Episode 33

The whispers followed Kadja like a shroud, clinging to her even in the sterile halls of Emerson Middle School. “Freak.” “Witch.” “Cursed.” The words, spat from the mouths of classmates who dared not venture beyond the porch of her family's old Tudor home in Bar Harbor, were a constant, stinging reminder of the unseen forces that had driven them from their lives. Her parents, their faces etched with a weariness that went beyond mere exhaustion, had finally spoken the words that Kadja had long feared: it was her fault. Their decision to sell the haunted house, to uproot their lives and flee the insidious whispers and spectral manifestations, was a consequence of her curse.

They had chosen Saint Andrews by the Sea, New Brunswick, a place that promised a fresh start, a sanctuary by the ocean. A huge piece of land had been purchased, and the foundations of a new home were being laid, a testament to their desperate hope for escape. Yet, Kadja felt no solace. The shadows, though perhaps less potent in this new, windswept landscape, still lurked at the edges of her vision. The moon, a constant celestial clock, still dictated the hours of her torment. The gnawing guilt, the weight of her parents’ accusations, pressed down on her, a heavier burden than any spectral presence.

Her father, his voice strained, would sometimes try to reason with her, his words a desperate attempt to find logic in the illogical. “It’s the house, Kadja,” he’d say, though Kadja knew it was more than the house. It was her, wasn’t it? The whispers of the 1920s and 30s, tales of gangsters and the mafia who had supposedly sought refuge in their Bar Harbor home, had been unsettling enough. Then there were the doors that opened and shut on their own, the chilling presence of a woman’s spirit hanging from the chandelier in the main hall, all amplified by the cruelty directed at her. Her own family, her brothers, even Jasper, their loyal Cocker Spaniel, had begun to act strangely, their gazes distant, their movements jerky, as if possessed by an unseen puppeteer. It was her fault, they insisted, that their lives had become so sad and lonely, that their beloved Jasper now seemed to regard her with an unnerving wariness.