A Date With Death

Mia Archer

Contents

1. Dying Young

2. The Other Side

3. The Fun Side of Death

4. Hunted

5. Caught

6. Between Worlds

7. The Morgue

8. Back to School

9. Walk Home

10. Dare

11. Creepy Woods

12. Awkward Almost Date

13. Breaking and Entering

14. Haunted House

15. A Dose of Freaky Ghosts

16. Waking Up

17. Almost Caught

18. Dead Cheerleader

19. Necromancer

20. Rumble

21. Quiet

22. Escape

23. Morning After

24. Stages of Grief

25. Ghostly Confession

26. Back to School Again

27. Survivor

28. Creepy Lunch

29. Tracking

30. The Basement

31. Reanimator

32. Reaper

33. Escape

34. Coming Clean

35. Waiting

36. Creepy Haunted House

37. Necromancer’s Lair

38. Danger

39. Homecoming

40. Thriller

41. Reaper

42. Throw Down

43. Death

44. Who Shot First?

45. Portal

46. Cover-up

47. Girlfriend

48. Magic Dance

49. Supernatural

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A Date With Death

By Mia Archer

Copyright 2018 Mia Archer

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Individuals pictured on the cover are models and used for illustrative purposes only.

First digital edition electronically published by Mia Archer, August 2018

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1

Dying Young

I was seventeen years old the day the bus ran me over on the first day of school. Not a great way to go, all things considered.

I promise it’s really a funny story despite all the death stuff though. Trust me on this one. It all started with the final bell ringing on the first day of school.

“I can’t believe Mr. Thompson gave us homework on our first day,” Graham said.

I shrugged. “It’s math class. We’re supposed to have homework on our first day. If you expect anything else you’re in for a rude awakening.”

Graham stared shook his head in disgust. He totally didn’t notice a girl in a poodle skirt walk through him carrying books clutched to her chest that’d been out of print for decades.

We’re talking they were old enough that they didn’t get used in any of the classes around here anymore, and that was saying something considering how the school seemed to wring every last drop of education out of their textbooks before reluctantly buying new ones.

I didn’t turn to follow her. I’d learned a long time ago how to avoid looking at the ghosts. I was the only one who could see them, after all. I’d learned years ago that I got weird looks when I watched the spirits of the dead making their way through the land of the living.

Staring at something no one else could see wasn’t good. In the interest of not being labeled as a total weirdo I’d learned early on to keep my big mouth shut.

“Yeah, but he didn’t have to be so smug about it. Like he looked at all of us as though he was daring us to say something,” Graham said.

I rolled my eyes. Graham and I had known each other for as far back as I could remember. He was in that weird space where he was always around even if I couldn’t quite think of him as a friend. Part of that was the prickliness he was showing off now. The dude was always upset about something.

“Y’know you’d be a lot happier if you didn’t get so worked up about stuff like this,” I said.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.

I hit him with a look. He blushed and looked away.

“Whatever,” he muttered. “I just think it’s ridiculous that he’s giving us homework this early in the school year.”

I sighed and hoisted my backpack. “Well on the bright side it’s the end of the day and it’s beautiful outside. Not to mention we only have one more day of classes since they started school on a Thursday!”

I was distracted for a moment by the sight of a spectral teacher floating in the back of a classroom. A ghostly teacher hanging from an invisible something in the back of that room. I shivered.

There were rumors about the teacher who’d committed suicide here a few decades back, of course. Rumors that were just that. There’d never been any official acknowledgement of the incident and there were whispers of a coverup, but the legend was passed down from student to student.

I knew it was totally true though. Talk about distracting in the middle of English class staring up and seeing the echo of someone who’d taken their life in their classroom. I couldn’t ever get any of the current teachers to talk about what’d happened. Especially not the older ones who’d been around for it.

“Yeah, that’s so stupid,” he said, because of course he’d say something like that. “Why’d they even bother? They should’ve started classes next Monday.”

I hit him with another look. Not that it did much good. He went right on complaining as though I wasn’t standing here getting frustrated listening to his griping.

He was never good at telling when someone was getting tired of his griping. Which was part of the reason why I was one of the few people to put up with him.

“Gwen!”

I smiled and turned, glad for a distraction. I saw none other than Zach, Greg, Dave, and Nicole walking up. Zach held his hand up in the air for a high five and I returned it.

More grumbling from Graham. I glanced over and saw him staring at my swim team friends with one hell of a glare, but otherwise he kept quiet.

Good. The guy could be ridiculous when it came to my friends. It’s not like it was my fault he never bothered to find friends of his own.

“Read to kick some ass this year?” Zach asked.

“You know it!” I said. “I’m totally blowing them away at sectionals. This is going to be my year!”

“Yeah, only if you keep busting your ass,” Greg said.

I stuck my tongue out and laughed. “Yeah? Those are big words from a guy who gets beat by a girl on the regular.”

They fell into step around me. Graham didn’t look all that happy about it, but whatever. It was nice to have some positivity around me.

“So did you have a good summer?” Nicole asked with a knowing smile.

This time when I rolled my eyes it was in solidarity with them and not because I was frustrated at one of my friends getting all sour and upset.

“Come on Nicole,” I said. “Is it really a good summer when you’re swimming back and forth at five in the morning?”

“That’s my idea of a good summer,” Dave said, leaning in and hitting my shoulder which was a little weird, but whatever.

“Yeah, well I guess it was my idea of a good summer too since I was crazy enough to hang out with all of you,” I said.

“That sounds horrible,” Graham said.

I stared at him blankly. He looked away again.

“Come on Graham,” I said, smiling and trying to salvage the moment even though everyone else was hitting him with weird looks. “Summer sports aren’t all that bad. And swimming isn’t too bad either. You get to see hot chicks in tight suits all summer long!”

Graham’s blush deepened. He’d always been a little weird about the fairer sex. I knew firsthand considering he’d decided he had a crush on me way back in middle school when everyone was realizing they were into the opposite sex.

The only problem for Graham was it’d been right around that time that I realized I was into the same sex. Not that I thought I would’ve ever been interested in him even if I was into guys.

“Yeah, well if it involves doing sports then it’s not for me,” he said.

We stepped out into the sunlight and I decided I was going to ignore him being a sourpuss. The day was too nice to worry about stuff like that.

Though as we stepped out into that sunlight I was greeted by the ghost of a kid dressed like something straight out of the late ‘80s or early ‘90s. I knew who this one was. Everyone knew about Greg “Shredder” Peffercorn.

Sure enough there he was doing his thing. The thing he’d loved the most in the world to hear people tell it, and the last thing he’d ever done.

He rolled out of the school and up onto a railing that didn’t exist anymore. The school removed it after Greg’s incident. He slid down the thing, a huge smile on his face, and it wasn’t until the last moment that the smile slipped as he did.

His ending couldn’t have been very dignified for all that he was supposedly pretty well liked. At least if the marker with a bunch of messages from students was anything to go by. Then again it seemed like any time someone died in high school everyone was suddenly their BFF whether or not they’d spoken in real life.

Greg wobbled. Slipped. His crotch slammed into the imaginary rail and he went crosseyed. Luckily for him, or maybe not so lucky depending on your point of view, he didn’t have long to think about the pain between his legs.

He slipped off and slammed his head against the edge of the stone stairs. At a spot where I swear there was still a slight faded brown stain. One moment he was there then he faded away.

People never seemed to realize just how little it took to end someone. I knew from personal experience, being accident prone, but I also had the example of all the echoes of untimely deaths that constantly surrounded me.

I shivered and tried to ignore it. The day was too nice and warm to dwell on the icy grip of death.

The sun beat down on us, but it was nice to be out in the heat after being stuck in the sterile school air conditioning for most of the day. I took a deep breath and smelled the delicious smells of summer and freedom.

They were still out there even though summer vacation and the freedom that came with it was gone as of about seven thirty this morning.

People streamed down the steps around us chattering about the first day. Most everyone seemed happy to be here.

That was the thing about the first day of school. It sucked to be back at school since it meant the end of summer and the end of freedom, but being back also meant being surrounded by friends again which was pretty cool.

I glanced at Graham. It was pretty cool as long as you had friends, that is.

“So are you ready for the practice to start?” Zach asked. “You’re not doing any fall sports, right? Means more chlorine.”

“You know swimming’s the only sport for me, and I’m more than ready,” I said. “I can’t wait to get back in the drink and start kicking your ass!”

Zach held a hand over his heart, but then his expression changed and he was looking beyond me rather than at me.

I turned to follow his gaze and saw the biggest distraction that’d ever confronted me since puberty hit and I realized I was into the ladies.

Stacy Arnold.

Every school has a Stacy Arnold. The perfect girl. The “hottest girl in the school.”

She hadn’t always been the hottest girl in the school of course. That honor fell to Aubrey Taylor when we were freshmen and Aubrey was a senior. After that Ashley Norris had ascended to the throne her senior year, and then last year it was Kara Thomas who ruled the school through the sheer force of all the guys who wanted to get with her and all the girls who wanted to be around her to pick up the scraps.

This year Stacy was tops, though. I liked to think I was a Stacy hipster. I’d been crushing on her since middle school. The days when she wore her cheerleader uniform to school were some of the best memories of my young life.

Heck, she was so distracting that even the dead noticed her. A group of spectral guys stood near the sidewalk in front of the buses with mops of hair that looked like something straight out of Star Wars.

Jake, Luke, and Arnold. Drinking too much before going for a drive back in the early ‘80s. It turns out wrapping a boat of a car from the ’60s around a telephone pole was a lot less survivable back then when cars weren’t designed to crumple and seatbelts were still considered optional.

They stared at Stacy and high fived each other as though they had a chance. I rolled my eyes. Guys were the same everywhere, and even death wasn’t enough to keep them from their carnal urges.

Not that I could blame them.

“Stacy!” Zach called out, holding up his hand.

I frowned. I liked Zach and all, but it wasn’t fair that he got a chance at the girl of my dreams just because he happened to be the gender she was into by default.

Damn it.

Still. I couldn’t help but be distracted by the way she swayed in her outfit. It wasn’t the cheerleading uniform, but it was distracting enough. A pair of shorts that were just long enough to satisfy the school dress code while also causing heads to turn. A tight T-shirt up top that was tucked into those shorts even though it didn’t look to me like there should’ve been any room to tuck anything in considering how tight they were.

Yeah, she was the dream, and it was dreaming about her that caused my untimely demise.

Hey, can you blame a girl? There were worse ways to go than staring at Stacy rocking a pair of tight shorts.

Unfortunately my momentary distraction distracted me all the way into the parking lot where buses were coming and going.

“Gwen! Watch out!” Dave yelled.

Huh. That was odd. It was almost enough to pull me away from my contemplation of Stacy and her distracting fashion choices. He sounded really worried about something.

A horn sounded. Loud. Right next to me. That was finally enough to pull my attention away from Stacy and I found myself staring up at something big. The word “yellow” crossed my mind, and everything went dark.

Dying on the first day of school because I was staring at a hypnotic butt in a pair of tight shorts. Talk about embarrassing, but if you’re gonna die then why not die happy?

2

The Other Side

I woke up thoroughly confused. People were staring, but they weren’t staring at me like you’d expect considering I just got up after getting hit by a bus.

I looked at the gathered crowd. There was Dave looking really worried and running almost in slow motion. Zach looked like he was torn between helping me and going after Stacy who’d noticed something going on.

I couldn’t really blame him. It would’ve been a tough choice for me too.

Jake held Nicole. Like he was trying to keep her from seeing something unpleasant. Meanwhile she looked like she was on the verge of tears.

No, scratch that. She was crying. Which seemed a little melodramatic considering I was standing right here.

Though come to think of it things looked a little weird. A little washed out. And as I looked around I suddenly realized I was seeing those reflections of people who’d passed on, but they looked a hell of a lot more substantial now than they had just moments ago.

Well shit.

And Jake, Arnold, and Luke were right there looking me up and down with an appreciation I didn’t appreciate. Just like they did every time I passed on while at the high school.

“Back again Gwen?” Jake asked. “First day of school. That has to be a new record.”

I flipped him the bird. They had that even back when they’d died. They all laughed at each other and floated over to stare down at the pavement in front of a bus that’d come to a halt right about where I’d been standing moments ago.

Crap.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Luke asked.

“Hitting the pavement was the worst part,” Arnold said, pushing his glasses up on his nose.

“Bullshit Arnold,” Jake said. “You don’t remember what it felt like to hit the pavement.”

“Says you,” Arnold said. “They had to pick you out of those power lines if I recall.”

Now it was Jake’s turn to flip Arnold the bird.

“So what do you have for us?” Luke asked. “Come on. You have to tell us something.”

I looked at them gathered around my body on the ground. Mr. Thomas the gym teacher showed up blowing his whistle, and I thought I could hear an ambulance in the distance.

An ambulance was good. The sooner the medical professionals got there the sooner they could go about covering things up. The last thing I needed was someone with a little bit of lifeguard training bending down and trying to give me the kiss of life.

First off, gross. Second off, I didn’t need them seeing that I was well and truly cold and the only thing left to do was rummage through my pockets looking for spare change, as Billy Crystal had once so eloquently put it.

“Seriously?” I asked. “My body’s still warm and you’re bothering me for that?”

“Come on,” Luke said. “You know you don’t have long before he comes.”

I glared at them. The last thing I needed was a reminder that he was coming.

“Y’know I have half a mind to tell him you guys are smarter than the average specter,” I said.

They held their hands up and went a little more translucent. As though they were trying to fade away and hide. It was a wonder they’d managed to hold out on this side for this long, but I guess they really weren’t ready to let go.

It was possible to pull a spirit that wasn’t willing to the other side, but it wasn’t exactly a picnic to hear him complain about it. Not that it’d stop him from tossing them to the other side if he knew about them.

“We stay on this side,” Luke said.

“Besides, you wouldn’t rat us out,” Arnold said.

“Not like it’d do any good,” Jake said.

The other two glared at him and I let him have his moment of boasting. As much as a ghost could boast about being a badass, which wasn’t much.

Flashing lights appeared on the other side of the bus. The professionals had arrived, and Mr. Thomas was busy herding students away from the scene of the accident. Including Stacy who was heading for the gym, though she kept turning around and looking worried.

Now wasn’t that interesting? I’d always admired her from afar. Sure we’d talked a few times. There was one semester of biology freshman year where we’d sat next to each other and I’d been in heaven. I couldn’t imagine her being that worried about me though.

It had to be your normal average freakout anyone would have after seeing someone getting flattened by a bus right in front of them.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll give you another plot point.”

They all came back into existence. They stared at me with anticipation. Like it was a wonder their tongues weren’t hanging out of their mouths panting.

“Come on,” Jake said. “Hit us with it.”

“Well Senator Jar Jar…”

“Oh come on!” Luke said. “They made that asshole a senator?”

“You’re pulling our leg. She’s pulling our leg. That guy is the worst,” Jake said.

“Look, do you want to hear what happens next or not?” I asked.

“You could just set up a tape in one of the AV rooms like you did for Phantom Menace,” Arnold said.

He’d been part of the AV club once upon a time. One of the founding members, actually. He had his own memorial, though it wasn’t nearly as popular as the one to Jake the idiot who’d slipped and killed himself, likely trying to impress a girl with enough hairspray on her skull to punch a hole in the ozone layer, on the front steps.

I wasn’t sure if that was a commentary on the way popularity worked in high school or if it was just a commentary on how spectacular the memorial was if someone was stupid enough to get themselves killed on school property while everyone was watching versus dying off campus.

“After all the bitching you guys did afterwards?” I asked. “No way. I have to prepare you before you get to see the next one.”

I didn’t bother to explain to them that I’d have to scour secondhand stores all across the county in order to even find a VHS version of Attack of the Clones. These guys still thought CDs were magic. The thought of DVDs would blow their mind, let alone Bluray or online streaming.

“So Senator Jar Jar does a continuing resolution to give Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers and…”

“And what?” Luke asked. “Come on. You can’t just leave us hanging with that!”

“Emergency powers?” Arnold said. “What idiot wrote this stuff?”

“George Lucas himself,” I said. “Trust me. The living world has as many questions as you do.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Arnold said. “I mean when you think about it…”

His eyes went wide and he faded. The others looked behind me and did the same. I sighed. Turned to see a darkness gathering on the other side of the school bus.

He was here, which meant it was time for me to get out of here. They’d have to wait until my next unfortunate death before they found out just how thoroughly Senator Jar Jar fucked over the Galactic Republic.

I turned and tipped an imaginary hat at the guys in salute, but they’d skedaddled the moment that darkness showed up. They were floating towards the gym.

It hit me what was going on. Stacy had been heading for the gym. Of course. The cheerleaders had to practice, and those horndogs were going to use their spectral status to have a look at the squad while they were changing or something.

Though to be honest I wasn’t sure if they would be able to enjoy that as thoroughly as they might if they were still among the living. The less I thought about how ghostly junk worked the better.

They did have a good idea though. So I turned from the gathering darkness on the other side of the school bus and sprinted for the school.I figured all the hullabaloo in front of the buss would give me me a little bit of time to get away from him.

I paused when I got into the school. I briefly considered that this might not be the genius idea I thought it was. The whole place was nearly empty, which I guess made sense considering it was the end of the day and everyone was trying their best to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

“Psst!”

I turned and saw Luke’s head sticking out of a wall. He grinned and motioned for me to follow. I turned and looked over my shoulder, but the darkness was still gathering around the school bus. He must think I was still out there.

That made sense. If he was going to materialize anywhere it would be at the spot where I died. That was the kind of thing his kind was usually drawn to for starters, but it wouldn’t take him longe to realize I was no longer there.

I needed to be out of sight when that happened.

I grinned and followed Luke through the wall. This was one thing I always enjoyed. That and the floating, which I always forgot I could do. I picked my feet up and moved through the wall like I was a specter myself.

I guess I got so used to walking around on my own two feet on the other side of the veil between worlds that I never stopped to think about the far more convenient ways of getting around once I’d shed my mortal coil.

“This way!” Jake said.

“Seriously though,” Arnold said. “Senator Jar Jar?”

“I mean is that really any less believable than Senator Bono?” I asked.

They all stopped and stared.

“Right, I know,” I said. “The Simpsons did that joke like two decades ago. I figured you’d appreciate it considering when you passed on though.”

“The who?” Arnold asked.

“No, not The Who,” Jake said. “She said the Simpsons. Is that some new rock band or something?”

I sighed. Reminded myself that these guys had expired just as most modern pop culture was being born. Like we’re talking right at the point where the modern blockbuster started to become a thing and pop culture as we knew it today came into existence along with modern special effects and long running primetime cartoons.

“I keep forgetting you guys were killed on the verge of some of modern pop culture’s greatest accomplishments,” I said.

“Yeah, well that’s not our fault is it?” Arnold asked.

“Actually it sort of is,” Jake said.

“Yup. Totally drank too much and got in that Delta-88,” Luke said.

“You guys are still used as a cautionary tale by the school, you know,” I said.

“Yeah, you’ve told us about it,” Luke said, looking downright depressed now.

“Oh come on you guys,” I said. “I never told you this, but they made a sequel that actually stars Luke and Leia and all your favorites!”

That perked them right up.

“Yeah? What about Han?” Arnold asked.

“Hey, so it looked like you guys were about to go do something here in the school,” I said, suddenly desperately in need of a subject change. “Why don’t I tag along?”

“Sounds good,” Luke said. “The cheerleaders were about to start practicing so we figured we’d have a look.”

“God bless whoever decided shorts should be that short in an official school capacity,” Jake said.

“But what about Han?” Arnold asked. “It worries me that you’re deflecting when I ask about Han. You did that when you didn’t want to tell us the new Star Wars movies weren’t sequels.”

“Come on guys,” I said, still in desperate need of a subject change. “Let’s go have a look and see what the cheerleaders are up to.”

It really was a pity these guys were dead, because they were pretty cool to hang out with. Not that we would’ve had an opportunity to hang out if they were among the living, but whatever.

We floated off towards the gym, Arnold pestering me the whole way for info about Harrison Ford’s career I wasn’t going to blab because that was a round of bitching that would’ve made Senator Jar Jar look tame in comparison.

3

The Fun Side of Death

“Dude! She’s coming out of the changing room!” Luke said.

“Aww man,” Jake said.

“You guys seriously watch girls in the changing room?” I asked, hitting them with a look.

They at least had the good grace to look embarrassed. I didn’t have a feeling that was going to stop them from doing what they’d been doing, but they could look embarrassed about it.

“Hey, we’re dead,” Jake said. “So what?”

“How does that even work if you’re dead?” I asked, pointedly looking down. “Isn’t everything… dead?”

“It works just fine,” Arnold said. “I think? I’ve never tried. I mean if we had someone on this side who could…”

“Ew, and no,” I said. “Not into the dudes. Don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”

“I know, and it’s totally hot!” Luke said. “I mean except where we don’t get to…”

“Whatever,” I muttered, cutting the ghostly perv off. “They’re all out of the changing room, so let’s go sit in the bleachers and watch.”

We floated over to the bleachers, and once again I found myself distracted by the beauty that was Stacy as she sashayed across the gym floor.

“It’s unfair that a girl can look that good,” I said.

“Come on,” Jake said. “There’ve been girls like her before.”

“Well yeah, but she’s the girl like that for my generation,” I said. “I’m not exactly stuck here like you guys are getting to see year after year of hotties walk the halls and not having that sound creepy because I died and stayed the same age.”

“Good point,” Luke said. “So have you thought about maybe saying something to her or something?”

“Come on man,” Jake said. “She can’t do stuff like that until she goes off to college. The girl on girl stuff is hot, don’t get me wrong, but would you want the world to know you were a fa…”

“Gonna cut you off right there Jake,” I said.

“Wha?” he asked, looking genuinely confused.

I sighed. “I’m gonna cut you some slack because of the decade you were killed in, but that’s not a cool word to say these days.”

“Oh come on,” he said. “Why wouldn’t that be a cool word to say?”

“It’s sort of like the n-word,” I said.

Though it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t know how a bunch of teenage guys from the early ‘80s would feel about that word either. I hoped it wasn’t something they’d toss around, but you never knew.

Sometimes the culture shock of talking to someone who was a teenager four decades ago when very different things were considered acceptable could be surprising.

“Sorry Gwen,” he finally said. “You know we’re not up to speed on everything.”

“Yeah, well that word ain’t cool in a world where gay people can get married,” I said.

“They what?” Arnold asked. “When did that happen?”

They sounded genuinely curious. I hated it when I dropped little bombs like that in conversation though. Updating them on everything that’d been happening in the world in the past forty years could be a pain in the ass.

“Y’know you guys might learn something if you ever bothered to haunt a library instead of the girls’ locker room,” I said.

“Yeah, but why would we ever want to haunt anything but the girls’ locker room?” Luke asked with a lopsided grin.

I rolled my eyes and went back to watching the cheerleaders. The others were pretty enough, but I only had eyes for Stacy.

She was in a tank top and a distracting pair of shorts. Like it wasn’t fair that girls could wear shorts that short as part of an officially sanctioned school event. Sure it was just a practice after school which is probably how they got away with it, but still.

If word got out about those outfits then the bleachers would be filled with people trying to get a look, is what I was getting at.

“So why don’t you say something if the world is so cool with the gay thing these days?” Luke prodded.

I turned and glared at him. He actually floated back just a little bit. I blinked. Brought it under control.

“Sorry,” I said. “I sort of lose control sometimes when I get irritated.”

“No problem,” Luke said. “Just don’t freak us or anything.”

I turned back to the gym floor.

“So?” Luke prodded.

“You’re not going to give this up, are you?” I asked.

“Well no,” he said.

“Why can’t you give it a rest?”

“Because I never got a chance to tell my girl how I felt about her,” he said, suddenly quiet. “Because you get to go back and forth and I don’t, so you still have a chance where I don’t.”

I turned and looked at him. He suddenly looked surprisingly wise for all that he was perpetually seventeen years old and a spiritual horndog.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well it’s not like we ever talked about it before,” he said. “Kinda hard to get into that stuff when most of our conversations are drip feeds about what’s happening in the latest Star Wars movies.”

I snorted. Attack of the Clones was hardly the latest Star Wars movie, but I wasn’t going to get into that considering Arnold was already irritating me with his questions about Han.

The guy had already irritated me with all his questions about the special editions making Han shoot second. The guy had a Harrison Ford obsession or something, and none of them were happy to find out that “Han shot first” wasn’t officially a thing anymore.

“The point I’m trying to make is if you like someone then you should say something. Let her know how you feel. Don’t make the mistake I made,” Luke said, his voice still quiet.

“Getting drunk to impress Kathy and wrapping your car around a telephone pole?” Jake asked, sounding surprisingly chipper for a man talking about the car accident that killed him.

Luke shot him a sharp look. “I thought we were over joking with each other about that. Besides, none of us were driving.”

Now that was interesting. They’d never said all that much about the accident that killed them, other than telling me that’s how they bought the big one. They’d certainly never mentioned that someone else was driving, but I wasn’t going to pry.

I was curious where the fourth musketeer was though. There wasn’t a chance that an accident that killed three guys in an ancient metal land boat out of Detroit would survive. Maybe it was that Kathy girl? Maybe she moved on?

Jake held up his hands. “We are man. We are. No point getting pissed off about dying for all eternity. Happens to everyone at some point.”

“Almost everyone,” I said.

They looked at me and I was made distinctly uncomfortable by those looks. They were the sort of looks that were usually reserved for kids who had booze on their person and were suddenly looking down the barrel of a flashlight some local cop was shining in their eyes as they broke up the fun.

Which wasn’t the reaction I thought my conditional immortality would get from these three. What the…

“Come on,” Jake said. “It can’t be all that bad.”

“Or maybe it is,” Luke said. “She’s bringing the fuzz down on us again!”

Ah, there it was. We weren’t talking about dying, or my inability to die, anymore. We were talking about the dark and scary guy chasing me because of my recent death.

Luke’s eyes were wide as he stared at the other end of the gym. The cheerleaders were still out there doing their thing. Right now “their thing” involved doing some sort of hypnotic dance that involved swaying their hips back and forth and bouncing. Oh the bouncing.

That was almost enough to distract me from the darkness gathering at the other end of the gym. Stacy shaking what the good Lord gave her was a huge distraction.

The kind of distraction I didn’t need right about now if he was around.

“Looks like it’s time to hit the road again gentlemen,” I said. “It’s been a pleasure.”

They hit me with mock salutes and disappeared into the bleachers. I knew if I went down below the bleachers they wouldn’t be there. I’m sure the temptation of watching the cheerleaders do their thing would almost be enough to get them to stick around, but not quite.

They knew when it was time to get the hell out of Dodge, and right about now with him on the other end of the gym was a hell of a good time to be scarce.

The darkness spread out across the gym. Tendrils of black fog reached out for me. I knew it was reaching for me. The guys were never in any danger. Not when I was here.

He wanted me, and only me.

A couple of the cheerleaders shivered as that black cloud hit them. All of them stopped the dance routine and looked around as though they sensed something terribly wrong.

That was the thing about Death coming through an area. Mortals could always sense him even if they couldn’t see the other side until they got here. Even the coach stopped yelling at them to get their asses in gear and let out a little shiver when she felt that cloud hit her.

The nice thing about being mortal and oblivious to the spirit realm was they’d probably chalk it up to a deficiency in the gym HVAC system and not to the personification of death moving through them to capture a girl who’d been stupid enough to get run over by a bus while staring at a cheerleader’s ass.

Worth it.

I wasn’t going to stick around long enough to let that cloud touch me. No, not a chance. One touch from that thing and it was game over man. Game over.

To borrow a phrase from a movie the guys wouldn’t be familiar with because they’d been dead and gone by the time James Cameron got around to making the only good sequel in the Alien franchise.

“Time to get out of here,” I muttered.

I turned and booked it out of the gym as fast as my spectral locomotion would carry me. I’d never bothered to try and figure out just how fast that was, but if I was going to keep getting chased by a reaper it occurred to me that might be a good sort of thing to know.

Also? Totally not the kind of thing I was going to sit around and try to figure out right now. It was time for a more practical test of how fast and how far I could go floating my happy ass away from the reaper chasing me.

So I floated through the locker room. Nothing interesting happening there unless you counted three horny ghosts from the ‘70s giggling and hiding in lockers.

Then I was through that and onto the other side. Out in the halls where I could move around a little more freely. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Maybe I was going to make it out of this after all. I could circle back around to the gym once he was off on a wild goose chase.

It was right about then that I felt darkness and looked down. It pooled around my feet like a flood of water, only that wasn’t water.

Shit.

4

Hunted

I broke into a dead sprint.

Okay, so not the smartest thing. I just got done talking about how I could float around independent of my feet, after all, but I also just got done talking about how I always forgot I could float around independent of my feet when I was on the other side.

Besides, I’d like to see you keep your wits about you when you’re being chased by a reaper. Imagine being chased by a giant grizzly bear or something in the land of the living and you have an idea of what it’s like being chased by a reaper on the other side.

I stumbled over a tendril of darkness and flew into a wall. I closed my eyes and let out a shriek that definitely wasn’t very dignified, but again, I’d like to see you acting dignified when you’re being chased by a reaper.

I don’t care what Blue Oyster Cult has to say on the subject or how much cowbell they put into it, shit’s terrifying yo.

I tumbled through the wall. Right. I could fly through solid surfaces when I was on the other side because they weren’t quite as solid on the other side as they were in the land of the living. I kept forgetting all the rules.

Honestly. I visited this side of the veil often enough that you’d think I’d have a healthy appreciation of all the rules at this point. Go figure.

I stumbled to my feet, then leapt into the air. I was going to float out of this situation and I was going to float out of it fast, damn it. So I moved as fast as my floating legs would take me. I moved through walls heedless of what might be on the other side.

Incidentally that meant bursting into a room where I totally saw Mrs. Marsh the biology teacher practicing a little bit of anatomy with the assistant principal.

Ugh. Talk about gross. I figured getting run over by a bus would be the worst thing to happen to me today, but I guess that just went to show that you could always be wrong about how bad things could get.

I burst out into sunlight. I blinked a couple of times. Sure the sunlight was a little washed out on this side of the veil. Everything had a sort of blueish tint to it out here that took some getting used to.

Okay. I’d been in such a hurry to get the hell away from that billowing black cloud that I’d gone completely through to the other side of the school. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I saw the football stadium off in the distance, and I figured that was as good a place to hide as any.

I floated across the parking lot at top speed. There were lots of students parked out here, and I was treated to views of several of them sucking face in the back seats of their cars.

Also? There were a couple of cars back here that totally didn’t belong. Glowing blue numbers with fins on the back and entirely too much chrome. Like a bunch of extras from an over budget drama club production of Grease had set up shop in the parking lot with some very expensive props.

Echoes of other kids who’d met their untimely demise once upon a time. Ghosts who didn’t have an aversion to cars because they hadn’t died in them, but for some reason when they created an echo in this world they’d decided that sucking face in a high school parking lot was best.

Not how I’d choose to spend my eternity, but then again it’s not like it was the worst way to spend eternity either.

I zipped through the parking lot and into the football stadium. I hit the stadium full tilt and found myself in another locker room.

I shrieked again, but this time it didn’t have anything to do with a reaper chasing me.

It had everything to do with finding myself in a “be careful what you wish for” sort of situation. I’d imagined what it would be like to be in the locker room while the cheerleaders were getting ready for their practice. I’d never anticipated that I might find myself in the middle of the football team locker room while they were getting ready for their practice.

Lots of stuff I wasn’t interested in swung in the breeze. That’s all I’m going to say on that subject.

Also? That moment of unpleasant distraction was enough to undo me.

This time the darkness didn’t curl around me like water slowly pooling in. No, it was clear he was done fucking around. This time the darkness rolled through the room like a wave.

It was interesting to watch the reaction from the football players. I could hear their conversation, but it sounded weird. Like the sound you might hear through a crappy old timey radio. Like we’re talking back in the ‘30s or ‘40s.

They were talking about shrinkage and the sudden cold. Ugh. Guys. They were like a totally different species that I totally didn’t understand.

Thankfully that darkness also covered up the views that’d been swinging in the breeze. I guess that was one plus side of being hunted down by a reaper. The darkness coalesced and formed into a figure in the usual dark robes with a scythe at his side.

Oh yeah. He wasn’t screwing around. I’d really pissed him off this time, and he was letting me know it with that classic look.

I totally wasn’t ready to give in though. That would ruin the fun. I mean he wasn’t having fun, but I was starting to enjoy the chase.

So I darted through the wall I’d just come through. I floated around the bleachers and then down to the field. It occurred to me that if I was trying to escape someone it probably wasn’t a good idea to be out in the open like this, but at the same time I knew it was useless.

I’d done this so many times before that I knew how it all worked. I knew he could zero in on the spirits of the recently departed if he wanted to.

Though sometimes he missed. The continued existence of Luke, Jake, and Arnold as actual souls in the nether world rather than echoes of souls that’d gone on to their eternal reward was proof of that.

Not that I planned on escaping the reaper for the next forty years or so. No, I planned on catching up on the latest in the Star Wars saga by sitting my butt down in the theater, thank you very much. Not by listening to secondhand retellings from someone who could pop in and out of the spirit world and the living world.

I figured I might’ve bought myself some extra time though. The darkness wasn’t surrounding me anymore. Maybe he was still stuck in that locker room, which gave me an idea.

I floated back towards the school at top speed. Back past the spectral chrome finned cars that were forever tied to the spirit world, and as far as I knew they’d continue to be tied to this spot in the spirit world well after the rest of the world had boiled away as the sun expanded and eventually destroyed the place.

Which was a bummer, but they were only echoes so its not like it mattered. As though to drive home that point something stomped in front of me and I found myself staring up at something that looked like a tyrannosaur but was a little too big. I still thought of him, or her, as Rex, but I’d looked it up and it was pretty clear this one never made it into the fossil record.

The thing looked like it had when it was alive, only glowy and blue. Like we’re talking exactly how it looked in life, which was a little unfortunate seeing one of the mightiest predators to ever walk the land, a creature that had featured in children’s nightmares for decades, looking like an oversized chicken with sharp pointy teeth.

I ignored it as the thing bellowed at me, again it sounded like someone was watching Jurassic Park on a crappy old black and white television with a single speaker that was giving up the ghost. It tried to snap at me, and it looked a bit confused as its bite went right through me.

Advantages of the spirit realm and all that.

I kept floating until I got to the high school and back to the gym. It looked like Jake, Luke, and Arnold had decided to give the place a miss, too much heat with me stirring up trouble, but then I saw the faintest hint of ghostly blue under the bleachers.

I rolled my eyes. The perverts had gone back to doing exactly what they’d been doing earlier, but they’d decided it’d be a good thing not to be discovered doing what they were doing.

I sat back down on the bleachers. Far from them. I figured when he came back I didn’t want to give them away, but I was also going to enjoy the show while I could.

Unfortunately no sooner had I sat down than a figure appeared next to me. No skeletal face this time. No robes and no scythe. No theatrical darkness to warn me he was coming, which is what told me I’d really pissed him off.

No, the reaper looked like an older guy in his mid forties looking down at me with more than a little annoyance.

His glower was the stare of someone who wasn’t angry so much as he was disappointed. I knew that’s what that look meant because I’d had it explained to me time and time again over the years. Usually right after I’d suffered an unfortunate and fatal accident.

I sighed. “Hi dad.”

5

Caught

The grim reaper, also known as dad in my household, stared at me for a long uncomfortable moment.

I suppose just about anyone would be uncomfortable having the reaper himself staring down at them. Well, one of the reapers, though mortals usually only ever met one which is where the whole myth that there can be only one came from.

Or maybe the “there can be only one” came from a cheesy Sean Connery movie my dad liked to watch for the comedy value. Anything featuring immortals or the afterlife tended to fall into the comedy category for people in his line of work.

The point is he glared at me, but it wasn’t the sort of intense “death stalks you at every turn” glare that people with more melodrama than sense liked to talk about when they felt the icy cold hand of dad reaching for them.

“You know I’m not angry with you Gwen,” he said.

“You’re just disappointed,” I finished with a roll of my eyes.

His mouth hung open and his eyes narrowed. Clearly he’d been on the verge of saying just that, and clearly he didn’t care for me talking back to him and parroting what he was about to say right back at him.

“Well yes,” he said. “That’s exactly right. I’m very disappointed in you right now. How could this happen again?”

I looked away. I mean it was one thing to know your dad was a grim reaper tasked with ferrying mortal souls to whatever eternal reward awaited them beyond even the ghost world.

It was another thing entirely to admit to him that I’d just died, again, because of something stupid like watching a pretty girl walking past and getting distracted.

He had a wall of shame for people who’d been walking and talking Darwin awards, and I didn’t want to get on that list. Even if I had sort of taken myself out of contention for a Darwin award with the whole being into girls thing.

“You don’t have to be quiet and sullen like this,” he said. “I remember what it was like when I was your age.”

“You were my age in the fifteenth century,” I said.

“The seventies and eighties are not that old,” he said. “What’s important is I remember what it was like to be your age and…”

“Can we just get this over with?” I asked. “I’d like to say hi to Harold down at the morgue. Is his daughter off at college now?”

“You act like this isn’t a big deal,” dad said.

I looked at him and shrugged. “Isn’t it? I bite it, the ambulance carts me off to the hospital, and then Harold takes care of business and forges all the appropriate paperwork. What’s not to like about that arrangement? You keep him in business and he keeps me out of trouble.”

Dad blinked a couple of times. Finally he grinned and shook his head.

“Y’know I never really thought of it that way before. I suppose I am keeping him in business,” he said.

“Can’t have a morgue without dead people,” I said.

I neglected to mention that dad wasn’t actually the one providing the impetus for people to cross over to the other side. He was just the person tasked with helping them to the other side once they’d made whatever stupid mistake put them on the other side in the first place.

If he was smiling and laughing instead of getting pissed off then I wasn’t going to do a thing to bust him out of that mood, that’s for sure.

He sighed. Some of that smile disappeared.

“You still have to understand that this isn’t exactly easy. Every time you pull something like this I have to take the time to smooth everything over with the ambulance drivers, the doctors, and Harold could get in serious trouble if they discovered what he was doing,” he said.

“If they discovered that bodies were getting up and walking out of his morgue?” I asked. “No one would believe that.”

“You’d be surprised,” he said. “There are stranger things that happen in this world, and there are people who know about our side of the world and don’t like it.”

I shivered. That was getting close to territory I’d never liked talking about. I’d heard about dad’s job over the years. Sort of like if you grow up with a cop for a dad you learn about the stress and nastiness involved in that job.

Well it was the same with me, only I’d learned how the world really worked. That there were a lot of scary things out there that people liked to pretend were mythological or long dead so they could continue living their lives.

I knew they were all real, and I didn’t like thinking about it. The worst dad had ever had to deal with was a nasty necromancer when I was a kid, and that still gave me the screaming heebie-jeebies every time I thought about it.

“Right. So in the future I make sure I’m more careful. No more dying unless it’s off in some remote area where people aren’t going to see it,” I said.

I thought back to a time I fell off the edge of a mountain while we were on a vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains. I mean it’s not like it was entirely my fault. The mountains there are barely bumps so you have kids hiking up the side of them with relative ease, and there was a part on the Mount LeConte trail where there was a bunch of loose sand people could climb on one side of the trail and a big drop on the other side of the trail.

You do the math. Apparently it completely ruined dad’s vacation, but not for the normal reasons a parent’s vacation would be ruined by their kid suddenly going off the side of a mountain.

“You just don’t get it,” he said. “You’re getting older. Things are going to start changing.”

I stared at him. “Are we really having this conversation now? Because they sort of covered that in human development back in fifth grade and…”

Dad rolled his eyes. Darkness roiled around him. That usually wasn’t good when the darkness started roiling around him.

Some parents get a stern voice when they’ve had enough of their kid’s shit. My dad started letting tendrils of his death darkness, or whatever the heck that stuff was called, coil around him like angry snakes ready to strike.

Needless to say it’d freaked me out when I was younger, but I was used to it now.

“You’re coming with me young lady,” he said. “It’s time to show you just how seriously you should be taking this.”

Something different happened this time. Usually that darkness roiled around him like angry snakes and that’s all that happened. I’d seen him use that on a runner once. A recently deceased spirit who was in a car accident right in front of us on the interstate who’d tried to run when he realized a reaper was right there waiting to take him.

It’d been one of those rare moments when I saw what it was like for my dad on the job. Understandably he didn’t like taking me along with him on the job if he could avoid it.

And now he was doing it to me. Which terrified me. He brought people through to the other side. I’d died so many times and he’d never pushed me through to the other side. I always figured he didn’t want to lose his daughter like he lost his wife, but what if I’d finally pushed it too far?

What if that big yellow bus and my trip to the gym to scope out the cheerleaders really would be the last thing I ever saw on this side of the veil?

“Dad, no!” I shouted, but it was too late.

Darkness surrounded me.

6

Between Worlds

The darkness receded. I shook my head and tried to get my bearings, but when I looked around I realized maybe I didn’t want to see wherever the heck we were.

Dad was back in his work clothes. A long flowing black robe. His body looked skeletal. His scythe was in one hand and a bony hand showed on the other, though it was more like I could see his bones through his almost transparent skin than that his hands were actual bone.

Sharp rocks jutted up from the ground all around us like a rocky skeletal rib cage, and they ran in a line towards a massive gate that glowed with a strange reddish blue light that seemed to shift as…

My mouth fell open. I’d seen the occasional ghost hanging around past its expiration date on both sides of the veil back home. I’d seen a couple of souls of the recently departed, including the guys I’d just been chatting with before dad caught me, but I’d never seen anything like this.

I stared at a river of souls moving steadily towards that gate with its constantly shifting colors. They streamed towards it. A mass of presumably recently deceased humanity of all shapes and sizes and from all walks of life. Old, young, one heartbreaking young woman carrying an infant.

I didn’t want to hear that story.

All moving towards what had to be their final reward. Dad had described it to me often enough.

“Um. You’re not pushing me through that thing, are you?”

A hand landed on my shoulder. Dad’s hand, and it looked like solid flesh rather than translucent with a spooky skeleton showing through. That was the only part of him that’d changed from his work uniform, but I guess he wanted to put me at ease here.

I wasn’t sure whether or not that was a good thing. Did he want to put me at ease because I didn’t have anything to worry about? Or did he want to put me at ease because I was about to go to the other side to have a nice meet and greet with grandma and grandpa and all my pets that’d gone on before me?

“Look at the River of Souls,” he said.

I stared at the mass of death. You can hear statistics about how many people are going on to their final reward at any given moment and how it’s a massive number simply because the population is so huge right now, but it was another thing entirely to see that mass of people moving before me.

I looked off towards the front of the line. Oddly enough I could see the gate clearly even though it was pretty far away. That was fine with me. I wanted the thing to stay nice and far away from me.

The people going through that gate were a study in differences. I could see them clearly even though they were far away too. Weird, that.

To me the gate looked like more of the creepy black rock arching up into the darkness to create the gate with the glowing center, sort of like a forcefield on the old Star Trek with Kirk and Spock, but clearly the people going through that gate were seeing something different.

