** Please remember this is a very rough draft, so there will be mistakes and errors in it! **

Meredith Mitchell sat staring at the house even after her mother, excited to finally be in Salem, Massachusetts, erupted from the car. The dilapidated old Victorian style mansion glowered at her. It didn't want her here anymore than she wanted to be here, but her mother dragged her into one last project before she moved to California to begin her rotation at Amsterdam Hospital, a mental health facility located in San Francisco. Now, she regretted that decision with every breath.

The three-story house, with its peeling blue paint, hanging shutters, and sagging porch might have been a beautiful structure once, but that era had long since passed. Just the kind of house her mother loved to restore to its former glory.

Josephine Mitchell had her own restoration show on one of those home improvement networks finding and restoring historical homes. Fancy way of saying finding the oldest dump she could and fixing it.

Meredith spent the better part of the last ten years being dragged from one construction site to another. She'd been tutored instead of being allowed to go to school and escaped the madness of that life when she went to Auburn University down in Georgia four years ago. Her mother, being the overbearing mother she was, demanded Mer spend her summer breaks on whatever site she was currently filming.

Because of all that, she knew everything about restoration and the production side of the show. She'd been curious and all the crew, the director, and producers had taught her the ins and outs of production. She'd even considered film school, but she'd been afraid her mother might try to convince her to sign on to the show.

And that was something Meredith refused to do. She went into psychology so she could help people, not the bones of forgotten houses. Something her mother couldn't or wouldn't understand.

The pounding on the glass of the passenger door startled her and she looked over to see Carlos Santiago grinning at her. He loved to startle her, had done it since she was a kid. The Hispanic trickster she called him. Shaking her head, Meredith got out and gave the man a hug. He was going to be running this site for this season of the show.

"Good to see you, pequeno. Your madre say you be going to work at the loco place soon."

"It's not the crazy place." Meredith eyeballed the yard, full of trash and overgrown weeds. "It's a hospital for people who need help with their problems."

"Loco." Carlos nodded emphatically and Meredith smiled. The man and his superstitions. He'd never go near a place like that, thinking the people inside were inhabited by demons or such. He'd never believed in mental health problems. It was always some religious thing.

"Well, that's not for a little while. When do we start filming?" She really just wanted to get the trash gone and the lawn mowed. Snakes lived in overgrown weeds, something she was hauntingly familiar with. She'd been bitten by a rattlesnake when she was eleven. Since then, she never traipsed through weeds.

"First, I walk through house, make sure is safe." Carlos stroked his chin, staring at the house. "I don't like this one. Bad feeling."

Not that I blamed him there. The place reeked of haunted house syndrome. I could imagine ghosts watching us, waiting to jump out and scare us while we were doing some mundane task.

"Your mama, she wants to live here while we work." Carlos shook his head in exasperation. "I tell her not good idea, but she no listen."

Now that was news to Meredith. Her mom never said a word about staying here. She'd assumed they'd rent a place close by.

"There you are!"

They both turned to see her mother hurrying toward them. Josephine did not look to be the forty-eight-year-old woman she was. Her cheeks and eyes still burned with the fires of youth. Truthfully, many had mistaken her for Meredith's sister. Jo didn't look a day older than thirty. Meredith hoped she'd inherited her mother's fountain of youth gene, but she wouldn't bet the bank on it. Her dad had aged rapidly and died of a heart attack at the ripe old age of thirty-nine, but he'd looked closer to fifty.

"Miss Jo." Carlos accepted the hug her mother gave him, smiling. Meredith had a feeling the carpenter had a crush on her mother. Not that she'd mind him acting on it either. She liked Carlos and knew he'd be good to her mom. Maybe she'd throw some hints toward them both during this project. It'd be nice to know someone was here for Josephine while Mer was three thousand miles away.

"What do you think?" Jo motioned toward the house. "She's a beaut isn't she?"

"I wouldn't say that." He eyeballed the house. "She looks more like she was on a drunk for the last hundred years."

Her mother laughed even though it wasn't funny. Perhaps her mom had a crush on the carpenter too? This might be easier than she'd first thought.

"What's this about us staying in the house?" Meredith wasn't going near it unless there was hot water and heat. October in the northeast was cold at night no matter how warm the days were.

"I meant to talk to you about that...' Her words trailed off as a van, followed by two cars, pulled up. The massive Ghost Exterminators logo was hard to miss on the van. Meredith knew the show. It aired on one of those travel channels which so happened to be a sister network to the one her mom's show aired on.

"Mom?"

Jo shot her a nervous smile. "The networks thought it might be a good idea for us to team up on this particular house."

