘get lost’.”

“Same diff.” Shades shrugged. “Trust me, in those Woods, all you have to do to get lost is take a hike.”

“Now, now… I didn’t make anybody go in there…” Travis backpedalled physically, as well as rhetorically. “You went in there all by yourself…”

Melissa glared at him.

“While you stood and watched,” Shades reminded him.

“But… but… no one…”

“Oh, it’s certainly a spooky old building,” Shades assured him, “but it’s not the first haunted place I’ve walked back out of.” He grinned at Travis. “Care to take a look for yourself?”

“Uh…” If Travis had a watch, Shades figured he’d probably be glancing at it about then. “I, uh, think I’ll be going now…”

“By the way,” Shades inquired, “what happened to your face?”

Just something about that bruise, since he first laid eyes on it. Had an ugly guess about it, but was quickly proven wrong.

“None of your business”” Travis started.

“That’s from when Max beat him up!” one boy declared, the others backing him up.

“Shut up, you little brat!”

“Max went in there?” Shades froze for a moment at that possibility. “Justin, too?”

“Yeah!” the other kids confirmed.

“Ha! They’re all dead!” Travis sneered, all the while continuing to back away from them. “Go on, then! They’re both gonna die if they haven’t already! Guess I’ll have the last laugh, tough guy!”

“Nah.” Shades relaxed. After the black cat thing ran off earlier, an intangible wind blew through the whole place, rippling, shimmering, an invisible wave leaving the entire mansion aged and dilapidated beyond its years, seeming withered in its wake. Even that creepy door in the hall no longer held any sense of menace, so they took their chances, finding it led to servant stairs, taking them straight down to the ground floor. Moved as quickly as Melissa was able, as he could already feel whatever power he had drawn upon up there slipping away, as well, right along with whatever malevolent force permeated the place up until now. “If I could handle it, Max should be just fine. And Justin did survive the Harken Building, and that haunted island…”

Somehow he knew, just knew, his friends were still alive, and he suspected he owed them for doing something, whatever it was that bailed him out there at the end of that grim confrontation, just when it looked as if all was lost.

And that was about when another figure stepped out the front door.

“Well, speak of the devil…” Shades remarked as Justin emerged from the depths of Vineholdt.

Hardly anyone would’ve noticed Travis bugging out at this point, if Melissa hadn’t chosen that moment to call out after him.

“Off with you! Ya big fart-bag!”

As the other kids laughed, Shades smiled, harboring the sneaking suspicion that nickname was going to haunt Travis for a long time to come.

Then he laughed out-loud as he observed Justin struggling under an armload of Castle swag. Even the kids’ laughter trailed off in wide-eyed wonder at the jingling mass of jewelry he carried, and Shades sighed at how he always managed to find stuff like this. Now that he no longer needed to keep an eye on Travis, he just couldn’t help cracking up at seeing his friend loaded down with more bling than Mr T.

“Where the hell did you find all that?”

“In the basement,” Justin answered. “But wait! There’s more!”

After draping some gold chains on his arm to free up one hand, he reached into his pocket and produced a jade disc.

Shades’ breath caught in his throat, turning his laugh into a cough.

That was in there?”

“What is that?” one girl asked.

“Bad news,” Shades told them. The only good thing he could see about this was that removing it from wherever Justin found it seemed to confirm that the Evil in this place was down for good, not just for the count. “I’m pretty sure that’s what caused this whole mess in the first place, Woods and all.”.

At that last, the kids all backed off as if he just announced that it was radioactive.

“What happened to Max?” Shades brought up, recalling the kids saying that he and Justin came to the house together.

“We got separated…” Justin blurted, his treasure momentarily forgotten as he remembered what he was doing before his run-in with Phantom Eleanor and her ghastly grandmother. “There was this painting, of Eleanor… and Max said something about a cat…”

“We’d better go look for him,” Shades recommended, already bracing for Justin’s inevitable objections, surprised to see none.

“Go and find your friend,” Melissa piped up. “You’ve already saved me.”

The other kids added their own encouragement.