An old woman approached the gate and looked up at the thing as though she was terrified of whatever she saw there. I mean the black rock was pretty fucking creepy, but I don’t know if it was worth the terror clear on her face. She started screaming and trying to get away, but the force of souls pressing against her carried her through.

Another man looked up at the gate with pure joy. He was right behind the woman, and the differences couldn’t have been more obvious. He was looking at whatever was beyond that gate like it was the most wonderful thing ever, and he had a huge smile on his face as he stepped through without an obvious care in the world.

“Well that was a weird reaction,” I said.

Dad was looking in the same direction I was. He shook his head.

“What do you see when you look at that gate?” he asked.

“I see a bunch of creepy black rocks surrounded by a starry darkness up above. There’s a weird glow like something out of Star Trek in the middle and people are floating through it,” I said.

“You’re sure?” he asked. “No pearly gates? No fiery gate to something nasty?”

“Well yeah, why wouldn’t I be sure?” I asked. “I mean if I saw pearly gates or hellfire and damnation I’m pretty sure I’d be able to tell the difference. The thing looks like a Star Trek set with slightly higher production values.”

“That’s the same thing I see when I look at the gate,” he said with a slight smile. I wasn’t sure if that was for what I saw there or because I couched it in terms of Star Trek, which we’d watched together when I was little. “I intentionally never told you what that gate looks like to me.”

“What’s the big deal?” I asked.

“Ask any of those people and they’ll see their eternal reward in that gate,” he said. “Some see pearly gates that open up onto fluffy clouds in a blue sky. Others see black gates with fires beyond. There was a time when there were a lot of people getting routed to the Elysian fields, but that hasn’t been seeing nearly as much business in the last thousand years or so. Mostly teenagers who were being smartasses with their eternal souls and realized too late just how serious it was. Not that the Elysian fields are a bad place to spend your eternity.”

I stared. I didn’t see any of that. I just saw the same thing dad did. The same thing…

“The same thing a reaper would see,” I said.

Up ahead someone broke free from the River of Souls. Huh. I guess I didn’t know that was an option.

The soul was that younger woman I saw with the infant. I found myself silently cheering her on even though I didn’t see any way she could escape.

She reached the edge of the river. No one reached out to stop her. Her eyes darted around, frantic, and it looked odd in a pure soul that was mostly glowing blue like something out of Star Wars or Ghostbusters or something.

Something moved up above. My eyes were drawn to the movement. Something was up there on top of the spires. I blinked. More reapers stood up there in their work clothes. They silently swooped down on the woman who fell to her knees screaming and begging for them to give her and her baby a second chance.

It didn’t matter. One picked her up gently. Cradled her in its arms. I couldn’t tell if it was a he or a she considering all reapers looked the same when they were in their work clothes with black cowls that covered their faces.

Still, there was a surprising gentleness as the reaper carried the woman and her baby to the gate and placed her in front of it. She sobbed against the reaper for a moment, but whatever that reaper said to her seemed to make her feel a little better.

As good as someone could feel about dying in childbirth, that is.

The woman turned and looked up at the gate. Smiled down at her child, though the closer they got to that gate the more my eyes were playing tricks on me, because it seemed less like a baby in her arms and more like a fully grown man standing beside her with his arm around her shoulder.

They stepped through together. The massive gate glowed blue for a moment, short enough that I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been watching at the exact moment the woman stepped through, and then it was over.

The reaper who’d been down there talking to the woman stood for a moment with head bowed, then floated back up to its perch where it stood watching the river with scythe held out as a warning to anyone else who might try to get around the natural order of things.

“Damn,” I breathed. “This place is intense.”

“This place is intense,” a voice said. “And the fact that you can see the same thing your father can…”

I jumped and turned around. A reaper stood behind me. An older man with white at his temples and a smile that unsettled me slightly. I felt my father tense next to me.

“I expect we’ll see interesting things from you in the future, Gwen,” the man said.

My dad immediately got down onto one knee. I didn’t, which earned me an irritated look from dear old dad, but I figured it was too late to go back now. Besides, I didn’t know who this guy was or why I should be taking a knee for him.

I licked my lips. “Who are you?”

“Gwen,” my father said, his voice strained which made me more nervous than anything else that’d happened so far. “Meet Death. The Death.”

The man smiled and nodded ever so slightly. My dad rose at that nod. Meanwhile I felt a chill that ran down to the marrow of my bones. Dad had talked about the big boss before, of course, but I’d never met the man. The Grim Reaper. Not a reaper.

“You’ve caused us quite some trouble over the years,” Death said. “But then again all of us cause trouble if we have the gift. Death comes to reapers. Embraces them like an old friend whether they want it or not, though it makes for an awkward childhood.”

“You’re saying I died a lot because I’m like my dad?”

“Perhaps,” Death said. “I expect interesting things from you, as I said.”

Death let the implication hang in the air. Not that there was much he needed to do beyond let that implication hang there. Dad had been telling me about his job long enough that there was one thing I understood more than anything else.

The job was only for a special kind of person. A person who had the “right stuff,” which in this case meant a person who had the power to see through the veil between worlds. Or the kind of person who got killed and came back without turning into a zombie or vampire or any of a number of undead things lurking out there in the world.

That I was looking at our surroundings and seeing a river of souls surrounded by a bunch of rocks rather than the eternal reward that awaited all mortals who eventually came through this place told me I wasn’t a mortal.

“Damn,” I breathed. “You really think?”

Dad sighed. Death smiled, a sad smile, and put a hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“I really do think,” he said.

I looked at my dad. An accusing stare. He shrugged. “I never said anything before, but the fact that you’re able to come back despite being so accident prone told me everything I needed to know even when you were younger.”

I looked up at him and blinked a couple of times in surprise. “You’re serious? You knew about this years ago and you didn’t say anything?”

“Well I didn’t want to burden you with it before it was time,” he said. “Honestly I was terrified you’d ask me why you kept going back to your body after getting hit with something that’d kill anyone else.”

“I figured it was nepotism,” I said.

Death laughed. Dad frowned. I knew that wasn’t something he liked to even joke about. Especially considering our home situation.

“I mean I figured maybe the bond between father and daughter was stronger than man and wife or something like that,” I muttered.

“It was something like that,” he said. “You’re one of us. Whether you like it or not, it looks like you’re going to be going into the family business someday.”

I looked out at the bleak rock surrounding us. Maybe this did look different for all the mortals going through, but I can’t say I liked the idea of suddenly discovering that I was going to go into the family business whether I liked it or not.

“Do I at least get to go to college first or something?” I asked.

Dad chuckled. “Well yeah. I went to college. Not like I needed the degree, but it’s a good way to get some life experience and that’s something you’re going to need when you start this job.”

I sighed. “I don’t like this place.”

“I don’t like it either, but that doesn’t make what we do any less important,” Death said.

“Really? You don’t like this place?”

“It isn’t very friendly, is it?” he asked. “Not for us, at least.”

“No,” I said. “No, not at all.”

I could understand why most reapers spent their time out in the real world. Finding souls of the recently departed and ferrying them to the other side. It was a lot more pleasant than this dreary place, for all that it involved being around the recently departed and all the moping and sadness involved.

“Can we go back now? I think I’d rather be on the slab at the morgue than here thinking about all these people dying and moving on.”

“You’ll get used to it given enough time,” dad said. “But for now yeah, I think your first look at the gate is probably enough for now. Let’s go.”

“We’ll be seeing you Gwen,” Death said. Not a pleasant parting word considering who it came from.

7

The Morgue

I blinked a couple of times as I stepped out of the darkness and found myself surrounded by the comforting familiar surroundings of the morgue.

I know. There aren’t a lot of people out there who’d think the morgue was a comforting place. What can I say? I’d been here often enough over the years that it was familiar.

I guess the whole comfort with the dead and dying thing should’ve been my big tipoff that something weird was going on with the way my brain was wired, but I never gave it a second thought until now.

I moved past Harold. He looked up and gave me a nod as I floated through. I’d never stopped to think about how odd it was that a mortal could see me in this form before, but now that dad and Death gave me the whole speech about seeing things that mortals couldn’t it occurred to me that no mortal should’ve been able to note my passing through the spirit realm.

“Back for another visit Gwen?” a disapproving voice sniffed.

Mrs. Reynolds popped her head out of the line of cold storage units where the bodies were kept until they were sent on to their funeral parlor or crematorium of final destination.

“Still hanging out with the stiffs Mrs. Reynolds?” I asked.

“You know she’ll never change her ways,” Harold said.

I looked over to the current coroner. Honestly this place wasn’t all that busy for all that his job was a full time job. My dad alway said it was nice work if you could get it. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

“I can’t help it that they remodeled this place and moved my desk,” Mrs. Reynolds said. “And I’m not going to change now just because they remodeled and added this fancy cold storage. When I did this we didn’t have refrigeration!”

“I know,” Harold said. “If you wanted to keep bodies on ice you had to walk ten miles in the snow uphill both ways collecting the snow to keep them refrigerated.”

“Actually no,” she said. “We just got them out of here as quickly as we could and that’s the way we liked it. There were no ridiculous notions like you kids these days have. Honestly. Thinking you can solve a murder with…”

“Uh-huh, that’s nice Agnes,” Harold said, going back to his game and clicking away.

He was playing one of the classics tonight. Not that he had any choice. Some 2D game where he clicked around the screen to get a little character to move around. I’d never been much of a gamer so I couldn’t tell you what it was, but it looked old.

Then again with the government issue computer he was playing on I guess any game he was going to play was going to have to be old.

“Am I in the usual spot?” I asked.

“You know it Gwen,” Harold said. “I even kept your clothes on.”

I blushed as I remembered the first time I’d woken up in the morgue sans any clothes. Talk about embarrassing. A body bag was not my idea of high fashion, and I’d screamed my head off until my dad showed up with some clothes for me to change into.

“Thanks,” I said. “Were they very bad?”

“The usual,” Harold said. “There was a tire track on you this time around, looks like the bus was trying to stop when it ran you over, but otherwise you should be good as new.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I floated over to the cold storage. They looked like filing cabinets running from the floor to the ceiling. I was on the bottom row at the far left which made it easier for me to get out. Harold had even installed special handholds so I could push myself out.

“Honestly I don’t understand how a young girl like you can get yourself into so much trouble,” Mrs. Reynolds said.

“I guess it’s a bad habit,” I said with a shrug.

“Yes, well when I was a young woman we didn’t get in the kind of trouble you get yourself in,” she said with a sniff.

“Stuff it you old bat,” Harold said. “Back in your day people got run over by horse drawn carts and thrown from horses and killed by factory accidents and unsafe working conditions all the time. You just had the good fortune to last well into your eighties despite all the things that could kill you back then.”

Agnes sniffed again to let him know exactly what she thought about that. I wondered what it would be like to work with someone who was so obviously annoying and who wouldn’t ever go away.

I slipped into the cold storage. I didn’t even scream as I found myself face to face with an older woman who’d obviously passed recently. I’d done this so many times that I was used to it, after all.

“Nice try Agnes,” I said.

“I had nothing to do with that this time,” she said.

“Oh, sorry about that,” Harold said, his voice slightly muffled because I was on the other side of the metal. “Forgot I had her down there. You were sort of a surprise today.”

“Aren’t I always a surprise?” I asked.

I stooped down and found myself staring at my body. There were a few bruises on my face and there was a spot down the middle where it was obvious a giant tire had run me over.

My face twisted in distaste. Yeah, that would’ve hurt if I’d been around to experience it. Probably a good thing for yours truly that it’d been a quick end.

“This is going to hurt,” I said.

“Sorry,” Harold said.

“Serves you right for getting in that kind of trouble in the first place,” Agnes said with another sniff.

“I could really do without the judgment Agnes,” I said.

I looked down at my body and took a deep breath. This was never fun. For most people it hurt when they were dying, but I was one of the few people in this world who was unlucky enough to deal with the pain on both ends.

Still, there was nothing for it. It was either deal with the pain or go on living in the spirit world having conversations about Star Wars with dudes who’d made bad decisions back in the ‘80s or listening to Agnes gripe at me about some of the life choices I’d made that led to my death.

Yeah, next to that the pain of resurrection wasn’t all that bad. So I dove into my body. It’s the only way to describe it.

My eyes flew open and I groaned in pain. The feeling of my body repairing itself as my spirit came back was never pleasant. I’d never given a second thought to it until today, but I guess it was weird that I pulled a Wolverine every time I went back to my body.

Yeah, not the kind of thing a normal person with a normal spirit/body relationship could pull off.

I bit my lip and tried to think about anything but the pain of my body repairing itself, and then it was done. I gasped a couple of times and concentrated on breathing while I wondered if that was maybe what it felt like for the poor bastards I’d read about who went into surgery and were awake the whole time because the anesthetic hadn’t worked.

The only problem was there were no handles in here. Of course there weren’t. Some old lady was in my spot, though it was beyond me why Harold would put anyone in my spot considering there were plenty of openings in this place.

I kicked the door a couple of times. Light filled my slot and I slid out. Harold smiled down at me apologetically.

“Sorry,” he said. “I really need to stop putting people in your spot.”

“You’ve got that right,” I growled.

I looked around. Harold’s game was paused or something. Agnes was still a hazy blue glow around the edges of some of the cooling units because she refused to move where she pretended to do her work. Her desk had been in that spot in life and she wasn’t moving in death.

She was another one who seemed to be a full spirit rather than an echo of someone else who’d passed to the other side. At least she was one of the few on this side of the veil that I could have a conversation with.

I’m sure Harold would’ve preferred it if she went on to her eternal reward considering the mouth she had on her.

I stood and brushed myself off. There were a few twigs and leaves that had been ground into my clothes, and there was going to be no fixing this outfit.

Which was a shame. This was my back to school ensemble and I’d spent a lot of time putting it together thank you very much. A damn shame.

“Anything else I need to do here?” I asked Harold.

“Nope. You’re free to go. Tell your dad I said hi,” he said with a dismissive wave, never looking up from his game that he’d returned to while I was looking around.

Yeah. Good work if you could get it.

I glanced over to Agnes, but there were no words of kindness or encouragement coming from her. Not that there ever were. Not that I was surprised she was being just as sour now as she’d been on the other side.

I took a deep breath. Time to go back into the world of the living, only there was something about it that felt different now that I knew what I knew about my place in the family business.

8

Back to School

The looks were the thing I hated the most about coming back from the dead. I could tell the moment I walked down to the corner and saw Graham staring with his mouth open that this was going to be one of those days.

“You’re going to catch some flies with that thing,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said. “But you got run over by a bus yesterday. They took you off in an ambulance. You looked very dead. How are you here?”

“I just bounce back I guess,” I said.

I’d become a pro at making up plausible sounding reasons for my survival. It was always easier when my accidents happened somewhere other than our hometown. After all, if the mysterious death and resurrection happened at a vacation destination on the other side of the country it was easier for people to convince themselves they hadn’t seen what they thought they saw.

It was a little more difficult when I was around people I’d known my whole life. Like the time I fell into the bear enclosure at the zoo on a school field trip and they’d had to concoct some story about me being a miracle survivor.

There’d been rumors that I was a secret bear whisperer or something that went around after that, but I think most everyone had forgotten that incident by now. At least the people my age. I’d even been bullied about falling into the bear enclosure until I turned that bear whisperer stuff around and threatened to sic my furry friends on the people bullying me.

“Seriously Gwen,” Graham said. “I saw them load you into the ambulance and put a black bag over you. Like they zipped it up and everything. They don’t do that if someone is doing fine after an accident.”

I forced a smile. It was difficult. I wanted to track down those idiots in the ambulance and smack them. They should’ve known better than to zip me up in a black bag where people could see.

They were supposed to make it look like they were working on me and I had a chance no matter how dead I was. That made it easier to explain why I was suddenly amongst the living a day or two later. Maybe they were a rookie crew or something who didn’t know the ropes.

Maybe I should’ve stayed home for more than a day to make it seem more plausible that I was in recovery.

“Well they must’ve been wrong or you must’ve been seeing things,” I said. “Because I’m alive and well in front of you now. They wouldn’t be putting me in a body bag if I’m standing here in front of you now, right?”

It was flimsy logic. He could probably poke holes in it if he wanted to. He could probably make some trouble if he kept asking the wrong questions. I didn’t want him to keep asking those sorts of questions, because that would result in a visit from dad or some of the other reapers who covered up weird death anomalies, and I didn’t want that to happen to a friend. Well, a guy who hung around me. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call Graham a friend.

Instead he stared at me with a weird look for a moment and then shrugged. I could handle weird looks. I was used to weird looks.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” he said.

Well then. That was a surprise that he went along with it, but I’d take it.

We walked on in silence which was unusual. Usually he had something to talk about. Sure most of the time these days he was going on about how much he hated everyone at the school which wasn’t exactly engaging conversation, but it was something.

The silence now was eerie.

“So…” I said.

Only Graham had stopped. He was looking up, which was odd in a town without much elevation. I followed his gaze, then shivered when I realized exactly where he was looking.

“I don’t understand why you’re so obsessed with this place,” I said.

Graham just stared. It was like he didn’t realize I’d just talked to him. He was off in his own little world.

I looked past the wrought iron fence to the small forest beyond that rose to the only hill in town worth the name and ended with an old mansion that looked like it should be right next to the definition of “haunted house” in the dictionary. I could understand why he was so transfixed.

The place gave me the creeps. The Thomas Mansion could be seen from just about everywhere in town because it occupied the highest real estate in town. A mound that looked like a foothill.

At least it would’ve been a foothill if we lived in a state where there was that kind of elevation. Around here the glaciers had flattened everything out thousands of years ago before melting into the great lakes so it was a little odd to see something that big.

There were rumors that it was actually an ancient Native American burial mound. A creepy old mansion on top of an old mound ground would be creepy enough, but I knew the truth.

There was a good reason to think the place was creep central. It’d been the home of a nasty necromancer once upon a time. The kind of asshole who looks at death and says “No thanks, I think I’ll try to get around you if you don’t mind.”

Dad spent a lot of time taking care of that asshole, and the stories he told of his fight that happened right after I was born were enough to chill me to the bone. Especially because a reminder of that fight floated around our house to this day, refusing to go to the other side.

“How can you not love that place?” Graham asked, his voice quiet as though he wasn’t really asking me specifically so much as he was thinking out loud.

“Um, are you talking to me or are you doing that creepy talking to yourself thing again?” I asked.

“There’s so much power there,” he whispered.

That was worth a look. That was the sort of thing that a bad guy would say in a cheesy book or movie or something. Or the sort of thing someone who knew about a necromancer living there once upon a time might say.

“What are you talking about Graham?” I asked, my voice suddenly sharp.

That sharpness must’ve been enough to finally pull him out of whatever spell the place had put over him. He shook his head and turned back to me. Hit me with a sheepish grin.

“Sorry,” he said. “I guess I get distracted when I look at that place.”

“You’ve got that right,” I said. “Now what were you talking about? What power?”

Was my voice a little more harsh than it should’ve been? Maybe, but if he knew about the necromancer that used to live up there before dad dragged the asshole kicking and screaming to his eternal reward…

“I mean look at the place,” Graham said, gesturing past the now out of control woods that’d grown up around it since it’d been abandoned. “Whoever built that place had to have some real money once upon a time. Why wouldn’t you want to live in a place like that? It’d mean you’ve made it!”

“You’re nuts if you think that’s what that means,” I said. “Living in that place just means you’d be buying a new boat for whatever contractor was lucky enough to convince you to use him to fix it up. That place is probably rundown and full of rats and other nasty things.”

“Yeah, but you could clean that up and it would look amazing,” Graham said, his voice taking on a worshipful quality that made it clear he wasn’t listening to anything I said.

Oh well. At least he wasn’t getting a hard on for that place because he thought it’d be neat to be a necromancer or anything. He obviously didn’t know that bit of the house’s history.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You should really watch this documentary I saw on something like that once. They called it The Money Pit. Or another documentary on a house like that called Poltergeist.”

Graham flipped me the bird. Well then. Talk about rude, but I was used to that from him.

We walked on in silence for awhile after that. There wasn’t much to say after he went on and on about how he wanted to live in the single most haunted house in the whole city.

Talk about creepy.

“So what happened when they took you to the hospital?” Graham asked as we got closer to the school.

I turned and eyed him with suspicion. I almost wished we could go back to the silence if this is what he wanted to talk about.

“Um. They took me to the ER and gave me a once over,” I said.

“Huh,” he said.

A few more steps in silence, but it was too much for me. Or maybe I was annoyed at him because he was talking about a necromancer’s house like it was a big deal.

“Is there something wrong Graham?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you were so busy chatting with those idiots that you weren’t watching where you were going and something bad happened to you?”

“What are you even talking about?” I asked. “I was distracted because Stacy walked by. Not because I was chatting with my friends.”

“Well maybe you should’ve been talking to a real friend instead of worrying about them,” he said. “Did you ever think of that?”

I sighed. And here we were back to the perpetual argument we always had. The argument that made me think maybe it’d be a good idea to drop Graham entirely, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it because we’d known each other for so long.

“You’re being ridiculous Graham,” I said. “I can have other friends, and it wasn’t their fault that I got knocked over by a bus.”

“It was more than knocked over,” he grumbled. “You don’t know what I do for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

He glanced at me. Glared at me, is more like it. Not for the first time I found myself wondering why I didn’t drive to school rather than walking. Then I wouldn’t see him at the end of the street and I wouldn’t have to put up with this grumbling.

But I felt bad for the guy. I guess that’s why I kept coming back. I felt like maybe there was a part of him that could come back and be the happy person he’d been a few years ago before middle school.

If only he’d get over himself and stop being his own worst enemy when it came to social situations.

“Nothing,” he finally growled, looking away.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

Blessedly the silence this time was more permanent as we didn’t say another word to each other the rest of the short way to school.

9

Walk Home

“Gwen!”

I smiled and turned to see Zach coming down the hall with Greg and Nicole close behind. They had huge grins on their faces and it was nice to see someone who was happy to see me recovered for a change.

Most of the people who’d been around for the accident had been giving me weird looks for the past few weeks. The others who’d heard the rumors I’d been killed looked at me like I was a zombie or something.

I mean I guess on some level that was sort of true? I didn’t think a reaper counted as a member of the undead, but I couldn’t be sure. I’d never seen it brought up by dad or anything and it was never a feature in any of those creepy monster shows they broadcast on cable channels that were supposed to be teaching about history.

“How’s it going?” I said with a grin of my own.

“Better now that we’re seeing you alive and well!” Greg said. “Talk about your all time amazing recoveries. Have you heard the rumors you died and came back?”

“Totally amazing,” Nicole said with a roll of her eyes. “The poor girl has been hearing it from everyone. Give it a rest Greg.”

I blushed and looked down. I hadn’t had to explain myself all that much over the past few weeks. Most people took the zombie rumor to heart and gave me a wide berth.

I knew it’d stop being so weird given enough time, but the thing was that could take half a year or something which was an eternity in high school time. Basically I’d just screwed over the first half of my senior year by not watching where I was going staring at Stacy’s ass on the first day of school.

“Oh you know,” I said. “Those injuries aren’t ever nearly as bad as everyone makes them out to be!”

I totally wasn’t dead and then came back because my dad is a grim reaper. That’s what I wanted to shout, but I figured that’d sound too suspicious.

“Not nearly as bad?” Nicole asked. “You had a bus tire on top of you.”

“I mean you can have heavy stuff on you and people get out of it all the time. Haven’t you ever seen those videos of construction workers getting under those massive dump trucks they roll around or something?”

I thought I’d seen something like that once upon a time. I should’ve looked up a video or something before I used that line of reasoning to explain why I was alive and well instead of still cold in the morgue.

Whoops.

“I guess,” Nicole said.

“I mean you’re obviously alive and well now, so whatever,” Zach said. Then he smiled a knowing smile. “By the way. Are you still keeping quiet about exactly why you almost got sent to the great beyond by a big yellow school bus?”

This time I didn’t have to fake the blush. These guys knew entirely too much about me, and now it was showing. Nicole had a knowing grin of her own, and Greg was looking down like he couldn’t believe Zach had actually brought this up.

“I think you know exactly why I was distracted enough to walk in front of a bus you jerk,” I said. “Lucky jerk, is more like it. Getting a girl like Stacy to give you the time of day.”

“Yeah, well what can I say? I’m irresistible to women!” Zach said with a grin.

An even worse torture over the past couple of weeks than having everyone in school looking at the weirdo zombie girl who rose from the dead? Watching Zach getting up close and personal with Stacy. Sure it’d been nice because she’d been at our lunch table which had also been awkward because I totally shut down in her presence, but seeing her with Zach still hurt.

It was a reminder that the hottie cheerleader who was going on about getting ready for homecoming wasn’t going to the homecoming dance with me, thank you very much. Too bad. So sad. Plight of the gay kid and all that.

At least that was a halfway normal problem next to all the zombie girl rumors. A good old fashioned rumor that I was closeted might be preferable.

“I know what you mean,” I said, which got a weird look from all of them since they knew I was into the ladies. “Every time I look at you hanging all over her I can’t resist the urge to hurl!”

We stepped out of the front door and into the light. Again I was treated to the sight of the same old Tony Hawk wannabe grinding down a metal railing that no longer existed and doing his last face plant ever. Meanwhile off in the distance a girl in a poodle skirt walked across the grass looking severely depressed for some reason.

I looked at all of those echoes of kids who’d died while they were in school then come back to haunt the one world they knew and shivered. Before I’d always assumed I could see those echoes all the time because my father was a reaper. I thought maybe some of whatever it was he did rubbed off on me or something.

Now I knew the truth. It was the family connection, all right, but not in a way I would’ve thought.

“Come on Gwen,” Zach said, a hand slapping me on the back a little harder than I would’ve preferred. “It’s not that bad. Just try not to look at them.”

I turned and eyed him. Surely he couldn’t have any idea that I was looking at a bunch of ghosts and thinking about how I shouldn’t be able to see them. He grinned and pointed off in the distance.

I followed his hand and blushed. Right. He was talking about the big yellow school buses, one of which had almost ended me a couple of weeks ago. Not the ghost teenagers walking around the green in front of the school.

“Very funny Zach,” I said.

I felt something tug at my arm and turned to see Graham staring at me. Intensely. He hadn’t looked at me with that sort of intensity since a middle school dance when he’d confessed his love and I’d had to let him down as gently as possible without confessing an interest in the ladies I wasn’t quite ready to admit to the world.

“Are you seriously hanging out with these jerks?” he whispered loud enough that they could obviously hear him. “He just made fun of the fact that you were run over by a bus!”

Zach gave him a weird look, but it wasn’t an unpleasant look. More confused than anything. Which was how a lot of people reacted to Graham.

“Zach isn’t making fun of me,” I said, pulling my arm away. “That’s just how we joke with each other. Right Zach?”

I turned to him and grinned. He grinned right back at me and gave me a thumbs up to show there were no hard feelings.

“See?” I asked. “Not everything negative someone says is necessarily a bad thing. You have to learn how to read the situation.”

“Whatever,” Graham grumbled, shoving his hands in his pocket and kicking a bit of stray asphalt that’d been kicked up from the parking lot.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. There was no getting through to this guy. He was in a prison of his own making, and he couldn’t see it.

“Come on Gwen,” Dave said. He stepped up to the other side of me and cast a protective eye towards Graham. “We need to get going.”

“We need to get going?” I asked.

“Well yeah,” he said. “You have to get home, don’t you?”

“I’m confused,” I said. “I mean yeah, I have to get home, but what does that have to do with any of you?”

“It has everything to do with us today,” Nicole said with a grin. “After what happened Dave wanted to make sure you got home safe, so we’re all walking you home.”

“Yup. Where Nicole goes I go,” Greg said with a shrug. “So if Dave insists on walking you home then that’s what we do.”

I looked at Zach and he shrugged with another one of those characteristic grins he always seemed to have plastered on his face. Like he didn’t have a concern in the world.

Or like he was planning something.

“Listen guys,” I said, shooting a quick glance to Graham who looked even more annoyed. “I’m flattered that you want to do that for me, but…”

“Hey! Stacy!”

Two words that pulled me away from whatever it was I was about to say. Two words that had me dumbstruck like an idiot. Two words that had my head whiplashing around in the direction Zach was pointing.

Because walking towards us was none other than Stacy. And for a wonder she didn’t seem to be heading into the gym for practice. Did they not have practice on Fridays?

Of course she was coming over to see Zach. Sure they weren’t officially dating or anything, but with the way they were always chatting and putting their heads together I figured it was only a matter of time.

“Hi Zach!” she said, walking over and giving him an awkward little side hug.

“You ready to go?” he asked.

“She’s going with us?” I asked.

“Her?” Graham asked. “The cheerleader?”

“Our friend,” Zach said. “And yeah, she’s going with us.”

“If you’ll have me along,” Stacy said, looking at me and smiling the kind of smile that could knock someone on their ass. I wondered if she knew what she was doing with a smile like that.

“Don’t you have practice?” I asked, even as my mouth wondered why the hell I was so intent to have her not come with us.

“Nothing on Friday,” she said. “And we have a Saturday game this weekend so I’m totally free tonight!”

“Don’t mind Stacy here,” Zach said. “She’s been so busy getting ready for homecoming next week that she needed a break. Figured she could walk you home too.”

I wouldn’t mind if Stacy walked me home. Just her and me, come to think of it. None of the rest of the group. Though I didn’t think that was going to happen.

“I mean I figured you wouldn’t mind Stacy tagging along,” Zach continued with a wink that, thankfully, Stacy couldn’t see.

I tensed. I wondered if he was about to go revealing secrets I really wouldn’t care for him to reveal to Stacy. It’s not that I really cared about the whole into girls thing getting out. Next to being the daughter of a supernatural being who shuttled souls from the land of the living to their eternal reward that sort of thing seemed like small potatoes.

No, this was plain old fashioned not wanting a crush to be revealed because I figured I’d die from embarrassment. Particularly since it was obvious Zach was the one who had the in with Stacy. Not me.

The jerk.

“She’s still a little loopy. Got run over by a bus a couple of weeks ago,” Zach said.

“I know,” Stacy said. “You poor thing. That must’ve been terrifying!”

She surprised me by stepping forward and wrapping her arms around me in a hug. A hug that, not gonna lie, felt really good. It was the kind of hug I could get lost in, and I found myself wrapping my arms around her and enjoying it, even if it was a surprise.

“So we’re all ready to go?” Zach asked, clapping his hands together.

“Totally!” Nicole said. Greg nodded and wrapped an arm around her.

“You guys don’t have to walk me home,” I said.

“But I thought…” Stacy started, and Zach elbowed her in the side.

Weirder and weirder. Almost as weird as the way she looked at me after that hug. I figured she might’ve had some macabre fascination with the zombie girl, but was that interest there?

No, that couldn’t possibly be interest.

“Nonsense,” Dave said, putting an arm around me which made me just a little uncomfortable. It suddenly occurred to me that he was definitely showing some interest which I didn’t need right now. “We want to make sure you get home safe with no more unfortunate bus incidents, after all.”

One look at all of them was enough to tell me most of them were going along with this ridiculous scheme whether I liked it or not. Whatever the scheme was. I was pretty sure it wasn’t walking me home.

Damn it.

All of them but Stacy. She looked at the school and then back to me.

“Good, it’s settled then,” Zach said. “We’re walking Gwen home, and that’s that.”

And with that we were off. For a surprise Graham even grumbled then fell into line and no one asked him to leave.

This was going to be an interesting walk home for sure. Assuming that was even what we were doing.

10

Dare

I probably should’ve realized some bad shit was going down the moment Zach got a look at the old Thomas mansion.

“That place is seriously so creepy awesome,” Zach said.

“Says you,” Graham muttered.

I turned to Graham. “Come on. Weren’t you the one going on about how great this place was this morning?”

Graham blushed. Obviously he didn’t like being caught out agreeing with one of the jocks he seemed to hate so much. Clearly he was disagreeing with them for the sake of disagreeing and being, well, disagreeable.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Dave said. “It’s just an old mansion.”

“That’s right,” I said, desperately wanting to change the subject. “It’s just an abandoned old mansion.”

“Oh come on,” Zach said. “You sound like you’re actually afraid of the place or something. You know those old stories are just stories, right?”

I looked into the thick woods surrounding the place. At least as thick as a woods could grow in the decade or so since the necromancer had been taken out. Though it was already wooded around the mansion to begin with, so the trees had a head start.

As I watched those trees I saw a faint blue glow coming from between them. That glow resolved to a little girl floating along listlessly. She wasn’t skipping or playing or doing anything that might indicate she was a reflection of a poor soul that’d met an untimely end and left an echo behind.

No, she floated through the air with her head lolling to the side. Everything about her looked off. Like she was on the property of a former necromancer who’d done something terrible to her before she passed on.

Nothing good could’ve happened to the spirits of the dead if they were on a necromancer’s former haunt.

“Maybe there’s a good reason to be afraid of this place,” I said. “Maybe there’s a good reason people stay the fuck away from it.”

“I agree with Gwen,” Nicole said.

She took a step closer to Greg and he didn’t seem to mind. He put an arm around her and held her tight.

“It’s okay babe,” he said. “There’s nothing in there that can hurt you.”

I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself. Nothing in there that could hurt her? Yeah, right. That was a likely fucking story, but it’s not like I could tell them that there really were scary things in there that went bump in the night.

Not without revealing a little too much about me and my family, at least.

“Are you sure about that?” Graham asked.

I turned to my friend and found myself wondering what the heck he’d been smoking. Because he looked genuinely afraid of the place. Which was a huge difference from how he’d been acting earlier.

“What happened to being all gung ho about going up there?” I asked. “What happened to that place being a symbol of power or whatever it was you said it was?”

Graham shot me another dirty look. There was a surprise. Sure he was in the habit of hitting anyone he didn’t like with a dirty look, but this was the first time he’d used something like that on me since, well, this morning I guess.

“You don’t have to be a jerk about this,” he hissed.

“I don’t know,” Stacy said. “I always thought the place looked kind of cool.”

I turned to her and stared in astonishment. I couldn’t believe Stacy of all people would be talking about the Thomas mansion like it was cool. I figured the bubbly cheerleader obsessed with homecoming and tight clothes that I loved watching her in would be the last person to have a thing for that place.

“Are you serious?” Zach said. “Because if you’re serious I think that’s the sort of thing that calls for a little visit. What do the rest of you think?”

He winked at Stacy and she smiled at him.

“You were planning this,” I growled.

They turned and grinned at me, but his words dropped like a bomb in the middle of everyone else. I couldn’t believe he was serious. Zach was a joker on the best of days, and I’d hoped this was another one of his jokes.

“Okay, that’s enough fun,” I said. “We had our laugh, now let’s get going. None of us are going up to that place, and I don’t appreciate you two luring us out here.”

“I’m being totally serious here,” Zach said. “Why not go up there and see what it’s like? I’ve heard the place is abandoned anyway. Nothing to be afraid of.”

“I really don’t want to go up there,” Nicole said.

“Yeah, what she said,” Graham said. “Going up there would be a very bad idea.”

He even took a couple of steps back. I guess there was a big difference between wanting to go up there when it was a hypothetical that wasn’t actually going to happen and wanting to go up there when there was suddenly a real chance of being forced to go through with it.

“Come on,” Zach said. “I dare you chickens to go up there with me and Stacy. If she can do it then any of you can.”

“How are you even going to go up there?” Dave said. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a wrought iron fence around the place and it’s locked tight.”

“I know a way through the bars,” Zach said. “There are gates all around the place and one of them is loose.”

“Wait,” I said. “You’re telling me you’ve actually been up to the Thomas mansion before?”

“Is that really so surprising?” he asked. “It’s not like it’s a big deal. It’s just an old mansion with a bunch of dust covering everything.”

Yeah, it was an old mansion with a bunch of dust covering everything and a bunch of ghosts haunting the place. The things the necromancer had done up there… I shivered again.

The police had covered it up, but the guy would’ve been known as one of the most prolific serial killers the world had ever known if it weren’t for the coverup.

Then again it’s not like he was technically even a serial killer considering he’d been bringing those bodies back to life as soon as he killed them. Which was a distinction without a difference as far as most mortals would be concerned.

“Come on. At least let me show you the gate,” Zach said.

He looked at Stacy and it was clear the whole reason he was doing this was because he was trying to impress her. Them working this out to get everyone out here had probably been his attempt to try and impress her too.

Great. I was going to be dragged into this because he was trying to impress a girl I was into who’d never be into me.

I guess there was nothing for it but to go along with this ridiculousness though. It was either that or leave them to walk into a former necromancer’s lair.

Not to mention if Stacy was here and she was willing to spend time with me, even if it was sort of bank shot spending time with me because she wanted to spend time with Zach, then I was going to spend that time damn it.

So we walked around the wrought iron fence surrounding the property. There were spots where people had obviously scratched at it trying to get climb the thing, but there was supposed to be no way through.

At least that’s what all the rumors said. Not that there were many people who were crazy enough to try to get in there in the first place. The spikes on top of that fence would’ve made it really uncomfortable for anyone who got to the top.

Finally we came to a gate that looked a little different from the others. It was hard to put my finger on why at first, then I realized it was a slightly different color from everything else. Sort of like an object you know you can target in a video game because the designers wanted to make it obvious to players.

“Seriously?” Nicole said. “You’re seriously going to tell us it’s as easy as a gate being left open?”

I looked around at the group. Stacy seemed excited and she kept glancing at me for some reason. I thought it was very interesting that she was so interested in something like the Thomas mansion, but more than that it was interesting how she kept glancing at me.

What the eff?

The reactions from the others were even more interesting. Dave looked at me and smiled like he was trying to put on a brave face, but it was clear he didn’t like the idea of what we were doing here.

Meanwhile Zach looked like he was enjoying every moment of this. Then again he’d always enjoyed a little chaos.

Finally there was Nicole and Greg. They looked like they didn’t like where this was going, but Greg was trying to put a brave face on things because he didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of Zach which was pissing Nicole off.

Then there was Graham. I’d been so focused on what was going on with my swim team friends, plus the hotness that was Stacy, that I hadn’t stopped to pay attention to what was going on with Graham.

He looked even more nervous. Like he wanted to be anywhere but here. He also looked angry for some reason, but I chalked that up to the anger he seemed to feel for anyone and everyone more popular than him.

“Come on,” Greg said. “You’ve had your fun. That gate is locked and we’re not going up to the old Thomas place.”

“You sure about that?” Zach asked.

“I’m positive,” Greg said. “You’re going to push on that to try and scare us and it’s not going to move and we’re all going to look like idiots for getting so freaked out.”

“Fine,” Zach said. “If you’re really so certain that nothing’s going to happen then why don’t we make this interesting?”

“Come on,” Greg said, sounding worried. “We don’t need to do this. I’m not going to let you scare us like this.”

Zach shrugged. “If I’m really bluffing then you should have no trouble agreeing to go up to the Thomas place if it turns out I’m telling the truth.”

Nicole grabbed Greg by the arm. Not a gentle grab either. No, that was the grab of a woman who was freaking out because she didn’t like where this was going and she could sense that Zach wasn’t joking around about the gate which he thought was a fine joke if his grin was anything to go by.

“Fine,” Greg said. Apparently he either wasn’t good at reading the situation or he thought Zach was bluffing and was willing to go along with this.

“You’re not even going to bet him something?” Nicole hissed.

“What do you want to bet?” Zach asked. “Anything you want.”

Nicole looked up at the old Thomas place. Clearly she didn’t like the idea of going up there. Clearly she was ready to turn and bolt, but she was going to stay as long as Greg was there acting like an idiot.

“I just want to get the hell out of here,” she said.

“Fine,” Zach said. “Wager accepted. If this gate works then you all have to go up there with me. If it turns out I’m full of shit then we call it a night.”

“Wait one goddamn minute,” Nicole said, showing how upset he was by letting some swearing leak out. “I didn’t agree to that and you…”

“Nope. Agreement already made,” Zach said. “And now it’s time for the big moment.”

The gate rattled as he pulled on it and I found myself sighing in relief. The whole thing had been a joke. Not a very good joke either, if you ask me, but I was still happy that it was a joke.

I didn’t want to go up there. Probably more than anyone else standing around here because I knew what had been up there once upon a time.

I told myself I was jumping at shadows. That there was nothing to be afraid of these days. My dad had taken care of all the problems back when I was a little kid.

I told myself I didn’t want to see more of those weird ghosts floating around the place looking all weird, but I knew deep down that the simple fact of the matter was the place terrified me.

“See, I told you he was full of it,” Greg said, relief dripping from his voice.

“Oh yeah?” Zach asked. “I was joking, but not in the way you’re thinking.”

And with that he pushed the gate open. It didn’t even so much as creak. Like there’d been someone maintaining it recently which struck me as ominous.

“So what do you guys say?” Zach asked. “Ready to make good on that bet?”

11

Creepy Woods

“No way. There is no way we’re going up there,” Nicole said.

“Come on,” Greg said. “It might be kind of fun. We go up there and see what there is to see, and we prove that Zach is full of it.”

Their conversation was whispered and it was clear we weren’t supposed to overhear it, but they were close enough that I could hear every detail of their lover’s spat.

“I really don’t know about this,” Dave said.

“Yeah, none of us agreed to go up there,” I said. “It was between you and Greg.”

I don’t know why I was trying to argue with them. I knew what Zach was like when he got like this. It brought to mind a certain trip home from a swim meet last year where he’d convinced one of the senior guys to moon one of the cars behind us.

That’d gotten really awkward really fast when it turned out the car behind us was actually a cop car. The only thing that saved everyone’s ass, including the poor terrified kid whose ass was the one in question, was that everyone clammed up and refused to name names.

Still, that’d been a terrifying half hour watching a cop walking up and down the bus shining his flashlight in everyone’s eyes while the reds and blues flashed across the bus interior from behind.

This was just like that, only the stakes were so much higher and they had no idea. That they were higher than someone accidentally winding up on some registry somewhere because the laws were so stupid about that sort of thing was saying something.

This was literally life and death, and that meant I’d have to follow these idiots wherever they went to make sure they didn’t find something they shouldn’t or stumble across something left behind or something.

Sure my dad had probably been thorough, but the place gave me the creeps. The way the ghosts listlessly floated around seemed wrong. There was something still off about this place, even if the necromancer who caused all of this had long ago been killed for good and tossed to his hopefully warm and toasty eternal reward.

“Stacy, what do you think? Are you brave enough to go up there and see what the big deal is?”

She put her arm into the arm Zach offered and smiled. Then her eyes darted around the group again. In particular I thought her eyes came to rest on me, but again that had to be my imagination working overtime.

“If you go up there then I’ll go up there,” she said.

“No way am I going up there,” Graham said.

I turned and blinked at him a couple of times. Again I’d completely forgotten he was even standing there. He looked terrified as he stared up at the place. Totally different from the worship he’d had on his face earlier.

“Seriously?” I said. “You’re bitching out now?”

