Chapter 1

"Something took him." Nell said in a panicked tone. "That's it. We're gonna die in here."

She sat down on the ground, her eyes wide and unfocused. She put her hands on the sides of her head and her fingers gripped at her hair. "Oh well, had a good run. At least they won't have to move our bodies to bury them." She let out a couple of course laughs, more eerie than comedic and continued mumbling to herself.

Ella looked on, concerned by her friend's downward spiral. "Stop." She said in a moderately consoling voice. "We aren't going to die here. We can make it out, I swear." She promised.

The words snapped Nell out of her own head and she looked up at Ella with anger in her eyes. "How?" She snapped. "How can you promise that? The only reason any of us are in this mess is because of you. Because you had a plan, and what could ever go wrong with that?"

ONE DAY EARLIER

"Are you really still on this?" Scott groaned. "Just accept it, there's no such thing as ghosts."

"I can't believe you'd just throw out the whole idea after one bad try." Ella protested, "You'd make an awful ghost hunter you know."

"I've hunted down as many as you have." He sneered. "Probably as many as any professional could."

"There it is." She threw back, unwavering. "It's the 'probably'. Admit it, you're not sure."

"Look, I was skeptical last time but you convinced me to give it a shot. We got absolutely nothing and yet you're still going to try to tell me I'm wrong?"

Nell looked over at them, disinterest plastered across her face. She was fairly used to their petty arguments by now and no longer bothered to give them her full attention. She turned her head to look at Ella, her not-quite-straight chestnut hair brushing past her shoulder. She sat on the armrest of Ella's chair, which only further contrasted the height difference between the two girls.

"I'll go with you again." Nell said "Even if we don't find anything, what's the harm?"

"Wasting more of my time." Scott groaned as he rolled his eyes behind his glasses.

"Yes Scott, I'm sure you have some pressing Dr. Who episodes to catch up on." Mac chimed in from his position stretched out on an adjacent couch. He was the tallest and his thin stature made him look willowy but without the grace a girl of his figure might have had. "Wouldn't want to disrupt your important schedule." He added with the sarcastic edge that always seemed to slip into his voice.

All four of them sat in Scott's living room, glowing from the light of the midday sun that flooded through the open window. Ella turned to Mac, a sunbeam catching the golden color of her mid-length blonde hair and reflecting it back. "So you'll go then?" she asked a bit surprised. "It's just, I've done so much research on it, I can't let the whole thing go after one try."

"Count me in." Mac said.

"Ugh," Scott sighed, "I guess if it really means that much to you, I'll go. You have to promise this is the last time though." He glared at her with a distrustful stare.

"Deal. I just need one night and then--"

"Night?" Nell said in an incredulous tone. "You didn't say we were spending the night."

"That's why we didn't catch anything last time, we went during the day." Ella argued, "We spend one night in the cemetery and we're bound to see something."

"If you remember correctly, we did find something last time." Nell countered. "There were orbs on some of the photos I took, and my camera died in that weird way, like the power just drained."

"That hardly counts as proof." Ella went on, the disappointment in her voice becoming more noticeable. "I just need one thing. One piece of undeniable evidence and I can feel it's going to be there."

"It is supposed to be one of the most haunted cemeteries in the country. I mean if we stay the night there and don't find anything I'd be pretty shocked." Mac said as he sat up, suddenly more interested in the conversation. "Let's do it."

The next day all four of them piled into Ella's 2004 jeep liberty that had logged so many miles it should have quit running years ago. Ella sat in the driver's seat. She dug through her backpack and pulled out a dark blue composition notebook with papers sticking out of it and carefully passed it to Nell who sat in the passenger seat. She then tossed her backpack into the backseat, much to the annoyance of Scott and Mac who barely had enough room there to start with.

Ella strained her neck as she turned to look back at them, "You guys remember to tell your parents you were at each other's houses?"

"Yes Ella, I'm well versed in the art of lying to my parents." Mac replied.

"I know you are, I meant goody-two shoes over here." She gestured to Scott

"Yes I told them, though I don't see why I couldn't have told them where we were actually going." Scott complained.

"Oh yeah, let's all just tell our parents we're trespassing on state property. Not to mention spending the night next to hundreds of dead bodies so we can chase down ghosts. I'm sure they'll be thrilled." Ella said.

"Yours would probably have you committed." Mac joked to Ella.

"You know, I don't know why they care where we are every second anyway. We all leave for college in a few months, you'd think that would gain us a little trust." Nell added

"Well it seems that's not how it works. But, it doesn't matter anyway because they buy whatever lie I tell them." Ella smirked. "Same result and only slightly more guilt."

"Yeah, yeah we get it, you're a professional master of deception. Let's just start driving, you want to be there before sundown, right?" Mac interrupted.

In reply, Ella twisted the key in the ignition and the engine rumbled. It died. She tried the key again and this time it started. She switched the car into gear and started off down the street.

