Free The House on Everley Street (Death Herself Book 2) by Amy Cross

believe that if ghosts were real, I'd have seen one properly by now.”
    “Because you've been in a situation where a ghost would definitely appear to you,” she asked, “if it had the chance?”
    “Something like that.”
    “Isn't that kind of patronizing?” Louis asked. “It's like you're saying you're too smart to fool yourself, but other people can do it just fine.”
    “I didn't say that -”
    “Leave him be!” Hannah said, nudging Louis. “Jeez, you're being kinda rude! The guy's entitled to his opinions.”
    “I just want to know what he thinks,” Louis replied defensively.
    “I think the human mind is a complex thing,” John said, hoping to keep them from fighting. He enjoyed the way Hannah seemed to be on his side, and even if he didn't want to admit that he found her attractive, he also wanted to keep her attention. Not that he'd ever cheat on his wife, but still, he figured that talking to a pretty girl wasn't illegal. “I was once in a situation,” he said cautiously, “where I truly believed that someone I knew was going to come back and appear to me as a ghost. It wasn't too far from here, actually. I was certain, absolutely convinced without a shadow of doubt, that she'd appear to me. In fact, she'd actually told me, specifically, that if she died, she'd come back and haunt me.”
    “What kind of person says that?” Gary asked.
    “A messed-up, manipulative person, in this instance,” John continued with a faint smile. He felt a little uncomfortable being so open, but at the same time, he couldn't help himself. “So I was more than certain, given her nature and given the circumstances, that she'd show up. And I was more than vulnerable, I was a sitting duck, I even dared her. I goaded her, I told her to show herself. She had ample time to make her presence known in one way or another, but...” He paused.
    “She didn't?” Hannah asked, with a hint of disappointment in her voice.
    “She didn't. Nothing. I imagined her coming back, I built it up in my head, I was terrified at times and I even dreamed about it, but I realized later that it never actually happened. There were no spooky goings on at all. I mean, maybe a few bumps in the night, but nothing that couldn't be rationally explained. Trust me, though, if she could have come back and haunted me, she'd have done so.” He paused again, feeling as if he was opening up for the first time, and wondering why he was telling these kids something he hadn't even told his wife or his so-called friends. “At the same time,” he continued, “I carried the fear of her everywhere I went. For the past twenty years, I've slightly expected her to show up at any moment, so I guess you could say she was haunting me that way. Or rather, I was haunting myself. And then recently...”
    He glanced at Hannah and saw that she was hooked on his every word.
    “Recently,” he added, addressing her and only her now, “I had the opportunity to face my fear once and for all. Just today, actually. And guess what? The house was empty, there was nothing there. Of course there wasn't, there never was, but that didn't stop me building it up over the years. Tonight I'll be sleeping in the place that I once thought she haunted, and by doing so I'll be permanently wiping away the last vestiges of doubt, getting rid of those little whispers at the corner of my mind. The prospect is both intimidating and freeing. I feel like a major part of my life is changing.”
    “So...” Gary paused, frowning, “you're going to spend tonight in a haunted house?”
    “Can we come?” Hannah asked immediately.
    “I have an electro-spectrometer,” Gary said. “It needs a big battery, but I can fit it in my backpack.”
    “I've got infra-red goggles,” Louis added. “And a camera.”
    “I don't need company,” John replied, amused by their eagerness, “and it's not a haunted house. It's just a house. In fact, if anyone in that place is a ghost, it's me, still clinging to