I’m not sure why I was mad at him for not going up there. Maybe I just wanted someone else to come along. Being the fifth wheel with Zach and Stacy and Greg and Nicole, not to mention Dave acting like he was maybe interested, sounded like my idea of hell even before we were talking about going into a creepy old mansion that’d been the playplace for a fucking necromancer once upon a time.

“No way,” he said. “Sorry Gwen, but… I’m sorry.”

And with that he turned and jogged down the sidewalk. I stared after him until he rounded a corner in the distance.

“I can’t believe him,” I said.

“No need to worry about the weirdo,” Zach said. “Besides, the last thing we need is him staring at Stacy’s ass the entire hike up to the mansion.”

That was good for a nervous glance around on the part of yours truly. If Zach was watching people watching Stacy’s ass then there was a good chance he might’ve caught me doing a little bit of staring on the way out here.

Hey, what can I say? I wasn’t above enjoying the view. Just a little.

But from the way he looked at everyone it would seem he was only worried about other guys staring at Stacy, and not other girls staring at Stacy. Even though he knew staring at Stacy was something I was very much interested in.

Maybe he didn’t think I was competition since there was no way Stacy would be into me. The jerk.

“We’re doing this,” Zach said. “You can come with me or you not, but I’m going up there and I think Stacy is coming along with.”

Stacy shrugged as though she didn’t have a care in the world, but there was a gleam in her eye that made me think she was looking forward to this.

Who would’ve figured. Stacy had a little bit of an adventurous streak to her. Though I’m not sure she would have that same adventurous streak if she knew there’d been a necromancer up there killing people, harvesting their souls, and turning their bodies into meat puppets once upon a time.

After I explained to her what a necromancer was, that is. Not many people outside of D&D fans ever seemed to appreciate what they were or how nasty they could be.

Zach stepped through the gate. Damn. He was not wasting any time. He grinned at everyone as though challenging them to follow.

“Damn it,” I growled.

There was nothing for it. I had to follow them. I wasn’t sure what the hell I would do if some of the spirits hanging around this place got restless, but I had to go with them and protect them from whatever it was that had me so nervous about this.

It looked like Greg and Nicole were coming along too. I heard him swearing up a blue storm behind us which he usually did when Zach was dragging us into something crazy stupid, but they were following.

Dave even followed, keeping close to me which I could’ve done without.

Everyone was along for the ride. Everyone but Graham, that is. Though the more I thought about it the more I couldn’t help but think maybe that was a good thing that he was sitting this one out.

He was bad enough with my swimming friends normally. I figured he’d be intolerable if we were doing something stressful like a traipse through a haunted woods up to a haunted house that may or may not have some bad spirits lurking in its depth waiting to be disturbed by some stupid teenagers gleefully throwing themselves at the most classic horror movie scenario in the book.

The only thing we were missing was a Great Dane with a speech impediment.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Nicole said, looking at the trees reaching for us in the dusk. It was even darker under the trees which blocked out any remaining sunlight filtering through.

“Come on,” Greg said. “It’s not that bad.”

Even as Nicole said the place was giving her the creeps a glowing blue ghost floated out of the woods and through her. She gave a little shiver as it did.

Those ridiculous ghost hunting shows, also known as unintentional comedies in our house, always went on about how the dead created cold spots. As though every wonky HVAC system in an ancient drafty building was a spirit of the dead trying to communicate.

Like with almost everything on those shows there was almost no truth to that. Almost, but there was a little kernel of the stuff in there. The dead only made a person shiver if there was direct contact and they were a little closer to the real world than is probably good considering they’re supposed to be stuck in the spirit realm.

The practical upshot is if someone shivered when they felt a ghost moving through them it meant the fabric that usually separated the world of the living and the world of the dead was getting a little too thin for comfort.

To spell it out even more: ghosts giving someone the shivers was bad. Very bad.

I shivered myself, and it had nothing to do with the dude with late ‘90s frosted tips and an Offspring t-shirt declaring to the world that he was pretty fly for a white guy who floated through Nicole and everything to do with the fact that she shouldn’t have been able to feel the dude in the first place.

The more time we spent here the more I thought we really shouldn’t be here. Sure it was possible the fabric between the worlds was thin here because it was a residual thing from a necromancer working here once upon a time, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something very wrong going on here in the present.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a hand came down on my shoulder. Fortunately it was a warm hand and not the cold and clammy hand you’d expect from a ghost or a zombie or any of the other things out there that went bump in the night that totally existed despite what parents told their kids to make them feel better about the world.

I wheeled around and saw Dave staring down at me with what I’m sure was supposed to be a reassuring smile.

“You doing okay?” he asked. “You seem a little jumpy.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

I saw a brief faint echo of some guys who looked like they were from the civil war charge behind Dave. That was good for a double take, there hadn’t been any actual civil war battles in this state as far as I knew, until I saw a digital watch on one of them.

Right. It was weird to see older ghosts like that unless they were really riled up, but it wouldn’t be that weird to see, say, a few of guys who’d disappeared from a local reenactment right around the time the necromancer was busy doing his work and the town was just starting to get paranoid and realize there might be a killer in their midst.

“Y’know if you want I could like, um…”

I stared at Dave. There was something weird about the way he was acting. Like he was trying to…

Before I could finish that thought his arm was around me and he pulled me close. Which was definitely a surprise. My eyes went wide and I wondered what I’d done to bring this on myself.

Also? My reaction was pretty immediate. I pushed him away without thinking. He stumbled back and bumped into a tree.

“What was that all about?” he asked, smiling as though he hadn’t just tried to put the moves on me and gotten shot down.

“Concentrate on walking Dave,” I said.

I turned and kept walking behind Zach and Stacy. I totally was not equipped to deal with Dave trying to get up close and personal with me on top of everything else. It didn’t help my anxiety as we got closer and closer to that damned mansion.

This was almost enough to make me wish I was still lying on a cold slab back in the mortuary, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might still wind up there by the end of the night.

12

Awkward Almost Date

Dave moved in, totally not taking a hint, and I sidestepped again. The last thing I needed was all of this on top of my worries.

That didn’t stop him. His awkward attempt to put his arm around me turned into an even more awkward pat as he tried to cover up what he’d been trying, and failing, to do.

I ground my teeth together. It didn’t help that when I’d sidestepped him I’d run right into another girl who looked like she was a few years younger than us. Though of course she would’ve been a few years older than all of us considering she probably died around the same time as everyone else the necromancer offed.

There were more and more of them the closer we got to the mansion. I didn’t like that there were that many ghosts active around here.

Usually it took a major trauma or an affinity for a place for a ghost to show up. See the ghosts at the high school for the type of spirit that has an affinity for a place, or the Tony Hawk wannabe eternally faceplanting on the front steps for an example of someone tied to a place by affinity and trauma.

I guess being killed and resurrected by a necromancer also counted as traumatic, but I’d still never seen this many ghosts gathered in one spot and it was freaking me out.

I felt another hand on my shoulder and whirled around ready to smack Dave away. Only the smack died before it could land.

That was Stacy’s hand. On my shoulder. She had a little smile on her face that said she was more amused by me trying to smack her hand away than anything, but I still blushed and looked down.

There was something about Stacy looking at me that felt like I needed to look away. Looking at her was like looking at the sun.

“You don’t like it here, do you?” she asked.

I glanced around. A crowd of people with cameras hanging around their necks moved past. I shivered. The tour bus that disappeared from a rest stop on the outskirts of town was well known. Less well known was what had actually happened to it.

You’d think a smallish town like this would be more curious about all the disappearances that happened years ago, but as far as I could tell everyone went the traditional route for small town shames: they didn’t say a word about it.

“This place is freaky,” I said. “What about all those people who disappeared years ago? They say they’re buried around here.”

They were buried around here. I wasn’t sure if it was a cover up or if the cops really were that incompetent about letting that rumor fly free.

“I know,” Stacy said. “Isn’t that awesome?”

My response was interrupted by arms wrapping around her from behind. Zach had arrived and come between whatever moment we might’ve been having.

“You girls having fun?” he asked.

I looked at the woods surrounding us. Imagine “haunted forest” and then ratchet up whatever you’re imagining to eleven and you’re getting close to what it looked like. We’re talking that Tolkien dude’s worst nightmares which isn’t the sort of thing I’d expect in the middle of Small Town, USA.

“About as much fun as you can have walking through a haunted woods,” Stacy said.

I eyed her sharply. There was something knowing about the way she said that. Could she see the ghosts?

“Haunted woods?” Zach asked with a snort. “Come on. You’re being ridiculous.”

We weren’t the ones being ridiculous, but it’s not like I was going to tell him I thought he was being ridiculous. I also wasn’t going to tell him that as he said that the spirit of some guy who looked like that old bearded dude on tuna cans in the grocery store floated through him showing just how haunted this place actually was.

I wasn’t even going to try and figure out how the heck a guy who looked like the poster boy for Maine got all the way to a landlocked place like this. Maybe he’d been a fisherman up on one of the Great Lakes or something and that’s where the necromancer caught him and brought him back here.

There were enough ghosts floating around here that it was really freaking me out and giving me a new appreciation for just how much damage that necromantic asshole did while he was still amongst the living.

Though there was plenty enough example every time I walked into the kitchen every morning and saw my mom trying to make breakfast and getting frustrated because she couldn’t touch the mortal plane.

“Come on,” Stacy said, pulling me out of those dark thoughts. “I think we’ve both had enough time with the boys. Wouldn’t you agree?”

I looked over to Dave. He looked at me with hopeful eyes, but I took the opening Stacy was giving me. I mouthed a quiet “thanks” to her and started up the path leaving the guys behind us.

“What are we supposed to do?” Zach asked.

“You’re walking on a path through a haunted forest,” Stacy said. “Hold each other’s hands if you’re afraid.”

“But the whole point of taking you through here was getting you scared enough to get up close and personal with me!” Zach said, his voice dripping with disbelief.

Stacy leaned in and smiled. “They always get like that when they think they’re in and discover they’re not.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said, trying not to hide my excitement that she’d just admitted Zach wasn’t as in with her as he thought he was.

That coupled with those looks she kept giving me had me thinking. They were ridiculous thoughts, of course, not the sort of thing that would actually happen, but I couldn’t help myself. A cute girl was acting interested, sort of, and I was going to take what I could get.

I turned and looked at Dave. Admittedly I didn’t have all that much experience with guys going for me. Sure there was Graham trying to get a little handsy at a middle school dance, that was one time when I was glad for an ancient blue haired teacher showing up with a ruler and reminding us to make room for Jesus, but other than that I’d mostly given off a vibe that had most guys keeping away from me.

I’m not saying I didn’t get looks. Just that it never went beyond looks. Until now.

“Yeah, I guess that is the worst,” I said, still keeping up the pretense that I was annoyed at them for being too eager and not because I wasn’t interested in the guys.

It seemed like a good time for a lie since I had no firsthand experience with what she was talking about.

We walked in silence for a little while. The path we took through the woods was meandering. As though someone out there wanted it to take as long as possible for someone to make it through the woods.

I looked at the branches reaching out for us. They were so thick that they blotted out the evening sky, and for some reason that sent a chill running through me. Normally I wasn’t one to get all freaked out by death imagery considering what my dad did, but those branches reaching out like skeletal hands were freaking me out now.

“You seem really bothered by this place,” Stacy said.

“You’re not?” I asked. “I mean if anyone should be freaked out…”

“It should be the cheerleader?” she asked, her voice suddenly sharp.

I looked away. I’d been judging her without realizing it, and now that she was calling me on it I felt bad about it.

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess you didn’t deserve that.”

“Nah. I’m the one who should be sorry,” she said. “I project an image, after all.”

She said it like she was trying to project an image. Like it was a mask she was putting on every day or something. Weird.

“So you’re not the cheerleader?” I asked.

“I mean I am a cheerleader,” she said. “I’m captain of the squad. Worked my ass off to get there too. It’s just that’s not all there is to me.”

“Huh,” I said.

What else was there to say to something like that? Everyone had their own internal life and everything, but it was a little weird hearing her talking about it like that.

Because she was a bubbly cheerleader who didn’t have deep thoughts like that? There I went doing it again. Oops.

“Everyone has a part to play in school I guess,” she said. “I do the bubbly cheerleader thing. Plus I’m not gonna lie, it’s kinda cool being on top. Don’t tell me you’re not doing the same thing with the whole swim star thing you’ve got going.”

I blinked at her a couple of times. Then I turned to look around us. Zach and Dave were pulling up the rear behind us, but it seemed like they were mostly doing that because they were enjoying the sight of our rears.

Boys.

Meanwhile Nicole and Greg were way behind. It looked like they were still arguing, but the argument kept getting interrupted by Nicole jumping at shadows and freaking out every time a branch snapped.

I can’t say I blamed her.

I turned back to Stacy. Tried to make my voice sound nice and even, though it was difficult considering the way she’d just pretty much called me out.

“What do you mean the whole swim star thing?” I asked.

She hit me with a look. “Are you kidding me? They're always reading off your wins on the school TV. That stuff is your life. They should call you swim girl. Not zombie girl.”

Huh. I didn't know Stacy knew that much about me. It was weird to have her reciting details of my life at me.

“What about it?” I asked.

“Nothing about it,” she said. “You do you and I do me and that’s fine. ”

I shivered, and this time it had nothing to do with some ghosts who came floating through the woods and everything to do with learning Stacy spent so much time thinking about me.

Then I looked ahead and shivered again. This time it did have everything to do with what I saw out there and nothing to do with Stacy.

“We’re here ladies!” Zach said, coming up behind us and slapping a hand down on our shoulders which was irritating.

Sure enough we were here. The woods around the mansion looked like it’d tried to retake some territory that’d probably been a well-manicured lawn once upon a time, back when the Thomas family still lived in the place, but there was still a clearing around the house.

The place looked even more like your classic haunted house up close than it did from far away. We’re talking super creepy.

“Ugh,” Nicole said, stepping up beside us. “Do we have to go into this place?”

“Come on,” Zach said. “It’ll be a good time. Besides, you and Greg can go off and pull a Daphne and Fred if you want.”

“A what?” Nicole asked.

I tried to suppress a giggle. I didn’t do a very good job of it. Neither did anyone else. The only people who weren’t giggling were Greg who seemed to like the idea of going off to do a Daphne and Fred with his girlfriend, and Nicole who truly didn’t seem to have any idea what we were talking about.

“Greg will tell you all about it,” Zach said. “Now come on gang! We have to see who’s haunting the haunted mansion!”

“Rap on a table. It’s time to respond,” Stacy muttered.

“What was that?” Zach asked.

I stared at her. That had always been my favorite ride when we went to visit the mouse, and I couldn’t believe she was reciting the lines at me. Every time I thought this girl couldn’t get more interesting she went and proved me wrong.

“Nothing,” she said, though from the way she caught my eye it was clear she knew I knew what she was talking about. Like it was our little secret or something which had me shivering again.

That shiver had nothing to do with the creepy mansion in front of us, just in case anyone was still keeping count.

“Right. Well let’s figure out a way to get in there!” Zach said, and with that he led us towards the creepiest house in town.

13

Breaking and Entering

“There is no way I’m going down there,” Nicole said.

“Come on Nicole,” Zach said. “It’s the only way to get into the place, and it’s not like it’s that bad.”

“No. No way. I’m not going down there,” she said.

We stared at a gaping hole in the ground that led down to the mansion’s basement. Though when they built the thing they probably called it a cellar.

The place looked creepy, and I could understand why Nicole wouldn’t want to go down there. Also? It was totally the only entrance to the mansion that was open.

Which was weird. I figured my dad would’ve locked the whole place up nice and tight after the incident a decade back, but that had been a decade ago. Maybe some idiot had broken in here since looking for copper or something.

“Would you tell him we’re not going in there?” she asked, turning to Greg.

Greg looked between his girlfriend and his best friend and it seemed like he was genuinely having trouble deciding which one of them he was going to go with. Which earned him a slap from Nicole that wasn’t at all playful.

“What was that for?” he asked.

“For actually thinking about taking his side instead of mine!” she said. “I can’t believe you’d do that!”

“You know I’ll protect you, right Gwen?”

I turned to Dave. He smiled an uncertain smile as he looked between me and the cellar. Clearly he didn’t like the idea of going down there any more than anyone else, but clearly he was also willing to do something that scared the crap out of him if it meant a chance to impress me.

Boys. The things they’d do to impress girls. Even when it wasn’t clear that the girl they were trying to impress was even into being impressed in the first place.

“You’re all being ridiculous,” Stacy said.

She reached into her back pocket. A distracting move because her back pocket was part of her tight jean shorts. It was a wonder all of us had made it through the woods without getting scratched up considering we were all in summer clothes.

Almost like someone had been along that path recently and cleared a path. There was an unsettling thought.

Stacy pulled out her phone and tapped the front. The bright LED flash on the back of her phone came on and then she was descending into the dark hole with body language that could only be described as filled with grim determination.

Scratch that. Sexy grim determination. If that was a thing.

Damn. This girl just got more and more impressive the more time I spent with her. Sure some of that was the crush talking. I’m totally willing to admit that. It’s just that she kept giving me so many good reasons to have a huge crush on her!

Also, if she was going down there into the darkness then I felt like I needed to follow her. So I went down the stone steps as fast as I dared take them in the dim light.

The first thing I noticed stepping into the basement was the smell. It was the sort of musty smell you only got when you were in a place that was old. Like we’re talking really old.

I’d smelled it a couple of times going to auctions with my mom when I was really little. That’d been one of her favorite things to do. Back before everything changed.

“Stacy?” I asked. “You in here?”

“…telling you I don’t care if you all go down in there! And you’re sure not getting what you think you’re going to get in there mister!” Nicole’s voice trailed in from above. “Daphne my ass!”

I smiled. I guess the guys never stopped to think that maybe their plan would backfire if us girls got so afraid that we didn’t want anything to do with them.

Not that I wanted anything to do with Dave to begin with. That was going to be a rude awakening for him once he figured it out. No, I’d much rather spend some more time with Stacy.

Speaking of…

“Stacy? Where the hell are you? Come on. This isn’t funny,” I hissed.

I looked around for some sign of her. You’d think someone walking around with their bright phone out in front of them would be easy to find in a creepy basement, but she must’ve turned the thing off.

Either she was playing a joke on me or something very bad had happened. Either way I didn’t like it.

“Come on Stacy,” I said.

I searched the darkness, and that’s when I realized there was something very off down here. Well, more wrong than the whole creepy musty haunted house basement out of a Stephen King novel vibe.

I could see pretty clearly without a light. I hadn’t bothered to pull out my phone because I wanted to catch up with Stacy before she got too deep into a known necromancer’s lair. Particularly the basement of a known necromancer’s lair which was about the last place I wanted to be.

I tried not to think about how many bodies might be buried in the soft earth down here. Clearly the Thomas family hadn’t bothered finishing this basement. That or they had and someone came along and dug it all up.

Not a comforting thought. There weren't many comforting thoughts coming to me tonight for some reason. Oh yeah, probably because we were walking through a creepy basement that was a known hangout for a fucking necromancer.

I peered into the odd twilight. Yeah, definitely not dark. Which was wrong. I shouldn’t be able to see a damn thing in here unless I turned on my phone, but now I wanted to know how I was able to see so clearly.

I moved over to what I assumed was a wall. It was close to the slightly less dark hole that was the cellar entrance. I peered a little closer, and that’s when it hit me what I was looking at.

A ghostly glow. All around me. The kind of glow I usually saw on people who were deceased. No longer among the living. Pining for the fjords. Ex-people.

This whole basement was glowing with the energy of people who’d gone on to their final reward, and there was enough residual stuff that I could see by that glow.

“Gwen…”

The whisper made me jump. It was soft. Soft enough that the idiots still arguing on the ground level weren’t going to hear it.

Damn it. I was stuck down here with a ghost whispering sweet nothings I could’ve done without in my ear. Great.

“Gwen…” the whisper said again. “I’ve come for you.”

I stood up straight. Took a deep breath. Swallowed because I wasn’t sure what the hell else to do.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

This wasn’t happening. My dad took care of the necromancer. The idiot who killed so many people. The one who killed…

“I’ve come for you Gwen,” the voice repeated.

I closed my eyes. Tried to remind myself that even if there was still a necromancer’s spirit lurking in this place it’s not like he could hurt me. At least I didn’t think he could hurt me if I really was destined to go into the family business.

Then again the only time I’d seen my father genuinely afraid was when he talked about his battle with the necromancer. Anything he was afraid of seemed like something I should be afraid of too.

“I’m not afraid of you,” I said.

That was a lie. A whopper of a lie. Besides, even if I didn’t have anything to worry about that didn’t mean the people I was with didn’t have anything to worry about. Could necromancers linger?

Sure ghosts could linger, but dad said he grabbed that guy and tossed him headfirst through the portal on the other side. He’d talked about the portal a few times even if I’d only ever seen it for myself a few weeks back after the bus incident.

“You will be,” the voice said, getting lower and more gravelly. “You will.”

I frowned. There was something really wrong about that. Sure a necromancer working a decade back would’ve seen Star Wars like everyone else, but it seemed odd for the spirit of a necromancer who wasn’t supposed to exist anymore to be using quotes from Star Wars to try and scare me.

Especially a quote from Yoda who was, after all, one of the good guys.

I wheeled around. A flash of blinding light hit me and I threw my hands up. I’m not ashamed to admit that maybe I screamed just a little too.

Laughter. No, not laughter. More like giggling. Someone was having a grand time with the joke they’d just pulled on me. I wasn’t dead. I didn’t feel the familiarly unpleasant feeling of my body being pulled from its mortal coil.

I lowered my hands. The blinding light was still there, but it wasn’t the blinding light of being ripped out of my body. No, it might be bright, but it wasn’t that bright.

It was more like the blinding pinpoint of light that came from staring right at the flash on the back of someone’s phone. I couldn’t make out exactly who was lurking in the shadows back there, but the argument I heard still going up above meant it was probably Stacy.

“I suppose you think that’s funny?” I asked.

“Actually yes,” Stacy said, turning the light to show her smiling in the LED.

“Well I didn’t think it was funny,” I said.

I pulled out my own phone. I didn’t want to let on that I could see just fine down here because the glowing energy of all the people who’d died in this place was filling the basement.

That didn’t seem right. Admittedly I didn’t know enough about how ghosts worked to be able to tell if it was normal, and I sure wasn’t going to ask my dad since that would involve admitting why I was asking the question in the first place, but it seemed wrong.

Anything wrong in a place like this had me on edge.

Stacy looked up to the entrance. They were still arguing out there.

“We’re going on without you!” she called up.

“We are?” I asked, both not liking the sound of that and very much liking the idea of going into the creepy mansion with Stacy.

I was conflicted, is what I’m getting at.

“Yup, we are,” she said, and then she surprised me by holding her arm out as though she wanted me to take it. “Why, are you afraid?”

“I’m not afraid of any ghosts,” I said.

Stacy smiled. “I think you got that line just a little wrong, but it works.”

I rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to put my arm in hers. Even if it was probably just her trying to get me to go deeper into the haunted house with her.

I’d take it. The touch was electric. Like we’re talking more intense than that time I thought it would be fun to play with a downed power line and I woke up a little singed in the morgue a day later.

“Let’s go,” Stacy said.

14

Haunted House

“I guess I just don’t see what the big deal is,” Stacy said. “I mean look at this place. It’s not even that creepy.”

I had to admit she was right. The place just looked… old. Like people hadn’t been living here in awhile.

Maybe there were some people who would freak out, but not me. Surprisingly Stacy didn’t seem like she was freaking out either which would’ve surprised me an hour ago, but after that conversation in the woods I wasn’t sure what to think about her.

She was certainly more than the hottie in impossibly tight clothes. That was for sure.

She walked over to the bottom of a staircase. We’re talking a big grand thing going from the first floor all the way up to the fourth floor with stops at all other floors in between. It looked like the kind of thing that should be in a palace and not in a mansion.

“That’s weird,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

She was looking at the bannister. She’d moved her phone up to provide some light so she could get a better look.

“Check this out,” she said. “It’s like someone’s been through here and dusted the thing.”

“That’s impossible,” I said.

Though even as I said it a ghostly apparition of a woman in something that looked like a French maid outfit appeared. She floated up the stairs with a feather duster out that she idly ran along the bannister.

Was it possible the ghost was the one cleaning things? She disappeared before I could call out to her, but then again it’s not like I was going to call out to a ghost Stacy couldn’t see. That would bring up questions I wasn’t in a mood to answer.

Even if I wouldn’t mind some answers to the questions running through my mind. Ghosts shouldn’t be able to touch the real world like that unless there was something powerful agitating them, and the only thing I could think that would be powerful enough to do that was something like a necromancer working or maybe a mass casualty event where there was a lot of trauma.

What can I say? Growing up around my dad I’d picked up a few things about how the job worked.

“Yeah, this looks like someone’s been here,” she said.

As though on cue a moan filled the room. Stacy wheeled around and raised her phone, but the room was so big that even the bright LED didn’t completely penetrate the darkness.

The moan got louder, and then something shambled into the light cast by Stacy’s phone. For a brief moment I thought it was a zombie, then I realized the zombie looked a lot like Zach.

Plus he totally didn’t move like a real zombie. He had his arms out in front of him and was shambling like a Romero. Clearly he’d learned everything he needed to know about acting like a zombie from movies that got a lot of things wrong.

He looked up at us and grinned, clearly pleased with himself that he’d scared the crap out of us.

“What the hell Zach?” Stacy snapped.

“What the hell were the two of you thinking running off like that?” Zach asked.

I wheeled around. Also? I totally felt something gathering around me that would’ve freaked me out if we were in better light. When he startled me there was totally a smoky darkness rising around me in creepy tendrils.

Exactly like it did with my dad when he was doing his whole other side routine. I knew because I’d seen it on him when he was chasing me down and trying to keep me from spending too much time visiting the other side.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on anything but the surprise I felt. That darkness was a new reaction to getting scared, and if that was going to start happening every time I got startled we were going to have a big problem.

“Are you okay?”

I turned to Stacy. She seemed like she was genuinely concerned which was weird considering most of my experience with her, the past couple of tortured weeks being the exception, was worshipping from afar like everyone else at our school.

I looked down. The only thing around me was the regular darkness of the freaky haunted house. Compared to the freaky darkness of some weird death power coming out to play I’d take it.

I really didn’t need to go through the part of the whole superhero movie where the young heroine gets her powers and embarrasses the hell out of herself because she has no idea how to use them.

Not that I even thought of those abilities as superpowers. Not like the kind of stuff you heard of coming out of, say, Starlight City and all the ridiculousness there. Like the reapers operating in that city really had their work cut out for them.

Though I guess the ability to mess with the dead and carry people to the other side could be seen as a superpower if you looked at it from a certain point of view.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “Zach just scared me.”

Zach made a noise somewhere in the back of his throat that told me just what he thought of that. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing, indignant, or a little bit of both.

“Come on. It’s not like we snuck up behind you or anything,” he said.

“You’re still acting like an ass Zach,” Nicole said, coming up behind him.

Now there was a big surprise. I didn’t figure anything would get her in this place and yet there she was.

“You feeling okay Nicole?” I asked.

“Fine,” she growled, but that growl and the way she wrapped her arms around herself as she looked at the darkness around us proved that for the lie it was.

“Come on Nicole,” Greg said, appearing out of the darkness and clearly upset that whatever action he might’ve hoped to get from taking her to this place was circling the drain. “It’s not like it’s all that bad.”

She wheeled on him. “Not that bad? Are you seriously trying to tell me it’s not that bad? I have spiderwebs all up in my hair. I have who knows what stuck to my feet because it’s been on the floor waiting for someone to come along and step on it for God knows how long. I’m going to be coughing for a week because of all the dust being kicked up in this place, and on top of that I could swear I’ve seen at least one creepy ghost since we came in here and I’m not supposed to be seeing creepy ghosts because there’s no such thing as ghosts!”

I kept my mouth shut. Now didn’t seem like the time to correct her on that misconception. Now really didn’t seem like the time to point out that there were, statistically speaking, likely to be a lot more ghosts in a place like this because of the residual necromantic energy that hung around well after a necromancer was done working their evil spells.

I figured the necromancer was another something I totally shouldn’t bring up in present company. One they would think I was crazy, and two it freaked me out and I didn’t want to freak them out any more than they already were. Not to mention that three, I couldn’t even be sure Nicole would know what a necromancer was since she didn’t seem like the D&D type.

“Come on,” Zach said. “We need to go deeper into this place. My dad told me it was abandoned in a hurry like a decade back for some reason when the last Thomas heir disappeared. I bet there’s a shitload of stuff here we could snag as a souvenir!”

I wheeled on him. “Are you seriously talking about robbing this place?”

“Well why not?” Zach asked with a shrug. “I mean I wouldn’t steal from someone if they owned the place, but this is a wreck. The place is abandoned. Is it really stealing if there’s no one who owns it?”

I shook my head, but there was a certain logic to what he said. A certain logic that I’m sure had led a lot of people who’d never think of themselves as criminals to do some pretty criminal things.

Then again we’d already put breaking and entering on the list. Next to that stealing a couple of trinkets from a house that no one technically owned after the last Thomas was thrown across the threshold of that gate to his eternal reward didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

“I don’t know Zach,” Dave said, looking to me. I wanted to roll my eyes. Clearly he was taking my side because he wanted to get in good with me.

It was almost enough to make me want to tell him just how little chance he had with me. I mean he totally knew like everyone else. I’d made comments about women around him and everything.

There just seemed to be a breed of straight boy who thought they had a chance with you, that theirs would be the magical dick that showed me the error of their ways, and Dave was that for me.

Le sigh.

“Seriously,” Zach said. “I don’t see why you wimps are acting like this is such a big deal. The Thomas family had one heir and he died. There’s no one here who can be upset about us taking this shit.”

As though to illustrate his point he walked over to the stairs and took a couple of steps up. He seemed to be looking for something by the light of his phone.

I didn’t need his phone to see though. No, I could see clearly that there were a couple of shelves displaying things that might’ve been valuable once upon a time. Heck, they might even still be valuable today if there was anyone around willing to go through this place and take an inventory of everything.

There were even a couple of paintings that ran up the stairs. Paintings of severe and unhappy people with angular faces staring down disapprovingly, though to be fair that disapproval looked like it was simply how they looked rather than having any supernatural relation to how they may or may not feel about Zach robbing them blind long after they were dead and gone.

“What’s this?” Zach asked as he came to a shelf with a statue of a gargoyle of some sort. I don’t know why he was hamming it up and acting like he was doing a big reveal or something. Seriously. He was going through the place like he was on one of those lame ghost hunter shows where they jumped at something every five seconds even though they were never going to find a real ghost.

Not with the methods they used, at least.

Then it hit me exactly why I had no trouble seeing what he was reaching for while he was hamming it up and acting like he couldn't see the thing. Because he couldn't see it.

I could see everything because there was a blue glow coming from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It was under the stairs. It was all around us. I hadn’t noticed it because it was coming from everywhere and my mind glossed over the glow.

Which was bad. The closer Zach’s hand got to that statue the more intense that glow seemed to get.

Like whatever was behind that light didn’t like that Zach was getting close to robbing the place.

“Zach,” Stacy said. "Maybe you shouldn't touch that thing."

"Come on," Zach said. "You're all acting like wimps."

I felt a low vibration around the house. I suppose it could've been the old mansion settling around us, but something told me that wasn’t architecture causing that vibration. Something terrible was stirring. Something none of us wanted to be around to see.

"Zach, no!”

I started up the stairs, but before I could take more than a couple of steps his hand made contact with the statue and all hell broke loose.

15

A Dose of Freaky Ghosts

That low vibration turned into a rattling. The stairs under us heaved and shook, and Zach was thrown back. He landed at the bottom of the stairs with a thud and groaned. It didn't look like anything was broken, but it was difficult to tell.

I was thrown back as well. It was like the stairs underneath me were a living thing trying to throw me.

My landing wasn't nearly as hard as Zach’s. It was still painful and I saw stars dance in front of my eyes, but I could get up and shake myself off while Zach was still groaning and holding an arm that might be broken.

I'd take it. It was better than landing and feeling my spirit detaching from my body. Never a pleasant experience.

"What the hell is that glow?" Nicole asked.

I was still with it enough that I turned and gave her a sharp look. What was she talking about? I looked around for anything other than the spiritual energy, but there was nothing. Just that ghostly blue glow that suffused the room.

"What the hell is that?" Dave shouted.

I looked up and saw spirits starting to move through the room. Like we’re talking it looked like something out of the freaking Haunted Mansion, only way more intense because this was the real thing and not a bunch of clever animatronics being rear projected onto glass to make it look like it was ghosts dancing around a ballroom.

Believe me. The real thing looks a hell of a lot more intense than anything special-effects can come up with either in a dark ride or on the movie screen.

“Fucking ghosts! I told you we shouldn't have come here!" Nicole shrieked.

She wasn't turning to run though. No, she’d climbed up onto poor Greg who was doing his best to hold her while not stumbling and falling on his ass.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Greg said, looking up and around.

The only person I hadn't heard from so far was Stacy. I looked over to her and wasn’t terribly surprised by what I saw there.

She stared up at the ghosts with a look that was ecstatic. Like she was actually excited about seeing ghosts. Most people would’ve been terrified, but she was like a kid in the proverbial candy store.

I shook my head. I couldn't believe she was actually excited by this, but then again based on what I'd heard from her already it's not like it was much of a surprise.

"I'm getting out of here!" Greg said.

He carried Nicole over to the main door and tried to work the handle. They were massive doors, the front entrance presumably since we were in the main entrance hall, but as he rattled the door it became very clear there was no opening it.

"Damn,” he said. "The thing is locked!"

"Of course it's locked you idiot," Dave said, panic touching his voice.

He wasn't even all that close to me anymore. I guess when it came down to it and he found himself in a situation where he was genuinely in trouble he wasn't going to try and protect me.

I probably should’ve been insulted, but mostly I was relieved he was done trying to turn this into a date night.

"Screw this," Nicole said, hopping off of Greg. She had a feral look in her eyes. As though it’d suddenly become every person for themselves and she was going to get out of here.

"Let's get out of here the way we came! That's open!"

Only as she ran, presumably towards whatever door they'd used to get in here in the first place, that door slammed in her face. It was abundantly clear that whatever power was causing all of this weirdness didn't want any of us leaving the room.

I swallowed. Looked around at the glow, at the ghosts. That definitely wasn’t a good sign.

"Isn't this amazing?"

I turned and stared at Stacy. Her mouth was open and she was laughing like she was enjoying this! A woman who looked like she met her end back in the 19th century floated through the room. Her pretty face was only slightly marred by what looked like burns of some sort. She even bore a passing resemblance to some of the family members on the various paintings on the stairs.

"It's certainly something," I said.

Zach had finally managed to pull himself up off of the floor. He looked around with panic. The glow was bright enough that it was almost blinding for me, and I figured if it was blinding for me then it must’ve been bright enough for the mortals to see.

Not good. Really not good.

“I told you this was a bad fucking idea Zach!” Greg screamed, walking over to his friend with a fist raised as though he was about to throw down.

Well then. Talk about a surprise. I know people did weird things when the fight or flight response took over, but I’d never seen someone switch from flight to fight so quickly before.

Zach raised his fists and it looked like the two of them really were about to throw down. The only thing that stopped them was the booming voice.

“How dare you step foot in my home!”

That voice brought everything to a stop, and I’m not just talking about the fight brewing between Zach and Greg. No, the glow dimmed around us as that voice boomed, and even the ghosts that’d been darting around the room stopped and turned to stare towards the top of the stairs.

I reluctantly pulled my attention away from the brewing fight. I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what I saw up there, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away.

“Holy shit,” Stacy breathed.

It would’ve been nice to see her taking this seriously for a change were it not for the fact that I was trying very hard not to turn my pants a nice brown color.

A figure stood at the top of the stairs in a cape that fluttered in a nonexistent wind. Those spirits seemed to be swaying in that wind that didn’t touch any of the mortals in the room, which meant it had to be coming from the other side.

Shit. Mortals weren’t supposed to be able to touch both sides like that. The fact that this guy could, and from the booming voice I was pretty sure it was a dude, couldn’t mean anything good for us.

The figure held a glowing staff in his left hand. At least the tip was glowing. It pulsed with the same blue glow that filled the rest of the room.

Also not good.

The sprits started acting weird again. Ghosts acting weird was bad. I’d spent my whole life seeing the things and I’d thought seeing ghosts was normal until I made some odd comments in kindergarten that had me sitting down with dad to have a chat about what was and wasn’t normal for mortals.

In all that time I’d never seen them do anything like this though.

“What’s going on here?” Nicole asked. “Who the fuck is that?”

The ghosts swirled around the edges. They moved faster and faster creating a tornado of spiritual energy.

Not the sort of behavior you wanted to see in regular wind, let alone a wind powered by the souls of the dead.

Shit.

“You’re going to regret the day you ever came to my house,” he said, his voice booming.

Some of the ghosts started diving for us, and that’s when it happened.

I didn’t mean to do it. One moment a ghost was diving for me, and the next I was filled with a cold rage. Ghosts did not come after me. My father was a reaper, damn it. He ferried souls to the other side on the regular, and I was not going to let this asshole do this to us.

I had no doubt I was looking at a necromancer. That we were staring up at our potential doom and it didn’t look pretty. I also knew I wasn’t going to go down without a fight even if I wasn’t sure what I was going to do to fight the guy.

Darkness gathered around me as the ghost dove for me. It was the same darkness that always appeared around dear old dad when he was tracking me down on the other side. The darkness of death.

I wasn’t sure how I did it. Just that I could feel that ghost coming at me, and I lashed out with that power. It was like thrusting my arm out. It felt as natural as moving the rest of my body which was odd considering I’d probably spent a good four years when I was a very little kid learning how to use my arms and legs without falling on my ass.

Whatever. It worked, and I wasn’t going to knock it if it worked. The blackness flailed through the air, it looked nothing like my father’s practiced shots, but the ghost was close enough that it couldn’t avoid me as the tendril of darkness wrapped around its leg.

The ghost shrieked and I felt something tugging on the darkness. As though it was trying to escape. I smiled and pulled back. Like when I’d been on a fishing trip with my grandpa years ago before he passed on. On my mom’s side, not dad’s. I wasn’t even sure what’d happened to his parents, and he wasn’t saying anything.

It’d been a pleasant ghostly visit the night my mom’s dad came to see me before he moved to the other side.

I pulled at the ghost. It shrieked and then it was gone. It seemed to explode into mist and then it was gone. I wasn’t sure where it went, but I had a pretty good sneaking suspicion I’d just sent it to the other side. To that river of souls moving towards the gate. The thing hit me with a look that was both relieved and thankful as it exploded, which I wouldn’t expect all things considered.

I figured that meant something very disturbing. The thing was happy to go to the other side. Happy to be released. I shouldn’t be able to do that with an echo left behind by trauma.

These weren’t ghosts. These were actual souls that’d been ripped out of their bodies. Ghosts didn’t go to the other side like that because they were echoes of people who’d died. Souls could be tossed to the other side because they weren’t supposed to hang around in the mortal world, even if it was on the other side of the veil.

Shit. Yeah, this guy was definitely a necromancer.

“What the hell did you do?”

I turned to see Dave staring. His eyes were wide. Everyone else was staring as well. As though I was as much of a monster as the tornado of ghosts.

Shit. I guess they’d seen that. Then again it would’ve been pretty impossible for them to miss it now that the barrier between worlds had fallen to the point that they could see ghosts and spirits.

“What the fuck are you?” Zach asked, looking at me with a terror he probably should’ve felt earlier when he was convincing us to come up here to the mansion in the first place.

“No! You won’t take me!” the booming voice said.

I looked up to the top of the stairs where that blue glow on the asshole’s staff had become almost blinding. Shit. I guess I’d been working on instinct, but whatever I did had freaked this guy out.

Which was weird considering this necromancer had thrown down with my dad a decade ago and should know what he was dealing with when he faced down a personification of death, but whatever.

I didn’t have much time to think about it. He raised his staff and brought it down. The tornado of ghosts blasted out and a shockwave slammed into me faster than I could react.

I flew through the air. Not an entirely unpleasant feeling since I knew I’d be able to come back to my body when it was all said and done, but it wasn’t exactly pleasant either considering I slammed into the massive solid wood doors with enough force to blast them open.

I had one last view of the mansion glowing with that strange blue spiritual energy and enough time to wonder if people down in the town were seeing this before my body tumbled around and something dark came up to meet me.

The lights went out for a little while.

16

Waking Up

I pulled myself up and looked around. The world was dark around me still, but not so dark that I couldn’t see.

Though the reason for me being able to see in that darkness became apparent pretty quickly. There was still a blue glow coming off of everything. The trees. The ground beneath me.

My arms and the rest of my body.

Shit.

I floated up, because floating was totally something I could do when I was like this. Sure enough there was my body by a tree where I’d hit with enough force that it’d ended me.

Except of course it didn’t end me because I was the daughter of a reaper and death didn’t happen to me the same way it happened to other unfortunate bastards.

I sighed. This looked like it was going to hurt. My neck had been twisted at an odd angle and those were always painful to put back into place.

It’d only happened to me twice, don’t go hiking along a mountain trail in slick weather is all I’m going to say about that, but both times had been deeply unpleasant when I came back to my body and had to set everything right.

I took a deep breath.

I decided the whole thing would be easier if I took a flying dive. And so I jumped up and did my best impression of one of the divers on the team. My body rushed up to meet me, and despite the fact that I was in spirit form I squeezed my eyes shut.

The pain was blinding. Think about when you jump into cold water. How the shock of that water hitting you is enough to completely blindside you. Now imagine that instead of cold water you're dealing with pure pain hitting every nerve ending in your body at the same moment.

Yeah. Not exactly a pleasant experience. Not exactly something I liked to repeat if I could avoid it, but it’s not like that stupid necromancer had asked me before he forcibly removed my spirit from my body.

I tried to move. To get a feel for exactly what was going on in my body. And already I could tell it was nothing good. I’d become something of an expert in all the many ways a mortal body could be broken, and this was about as bad as I’d ever experienced.

My arms refused to move. No, scratch that. Everything in my body refused to move. My arms were just the first thing I tried.

The pain seemed to be localized to my head, and I figured that meant when I'd slammed into that tree I'd snapped something inside my neck. Otherwise I’d be able to feel the rest of my body.

If I was mortal that’d mean a lifetime of paralysis. As it was it meant I was going to be in some serious pain when everything started healing up properly. Sure enough I felt a tingle running along my neck as nerve function returned.

The tingling sensation moved to my shoulders. Then my arms and hands. I figured that meant things were good enough now that I could finally do what needed to be done. It wasn't going to be fun, but I had to do it.

I reached up and grabbed my head which was at an odd angle. I jerked it to the side and my neck made a cracking sound as the bones there righted themselves. They would've done that eventually whether or not I did the whole neck cracking thing, but I figured it was like a bandage. Better to try and repair the damage immediately rather than wait for it to heal itself slowly and excruciatingly.