“Very well. Maybe it’s not such a good idea to tell your parents about this little adventure,” Shades suggested with a wink. “Save it for your grandkids.”

“What’s this all about now?” Sheriff Duhan demanded as he came upon the scene, a young woman in tow. After hearing something about some deputy running off some kids hanging around the Castle, without checking on things properly, especially after hearing a couple of those newcomers figured into it, he dropped everything to go investigate this personally.

“So much for that idea…” Shades muttered, noting that Justin managed to shove the amulet in his pocket before they got close enough to see it. “Well, you see…” he began, drawing the sheriff’s attention even as he tried to figure out exactly where he should begin.

And the kids immediately launched into a loud, overlapping complaint about Travis Tully, with Melissa holding up the ball again as Exhibit A, as Shades accepted that there would be no withholding anyone’s involvement in this matter anyway.

As if we weren’t already the talk of the town

“You went in there?” the woman, who could only have been this Sister Clarice they’d heard about, gasped. Dressed in dark grey robes and a powder blue shawl, she still looked a bit under the weather, so it was hard to tell how much of her pallor to attribute to it. Despite that, she still came out here when she heard that both children, as well as those mysterious strangers who somehow survived the Woods, were involved in this.

“Sister Clarice, I presume.” Shades noted her violet eyes, the mark of Cyexian lineage, but decided not to make a big deal out of it, given its total lack of relevance to the matters at hand.

“Please, just Clarice… Are you… a Seer?” Clarice tilted her head, as if trying to measure him up in some way.

“Just an educated guess,” Shades told her, not sure how to explain that he recognized her from that haunting vision in the great hall earlier. “I figured you would come, once you heard…”

“I have bad memories of that house,” she explained, appearing visibly ill-at-ease just standing at its front gate.

“Sister Leta, right?”

Clarice blinked at him.

“That house has some bad memories, too,” Shades informed her, “and it likes to share.”

Max and Justin nodded in somber confirmation of that.

“Where did you get all that?” Sheriff Duhan’s attention, meanwhile, had shifted to Justin and his stockpile of jewels.

“Well, they were in the basement…” Justin struggled not to squirm under the lawman’s scrutiny.

“Given that I believe he just lifted the curse on this place,” Shades interceded, “I daresay he’s earned it, hasn’t he?”

“Lifted the curse?” Clarice’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion. “What do you mean?”

Before either of them could elaborate, Max came strolling out the front door, holding a fluffy black cat in his arms, and they all jumped in spite of themselves.

Shades stepped back for a moment at the sight of that cat, instinctively positioning himself between her and Melissa. Then he noticed that the cat was just resting, curled up in Max’s arms, purring even, merely gazing out at all these strangers with idle feline curiosity. No trace of the malevolence she exuded only a short while ago, a completely different kitty.

“Lydia?” Justin gasped, trying to wrap his head around the fact that he was seeing Eleanor’s kitten, Poe’s, twin sister in the flesh, all grown up. “But where?…”

“It’s a long story,” Max replied. One he was not too keen on telling most of. He looked at all of his friend’s loot and found the perfect cue to lighten up. “I found her wandering around the house a few minutes ago, after whatever happened… well, happened.”

“But where do you know that name?” Clarice asked Justin. In her time in Pickford, she had taken it upon herself to learn as much as possible about the Rigbys, even after their failed bid to cleanse the house, and there were few left who were privy to that particular name.

“I think I met Eleanor on a ship years ago,” Justin answered, “and Poe, too, and she told me about his sister, Lydia. Liddy-Kitty.”

Lydia perked up at that name, as well as Eleanor’s, glancing about with a look of anticipation, as if she expected her kittenhood companion among those gathered here. Giving way to dismay and confusion after a long moment, for she found she recognized no one.

“Kitty!” one of the other kids chimed in, and they all circled around Max, wanting to pet the cat.

Melissa looked concerned at first, but could see no recognition in the cat’s eyes. Just another friendly stranger who wasn’t Eleanor.

