Chapter 12
Autumn's POV
The photos came like a whisper at first — Quinn bouncing toward me with a USB like it was treasure. The clubroom still smelled faintly of stage makeup and fog spray; the corsets had been banished to the corner, lace gloves folded, and we were all still half in character from the Victorian shoot.
"Autumn, you look like a tragic poet," Quinn announced, thrusting the USB at me. Her bangs were messy in the best way, and she had a smudge of pale dust on one cheek that she was definitely going to worship later.
I smiled and took the drive. Rhea had already swept into her usual spot by the whiteboard, clipboard balanced like a sword. Dorielle lounged on the couch, one ankle crossed over the other, smirking as if she'd already judged the entire set. Theo was rinsing off a smear of fake blood from his collar and doing it with more care than I expected. Liam was quietly loading the photos on his tablet, fingers moving with that nervous, brilliant precision he always carried.
We projected them on the wall. One by one, our ridiculous, dramatic faces filled the room — lace collars, ghostly makeup, serious stares at nothing. In the group shot by the library archway, we looked like a poster for an eerie period drama. I blinked and felt some small, warm swell of belonging I hadn't even known I was missing.
"Icons," Quinn declared, hands clasped together. "We are the icons."
"You look tired," Dorielle said, but there was a softness beneath it. It landed like a secret smile between us.
Rhea cleared her throat, clipboard tapping once. "Photos — archived. Next agenda: open forum. We do this every so often: no cases, just talk. Strengthen bonds. Understand each other. If someone needs to share, this is the space."
Quinn bounced with the energy of someone who'd prepared for this moment all her life. "Secrets! Confessions! Favorite cereal!"
"No cereal discussions unless asked," Liam deadpanned, but his expression was gentle.
Theo sat back and folded his hands. "I'll start. I joined because… I wanted to help. That's it. No drama."
"Romantic," Quinn teased. Theo shrugged, smile small.
Rhea gestured at me. "Autumn."
My heart always did a small stutter when anyone pointed to me. Not from performance anxiety — nothing so dramatic — but because saying something out loud made it real.
"I joined because I wanted somewhere steady," I said. "A place that kept going, even if everything else felt like it could disappear."
Silence wrapped tight, but it was peaceful. Quinn gave me a thumbs-up like it was the world's most profound thing. Dorielle rolled her eyes but I saw the way she blinked, softer for a moment. Liam met my gaze and held it steady — a small, quiet acknowledgment. Theo nodded once, as if cataloguing something in his quiet way. Rhea simply wrote it down on the clipboard, then tapped the pen like it was a gentle drumbeat that said: noted. We belong.
Open forum unfurled into a dozen small confessions — goofy, raw, and everything between.
Quinn told us about her disastrous attempt at summoning Bloody Mary in middle school (it had involved glitter, three candles, and a very impressive spot of crying). Dorielle admitted she used to practice barbed, charismatic smiles in the glass until she could disarm someone with a look. Liam confessed he used to build tiny circuits in secret, stealing a bias for electricity most kids don't discover until they're older. Theo told a small, private story about patching up his first real wound and realizing he wanted to be the person who could steady someone else.
We laughed. We cried a little. Some of the confessions landed heavy — like stones dropped into a still pond and the ripples touched all of us. I told a shorter, cleaner version of my worst nights — the ones where memories looped and sleep was a betrayal. They nodded like people who knew, in their student-bones, the ways in which your past tries to sit on your chest.
When the laughter rode the room's waves out, Quinn got dramatic again and clasped her hands. "Okay, now ghost stories. For Halloween. We're allowed to be scary, right?"
Rhea tilted her head but didn't stop the grin that tugged at her mouth. "We're allowed to be thorough."
Quinn sat forward, lowering her voice in a way she thought made her sinister and succeed only in making her adorable. "There's a campus legend about the old staircase by the science wing — lights flicker, someone hears footsteps when no one's there. People swear it's a ghost. Some say a student once vanished in those halls and never returned."
Dorielle snorted a little. "Maintenance problem, paranormal-lore-equipped students, and an administration with a messy PR team."
