Page 65 of Big Witch Energy

The Caroline-Emily hybrid nodded, almost frantically. “She’s kept me away, from the day Caroline could see us. Had to reach out, in some way she wouldn’t understand. It had to be about love. Your Caroline, she understands love, but not her. She’s so powerful. Even in death. She had us all fooled.”

“You keep saying ‘she’ and ‘her,’” Ben said. “Who are you talking about?”

“The same woman who pushed me off the cliff. The same woman who kept me from being buried in the churchyard. R—”

A burst of green-gray light from his right nearly knocked Ben on his ass. A spectral, skeletal woman was screaming inches from Ben’s face like a hurricane made of screeching. Caroline tumbled to her side. She rolled out of Ben’s dazed grip. His breath caught, and he didn’t have time to worry about the angry ghost lady—who was not Emily, he could just tell from the angry brow and the peeling, rotten skin—howling at him while he tried to wrestle Caroline’s dead weight away from the precipice.

“Fuck. Off!” Ben hollered back.

Was he crazy, or did the dead harridan look almost offended?

“You heard him, fuck off!” Suddenly, Riley was sitting up and the ghost was hit with a face full of salt she threw from a small linen bag. With one last sneer, the ghost sizzled into nothing.

“Ow.” Riley flopped back to the ground. “Ow. Fucking ow.”

Caroline gasped into a conscious state. “Are we awake?”

“Yes, and it’s terrible,” Alice grumbled into the grass. “Why am I face-down?”

“Why are we awake?” Caroline demanded. “And why does it hurt so much? And why is Alice face down?”

“I’m so sorry, Alice!” Edison exclaimed, crawling over to her side to help her sit up. “Riley went down and I panicked.”

“That’s OK,” Alice huffed as Edison helped her sit up. “I just need someone to pick the grass out of my teeth.”

“Oh fuck, that hurts,” Caroline groaned as Ben cradled her into his shoulder.

“What she said,” Riley moaned, lifting an arm to flap in Caroline’s direction.

“Why am I here?” Caroline asked. “Why are you all here? Is this going to be some very unfortunate Wizard of Oz situation? Or did I get slipped some party drugs in a nonparty context? Is that why I’m asking so many questions?”

“You sleepwalked,” Ben told her. “You don’t remember?”

Caroline shook her head. “I had the same dream, walking up to Vixen’s Fall to meet Emmett. But then those hands pushed me, and everything went gray. It felt like I was underwater. I could feel Riley and Alice with me, but I couldn’t reach out to them. I could hear your voice, but I couldn’t talk back. I couldn’t even hear what Emily was saying. And the barroom ghost yelled in my face. Bitch.”

“It was awful. Let’s not ever do that again,” Alice sighed as Riley helped her to her feet.

“Agreed,” Riley groaned as the rest helped Ben and Caroline up. “Also, is it just me, or was that the most aesthetically challenged ghost we’ve seen so far?”

“She was definitely in a later stage of decomposition,” Ben said. “What ghosts I’ve seen at Shaddow House seem to be in a ‘fresher’ state.”

Riley’s lips twitched. “Is that an official medical opinion of ghosts?”

“Oh, the journal articles I could write…that would immediately get my license taken away and then get me committed,” Ben sighed.

“So why the sudden change in ‘freshness?’” Riley wondered as the five of them trudged back through the grass, toward town.

“Maybe that’s her real state, spiritually speaking?” Edison suggested. “The purple-dress-lady guise at the bar was just a sort of…well, the fairy tales would call it a ‘glamour,’ to keep up appearances? To make people she allowed to see her drop their guard?”

“Well, who the hell has time for ghost vanity?” Riley griped.

Caroline suggested, “Ghosts, mostly?”

***

The house lights of Gray Fern were blazing when they returned, prompting Ben to run up the stairs much faster than Caroline could manage on her ankle.

The kids? Were the kids OK? Had the ghosts staged some sort of distraction to get the adults away from his kids to use them somehow? He didn’t know how that would work, but dad panic didn’t allow for logic in times like this.