Vengeance.

Whatever that woman was, she wanted vengeance.

"No one believed me, you know? I didn't mean for Susan to die..." Detective Rowles says, taking off his glasses with shaking hands. He looks at me, revealing a broken man lost in hysteria.

I breathe in sharp, harsh breathes. "We need to go, Detective," I say as quietly as possible. I stare down the dark corridor, glaring at the stairwell where she lingers.

"It won't work." Detective Rowles groans. "Nothing works, John. She follows..."

"Agatha?" I ask, my voice cracking, eyes on the stairwell.

"Yes," he whispers.

The chandelier in the stairwell, which Susan had told me was Agatha's prized possession, vibrates at the mention of her name, sounds of shaking crystal echoing in the dark home. It was our only source of light, aside from our phones that got no service.

I moan despairingly and look away. At the bottom of the stairs was Susan, the realtor that brought us here. Detective Rowels and I had been in the vacant master bedroom when we heard a loud thud and breaking of wood in the stairwell. We dashed for the railing, glancing down in distress.

Susan was there, lifeless at the bottom with blood pooling from her head, her neck clearly broken. Then we saw her – Agatha, standing next to Susan, already glaring up at us wide wide, unblinking eyes.

That had been five minutes ago, and as we had turned around to look for an escape, all the doors slammed shut at once, the lights turning off.

Except for the chandelier.

Wriggling the doorknobs got us nowhere, either. The stairwell was the only way out, a stench omitting from it that I recognized from the master bedroom — a miasma named Agatha.

"I came here to confirm a haunting, Detective Rowles," I slowly say. "I mean, I didn't expect to get a ghostly confession...But this? No...this is an affliction of a disturbed soul."

A crackling noise reverberates from the bottom of the stairwell as if to echo my sentiment. My heart pounds so hard that I feel it in my ears. The sound of something slowly ascending the stairs in slow thuds prompts Detective Rowels to meekly call out, "Susan?"

Is someone dragging themselves up the stairs? For a moment, I worry that Susan might still be alive and in desperate need of help. I take a few, cautious steps forward.

In the stairwell, I see unbridled, brown hair, and then a human body pulling itself up the stairs, although I knew she was no human. What replaced her was scorned spirit with insatiable hunger. Agatha turned her head to face me, her unblinking black eyes glaring at me while she pulls herself onto the landing. I back away, nearly falling over as I wail in fear as she ascends the rest of the stairs in seconds, her bones cracking with her terrifying speed.

And I drop to my knees.