Page 9 of Ghost Girl

And beyond that, when they finally took their last breaths, their souls would detach from their bodies as he buried theirsegmented bodies in the makeshift graveyard behind the cabin, hovering in the vicinity for all eternity. There was no moving on. No peace to be found. Simply a meaningless existence thrust upon us by the whims of a madman.

A clever madman, however. The holes he dug were significantly deeper than six feet, and he would only fill them up halfway before going hunting. Then, he’d bury the carcass of whatever animal was unfortunate to cross his path. Another measure taken to hide the bodies, just in case the police ever did discover his actions. A cunning means to trick whoever was digging into believing it was just an animal buried rather than a body.

He was the single most devious man I had ever had the misfortune of meeting.

I got bored of waiting for the girl to quiet down. They were the most interesting to me in that limbo state between their panic, realising they weren’t going anywhere, and before Blake returned. Their thoughts were a whirlwind behind their eyes, important moments of their lives flashing through their minds as they latched onto whatever good they could hold onto in their darkest hours. I liked to watch, to see their expressions play out on their faces. Perhaps it was invasive of me, but it made me feel just that little bit less alone. Just for a little while. I got to pretend that I knew them. Sometimes I would make up stories about them in my head, giving them a life and memories prompted by those expressions.

But it never lasted. Eventually, they would die, and then they would ignore me just like all the others. A few of the newer ones attempted to talk to me until they found out I had married the psycho. Then bets were off. Most of them stuck to themselves. A few of them clustered together. After a while, none of them talked. It was a miserable, lonely existence.

It made me hate him even more.

Hate didn’t even cover it. Iloathedthe man. Alive, I had never wanted to see him or anyone else hurt. My bleeding heart was one of the things he’d claimed to love about me the most. He’d taken that from me, too, to a degree. I didn’t care about the girls beyond adding another reason to the already extensive list for why I wanted him to suffer.

More than that, I wanted him to beg the way his victims did, only to find no mercy from me. We were far past mercy. Now, there was only Hell, and I would drag him there with me if I had to.

Blake likely wasn’t coming back for a while, so I decided to find something else to do in the meantime. I floated through the ceiling up into the main living space of the cabin, leaving the girl in favour of my other favourite pastime. My only other pastime, really. Practicing.

I’d been a big fan of horror stories when I was alive, my bookshelves filled with Stephen King, Richard Matheson, and Ramsey Campbell. I had a few of the classics, such as Poe and Stoker, but I much preferred the modern take.

As much as Blake had supported my interests by supplying my collection, he’d never shown an interest himself. Until I realised he was living a horror story as the antagonist, and then his disregard for it made more sense. Wouldn’t want people to think he was anything but the sweet, innocent, life-saving surgeon he portrayed himself to be. No, it wasn’t Blake who went to see the latest scary blockbuster with me, but his brother, Chance.

The ghost hunter.

Sometimes I wished he were here, until I remembered that he was related to my killer. I couldn’t help but wonder just how close they really were, and how much Chance actually knew about Blake’s… extracurricular activities. If he was in on it somehow, using his ghost-hunting business to distract and draw the attention away from Blake, or worse, he was somehowinvolved in a more hands-on capacity, I didn’t know what I would do.

Chance had been my friend long before I’d ever even met Blake. We’d met in middle school and became fast friends, up until Blake and I started dating and he found a closer friendship with Ashe. Still, the love for one another was there and never went away. Besides Blake, he had been my favourite of all the Dodds, even if his last name was Weiss after his biological father. His friendship meant so fucking much to me for so much of my life…

And then there were their parents. Mallory and Calvin. They’d treated me like one of their own from day one. Mallory had been especially excited to induct me into the family. Her desire for a daughter when she’d been saddled with two sons prompted her to treat me like the daughter she’d never had. When my mother had been diagnosed with cancer when I was a teenager, she’d been right there with me the whole time, supporting us all in any way she could. And right behind her had been her doting husband, Calvin, my father-in-law. He’d been as much of a father to me as my own.

If that entire family had duped me, they wereallgoing to pay.

Whereas my fury when I was alive pumped through me with a fiery vengeance, drumming inside of me with each pulse of my heart, I no longer had a pulse to push it through. Now, it was like an ember sparking in my core, catching on the kindling of each and every one of my grievances, and consuming me whole. Most days, I imagined I felt like a witch burning at the stake. Some days I wished I had been, because then I would have been killed for a reason. This nonsensical bullshit, the purposeless way my last breath had been stolen, the inconsequential pain and suffering that no one knew I had experienced becauseno one had saved me. No one even knew that I’d needed saving in the first place. That’s what got me.

Luckily, my anger helped with my ghost girl practice sessions. The heightened emotions gave me something to focus on, a goal, apurpose. That fiery fury filled me with energy, like Iwasthe flame and I was feeding off of all the negative emotions my death and betrayal had dredged up.

I wanted them. I wanted to consume them. I wanted to use them to learn all that I could, to get as strong as I could. I wanted to weaponise them.

I wanted my face, myrage, to be the last thing Blake ever saw, and I wanted him to realise just how much he’d fucked up.

But to do that, I needed to learn to control it. This power that built within me, this supernatural energy that flowed through my very being, that kept me grounded on this earth even if I was displaced into an overlying realm, was wild and feral. I knew innately that taming it wasn’t an option, but it needed direction. It needed to be coaxed. Fuck, it needed to beromanced.

And dammit if I wasn’t going to do just that.

If death had taught me one thing, it was that power was the only lover I needed. Power didn’t betray me like a man. Power didn’t destroy me just for the sake of it. It didn’t do what I wanted whenever I wanted it to, but that was because I hadn’t earned it yet. I needed to prove to it that I was worth listening to, worth its loyalty, and then we could exist together in perfect harmony.

It wasn’t good or bad. There was no hero or villain. Power simply was, and there was a peace in that. A release.

I wasn’t human anymore, but something other. Something that now had the ability to tap into the deep well of energy that coursed through everything in every realm. I was a motherfucking ghost, and I was going to be the best there ever was.

As the rage took hold, the heat consuming me, I reached deep inside of myself as I chased it, desperate to grab hold. It wasn’tsomething I could hold in my hands, however. The power was even less tangible than I was, and I floated through walls, for fuck’s sake. When I first started attempting to reach it, I grew frustrated very quickly. So many attempts, all of which failed.

Capturing it was a no-go.

Trapping it never worked.

Trying to force it to obey my commands was ridiculously stupid, because its bite was just as bad as its bark.

I had it figured out, now, though. It required gentleness. A soft touch, just barely brushing against it, teasing it until it wanted more. I needed to get its attention and convince it to channel itself through me the way I imagined.

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