Nothing But Bones

14: Tiff's Tell-All!

The basement steps creak with each step, almost as if they're announcing Elton and Tiff's trespassing. Once at the top, the door to the basement is already open, leading into a large, but messy kitchen. Both teens and animal companions exit the basement into the kitchen.

Looking around, they can see the appliances or the decor haven't been updated since maybe the 80s, with dated equipment and faded yellow countertops.

"Looks like our kitchen from before I was born."

She laughs. "Looks like our kitchen now."

Still, it's a good idea to check for dust. For tracks. For something, some sign of a person being here. Some sign of magic.

She still isn't good at that last bit, she knows. That's more Darius's purview, or Drake's if he's feeling frisky and cooperative.

"So what now?" Elton looks up at one of the nearby cabinets. "Something tells me you have more experience with this kind of shit than I do. I've been in the house before, but only the living room or whatever the main family room is. I... Just... what next?"

"You want to know a secret?" A bittersweet smile crosses her lips. "I've never actually gotten to investigate a haunting before. Even with looking for Boris Covington, I've never..." She pauses to choose her words more clearly. "I've never really gotten to do the classic ghost investigation thing. It's always something else."

She pauses, shines her flashlight up at a layer of dust on the light fixture. It's worth elaborating on, she thinks, even with all the flies under the lightbulbs that she's seeing. Boris should really clean those out before he tries using this room, she thinks. She isn't sure how flammable they are, but she does know they're annoying.

Back to him, she keeps speaking. "It's not for lack of trying. I've been trying to get into our local strip club, because that stage is definitely haunted, but my aunt instructed everyone not to let me in and her friend agreed. So I mostly just stand outside and try to do readings while I'm choking on grapes."

Kepler perks up at the mention of grapes.

Tiff ignores his misguided optimism. "We could try to do some readings, but you don't have a Spiritbox— you were right, it was a good idea— and I didn't bring my EMF reader. I could make one, if I had the supplies, but I don't have anything I could use with me. For now, I think we just sweep the house and look for this guy I'm looking for."

He knew he should have brought the Spiritbox, dammit. "I wish we were doing this more prepared and at night, but it is what it is."

"It is what it is," she agrees.

"So you're looking for someone named Boris Covington, eh? Why is he so special?

Elton turns on his phone's flashlight and shines it around the kitchen. Bright white light mixes with Tiff's muted yellow-green. Thunder rumbles outside the large back windows; the rain pours down in sheets on overgrown plants. At least there's ambience.

She chuckles again, and crouches down to peek into one of the cabinets under the sink. "See, that's kind of one of those things I would want to explain later. He's, uh—"

Tiff picks up a bottle of something under the pipes and inspects it. "Yeah? What is he?"

"Shit, Elton. There's so much you don't know."

She needs to keep her cool. Tiff knows that— and she knows his type. She was him. Hell, she is him. Some sort of searcher; someone who isn't satisfied until they've seen everything and then some. They all have that drive, that edge. You have to get to the bottom of whatever macabre thing the world has in store for you, and you think ghosts are so fucking cool. Every answer leads to three more questions. You're never satisfied. It turns into a fascination with portals; it turns into a need to practice supernatural medicine because nobody else is doing it; it turns into saving the world over and over again because this is what your life is like now, when you really just wanted to find Bigfoot or research local fairy tales or step into a haunted house with a weird rat and his fucked-up American girl.