Chapter 9: Sigrid Ankertna

Sigrid looked at the house Marigold gave its address to visit with admiration. The house was completely different from the houses from both sides. It was surrounded by the rusty iron bars and the weeds that had grown innumerable and waist-high, which all of those seemed like to test the patience of the houses next to it as those were hurting the view of them. 

Sigrid opened the creaking iron door carefully, and walked through the weeds that grew to her knees. The moment she opened the door, the smell of the rotten blood struck her. Sigrid frowned. She used to see dead bodies, but still, she didn’t like this kind of smell. When she tried to look at where the smell was coming from, she saw the area where the wooden floor of the house had blood seeped into it. The smell was very strong in that area. 

‘I must change the whole wooden floor, if it were just to be cleaned up, it would still smell’

The windows were also broken as if they were thrown by rocks from outside. The furniture strangely remained intact. Probably, no one tried to take anything since all of them from murder scene. The kitchen also smelled terrible. There were a lot of rotten food ingredients. In the child’s room which was on the second floor, the baby bed was covered with blood and many flies were buzzing around. It was clearly no one touched the house since the murder.

‘Was maintaining a house usually like this?’

Sigrid let a heavy sigh. If they’d like to sell the house, wasn’t the most basic thing to do cleaned up the murder trace? Sigrid looked at the house structure in wonder. 

At least the house’s structure was not lacking. The building looked strong, and the interior inside the house was actually a fine interior. Although it was not like a luxurious interior. It was basically a middle class’ house.

When Sigrid left the nursery room, there was a faint baby cry behind her back. It was only then Sigrid was realized and convinced. This was a haunted house. She put her ears to the door and listened attentively. Surely, there was a sound coming out from the room. Yet, when she opened the door to check, the cry stopped. 

“Maybe .. umm..” Sigrid tilted her head and slowly gathered aura. The sphere of light began to appear in her hand, then it started gradually grew bigger. The size of the aura light was growing from a size of firefly to as big as a fist, and then as big as a head. However, since she hadn’t had a core, the light was unstable so the surface of the light was repeatedly distorted like ripples. 

Then Sigrid released the compression of aura on her hand. The warmth spread out with a flash of light in the room. Glittering light particles filled the room and slowly disappeared. Afterwards, no more crying was heard when Sigrid came out from the room. 

‘I guess it’s a good thing.’

Sigrid used to listen to mages’ conversations. The theory of ghosts was it was created by the aura of negative emotion that was left by the people who died. It was said that spreading a warm aura in the place where the negative’s aura exists would drive out ghosts. At first, Sigrid didn’t know whether it was real or not, but now she was convinced that it was true.

Sigrid returned to the real estate office and Marigold, who had been waiting, looked at Sigrid’s face and asked, “How was it?”

“It was haunted, isn’t it?.”

Marigold was discouraged by Sigrid’s words. The ghost was the biggest reason the house didn’t sell. Every time it was going to be cleaned up, the ghost bothered the people who tried to clean up, and of course, they were scared and left the house in a mess. She was constantly getting complaints from both sides of the house, it was dropping their house prices, they said. But she didn’t know how to solve that problem.

“If you can make it cheaper, I’ll buy it. I have to change many things inside the house, remove the furniture, and clean up the whole house.”

“But it’s already half the price, costumer.” Marigold laughed with a troubled face.

Sigrid pondered and said. “Then deduct the cost of cleaning, the replacement of wooden floors and windows.”

After a little bit of scuffle, Sigrid took over the house at forty-percent of the market price. Marigold was honestly in a good mood. It was good to buy the house at a cheap price when it was auctioned, but it was a headache to sell it because of the existence of the ghost.

Sigrid paid the down payment on the spot. She drafted the contract and received the keys. As she came out after receiving Marigold’s farewell greetings, she felt bewildered. 

‘Is it okay to buy a house like this?’

There was sudden fear. She was determined to change her life necessities, but why did it feel so impulsive? Although she bought the house for less than half the market price, the house was still not cheap for her and half of her savings was blown away. Then, while fiddling with the bronze key in her hand, Sigrid shook her head.

‘No, you’re supposed to change it. You did well. You’d do a good job. Also, it’s fine if it’s wrong. What’s wrong with doing something wrong?’ 

She had tasted disgraceful death when she thought she lived the right way, that pitiful life. However, Sigrid felt it was not easy to live the way she wanted to live. She herself didn’t know what her heart wanted. Sigrid had always killed her desire in her life that when she looked into her heart and tried to understand what she needed, it was really hard to find them, to find what she wanted.