Instead I just had a moment of excruciating pain where bright stars flared in front of my vision and I had an out of body experience. Because yeah. Don’t try that at home kids. Trying to move a mortal neck like that would’ve resulted in immediate death. For me it resulted in a temporary out of body experience that was actually a pleasant break from the constant pain that was my body, then I dove back in to finish the fun.

Once everything was back in the proper order, mostly, I figured it was time to get up and have a look around. Figure out exactly what the heck was going on here.

A faintly glowing darkness surrounded me. Darkness and the creepy sounds of small skittering critters moving through the woods, but there were no critters creeping around in my immediate vicinity. Even if there were it’s not like I’d be all that worried about critters creeping.

We were in the middle of a town in the Midwest, after all. Everything big and dangerous that could potentially devour a human had been killed or run off long before my great-grandparents were born.

Getting run down by an apex predator? Another one of those things that was not fun. A trip to Glacier National Park and an impromptu reenactment of Night of the Grizzlies, but in the middle of the day and because I hadn’t been paying attention rather than because of a monthly visitor pissing the bear off, taught me that lesson.

The most dangerous wild animal I’d run into around here was a coyote, and I wasn't particularly worried about them. Sure there were stories about coyotes killing some poor girl on a trail somewhere, but around here they got shot at often enough to have a healthy fear of man.

No, there were far more dangerous things lurking in the woods tonight. Even if that blue glow was almost gone. As though whatever angry spirits had been aroused by the necromancer were finally starting to settle down.

Damn. What a night.

"Hello?" I called into the darkness.

No answer. Not that I'd been expecting much of an answer. I'd been dreading getting an answer, to be honest.

I figured given everything that had happened, anything out there that might answer my fearful call wouldn't be anything I wanted to run into.

Still. My friends were out there somewhere. At least I hoped they were out there somewhere. I hoped they were still my friends after what they’d seen me do in there tonight.

I couldn't get over the sense of dread that had come over me since I saw the necromancer standing at the top of those stairs. That feeling of dread told me something very bad had happened to my friends.

I moved through the darkness. It’s not like I had anything better to do than go for a stroll through a ghost infested woods in the middle of a night when there was likely a necromancer out there looking for me.

I decided to move parallel to the house in a big circle rather than going closer to the house. I didn’t see any sort of weird glow coming from the place any longer, but that didn't necessarily mean there wasn't anything going on up there.

No, now that I knew that stupid necromancer had come back you bet your ass I wasn't going near that place unless I had a plan. Or maybe my dad ready to show up and bust some heads. In a spiritual sense.

"Hello?" I said in what I would call a loud whisper. Again there was no answer. "Is anyone out there? Anyone at all?"

I could kill Zach for dragging me out here. Assuming he wasn’t already dead, that is. This was his fault. He was the one who dragged us into this crazy situation.

Sure he had no idea what he was getting into, and that brought me to the next person on my idiot shit list. None other than myself.

Zach had no way of knowing the infamous haunted house all the kids in town avoided actually was a haunted house. How could he possibly know in an age where most people denied the supernatural? An age where almost everything supernatural had been chased into the shadows by the bright nuclear fire of modern civilization and most anyone who ran into the supernatural were having an unfortunate brush with something that was probably going to kill them on the distant fringes of that fire?

I’d known though. I’d known and I’d kept my big mouth shut because I was afraid revealing what I knew would reveal things about me I’d rather my friends didn’t know.

"Damn it guys," I growled. "One of you has to be out there somewhere. Where are you?"

I was on the verge of tears. One of them had to be out there because otherwise that meant they were all gone. And if they were all gone it was all my fault. I knew the real dangers out here. I knew and I didn't say anything to stop them from walking into that danger.

"Hello?"

I stopped as I heard something rustling ahead of me. Something loud. Something that wasn’t bothering to cover its tracks.

I figured that meant it was a fifty/fifty that I was about to see one of my friends stumbling away from the house or a necromancer looking for me or my friends.

I looked around in a panic. My eyes went wide, but I couldn't see a thing. There was no helpful glow now to…

No. Scratch that. There was a glow out there. And it occurred to me, almost too late, that a blue glow was the exact opposite of what I wanted to see. I only ducked out of sight at the last possible moment and even then I was almost caught.

Idiot. Stupid freaking idiot!

The glow was bright enough now that I could see clearly. I’d walked right up to the edge of a path running through the woods and hadn't realized it. My only warning that the path was there was the ground started to glow ahead of me just before a bunch of ghosts made an appearance.

Followed by none other than that asshole necromancer.

17

Almost Caught

The necromancer strode along with staff in hand. He was using it as a walking staff now, but I could still see that strange glow at the top.

I stopped and listened. Also? I totally made sure I was absolutely still. The last thing I wanted was to draw this asshole’s attention. Not when he'd just thrown me out of that mansion with a quick slam of his staff.

Besides. I figured this was one of those times where it was a good idea to listen. I needed to know what he knew. Maybe he knew something about where my friends were.

Though it probably wasn't a good thing if he did know where my friends were. Because if he knew where they were…

I shivered and tried not to let that thought go to its natural conclusion.

One of the ghosts moving along the path stopped and seemed to look at me. I shivered as I realized that I knew that ghost. That ghost gave me an answer about where some of my friends were, at least.

It was Zach's spirit staring at me. His eyes narrowed, and I wondered if maybe he blamed me for what had happened. He was the jerk who brought us to that mansion, but he’d also seen me doing that weird stuff with that reaper darkness.

Did he think I had something to do with this? Was he going to rat me out because he was pissed off?

The necromancer was on him in an instant. He brought his staff down next to my friend and there was a tiny flash of light.

I looked away. I had to. That flash wasn’t nearly as bright as what had happened up in the mansion, but it was still painful.

"What are you doing?" the necromancer barked.

Zach’s eyes glazed over. His hand started to raise. As though he was going to point at me. Like the necromancer was taking control, which was totally something those assholes could do. That was the whole point of what they were doing. Take control of the dead and all that.

Shit. Zach didn’t need to be so pissed off at me that he ratted me out. Not when the necromancer could command him to give me up.

Finally he shook his head and seemed to regain some of his sense. He stared at me again, but this time there was no glare. He looked back to the necromancer.

"Nothing," he said.

I didn’t sigh in relief. I wanted to, but I didn’t. A sigh would’ve made too much noise considering how quiet it was.

Zach’s spirit still had enough control that he wasn’t going to rat me out. He wasn’t so angry with me that he was going to rat me out.

I could understand why he would be that upset given that he'd just had his spirit forcibly removed from his body. It’d freaked me out the first couple of times it happened to me, and even these days it wasn't exactly a pleasant experience even if it was something I'd grown used to.

The necromancer, his face still masked in shadows that were even more intense now that he was moving through the dark woods, peered into the darkness. But either he was nearly blind because of that spell he was using to cover his face, or he didn't have very good night vision.

Not that I'd ever heard of necromancers having night vision. It's not exactly the kind of thing they’d need.

Finally he shook his head and slammed his staff down again. Again I flinched away because that bright flash of light was painful.

"Get moving then!" the necromancer growled. "We have to find the others! Now go!"

They needed to find the others. I guess I could take some small comfort in the knowledge that they hadn’t found the others yet.

It was a very small comfort though. Zach had been captured. It looked like that was his spirit and not a ghost, too, which wasn’t good. That meant the necromancer had grabbed him before his spirit could go on to the beyond.

Or maybe that was good. If his soul was still there then maybe it could be reunited with his body. It was a thin hope, but it was something.

Seeing his spirit outside his body brought up other questions though. Someone having their spirit separated from their body should’ve been the kind of thing that drew my dad’s attention, but he wasn’t anywhere to be found.

Was the necromancer doing something to mask all the nastiness he was committing out here? I guess the last time around there’d been some weirdness where a lot of people were disappearing but dad didn’t feel the call of his job. That’d been his first tip that something weird was going on in town.

What if the same thing was happening now? It’d be awhile before the body count got large enough that my dad would have any idea something bad was going down. I had to get back home so I could tip him off.

The ghostly procession floated on through the woods. I saw most of the spirits that’d been floating through the woods earlier when we were making our way to the house.

I guess they came under the necromancer’s control when he wanted to call them. I shivered at the though. I wasn’t sure what was waiting for people on the other side of that gate on the other side, but I knew it had to be a hell of a lot better than spending eternity at the beck and call of some asshole who killed you then resurrected your spirit to serve his own selfish needs.

I waited for a long while after the glow faded and the deathly procession was gone. I’m not sure why I didn’t go crashing through the woods. It was a sense there was something weird going on here. Something not quite right.

Something like a necromancer out there hunting me. I didn’t like the thought considering how freaked out my dad had been talking about his own experiences with this necromancer long ago.

It turns out that gut instinct was absolutely right too. I was just about to breathe a sigh of relief and head across the path when suddenly everything came to life around me.

If you’ll pardon the pun. Because the things that were coming to life around me were actually a bunch of glowing blue ghosts that lit up the woods brighter than a floodlight.

It would’ve been pretty impressive too. If it wasn’t so terrifying. It was like everything that had ever died on this spot was suddenly flaring to undeath around me.

Squirrels moved through the trees above me, but they were leathery and unlike any mammal I’d ever seen before. They also seemed to have little wings on them which was trippy. Obviously I was looking at something that never made its way into the fossil record.

There were also a few monsters from prehistory I recognized from trips to the Field Museum when I was a little younger and we could travel with mom.

Like we’re talking a giant T-Rex that could’ve been Sue herself that came stomping through the forest. Ghostly trees that looked nothing like the environment surrounding me now swayed with its passage. Then it looked down at me and did what an apex predator from a time long forgotten would do when it saw a tasty little morsel staring up at it and refusing to run away.

It was almost exactly like that famous scene with the lawyer. The big difference being when its teeth squeezed shut around me and it tried to pick me up and shake me around I didn’t go with it.

Yeah, that was the problem with being long dead. It couldn’t affect the physical world unless there was something there juicing it up like the necromancer, and it would appear that he was powerful enough that he could make an ancient dead creature like this appear, but not so powerful that he was able to make the fucker actually hurt me.

So it was pretty much like my encounter with the not-a-T-Rex outside the school earlier. If I had a penny for every time an ancient apex predator tried to kill me because it didn’t realize it was long dead…

Which was a good thing, all things considered. Those teeth looked like they’d really fucking hurt. The monstrous thunder lizard regarded me with curiosity, and I reached out with some of my darkness and flicked it on its backside which caused it to blow into a thousand tiny little pieces.

Huh. I guess the thing’s hold on reality really wasn’t all that great to begin with if it fell apart like that with just a little flick from that dark reaper mojo I was putting out. Damn.

Also? Totally not a good idea for me to go throwing around my powers like that. Because no sooner had the thing disappeared than I heard an unearthly wail.

I thought it might be coming from some of the ghosts surrounding me. That kind of wailing was the kind of thing you expect to hear from the souls of the damned and all that. Only the wailing got louder and turned into a scream that sounded decidedly human.

“I knew you were still out here! What are you? How are you doing that to my pretties? Do you have any idea how fucking difficult it is to raise a tyrannosaur ghost from the beyond?”

Shit. It looked like in flicking that T-Rex away from me I’d advertised my position to the world. Not what I was going for.

So I did what anyone would do if they suddenly found themselves confronted by a scary thing that was going to do its best to kill them. Not that I thought he could kill me, not exactly, but my dad was afraid of necromancers and so I figured that meant I should be afraid of them as well.

Even if I didn’t know why, exactly, I should be afraid of them since it’s not like the asshole could kill me permanently.

I turned and crashed through the woods. I heard something moving through the trees behind me, but thankfully it seemed that the same trees that were making it slow going for me were making it even slower going for the asshole who had to deal with a glowing walking stick and what looked like robes that were pretty epically unfit for a stroll through the woods.

In short it wasn’t all that difficult to get away from the asshole, but I also knew it was only a matter of time before he’d catch up to me.

I needed to get out of here now and I needed to go to my dad and tell him what was going on. I hated leaving my friends behind, but it was the only way I could think to try and make this better.

18

Dead Cheerleader

I kept running through the woods even though I was pretty sure no one was following me anymore.

Hey, what can I say? I wanted to be thorough in getting the hell away from the danger threatening me.

Finally I had to stop because a stitch in my side was threatening to sideline me whether or not I was willing to keep moving.

“This really sucks,” I said. “Like I’m seriously going to kill Zach if I ever see him back in his body.”

I know that probably doesn’t sound like the nicest thing to say considering the state I just saw him in, but logic sort of went out the door for me when I saw that necromancer.

Besides, growing up around a literal personification of death meant that I had a little different sense of humor when it came to death and dying than a lot of people did.

I figured if I’d stopped to catch my breath then I should at least try to get my bearings. Then I remembered I was carrying a tiny little plastic and glass rectangle that gave me access to the sum total of all of humanity’s information, including accurate maps that could pinpoint my location on earth to within about three feet, and pulled my phone out of my back pocket.

I let out a couple of choice curse words as I saw the battery indicator around the thing. The thing hadn’t been all that charged after a long day at school to begin with, and I guess walking around with the flash on hadn’t done wonders for the battery life. It was good and drained and I had no light.

Fuck.

“Just my fucking luck,” I said.

“Just your fucking luck?” Stacy asked. “What about my fucking luck?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. I mean I was happy to hear Stacy out there, don’t get me wrong, but it also freaked me out a little considering I’d just resigned myself to never seeing any of my friends alive ever again.

Though considering the state I just saw Zach in there was always a chance I wasn’t going to be seeing Stacy alive either.

“Stacy?” I hissed into the night. “Is that you?”

I whispered because I couldn’t be entirely sure that wasn’t a necromancer out there trying to lull me into a false sense of security before he did whatever it is necromancers did to ruin a reaper’s day.

“Yes it’s me,” she said. “Who’s that?”

There was something odd about her voice. A slight hitch to it. Like she’d been crying and was trying to cover it up or something.

Then again if there was ever a time for breaking out the waterworks then this seemed like a good night for it.

"It's me. Gwen. I’m in the middle of a bunch of dark flicking trees and I have no idea where I am," I said.

“Gwen?” she asked, the quiet crying stopping and some hope coming to her voice. “How did you make it out of there? I thought I saw…”

There was a pause. Her next words were tinged with suspicion.

"How do I know it's really you?"

Okay. I figured she’d be a lot happier to hear from someone, but I guess not.

"How am I supposed to even answer that question?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "But I saw weird things floating through here. A ghost that looked like Nicole. She looked at me, and I thought she was going to say something, but then she kept going. I also thought I heard… him. Shouting in the distance. That’s when Nicole moved on.”

That was good for a shiver. A ghost that looked like Nicole meant the necromancer had caught her too. Maybe that meant he'd caught everybody.

Everybody but me and Stacy. We were the last two left. The only two who knew there was a necromancer out there. Again I felt the pull of knowing I had to get to my dad and tell him about this, but I couldn’t leave Stacy here.

I had to get her out of here, damn it. If I could save one friend tonight then it would make this all somehow better. I wasn’t sure how, but it would.

"He threw me through the doors," I said. "Whatever he did threw me free of the house. So he couldn't get me."

"I saw that," Stacy said. "You were flying way too fast. I was tumbling over and over and I couldn't do anything and…"

That quiet crying started again. At least the crying gave me something I could use to sort of triangulate her position in the middle of all this dark mess.

I shook my head. I couldn't stop blaming myself. I wouldn’t be in this dark mess in the first place if I’d been honest with them from the get go.

I should have turned everyone back at the gate. I should have turned everyone back as soon as I saw ghosts floating around the place.

Ghosts floating around a place in numbers like what I saw tonight never meant anything good. I knew better, and I still went along with the stupid plan my friends came up with.

There’s the teenage years summed up in one neat little sentence.

Still, the damage was done and all I could do was try and fix it. So I followed the crying. Rounded one of the trees and gasped.

Stacy leaned against a tree quietly sobbing, but it wasn't Stacy as I expected her. No, she was glowing bright blue. Bright enough that I could see her surroundings pretty clearly. I could even see the tree on the other side of her because she’d become somewhat transparent since I last saw her.

Okay then. Obviously when she'd been blown free of the house it’d been enough to kill her. And now here she was. Her spirit was still stuck in this world.

Her spirit was stuck here in this world and there was no sign of my dad coming to take her on to her eternal reward. That meant there was something seriously wrong here. Again, he should’ve been here by now. He should’ve sensed there were deaths happening and showed up. Done that whole darkness routine to pull them to the other side.

Where the hell was he?

"Um, Stacy?" I asked.

She looked up and there were obvious tears streaming down her face even though she was ghostly. I never knew ghosts could cry.

Then again they could do just about everything mortals could do and then some. Floating through walls. Scaring the bejeezus out of mortals who happened to see them. All that good stuff. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised that she’d be able to cry like…

I could've kicked myself for the thought. Like a real person. She was a real person. Even if she was recently deceased.

Where the heck was my dad? What was taking him so long? Or, more chilling, what was keeping him from coming out here and doing his job?

Stacy wiped a tear from her cheek. Smiled at me. It was a smile that sent a shiver through me. Both a shiver of delight because I loved having her smile at me, and a shiver of something that almost felt like fear because it was the smile of a dead girl.

I looked around for her body but didn't see it anywhere nearby. And the more I thought about it the more I realized it was probably a good thing I couldn’t see her body.

I knew from first-hand experience that it could be an unpleasant experience seeing the recently deceased. I'd been recently deceased often enough and seen the results on myself, and I didn't care to see it with one of my friends.

Well, a girl I’d been crushing on for years who’d been hanging out with my swim team friends and torturing me for a couple of weeks. I wasn’t sure if that rose to the level of friend just yet, but it was a nice thought.

"I bet I look like shit,” she said.

"Something like that," I replied.

She reached out to smack me. Luckily she was so distracted by everything else that she didn't seem to notice that her smack ran right through my shoulder.

"You don't have to be a bitch and confirm that I look like crap," she said. “I’m fishing for a compliment here. The least you could do is take the bait.”

That was good for a smile, though probably not for the reasons she thought. It was just that I couldn’t help thinking of the sorts of compliments that’d fit her current state.

“Your Empire Strikes Back Obi-wan costume is amazing!”

“Hey, I hear they’re looking for extras on the sequel to that Ghostbusters remake!”

“Ever seen The Frighteners? Well it was a movie made by the Lord of the Rings guy a few years before he got super famous for that and, whatever. The joke wasn’t worth the five minutes of explaining anyway.”

Yeah, something told me none of those compliments were going to be the kind of compliment she was fishing for.

I was relieved she didn’t notice how her hand had gone right through me. I figured the breakdown when she realized what’d happened wasn’t going to be pretty, and I wanted to avoid it for as long as I could.

“Sorry about that," I said. "It's just that…"

Stacy floated up. Reached down to brush herself off. Again I wondered if she’d notice her new state of being, but she didn't look down as she brushed leaves and stuff away from her. She didn't even seem to notice that there weren't any leaves to brush away from her body.

No, any leaves and other gunk that hung out on forest floors would’ve floated right through her if they had landed on her.

"So what do we do now?" she asked. "That guy is obviously still up there at the house. I don't know what the hell he did, but did you see that? There were actual ghosts up there! It was amazing!"

Well then. If Stacy thought ghosts were amazing then she was about to get one hell of a pleasant surprise. Though something told me she wasn’t going to be as enthused about the whole ghost thing if she was the one who suddenly had a penchant for floating around and sliming Bill Murray.

"Um…"

"I mean I'd heard stories about this place, but I figured that was just people making up stories. Y’know, guys trying to freak out girls so they can get a little action or something. That's not the kind of thing that happens in real life!"

"Yeah," I muttered.

I'd lived with the knowledge that ghosts were real for some time. I could understand her having a little bit of trouble adjusting to the idea though.

It was something I'd lived with since I was a little girl, after all. The existence of life after death was one of those facts of life I'd never really questioned until I got older, went to school, and realized that seeing ghosts wasn't something that happened to everybody. That the subject of what happened in the afterlife was a point of some contention with a lot of people.

"Do you think we should go to the cops or something?" Stacy asked. "I mean if Nicole was a ghost then…"

Stacy’s voice caught. I got the feeling she'd already worked through the full implications of what it meant that Nicole was floating around here in ghost form. She wasn't stupid.

Yet she still hadn’t realized what’d happened to her. That seemed to be a pretty common occurrence with the recently deceased. At least denial had been the first reaction I’d seen on the occasions I'd been unfortunate enough to be around when it happened, which seemed to happen a lot more to me than it did to your average person.

People who were recently deceased had trouble admitting what had happened to them. It was a real Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis situation every time.

And it was time for me to be Michael Keaton and deliver the bad news. I mean I know that’s not exactly what he did in that movie, but work with me here. I’d just died and discovered that most of my friends had passed on as well. I wasn’t thinking straight.

"Stacy," I said. "There's something you really need to know before we decide what we're going to do."

Now I was worried about the thought of my dad coming around. After all, him showing up usually meant someone was about to be tossed through that gate.

I didn't want Stacy to get tossed through that gate. Not when she was so young. I didn’t want that for any of my friends. They all had so much to live for, and yet…

"What is it?" she asked. "You're looking at me like you've seen another ghost."

I figured Stacy wasn't going to provide me with a more perfect opening than that. So I simply crossed my arms. Stuck one finger out and pointed at her. Which caused her to look down.

19

Necromancer

Her eyes went wide as she took it all in. The blue glow. The slight transparency. The way she gave off light even though it was pretty dark. Enough light to see by.

When she looked back up at me her face had gone almost completely transparent. Which I figured was the ghost equivalent of going pale. It's not like she had blood to drain from her face considering all of her blood was probably pooling in whatever way gravity was pointing wherever the hell her body had wound up.

"What the hell is wrong with me Gwen?” she asked. "Don't lie to me. Tell me I'm okay. Tell me I'm seeing things."

An old joke occurred to me. I wasn't sure if it would help, but if ever there was a time when somebody needed a little bit of humor…

"Which do you want it to be?" I asked. "Do you not want me to lie to you, or do you want me to tell you you're seeing things?"

She frowned. "Damn it. This is not the time for humor!"

"Sorry," I said. "I just thought…"

"Why am I like this?" she asked. "And how are you still alive if this happened to me? I saw you slam into those doors. You hit hard enough that you knocked them open. I went out right after you and I didn’t hit those doors and I still died. You shouldn't have survived something like that!"

Her voice was borderline hysterical. Which I could understand, but it wasn't helping things considering there was still a necromancer out there with his parade of undead looking for us.

I glanced around the dark and scary woods that surrounded us. Dark and scary woods had never been all that scary to me before. And this particular woods wasn't even all that dark with all the supernatural glowing helpfully illuminating everything. Right about then it was the last place I wanted to be though.

Particularly if I was dealing with a recently deceased cheerleader coming to terms with the idea that she was recently deceased.

"Look Stacy,” I said. "I understand you're going through a difficult time right now, but…"

"You understand that I'm going through a difficult time?" she shouted.

I held my hands up. Shouting was the last thing we needed. No, she needed to shut the hell up. She was risking attracting all sorts of the wrong kind of attention.

"I think you really should quiet down if…"

"I will not be quiet!" she shouted. Screeched, is more like it. Loud enough that her screech echoed off of the trees. That was the kind of screech that could be heard by a mortal who normally didn't see or hear much of the spirit world.

"I'm dead! Do you have any idea what that means? I had my whole life ahead of me! I wanted to see ghosts! I didn't want to become a ghost!"

"And maybe we can still fix it Stacy,” I said, repeating her name in the hope that it might bring her back to some semblance of sanity. "All you have to do is…"

"All you have to do is surrender to me my pet," a deep voice boomed from the semi-darkness.

That semi-darkness only lasted for a moment before it exploded in bright blue spiritual light. We were surrounded on all sides by ghosts, though I was starting to suspect they were the souls of people who'd been forcibly removed from their bodies so the necromancer could do who knew what to them.

My suspicion was confirmed when I saw Stacy standing in front of me and Stacy floating beside me. One was a live body, and the other was her soul leaning against the tree in terror. Actually she was sort of inside the tree since she obviously hadn't gotten control of the whole floating through things deal yet.

Shit. This is what I'd been worried about.

Though with the night I'd been having I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that the shit was hitting the fan so spectacularly.

"What the fuck are you doing with my body you asshole?" Stacy asked.

I wasn't sure if she was brave because she was actually that brave, or if it was because she had no clue just how terrified she should be. Either way, I had to give her points for daring to question the necromancer when she was in a very vulnerable spiritual form.

It still wasn't the smartest thing she could have done, but she had a pair. Even though she didn't have a pair. She didn't have much of any sort of anatomy considering she was deceased.

She threw herself at the necromancer. She looked like a glowing blue spiritual missile. Her hands outstretched like she wanted to throttle him. Which was a sentiment I could totally understand, even if I thought it was really stupid.

Again, attacking the scary man who’d separated her spirit from her body didn’t strike me as the best thing she could be doing.

The necromancer was ready for her. He slammed his staff down into the ground and there was another one of those explosions of spiritual energy. It radiated out and some of the ghosts were blasted back. Stacy included. It also hit me, but I was ready for it this time.

It wasn't quite as painful this time around. Small blessings and all that. I'm not saying it was a pleasant feeling, just not as unpleasant as it’d been before.

The more interesting thing was that when he struck with his staff Stacy’s body, her living body, lurched forward even as her spirit was tossed back. It looked like a puppet that was under control of a marionette that didn't know what the hell they were doing.

It was creepy enough that it stopped Stacy’s mad floating dash for the necromancer. She looked at her former body, the home her soul had known her whole life, with a mixture of revulsion and terror, but then, to her credit, that revulsion and terror turned to determination.

The more I saw this girl dealing with the necromancer the more I found myself drawn to her. Like she was really doing a hell of a good job. A hell of a lot better than I’d done facing this asshole down. I'd been running in terror this whole time.

"Give me my body you asshole!" she shouted.

I needed to do something. So I started running towards the necromancer. I wasn't going to get there in time to help Stacy. Not that it looked like she needed much help.

No, she dove for her body and her spirit started to flow into it. Her body's eyes blinked a couple of times and I could see the telltale sign of her spirit returning. That spark of the living was coming back.

Well then. I'd done that before with my body, but I'd never seen a spirit try something like that.

"This is my body!" Stacy screamed, and this time the screaming came both from her glowing blue soul trying to dive into her body as well as her body itself. Like there was a tug-of-war going on between her soul and the necromancer, and it looked like she was winning.

I couldn't see the necromancer's face, but it was clear from body language that he was just as surprised as I was that Stacy was putting up that much of a fight. He jerked his staff at her, and her body jerked away, but her soul stayed stuck tenaciously to her body.

Finally he seemed to get frustrated and slammed his staff down. There was another one of those blasts. It knocked me back a few steps, it wasn’t nearly as powerful out here for some reason, and it also knocked Stacy’s soul clear of her body.

Stacy floated in front of her body blinking in surprise. Then she dove for her body again, but the necromancer was ready for her this time.

He struck with his staff. It hit Stacy. Ghost Stacy. Not creepy zombie Stacy. She let out a scream that was otherworldly. Like seriously it looked like she was in pain which wasn't supposed to happen to souls.

I'd almost made it to them, and I knew I had to do something to stop her suffering.

I was furious with this asshole. He attacked my friends. He attacked me. He was trying to upset the natural order of things and I knew whatever the hell he was doing with his necromancer mojo wasn’t good.

So I let out a scream of my own as I dove for him. Darkness surrounded me. The pulsing energy of death. It still felt new, kinda scary if I’m being honest, but I also felt like I could use this.

Oh hell to the yes. This necromancer wanted to try and tangle with death? Well I was going to show him what happened when a reaper came calling.

The only problem was when I tried to strike, when I threw my hand forward and a tendril of darkness moved along with, it was clear my aim was off. The dark tendril went wide, but then it coiled around and swept under the necromancer's feet.

He didn't exactly go down for the count, and I couldn't exactly see his face, but again it was clear from his body language that he was surprised I’d managed to trip him up.

He turned and glared at me. At least I think he was glaring at me. Again, kind of hard to tell when his face was shrouded in darkness like he was using some mask in a video game intended for the self-proclaimed badass crowd.

At least as badass as you could get sitting in front of the TV with a controller in your hand brushing off cheese puff dust and sucking down soda like it was lifeblood.

"What the hell are you?" the necromancer growled, his voice low and menacing.

I'm not going to lie. It was the kind of low and menacing voice that made me feel like soiling my pants just a little. I didn't, I wasn't that completely out of control of my body, but it was really touch and go there for a moment.

"I'm the one who's going to stop you," I growled right back at him, though I had a feeling my growl wasn't nearly as intimidating as his. From the way he turned his staff on me, with Stacy still attached as though he was trying to suck her soul into that glow at the tip, he was ready to take me on.

Fuck. I’d made my bed though. Now it was time to lie in it. Even if I had a feeling this was going to end poorly both for me and Stacy.

20

Rumble

“I don’t know what you are, but I’ll be happy to add you to my collection,” the necromancer hissed.

"In that case let's dance," I said.

Now who was being the armchair badass? I wish I felt the whole ‘80s Chuck Norris vibe I was trying to give off with that one liner, but the truth was I was terrified.

He whipped his staff around, and this time he was whipping around Stacy along with. Like he was literally using her soul as a whip, and I had a feeling this was going to hurt when she hit.

She was still screaming in pain, clearly being attached to that thing wasn't pleasant, and when she passed through me it felt like a physical blow.

Yup. I was right. Not pleasant at all.

I stumbled back. That wasn't good. He was using the girl of my dreams as a whip, and it was actually hitting. Ghosts weren't supposed to hit with any sort of physical force. Not usually.

I stared at him with his funky Stacy whip, and then I lashed out with my darkness again. Again it seemed to go through him, again it seemed to knock him off balance, and again he looked a little surprised that anyone was able to fight back against him.

The problem was that once again it wasn't doing a damn thing to actually help me. He hadn’t been knocked on his ass. I wasn't getting anywhere in this fight. I had no idea what the hell I was even doing with that darkness.

Though I guess maybe I had done a little more than I thought simply by attacking the fucker. He threw his hand out towards his ghostly minions and shouted loud enough that it boomed and made the trees sway all around us.

"Get her!"

I winced and prepared for the hurt. Only the hurt didn’t come. I was facing down a literal army of the dead, spiritually speaking, but none of them looked like they were willing to make the first move.

I even saw that dinosaur ghost I’d whipped earlier. Far from being a terrifying prehistoric spiritual monstrosity, though, the thing turned and ran when it realized the necromancer wanted it to take a bite out of me.

Huh. Maybe I’d done more than I realized in fighting off some of these fuckers. That or they’d seen me fighting the necromancer and decided they didn’t want anything to do with someone crazy enough to fight something that scared the shit out of them.

I shook my head and laughed.

“Get her?” I asked. “That was your plan? Get her?”

“Damn it! I said get her!”

Okay then. I guess our necromancer friend wasn’t in the mood for light banter from ‘80s classics. Leave it to someone messing with the forces of nature to not have a sense of humor about what he was doing.

Though I guess I had no way of knowing what gender this asshole was considering the long flowing robes and the darkness over his or her face. It really wasn’t fair to gender the force of darkness who was doing everything he or she could to cover up his or her identity.

He or she slammed his or her staff down, and y’know what I’m just going to keep on referring to our necromancer friend as a he because of the booming voice that sounded pretty darn masculine when you got down to it.

The staff hit the ground and a shockwave ran through the ghosts. That was enough to get them to start moving. Shit.

I was close to him now though. Close enough that I thought I could reach his staff. Close enough that I might be able to do something if I could just close the distance.

So I did just that. I ran at him despite the fact that he was sending an army of ghosts after me.

I’d like to think he looked surprised that I was still coming at him. I’d like to think he was surprised in general that a couple of teenage girls were taking him on where far more powerful beings would be afraid.

Also? I totally wish I could remember exactly what it was I did. It was like all that dark death mojo flexed around me and there was an explosion of my own. A wave that flew out from me as my hands closed around his staff, and instead of sending all the ghosts running towards me it dispersed them like mist in the wind.

One moment they were there, the next moment they were blowing away. Including a couple of my friends who I’m pretty sure I recognized in that crowd.

I really hoped I hadn’t done anything that would hurt them. Like more than they’d already obviously been hurt considering their spirits had been removed from their bodies, that is. I guess next to that there wasn’t much I could’ve done that would’ve hurt them all that much.

I’d also finally managed to knock the asshole necromancer on his ass. He fell back and his staff went flying. It landed against a tree which knocked Stacy free.

I wasn’t sure what the hell that guy had been doing to trap her in the first place, but I knew I didn’t appreciate him pulling his best Harold Ramis with my girl crush.

The only problem with setting her free? It looked like she was still in a fighting mood. No sooner had she gotten free, I guess being attached to that staff protected her from whatever the hell I’d done, than she was throwing herself at the guy all over again.

“No,” I growled. “We’re not doing this right now.”

I reached out and grabbed at her. For a wonder it actually seemed to work, but she seemed even more frustrated now. She turned on me and it was like a scene out of a horror movie or something as she did her best to claw at me.

It didn’t do any good though. She was a ghost, after all. Maybe she could do something to that necromancer because he seemed to have one foot on both sides of the veil, but she wasn’t doing jack or shit to me.

“We need to get out of here!” I hissed.

“Not a chance,” Stacy said. “That asshole has my body, and there’s no way I’m leaving here without it!”

“My ass you’re sticking around here,” I shouted back at her.

I looked past her to the necromancer who seemed to be recovering from the spill he’d taken. At least he was starting to stir, and I figured if he was waking up then right here was the last place I wanted to be.

“Come on,” I said, the darkness gathering around me.

“No!” she shouted. “You’re not doing this to me! Not when my body is right there!”

There was something different about the way she looked at me this time. There was a pleading there. She was begging me not to abandon her body to this asshole, but that was exactly what we were going to do.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But we have no choice. This is too dangerous. I promise we’ll get help.”

The only problem with that was the only help I could think of was my dad, and something told me he wasn’t going to be all that happy about the current situation when he found out about it. Damn.

I yanked again and did something. I couldn’t quite explain it. Just that the darkness surrounded us as I yanked in a way I never had before with that darkness. One moment we were walking through a glowing haunted forest with a necromancer on the verge of waking up and ruining our day, and the next moment we were on the other side.

The river of souls flowed past us. Stacy stared at it, her eyes wide, and she followed that flow to its natural conclusion off in the distance. Off where the gate waited for all mortals who shed their living body.

She stared at that gate with no small amount of worry. It was enough to make me wonder if she saw one of the bad things.

“I’m not ready,” she whispered. “It’s wonderful, but I’m not ready.”

I looked around. To the rocky outcroppings that looked like deadly fingers reaching for the dark sky. To the reapers on top. None of them had seen us now, but I knew it might not be long.

We needed to get out of here before any of them saw us and threw Stacy through the portal. We needed to get out of there before he showed up. The last thing we needed was Death working his dark magic on my girl.

Even if she wasn’t my girl.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing her and yanking again. In the same way I had to pull her here. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but…

We fell to the ground. The necromancer was still there. If anything Stacy looked more terrified now than she’d been a moment ago facing the necromancer, but she also didn’t protest this time when I dragged her along.

Something about being on the other side, about seeing that there was an eternal reward waiting for her, had done a number on her. Maybe it’d finally hit home that she was dead. Or she was a ghost. Undead. Something.

Whatever. When I pulled this time Stacy came along without protesting, though I did wrap a tendril of that darkness around her. Maybe she could fight off the necromancer, but it was clear she had trouble fighting off whatever the hell it was I was doing with that darkness.

That could be useful. It was also a little worrying that I had access to the same sort of powers that my dad had, but I guess it was to be expected if I was going to be going into the family business.

It looked like she was going to be coming along no matter what I did, so I turned and sprinted off into the woods, doing my best to avoid the trees wherever I could as they reached out and seemed to be grasping for us.

Though as we moved away from her body Stacy seemed to regain some of the fire. She tried floating back towards her body, but I pulled her along and ignored her as she got more and more angry the farther we got from the necromancer and the spot where I’d accidentally pulled her to the gates of death.

Stacy might be pissed off at me right now, but I knew she’d thank me later for saving her from whatever the hell it was that necromancer planned on doing with her eternal soul. Or from getting caught by reapers on the other side, for that matter.

At least I hoped she’d forgive me. The idea of having a hot but pissed off ghost haunting me for the rest of my life was not top on my list of things I’d like to deal with.

21

Quiet

We made it to the fence in record time. The only problem with making it to the fence in record time was we didn’t make it to the gate in record time, and I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like what we found we got to that gate.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would be under watch. Someone had been using that gate recently, and the fact that we’d run into a very real and live necromancer, pardon the pun, meant he’d probably been using that gate to get through.

He was the whole reason Zach was able to get us in here in the first place.

“What’s the problem?” Stacy asked. “Having trouble getting through the fence?”

She floated through the fence and turned around to smile at me. It wasn’t a pleasant smile. No, clearly she’d decided she needed to blame someone for her current situation, and I was the only person within convenient range.

The fact that she was partially right only made it that much worse.

Also? I totally wasn’t going to hang around here long enough to have her bitching at me. No, if she was going to be like this then I was moving on.

“I’m going to find the gate,” I growled. “You can come with me or you can stay here. I don’t care.”

I was tired of it. She’d spent the entire trip through the woods griping at me and telling me how terrible I was for not simply standing up to that necromancer asshole.

It was annoying. It was frustrating. It was the least I deserved considering I hadn’t said anything to keep my friends from getting in this situation in the first place.

“Fine,” she sniffed. “You go on. I’m going to hang out here if you don’t mind.”

“Fine,” I replied. “You stay there and we’ll see what happens to you when the necromancer comes along and scoops you up with that creepy staff thing.”

I turned and stalked off along the fence. It was easy enough to figure out where I was now that I wasn’t in the middle of a bunch of creepy trees that seemed to be reaching for me like monsters out of some movie or something.

We were in the middle of suburbia, after all. That meant there were houses on the other side of the road and even a street sign that I could make out in the light of the very welcome street lights.

The middle of the wilderness this wasn’t, is what I’m getting at.

“Wait. You’re seriously leaving me behind?” Stacy said, floating up next to me. She did a little twirl and a dip around me. Clearly she was getting used to flying.

“Of course I am,” I said. “If you’re going to be ridiculous about this then I’m not going to listen to it.”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “I just died! How can you act like I’m being ridiculous when I just died?”

“Because everyone who just died acts ridiculous about it,” I said.

That shut her up for a moment. She stared at me then floated in front of me moving backwards. Which wasn’t as annoying as you might imagine since it meant I now had a nice blue glow lighting the way.

“You can’t just leave me behind,” she said.

“Oh yeah? Watch me,” I shot back.

I stalked through the woods in silence for a good little while after that. It was a lot easier to see with Stacy floating in front of me lighting the way.

It was actually kind of hard not to laugh. She looked like she was trying her best to intimidate me. The only problem with that idea was her idea of trying to intimidate me seemed to come entirely from cheesy horror movies.

“You know if you make a face like that right after you die you can freeze your face like that forever,” I said.

Stacy’s face froze with her tongue sticking out and her eyes opened wide. Wider than they ever could’ve opened while she was alive.

She stayed like that for the space of a breath she could no longer take and then she was back to good old fashioned horror.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “That’s really a thing?”

I snorted. I couldn’t help it. She looked so sincere in her horror that she might be stuck like that for the rest of her unnatural death.

“No, I’m not serious,” I said. “But you making those faces is distracting, and I’m trying to get out of here so I can get some help.”

She put a hand on her hip. Cocked her head to the side.

“Come on Gwen. Who could possibly help me? I’m dead. Everyone is dead but you, and you’re not telling me what’s up with that.”

“And there’s a good reason for that. Now be quiet,” I hissed.

“Why would I be quiet? I just died and I don’t feel like you’re treating this with the gravity it deserves. I mean…”

I reached out and flicked my fingers. A tendril of darkness flew off of my fingers and snapped into Stacy. From the way she looked at me, surprise mixed with just a tad bit of pain, she didn’t appreciate me flicking her with my death mojo.

“What the hell was that?” she asked. “This is what I’m talking about! You’re hiding something from me and I don’t like it!”

“Would you shut up? We’re almost to that gate and I don’t want you advertising to that necromancer that we’re here. Unless you want to spend more time in his staff,” I said.

That shut her up, but only for a moment.

“Necromancer? Is that what that creepy guy was? And… Ew! Does that mean he’s doing… stuff… with my body?”

It took me half a second to realize what the heck she was talking about. When I did realize what she was talking about it was all I could do to keep from losing my lunch.

Talk about mental images I didn’t need.

“Necromancer,” I said, emphasizing the second part of the word. “Sort of like a dark wizard kind of dude who raises bodies from the dead so he can create a zombie army and take over the world. At least that’s what they’re usually trying to do. There’s not a lot of originality with that crowd.”

“Oh. Well thank God for that,” Stacy said.

I arched an eyebrow. It took her a moment to realize what she’d just said. She was thanking God she’d just died, and that her corpse wasn’t being desecrated in a way I’m not going to repeat here.

I guess when I thought of it that way it was a good thing he was a necromancer and not… that other thing.

“So how do you know all this?” she asked. “You’re still not telling me the weirdness going on with you Gwen. Like I know some people think you’re a little off, but I always thought you were pretty cool and…”

I held a hand up to stop her prattling. I was serious when I said we were coming up on the gate and I didn’t want her giving away our location. Not when I didn’t know what kind of dark forces might be waiting out there.

Though it was nice of her to point out that people at school thought I was weird. It was also nice that she had my back, and I don’t mean that in the sarcastic way even though I totally meant the first part sarcastically.

“I’m only going to say this one more time,” I said. “I need you to be quiet while I think about what to do about those assholes.”

“What assholes are you…”

I still wasn’t sure how I was manipulating that darkness that my dad always seemed to have lurking around him when he was on the other side of the veil. I just knew I could think about it and it sort of went where I wanted to go. Sometimes.

It was still a little touch and go, but I did manage to wrap a tendril of that darkness around her mouth and shut her up nice and good. Like I’m not even talking it muffled what she was saying. It was like I’d found a mute button that shut her up completely.

Huh. That was a trick I was going to have to remember, but right now I was more concerned with the apparitions gathered in front of the gate.

Those guys hadn’t been there before. There was a dude who looked like a civil war soldier, another dude who looked like something out of the Revolutionary War, and a couple of bored looking teenagers who were playing some video game I didn’t recognize. It was like they were holding huge bricks in their hands looking bored.

Not a lot, but they could sure go off and alert that necromancer asshole that I was out here. Right now I needed to get away without letting him know I was getting away.

I turned back to Stacy. I hated to have to do this, but…

“Look. If I let this drop can you be quiet and listen to me for a minute? I have a plan to get us out of here, but you need to stop and listen to me for a change.”

Oh how things had changed. There was a time when I would’ve loved the chance to sit and chat with Stacy forever and ever, but I guess being chased through a dark forest by a creepy necromancer had a way of changing your outlook on life.

Now all I wanted was for her to shut up and listen.

