Page 57 of Ghost Girl

We sat in silence for a beat, contemplating our life choices and what had brought us to this moment. It was heavy, incredibly depressing, but also enlightening. The rightness of my decision was becoming more apparent the more I let it settle, and I was confident I was making the right choice.

The moment was interrupted by the EMF going off, beeping loudly as it picked up on a ghostly presence joining us again. The lights were flickering wildly, the beeping more rapid than before to the point where it was almost a single, solid noise. Whoever was here they were practically on top of us.

‘Right,’ I said, clapping my hands on my knees before hauling myself to stand. ‘That’s my cue. Rhodes, do you see her?’

He shook his head, scanning the darkening woods as the sun was descending for the night. ‘No. I don’t see anything.’

I figured as much. I was almost certain this entity wasn’t Kali. I didn’t think she would mess with us like this.

‘Hello?’ I called out, stepping closer to the spirit box that was placed in a small clearing nearby. ‘If you can hear me, let meknow. You can talk through the spirit box right here, and it will pick up your voice so we can hear you.’

When I got no response after waiting for a few minutes, I tried again. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

Nothing.

‘Kali? Are you here?’

The spirit box lit up at her name, and excitement burst inside me, thinking it was her. But that excitement was quickly doused by the decidedly male voice that came through.

‘She’s… mine.’

‘Who’s yours?’ I asked, dread starting to sink in. Was he laying claim to Kali? Why? What could he want from her?

The spirit box crackled again before the entity repeated his words.‘She’s… mine.’

‘Who?’ I asked more insistently, the bad feeling growing until I felt like I was about to be sick. ‘Who’s yours? Kali?’

‘Yes…’

I exchanged a startled glance with the others, and it was Rhodes who asked the question I couldn’t seem to vocalise. ‘What do you want with her? Kali doesn’t belong to anyone.’

‘She’s… MINE!’

I jumped back when the spirit box was suddenly launched into the air by some unseen force, then Rhodes was forced to duck as it was thrown at him. It missed, thank fuck, but it was thrown so hard that it smashed to pieces when it collided with the tree behind him, leaving a significant dent where it hit.

Rhodes glanced between the tree, the obliterated device, and back to where the entity was presumably standing, eyes wide with both fear and exhilaration. ‘Holy shit…’

That shouldn’t have been possible. Not once in all my years of paranormal investigating had I come across a spirit that could manipulate tangible objects, but with such strength. I didn’t understand, and I was suddenly more sure than ever thatwhatever Kali had gotten herself into, it was dangerous even beyond the grave.

Was this entity the reason why she hadn’t shown up today? Was she hiding from him? I didn’t think I could wait much longer to join her if she was in trouble.

‘What do you want?’ I called out despite our only means of communication being destroyed. I didn’t expect an answer, but the chills that ran across my skin when I heard his voice whispering through the breeze had adrenaline coursing through my veins in an instant.

‘Leave.’

My jaw clenched, a protest sitting ready on my tongue, but I already knew that arguing with this thing would be futile, so I bit back the urge to argue. Instead, I tried a different tactic and asked a question I desperately needed the answer to.

‘Do you want to hurt her?’

‘LEAVE!’

Out of the corner of my eye, I swore I could see the shadows becoming denser, darker, that they emitted a chill that exceeded their typical temperature on a warm summer evening like tonight. I realised we were fighting against something much too powerful and beyond our scope of understanding, and it was no longer safe for us to stick around.

I raised my hands and backed up a couple of steps to show that I was giving in to his demands, our safety currently more important than the answers it clearly didn't want to give. ‘All right. Okay. We’re leaving.’

Mikey and Rhodes didn’t need any more prompting, both of them darting towards the house without looking back.

I wasn’t so quick to disappear, however. There was something that was keeping me rooted in place, staring at the shadows of the woods. I didn’t know what, but I could feel eyes on me from multiple directions. In possibly the stupidest moveof my life, I turned my back on the angry entity to scan the woods in the other direction.

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