Ghostfacers || Private to Brenny

Emma looked around. Nothing. The other way? Still, nada. No matter which way she turned her head, she could not see past the suffocating darkness. She wasn't even able to see her hand when she raised it in front of her face. Dropping her arm to her side, she fished the tiny cylinder from her pocket. Pulling it out of her pocket, she readied it in front of her. She felt the cylinder tube suddenly change form, and a few seconds later, a faint glow was given off by the celestial bronze baseball bat she held. The glow was dim, but just enough that she could now properly see her arms.

Emma slowly set a foot forward... and then another... and another. She crept forward, eyes darting everywhere, almost uselessly. There was nothing stirring in the darkness beyond, and if there was she couldn't tell. So where was she? Suddenly, her head snapped around. Somewhere to her right, she had heard something. A sound that she had definitely not made. What was it? A radio? A television? It sounded like the static of something electronic turning on.

Emma's eyes flew open, head jerking to the side. She is not exactly a very deep sleeper, so the sound caught her worse than it would have caught others. Her dark curls thrashed around as she scrambled across her bed, escaping the horrid noise. Her heart beat as fast as a rabbits if it were being chased by a hawk. There was a continuous ringing in her ear as she grabbed a pillow and helplessly threw it in the direction of the noise. And then, she recognized the voice. Fury bubbled inside of her, replacing the fear.

"Fey, you utter and complete ASSHOLE!" Emma's voice was dangerously sharp, but also at a decibel level considerably lower than that of the megaphone. Although the ringing in her ear had not ceased, she picked up sounds of her bunk-mates waking angrily. A door shutting somewhere down the hall told Emma that the boy was heard through the walls. "What the HELL were you thinking?!" She slid out of her bed and advanced towards the boy. Her fingers curled into a fist and swung through the air, making firm contact with Fey's humerus.

"Get. Out." She warned. "I will meet you outside in five minutes. Just get out," she said, the fury not subsiding in the least.

Emma's eyebrows remained scrunched together, her face dead-set in an angry expression. Not only did she hate being woken up, but by a megaphone. That was a horrible way to be woken. She still heard a high ring in her ears, and her body simply shook with a mix of fright and rage. Emma heard Sebastian snicker as he exited her room, and, in one last surge of emotion, she grabbed a pillow off of her bed and hurled it at his head. She then stomped over to the door and shut it behind him, careful not to slam it, even though she would have enjoyed that.

Sighing, Emma turned to the open room to find the unhappy faces of many of her siblings glowering at her. She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers to her temples, massaging them slightly. Sebastian was one of the most annoying people Emma had met at this place. But, believe it or not, he was also one of Emma's favorites. The main reason was that they hated the same stuff. Emma also kind of admired his no-care attitude, something that she herself was never able to obtain. No matter what she was doing, Emma always had worries piled up ten feet high on her back.

When she heard her roommates settling back into their beds, Emma opened her eyes. She padded over to her bed and bent down onto her knees. Her arms slipped under her bed, and she rummaged around in the dark for a moment. Then, she produced a small suitcase. She proceeded to fill it with an ample amount of clothes for the trip to Iowa.

Emma had done plentiful research towards the trip that they were doing. Although, it was more of Emma's planning that prompted the trip. Sebastian sort of just talked about it but didn't act. Anyway, the two were taking a plane to Iowa to stay in the Villisca house. In 1912, a family was gruesomely murdered within their own home. The walls still protect the identity of the murderer or murderers who bludgeoned to death the entire family of Josiah Moore and two overnight guests on June 10,1912. Almost 97 years later, her secret continues to draw many visitors to her door. The people say that the house is a haunting little plot, and stay away from it. Emma and Sebastian planned to do the opposite. Although it was rather expensive, the two had split the price and saved up for a while, and then they were ready to take the dive.

A violent knocking at Emma's door made her jump, interrupting her thoughts. Although irrational, for some reason she thought that she was about to meet the same fate. Upon hearing Sebastian's voice, her nerves were somewhat numbed and replaced with the same annoyance that she had had before. Emma quickly zipped up her suitcase and grabbed the small bronze cylinder from her bedstand and tucked it into her back pocket. She then rolled the suitcase to the door and pulled it open.

"Shut. Up." she hissed, before blowing past him and out the door of the cabin, knowing that the boy would not linger in there long. She expected that he despised her siblings. Although her brain had no logical answer, her gut told her that he felt a little bit humbled by his own stupidity in the presence of her siblings. But, that was psychology. A field for which Emma had no patience or respect. "Did you ring up the cab?" she asked, turning around to face Sebastian.