She nodded, but there was something about her eyes that said she wasn’t going to be listening for long even if I did get her to shut up.

I let the tendril of darkness around her mouth drop. At least I tried to let it drop. The problem was it didn’t seem to want to do what I was telling it to do.

I briefly worried I’d maybe done something terribly wrong. I didn’t know enough about all of this. I hadn’t even asked for it. It was just something that came along with being my father’s daughter and now I’d been thrown in over my head.

Finally something snapped and the tendrils of darkness let go. They snapped back into me and I was knocked on my ass.

Not a fun experience.

“What the hell was that?” Stacy yelled.

Which wasn’t good considering there were still a couple of free floating full torso vaporous apparitions hanging around by that gate waiting for some idiot to make too much noise and give away their position.

And those ghosts were looking at us now. They didn’t look happy.

“Damn it Stacy.”

22

Escape

I charged at the ghosts. What the heck else was I supposed to do? I might’ve been screaming, too, which wasn’t good because that was going to draw all sorts of the wrong attention, but they already knew we were standing there trying to hide so what the fuck ever.

I lashed out with the darkness. It wrapped around the ghosts before most of them had a chance to do anything.

I say most of them because there was at least one, a chubby guy in that civil war uniform that I was pretty sure was from a reenactment and not the actual civil war who jogged off into the woods.

I’m pretty sure there weren’t ever any real battles from the civil war around here, but who knows. I was a product of the American education system, after all.

Either way it wasn’t good that he got away. I sent whips of darkness after him but they didn’t quite hit the mark. I just didn’t have enough experience with this.

I wondered if dad had to do target practice with this stuff to get used to the idea of using his death powers, or whatever the hell this was.

Either way the ones that were caught were well and truly caught, and I felt something weird this time around. Like it was almost like I could feel their thoughts. Talk about a weird experience.

Turns out the Revolutionary War dude was also a reenactor of some sort. He was actually an accountant named Chuck who’d been big into the local bowling league until his wife left him for another man and he drowned his sorrows until his liver couldn’t function anymore back in the sixties.

Tragic. Also, as I tried to get that tendril away from him so I didn’t have that flood of weirdness hitting me the connection started to vibrate. It was like a hum that was dancing around in my brain, and it wasn’t comfortable.

“What are you doing to that guy?” Stacy asked, floating up next to me but being very careful to avoid the tendrils of darkness whipping around like something out of a bad alien invasion movie.

“I don’t know what I’m doing!” I said. “I don’t know how any of this works!”

The darkness was getting more and more intense. I felt like the whole world was being blotted out around me, but I could still see everything perfectly.

I wondered if this is what it felt like for dad when he was chasing someone down on the other side. It was like I was seeing both sides of the veil at once.

I screamed and Chuck screamed and a cloud of darkness surrounded him like what’d happened with Stacy back in the woods then he sort of dissolved along with the woods and Stacy and the other ghosts.

Clouds roiled in the darkness above while strange lightning that was like no color I’d ever seen streaked through the sky. It was just me, Chuck, and the stream of dead people making their way towards that gate.

Oops. I did it again.

Chuck turned and looked at the gate. Turned back to me. His lip quivered, and for a surprise he came at me. I threw my hands up, fully expecting a ghostly attack of some sort, but he threw his arms around me and started sobbing.

“Thank you so much,” he said. I’ve been trapped there for decades! “Thank you, thank you! Freedom!”

It was a little odd seeing a guy dressed up in a Revolutionary War outfit talking about freedom. That seemed like the kind of thing straight out of a cheesy old Mel Gibson movie. Back when he made movies instead of going on crazy rants best not repeated here.

Chuck joined the stream of spirits making their way into the gate, and as I watched his face seemed to turn more and more happy the closer he got, and then he was gone.

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. I’d pulled someone to the other side again. I still wasn’t sure how the heck I’d done it, but I’d pulled him to the other side and he’d gone on to his eternal reward which meant his spirit had been hanging around on the wrong side of the veil between life and death since he died back in the ‘60s.

It was enough to make me think this whole necromancer thing had been going on for a hell of a lot longer than I thought.

Also? As I looked around at those giant fingers of stone sticking up out of the ground with reapers all along the top in their work outfits I realized I was exposed in a place I really wasn’t supposed to be.

If any of them came down and started asking questions about what I was doing here that would bring my dad in. On the one hand I figured it might be a good idea to get my dad involved considering I was in way over my head, but on the other hand I thought of Stacy.

And I made one of those stupid decisions that seems to be the unique purview of teenagers trying to protect a friend, a crush, or all of the above. I decided to get the hell out of here.

I’d done this once so I figured how hard could it be? Darkness surrounded me, and a moment later I was back with the creepy woods on one side and the gate and suburbia on the other side.

“Where did you go?” Stacy said. “What did you do to that guy? Like one moment you were there and the next moment you were gone and he was gone. Is that what you did to me?”

She was getting hysterical. Hysterical wasn’t good. Hysterical would make her do something stupid that could get her hurt.

Well, hurt in a metaphysical sense. Obviously she wasn’t going to get hurt physically since, y’know, already dead and stuff. Or mostly dead.

The other two ghosts, presumably still under the necromancer’s control, stared at me and then turned and floated off as fast as whatever it was that made ghosts move could take them.

I let them go. We were at the gate, and something told me the necromancer wasn’t going to be doing much beyond the confines of his little hidey-hole.

“We need to get out of here,” I said. “And we need to get out of here before that guy finds you and does something bad to you. He’s enslaving souls, and I don’t think you want to be stuck working for him for the next few decades like poor Chuck.”

I pushed the gate open and it swung wide with a familiar creak.

“What about my body?” she asked. “Are we going to just let him have it?”

I frowned. That wasn’t ideal. I didn’t know what the necromancer was doing with the bodies, but it couldn’t be anything good.

“We barely made it out of our last two encounters with this guy,” I said. “Do you really want to try for a third time and see what happens?”

“Why should I come with you?” Stacy asked.

“Because right now I’m the only thing stopping you from either being enslaved by a necromancer or being sent on to your eternal reward,” I said. “So if you want to leave this world for good and go off and spend time with your grandparents and all your pets that died when you were a kid you’re welcome to it, but if you want a chance of maybe living again then come with me.”

Stacy’s mouth quirked up in a half smile that seemed odd given the circumstances.

“So you’re saying come with you if I want to live?”

My mouth quirked up in a smile too. Now that she put it that way…

“Yeah, I guess that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“I mean I think you already failed on that count considering my current state, but whatever,” Stacy said, floating through the fence like it was nothing.

She paused on the other end of the fence and grinned at me. Like she was enjoying the fuck out of the fact that she could get through the thing so easily while I was having trouble.

“So where do we go now? Back to your place?”

I suppressed a little shiver at that. There was a time when I would’ve been jumping for joy at the thought of Stacy offering to come back to my place.

That time was well before we ended up in the middle of a necromancer’s lair and I found myself fighting off an army of ghosts and one of the most dangerous bastards to ever practice magic in this town.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” I said.

As much as I liked the idea of having Stacy in my room, even ghost Stacy, there was another part of me that didn’t like the idea at all. Not when going home meant potentially running into my dad.

I knew I should’ve gone to him and told him what was going on here, but I needed time to figure out how I was going to present everything so I didn’t get in trouble for going to that house in the first place and I didn’t end up ratting Stacy out.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get going somewhere that isn’t here, at least.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” I said.

I looked into the woods. I could see a glow there, and then I saw it. A single pinpoint of light moving through the woods. A single pinpoint of light that was no doubt coming from that creepy staff the necromancer was walking around with all the time.

I turned and sprinted down the road, crossing to the other side of the sidewalk, and Stacy floated after. I could tell because I had her glow to light the way.

As soon as I could I took a sprint down a side street. I was serious about getting the hell out of there. Now it was time to figure out what the hell I was going to do about the Stacy situation and how the hell I was going to tell my dad.

23

Morning After

Light.

That was odd. There was something about the light that was wrong. It was too strong. Like it was beating through a window and…

I opened my eyes. The thin red darkness that was the inside of my eyeballs was replaced by the brightness of the sun shining through my window.

I smiled. It was nice to be back home. It was definitely nicer than…

I paused. Tried to think about why I had a bad feeling about something that’d happened the night before. There was something that felt off. Something that seemed very wrong.

I looked at my alarm clock. The thing hadn’t woken me up, and that was a wonder. I also didn’t feel all that tired even though I’d been up late the night before…

I sat up. Turned and let out a scream as I saw Stacy sitting in a rocking chair on one side of my room.

I heard someone moving around in the house. Not good. Someone moving around in the house meant dad was around. Maybe mom too, though she hadn’t always manifested this early in the day.

Dad coming was bad though. If dad came in here he would see Stacy. If he saw Stacy then he would do something like…

Something like what I’d done the night before. Pushing a spirit to the other side. Sending them through that gate that waited for all mortals.

I shivered. I’d done that. I’d done it because it was the only way to stop that ghost, Chuck, from ratting us out to a necromancer who did terrible things to all my friends.

Now here I was facing Stacy’s ghost and if dad found her he’d do the same to her.

“You need to hide,” I said.

“What? What are you talking about?” she asked.

“You need to hide right now. My dad is coming, and he can’t see you in here,” I said.

“Right. He can’t see me. I’m a ghost. Duh. You told me all about this last night,” she said.

I winced as I thought about the conversation we’d had on the way home. I’d told her a little bit about what it meant to be recently deceased, and it looked like she’d been paying more attention than I thought.

Oops.

At least she hadn’t asked me how I knew all of this about what it was like to go on to your eternal reward. Those were the kinds of questions I still really didn’t want to answer.

“Seriously,” I said. “You need to get out of here now. Hide in the closet or something. Go through the wall.”

I stopped. Thought about that. I didn’t know enough about what a necromancer did to a spirit. If she floated through my wall to the outside where the whole world could see her would people actually be able to see her? Or was she like a regular ghost?

I didn’t know, and not knowing worried me more than anything.

“On second thought maybe you shouldn’t hang out on the other side of the wall,” I said. “Here. Try the closet.”

“The closet?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” I said. “You do not want to be in here when my dad gets here!”

“Why the heck does your dad have you so freaked out?”

The darkness was gathering around me. I didn’t like that the darkness was gathering around me. It wouldn’t be long before I did something with that darkness that we were both going to regret.

“Okay, fine,” she said, crossing her arms in a huff as she floated across the room towards the closet.

No sooner had she floated into the closet than the door banged open and my dad looked around as though he expected to have to fight someone off.

Anyone who found themselves robbing the home of death incarnate was going to have a very bad time of it. The only problem was no one had ever tried it, so it’s not like we’d ever gotten around to testing that theory.

“What’s wrong? I heard a scream,” he said, his breath coming in deep gasps. As though he’d run all the way to my room.

I felt bad for obviously scaring him, yes there are things that scare even a reaper, but at the same time I was mostly worried that he was going to find Stacy in here and then stuff was really going to hit the fan.

Side note. I’d always wondered about that phrase. Like if there are real long lost origin stories for most phrases then the story behind that particular phrase about smelly things hitting fans had to be a doozy.

“Um. I saw a spider?” I said.

My dad peered at me long and hard with a look that said he wasn’t buying it.

“You’re not afraid of spiders,” he said.

“Well it was a big scary one,” I said.

“Then where is it?” he asked, his eyes darting around the room.

“Would you get out of here?” I growled. “I need to get ready for school and I don’t need you in here breathing down my neck.”

He looked around the room one more time, and then seemed to decide it was a better idea to avoid antagonizing his teenage daughter than it was to stick around and find out what it was that actually made me scream.

The source of that scream floated through my closet door as soon as the door closed behind dad. She looked at where my dad had closed the door and shook her head.

“So do you want to maybe tell me why you’re so afraid of your dad?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’m not afraid of him. I’m afraid of what he’ll do if he sees you.”

Stacy crossed her arms. Now she was the one hitting me with a look that said she wasn’t going to put up with any nonsense. It was a little weird seeing a look like that from someone my age.

“So do you want to tell me why I should be afraid of what he’ll do to me? Is he friends with Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray or something?”

“Is he… what are you talking about?” I asked.

“Come on,” Stacy said. “You can’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I know what you’re going for, but come on Stacy. I think referencing that movie is in poor taste considering your current state.”

“Whatever,” Stacy said. “I don’t see why I should be so afraid of your dad. What’s the big idea stuffing me into that closet when he can’t even see me?”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “He totally can see you. He’d be able to see you and that would be a very bad thing if he could see you.”

“What, is he like some sort of cop for dead people or something?”

Her laugh and the big smile plastered on her face told me just what she thought of that. Though the smile disappeared as she saw the very serious look on my face.

“Something like that,” I said. “My dad is a reaper.”

Stacy laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh that had very much amusement behind it. I could see where that would sound like the kind of thing someone was joking about just a day ago.

I could also see where she might be a little less likely to think it was a very funny joke these days considering everything that’d happened to her the night before.

Her laugh trailed off when I didn’t join in.

“You’re serious,” she said. “All that weird stuff you were doing last night. The way you didn’t seem all that surprised about everything that was happening. The way you survived being thrown through that door. It’s all because your dad is death?”

“Not death,” I said. “A reaper. Big difference. And that’s the thing. I didn’t actually survive getting thrown out that door. I died the same as you did. The big difference is I can go back into my body once I’ve died. I heal up.”

I held my hands out as though I was showing off my healing ability. I was a regular Logan with the way I got over things.

“You’re completely serious about this,” Stacy said, her voice rising. “You’re… Are you the same as your dad?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “At least that’s what he told me, and considering everything that happened last night I’m willing to believe him.”

“So you’re saying your dad is the fucking grim reaper, and like you’re an apprentice or something? Like did you lure all of us into that mansion last night so that guy could kill us off?”

I was so thrown off by the question that it took me a minute to think through it. I guess waiting wasn’t the reaction Stacy was looking for. If anything she looked more pissed off the more I delayed.

“Well that’s not entirely accurate,” I said. “He’s not the grim reaper. He’s a grim reaper. There are a lot of them working to bring souls to the other side.”

“How the hell is that supposed to make me feel any better about any of this?” she said, her shriek getting loud enough that I worried my dad might hear it and come to investigate again.

“You really need to keep it down,” I hissed.

She might be willing to get into a shouting match when there was a grim reaper in the house more than capable of taking her to the other side, but that didn’t mean I wanted to deal with the inevitable fallout when my dad realized what I was hiding up here.

“I don’t need to keep anything down,” she said. “I find out you’re a grim reaper and you took us up to the house to get us killed and now…”

“I didn’t take you up there to get killed!” I said, my voice rising. “And if you would stop and listen to me for maybe thirty seconds you’d realize I’m trying to help you here!”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. A fat lot of help you’ve been so far.”

“Think about what you’re saying,” I said. “I was trying to fight that asshole. You’re the one who went up to a necromancer’s house and dragged everyone else along because you thought it’d be cool!”

Again I could tell I’d said the absolute wrong thing at the wrong time. It was starting to be a thing with me. Damn.

It was also the truth though. Zach had been the one to drag us out there and I was pretty sure Stacy had been in on it from the beginning.

“You knew there was a necrowhatsit in that house and you let us go up there?” she asked.

Damn it, damn it, damn it!

“Would you stop trying to lawyer me on this and let me help you?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Will you stop avoiding these questions and tell me the truth for a change?”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “I knew there’d been a necromancer up at that house once upon a time. It was a big deal like ten years ago.”

“Back when all those people were disappearing mysteriously?” she asked. “You mean that actually had something to do with that house? That wasn’t just bullshit rumors on the playgrounds?”

“It wasn’t,” I said, trying my best to hide some of the pain I always felt thinking about those disappearances, and not doing a very good job of it as always. “But my dad took care the necromancer.”

“What, like he killed the dude?” Stacy asked.

“He didn’t kill him,” I said. “Necromancers use energy they pull from the souls of the living to prolong their lives and give themselves weird magical powers. That means if you take away the source of that power they do this whole weird shriveling up Indiana Jones type thing. At least they usually do if they’re past their expiration date.”

Stacy stared. Clearly she wasn’t all that impressed by the imagery. She looked like she was about to be sick, but of course she couldn’t be sick because she was already dead and it’s not like she was going to be able to lose her lunch if she didn’t have anything in there digesting.

I’d heard of some ghosts that could puke up on people, but those were special cases. We’re talking ectoplasm everywhere. I’d never run into one of those, but I didn’t figure it was a pleasant experience.

“So were you ever going to tell any of us about this? Maybe warn us?” she asked.

“Well, no?” I sort of half said and half asked. “It’s not like it was something I thought you needed to know. The necromancer was supposed to be long gone!”

“Well obviously you were wrong about that, weren’t you?” she said with a sniff. “Now you’ll excuse me, but I don’t think I want to be around you right now.”

She floated through the wall. I listened for any screams from the other side, but there was nothing.

I suppose I deserved that. I knew on some level that none of this was my fault, that there was no way I could’ve possibly known about what was going on up there, but that didn’t stop me from blaming myself for all of this.

Damn it.

24

Stages of Grief

I sighed. I probably should get out there and find her. I figured it was even money whether or not I’d find her first or some poor unsuspecting kid walking to school would find her and hurt themselves doing something stupid trying to get away from the real live ghost floating in front of them.

Pardon the pun.

Assuming she could be seen. Again I simply didn’t know enough about what was going on with a soul that’d been removed from a body that was still living. The only dead people I’d ever dealt with in my short life were people who were already dead.

So I threw on some clothes and sprayed myself with some body spray. Hopefully that would be enough to keep me for the moment, and I figured I could always duck into the showers in the gym if it turned out I was a little ripe.

I needed to get out there and find Stacy. Especially if there was a chance my dad might be out there to see her. I don’t know where he’d been the night before, falling down on the job obviously, but I still didn’t want to run the risk that he might run into her in the course of his normal day.

I blew past the kitchen. Mom wasn’t in there, she usually wasn’t in the morning, but there were two toaster pastries waiting for me. With the strawberry frosting which I always loved.

I stopped to grab those. I figured I was going to need some nourishment for what was already shaping up to be one hell of a day.

I burst out of the house at a run and I kept it up until I reached the sidewalk. Once I was there I realized I had no idea where Stacy went.

A scream off in the distance told me all I needed to know.

I took off at at sprint. If there was someone screaming it meant they could see her. If they could see her then it might bring all sorts of the wrong kind of attention down on her. That kind of attention would draw my dad’s attention and before I could do anything about it Stacy would be getting a one way trip to the other side where she’d be tossed through that portal.

Damn it.

I reached the park in time to see some kids who’d probably been there to have a little fun on their way to school running in terror.

Well that was one good thing, at least. I didn’t think it was likely someone was going to believe a bunch of kids when they started talking about seeing a ghost in the park. At worst a teacher might think there was some creeper lurking, but it’s not like it would make the news or anything.

I searched the park for any obvious signs of a haunting, and boy did I get it. A creepy little girl went jumping rope through a piece of playground equipment that was more plastic than anything else and had obviously been built since that little girl died, but she was oblivious to me.

I knew she was a normal for the park. It’d made my trips to this place a little weird when I was a little kid. The girl had gotten away from her parents and decided to go for a swim in a retaining pond that had since been surrounded by a very tall fence with a bunch of warning signs.

Sad, but it had happened before I was even born. The parents around here remembered, but for me and my friends it was just another sad story that had reached urban legend status.

Finally I spotted a flicker of movement in an old school metal monstrosity that definitely wasn’t like some of the newer playground equipment designed to keep kids safe.

No, this was one of those old solid pieces of metal that’d been built over gravel in an era when people who built playground equipment evidently thought survival of the fittest was a good thing to encourage with their designs.

I didn’t think that flicker of movement was a kid either. It wasn’t solid enough. I walked over and stuck my head in. Sure enough there was Stacy almost leaning up against a wall. Not quite, of course, because if she’d touched the wall she would’ve gone right through.

“Stacy?” I asked.

She didn’t acknowledge me. She was rocking back and forth and clearly working through some stuff. Not that I could blame her. She’d been through a lot.

I’d gotten used to the sure knowledge that there was an afterlife and my dad escorted people to it. That knowledge came gradually over time when I was a kid, but this was hitting her all at once.

I’m sure it was a lot to absorb.

I moved over to sit next to her. When she didn’t pull a scare on me I figured it was safe enough to take that seat. Maybe. I went to lean back against the metal playground equipment then thought better of it.

She couldn’t lean back, after all, and I figured it wouldn’t be very nice to go rubbing that in her face.

“So do you want to talk about it?” I asked.

“What is there to talk about?” she asked. “I’m dead. I’m a ghost. I’m just sitting here marking time until your dad finds me and then its lights out forever.”

“Well I don’t know about that,” I said. “It’s more like you’ll go through a portal to your eternal reward. Whatever that happens to be. We’re not really allowed to know what’s waiting for people on the other side, but you’re young enough that I can’t imagine it would be anything…”

I trailed off. Realized from the look she was giving me that none of this was comforting her. Okay then. Time to change the subject.

“So it looks like you really scared some kids,” I said. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“You told me they couldn’t see me,” she said with a sniffle.

“Well yeah, normally people can’t see ghosts. Not unless there’s something weird going on like they had a connection to the ghost, but you’re a soul still stuck on this side with your body out there somewhere very much alive.”

“So what you’re telling me is that asshole still has my body and he’s doing who knows what with it?”

“Well when you put it that way it makes it sound like a bad thing,” I said.

She looked at me and I was totally expecting another glare. Only for a surprise she smiled. A smile was good. It was better than what I’d gotten so far this morning.

Then she really surprised me by leaning her head against my shoulder.

“Huh,” she said. “That works?”

“Um, yeah,” I said. “Side effect of what I am. I can touch the ethereal plane.”

“The what?” she asked.

“Never mind,” I said, wrapping an arm around her.

She kept her head resting against me which felt nice. It wasn’t exactly warm like it would be if she was still in possession of a pulse, but I’d take it.

She really surprised me when she reached out and ran a finger along my hand. Talk about the sort of contact I wasn’t expecting from her either in the land of the living or the dead.

“Um. Are you okay Stacy?” I asked.

She shifted. I turned to look at her and she was looking right at me. I swallowed, suddenly unsure of what to do with this turn of events.

It was unexpected. Not unwelcome, but unexpected.

“I was just thinking,” she said. “You were nice to me last night and all, and through all of this you’ve been trying to help me. Even when I was acting a little crazy.”

“Well yeah, but you had a good reason to be acting crazy,” I said. “I mean it’s not like you asked to be killed last night.”

I frowned. “Not that I’m sure what happened to you last night could be classified as being killed, but you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, but it could’ve been a lot worse,” she said. “If you weren’t out there then that asshole could’ve done something really bad to me. I could be stuck in that staff or whatever the fuck he was doing.”

“Usually they gather the souls of the dead or the undead around them to add to their magical power,” I said without really thinking about it.

She smiled. Smacked my shoulder. “See? This is what I’m talking about. You just know this stuff off the top of your head, and that’s pretty cool.”

“It is?” I asked. “I’m just repeating stuff I’ve learned from my dad over the years.”

“Yeah, well did it ever occur to you that maybe the reason why your dad is always dropping all this knowledge around you is because he figured you might be doing the same thing he does someday?”

I thought about that. Sure dad had always been pretty free about talking about his work, but I always thought that was because I was always asking him questions.

“Huh. I guess it never occurred to me that it’s a little odd he’d tell me all that stuff about his job,” I said. “At least considering what that job is. Not exactly the kind of job you talk about with your kids.”

“Yeah, more than a little odd considering what he does for a living,” Stacy said. “I can barely get my dad to talk about his day at the office, and as far as I can tell he’s just a boring accountant. Not even the fun kind of accountant who does work for the mob or something.”

“I don’t know if the constant risk of getting knocked over by a rival crime gang would be a good thing,” I said.

“Yeah, well it’s not like there are crime families around here anyway, so no worry there,” Stacy said. “Besides, here I am dead regardless of what my dad does for a living.”

We settled into silence after that. She rested her head on my shoulder again. Maybe she just needed to be close to someone and I was the closest she was going to get since I was the only person she could lean against and actually physically touch given her current condition.

Unless she met some of the boys at the school. Not that I was going to introduce her to them just yet. No, those horny bastards would be all over her and I wanted Stacy to myself for just a little longer.

25

Ghostly Confession

“You know you’re going to have to get to school,” Stacy said. “You’re going to be late as it is.”

“Do I have to go to school?” I asked. “Because I’d much rather hang out here and try to figure out a way to tell my dad about everything that happened without him trying to throw you through to the other side.”

“Is that what you’ve been worried about this whole time? That he’s going to find me and send me to the other side?” she asked.

“Um, maybe?” I asked. “What can I say. I’m selfish. I like having you around.”

“Oh really?” she said.

There might’ve been a twinkle in her eye. Or it might’ve been that because of the whole ghost thing she seemed to sparkle and twinkle naturally. Either way the corner of her mouth quirked up in a little smile.

“I thought you said I was a soul set free from my body and not a ghost?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how dad would handle it,” I said. “Or what would happen to your real body the necromancer has if your soul were removed from this world.”

“Oh,” she said.

Crap. Any moment we might’ve been having was gone as she realized the potential consequences we were facing here.

Stupid me for ruining that moment, but it had to be done. She had to appreciate how serious this all was.

“Yup. Kind of a nasty situation all around,” I said. “But we’ll figure something out.”

“And in the meantime you need to go to school,” Stacy said.

I barked out a short laugh.

“No way. I don’t want to go to school today. I think having a bunch of my friends killed by a necromancer is a good reason to take a day off.”

“You have to go to school Gwen,” she said. “I know no one ever really wants to go to school, like it would be totally nice if we could have the whole hanging out with friends thing without all the homework stuff, but you have to go.”

“After everything that happened last night?” I asked. “No way. We’re going back to that house in the daytime and we’re going to try and figure out what’s going on there.”

“Seriously?” she asked. “Are necromancers like vampires or something? Do they hide in a coffin during the day?”

“Well no,” I said. “They can be up and around any time of day.”

“So we’re not even talking Edward rules here?” Stacy asked. “It’s not like they can hang out under clouds and… Wait. You’re telling me vampires are real? You have to be fucking kidding me.”

Oops. I’d just broached another subject that I would’ve rather avoided. It was bad enough that she’d just learned the whole death and dying thing and ghosts were real.

Besides, she sounded way too excited to discover bloodsucking vampires were real.

“I really don’t want to overwhelm you with stories of other paranormal creatures that are or aren’t real,” I said.

“But they are real?” she asked. “And other things too? Like werewolves? Wendigos?”

This girl. Every time I thought she couldn’t surprise me she went and did it again. Most people would react to the knowledge that vampires and other supernatural things were real with terror. Like it was an existential threat to the whole idea that humans were the dominant species on the planet and most mortals didn’t take that news all that well.

Even though those monsters totally weren’t much of a treat at all. Sure vampires might be scary one on one in a dark alley or something, but they didn’t have things like automatic weapons or tanks or atomic weapons which humans did. Imagine if cows could mow a farmer down with a machine gun nest every time he tried to come along and pick some of them off for his steak dinner and you’ll start to get an idea of what modern supernatural predators of homo sapiens were facing down when they went to get a snack the old fashioned way.

I’m getting away from what’s important though.

“Subject change,” I said. “Because that’s a big subject that we do not have time to talk about right now.”

“Come on,” she said. “Are werewolves real? Mummies? What about Bigfoot? Have you ever met Bigfoot?”

“I mean I saw Bigfoot once,” I said.

“Really?” she asked, leaning forward with her eyes twinkling. “What was it like?”

“Well it was a big blue truck with giant wheels and it ran over a bunch of cars they brought in from a local junkyard, so I guess it was pretty cool.”

I’d been there on a business trip with dad. You’d think that business trip would be one of the drivers biting it considering how dangerous some of that stunt car stuff was, but it turns out some overweight dude who had too much of a fondness for greasy food finally had that fondness catch up with him while he was in the middle of eating a bucket of greasy arena beef nachos.

At least the guy died doing what he loved. There weren’t too many people who could say that.

“You’re terrible,” Stacy said. “And you also have to go to school. Think about it. If you don’t show up then the school is going call your parents. If they find out you didn’t go they’ll realize something is up and then you’re going to be in deep shit and your dad might discover me anyway.”

“Shit,” I said. “Never thought about it like that.”

“That’s why I’m here to think things through,” Stacy said. “No one ever expects the cheerleader to be the brains of the operation.”

I rolled my eyes and pulled out my phone to get a look at the time. Not good. I was already going to be cutting it close even if I got there in the next couple of minutes, and it was a good ten minute walk to the school from here.

I had no choice. I was going to have to run. It was a pity my Hollywood inspired dreams of going to school riding on a skateboard while holding onto the back of a pickup truck had been so many dangerous lies.

Seriously. I’d seen the aftermath of a kid trying that. His spirit still hung out in front of the courthouse downtown ranting about suing the people who made Back to the Future, though I’m pretty sure the people who made that classic were safe enough considering ghosts didn’t have any standing in court that I was aware of.

I sighed. “I hate it when you’re right. We also have to figure out what we’re going to do about you.”

“What do you mean what you’re going to do about me?” she asked. “I’m following you to school. There’s no way I’m wandering around on my own when there’s a necromancer out there looking for me and your dad might come across me and zap me to the other side. No way.”

“Yeah, but what about what happened with those kids that ran screaming?” I said. “I can’t have you following me around if people can see you. That’s going to draw the kind of attention we don’t want.”

Stacy looked down and her colors turned a slightly darker shade of glowing blue. Basically the ghost equivalent of a blush.

“What?” I asked.

“I think that was sort of my fault,” she said. “They didn’t see me at first, but they were playing and having fun and being alive and I was in a delicate state and maybe I got a little mad and went all librarian in the opening scene of Ghostbusters on them.”

It took me a moment to think about what scene she was talking about. I’d seen the movie, I didn’t know anyone who hadn’t, but it wasn’t a movie we watched at home all that often. Dad always grumbled about how he didn’t want to watch a movie about work when he was trying to enjoy a nice quiet night at home.

“So you scared them on purpose?” I said. “Like they couldn’t see you until you got all pissy?”

“I’m pretty sure they couldn’t,” she said.

I sighed. “I have a feeling I’m going to regret this, but I guess you can come along.”

“Why would you regret it?” she asked.

“Because everyone’s going to see a ghost and think I’m some weird chick who has dead girls hanging around her all the time? Duh,” I said. “That’s just what I need after the zombie girl stuff.”

“But we’ve already covered that people aren’t going to see a dead chick hanging around so you don’t need to worry about that,” she said.

“Says you,” I said. “What if you see your boyfriend hanging out with some other chick now that you’re out of the picture and next thing I know you’re pulling a Beetlejuice and everyone is terrified of coming near me?”

“First off I’m totally not going to pull a Beetlejuice no matter what I see at school today,” Stacy said. “And second off I really don’t think you have to worry about me seeing my boyfriend and getting jealous of him hanging all over some other girl or something.”

I felt a flash of hope rise in me. Sure there was a lot of weird shit that’d been going on lately, but at the end of the day I was still a teenager with some of the same urges that teenagers have been feeling since time immemorial.

Which meant that the moment she started talking like there might be a chance with the two of us was the moment I got very interested.

“Oh really?” I said. “Why wouldn’t you be jealous?”

She looked at me for a long moment and it felt like one of those moments where anything could happen. My breath was coming in shorter and shorter gasps. My pulse raced and I wondered if I was having a panic attack or if this was the moment when she was going to admit that she totally had the hots for me.

“Well I’m pretty sure I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said. “Zach was the closest thing I had to a boyfriend these days and it’s not like that’s going anywhere.”

She had to be toying with me. She was smiling like she was toying with me and having a good time with it, too.

“Why wouldn’t that be going anywhere?” I licked my lips.

“Well duh,” she said, leaning in close. Close enough that I would’ve felt her breath on my lips if she was still alive and still had breath to be breathing on me. “He’s sort of in the same predicament as I am. Not like you can date the dead, right?”

I stared at her and thought about telling her that I had a few ideas on that score, but I didn’t want to get into a conversation like the one we’d had last night about what a necromancer was and what the necromancer planned on doing with her body now that her soul was out of the way.

“I’m fucking with you Gwen,” she said, and really surprised me by leaning in and kissing me on the cheek. “Isn’t it obvious by now I’m into you?”

My heart fluttered and I worried that I might be on the verge of dying from overwhelming joy. She was into me. I wasn’t imagining things. The only problem was it was a dead cheerleader who was into me.

Crap. I’d dreamed about this moment forever, but I’d never imagined Stacy being dead when she admitted she had feelings for me.

“Who knows? If you can figure out a way to get me back into my body maybe we could even go on a real first date, and not that crazy walk through a haunted house bullshit from last night.”

“Huh. So you’re saying if I save you and get you back into your body I totally get to go on a hot date with the cute cheerleader?” I asked.

“Well yeah. That’s pretty much what I was saying,” she said. “Come on Gwen. Get with the program!”

“Oh I’m with the program,” I said, standing and brushing myself off. I was suddenly filled with a new and strong resolve. “We’re going to find that necromancer and we’re going to make him regret the day he ever decided to mess with us!”

“That’s the spirit!” Stacy said, standing herself and instinctively brushing herself off even though she totally didn’t need to considering dirt and muck wasn’t going to stick to her.

“First, though, to school,” I said. “Wouldn’t want to be marked as absent and get the wrong kind of attention from my dad.”

So I set off for the school, filled with a new determination. The girl I’d been crushing on for years was totally into me.

Sure she was technically dead right now and I needed to fix that, but that didn’t change the fact that she was into me, damn it, and nothing, not even a necromancer, was going to stop me from getting that date!

26

Back to School Again

“Running late Gwen!” Luke said.

“Yeah, you’re totally going to get it if you don’t get in there asap,” Arnold said. “Do they still paddle students like they did when we were in school?”

I fixed him with a glare. “Come on Arnold. I know when you’re bullshitting me about the way they used to do things, and you’re not getting me with that now.”

The three of them looked at each other like they were genuinely surprised.

“What, so they don’t paddle kids for getting in trouble now?” Jake asked.

“Not if they don’t want to wind up with a visit from the cops for abusing students,” I said. “Now get out of my way. I have to get in there.”

“Hold up gents,” Luke said, suddenly licking his hand and running it through his hair.

Not that it did much good at all. The problem with licking his hair and trying to wet it back was that it was going to pretty much stay however the heck he’d worn it when he died. Something about a person’s residual self-image or something like that translating over to what they looked like in the great beyond.

I sighed. I’d been afraid of something like this. Stacy floated up behind me and looked at the three guys.

“Friends of yours?” she asked.

“Something like that,” I said. “But we don’t need to talk to them right now. What’s really important is that we…”

“Pardon me madame,” Jake said, swooping forward and trying to take Stacy’s hand. It didn’t work because she snatched it away at the last moment, and so he went into a bow and tried to act like that’s what he’d been going for all along.

“Damn,” Arnold said. “Is this the girl who got you to walk out in front of that bus a couple of days ago Gwen? Because I can totally see why you’d be willing to die for an ass like…”

He cut off as darkness surrounded me and I let loose with a whip of dark energy. Just enough to snap him on the mouth and get him to shut the fuck up.

“Holy shit,” Luke said. “She’s doing that thing. Like what the reaper does!”

“Exactly,” I said, then sighed. “He’s my dad guys. Are you really surprised I have some of the same abilities he does?”

“Well not surprised,” Arnold said, feeling at his lips. “But it’d be nice if you didn’t use that stuff on your friends.”

“Also, can you explain to us what the hell the hot cheerleader is doing here on our side and not living like she’s supposed to?”

I frowned. “You guys didn’t hear anything in the school this morning?”

They looked at each other in clear confusion. I’d figured a bunch of students dying overnight would be the kind of thing that got all sorts of attention at the school. Especially a bunch of students who were pretty popular and well known.

“There’s nothing weird going on in there,” Luke said. “Trust us. We know all about what it’s like when a student bites the dust.”

“You’re sure?” I asked.

“Pretty sure,” Arnold said with a shrug.

“No bullshitting you guys. If you’re bullshitting me then I’m not going to tell you anything else about what happens in the prequel trilogy,” I said. “Understand?”

“The prequel trilogy?” Stacy asked. “Like Star Wars?”

“Yup,” I said. “I’ve been telling them what happens since they were all dead long before George Lucas decided to cash in again.”

“Huh,” Stacy said. “You guys have been dead since what, the early ‘80s, and the one thing that you’re the most worried about in the world is what happens in the next Star Wars movie?”

“Well yeah,” Luke said. “It’s a pretty big deal. I don’t think there’ll ever be a movie bigger than the Wars.”

“Have you told them about that little bitch Kylo Ren?” Stacy asked, turning to me.

“We haven’t covered the new sequels yet,” I said.

“Wait a minute,” Arnold said. “New sequels? What the hell are you talking about?”

“So they don’t know what happens to Luke or Han? Seriously?” Stacy asked.

“How the hell does a cheerleader know this much about Star Wars?” Jake asked. “That’s like, not a thing that happens.”

“Come on,” Stacy said. “Ever since Disney bought out Lucasfilm everyone is into Star Wars. It’s been huge as far back as I can remember.”

They all three turned to face me and it was clear from their expressions that they’d just gotten the worst news since they discovered they were dead.

“What the hell is she talking about saying Disney bought Star Wars?” Jake asked.

“Seriously. Their movies suck!” Arnold said.

“You guys might’ve liked The Black Cauldron if you lived long enough to see it,” I said. “But you’d be surprised how much has changed, and we do not have time to go into all of this right now.”

“Fine,” Jake said. “But I seriously think we were born in the wrong decade if the world is a place where hot cheerleaders know about Star Wars.”

“Maybe so,” I said. “But that’s something to worry about later.”

“Shit,” Luke said.

We moved up the sidewalk and I hit Stacy with a sidelong glance.

“You were enjoying that. Weren’t you?” I asked.

“Maybe I was,” she said. “What’s it to you if I was enjoying it?”

“Nothing I guess,” I said. “But you didn’t have to tell them about what happened to Han and Luke.”

“I didn’t tell them,” she said. “But I figure I can hold that over their heads if they start going on about my ass again.”

I made a production of peering behind her. She was walking like normal instead of floating along which meant I got to see a ghostly version of that hypnotic walk that had caused me to walk out in front of a bus weeks ago.

“I don’t know,” I said. “They did have a good point. Even if they were a little crude about making that point.”

“You’re the worst,” she said, sticking her tongue out.

“Hey, I’m only getting a look at my prize for saving your life,” I said. “If I’m going to do something big like going up against a necromancer then the stakes have to be pretty high, y’know?”

“You really are the worst,” she said. “Now come on. We need to get in there and figure out why people aren’t inconsolable that I’m dead.”

“That’s what you’re worried about with everything that’s going on?” I asked.

“Well duh,” she said. “I mean have you ever seen what a high school is like when someone kicks the bucket? Everyone gets all sad and weepy and you get to see who your real friends were.”

“You mean you get to see a bunch of people virtue signaling and pretending they were BFFs with the recently departed so they can get some of that sweet sympathy,” I said. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not all that excited about walking in to a weepy bunch of…”

I trailed off as we stepped into the school. It was just like the guys said. There wasn’t a weepy eye in this place. Just a bunch of students at their lockers getting ready for a day at school. I guess I hadn’t gotten to the place too late after all.

“Damn,” I said. “If you were expecting people to be upset about your demise then you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Says you,” Stacy said. “I’m sure there’s someone out there who knows what happened.”

That tickled something in the back of my mind. Like it was weird that no one seemed all that upset this morning. Stacy was right. If there were people who kicked the bucket in a school it usually was a big deal, and if one of those people who kicked the bucket happened to be a pretty cheerleader that everyone knew and at least half the student population secretly had a crush on?

Well there should’ve been a lot more people who were weepy and upset. Or at the very least there should’ve been more people who were worried that they hadn’t heard from their friends yet.

“What if they don’t know about it yet?” I asked.

“What are you talking about?” Stacy asked. “Of course they’d know about it. Someone had to have found us, right?”

“Think about it,” I said. “Like really think about it. We were out at that house in the middle of the night last night, so that means your parents probably haven’t even had a chance to realize you’re missing. Do you ever stay the night at someone else’s place?”

“Well I do,” she said. “But usually not in the middle of the week. I just called them and told them I was hanging out with friends. They wouldn’t think I was out overnight with someone, but they’re not the waiting up type either.”

“Okay, so maybe they went to sleep early or something and it’s only this morning that they would’ve realized something was wrong and they needed to do something about it,” I said. “The same thing is probably happening with everyone else too. They’ve probably only just gotten around to calling the police and reporting you missing, and it’s going to take at least a day for news that people are missing to filter out.”

“So you’re saying people are going to make a big deal out of it, but they haven’t learned that I’m missing to make a big deal out of it yet?” she asked.

“Maybe,” I said, still not liking that explanation. “Is that seriously all you care about? Whether or not people are upset that you’ve gone missing?”

“Wouldn’t you want to be a fly on the wall at your funeral?” she asked. “Everybody always says the nicest things about people when they’ve kicked the bucket. I think it’d be interesting to be there to hear what people had to say.”

“You’re nuts,” I said.

“Maybe, but you have to admit I’m right.”

“I’m admitting nothing of the sort,” I said. “Now let’s get to class. I have to act like everything is normal here today or people might start asking questions and…”

I trailed off, because I saw something that should’ve been impossible, but it also made terrible sense given what I’d seen the night before. The crowd parted Greg walked towards us with a smile plastered on his face. His eyes darted to my side for a moment, but then he was on us.

And he walked right past me. What the eff?

“Did he seriously just blow you off after everything that happened last night?” Stacy asked.

“I think he did,” I said. “And I also don’t know whether or not that’s actually him, but I’m going to find out damn it.”

So I turned and moved to follow Greg. I was going to figure out what the hell he was doing here and whether or not he’d escaped, or something much worse had happened to him.

27

Survivor

I moved through the crowd, but the first bell beeped letting everyone know it was time to get to class. Damn. Not enough time.

“Greg!” I shouted.

He paused and looked slightly over his shoulder. His face scrunched up in confusion. Like he almost recognized his name. Almost, but not quite.

“Greg! It’s Gwen! I need to talk to you!”

“Why is he ignoring you?” Stacy asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“Because there’s a very good chance that’s not Greg,” I said.

“Seriously?” she asked. “Is this like a necromancer thing or something?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “All I do know is I don’t like what’s happening here, and I really don’t like what I saw that necromancer doing with your body last night. It was like you were a puppet or something.”

“So you’re saying he might be under the necromancer’s control?” Stacy asked. “If he is then could he see other ghosts?”

Almost on cue a weeping girl stepped out of the walls clutching books to her chest. I knew her only by sight, but it looked like whatever had happened to her in the past hadn’t been a terribly pleasant experience.

Also? Greg totally stopped as though to give her some space when she floated in front of him.

“I’d say that’s a definite yes,” I said.

“Damn,” Stacy said.

“You’re damn right,” I said. “Now let’s go see what the hell is going on here.”

