Not Quite What it Seems

Prologue

Tessa Gray was used to the unusual. Odd things happening, things going missing, strange noises, etc. What she wasn't used to was quiet. She has a rambunctious 2 year old daughter, and a smart alec 17 year old adopted son. Needless to say that she expected noise. But, on this day her husband, James Carstairs, had taken the kids out to the park, so she was home alone for some 'relaxation and alone time.' She grabbed the copy of A Tale of Two Cities, she had been reading for the millionth time it seems, which was sitting on the bookshelf in the living room, and crossed the room to sit on the sofa. She opened the book to the page that she left off on, removed the bookmark and started reading. She was about 4 pages into her reading session, when she heard a sound coming from the door leading down to the basement.

There it was, the unusual, a sound coming from a house that she knew to be empty, other than herself, of course. Her head swiveled toward the door trying to discern what the noise was. It sounded almost like a slight clicking noise, as if somebody was turning the doorknob but not enough to actually trip the latch and open the door. She marked her spot and closed her book, sitting it down on the cushion next to her, she got up to investigate the noise. She made her way across the room towards the door. When she got about 5 feet away, the door slowly swung open, opening up into a black rectangle and a set of stairs leading down into the darkness. Not one to be spooked easily, she flipped the light switch at the top of the stairwell, illuminating the steps and the rooms at the bottom.

Her sock covered feet made almost no noise as she descended the stairs. Finding herself at the bottom, her eyes slowly scanned the first room. One side of the room had been made into a sort of lounge/gaming room for her son, Christopher (Kit), and the other side was a play area for her daughter, Wilhelmina (Mina). She stood in silence, taking in her surroundings, when it happened again. A slight clicking noise coming from the study off to the left of the main basement room. She softly padded over to the door and observed the knob, it was slightly turning making the clicking noise. Her head cocked to the side and her eyebrows flew up when it actually did a full rotation, tripping the latch and opening slightly. She pushed lightly on the door and stepped into the dimly lit room, the only light coming from the doorway behind her. Off to the right, just outside the beam of light on the floor, stood a figure next to the desk. She smiled softly, recognizing the shape in the dark.

Her lips quirked up in a half smile and she said in a jovial tone, "What are you doing going through Jem's papers? There's nothing in there for you, Will." The shadowy figure turned and she was surprised to see that it wasn't Will, her husband's best friend and her first husband, but his son, her son, her first born, James Herondale. Now this frightened her, he had died in the 60s. Granted Will was dead too, but he often visited her and Jem on a, somewhat, regular basis, Jamie hadn't. For all she knew, he had moved on to the afterlife completely. "James?" Her voice quivered in bewilderment, "Jamie, is that you? I thought you moved on. What are you doing here?" The more she stared at him the more solid he looked, it was eerie, to say the least.

His gentle baritone voice came out as a whisper. "Yes, mother it's me, and I'm not a ghost. I'm here in the flesh. I came here looking for information to help me find the person who defiled my final resting place, and to find out why they Necromanced me." Tessa was taken aback. Something was terribly wrong.