Leaving the rest of her stuff alone, you grab Kate's blanket and return to the house.

You lock the door behind you.

You resume reading your book about haunted houses.

The next section, oddly, begins by talking about teddy bears.

Consider the teddy bear, the book says. Made of cotton, fabric, and stitching, the final product cannot be described accurately as any of those things. The teddy bear is something new--its construction was in some way unique, and it immediately begins to take a different journey through the universe than any other teddy bear. It is loved and given attention. It is made meaningful and significant to living minds. It is drawn into and entangled with the human noosphere. An inanimate object cannot be said to have a personality, yet a teddy bear has personality; each torn stitch tells a story, each stain the burden of a lived experience.

The teddy bear, carrying stories and emotions and purpose, gains a psychic weight. It is filled with energies and essences the human mind can only perceive as a whim or a gut feeling, if at all. It becomes an object that inexplicably feels like something.

Houses, too, accumulate psychic weight--perhaps more than any other object. They protect us, becoming an integral part of our lives and a fixed point in our memories. They become an anchor by which we measure time ("well, back when I lived on so-and-so street"). They become our sanctums, our cages, and the default setting of our existences. They soak in the energy of all those who dwell within, the walls growing saturated with our pain and our triumphs, the floors carpeted by our stories. From the moment a house is planned it is a unique entity, given purpose long before the first shovel meets dirt--and often, it is an inability to meet that purpose that takes the house and twists what it contains, the perversion of its only consistency in turn perverting the house itself.

In a sense, a house only has one definition of a house. A house, ancient and filled with psychic energy and no longer meeting its own definition of a house, may begin to lose its grip on what it itself actually is.

It begins to change into something that is unlike a house.

A house does not feel. It lacks any of the requirements to have feelings, be they physical or emotional or otherwise. It is not equipped to experience the world in that manner. A house does not feel anger, or loathing, or sadness. It does not long, or desire, or hunger. A house cannot lose its mind.

One by one, as a house begins to strip itself of being a house, such distinctions become meaningless. A house does not feel, but the floors of a haunted house may creak angrily, its rooms exuding an unmistakable hostility. It may become impossible to sleep, as one feels perpetually surrounded by an unseen enemy. A house does not act, but a haunted house may shift, change, pushing its doors from the forefront of the human mind and into hiding, altering its staircases into impossibilities and warping its hallways in on themselves. These expressions are a negative feedback loop--a house does not understand terror, and its own terror will only further terrify it. It does not, CANnot understand rage, and that it has been driven to experience it can only further enrage the house.

A house does not want to be haunted.

A house cannot explain why it's haunted, or be rationalized out of it.

Even the phrase haunted house is a misnomer, because--as stated before--no phantom or specter truly haunts the house. The house isn't afflicted by any single outside source, but by its own story becoming poisoned and its own purpose becoming confused. The house is lost within itself, as much as a house can be said to be.

The house is not, in the strictest sense, actually haunted.

Rather, the house is sick.

. . .

You decide to put the book down for now and call Kate. It's not that late yet, she and Cici are probably still hunting for that upstairs entrance.

It takes a little bit for her to answer the phone.

"What's up," you finally hear.

You catch yourself giving a small sigh of relief. "Any luck with the upstairs...?,"

"Nada," Kate replies. "We can't find jack--nothing in the ceiling, nothing in the walls, nothing on the floor. You might've overtaken my spot as the house's favorite," she chuckles.

You ... chuckle less.

"Have you tried going outside?," you ask. "Like maybe if you get away from the house--"

"Oh, yeah," Kate interjects, "I went for a walk and shit, got some smokes, still nothin'. Me and Cici both remember us all being like hell yeah let's find a secret passage and then... last thing either of us remember was that you left, and we were playing that game you own with the anime boobs."

. . .

"Y... you might have to be more specific."

"Jesus," Kate laughs, "the volleyball one."

You shake your head, despite talking on the phone. "I don't... think that one gives any powers. I mean, you guys are free to try it again, but--"

"Oh, we know," Kate says a little smugly. "CICI definitely knows--!"

You hear, in the distance, Cici's voice yell across the room. "You don't know this was my idea! We all blacked out!"

Kate yells back at her. "It was definitely your idea because you've been talking about it for like two days! First it was I wonder if Plaire missed something with that volleyball game and it slooowly morphed into man I kinda enjoyed that volleyball game, like, you know because it tests your reflexes or whatever, and then BAM, we're sitting around playing the damn volleyball game. Just admit you like the big aniME TIDDIES, CICI!"

"I just really like volleyball!," Cici insists. "You don't know why I like things!"

"There's TWO princesses," Kate shouts, "that are IDENTICAL except one has bigger bahonkadongeroos and YOU keep--"

"There's OTHER differences!," interrupts Cici. "Like... uhhh..."

Kate returns her face to the phone. "Anyway, that's the most exciting thing to happen over here."

Your video game setup is a little convoluted to account for as many game types as possible, and to have it all run off your computer monitor... so you probably showed them how to get it going right before you left, after whatever happened with the upstairs... well, happened. You might have brought it up, or Cici might have asked (since apparently she's been wanting to ask about it since you showed it to her the first time).

It's just a little unnerving that nobody remembers it actually happening. You're familiar enough with stories opening in media res, but you are not down for sections of your life doing that.