I was careful as I approached him. I thought about everything we’d seen the night before. How that strange ghostly procession had been walking around that property like a parade of the damned or something.

It wasn’t the kind of thing that made me feel all warm and fuzzy about approaching my friend. Not when I knew he was probably under the control of that necromancer. Not when I figured there was a very good chance that his soul had been sucked into that staff.

I caught up with him. He seemed to be walking on a very bad autopilot that kept bumping him into people rushing to get to class before the final tone. As though whatever was controlling him was having trouble getting used to the hustle and bustle of a high school.

I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into a door off to the side. It turned out to be leading into the men’s room, but the bell had already beeped which meant anyone who was in that room had already moved on.

“Greg. It’s me. What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

He stared at me blankly. I’ve heard of a thousand yard stare before, but it wasn’t something I’d ever thought I’d see in person.

“What are you doing?” Stacy asked.

“That might be Greg in there,” I said. “If there’s any part of him in there he can tell us what happened to him.”

“I don’t think that’s happening,” Stacy said. “Look at him. He’s checked out.”

He might be checked out, but he did acknowledge Stacy. His eyes moved to her every time she spoke, and that was worth a shiver.

He wasn’t supposed to be able to see ghosts. I know we’d seen him looking at that girl earlier, but it didn’t make it feel any less wrong that he was looking at Stacy now.

I’d gone my whole life moving through a world where I could see ghosts and other people couldn’t, and seeing that world being flipped upside down now was disconcerting and more than a little creepy.

“Would you stop doing that?” I asked.

His attention snapped back to me, but it was clear he was watching but the lights weren’t on at home.

“I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of him,” Stacy said.

Then he smiled. I guess I should’ve been happy he was smiling, but I couldn’t shake the very bad feeling that him smiling didn’t mean anything good for me or Stacy.

“Gwen!” he said, that smile never touching his eyes.

There was also something that was very off about the way he said my name. Like he was trying it out for the first time. Or like he was dredging it up from some half forgotten memory.

Either way it was totally creepy.

“Um. This is fucking creepy,” Stacy said.

“You’ve got that right,” I replied.

Greg turned on Stacy. Yup. He could definitely see her, and that was not fucking right.

“Stacy,” he said, his mouth turning down in a frown as he stared her down. “You know you shouldn’t be here Stacy. That was very naughty of you running from the master last night.”

Stacy’s eyebrow shot up. “The master? So what is this, a Nick at Nite rerun of that stupid genie show or something?”

“You always were funny Stacy,” Greg said, then he laughed.

Only it was a weird laugh. Like his mouth was making “ha ha” noises, but it wasn’t genuine. It sounded for all the world like a computer or a creepy puppet trying to sound like the hu-mons and not quite pulling it off.

“You will be funny for the master soon,” he said. “Everyone will be for the master soon. You shouldn’t fight it like you did last night.”

I felt the darkness spreading around me. It popped up without really thinking about it. I guess I was creeped out by this to the point that I didn’t even think about it before I tried to defend myself against the creepy zombie dude.

I lashed out with the darkness. I was getting better at that even if I still didn’t have as much control as I’d like. A tendril wrapped around his neck and he went limp.

“Damn,” Stacy said. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

“Good idea,” I said. I turned back to Greg. “Now tell me where your master is.”

He smiled. His body was still limp, obviously whatever I was doing was cutting the strings between him and the puppet master. At least the part that made him move. He didn’t seem to be having any trouble talking.

“You don’t need me to tell you where he is,” Greg said, his voice raspy now. “He will find you. He knows where you are and he can’t wait to meet you again, but not yet. It’s not time yet.”

“That wasn’t at all creepy,” Stacy said.

“Tell me about it,” I replied. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything else out of him though.”

I released the darkness and he stumbled forward. He caught himself, but even when he caught himself it was like he wasn’t quite right. Like he was trying to do everything normally but whatever was inside him wasn’t comfortable with it.

“So creepy,” Stacy said.

“Yeah, and we need to get out of here,” I said. “I don’t like everything he said about his master being able to find us.”

“I mean he knows we go to this high school,” Stacy said. “There’s only the one in town so it’s not like he has to go far to find us.”

“I also don’t like all that stuff about waiting to find us,” I said, looking at Greg. “If he’s pulled this then he could do it with other people too.”

Stacy crossed her arms over her chest and shivered. Which was weird considering, y’know, she was dead, but I could understand the feeling.

“You can wait for the master,” Greg said, his voice less raspy now that he didn’t have that dark tendril wrapped around his neck. “He will come for you. He’ll collect what’s his and he’ll take care of you Gwen.”

I stepped out of the bathroom and came to a halt. It would appear that the creepiness wasn’t over yet.

“Why did you stop?” Stacy asked, then she followed my gaze past the door and gasped. “Oh.”

Everyone who’d been with us in the haunted Thomas mansion the night before stood before us looking at us in a way that was… off. Their heads were cocked to the side and they stared at us with a hunger. Like they were thinking about how our brains would look as a pizza topping or something.

Not good.

“My body,” Stacy said.

Sure enough Stacy was among the zombie friends. It would appear that the necromancer had grabbed everyone but me, and I figured that meant he’d grabbed their souls too.

They were probably all currently residents of the crystal at the tip of that asshole’s staff. Not good. Not good.

“This is creepy looking at me from the outside,” Stacy said. “Does my stomach always look that chunky?”

I turned and my mouth fell open. “That’s what you’re thinking about right now? All our friends have been possessed by an evil necromancer, your body has been taken over, and you’re worried because you think you saw a little bit of fat on your stomach?”

“Well duh,” Stacy said. “I never get to see myself from this angle. You bet your ass I’m going to take advantage of this. I clearly need to spend some more time doing crunches.”

“Okay one, we totally do not have time for this,” I said. “And two, your stomach is flat and hot as fuck so stop fishing for compliments. Now come on.”

I stormed down the hall. The zombie friends didn’t make any move to follow me, and somehow that felt more ominous than if they’d all started moaning and pointing at us and shuffling along trying to follow us.

Trying to follow me, that is, because Stacy stayed floating in front of her body giving herself a critical once over.

I lashed out with my darkness. It was getting easier and easier to do that. I guess the old thing they say about practice making perfect was absolutely right.

“Come on Stacy,” I said. “This is not the time to hang around the creepy zombie people.”

She came along at last, but reluctantly. And it took me dragging her along for a little while before she finally gave up and followed willingly.

“You’re such a party pooper,” she said.

“Yeah, well this is a party you don’t want an invite to. Now c’mon. I have to get to class.”

Not that I was going to be able to concentrate what with the hot ghost cheerleader floating next to me and the worry that at any moment a necromancer might burst through the door and try to capture me.

It was going to be a hell of a day.

28

Creepy Lunch

“This is just weird,” I said.

“I know, right?” Stacy asked.

She dipped her hand down and mimed grabbing one of the fries off of my plate. She had her fingers up to her mouth before she realized there was no fry there.

She sighed and looked at my fries longingly.

“Yeah, definitely weird,” she said.

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” I said. “I mean look at that. It’s just… wrong.”

“Do you think he really has no idea there’s something seriously wrong here?” Stacy asked, staring across the lunch room.

I thought about Graham. Specifically I thought about how he had nothing in the way of social graces. He was a weirdo who had no idea how to interact with people. That was the plain truth.

“No,” I said. “He has no idea what the hell is going on. Why would he? They probably lied and told him they wanted to hang out because he was so cool yesterday or something.”

“And he’d believe that?” Stacy asked.

“I mean there’s a reason why he’s not that good with the whole social thing,” I said. “So yeah. He’d totally believe it.”

Graham sat at a table with Greg, Zach, Dave, Nicole, and of course Stacy. Along with two new girls, Lisa and Tiffany. They were laughing and having a good time.

Occasionally one of them would look over at me. No, they’d look over at us. The way their gaze moved between me and Stacy left no doubt that they could see her.

Not good. I kept expecting a necromancer to pop up and try to pull whatever it was he was doing last night with that staff. Only nothing happened.

“They look off,” Stacy said.

“The fact that they’re hanging out with Graham and Lisa and Tiffany should be proof enough of that,” I said.

“You’re right,” Stacy said. “Nicole hate’s Tiffany’s guts, and when I’m not being possessed by a necromancer I can’t stand Lisa. Can’t stand her now as a ghost, come to think of it, so I guess it makes me even more angry that my body is over there acting like we’re BFFs or something.”

“Something seriously wrong is going on here,” I said. “I’m worried they’re the next victims.”

“That’d suck,” Stacy said in a voice that told me she wouldn’t care all that much if Lisa was one of the necromancer’s next victims.

I stared at her. A flat stare because she was really stating the obvious. She did that thing where her cheeks got darker which I assumed was the ghost equivalent of a blush since she didn’t have any blood that could move to her cheeks.

“I’m just saying it would suck if something happened to your buddy there,” she said. “He escaped from the necromancer last night because he bitched out, and now he’s going to get caught by the asshole anyway.”

“That means the necromancer is somewhere here in the school,” I whispered.

I shivered. I didn’t like the idea of a necromancer being here in the school. That meant he was looking for me. I’d heard the horror stories from my dad, and I knew a necromancer looking for you wasn’t a good place to be in.

“You look seriously scared,” Stacy said.

“Yeah, well my dad is afraid of necromancers,” I said. “And I figure if there’s something out there he’s afraid of then it means I should be terrified.”

“Good point,” she said. “Not a point I’d like to think about either.”

“Where do you think he is?” I muttered, looking around at the crowd and

“Probably in the basement,” Stacy said.

“This school has a basement?” I asked.

“Well not a basement,” she said. “More like an old civil defense shelter they cut off from students years ago. Something about asbestos in the pipes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Great. I mean it’s not my problem since I’m pretty sure I can’t die, but that couldn’t be good for the students.”

“Nope,” Stacy said. “And I bet there’s something down there right now that’s an even bigger health problem for students.”

“Great,” I said. “Do you know how to get down there since you seem to know so much about this place?”

“No idea,” Stacy said. “My dad just told me it existed. He was talking about how they used to go down there sometimes after school.”

“Who used to go down there sometimes after school?” I asked.

“Well… people? I don’t know. It was the nineties. Things weren’t as locked down then as they are these days.”

“Ew,” I said. “You do realize that was your dad telling you about all the times he went down into the creepy school basement to make out with your mom, right?”

Stacy’s eyes went wide as the realization hit her. I figured there was a good chance the guy was talking about her mom considering there weren’t many people who voluntarily came to live in this town. It wasn’t exactly the kind of place people moved to.

“That’s gross,” she said.

“Yeah, well if we play our cards right maybe we can sneak down there sometime,” I said with a wink.

“You’re…” she stopped. Realized she’d probably been about to describe that idea as disgusting as well. It was a little bit of a test on my part.

“Actually that doesn’t sound too bad at all,” she said. “But you’re grossing me out talking about my parents making out in the basement.”

“Good thing we can’t make out then,” I said.

That’s when she did something that surprised me. Something I should’ve seen coming considering I could touch the ethereal plane and all that nonsense.

Well boy did I touch the ethereal plane in a big way in that lunch room that day. Like it’s not quite that weird scene in Ghostbusters where the ghost starts undoing Dan Aykroyd’s belt, but we were getting close.

She reached down and grabbed my cheek. Because yeah, I could totally touch ghosts in addition to seeing them and the same was true in reverse. Before I knew what was happening she floated in for a kiss and suddenly I was having a close encounter of the ghostly kind that curled my toes.

Stacy might be a soul that was completely separated from her body for the moment, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t deliver one hell of a kiss.

I probably looked like a total spaz to all the people around us. One moment I was staring at the odd sight of Graham suddenly being popular and the next I was leaning back in my chair with my arms flailing and my mouth moving like I was making out with nothing.

Yeah, that definitely was a spaz kind of moment. I was just glad phones weren’t allowed out during the school day. Otherwise there might’ve been a hell of an embarrassing video to come out of that moment.

Finally Stacy pulled away and smiled down at me. Like she was literally smiling down at me because she was hovering in the air above me. Just sort of bobbing there, happy as can be, with no indication that she’d just been sucking face with me in one hell of a kiss.

Which probably looked like I’d been leaning my head back sticking my tongue out to the rest of the cafeteria. I was terrified to even look. One more thing to add to “zombie girl’s” weirdness. Damn it.

“What… what was that for?” I asked.

“Because you’ve been so good to me through all this,” she said. Then she winked. “Plus I want to remind you exactly what it is you’re fighting for here.”

“Damn,” I breathed.

I looked around. Sure enough I was getting weird looks from everyone. Damn it. I was going to have a hard time living that one down, but whatever. Totally worth it to suck face with Stacy.

Even if she was a ghost. For the moment. I was going to fix that, damn it.

“Okay, so what do we do now?” Stacy asked. “There’s a necromancer lurking somewhere in the school, I’m still mostly dead, and your childhood friend is about to be drawn into that necromancer’s web of lies and he’s going to go there happily because he thinks he’s popular for the first time in his life.”

I stared across the lunch room to where Graham held court. There was something about what Stacy just said that tickled something in the back of my mind.

“Huh,” I said.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I mean it might be nothing,” I said. “Then again it might be something.”

“Come on. What are we talking about here?”

“What we’re talking about is what if Graham wasn’t leaving everyone behind yesterday because he was afraid of going into the haunted house?” I said.

“So what was his deal?”

“His deal was he hates anyone who’s not him. Or maybe me, but even then he seems to have trouble with me sometimes too.”

“Huh,” she said. “So you’re saying…”

“I’m saying he’s about as antisocial as they come, and I can’t imagine someone suddenly trying to draw him in by acting like he’s going to be Mr. Popularity. Actually if I was trying to get his attention that’d be the last thing I’d do.”

“So what would you do to draw him in?”

I shrugged. “Honestly? I’d probably offer to give him an anime statue or something.”

“What, like an action figure?” she asked.

“Oh no,” I said. “He’s very clear on that. They’re not action figures because they don’t articulate. They’re statues. Not toys.”

“You sound like you’ve heard that line a few times.”

“Yup.”

“So why is he sitting there now if he hates everyone?” she asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Exactly,” I said.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I should be warning him, but there was something off about this that made me not want to go near that table. Then it became a moot point as Graham stood along with everyone else at that table of creeps. A moment later the bell indicating lunch was over beeped and everyone started streaming out of the cafeteria.

“We need to warn him,” I said, not wanting to make the same mistake I’d made last night even if I did think there was something off about this. “I don’t care if he was sort of a jerk last night. He doesn’t deserve to spend the rest of his life as a necromancer’s puppet.”

“Forget that,” Stacy said. “He doesn’t deserve to spend the next five minutes with those bitches Tiffany and Lisa.”

I smiled. “I think he’d probably enjoy that, actually. You might hate them, but he’s mentioned how hot he thought they were a couple of times.”

“He talks to you like that?”

“Yeah,” I said. “One of many reasons why he’s just an acquaintance I put up with and nothing more even if he probably would’ve liked it if we went there.”

“Ew,” Stacy said.

“Ew is right, but I’m not letting another one of my friends fall victim to this damned necromancer, so let’s go.”

Though as I moved to follow I still couldn’t shake that feeling there was something weird about all of this. I was going to have to be careful about how I did this.

29

Tracking

“I really don’t like this,” I said.

“And I don’t like being dead, but nobody asked me what I thought about that,” Stacy said.

“Yeah, that’s the thing about being dead. Usually people don’t get a consult before it happens.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better with this point it’s not doing the job,” she said.

“I’m just trying to put things into perspective. A lot of people don’t have a choice about when they die. At least you’re getting this encore performance,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said. “It looks like they’re going to the basement.”

“How can you know that?” I asked. “There are lots of classrooms they could be going to.”

“Yeah, but they’re going to the basement,” Stacy said. “I’d bet anything that’s where they’re going. Everyone knows that’s the place to go if you’re skipping class. Also seems like the perfect place to go if you’re going to a creepy necromancer who’s going to kill your ass.”

I eyed her from the side. “How often do you go skipping class anyway?”

She blushed. “Not that often. I just know there are people who skip and when they skip they go down there.”

“Uh-huh,” I muttered.

I pushed my way through the crowd. People parted around me easily enough, I guess the whole zombie girl thing was worth something at least, but it was difficult to move through the crowd and keep an eye on Graham, Lisa, Tiffany, and all the necromancer zombies who were leading them to their certain doom.

“I can’t believe that asshole is somewhere in this school right now,” I muttered. “Do you think he followed us here?”

Stacy shrugged. “If he was coming for us it would be easy enough to figure out we’re high school students from everyone he killed. From there maybe he decided he was going to go for easier targets than you and me.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, but there was still something that felt off about all of this.

We took a couple more turns and then I watched as they all dispersed into a couple of bathrooms. At least they didn’t all go to the same bathroom which would’ve been even more creepy, but then again if they were trying to avoid being seen maybe there was a method to their madness and a reason why they weren’t all going to the same bathroom at the same time.

“Huh. Maybe they aren’t going to the basement after all,” Stacy said.

“Maybe not, but the night’s still young,” I said.

“It’s not even night,” she said. “And I’d rather not think about night right now considering what happened last night.”

I rolled my eyes. “Figure of speech.”

I ducked into an alcove and pretended I was looking through one of my textbooks for something. Hopefully to any teachers who walked by I’d look like I was trying to find some homework or something before I got to class.

In reality I kept an eye on those bathrooms. There was something weird going on here, and that feeling only got stronger as the bell beeped warning everyone to get to class asap and yet they were still hanging out in the bathroom.

“Okay, so that’s really weird,” Stacy said.

“Yup,” I said.

I glanced around. Luckily there were no teachers around to see me trying to be inconspicuous. Good.

“Seriously,” Stacy said. “What the hell could they be doing in there for so long?”

“Maybe they had some bad tacos last night,” I said. “But I doubt it.”

I gave up on pretending to look like I was busy when the second bell beeped. Everyone should be in a classroom now, and that meant it was suspicious that these clowns weren’t.

“I could go in there and see what’s happening,” she said.

“Do you really want to risk that? What if they really did have some bad tacos? That’s the kind of thing you’ll take to the grave.”

“Yeah, well I’ve already got both feet in the grave so what’s the problem?” she asked.

I looked up at her, she was floating a couple feet above me and she didn’t seem to notice that half her body had disappeared into the wall, and smiled.

“You’re being surprisingly upbeat about this whole dying young thing,” I said.

“Might as well have a sense of humor about it,” she said. “Besides, I figure I’ll freak out when your dad shows up and tries to drag me to the other side. Until that happens I’m just temporarily having an out of body experience.”

“Right,” I said.

I wasn’t going to let my dad take her to the other side. I wasn’t going to take her to the other side. We were going to beat this asshole, damn it, and I was going to get one of those toe curling kisses with Stacy’s real body and not just her soul.

I smiled at that. I guess I was one of the few people who could legitimately say I’d had someone body and soul. Not that I thought anyone but maybe my dad would appreciate the humor.

“There they are,” Stacy said.

I ducked behind a drinking fountain. It wasn’t much and they’d be able to see my feet if they really looked, but they weren’t watching for someone watching them.

Still, if they saw me then things could go bad fast. Sure the necromancer wasn’t up here, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t make an appearance pretty damn quick if he wanted to.

Something told me the necromancer wasn’t going to risk being seen in public unless he absolutely had to though. The way this was all going down reeked of someone who was trying not to get any attention.

“There they go,” I whispered.

“They are headed for the basement,” Stacy muttered. “I knew it!”

I stepped out from behind the drinking fountain when they’d disappeared around a corner and followed as fast as I dared. When I rounded the corner they were gone again.

“What the fuck?” I whispered.

“They went into the basement,” Stacy said. “I told you they went into the basement. The entrance is over here.”

She floated over to a door I’d walked past hundreds of times, but I’d never given ay thought to the thing before. Now, though, it caught my attention.

“That door goes into the basement?” I said.

“Yup,” she said. “I can’t believe you didn’t know about this.”

“Well excuse me for never having someone I wanted to go down there and make out with,” I said. “The whole liking girls thing meant I kept my love life on the down low with all but my close friends.”

Close friends who were all zombies now.

“You had a love life?” she said, arching an eyebrow. “Who was it? Because it’s sucked having to try and keep a bunch of guys at arm’s length all this time while I was crushing on girls.”

Now it was my turn to blush. A real blush that turned my cheeks pink as blood rushed to my face.

“Actually I haven’t had much of a love life,” I said. “I was just saying if I hypothetically had one I wouldn’t be sneaking down into the basement and, y’know what let’s just get down there and see what the hell they’re doing.”

I pushed the door open before we could go any further with that conversation.

“I know I’ve been using this word a lot lately, but talk about creepy,” I said as we descended the stairs.

The stairs down to the basement doubled back on each other and I had to pause where they doubled around to make sure there weren’t any surprises waiting for me around that corner.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Stacy asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Of course I want to do this. How else are we going to catch this prick?”

“I know. It’s just that I’ve been thinking,” she said. “What if you go down there and he catches you the same as he caught the rest of us?”

“I mean that wouldn’t be ideal, but I don’t think I have all that much to worry about,” I said. “You have no idea how many times I’ve died. Like Shakespeare could’ve been talking about me when he talked about dying many deaths, though I don’t think I’m much of a coward.”

“Wait, seriously?” she asked. “Last night wasn’t the first time you died?”

“Well no,” I said. “Come on. Weren’t you paying attention when the guys were giving me shit about getting run over by a bus because I was staring at your ass?”

“They were serious about that?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“My ass is that distracting?”

I had to suppress a giggle as she started doing somersaults and acrobatics in the air trying to get a good look at her ass. Which was a sentiment I could totally get behind, pun totally intended, but there was a time and a place for that sort of thing and it wasn’t when we were in the middle of tracking down a creepy necromancer who was trying his best to kill us. Or unkill us.

Whatever the fuck it was he did.

Darkness rose all around me. It seemed to come out to play when I was really pissed off about something, and I was really pissed off now thinking about fucking necromancers and everything they’d taken from me.

I wasn’t going to let Stacy be one of those things he took from me.

“Um, is there a reason you’re doing the whole dark and scary thing?” Stacy asked. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s kinda hot. Just wanting to make sure I’m not in any danger here.”

“I’m going to teach this bastard what it means to mess with a reaper,” I said. “Now come on. We’re doing this.”

“If you say so,” Stacy said, then she leaned down and hit me with a kiss.

“What was that for?”

She shrugged. “Because I wanted to, and because if I get sucked into that staff thing then I at least wanted to do that one last time.”

I grinned. “That is not going to be the last time we do that. Now c’mon.”

30

The Basement

“Okay. I’ve been down in this creepy basement for all of five minutes and I already don’t like it,” I said.

“Yeah, I always thought it looked like something out of those old Freddy movies or something,” Stacy said. “I never understood why people came down here to make out.”

“Freddy? You mean like the bear in those video games?”

“Come on Gwen. A girl like you is surely familiar with the horror classics,” Stacy said, floating ahead of me and whispering so she didn’t get overheard by anyone who might be lurking down here.

“Actually I’m not really all that familiar with that stuff,” I said. “My dad always said he wasn’t interested in watching movies about work so we never really pulled anything like that up on the old On Demand.”

“Huh,” she said. “Well as far as I’m concerned there’s only one real Freddy who should be terrorizing children and that’s Krueger, not Fazbear.”

“Oh. You mean the creepy dream dude with the gnarly face?” I asked.

“Exactly. The creepy dream dude with the gnarly face and the knife hands,” Stacy said.

I looked around the basement. Exposed pipes ran all along the ceiling and equipment that was no doubt part of keeping the school running day to day pumped along quietly or not so quietly in the background.

Yeah, I could totally see where she might think this looked like the kind of place where a creepy horror cliche would be hanging out.

Of course if there really was a necromancer down here then it totally was the sort of place where a creepy horror cliche was hanging out. Which didn’t make me any more inclined to stay down here, but I had to save Graham’s stupid ass since he was stupid enough to get his stupid ass dragged down here in the first place.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Yeah, well turn a corner. This thing is a big square that runs under the school around the edge with rooms off to the side here and there,” she said.

“Seriously?” I said. “Why would they have rooms down here?”

“Mostly storage I think,” she said. “But there are a few rooms that were obviously used for classrooms once upon a time. They have ancient chalkboards with swear words written all over them and everything.”

“Huh,” I said. “It’s weird to think there was a time they had so many kids around here that they needed to shove some of them down in the basement to learn. That sounds like a horror story all its own.”

“Yeah, the kids who were forced to go to school in the boiler room covered with asbestos. The sixties and seventies really were a different time,” Stacy said.

“Quiet,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I just heard something.”

We were coming up on the first corner. I rounded the corner and saw one of the rooms she must’ve been talking about. There was an eerie white glow coming out of a door and splashing across the walls on the other side. I could also hear voices coming from in there.

Shit. I got the feeling we were maybe running a little too late to save anyone. Damn it.

I crept down the hall as quietly as I could, then realized they were talking so loud that it’s not like they were going to hear me whether I was creeping or making enough noise to wake the dead.

Though it did occur to me that maybe the phrase “make enough noise to wake the dead” wasn’t the best phrase considering everything that was happening all around us.

“That’s got to be them,” Stacy said. “Unless someone is doing a weird LED light show down here or something.”

“It’d be a regular light show,” I said. “If this is used for storage the school definitely isn’t hiding anything with LEDs down there.”

“Whatever,” Stacy said. “We need to stop that asshole and get my body back!”

Stacy darted down the hall before I could stop her. Like I was so dumbfounded that she would even try to confront the necromancer again after everything that’d already happened that I couldn’t process what she was doing for a long moment.

Then I sprinted after her, not caring about being quiet now but also not wanting to shout and tell her what an idiot she was being.

At least she had the good sense to come to a stop at the door rather than blowing in there and trying to take on a fucking necromancer all by her lonesome.

Her eyes were wide and she turned to look at me as I finally caught up to her. I wasn’t sure what would horrify her so much, but I figured it couldn’t be anything good.

Not that much of anything good had been going down ever since we went to that stupid house last night and discovered there was still a necromancer very much alive, or maybe undead, looking for fresh victims.

“What are you…”

I peered around the edge, making sure to get down low so no one would see me if they glanced at the door. And what I saw in that room was enough to make a block of ice form in the pit of my stomach.

“No way,” I breathed. “It can’t be.”

“Way,” Stacy said.

I stared into a room that looked like it was one of those abandoned classrooms Stacy had been talking about. An abandoned classroom that wasn’t nearly as abandoned now as it’d probably been for the past thirty years or so.

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

Graham was in there along with all our friends who got turned into zombies last night. He was in there right along with Lisa and Tiffany who obviously weren’t all that happy about what was going on down here.

Only Graham didn’t need saving.

“Come on,” Tiffany said. “This isn’t funny.”

“Seriously,” Lisa said. “If you don’t have the stuff down here then I’m leaving.”

“I knew that girl was on something,” Stacy said, letting out a sniff.

I looked up at her in clear disbelief. “You’re seriously worrying about what she’s on at a time like this?”

“Don’t you think you should be worried about your friend?” she asked, nodding into the room.

Yeah, she had me there. Because the problem wasn’t with Tiffany or Lisa. It wasn’t with any of our zombified friends who were not-so-subtly blocking Tiffany and Lisa from leaving the storage room.

No, the problem was with Graham. He stood in the center of the room and all our zombified friends were staring at him like he was the next best thing to a god or something. We’re talking they were looking at him in a way that no one had ever looked at Graham before in their lives.

No one popular, at least.

The reason for that was becoming pretty clear too. He was pulling on robes, and the moment the hood went over his head some sort of darkness covered his face like he was putting on some piece of equipment from a video game or something.

Which is totally the kind of thing Graham would do.

“Much better now,” he said, his voice suddenly low and breathy and gravelly all at the same time.

I could’ve slapped myself. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t put two and two together. That voice totally sounded like a stupid voice he’d used when he wore a Batman costume back in seventh grade, but with a little bit of creepy magic layered on top of the thing.

That also explained all the bad feelings I’d been getting watching him hanging out with everyone at lunch. He wasn’t being lured to his doom. He was the one using my friends to lure other people to their doom, and I didn’t like that one bit.

“Idiot,” I growled.

“Are you talking about you or him?” Stacy asked. “Because right now it seems like it’s a toss up.”

“Him,” I said. “But me too. That Batman voice he’s pulling is still lame.”

“That’s who he’s supposed to sound like?” Stacy asked.

I peered back into the room. I was rooted to the spot and yet at the same time I worried that if I didn’t go in there and do something then bad things were going to happen again. At the same time I sort of wanted to let it ride and see what he did.

It’s not like I was a huge fan of Tiffany or Lisa either. I didn’t know many people who were, unless you were talking about the guys trying to get into their pants. Something that was as easily done as said if the rumors were to be believed.

“Are you going to do something?” Stacy asked.

It turns out that moment’s hesitation was all Graham needed to pull his dastardly plan. He held his hand out and that staff appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Like we’re talking it looked like a bad special effect from an eighties movie or something where they spliced the film together to make something look all magical but in reality it looked like some underpaid editor cut the film together.

I wondered if magic seriously worked like that, or if it was a case of Graham deliberately making it look cheesy because that was the kind of thing he was into.

“Um, I’m sorry but I don’t want to be part of your cosplay thing,” Lisa said. “The only reason I came down here was because Zach was down here with us.”

Stacy made a disgusted noise and rolled her eyes. “The slut.”

“Yeah, and you told me Greg was going to dump Nicole and I’m totally not down for whatever it is you’re doing if that’s not happening,” Tiffany said.

“Nicole would be ripping that girl’s hair out if she wasn’t a zombie under the control of a creepy necromancer.”

“But it makes no sense,” I said. “Graham can’t be the necromancer. The last time the necromancer was doing his thing was like a decade back, and Graham was way too young to be doing this crap.”

It didn’t make sense, but the fact that it didn’t make sense didn’t do anything to stop Graham from doing his thing. He raised his staff and the light at the tip glowed bright.

“Silence!” he said, his voice still doing that lame gravelly thing. “You have been brought down here because I need the prettiest and the hottest to make my plan work!”

Tiffany and Lisa both seemed unsure of what to make of that. On the one hand they looked a little creeped out because it was Graham who was saying it, but on the other hand they also looked kind of flattered that he was lumping them in with the prettiest and the hottest.

If that’s what he was going for then I could see why he wanted to grab Stacy and Nicole for his plot. Whatever it was. I still had no idea, but I still didn’t think it was anything good.

“Seriously?” Stacy asked. “That’s why he stole my body? He’s using me to lure people?”

“I don’t think it’s really working in this case,” I said. “It’s not like he was going to lure Lisa down here with you or anything.”

“Whatever,” she said.

Graham held his staff out, but this time around he didn’t do that weird thing where he slammed it into the ground and something puffed out and knocked people out of their bodies.

Maybe he couldn’t do that when he was near some of the zombies he’d created. Which was almost a shame. If he did something like that it might knock loose whatever was currently occupying Stacy’s body and give her an opportunity to take up residence again.

No, instead the tip glowed and sucked Lisa’s soul right out of her body. It was a wispy blue fog that streamed from her screaming mouth to the staff, and then it was done.

Tiffany got one look at that and started screaming herself. Not that I figured anyone would be able to hear her all the way down here. Not unless there was a class right over us, which was possible, but even then there were so many pipes rumbling and rattling down here that I never heard when I was on the first floor that I figured the soundproofing was pretty good.

Not that it mattered. She didn’t have long to scream. No, Graham turned on her and then she was screaming out her soul as well. It was sucked into the staff and then their bodies were standing there stiff and lifeless.

Except they were still very much alive and drawing breath despite the fact that their souls had been sucked out. Which totally wasn’t how that was supposed to work. They turned to Graham and smiled.

“What do you wish of us master?” they asked.

“Okay, this is fucked up,” I said.

“Fuck that,” Stacy said. “I’m not going to let that asshole use my body to take over the school. I worked hard for that body and it is not his to use on my friends!”

“But Lisa isn’t your friend,” I said. “You hate her, remember?”

“Whatever,” she said. “This ends now! Come on!”

And with that she let out an unearthly wail and flew into the room. I tried to stop her but she was moving too fast.

“Get away from my body you asshole!” she shrieked.

Great. Just fucking great. This wasn’t what I needed right now, but it’s not like anyone had bothered asking me what was convenient for me lately.

There was nothing for it but to go in after my totally hot and totally pissed off ghost cheerleader sorta girlfriend and face down Graham the necromancer.

Talk about things I never thought I’d hear running through my mind.

31

Reanimator

Graham looked surprised. Clearly he wasn’t expecting a ghost to come shrieking at him.

Also? He was totally way more prepared than I ever would’ve given him credit for. He whipped his staff around and held it towards Stacy.

Which meant her thing where she went shrieking at him quickly became her getting sucked into his staff. Oops.

Luckily for Stacy and unluckily for Graham he also wasn’t expecting me to come into the room behind Stacy with darkness rising all around me in an angry cloud. I shot a tendril of the stuff out at his staff and it flew to the ground where it clattered against the wall on the other side of the storage room.

Score one for the good guys!

Also? Knocking Graham on his ass appeared to totally be enough to get him to drop that whole shadowy thing. One moment his face was darkness wreathed in shadows, and the next moment he was looking up at me clearly surprised.

“Gwen?” he asked. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Saving my friends!” I said.

He looked at the staff and scrambled across the floor. I dove for it at the same time. I slammed into a couple of old desks that’d clearly been languishing in storage for decades as I dove for the thing, but I figured a couple of knocks and dings was worth it if I ended up saving the day.

Especially if I ended up saving the day and earning Stacy’s undying gratitude. Pun totally intended, thank you very much.

Our hands landed on the staff at the same time. His near the bottom and mine closer to the top. He looked up at me and for the first time since all of this started he looked genuinely worried.

Well he should be worried. The asshole. Luring people to their certain doom. Though that wasn’t entirely fair. We had gone sneaking around that old mansion, after all, but still. He was being a first rate dick trying to capture people for his nefarious purposes.

“What are you…”

His eyes went wide as darkness gathered around me. It was an involuntary reaction, but I’d never been happier to see that darkness gathered around me.

Normally that darkness meant my dad was coming for me, but it might just save our asses this time around.

“I’m not letting you do this Graham,” I shouted. “I’m not doing a repeat of what happened with my mom!”

I screamed, but then the scream stopped. It was as though the world was falling away and I could feel people pulsing inside the staff. I didn’t know how to describe it other than I knew they were in there and they were screaming for me to let them out of there.

He was keeping them imprisoned in there. He’d somehow managed to figure out a way to trap people’s souls in his staff. He was keeping their souls from going to the other side and that was the source of his power.

“You asshole,” I said. “All these years I tried to stand up for you, and you’re pulling stuff like this? You’re getting into necromancy?”

Okay, so maybe that felt just a touch melodramatic. It was a real “you were the chosen one” kind of moment. Or maybe the cheesy moment in one of those stupid videos they always showed about staying away from marijuana or booze where the “good” kid tells off their friend for the evils of getting a little drunk or high.

I was really feeling it though. A necromancer had ruined my life once upon a time. I didn’t think it was possible for Graham to be the necromancer who’d done that, but at the same time I wasn’t going to let him do the same thing to a new group of people.

“Gwen, please,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but if you’re able to do these things then we could be amazing together! Listen to me!”

“I will never listen to you again!” I said. “All those years putting up with your shit and this is what you’re doing!”

I reached into the staff. Again I’m not really sure how I was doing it other than to say I reached in there and I could feel the souls trapped in there.

And it wasn’t just the souls of my friends who’d been in the Thomas house that night. No, there were other people in there. People he’d probably lured. A homeless man I hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks, now that I thought about it. An old man who lived on his own and wouldn’t be missed. Some house pets who’d obviously met unfortunate ends when Graham came across them.

My friend was a murderer. Well, not quite a murderer since none of these people were technically dead yet. They could still be reunited with their bodies for a happy ending, but that wasn’t happening as long as he was alive and well and doing his death magic thing.

He was far worse than a murderer. At least people who were murdered got to go on to their eternal reward, whatever that might be. No, he was a necromancer, and it disgusted me to think I’d ever been his friend.

I pulled on those souls. Yanked them out. They flew through the room and whirled around in a tornado of spiritual energy as Graham screamed.

I couldn’t tell if he was screaming because he was afraid of what I was doing or if he was pissed off that I was ruining all the obviously difficult and meticulous work he’d done to track people down and steal their souls.

Also? I totally didn’t give a fuck that I was ruining his diabolical plan. That was sort of the point, after all.

“What did you do?” he shrieked. “I spent so much time on that! You’re ruining everything Gwen!”

“And I’m going to keep ruining everything!” I said.

The whirlwind was getting more and more intense. The swirling souls pulsed with spiritual energy as an unnatural wind howled through the basement.

“I’m starting to think this was a bad idea!” I yelled at no one in particular. Stacy had taken advantage of the distraction to hop back into her body, and from the way she was twitching and jerking around she was either having some trouble getting used to being in her body again or there was something in there with her that didn’t want to relinquish control.

Either way it was freaky.

The other spirits flew back into their bodies as well. Zach blinked a couple of times after his soul bolted down his mouth. Nicole’s soul hit her full speed and she slammed back against the wall. Greg and Dave were doing that jerking around thing Stacy was doing, and even Tiffany and Lisa got in on the action as they shook their heads and looked disoriented.

Their eyes fell on Graham and they made a beeline for the door. Only he had other ideas. He held a hand out and the door slammed shut before they could make their escape.

Damn. And they’d been so close too.

“You are not doing this!” Graham said. “I’ve worked too hard for you to do this!”

He jerked his staff away from me before I could pull anyone else out. It looked like it was sort of a “last in, first out” sort of thing which meant the homeless dude and the other victims who’d been caught well before last night weren’t getting out as long as he had his hands on his staff.

He pointed it at me and took a couple of steps back. He was breathing heavily. Normally I’d say it looked like he’d just run a marathon or something, but considering the kind of shape Graham was in that meant it looked like he’d just run five feet.

“What are you Gwen?” he asked, his voice quiet.

“What the fuck are you?” I asked. “How could you do this? You asshole!”

Darkness rose around me, but as I looked around the room I realized I was going to be the least of his worries. No, all the people he’d recently separated from their souls were moving in on him. He was so focused on me and the darkness around me that he didn’t notice the living closing in on him.

And they looked like they were ready to give him a beating that was going to give him a one way ticket to the land of the dead.

“I don’t know what you are, but I’m not going to let you cause me any more trouble,” he said.

“Are you sure about that?” I asked, my eyes darting behind him.

Graham chuckled. “Come on Gwen. How long have we been friends? You think I’m going to fall for an old trick like that?”

I shrugged. “You can fall for it or not, but it’s not going to change the fact that you have a world of hurt coming up behind you.”

Their hands wrapped around him looking like something straight out of a zombie movie. He let out a scream that was good for a smile on my part. It was nice to know that even a big scary necromancer could be taken by surprise.

“Thanks for the assist,” Zach said as he tried to pull Graham to the ground.

“Ugh. I can’t believe you made me act like I was friends with this bitch,” Nicole said, hitting Tiffany with a disgusted look.

Tiffany, for her part, looked like she was too terrified to be all that insulted at Nicole’s insult. She’d pushed back against the wall and stared, but she was clearly checked out mentally.

“Okay, this is definitely fucked up. I don’t know if y’all are doing drama or what,” Lisa said. “But I don’t want anything to do with this!”

She’d backed against a wall too. She also didn’t look too happy. Her eyes darted around the room looking for some escape, but of course there was no way out of here without opening that door.

“No!” Graham shouted. “I’m not going to let you do this to me! Not when I was so close!”

He raised his staff. Somehow they hadn’t gotten that out of his hands. Shit.

“Get the staff!” I shouted. “If you don’t get that he’ll be able to…”

Do exactly what he did. He raised the thing into the air and the tip shone so bright that I had to look away. It slammed against the floor and another blast flew out of the thing and slammed into everyone.

Shit. So much for getting out of here with our hides intact. The blast hit me and I felt myself being thrown from my body again.

Damn it.

32

Reaper

I was starting to get really tired of getting knocked out of my body. It was bad enough when it was a giant yellow school bus doing the damage, but having a necromancer do it and knowing that the necromancer was my sort of friend only made it worse.

I hated that he kept getting one over on me. I picked myself up in time to see him holding his staff up and sucking Nicole’s spirit back into the thing.

Damn it. This was not happening! I did not come in here to rescue my friends only to have them get sucked up into that damned staff all over again.

I looked down at my body which was crumpled on the floor and looking a little worse for the wear. I must’ve hit the wall at full speed when he knocked me back, and considering the solid brick construction of this thing that couldn’t have been a pleasant experience.

I guess it was a good thing I couldn’t usually remember the actual dying part of these fun little experiences.

“We have to do something,” Stacy said.

She was right there next to me. Floating in the air and looking on with concern as Zach was the next poor unfortunate soul to get the vacuum treatment from Graham’s staff. I tried to rub my head to get my bearings and then remembered we were on the other side where everything was pure spirit.

Right. I didn’t have a head to rub because I didn’t have any injuries on this side. It was probably going to hurt like a motherfucker when I got back into my body, but that was for later.

Assuming I got back into my body.

“Well?” Stacy asked. “What the hell are we going to do about this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t want to charge in here in the first place.”

She looked away.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I was just so pissed off when I saw him using my body.”

“I know,” I said. “I understand, even if it is annoying that you pulled this.”

Now wasn’t the time to get angry with her though. There’d be plenty of time for that if we got out of here. Assuming we got out of here, which was one hell of a big “if” right now.

“Come on,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”

“Seriously? You’re going to run?”

I looked at Graham. Looked at the way he was pulling Dave’s spirit back into his staff. We’d been so close. I’d gotten the thing away from him, it seemed to be the source of all his power, and he’d been on the verge of getting one hell of a beatdown.

A beatdown he deserved, but now he was getting away with this all over again. Because there was no one around to stop him. There was no one around to stop him because I was too afraid to do what needed to be done.

My face hardened. I felt the now familiar darkness starting to gather around me. The more I thought about this fucked up situation the more pissed off I got. The more pissed off I got the more I wanted to lash out, and there was a convenient target right there just begging to have his ass kicked.

He was always begging to have his ass kicked. One thing I’d never been able to get him to understand was that the reason people were so nasty to him was because he was so nasty to them to begin with.

I stood. Looked at the darkness all around me and then to Graham. He looked up in the middle of sucking people into his staff and paused. The dark shadows were back around his head, but his body language said he’d realized maybe he’d fucked up by concentrating on Hoovering up my friends instead of taking me on.

I held my hand out. I’d seen my dad do this countless times when he was on the other side getting ready to work, but I’d never done it myself. I felt a heavy weight in my hand and looked over to see a glowing scythe appear in my hand. When I looked down flowing black robes had appeared around me.

I looked up at Graham. Grinned.

“It’s time for some payback Graham,” I said, and my voice sounded raspy. Not like I was doing something stupid like putting on a voice. Not like what he did. No, that was just my voice when I was like this.