"Why?" Carlos' expression of suspicion mirrored her own. "What is wrong with the house?"

"There's nothing wrong with it we can't fix."

"Mom, there has to be a reason ghost hunters are here."

"It's rumored the house is haunted."

Carlos crossed himself and took a step away from the dilapidated old building. "You never say house is haunted."

"That's because I don't put any stock into all that nonsense."

"It is not nonsense, chica." Carlos took another step backwards. "The dead don't always stay dead."

"Zombies, Carlos?"

He shook his head. "No, ghosts. They are not meant to be here. They grow angry with the living and can hurt those they envy."

"He's not wrong."

We all jumped slightly at the sound of Ryan Edward's voice. It was just as deep and masculine as Meredith remembered it from watching the show. She knew without turning what he looked like. Tall, well over six feet. Dark blue eyes that bore through a person even when his coal black hair was falling into them. His coloring was a little darker than either her or her mother's, but if she remembered correctly, he had a little Indian blood in him. Sioux maybe.

"Ghosts can grow very angry when no one hears them. They can even learn to manipulate the energy around them allowing them to interact with this plane of existence."

We all turned to face him. He was smiling. Cute didn't really describe the man. He was handsome, rugged, but he had a hard edge to his smile that was a little off putting. He seemed friendly enough, but there was something Meredith couldn't' put her finger on. He unnerved her a bit.

"You must be Ryan." Her mother stuck her hand out, which the man gracefully took and kissed the back of it instead of shaking it. Meredith saw Carlos narrow his eyes, but she wasn't concerned. The man was too young for her mother. He just wasn't Jo's type. Then again, it could be good for Carlos to get a little jealous. He might finally put the moves on her mom.

"Indeed I am and you must be Josephine. I can't express how happy I am you allowed us to film alongside you while you restore the house."

"Well, I'll be honest and say it wasn't my first choice. I'm not a believer in the supernatural."

"That's perfectly fine." He flashed her another one of those dazzling smiles that held a hint of something flat and mean. "By the time we're done here, I can almost guarantee you'll be a believer. This old house has a history of death and murder. I think we'll all be more than happy to be done with it by the end."

"Death and murder?" Meredith finally found her voice. Why in the world would her mom want to stay here?

"Yes. The Willobey House was built in 1771 by Edmund Willobey, a prominent merchant from London. He and his wife, Caroline, along with their three children, Isobel, Daniel, and Edmund Jr. all moved into it shortly after construction. From what I can gather, the man didn't tell his family about all the troubles that befell the construction crews during the six months it took to build the house."

"Troubles?" Meredith glanced at the house and shivered. She really didn't want to stay here.

"There were accidents." Ryan ran a hand along the back of his neck. "Most crews had their fair share of accidents back in the day, but this particular project was riddled with them. Everything from broken bones to four people dying mysteriously."

Before Meredith could ask any more questions, the other three members of Ryan's crew came over. Meredith studied each one as he introduced them. Ripley Hershall looked to be a little older than Ryan and his complete opposite in looks. All that blonde hair and bright green eyes could blind a person on a rainy day. He seemed overly cheerful. Dana Matthews smiled at each of them as she was introduced. Her short brown hair and brown eyes might be considered average by some, but the fire burning in her eyes spoke of passion and a deep intelligence. Deputy Carl Jenkins made up the last of the team. He was a local officer and would be there to help dispute anything illegal was done or that the evidence collected was a hoax. Ryan insisted on it in every place he filmed. The deputy was an older man, in his fifties, Meredith guessed. Salt and pepper hair hung down over ice blue eyes. He didn't' look like someone to be messed with.

"This is Carlos Santiago, my project manager, and my daughter Meredith."

Once everyone was introduced, Ryan looked over at the house. His eyes lit up and he took several steps toward it, but Carlos stopped him.

"No one goes in until my crew clears it. The place is no muoy bueno. Very old. We need to make sure it is structurally sound and no one will fall through the floor."

Ryan frowned, but stepped back. "We'll get our equipment ready while you do that. I'd like to get in and do a walk through as soon as possible."

We watched them walk back toward the van and Carlos frowned after them. "This is bad idea, Miss Jo. Very bad idea."

"Mom, I'm with Carlos on this. Maybe we should find another house to restore." The place gave her the creeps. Meredith got the strangest feeling the house was watching them. Jo might not believe in the supernatural, but Meredith wasn't as sure as her mother that there weren't things that went bump in the night.

"I swear you two are worse than two old hens clucking around in the pen. There is nothing wrong with this house. It has good bones and we are going to make it beautiful again. It's just like any other house."

Meredith glanced at the house again.

This house wasn't just like any other house.

It was a bad, bad place.