“So, what did you find so far?” Chris asked Amy.

            She set down her salad fork and said, “At first, nothing. I didn’t get anything suspicious in my photos, all my meters came back with nothing, and I was getting a little pissed. But then, I was attacked last night by a dead corpse that looked like me in my bathtub.”

            “Your bathtub?” asked TJ. “What were you wearing?”

            “What does that have to do with anything?” Chris asked.

            “Nothing. I just wanted to get a mental image of our hot boss in the tub.”

            “The corpse was in the tub,” she corrected him.

            TJ groaned, “Ugh…gross.”

            “Anyway, I think it definitely has something to do with that jewel Marcus told us about. If we can find it, we should be able to close the book on this one.”

            “So, you want us to hunt a tiny jewel instead of invisible ghosts,” TJ reiterated. “I don’t know which one is harder.”

            “Where should we start?” asked Chris.

            “We’ll meet tonight in my room after Marcus leaves the mansion and go over a search plan. He said the west wing was remodeled after it was already built, so I think we should start there.”

            “You’re the boss lady,” said TJ.

            Amy, looking out of her bedroom window, watched Marcus disappear into the night. The sun had just set and he was making his way toward the secondary mansion in the back. She looked at the smaller building and realized there was an area to the right of it surrounded by iron bars. After glancing at it for a few moments, she realized it was a cemetery. Marcus had never mentioned it before, but she had a feeling there might have been a valuable clue buried somewhere in there.

            There was a knock at the door and she called the visitor in. It was Chris and TJ right on time with some equipment ready in hand. They joined her by the window and gazed out at the cemetery she was looking at. She looked over to TJ with a wicked smile.

            “Please, tell me you’re joking,” he whined.

            She patted him on the shoulder and said, “Tonight, you are our grave digger.”

            “But you said a zombie was in your bathtub and now you want me to go into a cemetery? That’s asking for something to happen! You know black people always die first!”

            “It wasn’t a zombie and you won’t die. Try to scrounge up a shovel and come back with anything odd that you find,” she instructed.

            He stormed out of the room cursing under his breath.

            “Lavalle became highly religious after getting the jewel,” Amy explained to Chris, “so it’s safe to assume that there could be clues in his private cemetery.”

            “How do you figure?”

            “Ritual burials. We might be able to determine exactly what religion he followed by examining the way a body is buried. With that, we could start picking out statues and paintings related to that same religion.”

            “From what I’ve seen, he could’ve been Christian or Catholic.”

            “One of the first rules about hiding treasure is to make clues that could throw off treasure hunters. I wanna be positive about where to look.”

            “So what should we do while TJ’s digging up graves?”

            “We need to start looking for secret rooms or hidden passages in the mansion.”

            “This place is huge,” exclaimed Chris. “With only two of us a search like that could take days.”

            “Well we better get started then,” she replied.

            Hours went by as the duo scoured the massive mansion and TJ dug up the graves one by one finding nothing on both ends. Those hours quickly turned to days without any repeated incidents like the bathtub. They spent every night sneaking around conducting their investigation hoping to find anything, but Amy was beginning to doubt herself. The only clue she found was a small journal belonging to Lavalle that mentioned his discovery of the cursed jewel that brought about his disappearance. It was described as a shard from a large jewel shaped like a flame. The poor souls that were unfortunate enough to come across this gem called it Hell’s Ruby. Other than that, she and Chris couldn’t find anything else related to it.

            One night, the grave digger in the cemetery near the second mansion dug up an object, which he gave to Amy. Excited about the latest clue, she quickly took it to her room and began studying it. It appeared to be a small wooden cube with strangely shaped markings on all sides.

            “Do you think it’s important?” Chris asked as he watched Amy sit on her bed tampering with the cube. “The shard could be inside it.”

            “We won’t know until we figure out what it does.”

            “Let’s just smash the damn thing until it breaks open,” TJ suggested.

            “Do you really want to risk damaging the ruby shard and pissing off whatever ghost is haunting this place?” she asked.

            “No, thank you. The only naked women I like seeing in my tub are ones that are still alive.”

            She let out a frustrated sigh and clutched the tiny cube in one hand. Something clicked on it and the odd markings all fell off onto her lap

            “What did you do?” Chris asked.

            She picked up one of the pieces and examined it, “These are magnetic.”

            Chris looked at the different sizes, “They look almost like puzzle pieces.”

            She put the pieces together as best as she could and her eyes widened when she recognized the shape. She saw this exact object when she first entered the mansion. The large oil painting of Lavalle in the lobby showed him wearing a broach that matched the same shape as the magnetic puzzle. With the pieces in hand, she took off to the lobby while her friends followed her.

            They reached the painting and she ran her hand along its surface. The small area where the broach was depicted felt hard like a metal plate was underneath it which meant that she probably found the location of an important clue if not the shard itself. With a smile, she placed each piece of the puzzle onto the painting until the broach was complete. There was a loud clanging sound that echoed in the vast lobby, and then the painting slid back and to the left revealing a long narrow corridor with practically no lighting.

            “I ain’t going in there,” said TJ.

            She looked to Chris.

            “Do I get a raise for this?” he jokingly asked.

            She reached into her pocket and pulled out her cell phone. It wasn’t much, but she didn’t bring any flashlights with her for this ghost hunt, so it would have to do. Together, the two slowly crept down the cold cobblestone hall and into the unknown abyss. The entrance behind them seemed to shrink in size the farther they walked from it making them feel like they were walking into a trap. Eventually, the duo came to an old wooden door on the right wall. The hall kept going down, but there was no way to know if there were any other doors along the way.

            “We’re not splitting up,” Chris said to Amy before she could suggest the notion.

            “Fine,” she huffed as she pushed open the door.

            It creaked open revealing a small library filled with shelves lining every wall. There were other shelves scattered around making it seem more like a maze than anything else. They carefully made their way through memorizing each turn they made until they reached the very center where a small square table waited for them. A tiny candle stood flickering beside an open book. Amy approached the book and began reading it to herself.

            We…tired…want sleep…watch hall…

            “What the hell happened to him?” Chris asked as he read the final sentence over Amy’s shoulder.

            “It made him insane and turned him into some kind of monster.”

            “He referred to himself as “we” in the end. Do you think it possessed him?”

            “I can’t say for sure, but he did say he heard it in his head. He also said there was a room here where he dumped the bodies for the ruby. Hopefully, it’s still in that room. I just wonder if the hall he was watching is the same one where he vanished.”

            “I don’t think we want to find out. Let’s find the room and get out of here before we start hearing voices in our heads,” Chris replied.