Here we are at home again, enjoying some peace and quiet with Christmas just around the corner. We need some time to rest up after our last case and I don’t like to take on a new case during the holidays. Some of our team members have gone home for Christmas, something that I encourage if they have family that actually speaks to them. And some of our team members do have nice relationships with their families.

Unfortunately, some of the families want nothing to do with the women we have taken into our team family. It has nothing to do with the girls on our team, but because they have been in criminal organizations or were forced into porn, their families just don’t want them around and will not communicate with them in any way, or at any time. Something that is very sad indeed. But we have our own celebrations here and we have a great time.

Baldwin and Mandar provide all the gifts for everyone, and they certainly do provide an abundance of gifts for the girls. The guys always get the same thing, a nice cash bonus, something they always enjoy. For Jennifer and I, it is our first Christmas together since we have been married and there is one thing we would both love to have for our gift this year, a nice peaceful vacation. However, I rather doubt we will get that.

And just as I was sitting in the library thinking about how fantastic it would be to have a vacation, someone came knocking at our door. It was the head of our local police and soon he was shown the way to our library. Baldwin and Mandar were present, and 10 of the girls, including Pacca who is looking after the computer still. Annelie had come home, but she, Rock and Bear are back home for Christmas. Anyway, coffee was brought in for us, and freshly baked cookies.

Alphonse, our head of police, told us about a strange house in the area that everyone considers to be haunted by ghosts. As soon as he mentioned ghosts, I called our ghosts to join us in the library, although I didn’t call them ghosts in front of Alphonse. He does not believe in ghosts, but ever since these rumors of ghosts began to circulate a few months ago, crime in the area began to increase quite a bit, especially drugs.

He believes the two are connected and the haunted house rumors were just meant to keep people away from the house so it could be used by the criminals. He and his officers have looked through the house and have found nothing, but he did leave 2 officers there overnight just 3 nights ago and when they did not check in at 4am like they should have, he and 3 other officers went to look. One officer was dead, his neck broken, and the other officer was found cowering in a corner absolutely terrified of them and he is still in the hospital and has to be kept sedated as he is still afraid of everyone.

He is unable to speak and only whimpers or screams. He asked me if we would look into the matter for him, he has obtained permission from the owners for us to look around. This sounded like something we could tackle quickly and be done in a couple of days. So, the team leaders that were still present voted and we accepted the case. At least the house was fairly close at hand too which made things much easier for us as well.

Several of us drove out there right away so we could look around during the day first of all. Kat, Angel and Carine came along, plus the Bad Girls team. Jennifer allowed me to go along since it was during the day and 3 of our own ghosts were along, but one of them had to stay with me at all times. Kat appointed Angel for that job. It was a very large, old house, going back to the 1500’s and made of stone. We also had Azura, Midnight, Storm, Frisky, Moonbeam, Patch, Sunny, Tracker, Bandit and Ginger with us, from the cats team.

This was the first case for our newest cat members and we will see how well they work on a real case, especially looking for secret doors. Azura, Sky’s cat, and Moonbeam, Amerie’s cat, were to stay with me as well, both being new cats. We spread out and looked around for 2 hours and met back in the large room to talk about what we had found. That didn’t take long since we had found nothing strange at all. The house was almost completely furnished though no one had lived there for more than a hundred years.

We decided to go home and come back this evening and spend the night. Jennifer decided to come back with us, so Jewel, which is her cat, came along as well. Muffin is sick and in the clinic right now, and of course we lost 2 cats, Jasmine and Chipper, in the last case because of that laser weapon. At around midnight we began to hear moans, scraping and laughing, typical ghostly sounds that people like to make to scare others.

The one that interested me was the scraping sound, that one sounded very much like old doors opening and closing, so I told everyone to be prepared for visitors. Everyone was supposed to respond when I said that, but I did not hear back from Katresa, Crystal, Sabina and Annika, who were staying in a bedroom together. Jennifer, Amerie, Melanie, Cynthia and I were in a bedroom across the hall from theirs so we quickly went over there. But it was empty.

I put out a quiet red alert to the others with a call to join us in our bedroom. Everyone else showed up. Unfortunately, without electricity, we had to rely on our flashlights to look around in the dark. Then we heard a shriek which seemed to come from the large room so we all rushed to that location. Sure enough, the four girls were there, tied up, and each had been beaten.

I had four of the other girls take them to the clinic and called Samantha to let her know they were on the way. I then called Kristina and asked her to come out with the remainder of her team right away. It only took them half an hour to arrive at the haunted house. There was no way we were going to leave here tonight after someone dared to attack us in such a way…

To Be Continued.

©2024 Steve McLeod.