"That's a theory," Quinn shrugged. "But what if it's… someone using the ghost story to cover things up? Like, someone wants people to avoid the stairs while they do something else."
The sentence hung there. When the director of tone — Rhea — folded her hands, her eyes became steel. That's when I felt it change. For the first time in the room tonight the joke left a small gap and we peered into it.
"The club takes reports seriously," Rhea said. "If multiple people have complained about the stairs, we document it. We do not assume ghosts. We assume a cause, and we test."
Liam's tablet chimed as if in agreement. "I pulled the building maintenance logs once," he said. "Light outages are inconsistent with the grid. Some weird timestamp discrepancies."
Theo added quietly, "And there's been more than one small, odd report near there in the last semester."
The energy in the room shifted from cozy to alert. Quinn swallowed, excitement mixed with a thin thread of real unease. "So…it could be a real… human doing human things under a ghost costume," she said.
"Or someone wants us to think so," Dorielle murmured.
I sat forward. I like mysteries where the clues are human-made. Those you can trace. Those you can touch. A ghost story that's actually a cover-up feels uglier than a true haunting because someone is deliberately shaping what others will fear.
Rhea nodded. "We'll start with a small, quiet probe. Tonight's just talk. Tomorrow we can do field observation. For now, before we leave… we archive the photos, set up a log, and make a small brainstorm list."
We made lists like we made maps in my head — each item a piece to hold until we needed it. Quinn insisted we bake cookies for morale; Theo insisted we schedule two people to be on watch by the stairs; Liam volunteered to check timestamps and feed logs again. Dorielle said she'd talk to a student who sometimes cleaned the science wing late. Rhea assigned roles in her chair with the calm of someone who always knows which pieces move where.
When everyone was packing, Quinn paused at the door and, in that sudden brisk way she had when she was trying to be brave, said, "Autumn? Walk me to the photocopy room? I don't want to be alone tonight."
I said yes before I thought about anything else.
We walked past the library, the quad, the string of paper bats, and the old stone arch. The campus wore its Halloween decorations like a costume over itself; the air smelled like fried food and the subtle tang of leaves starting to brown. Quinn chattered about nonsense — the photographer's eyebrow, the best angst-y pose to use on a poster — and I listened, grounding myself in her steady chatter.
When we turned the corner by the science wing, a shadow moved by the stairwell — small, deliberate. Someone was leaning against the railing, half-hidden in the dim.
Quinn stopped mid-sentence.
We slowed. Up close, the person was a student wearing a hoodie, head down like they were either waiting for someone or trying not to be noticed. They looked ordinary in that perfect way people do when they want to be invisible. When they moved, it was a small, inconsequential shuffle that would be nothing if you weren't already listening.
My chest tightened with something I couldn't name yet. It wasn't fear exactly. More like recognition that the campus had its own secret pulse and we'd just been handed the feeling of its beat.
"Maybe just a student," Quinn said, suddenly nervous. She gripped my sleeve.
"Let's keep moving," I whispered. "We're not alone, but we're not running."
We walked on, leaving the hoodie figure by the railing. My mind catalogued the sight like a photograph: dark hoodie, subtle nervous energy, head tucked, someone who possibly watched the stairs as a habit rather than a haunt. The kind of person who could stage a thing for misdirection.
Back in the clubroom, the banter resumed but underpinned with a current of quiet readiness. We made schedules: who'd check cameras, who'd walk the stairwell at odd hours in pairs, who to ask about the old missing-student rumor. Rhea made a small column on the whiteboard labeled *STAIRWELL LOG* and her handwriting turned clinical and tight.
Before we closed for the night, Quinn stopped me again. "Promise me something, Autumn," she said, eyes earnest and suddenly small.
"Im not going to leave you" I answered automatically.
She smiled, breathless. "Promise."
I promised.
Then I went home with a head full of lace ghosts and a small, steady worry tucked under my ribs. Not of the supernatural kind — the human kind. Someone was careful enough to shape fear. Someone wanted us to look away.
And we would not.
END OF CHAPTER 12