"So, what's the plan again?" Scott asked after they had put a good fifteen minutes between themselves and their hometown.

"Well," Ella started, apparently eager to explain, "it's about six right now and it should take us an hour and a half to get there, that means we'll be in the cemetery around seven thirty, before it closes. We can park a block over and walk in. It's a pretty big place so I doubt they look through it every night but if they happen to, there're some trees and mausoleums we can hide behind. We've all brought food and water. I even brought a big thermos we can fill with coffee from the gas station."

"Oh great, gas station coffee, my favorite." Mac sneered.

Ella ignored him and continued, "So, all we have to do is stay awake in the cemetery from 8, when it closes, until 6 in the morning when they open it again."

"Why couldn't we leave earlier and just climb the fence?" Nell asked.

"Well the fences are pretty high, so that's not really ideal, and besides I don't wanna leave before sunrise anyway."

"And what about the ghost hunting part of this plan?" Mac prompted.

"There are a few key sites that I marked in my journal, the ones with the most back story. We'll be sporadically taking pictures there and I'll do a few interviews to try and catch EVP's."

"Interviews? EVP's? Have you been Googling stuff again?" Mac replied.

"As a matter of fact I have. It stands for electronic vocal phenomenon and all the serious ghost hunters take them. I just set a recording device on the ground in a place that's supposed to be haunted and ask the ghosts questions. Sometimes even if you can't hear them you can pick up their voice on a recorder." The smug look on Ella's face showed that she considered herself a regular expert.

"Oh, that reminds me, I meant to go over a few rules with you guys about ghost hunting. I know last time we just kinda walked around and tried to snap pictures but this time it's going to be serious. We're stuck there all night, unless you guys wanna climb a twelve-foot fence. We have to make sure that nothing goes wrong."

"Yeah, yeah. Just get on with your rules already." Scott grumbled.

After glaring into the rearview mirror, Ella continued, "Okay, the first one: remember that not all ghost are nice."

"Uhh, are any ghosts nice?" Scoffed Nell.

"Most of them are just like regular people, but some can have malicious intentions. There's no way of knowing so it's best not to piss any of them off. That means no taunting, no challenging, and no asking how they died. If they were murdered it's likely they'll become angry."

"There sure are a lot of rules for something that no one seems to have definite evidence of." Scott sneered.

"Look, do you wanna help me or not? Until we know there aren't ghosts here we have to treat it like there are." Ella insisted. "I've watched enough horror movies to know that the four of us could easily get ourselves killed. I know that you guys don't believe as much as I do, but I need you to at least believe in the possibility of a threat because if this is real, we could be in danger." There was a silence and Ella just stared out the windshield pretending to focus intensely on the road. However it's hard to fake extreme captivation with asphalt and open cornfields for more than a few minutes.

"We'll take it seriously, Ella. We promise to be careful, right guys?" Nell interjected, trying to lift the mood in the car. The rest of them shrugged.

"So, do your rules say anything about bringing this?" Mac asked as he pulled a Ouija board from his bag.

Ella glanced in the rearview mirror, "Uh, yeah. You definitely shouldn't bring that! Those boards are known for attracting more evil spirits than good ones. You want to summon a demon?"

"Okay, okay I'll leave it in the car. Is that the last of the rules?" Mac replied.

"One more. If any old man warns us about anything, we bail immediately."

"That's a joke, right?" Scott asked hesitantly.

"Well it's not quite an official rule but it just makes sense to me. I mean, for one, that happens in horror films all the time and they never listen to them. I always thought it was pretty stupid. I mean if some random person gave you a warning, you'd think twice about what you were doing, right. So why would we walk into a dangerous situation if we were told not to by someone who couldn't even know what we were up to?"

"I'm not quite following the logic there but it works for me. If we get told to leave by a creepy rando, we leave." Nell agreed.

Ella smiled. "Glad we got those settled. I'll tell you guys more about the ghost hunting processes I'll be using when we get there. It's more of an on-the-job kind of thing anyway. I'll save the ghost stories too. It'll be easier to tie them to locations once we're there. For now, let's just play some music and drive."

As soon as Ella turned on the stereo, her Strokes CD started playing. Hearing the guitar riffs paired with the view of the sunlight and the highway, Ella couldn't help but be filled with hope. Even though she knew trying to do something like this for a career was insane, she couldn't help but love it. The history, the travel, all the ghost stories, not to mention the excitement of potentially finding something no else had, something that could prove the existence of other dimensions, it all made her feel... unstoppable.

'All I need', Ella thought, 'is one solid piece of evidence and I could break into this field, I could be a real ghost hunter.'

"Ugh, I hate your music." Scott interrupted her daydream, presumably just to annoy her.

"Don't care." Ella mused as she reached for the volume and turned it up so that the car filled with music.

"....people they don't understand. Your girlfriends they don't understand. In spaceships they won't understand. And me I ain't ever gonna understand, last night...."