The Eighth Gate

3 | Aftermath

The streets of Cullis Port were dusted with flakes of white, layered too thinly to warrant any beauty. The ground below Mary’s feet was slick; her rubber boots squeaked with every step she took, flanked by Noah in one side and Tamara on the other.

There was never an overwhelming amount of snowfall at Cullis Port. No blankets of fluffy whiteness ringing the streets, glittering when touched by the sunlight. No snowmen, no forts, and only the occasional snowball fight with whatever viable snow the children in the neighborhood could scrape up. The bit of cold, solid precipitation that would fall over the seaside town tended to melt away quite quickly, leaving in its wake ugly patches of dirt and dried grass on neighbor’s lawns; water pooled in puddles, slicking the streets and dripping from bare tree canopies like saliva.

The trio padded through the sidewalk in a comfortable silence, the sounds of their breaths combating the distant sound of waves crashing onto sandy shores. Nightfall had made its descent upon Cullis Port, and the moon was in its prime, its crescent shape lighting up the sky with its faint white glow. The town was empty at this time of the day; if not for the lit windows of the houses they passed, one might have thought it bared an eerie resemblance to a deserted community.

Mary readjusted her grip on two of Tamara’s technical equipment and tugged her jacket closer around her chest; the icy chill pervading the moist air pricked her skin with goose bumps.

“Why do I always have to carry the heaviest stuff?” Noah groaned, his petty voice shattering the silence. He had the long, slender tripod on his shoulder, a video camera with a much more technical name than that tucked under his arm, and a bag of more supplies slung over his torso.

“Because you’re the guy and that’s what guys are supposed to do,” Tamara answered, her gaze glued ahead. “Stop whining.”

“How much further do we have to walk?”

“About a block or two? Not far,” Mary assured him, taking pity in the way Noah was heaving and huffing much more than she and Tamara. He wasn’t much of an athlete, that was for sure. “Here, Noah, I’ll take the tripod.”

Noah cut Mary a surprised sidelong glance. “Really? I—no, that won’t be necessary. We’re almost there; I got it.” Mary shrugged, and they had just reverted back to their spell of silence when Noah added, almost clumsily, “Um, thanks, though.”

“No problem.”

The silence quickly returned after that as the trio became lost in their own thoughts. Tonight yet another investigation would take place; this time they were going to check out an abandoned house on 49th street, which had been boarded up for decades. Through further research—this was Mary’s area of expertise—it was revealed in a dated newspaper article that a murder had taken place there, in which a man who witnesses claimed had been a perfectly good father suddenly turned on his family and killed them all while they were sleeping before killing himself after the police arrived. Nobody ever figured out the motive.

Mary and her friends had no real reason to assume that the home was haunted, yet Mary thought that it wouldn’t hurt to check it out anyway—at least, not any more than trespassing into private property behind their parent’s backs did hurt. With its long, violent history, Cullis Port was filled to the brim with haunted venues, and over the past two years the three teenagers had nearly hit them all. It was becoming more and more difficult to find a new place to investigate these days.

Mary, Noah, and Tamara crossed an empty street, Mary walking silently while Noah and Tamara discussed the impossibility of last night’s Calculus homework, their quick steps betraying the subtle trace of anxiety that usually ran through them just before one of their cases….