It was kind of freaky, to be honest, but whatever. I threw myself at him, floating through the air over my body, and slammed into his staff which he brought up at the last moment.

I’d like to say that something cool happened. Like there were sparks or something where our two weapons came into contact, but that wasn’t the case. Nothing that cool.

No, there was just the dull thunk of wood on wood as the scythe slammed into the staff. Graham flew back from the hit and slammed against the wall.

I blinked and looked down at the scythe. Damn. Had I really just done that? It’s not like I was trying to throw him across the room like this was a superhero movie or something, but now that it was happening I’d take it.

I brought the scythe up again and slashed at his staff. He held it up again and moved at the last moment so the blade didn’t make contact with the staff. It also meant the blade didn’t make contact with him.

I wasn’t sure if I’d even been trying for that. That didn’t seem like a very nice thing to do. I might be trying to stop him, but I wasn’t trying to kill him. Was I?

Was that even something I could do? I’d never seen my dad actually kill someone before. He’d only been there to clean up after they were dead.

Then again I hadn’t seen what he did to the last necromancer who was messing around with this town. He’d never been all that forthcoming about what was going on there, and I really wished he’d told me now. If ever there was someone he had a reason to kill it would’ve been that asshole considering what he did to my mom.

“You’re not ruining this!” he shouted.

He held his staff up again. Again I braced myself for him to do something like send everyone’s spirits flying out of their bodies.

Though I guess he couldn’t really do that this time around. Everyone’s spirits had already pretty much left their bodies at this point and they were trapped in his staff again.

That pissed me off. We’d been so close and now we were back at square one. Stacy was just as screwed as she’d been earlier. All our friends were just as trapped as they’d been earlier today. I hadn’t done anything but set off an impressive light show.

Sure I got my friends back into their bodies for a moment, but did that really matter if they were only in there for that moment and now they were back where we’d started?

He threw his staff down, but this time I was ready. Maybe it was because I was holding the scythe and surrounded by that funky darkness. Maybe it was that I was mostly in the spirit world rather than in the real world so he couldn’t knock me out of my body this time around.

Whatever it was, his magic didn’t feel like it was working nearly as well on me this time around as it had earlier. Sure his magic hit me pretty hard, but it was like getting slammed by a powerful wave at the beach or something.

Sure I got knocked back, but it wasn’t the end of the world or anything. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t stand up against.

The door flew open along with him throwing his staff down. And he sprinted right for it. The little bastard was trying to escape. He hadn’t been trying to knock me aside at all.

“Get him!” Stacy shouted.

I hesitated. I looked at him running from the room and then down to my body. I didn’t want to leave my body down here where his minions could do who knew what to it after I left.

So instead of giving chase I dove for my body. Felt myself flowing into the thing in that same weird feeling that I got every time I was moving in there. Then I was blinking up at the ceiling and trying to catch my breath.

Everything was still funky. There were still residual flashes of light going off all around the room from all the built up spiritual energy filling the place. It took me a moment to catch my breath. It was like I got the wind knocked out of me.

I figured I was safe enough though. I always needed a couple of moments after diving back into my body, but I definitely wasn’t leaving my body behind for that asshole to mess with while I was chasing him through the school.

The last thing I wanted was to come back to my body and discover his minions had run off with it. Then what the hell was I supposed to do? Would I have to go to the other side and throw myself through that gate because I didn’t have a body to hang out in?

No, more likely I’d have to waste precious time trying to find my body. That or I’d have to go confess everything to my dad so he could help me out. That would suck for me, but it’d be even worse for poor Stacy who’d probably get a one way ticket to the other side of the gate if dad found out about her.

Finally I caught my breath and sat up. Looked around the room. And realized I still had problems even though Graham was gone.

He’d been busy while I was lying there staring at the ceiling trying to catch my breath. I was surrounded on all sides by my former friends, and I guess a couple of enemies if you counted Tiffany and Lisa who didn’t seem to care for Stacy any more than she seemed to care for them. All of them looked royally pissed off.

I smiled as I looked at each of them in turn.

“Um, I don’t suppose you’d want to maybe go easy on me and Stacy here?” I asked. “We were trying to save your asses, after all.”

Their eyes narrowed. Oh yeah. This was not good.

“I don’t think they like that you were trying to rescue them,” Stacy said.

“Yeah, I get that feeling too,” I said. “Maybe it’s time we get the hell out of here.”

“Good idea,” she said.

33

Escape

“I just want to tell you this was a terrible idea!” I shouted as we ran down the hall.

The whole place really had the whole horror movie vibe going for it this time around. Like seriously. The place looked like something straight out of an ‘80s horror classic what with the way there were little jets of steam and the occasional bit of dust coming down on top of us.

Above was a steady rhythmic thumping that had nothing to do with the zombie horde chasing behind us. It must be a passing period up above, and that was why things were a little different now.

I tried not to think about what might be in that dust. Then again I figured death from asbestos probably wouldn’t be all that different from all the many other deaths I’d endured.

Just more prolonged. And maybe with a settlement at the end if I hooked up with the right daytime TV ambulance chaser.

Whatever. I’d worry about that later. Right now I needed to worry about the very real chance that I was going to be captured by a zombie horde of my friends, and the girl who sort of seemed to have a crush on me, rather than worrying about dying from inhaling something that’d take a few decades to do its nasty work.

“You’re the one who…”

“You’re the one who got us into this,” I said. “End of story!”

I couldn’t be too mad though. I could understand her being pissed off. I could understand it, but that didn’t make me any less pissed off about it.

We turned the corner. I figured it wouldn’t be long before we were at the stairs and I’d be out of here. If there really were people going between classes up there then maybe the zombie horde on our tails wouldn’t chase after us.

Or if they did chase after us maybe they’d try to blend in. That was a big “if” though. If Graham really wanted to catch us he could have them chase us straight out of the school and damn the consequences of pissing off a bunch of teachers.

Only we never got a chance to see what would happen when we hit the crowds, because when we rounded the corner Zach and Dave stood in front of the stairs grinning. I skidded to a halt and had the weird sensation of Stacy bumping into me which always felt weird.

“How the hell did they get here ahead of us?” I asked.

Stacy paused and looked between them and the others who appeared behind us. All of them were smiling a creepy vacant smile, and all of them looked like they were about to seriously enjoy bringing down the hurt on us.

“The whole thing is a square running the length of the school’s edge,” she said. “If they ran really fast they could’ve gone around the other way and got here ahead of us.”

“Damn it,” I said.

I had to step forward. The zombie crowd behind us was still closing in. Sure it was mostly girls and Greg, but there were a lot of them and only one of me. I figured it was a toss up as to whether or not I’d be able to take all of them.

I also figured it wasn’t something I wanted to find out.

“So what do we do now?” Stacy asked.

I held my hand out. Darkness surrounded me and the scythe appeared in my hand. I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do with the thing, or even if I should do something with it considering these were my friends we were talking about, but I had to do something to get the hell out of here.

The only problem was I didn’t know what would happen if I hit them with the old scythe. I didn’t mind unintended consequences with Graham considering he was being a huge asshole and trying to kill people, but the only crime these people had committed was being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“What are you doing?” Stacy asked. “You can’t kill them. They’re already dead! Sort of…”

“Yeah, I’m just as confused by all of this as you are,” I said. “And I’ve been dealing with this sort of thing most of my life.”

Though as I felt the darkness surrounding me I noticed something odd. It was like a dark pulsing line that went out from each of their heads and disappeared off in the distance behind them.

“Do you see those dark misty tendrils running to their heads?” I asked.

Stacy squinted as we moved down the basement hall. They were trying to squeeze us in. I didn’t like that they were trying to squeeze us in, but at the same time I felt like I had no choice but to be squeezed in.

Not unless I wanted to risk hurting them, and I still wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to do that. I was starting to form a new plan though.

Sort of. It wasn’t a very good plan, but it was better than nothing.

Stacy squinted. “I don’t see anything.”

I sighed. I’d been afraid of that. The view I got of the afterlife always seemed to be a little different from the view everyone else got.

“There are weird misty dark tendrils running from their heads off to wherever,” I said. “And I have a feeling if we were to follow those things back to their source it would lead us to the puppet master.”

“So why don’t we follow those back and beat the shit out of the asshole?” Stacy asked.

“Because that would mean going through our friends first,” I said. “And I don’t want to hurt them.”

“You could go through Tiffany and Lisa,” Stacy said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

I turned to her and rolled my eyes. “I am not going through anyone, and that includes going through a couple of girls you don’t care for.”

“Whatever,” she said. “It was just a suggestion. Take it or leave it.”

“Leaving it, definitely,” I said.

I mean in a way what she said made a sort of twisted sense. If I was going to go after someone then it might as well be someone I didn’t know all that well.

“Come on,” I growled. “If we’re going to do this then let’s do this!”

Zach and Dave looked at each other, and then they ran for me. We’re talking they were doing the full zombie run too. No shuffling like in old black and white zombie movies. I ducked under Dave as he grabbed at me.

I couldn’t help but smile at that. I’m sure he’d been planning on doing some grabbing when we started this whole thing at the Thomas house, but I was pretty sure this wasn’t the grabbing he had in mind.

Well that was tough for him. I ducked under him and slashed with my scythe at that dark line running into his head. He stumbled forward, cartwheeling, and landed on the ground twitching as though he was in the middle of a seizure or something.

“Holy shit,” I said, staring at him in shock.

Not that I had long to stare at him in shock. My other zombified friends came at me which distracted me from worrying about Dave. Zach stumbled over Dave, but there was nothing to stop Nicole and Tiffany from jumping at me.

I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing. I felt terrible about it, but I was acting on instinct more than anything. So I lashed out with my scythe. Again and again I slashed at those lines connecting them to whatever was at the other end of that line.

I was pretty sure I knew exactly what was at the end of that line though. It didn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out that stupid Graham was out there somewhere controlling them.

Nicole and Tiffany fell to the ground twitching too. They hit with a hard crack and I winced. When they woke up from this, if they ever woke up from this, that was going to leave one hell of a mark.

“What did you do to them?” Stacy asked, astonishment dripping from her voice.

“I don’t know!” I said. “I’m winging this. I’ve never had to deal with something like a necromancer before, and I’ve never had to deal with my friends being possessed by one either!”

They stayed down on the ground twitching, but that didn’t stop the ones who were left from coming for me. It was down to Lisa and Greg. They lurched towards me, shuffling and looking more like regular zombies.

Of course the reason they were shuffling was because they had to take the time to move around the bodies of their zombie buddies who were still twitching and making me think I’d done something terrible.

“Fuck this,” I said.

I turned and sprinted for the stairs. I didn’t want to risk hurting anyone else. I didn’t know enough about what I was doing to be able to feel good about slicing at that weird dark connection to Graham.

The passing period was over when I broke into the halls on the first floor. I kept right on running. As far as I was concerned the school day was over and it was time for me to get out of here.

I ran past the security guard and out the front door. I half expected the useless chubby idiot to start yelling at me for trying to leave during school hours, but it never happened. No, he hadn’t even looked up from his phone by the time I was past him and out the door.

It was good to know our fine security people could do such a bang up job and react so quickly in an emergency.

I stopped when I got out of the school. I knew I should’ve been running, but the scene in front of me was enough to pull me up short. It was like every creature that’d ever died near the school was suddenly alive and it created an almost blinding glow.

High school kids. Old people who’d died in houses nearby. Ancient creatures that belonged in a museum. They were all out there, and clearly some asshole playing with necromantic magic had pulled out all the stops to create this display. A crunching noise that came from somewhere above told me I hadn’t made the clean escape I thought I had.

I turned around and looked up. I dreaded looking up. I’d seen enough horror movies over the years to know that looking up would only reveal things I didn’t want to see.

And sure enough there was Graham up there on top of the school staring down at me. As though that wasn’t bad enough, as he stared down all my friends he’d kidnapped, mind controlled, or whatever the hell you want to call it stepped up next to him.

All of them stared down at me with those vacant zombie expressions. All of them had those strange dark tethers running into their heads again. Like the world’s creepiest supernatural Internet connection or something. I could see the dark tethers running from their heads to his staff now that they were all standing together.

I guess necromancers couldn’t get wireless. What he was doing was creepy enough though.

“Stay away from this place if you know what’s good for you,” he said, his voice both booming and sounding like the whisper of a body long in the grave at the same time.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” I said, flipping him off and then turning and running.

“No! Get her!”

The spirits gathered in front of the school turned on me, but the darkness was around me again. It exploded out at any spirit that came at me, and they disappeared in a puff of spirit energy as I cut a path through them.

I wasn’t even sure what I was doing or how I was doing it. Just that I was panicking and keeping anything Graham was controlling away from me.

“What are you doing?” Stacy asked. “Are you just going to let him get away with taking my body like that?”

“For now,” I said. “But not for long. It’s time to bring in the big guns.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, suddenly seeming a little scared.

I hated what I was about to do, but I had no choice. Clearly things had gone way beyond the point where I could handle this on my own, and it’s not like Stacy was going to be able to do much of anything in her current state.

No, I only had one choice. It wasn’t a very good choice, but it was the only option left.

“It’s time to tell my dad everything.”

34

Coming Clean

“Are you sure we have to do this?” Stacy asked. “I mean seriously. He’s not going to be happy about this. You know he’s not going to be happy about it.”

I sighed as we walked through the streets. It was weird how empty everything seemed during the day. The only people out were the occasional mom in yoga pants pushing a stroller with the kids inside.

I guess that made sense. The only kind of people who would be out on a day like today were people who were home and didn’t have to work. Which mainly meant kids who were too young to be in school and the parents who watched them.

It was kind of nice seeing signs of life like that, to be honest. I’d spent so much time surrounded by death and destruction lately that it was starting to get me down.

“Gwen,” Stacy said. “You’re not answering me. I know you can hear me and I don’t appreciate you ignoring me.”

“I’m not ignoring you,” I said. “It’s just that there’s nothing we can do about this. We’ve tried to take this guy on like three times now and he’s kicked our ass every time. I’m not going to risk getting my ass kicked a fourth time. We’re going to do something about this and that means telling my dad.”

“I really wish it didn’t mean telling your dad anything,” Stacy said. “I have a feeling he’s not going to like me.”

“I mean it’s not that he’s not going to like you so much as he’s not going to like what you represent to him, professionally speaking. This probably is the weirdest way someone’s ever brought home a girl though,” I said. “Even if by the standards of girls who are into girls.”

Stacy smiled. An inviting smile if I ever saw one. It was nice to know that despite everything that’d happened she still had the hots for me. I’d sort of said that on purpose just to make sure she still felt that way.

I’m gonna be honest here. I was having trouble believing that a girl as hot as her could be into girls generally and into me specifically, so I had to remind myself of it every chance I got.

I suppose the catch to the whole budding romance thing in this case was the pesky fact that she was a ghost, so it wasn’t like we were going to be able to go on a date any time soon.

“You don’t need to worry all that much anyways,” I said. “You saw what happened to the people Graham was messing with when I went after them. They’re not really ghosts, for all that it looks like they’re ghosts. He’s doing some sort of necromancer mojo on them and that means they can be brought back.”

“You think so?” she asked.

“I know so,” I said with a smile. “Besides. You’re the one who proved it’s possible for people to get back in their bodies. All we need to do is take care of Graham, and from there it’ll be easy enough to get you back in your body so we can go on that date you promised.”

“I can’t wait,” Stacy said.

I decided I wasn’t going to dig too deeply as to whether or not she couldn’t wait for our date, or she couldn’t wait to get back into her body. I figured I might not get answers I necessarily wanted if I dug too greedily and too deeply into that question.

Stacy suddenly pulled to a stop as we rounded a corner onto my street. She looked down to my house and clearly she was getting freaked out.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It just sort of hit me now that I can see your house. We’re going to talk to your dad, and if he decides he wants me to go to the other side there’s not going to be anything you can do about it…”

“He’s not going to do that,” I said. “I’ve already explained this.”

“Yeah, easy for you to say. You’re not the one whose ass is on the line if your dad decides I need to go to the great beyond. I have a lot of life to live. I haven’t even had a chance to go to senior prom yet!”

“But you were the junior prom queen,” I said. “Everyone saw it. It was in the yearbook and on the school newspaper website and everything.”

“Well duh, but I still have to pass my crown on to the next junior prom queen,” she said. “Come on. You have to think about these things. Not to mention I was hoping for a crown next week at homecoming. It’s the least I deserve for all the time I put into making that happen.”

“Right,” I said with an eye roll. “Well we’re telling my dad everything, so let’s do this before you lose your nerve.”

“But I already lost my nerve,” she said, reluctantly floating after me as we walked towards my house. “I lost it when you said we were going to talk to your dad and it never came back. Do we really have to do this?”

I tuned her out as we walked up the steps to my house. It was a walk I’d made countless times before, but this time around it felt different. I’d never been in big trouble like this before, and I still didn’t know how dad would react for all that I was telling Stacy everything would be okay.

Yeah, right.

“Come on Stacy,” I said.

I stepped through the door and waited for her to follow. She stayed floating out there before she sighed, it was always weird seeing a ghost doing something like that considering they weren’t technically breathing, and floated after me. Then she came to a halt as she saw who was finally up and moving around the kitchen.

“Um, Gwen?” she asked. “Did you know there was a ghost in your kitchen?”

I looked at mom and gave her a wave.

“Well duh,” I said. “Mom is always out like this during the day.”

“Your mom is a ghost?” Stacy asked.

I looked between mom and Stacy. Mom, for her part, looked up and smiled. She was always welcoming like that, though usually I was the only one who could see her welcoming friends to the house since they couldn’t very well see ghosts.

“You brought a friend home?” mom asked. Then her smile turned to a frown as she looked at the clock. “And what are you doing home from school this early? Is there something wrong?”

“You could say that,” I said.

I’d been worried mom would be home. Like I knew she was usually up and around this time of day since that was close to the routine she’d been doing back when she was still among the living.

Though it’d been awhile since she was among the living. About ten years, to be exact. Right around the time the last necromancer was causing trouble for this town. Right around the time he’d come to our house in the middle of the night while I was over at a friend’s house and got a little revenge on my dad.

It was pure luck I’d been out of the house that night. Though looking back and knowing what I knew now it wasn’t likely he could’ve hurt me for good like he’d hurt mom.

“Um, yeah, there’s trouble mom,” I said. “But nothing major. I’ll talk to dad about it when he gets home.”

I could see the pain in her eyes. I knew she hated it when I did something like this, but there wasn’t much I could do or say. She was dead. She was a ghost. She hadn’t gone to the other side because dad hadn’t been able to bring himself to do that. Hadn’t been able to send the woman he loved on to her eternal reward.

Hadn’t been willing to let his daughter grow up without a mother, even if she was a ghost. There were times when I wondered if my mom resented that. Never more than today when I found myself suddenly looking at the decision he’d made all those years ago with a new understanding because I was making the same decision in the here and now.

We kept walking. I didn’t want to have an argument with my mom about whether or not she could have any say in me being home from school. I knew it must grate on her that I could pull a trump card in the whole rebellious teenager thing because she was a ghost and couldn’t exactly call the school to see what was going on, but she could yell at me.

Plus I really didn’t want to explain what was going on with Stacy. Mom seemed to have glossed over the fact that the “friend” I’d brought home was a ghost, and if I could avoid having that conversation twice that was just fine in my book.

“Come on,” I said, taking the stairs two at a time. “If dad is around he’ll be in his study.”

“I just want to take this moment to lodge another formal complaint about all this,” Stacy said.

“I don’t like this any more than you do,” I said. “But it has to be done. You know it has to be done. He’ll know what to do.”

I desperately hoped he’d know what to do.

I knocked on the door to his study and waited. I wasn’t even sure if he was in there. He always kept the door closed and locked even when he wasn’t around.

Basically he took the idea of having his own man cave to extremes. Though it was on the second floor and not down in the basement. Like my room was on the other side of the wall, and there were times when I heard odd sounds coming from in there but it was just one of those things that I’d stopped questioning because it seemed like part of living with the embodiment of death.

“Oh well. Isn’t that just too bad?” Stacy said. “Clearly he’s not in there. We’ll just have to…”

The door opened. Stacy cut off. She floated back but I reached out and grabbed her before she could go too far.

“You’re not going anywhere Stacy,” I said.

“Damn it,” she said.

“Gwen?” dad said, frowning. “What are you doing here? And why did you bring a ghost in here? You know it’s not good for you to take them away from their haunt.”

I sighed. That’d been one of several lessons I’d learned very early in life. Though it’s not like it was my fault I’d brought home the ghost of a creepy clown when I was four years old.

Some people got their fear of clowns from looking at creepy examples in the movies. I got my fear from bringing home the spirit of a literal dead clown who was forever doomed to repeat the same old balloon animal tricks in front of a parking lot that hadn’t hosted a circus since the fire that destroyed the arena hosting the last one that also took that clown with it.

“I’m not a ghost thank you very much,” Stacy said. “So you can just…”

She stopped. Her eyes went wide as she realized exactly what she’d just done.

“Way to give it away Stacy,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

“Whatever,” she said. “He was going to find out eventually. Might as well be honest about this if you’re going to make me do it.”

I turned back to my dad. If anything his frown had only deepened when he realized Stacy was all too aware of her current deceased state.

“You have some explaining to do young lady,” he said. He turned to Stacy. “And how are you around and I haven’t felt you?”

“It’s a long story,” Stacy said.

“It’s a long story and you’re not going to like it,” I said. “Turns out there might be a lot of people who’ve been dying lately and you’re not getting the notification.”

“What’s going on Gwen?” he asked, genuine concern breaking through his frown.

I took a deep breath. This was going to suck. This was going to freak him the fuck out, but there was nothing for it but to tell him everything.

Even if it was going to suck.

“There’s a necromancer out there,” I said. “And I’ve sort of had run ins with him last night and today.”

35

Waiting

“I mean all I’m saying is that could’ve gone a lot worse than it did,” Stacy said.

“That’s easy for you to say,” I said. “You’re not the one who’s grounded until she goes off to college.”

“I don’t see why that’s such a big deal,” Stacy said. “You have another semester and a half, tops, then the summer and you’re off at college. It’s not like it’s a life sentence.”

I thought back to the way my dad had looked at me. It’d been terrible. Not because he was angry. No, he’d been parenting via the whole “I’m more disappointed than angry” guilt trip method and it hadn’t been cool.

I figured I should’ve gotten some points for coming clean as soon as I did. I mean it was just last night that I figured out there was a necromancer operating around here. It was only today that I had my second run in with the asshole and realized this thing might be bigger than a creepy haunted house.

Unfortunately my dad hadn’t seen it that way. No, he’d been pissed off that I’d even dream of going to that house in the first place knowing what I did about it, even more pissed that I let some friends go in there too, and things had gone downhill from there.

“I mean he could’ve totally tried to push me through to the other side or something,” Stacy said. “So yeah, it could be worse than you getting grounded.”

“You’re just saying that because you’re happy you’re not on the other side right now,” I said.

“Not to mention if he takes care of this then it means I get my body back,” she said. “He was pretty clear on that. You were right about me only being mostly dead!”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” I said.

I walked over to my window and looked out at the street below. It was a typical suburban street. Nice and quiet aside from the noise of kids playing somewhere nearby. Birds chirped in the evening twilight and I could see the moon on the horizon about to peek over the horizon.

I frowned. I thought that was the moon, but I was also pretty sure the moon didn’t have an eerie blue glow to it.

“Are you seeing this?” I asked, pointing out the window.

“What?” Stacy asked. “The moon rising over there?”

“Ever seen the moon glowing blue?” I asked.

“Huh,” Stacy said. “That color looks like something straight out of a mad science lab or something.”

A chill ran from the tip of my head down to the ends of my toes. It suddenly hit me exactly what direction I was looking in. Towards a hill that was the only bit of elevation in the town which meant it could be seen from anywhere in town.

“Not a mad science lab,” I said. “More like a necromancer’s lab, and it’s open for business.”

“You think that means your dad is out there taking the guy on?”

I thought about everything we’d covered earlier. How my dad told me that necromancers could be dangerous because they used the souls of the living. He’d never said how they used the souls of the living though.

What if the whole thing that necromancer was doing with his staff was something new? I hadn’t mentioned that to my dad because I thought he’d know everything, but I was suddenly filled with doubt and wondering if I hadn’t told him enough.

Damn it.

“Something’s wrong,” I said.

“What makes you think something’s wrong?” Stacy asked.

“Look at that glow. I’ve never seen a glow like that before,” I said. “This is different.”

I should know. I’d spent a lot of sleepless nights as a young girl staring across the town towards that house. I knew it was out there and I knew there’d been a necromancer out there and I knew I should be terrified of that necromancer because my dad was terrified of that necromancer.

“Huh,” Stacy said. “I’ve never seen anything like that before either. That is really weird.”

“Right. And really weird isn’t good. Really weird means something bad is happening out there. Something’s happening to my dad.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Stacy said. “He could be laying the smack down on your friend and that’s why it looks like that. You just don’t know. It’s not like some teenager playing at being a dark wizard is going to be able to stand up against someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“I don’t know…” I said.

“You also can’t do anything about it,” Stacy said. “You heard what your dad said. He’s taking care of this and we’re supposed to stay here. He’s going to get my body back and we’ll be back to normal in time for homecoming this weekend.”

I turned and paced the room. She could talk about football games all she wanted, but I didn’t particularly care. The important thing to me was there was something bad going on in that house tonight and I knew it was bad no matter what Stacy said.

I went over to the window again. I knew I shouldn’t be doing that, but I couldn’t help it. It was like looking at a car wreck or something. I couldn’t stop myself from looking even though it was horrifying.

I should know. The habit people had of dying around me meant I’d seen more than a few of the things.

I stared out and this time I saw what looked like bolts of lightning coming down over the old Thomas mansion. At least they were landing right around where I figured the old Thomas mansion was. Not to mention that glowing blue light was starting to swirl like a tornado. Those lightning bolts were clearly bright blue too instead of pure white.

I shivered. I thought I could almost hear the souls of the tortured damned even from all the way over here, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound.

“What’s that noise?” Stacy asked, looking in the same direction and realizing exactly what was going on as she looked.

“Oh. That.”

“Yeah, that,” I said.

I turned and headed for the door. The time for sitting and watching was over.

“What the hell are you doing?” Stacy asked.

“What needs to be done,” I said.

“But your dad said we weren’t supposed to go out there. I know I haven’t been dealing with this for nearly as long as you have, but it seems like if the man who escorts people to the land of the dead is telling you it’s not a good idea to go out and fight this necrowhatsit then maybe you shouldn’t be doing that.”

“I don’t care what he said,” I replied. “He thought he could take Graham on, but something’s wrong.”

“Come on Gwen,” Stacy said. “Stop and think this through. Like really think it through.”

I hit her with a flat stare. I was willing to listen to her, but only for as long as it took to get to the front door.

“Come on then,” I said. “You can try and convince me on the walk down to the front door.”

“Fine,” she replied, floating after me. “What do you think is more likely? That your friend Graham is kicking your dad’s ass even though your dad’s been doing this for like… forever? Or do you think it’s more likely that your dad’s out there kicking Graham’s ass and the only reason things look freaky out there is because you aren’t old enough to remember what it looks like when a necromancer is getting their ass handed to them?”

I felt something. Heard it, too. More screams coming from the direction of that creepy old house. I couldn’t be sure, but it felt like that was my dad screaming out there. It tore at my heart to hear it.

“If he’s winning then that’s fine,” I said. “We’ll get out there and the worst thing that happens is he gets mad at me again and I’m grounded until I move out of their house entirely.”

“Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ at the end of that sentence?” Stacy asked.

“Because there is. If I’m right and he needs saved? Well then I’m saving his life.”

Stacy sighed and rolled her eyes. Clearly she didn’t like this new development. But she floated after me as I stepped out onto my front porch and looked at the glow in the distance. I turned to look at her.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going with you,” she said.

“No way,” I said. “That asshole can’t hurt me. He can do bad things to you though.”

“In case you haven’t noticed he’s already sort of done bad things to me,” Stacy said. “Besides. If we go out there and it turns out your dad kicked his ass it means I get back into my body that much sooner.”

“Is that all you care about?” I asked. “Getting back into your body?”

She surprised me by reaching out and putting a hand on my shoulder. Then she really surprised me by leaning in and kissing my cheek. It felt a little tingly where her lips made contact with my cheek, and I couldn’t be sure if that was because it felt so good having Stacy laying her lips on my cheek or if it was because whatever ghosts were made of made a little tingly feeling when they touched reality.

Whatever it was, I’d take it if it meant a kiss from Stacy. I smiled. A hesitant smile, but a smile.

“Fine. I guess you know what you’re getting into at this point,” I said.

“You’re damn right,” Stacy said.

“And I’m guessing you’re going to follow me even if I tell you to stay here,” I said.

“You’re damn right I’m going to!” she said.

I sighed. “I figured you were going to say something like that.”

“So what’s the plan? You want me to float over there and then come back and tell you what I see?”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “It’s too dangerous for you to go out there on your own. I don’t want you to get in trouble and I’m not there to save your cute ass.”

She did a little twirl in the air. Because of her ghostly form she was able to move and contort in ways she probably wouldn’t be able to if she was in her normal body.

“Y’know I really do have a nice ass. I’ve never been able to look at it from this angle before, but damn,” she said. “No wonder so many guys are always trying to catch a glimpse when I’m walking down the hall. They can eat their hearts out though. I’m into the ladies.”

I grinned. I liked the sound of that.

“Come on,” I said. “We need to get out to that mansion and figure out what the hell’s going on.”

I just hoped that “what the hell’s going on there” didn’t mean my dad was getting his ass handed to him in a throwdown with my acquaintance turned necromancer.

36

Creepy Haunted House

“Y’know I thought I might be used to this place the second time around,” Stacy said.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “How are you feeling about it now that you’re here again?”

“I can’t say that I really like the place,” she said. “Like I’m not a fan of the whole 19th century creepy vibe the place has going for it.”

“If you think about it there’s going to come a time when a bunch of matchbox houses built after World War II are going to seem just as old to people,” I said.

Stacy moved to hover over the entrance to the cellar. The secret back entrance we’d used the last time we were here to get into the creepy old haunted house. Her hovering there had the added benefit of creating a little bit of a glow.

“What are you even talking about?” she asked.

“Come on. You never thought about that kind of thing? Like stuff that we consider to be new, or at least recent history, is going to seem ancient to kids later on.”

Stacy rolled her eyes, but the smile she hit me with took some of the sting out of that eye roll.

“You’re weird Gwen,” she said. “It’s a good thing for you I think that’s cute.”

“Whatever,” I said. “Let’s go.”

I stepped down into the cellar. I flipped on the flash on my phone.

There was something about seeing the insides of a creepy old haunted house by the light of a phone camera flash that upped the creepiness factor. I’m sure it wouldn’t be long before someone realized that and made a crappy indie horror movie out of the idea.

“Did you hear that?” Stacy asked.

I did hear it. I turned the flashlight in the direction of the skittering noise and found myself staring at a big honking rat. Which wasn’t exactly something I wanted to see, but I’d take it over seeing a bunch of creepy ghosts hanging around the place.

Rats just meant this was an ancient house that wasn’t all that well maintained. Ghosts would mean there was still a necromancer here doing his business.

“Just a rat,” I said. “No big deal.”

“Just a rat?” Stacy said. “No big deal? Did I seriously just hear you say that a rat was no big deal?”

“That’s exactly what I said. Now be quiet. You’re making enough noise to wake the dead, and I mean that literally considering where we’re hanging out.”

“Whatever,” she said with a sniff.

We moved through the cellar, but there was no weird glow like last time around.

I’d take it. The last thing I needed was a bunch of restless spirits creating a bunch of trouble for us.

“This place is dead,” Stacy said.

I hit her with a sharp look and she shrugged.

“What? Maybe it’s not the best choice of words, but it’s the truth. This place is deader than disco.”

“You’re right,” I said, peering around and pushing back the shadows with my phone light.

There was nothing moving down here. I didn’t even have the feeling of dread I’d had the last time around. The place was just a musty old basement.

Sure it was creepy by virtue of being a musty old basement in a creepy old house that I knew was occupied by a necromancer, but that didn’t mean it was haunted. At least not at the moment.

Something was wrong with this place. It was too normal. Like it was just an old house. Like all the ghosts were gone.

“Maybe he’s out in the town somewhere?” Stacy asked. “He had to have gotten those other people in his staff you were talking about from somewhere.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” I said. “What if he decided to move whatever timetable he was operating under ahead just a little because we spooked him?”

“Better that we know he’s trying something so we can do something about it than to be surprised along with everyone else when he springs whatever the fuck it is he’s planning,” Stacy said.

“I guess there is a certain twisted logic to that,” I said. “Doesn’t make me any happier that we don’t know where he is though.”

“He isn’t here, which is where we are. That’s all I need to be happy,” Stacy replied.

“That might be a good thing,” I said. “But where the hell is he? What could possibly be more important than hanging out in his creepy haunted house?”

“No idea,” Stacy said. “Now would you stop treating a good thing like it’s bad? We need to find your dad and get the hell out of here.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

We made our way across the basement, but something stopped me before we headed up the stairs into the house. Maybe it was that I wasn’t eager to repeat our Scooby Doo adventure from the last time around, but I stopped and looked around and that’s when it caught my attention.

“What are you waiting for?” Stacy asked.

“Do you see that glow there?” I asked, nodding to a part of the wall that was glowing.

I turned my phone light on that glow and was surprised to see a dark door. It was so dark that I could’ve missed it the last time around. Especially with everyone around me trying to push us up into the house.

“I didn’t see that last time,” Stacy said.

“I wouldn’t have noticed it if it weren’t for the glow,” I said.

I guess that sort of made sense too. The last time we’d been down here the walls had been glowing. This particular part of the wall wouldn’t have drawn my attention.

Now, though? Well it was drawing my attention like a glowing wall in a video game trying to reveal the interesting something on the other side.

Assuming there was an interesting something on the other side.

“I don’t like this,” Stacy said.

“Yeah, I don’t like it either,” I replied. “But we came here to find my dad and we’re going to do it.”

“What if the whole reason we’re not seeing that Graham asshole is because your dad beat him? Did you ever think of that?” Stacy asked. “He could be back at your house right now wondering where you are and getting ready to ground you until you turn thirty or something.”

“I really hope that’s the case Stacy,” I said.

She sighed. “I figured you were going to say something like that. We’re totally going down there, aren’t we?”

“Yup,” I said.

“You’re not even going to say anything about me betting my cute ass this time around?” she asked, letting out a little giggle that sounded more nervous than anything.

“Well if you want to float in front of me I’d be happy to enjoy the view,” I said.

She grinned. That was the Stacy I knew. The Stacy who was excited about going into a haunted house. The Stacy who didn’t care about danger to herself as long as she was having a good time and seeing a cool creepy mansion.

“That’s more like it,” I said.

“Come on,” she said, floating ahead of me through the wall and giving me one heck of a lovely view of the goods. She had to be doing that on purpose.

She stuck her head through when I didn’t follow right away.

“What the heck are you doing hanging around out here? If I’m going to be brave enough to go down the dark scary spiral stairs then you’re coming with me!”

“Um. I didn’t have time to open the door?” I said. “I do have to do that since I’m still in the land of the living, you know.”

“Oh, right,” Stacy said, doing that ghostly equivalent of a blush. “Well come on! This thing looks like something straight out of an old black and white horror movie or something.”

“I was afraid we were going to find something like that,” I said.

I turned the handle, the thing was made out of something that looked like glass but felt a little off when I twisted it, and sure enough there was a creepy spiral staircase on the other end that led down beneath the basement. We’re talking a stone spiral staircase that seriously did look like something straight out of a creepy old black and white movie.

So pretty much exactly what I’d expect to find in a creepy old house like this. A faint glow pulsed on the walls, and I figured that meant we were on the right track.

Which meant there was a good chance I was about to go for round three with Graham. Great.

“Come on,” Stacy said, her eyes looking at me with a strange light that I recognized from the first night we came out here. “This is actually pretty cool! I can’t believe you tried to keep me from coming out here with you!”

I decided not to mention that she was the one who’d been acting like she was terrified of this place the entire time and headed down the stairs.

I went down for what felt like forever, but it couldn’t have been all that long. We came out in an area that looked like yet another bit of set design from a creepy movie, only this time around we’re talking a cheesy B-movie from the ‘70s or maybe a bigger budget movie from the ‘80s that was trying to look like those cheap movies from the ‘70s but with a hell of a lot more money to throw around.

I’d been a big fan of the genre. Mostly because my dad hated anything to do with the genre. Hey, what can I say? The rebellious teenager thing hit my house in weird ways.

He was always went on about how the last thing he wanted to do for fun was watch a movie about work. Which always left me wondering why he would think a bunch of monster movies were like work when he mostly ferried the souls of the dead to the other side.

Now I had my answer though. We’d descended into a mad science lair. It was the only way to describe the place.

“Damn,” Stacy breathed, even though she wasn’t exactly breathing.

“Damn is right,” I said.

37

Necromancer’s Lair

The first thing I noticed was all the bones. I’m pretty sure there was some fancy “o” word that described what I was looking at, but I couldn’t remember what it was. Just that it existed and I totally couldn’t think of it because there were bones all around and being surrounded by a bunch of walls covered in human bones is the sort of experience that stunts your vocabulary.

Like someone had made the entire cylindrical room out of bones that came together in a dome about four levels up. It made me wonder how long we’d been going down those spiral stairs. The bones glowed with the same faint pulsing that the door had glowed with up above.

That was nothing compared to what was in the middle of the massive room. The stairs opened onto a second level with a circle running around the whole thing. Stairs made out of, you guessed it, bones led down to a lower level with a massive stone obelisk, I could remember that “o” word thank you very much, in the middle.

A pulsing glowing blue crystal topped off the obelisk and looked a lot like the glowing crystal at the tip of Graham’s staff.

“Well there’s something you don’t see every day,” Stacy said.

“You’ve got that right,” I said. “What the hell do you think that thing is?”

Stacy stared. Clearly she thought I was being ridiculous expecting her to know what the heck this thing was. I blushed as I turned back to the thing.

“Right. I’m the one who’s got the whole daughter of a reaper thing going for her,” I muttered.

“So you have no idea what the hell this thing is either?” she asked.

“None at all,” I said.

“Well there’s only one way to figure it out then,” she said.

Before I could tell her to stop, or remind her that messing around with a necromancer’s toys was a monumentally bad idea, she was floating up to the top of the obelisk. I tried to grab her, then I tried to lash out with the darkness that seemed to be more and more under my control the more I practiced with it, but she was moving fast enough that I couldn’t get to her in time.

Damn it. If she was going to keep doing things like this then she was going to get herself in serious trouble.

From the way she cried out in surprise and pain when her finger touched the crystal it looked like she was getting herself into serious trouble right now. At least she got thrown back from the thing instead of getting sucked into it which I’d half expected given what we’d seen with Graham’s staff.

“Seriously?” I asked. “You’re going to float up there and touch the dangerous thing the necromancer left behind? What would make you think that’s a good idea?”

Stacy looked down at me and shrugged. “I figured if you weren’t going to do anything then I’d touch it and see if anything happened. Besides, you’re living. I’m dead. If anything’s going to happen in here then it’ll happen to me.”

There was a certain weird logic to what she said. It didn’t make me any happier that she was pulling an idiot move like that, but the logic was there.

“Okay, so what happened when you touched it?” I asked.

“Nothing good,” she said.

I snorted. “Could you please be more descriptive?”

“Fine,” Stacy sniffed. “When I touched it I thought I heard screams, okay? It was like hot to the touch which was totally weird since I haven’t felt much of anything since that necromancer asshole kicked me out of my body, and then there was all that screaming.”

I frowned. I thought about when I’d grabbed the top of Graham’s staff. Which is something he’d probably been hoping would happen for years. I guess he should’ve been a little more specific about the meaning there.

Touching the crystal on his staff connected me with all the unfortunates who were trapped in there, and they’d been doing a lot of screaming.

It was funny how the recently deceased, or people who’d had their souls sucked out of them for that matter, seemed to be pretty upset about the fact that they were recently deceased or had their souls sucked out of them.

“I’ve felt something like that before,” I said.

“Really?” Stacy asked.

“Yup. When I grabbed Graham’s staff and pulled some of the people who were trapped in there out. I could feel them in the crystal on top of his staff.”

“Huh,” Stacy said. “So you’re saying he’s using this thing as like a bigger version of what he was doing with his staff? Maybe it’s like a battery powered by dead people or something?”

I hadn’t said anything of the sort, but now that she mentioned it that did seem reasonable.

“Uh sure,” I said. “Something like that.”

I wasn’t going to let on that she was doing a better job of thinking this stuff through than I was. Not when I was supposed to be the expert on this stuff. At least I was supposed to know more than her, but she was coming at this with logic while I was flailing around trying to connect snippets my dad had told me about his job over the years with what was happening now.

“So go up there and touch it and see what happens,” Stacy said.

I suppressed a giggle, but I didn’t do a very good job of it. Stacy rolled her eyes.

“Come on,” she said. “Are you seriously going to giggle about that now?”

“Sorry, but I totally am,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said. “I’ve known a couple of guys who actually used lines like that on me. Like they thought it was actually going to work or something.”

“Well did it?” I asked.

I was suddenly very interested in what, if any, experiences Stacy might’ve had with guys before she decided to get interested in me. I knew it was kind of crazy, but there was a part of me that wondered if maybe the whole reason she was interested in me in the first place was because she thought I could get her back to the land of the living.

Was she just taking advantage of me? I didn’t know, and I didn’t like not knowing.

“I might’ve had a couple of experiences with guys,” she said. “Let’s just say they were ill-advised experiences where I was denying who I really was, and by the time they were over it only confirmed what I already knew.”

“Gotcha,” I said.

“What about you, as long as we’re asking very personal questions?” she asked. “Questions that I might get insulted by if it weren’t for the fact that I’m dead so it doesn’t seem like such a big deal on balance?”

“Nothing here,” I said. “Graham would’ve liked to get handsy with me. He tried at a couple of school dances, but I’ve always known I was into the ladies.”

“Huh,” Stacy said. “Would’ve been nice if I knew that about myself all along. Would’ve saved me a lot of lame fumbling in the backs of cars and theaters. Or maybe not. Who knows?”

“Yeah, well it’s not like anyone was all that interested in me whether or not I was into girls,” I said. “So it was sort of a moot point all along.”

Stacy floated down and she did that weird thing where she leaned in and kissed me and I could totally feel it even though it was more of a muted tingle on my face than a warm kiss. It made me look forward to the magical time when she was back in her body and I could enjoy more than that weird tingling feeling.

“Come on,” she said. “You don’t give yourself enough credit. I’ve always thought you were a total hottie.”

I blinked a couple of times. “You did?”

Stacy giggled. “Well there were a couple of months back in sixth grade when you put on way too much makeup, but even then it was kind of cute.”

Well there was a surprise. Like if she’d been looking at me close enough to know I’d gone through a phase in sixth grade when I was wearing too much makeup then she’d been watching me pretty close even then.

