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"We can't live like this anymore," the woman whispered into her little girls ear.
The child looked up into her mothers eyes and saw fear. They were standing in the foyer of their country cabin. It was an old house in the middle of nowhere, at the end of a long gravel driveway.
They'd only lived there for a couple of months, but something was terribly wrong. The mother dragged her little girl to the closet, her entire frame shaking, teeth chattering. She opened the door and pulled out her own and her daughters coats.
"Where's Daddy?" the little girl asked sleepily. The mother quickly slipped the jacket up the childs arms and zipped the front.
"Daddy is upstairs, Suzanne," She answered and opened the front door.
"Isn't he coming with us?"
The mother knelt down before the doorway and hugged her little angel. "We HAVE to leave, Suzanne."
There was a great boom that shook the walls and startled the mother and child. Then the sound of furniture being dragged across the upstairs floors. They could feel something scratching at the floorboards under their feet. Suzanne screamed and her mother scooped her up and ran through the open front door.
The car was parked in the driveway, but the woman ran past it, afraid to stop.
Suzanne watched the house over her mothers shoulder. It lit up inside like a giant jack-o-lantern, started shaking and rattling like train full of broken bottles...
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"Mom didn't stop running till we hit the main road," Suzanne recalled. "Now you want me to go back there?" It had all happened almost 20 years ago, but the images were still vivid.
The lawyer leaned back in his chair and looked to the balding man sitting next to Suzanne. She turned and looked at him too, "Don't tell me Doc, you've said it more than once...'I have to face my fear to conquer it.' Well, this is one fear that doesn't need conquering."
The Doctor shook his head back and forth. The Lawyer leaned forward again and put his elbows on his desk. "Well, you really should go down there. Your mother did mention in her will she wanted you to take care of it's disposal."
Suzanne rubbed her eyes and groaned, "Why didn't she get rid of it sooner?"
It was all too much, first her mother passed on, now her shrink and her Lawyer wanted her to go back to that...place. She was starting to regret her decision to auction the house off instead of just knocking it down all together.
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Nick finished his morning jog with a final lap around the house and sprinted up the steps to the front door. He just about plowed over Rachel as she stepped out onto the porch. "Woah there!" she said and raised her hands to ward him off.
"Sorry, Rach," he smiled impishly. "I didn't see ya there."
"That's ok, I was just about to come out looking for you," she smiled back.
"Didn't have to look too hard, eh?"
Rachel nodded her head. "I was just wondering if you'd like to escort me on a short trip?"
"Where to?"
"Haymarket, Virginia." Rachel answered. "One of my old college classmates called me the other night and told me about a strange case he has." Nick leaned against the doorway and nodded. "He has a young woman with a 'unnatural fear' of a house she used to live in. She says it's haunted, and he didn't believe her until he made her move back into it for a while."
"What made him call you?" Nick wondered.
"We're still pretty close," Rachel shrugged. "But we're leaving as soon as possible."
"Can I at least shower first?"
end of part 1