I’m there, I don’t know I’m there. It’s like a hollow, a hollow of… energy, I think. I’m… I’m drowning in it, being pulled under.” She shivers and rubs her shoulders.
“Do you feel the cold?”
“No,” she says.
We stand there staring at the blood stain.
“I exist… and yet I don’t.”
“Limbo?” I asked.
She shrugs. “I thought that when I died I’d finally get to know if the big chief exists. Well, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t. Not yet.”
“It’s okay, I don’t mind the suspense,” I say.
We grin at each other. A pause hangs between us and the smiles fade from our faces. We both realise, at the same moment, that this is the first time we’ve mentioned the otherworld to each other. This is the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much left unsaid. Lacey, you should pass on . I could say that. I could tell her to find peace. But I don’t.
“You know how we faced the murderous doctor at Magdelena?” Lacey asks, her gaze redirecting to the stain on the ground.
“Yes,” I say . It takes me a moment to pull myself from my thoughts.
“Well, I think we have to do it again, but with someone even worse , this time,” Lacey says. “I think we have to go up against some sort of evil spirit.”
Chapter Eight
There are so many songs set in the heat of a summer night. Love songs about sex and romance; songs about the moonlight and soft waves lapping at the beach in the summer heat. Funnily enough, there aren’t as many about pining over a guy you don’t even know whilst sitting on the grass next to your dead best friend.
We’re on the lookout, but what we’re on the lookout for… I’m not sure. We decided to get high. No, not like that; we climbed a hill overlooking the campsite, the fairground, and the surrounding moors. Now we sit and wait. My chin rests atop my bare knees as my eyes search the area around us.
This time there aren’t any rainbow lights or blaring music. There are no screams as the rides screech through the dark night like runaway trains. The fairground has been closed down, for safety reasons. No doubt I’ve lost Seth his job as well as his friend.
Go away , Death. Take your evil spirits with you. Let me live a normal life, like a normal girl. Just leave me Lacey, alive and touchable. Huggable. Breathable.
It’s a warm and clear night, but the stars aren’t as bright as they were on the Ferris wheel. Still, the air feels soothing, not the kind of atmosphere you would expect for an evil spirit to go on a murderous rampage.
“Why the campsite and then the fairground?” I ask. “I mean, the two locations are quite far away from each other. When you watch ghost movies, they’re almost always about a haunted house, right? Not a haunted town .”
“Maybe she’s latched on to you. I mean, you’re a human who can see ghosts. That’s pretty special, right? It can’t happen very often. Or maybe she sensed me . I felt her reaching for me. I think she’s lonely.”
“We need to find out if she’s killed before,” I muse. “Or how long ago she died. If we’re going to go after her, we need to find out as much about her as we can.”
“Google it,” Lacey says. “And why don’t you Google Seth, at the same time?”
“Because that’s stalking,” I reply.
“Then what the hell did we do all day? What was with the traipsing around old-fogey town looking for random mechanics?”
I flip Lacey the bird and pull my phone out of my shorts pocket. “Huh, check it out. I’ve actually got a signal.”
According to Wikipedia, Five Moors Campsite has had a small amount unusual deaths in the last few years, enough to be noted, and enough to attract an odd group of Goths to the same place every year, a little bit like Whitby.
“So that’s why there’s that group of emo kids in the next van,” I say. “They’re here on some sort of ghost hunt.”
Lacey leans over my shoulder, reading the passage along with me, her ghostly form
Michelle M. Pillow
Dayle Gaetz
Tiger Hill
MAGGIE SHAYNE
Andrea Goldsmith
George R. R. Martin
Alicia Roberts
Patricia Veryan
Malcolm Brown
SJ McCoy