Episode 43

Kadja sat on the damp, moss-covered stone, the rough texture a familiar comfort against her trembling hands. The Revolutionary Torrey Cemetery, with its leaning headstones and whispering pines, had become her sanctuary, a place where the taunts of her peers couldn't penetrate the silent, stoic presence of the departed. Even here, however, the whispers of "freak" and "witch" echoed in her mind, a relentless chorus that had followed her from Bar Harbor to Saint Andrews and now, to Portland. The move to Catherine McAuley, an all-girls school in Maine, had been her family's latest desperate attempt to escape what they perceived as her curse, a futile effort that only served to isolate her further.

The spectral presence that had clung to her since childhood, the unseen hand that had once manifested as glowing electronics and suffocating shadows, seemed to have found a new anchor in this institution. Doors creaked open and shut on their own, cold spots bloomed in sunlit classrooms, and the air often grew heavy with an unseen sorrow. Kadja felt it, a constant thrum beneath the surface of normalcy, a reminder that she was never truly alone. Her family, worn down by her perceived afflictions and the constant disruption they caused, had reached their breaking point. Her parents, their faces etched with a mixture of fear and exhaustion, had declared it was her fault, that *she* was the source of their misfortune. The immense piece of land they'd purchased in New Brunswick, the grand house they'd built in Saint Andrews by the Sea, had been an attempt to outrun whatever followed her. It hadn't worked. And now, Portland, another state, another school, another desperate hope that had already begun to fray at the edges.

The whispers of gangsters and mafia visits to their old Tudor home in Bar Harbor, the spectral woman hanging from the chandelier, the doors opening and shutting on their own – these were not just random hauntings; they were threads of a larger, darker tapestry that seemed inextricably woven into Kadja's existence. Katha's own history, her attendance at Emerson Middle School decades ago, the fear her classmates had shown even then, the family's ownership of the property at 11 Atlantic Avenue – it all painted a picture of a lineage steeped in the unsettling. Kadja's life had been a lonely, sad affair, her family's odd behaviour and her beloved Cocker Spaniel, Jasper, acting strangely only adding to her despair. It was as if a dark energy had latched onto her, and in turn, onto those closest to her, reacting with a chilling, almost protective, vengeance whenever cruelty was directed her way.