“Oh, that’s definitely Lydia, no mistake,” a gruff voice declared from behind them, Jarvis Tully having materialized while everyone was paying attention to the cat. Though his eyes also kept drifting to the gold and jewels Justin had found. “I never thought I’d see the day…”

Having had an eyeful of both, he turned and strode toward the house.

“Have a care, Jarvis,” Clarice cautioned him.

“I know what I’m about,” Jarvis muttered as he entered. “Where is that no-good layabout when there’s work to be done?…”

“Tully”” Duhan began, but the caretaker completely ignored him.

“Let him be,” Shades suggested, figuring Justin already set the precedent in that matter. “After all, he lost his wife in there, and his son was the one who set all of this in motion in the first place. Besides, I think we’ve seen the last of Veronica Rigby.”

“I almost forgot…” Max mumbled, reaching into his pocket. He fished out a grimy, crusty-looking sheriff’s badge, handing it to Duhan. “I think you might want to see this, Sheriff.”

“Taggart…” Duhan breathed, even making out his predecessor’s name engraved beneath the Pickford town seal, even under all of the grime. He hesitated for a moment, unsure if he really want to know, then came out with it. “We searched all over… Where did you find this?”

“In the fountain,” Max replied, “around that side of the house, where I was attacked by… something.”

“You too?” Justin gasped.

“Guess that makes three of us.” It was only now that Shades noticed the faint bruising around Max’s neck, vaguely shaped like a pair of hands wrapped around as if someone tried to throttle him, and concluded that perhaps avoiding the fountain was one of the best ideas he had all day. “That thing did a real number on you…”

You don’t know the half of it… Max kept to himself, then said, “Then it just fell apart…”

“Just about when you…” Shades was about to say took the amulet, but decided to keep a lid on it as long as Justin chose to. “Did whatever you did down there…”

“Down where?” Duhan’s eyes narrowed.

“There’s a secret door in that big staircase,” Justin explained, handing the sheriff the silver skeleton key he had reclaimed on his way back up. “There’s a bunch of skeletons and jewels down there, and this big circle with three more skeletons in the middle…”

“You broke the ritual circle…” Clarice concluded. “That’s how you severed her power…”

“I suppose I’ll have to… investigate…” Sheriff Duhan swallowed hard as he approached the house, key in hand.

Neither Shades nor his friends could help but wonder just what he ran into in there back then.

“Goddess, give me strength…” Clarice prayed as she steeled herself. To gaze upon this place, even in its diminished state, the form of all of her nightmares. “Let’s get this over with.”

In spite of her words, though, the house was already starting to feel less ominous by the minute. The whole structure seemed to sag in on itself, deflated, as if some cosmic poison was draining out of it. Though Shades suspected the estate and grounds would always carry some lingering trace of it,, much like that haunted island after Justin carried a very similar amulet out of another entity’s reach, and he wondered if that thing still posed any threat to passing travelers anymore.

All that emanated from the mansion now was a just a malevolent, but largely impotent, presence, glaring out at them from every window, silent, powerless.

“Well, I doubt anyone’s gonna be moving in any time soon,” he commented.

“What?” Max turned to him.

“Nothing,” Shades mumbled. “Now what say we get the hell outta Dodge?”

“If it means leaving this creepy place,” Justin replied, “then what you said.”

That resolved, they turned and left the kids to their new feline companion, figuring they’d be safe enough now until Clarice and Duhan returned, all of them apparently wanting to hear all about Melissa’s adventures in Vineholdt.

Along the way, they showed Max the other amulet, and he was also alarmed to find such a thing at the heart of all this horror. The one thing they could all agree on was that none of them felt like keeping it in their possession for long, not even Justin. Shades and Max were both in favor of dumping it way out at sea, in the hope that it might never be found again, but Justin continued to hold out, despite having seen the local marketplace, and what little it had to offer.

There really was no one around here who could afford market value for such a thing, and no one who would want it, if they had even the slightest inkling where it came from, or what it had been used for, but then he recalled one place that might.

“Ya know,” Justin told them, and Max seemed to remember now, as well, perking up as he said it, “I think I might just know a place where we can sell this thing.”