"I'm sure that I don't know what you mean," Emma retorted. She straightened her back. She didn't like being really outward with her emotions, and she gave an attempt to reel in her anger a bit. In no way did Emma 'love' Sebastian. In fact, there were specific reasons that he was her friend. For one, Emma was smart. Like, insanely intelligent. She knew the people of the camp, and she knew the chaos that went on. And she knew that Sebastian was one of those in camp who took great pleasure in ensuring that that chaos took place. Befriending him because of that was her logical answer. Another reason was that Sebastian could actually make a formidable friend. Emma didn't have many friends. In fact- it would even be safe to say that she didn't have any. But she had a suspicion that if it came to it, Sebastian, although seemingly unlikely, would prove loyal. That was her gut's answer to why they were friends. When it came to it, she much more preferred the first answer.

One other downfall of Emma's was that she did not catch sarcasm very quickly. She was strict about her own word choice, using only words that had importance and relevance and truth. Although she was not above lying, she didn't do so often. Especially if there was no point to it. In her eyes, sarcasm was almost like lying, and she found it as an ineffective form of communication.

"What do you mean it slipped your mind?" She asked quickly. If he hadn't called a cab before this, it might take it quite a while to get to their location. Stress was causing her muscles to bunch up, and her face was set in a stone-cold look. Hearing that he had indeed called the cab did nothing for her stress. In fact, when she realized that he had been sarcastic with her, she made a clicking sound with her tongue that suggested she was dismissing his attitudes.

'Relax' wasn't exactly at the top of her list of priorities. It was to make this whole trip go smoothly. Maybe it was what awaited her at the other end of the plane ride that was causing her to be so uptight. Emma didn't really believe in the whole notion of ghosts or any form of spirit after death. She had seen and handled a human skull and various animal bones enough to know that there was nothing spiritually significant about them. They were just physical remnants after death, which, during life, aided the body with creation of blood cells and provided structure. Still... there was something at the depths of the crevices in Emma's mind that made her frightened to step foot in the house they were going to.

Emma's thoughts had allowed there to be a small and eerie silence between her and Sebastian. She knew full well that if she did not fill it, Sebastian and his megaphone would be happy too. Gathering her wits, she gripped the handle of her suitcase tightly.

"Fine. Let's go."

Emma might have cracked a smile at Fey's dramatization of being mock-offended. Yes, that's right. A legitimate grin found and chiseled it's way onto her stone-cold face, otherwise void of outward emotion. Except for her eyes. Emma's eyes might be the only one thing that could reveal her thoughts. They were deep and meaningful. One look into them and you could easily tell if she was fond of you, or looked at you with distaste. One look into them and you could tell if she was pained or enthused. But one thing is for sure; her eyes always looked like she knew exactly what she was doing.

Emma doubted the legitimacy of Fey's words. She began to think about what he had said. He first thought was that his voice sounded uncertain. She had known Fey this whole time to be someone cocky and full of self-confidence. When his voice held the tiniest hint of uncertainty just then, Emma's eyes snapped onto him. Her second thought was: Who loves Emma? Certainly not everybody. Who even knew who she was? Would she be missed on this trip?

The brief moment of her insecurity let images flood in. It was Christmas. She was so eager to come downstairs to the presents that she had caught her Dad packing his things. She didn't think much of it. After all, at the time the excuse seemed legitimate. She did not know anything better. She spent the Christmas day with her neighbors. And the day after that. And after that. And her father never came home. And she missed him. So, if she did not come back to camp, would anyone miss her?

Finding herself breathing rather shallow, she forced herself to pull into reality. The images faded into the back of her mind, and she looked around, but couldn't find Fey. She turned around, fear creeping up into her of yet another abandonment, but she noticed that a somewhat new car had appeared in the parking lot. She heard his voice yell at her from inside the cab, and she let out the breath that she had been unconsciously holding.

Emma had been told before that over-thinking would get the best of her some day. She took small things and blew them up in her mind. She frequently had panic attacks that she would never admit to. Being wound so tight had caused her to fret over small things so much that she might not have been able to handle anything too big going wrong. But deep inside of her was also her courage. That small flame of courage, once tapped into, could ignite any big adventure into Emma's life, and she would face it full-on.

She gripped the handle of her suitcase and wheeled it over to the car. She hastily tossed it into the trunk and slid into the car seat next to Fey. She repeated the directions to the airport that she had memorized after a single glance at a paper a couple of days ago.

The car began to pull away from camp, and she looked out the window, watching the small lot begin to fade away down the road. Once out of site, Emma struggled to push it out of mind. She focused on the plan ahead. Get to the airport. Fly to Iowa. Stay in the house in which people were hacked to death. It seemed all spectacularly bright and cheery. It was exciting, and Emma looked forward to it. She didn't exactly believe in ghosts, but she couldn't be too sure. She was smart, and she knew that just a couple of years ago she doubted the existence of any sort of deity. And then she learned that she was the daughter of a greek goddess. Supernatural occurrences couldn't be blocked totally out of the picture.

Emma remained quiet as she stared out the window, looking at the dark street sliding by. The sun had not yet risen to reach above the trees, but the sky above them was no longer black, but a deep dark blue, signaling the arrival of morning. She was a little bit dreary and didn't feel like initiating much of a conversation with the boy next to her, not having much to say anyway. When Emma wasn't talking about sciences, she was a girl of few words.