I knew a lot of girls who went through that phase, but I figured I had a pretty good excuse. I didn’t exactly have a mom who was able to show me the ropes of putting on makeup back then. Sure she could do some things, things that were close to what she did when she was still alive, but helping her daughter put on makeup wasn’t one of those things.

It was kind of hard when she couldn’t grab anything to demonstrate, and her telling me what to do hadn’t worked out all that well.

I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or weirded out by Stacy watching me for so long without saying anything. I decided I was going to go with flattered. After all, I’d done the same thing to her.

“Right,” I said. “Well enough flirting. I guess if we’re going to do this then we’re going to do this?”

“What are you going to do?” Stacy asked.

I looked up at the big old obelisk. Like a miniature black version of the Washington Monument with a creepy crystal at the top. Then again there was a good chance this thing was way older than that monument I’d seen on our middle school trip to D.C.

“If we’re going to figure out who’s in there then I need to get up there and touch that crystal. See what’s what,” I said.

“Oh,” Stacy said. “I guess that makes sense.”

The only problem was I had no idea how I was going to get up there. There weren’t any ladders or anything in evidence, but I knew Graham wasn’t climbing that thing on his own. He’d never been all that athletic, and there weren’t even handholds on the thing to make it easy to climb.

“Maybe he uses magic or something,” I muttered.

“What was that?” Stacy asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just realized I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”

I stepped forward, wondering how I was ever going to climb it. I was contemplating doing it lumberjack style by wrapping my arms and legs around the thing and trying to shimmy my way up, a method that would likely end in tears if my inability to climb ropes in gym was anything to go by, but then I started floating up all on my own.

Well okay then. Unexpected, but I’d take it if this obelisk was going to provide me with a convenient way to get up there without climbing.

I floated up to the top, and the closer I got to the top the more it made sense. Yeah, Graham wasn’t athletically inclined at all. It would make sense that he’d come up with some magical method to get his ass up there.

Soon enough I was right in front of the scary looking obelisk thing. I stared down at it and licked my lips. I didn’t relish the idea of having to touch this fucker, but it’s not like I had much of a choice.

“I don’t want to do this,” I said, thinking of the screaming I’d heard the last time I did this.

A hand rested on my shoulder. The only thing that kept me from jumping at that touch was that the obelisk seemed to be calling the shots when it came to my movement.

I turned to see Stacy back there smiling at me. Reassuring me. It felt nice to have her back there lending me her support.

“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” she said.

I smiled. That more than anything gave me the confidence to do what needed to be done. I might not want to do it, but sometimes you didn’t want to do what had to be done. Maybe that was part of what my dad had been trying to tell me when he was chasing me through the school the last time I was stupid enough to get myself killed by literally getting thrown under a bus.

I put my hand on the crystal. Waited for the screaming voices to fill my head.

Nothing happened. No loud screaming filled my head. No nothing, really. I frowned. It was like I could search through the crystal even though I was on the outside, and there was nothing in there. It definitely wasn’t as crowded as Graham’s staff.

Then I felt something stirring within. Something dark. Something powerful. Something that terrified me and made me pull back, but before I could it was like the thing latched onto me. I screamed out in terror.

“Gwen?” Stacy asked, a note of panic to her voice. “Is something wrong? What’s going on in there?”

A single tear trickled down my cheek, but not for the reason Stacy might be thinking. I felt something in there, something powerful and yet impossibly captured.

My dad. He was in there. Somehow Graham had managed to capture him and now he was in that crystal and that was the reason there was that glow.

It wasn’t that there were lots of spirits of the damned trapped in this crystal. It was that there was one spirit trapped in there, and it was powerful enough to keep everything going.

“Gwen?”

That was my dad’s voice, but it sounded weak. Disconnected. I didn’t know what was going on in there, but I knew it couldn’t be good for him.

“Stop him,” he said.

Then the power released me. Sank back into the depths of the crystal. I floated there for a long moment staring down at the crystal in disbelief.

“What’s wrong Gwen?” Stacy asked.

“My dad,” I said. “He captured my dad, and I don’t know how to get him out of there.”

That would’ve been bad enough, but then the glow around the crystal got bright. Impossibly bright. Brighter than I’d ever seen before, and it flashed.

The world went dark around me, but the last thing I felt was an image of Graham throwing his head back and having a good laugh at the idiot who went and tripped some spell he’d clearly left behind to stop someone from doing exactly what I was doing.

38

Danger

Darkness. I was used to darkness. Usually it was followed by me waking up and looking down at my body, but for a wonder when I woke up this time I found myself staring at the creepy necromancer ossuary.

Ossuary. Right. That was the creepy “o” word I’d been looking for when I came down here. I shook my head. It was pounding with the beginnings of one heck of a headache.

“Gwen? Can you hear me?”

There was a note of panic to that voice. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at a note of panic to a voice. After all, there was a lot of stuff that’d gone down lately that was panic-worthy.

“What the hell?” I muttered, my voice dry and all croaky as I said it. Like I hadn’t had a drink of water in awhile.

“Oh thank fuck you’re awake,” Stacy said, her glowing face appearing in front of me. Concern was written plain there. “I was starting to think you were… Well I’m not sure what was going on since you weren’t dead.”

“Magic spell of some sort,” I groaned. “He must’ve put it in there to keep me from doing what we were trying to do.”

“Well I’m glad you’re awake now,” she said. “Do you have any idea how creepy it’s been hanging out down here for a whole day wondering if you’re ever going to wake up?”

I sat up straight at that, and immediately regretted it. It turns out sitting up wasn’t something that felt all that great considering the headache that was already threatening.

“A day? What are you talking about?”

“We’ve been down here for awhile,” she said. “I floated up a couple of times to see how much time went by, turns out my spectral Apple watch doesn’t exactly keep time even though it’s still here on my wrist. We’ve had a night and most of a day. You’re looking at Friday afternoon.”

“Shit,” I growled, trying to get up again.

This time there was still pain, but it wasn’t nearly as bad this time around as it’d been the first time around. That was good. I wasn’t sure what the hell Graham had done to me with that spell, but I did know that whatever it was couldn’t be anything good.

Especially if we’d already lost a day.

Someone settled in beside me. Stacy, of course. She leaned against the obelisk too, for a wonder she didn’t sink into it, and she put an arm around me.

“I know it’s got to be a lot to deal with,” she said. “But you said you were able to get those other people away from the necromancer’s staff, so you can probably do the same with your dad. Right?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I honestly don’t know. I mean when I grabbed that staff it was like the spirits wanted to get out of there. When my dad grabbed me in there it was like he wanted to escape but he couldn’t. And there was that spell that hit me. Something tells me that’s going to come along every time we try to do something to save him.”

“Huh,” Stacy said. “That seems like a bad thing.”

“You’re telling me,” I said. “Like very bad. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe Graham actually managed to catch him. I can’t believe I was out for a whole day.”

“Well you don’t know what happened. Maybe he got in a sucker punch or something,” Stacy said.

I snorted. “If Graham managed to catch my dad that means he’s way more dangerous than I’d imagined, and I already should’ve figured he was pretty fucking dangerous considering everything that’s happened so far.”

“Yeah, but maybe that’s a good thing,” Stacy said.

I turned and fixed her with a glare. “How could that possibly be a good thing?”

“Well think of it this way. Your dad took on a necromancer once upon a time and kicked his ass. Presumably this necromancer was a pretty scary guy since he was behind all the disappearances that hit town back in the day,” she said.

“You’re not making me feel any better about this,” I said. “Where’s the part where you make me feel better about this?”

“Well that’s simple,” she said. “Your dad got his ass kicked by this guy, but you’ve gone up against him twice now and you’ve kicked his ass both times.”

“I’d hardly call running away from him twice kicking his ass,” I said.

“Well maybe it isn’t exactly an ass kicking,” she said. “But if you think about it you’ve gone up against him and you didn’t get sucked into a creepy giant crystal thing, so that’s got to be good for something, right?”

“Okay, but what are we supposed to do about it now?” I asked. “It’s not like the guy is here for us to kick his ass. Or kick him to a stalemate. That seems more likely.”

“Well that is a bit of a problem,” Stacy said. “I could go floating through the house and see if I find him anywhere? He seemed pretty intent on getting me back into that staff. I mean I didn’t see him at all in the past twenty-four hours so it’s not like I think he’s around, but you never know.”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “We can go looking through the place together though.”

Stacy reached out and took my hand. She hit me with a smile that was positively radiant. The kind of smile that made me tingle and feel all sorts of good deep down inside.

“That sounds like a great date,” she said.

So we went through the house again. Did the whole Scooby Doo thing. Not that it did us any good. Unlike the last time we were out here there was no necromancer that showed up all pissed off that we were invading his territory.

I guess that made sense. After all, the last time around Graham knew we were invading his territory because he’d been with us when we walked up to the place.

“This is weird,” Stacy said. “I mean the last time we were here he was right there ready to throw down. Now we’re here looking for him and nothing. What could he possibly be doing that he hasn’t come back to home base in a day?”

“Yeah, well the last time we were here he knew we were here,” I said. “He does have a house he lives in withs his parents. Maybe he only comes here on the weekend or when he can sneak away.”

“Maybe, but you’d think he’d use his magic to get his parents to do what he wanted, or that he’d have some sort of undead alarm system or something. If I had a creepy lair like this and magic you bet your ass I would’ve done something to let me know when people were messing with my stuff.”

I frowned. There was something to what she said. I’d want to know if there was someone out there “messing with my stuff” too. Admittedly we didn’t have to worry all that much about burglars in our house. For some reason it was something that just didn’t happen.

There was one time when a bunch of people on our street had their stuff taken from them. Then the burglaries had suddenly stopped and dad mentioned that since he worked from home he’d caught them.

I’d never asked him too many questions about exactly what happened when he caught the jerks. I figured that was the kind of question I might not like the answer to.

We finally made it to the top of the house, but there was nothing. Just the glow of my phone flash illuminating everything. Where “everything” was mostly a bunch of creepy stuff that looked like it hadn’t been updated since at least the ‘40s.

“Nothing,” Stacy said. “The guy seriously isn’t here.”

“I don’t like this,” I said.

“What’s not to like?” Stacy asked. “The scary guy with the scary zombie army isn’t here to scare us. Seems like a winning scenario.”

“Yeah, but something about this isn’t right,” I said. “Like he should have some way to figure out people are invading his space.”

“But he doesn’t. Your friend is an idiot. We’ve covered this,” Stacy said.

“I don’t think he’s an idiot though,” I said. “He might be a socially maladjusted troll who doesn’t know how to interact with people, but he’s not an idiot.”

“Then what’s going on?” she asked.

“I keep asking myself a question. If he’s not here then that means he’s focusing on something else. If there’s something out there that’s more important than someone invading his lair, what is it and how is it going to really ruin our day?”

“Damn,” Stacy said. “I didn’t think of it that way.”

“Yeah,” I said.

We were in a room that had windows running all around providing a nice view of the town. It was the sort of thing that would’ve been really cool if it wasn’t at the top of a creepy mansion while I was searching for an annoying acquaintance, not quite a friend, who was also a necromancer who was probably causing some trouble somewhere out in town.

“Nice view of the town up here,” Stacy said. “I always wondered what the view would be like from this place.”

“Yeah,” I said, peering into the darkness all around us.

I thought about what’d tipped me off that there was something bad going down out here last night. I could see the mansion from our house because it was up on the only hill in town which meant it could be seen from just about everywhere.

Which meant I could see every part of the town from on high up here. Including the weird blue glow that was swirling in the air over the high school.

“Stacy, wasn’t there something about a big game going on at the school or something?” I asked.

“Well duh,” she said. “Homecoming. I’ve been helping with planning for the past month, but obviously I’m not going to be there tonight with everything that’s going on. A damn shame, too. It’s always a good time at homecoming.”

I felt a chill that went down to the very core of my being. A chill that threatened to have me leaning over and puking my guts up.

“What’s wrong?” Stacy asked, sensing there was definitely something wrong here.

“Do you see that glow out there?” I asked. “It’s the same glow I saw last night over this house. The glow that means that asshole is up to something.”

Stacy floated over to me. I could tell she was there because there was a little tingle that ran through me as her body pressed against mine. I closed my eyes and found myself wondering what it would feel like on that wonderful day when we got her back in her body and she could press that against me without the whole tingling ghost thing going on.

I smiled. Maybe we could even sneak into one of the art rooms and have some fun in front of a pottery wheel. It seemed appropriate considering how we met.

“You think he’s hitting the game?” Stacy said. “If that asshole ruins something I spent so much time planning so help me…”

“I have no idea why he’d be at that game,” I said, all the frustration of the past few nights coming into my voice. “Graham hates sports. He hates everyone who plays sports. He thought I was betraying everything I stood for because I joined the swim team.”

“Yeah, but that’s one of the biggest things in this town,” Stacy said. “Like we’re talking everyone and their mother goes to that game.”

I blinked. “They do?”

“Well duh,” she said. “You didn’t know about that?”

“I don’t really follow sports,” I muttered.

“That’s the biggest game of the year,” Stacy said. “They always pick a team we’re sure to beat, and there are always a bunch of alumni who come to enjoy a bit of their glory days.”

“So you’re saying it’s a whole stadium full of people, and a lot of them were people who played sports once upon a time?” I asked, that chill only getting more and more pronounced with each passing moment.

Graham hated sports. He hated the kind of people who played sports. It was starting to seem very obvious why he would choose a stadium of all places to launch another one of his attacks.

Damn.

“We need to get over there. Now,” I said.

Though I worried we were going to be too late. If that glow was already there that meant he was already putting whatever plan he had into motion. If he was already doing it meant we might not get there in time.

And if he managed to do whatever he was doing, I had a feeling it involved killing an entire stadium of alumni and sucking their souls into one of his contraptions, then I didn’t think we were going to be fighting to a stalemate anymore.

No, I’d be the one getting my ass kicked. Crap.

39

Homecoming

“Are you serious? You’re charging me fifteen bucks to go into a game for the school I attend?” I asked.

The lady behind the ticket booth looked bored. Like she’d had this same conversation with other angry people all night long and couldn’t be bothered to give a damn.

“My parent’s taxes paid for that stadium,” I said. “This is a ripoff that you’re making us pay to get in here.”

I held out my phone and the lady pushed forward a reader. There was a little ding and the fifteen dollars was deducted from my account. It was supposed to be used for emergencies and school stuff, but something told me my dad wasn’t going to give me too much trouble considering everything that’d gone down.

Assuming he ever got out of that crystal to be mad at me. I wasn’t going to think of that though. I needed to keep my head in the game. That’s what was going to save my dad. Not worrying about him stuck in that strange crystal back at the creepy haunted mansion.

“That went well,” Stacy said.

“You could’ve told me they charge people to go to these things,” I said.

I got a few weird looks from people who were clearly wondering why I was talking to the air, but I didn’t care. I was in a hurry.

If I didn’t hurry my butt along then there was a very real chance all these people were going to be ghosts by the time this was all said and done.

“Why would I even know they charge people to go to these things?” Stacy asked. “I’m a cheerleader. They let me in for free. They even let people in for free when they come back from college if you were on the squad.”

I rolled my eyes.

“What?” Stacy asked. “We put in our time for the school so there should be some benefits. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Not the time,” I said.

“Whatever,” Stacy said with a sniff.

I looked around the football stadium and realized we had a problem. The place was huge, with big stands on one side to hold the home team crowd and smaller stands on the other side to hold the visiting team which didn’t have nearly as many people showing up. Maybe that was just the families of the players on the other side.

Either way, we had a problem.

“What’s wrong?” Stacy asked.

“I have no idea where I’m going or what I’m looking for,” I said. “Like I’ve only been to this place for gym class, and even then it was using the track around the field and not using the actual football field.”

“Huh,” Stacy said. “How could you be a senior in high school and have no idea where anything is in the football field?”

“Because I’ve gone four years of school without attending a football game?”

Stacy smiled a funny little smile. Then she reached out and patted me on the shoulder, but it didn’t feel like it was supposed to be a comforting pat on the shoulder. No, this time around she looked like she was taking pity on me.

“You poor thing,” she said. “You have no idea what you’ve been missing. We’re going to have so much fun going on a tour!”

I summoned a bit of my darkness and flicked Stacy. Right on the butt which was hovering in the air just at about eye level which had been one heck of a distraction all night long let me tell you.

“What was that for?” she asked, whirling around and putting her hands on her hips. Hips that gave an indignant little shimmy that was just as distracting.

“We don’t have time for a tour,” I said, pulling myself away from the ghostly sexiness that was keeping me from what was important. “We need to find whatever the heck Graham is planning. If you were trying to hide something at one of these games where would you hide it? Something big?”

I felt like I was a secret agent in some movie about trying to stop terrorists from bombing a place or something. I guess in a way I was sort of a secret agent, and whatever Graham was planning was probably going to be the equivalent of dropping a bomb on the stadium.

It’d certainly result in the whole arena being dead. Or maybe in them being undead. Either way it was going to kill a lot of people, and I couldn’t let that happen.

“Oh, right,” Stacy said. “I keep forgetting we’re here for that. I get so caught up in everything that’s happening here.”

“Yeah, well the sooner we fix this the sooner you get your body back so you can have fun like this again,” I muttered.

“What’s wrong now?” she asked, obviously picking up on something in my tone.

“Nothing,” I said. “Now let’s get going.”

I wasn’t about to tell her that the annoyance I felt was more of a worry than it was an actual annoyance. Being here at this game, being surrounded by a part of the whole high school experience that I’d never cared about because it’d never really been my thing, made me realize that Stacy and I were from two different worlds when it came to the crowds we ran with.

Sure we’d come together for that one night. One night where we were thrown together, is more like it. Then there was the whole Stacy dying thing which had only added layers of complication to an already complicated situation.

I still worried that when this was all over she’d decide she’d rather be out there having a good time with all her cheerleader buddies instead of spending time with me. That the only reason she’d been hanging out with me all this time was because I was pulling a Whoopi and was, quite literally, the only living person who could see her.

Well, me and my dad. The point is I sort of had her as a captive audience, and I worried that might change when she was back in the land of the living.

Whatever, I pushed those thoughts away. I didn’t want to think about that right now. What I did want to think about was how I was going to find whatever Graham was planning.

A glance up at the skies told me there was definitely still something weird going on here. There was a swirling blue miasma gathering up above, but all the sports fans either didn’t notice it or they didn’t realize that having something that looked like a special effect from a supernatural themed ‘80s movie hovering overhead was a bad thing.

Probably the latter. Sports fans. There were times when I was inclined to agree with Graham. Not to the point that I thought it was a good idea to kill everybody who was obsessed with sports and use their souls to power unholy abominations, but I did think people got a little too obsessed over grown men and women tossing around balls.

“What about under the bleachers?” Stacy asked. “There’s usually a lot of action going on down there. It’d be as good a spot as any.”

“Fine, let’s go,” I said.

“But I can just zip under there and see what’s going on,” she said. “I promise I’ll be careful.”

I thought about it for maybe half a second before nodding. Normally that wasn’t the kind of risk I’d want to take with her. Not when there was a chance Graham could be lurking down there with that staff that he could use to Hoover her up along with all her spectral energy.

Tonight, though? I was in kind of a hurry. Every moment I wasted was a moment where that stupid jerk Graham could implement the rest of his evil plan and really make this a bad night for the team.

Though glancing at the scoreboard it looked like it was already a bad night for the team. A necromancer coming along and killing everyone in the stadium might be the second worst thing that happened to the team tonight considering the way they were getting creamed heading into halftime.

“Do it,” I said. “But be careful.”

“Of course,” she said, grinning.

Clearly she wasn’t worried about our whole dynamic changing once she was back among the living, but why would she? If she got her body back then she’d be the popular sexy cheerleader who everybody loved and I’d still be zombie girl.

I sighed and scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of Graham, or maybe of the others he’d taken as his zombie slaves.

Right. Graham had a bunch of zombie slaves. If I found them in the crowd then maybe I could find Graham. Maybe he’d even be hanging out with everyone out there. I should’ve thought of that first.

The only problem was it was a big crowd, and unfortunately a stadium full of people cheering on their favorite high school football team in a town where the high school football team was still a big deal despite their losing record was sort of indistinguishable from a stadium full of a bunch of glassy-eyed zombies.

Damn.

A cheer went up. Which was probably a good thing, because it was right about when that cheer went up that I felt a hand on my shoulder. It had me jumping like five feet and screaming at the top of my lungs.

I got a few weird looks, but mostly people seemed to think I was excited about something that just happened out on the field. Maybe the home team had scored or something. Those cheers were coming from our section, after all.

I blushed and turned to look at whoever had put their hand on my shoulder. That was a tingling feeling that meant whoever had touched me wasn’t among the living.

“What the hell?” I shouted, whirling around.

That got me more weird looks, but I was beyond caring about weird looks at this point. The stakes were way higher right now than a bunch of people at a football game thinking I was a weirdo because I was talking to a whole bunch of nothing.

When I whirled around I was relieved to see Luke, Jake, and Arnold floating behind me. They all looked concerned.

“What’s going on Gwen?” Luke asked.

“Why would you think something’s going on?” I asked.

“Because you’re never at these games,” Jake said. “Like never.”

“We know,” Arnold said. “We’ve been coming to these since the early ‘80s.”

I blinked a couple of times. “You guys have been coming to these games for thirty years?”

“What’s so weird about that?” Luke asked.

“You guys just don’t seem like the sports types,” I said.

“We never said we were the sports types,” Jake said, waggling his eyebrows.

It hit me exactly why they’d come to these games. I rolled my eyes.

“You guys are ridiculous,” I said.

Of course the only reason they came to these games was because of the cheerleaders. I mean sure the cheerleaders were nice to look at, but honestly. It was like these guys still did all their thinking with the brain down below even though they hadn’t had blood flowing to that brain down below since Darth Vader revealed he was Luke’s father.

I knew the exact timing because the truth of Luke Skywalker’s paternity was the first thing they asked me about back when they realized I could see them. The second thing was getting upset that a bunch of teddy bears were able to defeat the highest military power in the galaxy when I got to telling them about the next sequel.

Which seemed weird to me. I mean these guys had lived a lot closer to Vietnam than I had and even I got that…

Stacy reappeared at my side, pointedly ignoring the guys. “I didn’t find anything under the bleachers. Well, unless you count Gretchen Wilson making out with some band kid she wouldn’t be caught dead with out in public. That’d be a pretty big deal.”

I blinked. Came out of my reverie. Right. I needed to focus on something other than a clumsy attempt at a sci-fi allegory for Vietnam starring elite galactic shock troops getting defeated by the Care Bears.

“Okay,” I said. “So he’s not hiding under the bleachers which would be the most obvious place. So where the hell is he hiding?”

A loud horn blew. I looked up at the scoreboard. The second quarter had come to an end.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Halftime,” Arnold said.

“Yup. Usually these things are lame. Like the band goes out and does a show or something. It’s always fun at homecoming though,” Jake said.

“What’s different about homecoming?” I asked.

“All the floats they do for the parade, duh,” Luke said.

“Go easy on her,” Stacy said. “She’s never been to one of these games before. She probably has no idea what happens at homecoming.”

“Right,” Arnold said.

They kept right on talking about how weird it was that I’d gone to this school for four years and never bothered to go to a game, but I didn’t listen to their conversation. There was something prickling at the back of my mind. Something about what they’d said.

“Welcome to your homecoming game!” a voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “Starting off the homecoming festivities we have the floats from this afternoon’s parade coming around the track to be judged! The winners of our float building competition will enjoy…”

“Where do they keep those floats?” I asked.

“Usually they’re hidden back behind the concessions,” Stacy said. “Why?”

“They used to put them in the parking lot in our day,” Luke said. “Makes a lot more sense. No grass in the parking lot for the floats to get stuck on.”

“Yeah, but they paved the grass behind the concession stand back in ’88, remember man?” Jake said.

Again I tuned them out. It turns out I didn’t have to figure out where the floats were, because they were coming to me. And there was one float in particular that caught my attention.

It was in among all the others, but the production value on this thing was way better than any of the others. Someone had done a tribute to Thriller, though I was willing to bet this was the first time someone had done a tribute to that song using real zombies.

I’d found Graham.

40

Thriller

“All right!” Luke shouted, pumping his fist in the air. “It’s about time they went with some modern hits in one of these things!”

“But that isn’t a modern hit,” Arnold argued. “I swear. There are times when you still act like it’s forty years ago or something.”

“Well whatever,” Luke said. “The point is I fucking love this song!”

The strains of the late Michael Jackson pumped out across the football stadium. Everyone who’d been taken that night at the haunted house was there. Including Stacy, though I reminded myself that wasn’t really Stacy. Sure that was her body, but that wasn’t her.

“Ugh. I can’t believe he’s making me dance to that stuff,” Stacy said.

“Come on,” I said. “It might not be modern music anymore, but that song is a classic.”

Though I was willing to admit that part of the reason why I liked that so much probably had something to do with my dad refusing to allow me to listen to that kind of music. It fell under the umbrella of stuff he didn’t want to see or hear at home because he didn’t want to have to think about work in his house, damn it.

“If this isn’t what modern music is these days then I don’t want to be a part of it,” Luke said.

“Oh yeah? What about that Katy chick that sang that song about kissing another chick?” Arnold asked. “That was pretty hot.”

I rolled my eyes. There were times when I regretted the bits of modern pop culture I’d introduced them to. I hadn’t even gotten them started on the Internet and all the stuff that could be seen by accessing that treasure trove.

The last thing I wanted was to sit down at a computer in one of the school labs with three horny ghosts trying to get me to access all the joys of Internet pornography around the filters they had in place. I certainly wasn’t going to look that crap up on my phone.

“Are we forgetting something here?” Stacy said. “I mean it doesn’t matter whether or not what he’s doing is in poor taste. The fact remains that the jerk is forcing a bunch of people who shouldn’t ever be forced to dance like that into a stupid joke about zombies!”

I smiled. I mean on the one hand it was horrifying and everything Graham was doing was terrible. Those people didn’t deserve that.

On the other hand, though? The hand I wasn’t ever going to tell Stacy about since it already seemed like she was a little edgy about everything?

Well it was pretty fucking funny that he’d turned a bunch of people into zombies and now he was making them dance to Thriller as part of his homecoming float. It was the kind of sick, twisted sense of humor that I appreciated and that we’d bonded over.

Back before he’d started murdering people left and right, that is.

“You’re right,” I said. “We need to do something about this.”

The floats were rounding the track and the announcer was calling them out as they came through. I could see the homecoming king and queen at the back of the procession smiling and looking both nervous and excited at the same time.

I got the feeling they were nervous because they were about to live out the high school fantasy and not because they knew there was a necromancer piloting an ‘80s themed float across the track in preparation for a plan that probably ended with everyone in this stadium getting their souls sucked out of them and their bodies repurposed as slave labor for whatever the heck it was Graham was trying to do.

“Is he just going to drive that float up to the judging stand?” Stacy asked.

“Looks like it,” I said. “I have to give him credit. He has a pair on him.”

Stacy hit me with an odd look. “What do you mean he has a pair on him?”

“Usually when you have someone trying to take over the world supernaturally like this they’re doing it behind the scenes where there’s still plausible deniability about whether or not the supernatural exists, but he’s just letting his freak flag fly and telling the whole world what he’s up to. There’s guts in that,” I said. “That also means we need to get over there now. I have a feeling he’s about to do something bad, and I have a feeling we need to be there to take care of business.”

“Wait, what’s that guy doing?” Jake asked.

“Necromancer. Turning people into zombies. Trying to take over the town and then the world,” I said. “Pretty typical really.”

“Oh,” Arnold said. “Is that all?”

“Wait,” Luke said. “A necromancer? Like he likes to do… y’know… with dead bodies?”

“No dipshit,” Arnold said. “Necromancer like he raises bodies from the dead.”

“So he can do… y’know… with them?” Luke asked, eyeing the people dancing on the Thriller float.

“No he is not reanimating people so he can have sex with them!” I snapped, feeling so over having this conversation again.

They all stared at me, mouths hanging open.

“Oh please,” I said. “You were all tapdancing around it. I just said it. He’s a necromancer. That’s a bad dude who raises the dead and turns people into zombies so he can take over the world. Not… That other thing.”

“Well yeah, but he could…” Luke started.

I slapped him with a tendril of darkness. He let out a yelp and floated away from me.

“I’m going to ignore how you were looking right at zombie Stacy when you said that,” I said.

“You pervert!” Stacy said.

“Could we please stop sniping at each other and focus on the scary death wizard who’s about to kill everyone here?” I shouted.

Now I was getting some really weird looks. People were starting to shy away from me and it occurred to me that it probably wasn’t the best idea to have this conversation near the concession stand where there were a lot of people gathered to get some snacks while they waited for halftime to be over.

To them it would look like I was crazy. Plus I’d just mentioned that everyone in the stadium was about to get killed. Which probably sounded a lot like a threat to all the people who’d suddenly whipped out their phones and started calling someone.

“I think this is bad,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” Arnold asked.

“I just made a joke about everyone here dying, and those people are looking at me like I’m a terrorist or something,” I said. “They probably think I’m a bomber..”

I was saying it lower now. Low enough that I didn’t think anyone would hear me, but then again from their point of view it probably looked like I’d gone from ranting and yelling about how everyone was going to die to mumbling to myself.

Not much better, basically.

“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Jake said. “We used to joke about bombing this place to the ground all the time and no one thought it was a big deal.”

“That was a different time,” Stacy said.

“A better time,” Luke said.

“Please. You all thought Disco was a good idea,” Stacy said.

They continued bickering, but I was backing away. Because some school resource officers had appeared out of that crowd, and they were reaching for their pepper sprays and tasers.

At least they weren’t going for their guns. Though that was just my nervousness talking. It’s not like it would do anything but inconvenience me if they did shoot me.

That was one I’d never encountered before though. I wasn’t looking forward to finding out what it felt like to get shot. Or what it felt like to try and heal from getting shot, for that matter.

Best to avoid it. So I raised my hands. Glanced over my shoulder to where the Thriller float was getting closer and closer to the fifty yard line and the judging stand they’d set up there.

Damn it. I didn’t have time for dealing with the cops. I kept my hands up like I was a bad guy in a cheesy old black and white cop movie. Hey, just because I didn't think they were going to try and shoot me didn't mean I was all that eager to find out what it felt like to get shot. Something told me that would be a very unpleasant way to go.

Especially considering these were all a bunch of school resource and reserve officers who got to come out and wear their uniforms for the big game. Not exactly sharpshooters. They were the kind of idiots who would probably hit me in a spot that would really hurt while I was bleeding out and dying, is what I'm getting at.

I’d bled out while I was dying before, and it wasn’t an experience I was all that eager to repeat. Not to mention I didn’t have time for it right now.

"Easy guys," I said. "I promise you don't want to use any of that stuff on me."

Come to think of it, it was ridiculous that they were even reaching for their tasers and pepper spray to begin with. Maybe there were schools out there where the resource officers had to use that kind of heavy equipment on the regular, but this was not one of those schools. I was actually kind of insulted that they’d pull something like that on me.

"Get down on the ground," one of them said, his voice booming with the kind of hollow authority I'd expect from some jerk who made a living bossing a bunch of poor unfortunate high school kids around.

"You really don't understand," I said. "There's something terrible that's about to happen here tonight and…"

"That's a threat!" Another one shouted. He reached for his gun which was not helping this situation. "You heard that. She's threatening to…"

It was probably a good thing Graham decided to enact his grand plan at that moment. I mean sure it wasn't a good thing for all the people who were caught up in that plan, but it was a good thing for me since I needed a way to get out of the impending beat down and potential shooting that was no doubt coming my way from a bunch of Barney Fifes who had no idea how to do their job.

The first sign that there was something wrong was screaming. I was pretty sure it wasn't screaming that had anything to do with what was happening to me. I cocked an eyebrow and turned towards the parade.

It was difficult to make out exactly what was going on there from this distance, but it looked like somebody had hopped down from the Thriller float and was fighting with the people standing in front of the floats. Tonight was not a good night to be out there judging the floats.

A moment later there was a booming sound like a microphone been ripped out of someone's hand and then a new familiar voice boomed through the stadium.

Graham. Of course it would be Graham. He was ruining everyone's night, after all. It wouldn’t be a good villainous scheme if he didn’t gloat about it a little before he pulled it off.

"No!" he shouted, his nasally voice a very odd counterpoint to the deep bass the other announcer had been throwing around. "You will give me this microphone! Take care of them!"

That got a nasty response from the creatures on the float. There were more screams as a crowd of zombiefied popular kids dove off the float and attacked the people who’d been in charge of the microphones until just a moment ago.

I really hoped those people didn't get permanently injured. Then again, I suppose the real risk was that they’d be killed and sucked into whatever necromantic monstrosity he had going.

No sooner had I wondered what his plot was than I got my answer. My unfortunate answer. It served me right for even wondering in the first place.

Someone, probably another zombie who until recently had been high school royalty, pulled down a sheet that’d been painted to look like a huge tombstone in the middle of the float. Pulling that off revealed some metal framing, but I was more concerned with the thing hiding under that framing. An obelisk that resembled the one in the Thomas mansion basement.

"I have a bad feeling about this," I said.

"I seriously hope he's not using me to attack those people," Stacy said.

I hit her with a sharp look and she shrugged.

"What?" she said. "I don't want my body to be bruised or battered when I get it back."

"Assuming you get it back at all," I said. "Because with the way we've been doing tonight I don't know whether or not that's happening."

The cops standing all around me with their weapons drawn looked conflicted. On the one hand there was an obvious threat in front of them, at least I must have seemed like an obvious threat to those assholes even if I wasn't feeling like much of a threat. But on the other hand there was clearly an altercation going down over on the field.

Finally a few of them split off towards Graham and his fight, while a couple others stayed behind to take care of me. Apparently they thought a couple of slightly overweight middle-aged dudes would be more than enough to take care of a lonely teenage girl.

Great.

"You all thought you could ignore me! You all thought you could treat me like crap. Make fun of me! Well I'm going to show you all tonight!"

There was more screaming as he went through his speech. And it's not like I could blame the people in the stands for screaming and running for it. After all, so far his speech was going through the greatest hits you’d expect from your typical disaffected loner who’d decided to go on a rampage and take some people with him.

They had no idea that he was even more dangerous than your typical asshole with a gun or a makeshift bomb. The tip of that obelisk glowed with a bright light that was blinding, and I could feel it tugging at my soul even as I found myself looking at the cops next to me and wondered how I was going to get away from them.

"Look guys," I said. "You really don't want to do this. Trust me. The real threat is back there on the field.”

"I said get down on the ground," a cop with a bristling mustache said. He’d pulled his gun at some point between Graham making his announcement and me looking back to him. Not good. I really didn’t want to get shot. "If you don't then I'm going to have to use this."

"I'm going to show you all right now!" Graham shouted.

The one minus the mustache pulled out his Taser. Pointed it at me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I figured this wasn't going to be much fun at all, but it was better than the gun.

41

Reaper

Okay. So that was odd. I never figured getting hit with a Taser would feel like nothing.

It was almost enough to make me wonder if there was something going on. Like had the electrical impulse hit me in just the right spot to kill me? Considering all the problems I’d had with untimely deaths it's not like it would surprise me that something like that would happen. It would be just my luck that a nonlethal form of crowd control would be lethal to me.

Only I could still hear screaming in the distance. I could still hear the strains of Thriller floating across the stadium. Everything sounded normal.

Well, as normal as it could sound when there was a necromancer trying to kill everyone so he could harness their souls to nefarious ends.

I opened one eye. And saw something very different from any other experience I'd had with Graham the necromancer.

Everyone around me stood stock still. Their eyes were moving and clearly everyone was terrified, but it was also clear that none of them could do anything about that terror. Like those were the eyes of people who’d set Olympic sprinting records if they could get their legs to move, but whatever Graham was doing had stopped them before they could start.

I turned and took in the whole stadium. Saw that everyone was standing stock still.

"Okay. This is very creepy and weird," Stacy said.

"You're telling me," Luke said.

"And what the heck is this?" Stacy said, a note of panic coming to her voice. "Why am I…"

Whatever she was going to say was cut off as she floated off towards that giant shining obelisk. The top was getting brighter and brighter.

My body shivered and shook as tremors hit me. I figured that was a good sign. It meant I wasn't suffering from the same paralysis everyone around me was dealing with.

Though on second thought I wasn't sure whether or not that was really a good thing. Because that meant it was up to me to deal with this craziness, and I really didn't feel up to it. Dealing with a necromancer was something my dad was supposed to do, damn it.

Only he'd failed. I was all that was left.

"Damn it," I growled.

“Whoa,” Luke said as he started to float off towards the obelisk. "I'm getting the same weirdness here. What the heck is going on?"

"If I had to guess I'd say Graham put together something that’s a bigger version of that staff he's been carrying around," I said.

"What does that mean?" Luke said.

I had to shout so he could hear me. "It means he's sucking you into his big obelisk thing!"

"Aren't things usually supposed to flying out of big hard things like that?" he shouted back at me before he floated too far away for the conversation to continue.

I grinned and shook my head. It was just like him to get off one last dick joke before he was captured by the big scary necromancer who was doing his best to kill everyone in the stadium and take their souls so he could use their bodies to create a semi-undead army.

At least that's what I assumed Graham’s endgame was.

The cops who stayed behind to take care of me started swaying from side to side. They looked like they'd taken something really good shit. Like the kind of stuff you usually didn't get from the kind of people who sold that sort of thing at a high school.

Not that I'd know. Death by the stupidity of putting something in my body that didn't belong there was one death I'd never experienced. It was one death I never cared to experience either, thank you very much.

I stared in a mixture of fascination and horror as the souls started to rip right out of everybody around me. They opened their mouths and their souls streamed out, looking for all the world like everybody around me had been vaping or something.

I knew there was a whole scene that had grown up around the vaping thing, but I was pretty sure no enterprising vape enthusiast had created a smoke that glowed when it came out of a person’s body.

"Oh yeah," I said. "This is great. This is just fucking great, isn't it?"

Nobody answered. They were too busy having their souls ripped out of their bodies via their mouths. Which was actually kind of freaky and gross when you thought about it.

"Everybody was so busy worrying about the girl who might be a threat that nobody bothered to go after the big scary necromancer who’s actually a threat. How’d that work out for you?"

Again nobody answered. Tough crowd.

I was good and ticked off now. Graham had irritated me to the point that I wanted to do something stupid. I wanted to break something. Like every bone in his stupid body.

He still had the microphone up to his lips and he was letting out a maniacal laugh. Not that he needed the microphone. I could’ve heard the idiot all the way over here without it.

"I really wish he'd shut up," I said.

I held my hand out. I wasn't even really thinking about what I was doing. I was just pissed off and going on instinct.

Darkness surrounded me and my trusty scythe appeared in my hand. I looked down and was surprised to see that my hands were almost translucent. The bones that were normally nice and non-visible on the other side of my skin were as obvious as if I was looking at an x-ray.

And there was something else new. Something else that hadn't been there before. Dark robes flowed around me, but when I started to run they didn't impede my movement at all.

Then it occurred to me what an idiot I was being. After all, what was the point of running when I could float? Sure I was in the land of the living, not on the other side, but I'd seen my dad do it before. So I jumped.

Gravity quickly showed up to inquire as to what the hell I thought I was doing. I tumbled in the dirt, but got up again. I threw myself straight at the chainlink fence separating concessions from the field and rose through the air. This time I stayed up. This time I floated above everybody down on the field.

The only bummer about the whole thing was everyone was so busy having their souls sucked out that there was no one to see my moment of awesome.

It was a damn shame too. I figured I had to look pretty damn cool. Maybe there was a camera running to catch the game and I could get a copy of whatever video they were taking.

Assuming that video could even catch me when I was like this.

Whatever. I wasn't doing this because it looked cool. No, I was doing this because it needed to be done. I was doing this because I was going to make Graham regret the dark day he ever decided to mess with me or my friends.

That was a category I no longer put him in, by the way. If he was willing to do this to people then he was no friend of mine.

He was still cackling into the microphone when I flew over him. I did a quick golf swing with my scythe, and his laughter cut off. I could still hear his annoying nerdy cackling behind me, but at least it wasn't amplified across the whole football stadium.

"What the…" he said.

I landed in front of him. He stared and his eyes narrowed.

"Gwen?" he asked. "What are you doing here? I…"

"… Made a huge fucking mistake when you decided to fuck with me," I said, holding my scythe out in front of me.

I had the profound satisfaction of watching Graham take a couple of steps back. Clearly he didn't care for this sudden show of power from yours truly. Maybe he was thinking about the last time we'd gone mano a mano. The time he’d run from that classroom like the little bitch he was.

"So are you going to go quietly, or are we going to have to do this the hard way?" I asked.

He threw his head back and laughed. Held his staff up and slammed it down on the ground. A wave of necromantic power exploded out, and it was far bigger than anything he'd ever hit me with before. That might have something to do with it coming from the giant obelisk he'd concealed on the parade float.

Only it didn't do anything to me this time.

Now that was weird. The wave of necromantic magic slammed into me. Every other time something like that had happened with a far smaller blast of magic it had knocked me straight out of my body, but this time I stood firm.

Well okay then. Talk about unexpected, but not unpleasant. I smiled.

"Any other tricks you want to try?" I asked.

His eyes went wide. "You can't do that," he said. “That’s impossible!”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay Luke. Are we going to do this or what?”

His eyes narrowed. He looked furious. His mouth opened in a scream of pure nerdy fury, and then he was on me. Well, he wasn't on me so much as he was doing his best to try and attack me, and his best clearly wasn't all that great.

He brought his staff down as though he was using it like a giant broadsword. The kind of thing you saw at one of those cheesy medieval times places where they had the big swordfights and the horses and everything. Only the staff hit my side and did nothing. I looked down in astonishment. Then I raised my scythe and whipped it around. He only barely managed to get his staff in the way before I took off his head.

Energy crackled where our weapons of choice met, and then he shoved. This time he did manage to push me back just a little. Of course he couldn’t push me out of my body with a physical shove, but it was still annoying.

"I took care of one of you, and I'll take care of all of you!" he said. "This town is going to be perfect, they’re going to worship me as their god, and there's nothing you can do about it!"

I grunted as we had the world’s lamest sort-of sword fight on the track. The longer this went the more likely I was to be in some serious trouble.

Sure it's not like he could do that whole ripping my soul out of my body thing anymore, but I knew this was going to be a stalemate if I didn’t figure out a way to stop him and that obelisk soon. It would only be a matter of time before he set his zombie dogs on me, and then I’d really be in trouble.

He hit me with some of his magic again. Again the wave slammed into me and again it did nothing. I was like a rock standing against the ocean, but the ocean would wear down a rock eventually.

"Fine!" he shouted, frustration tinging his voice. "If you're going to be like that…"

He jumped away from me. Actually floated up to hover over the obelisk. Which wasn't something I'd seen him do before. I figured the sudden manifestation of the power of flight was the kind of thing that meant nothing good was about to happen to yours truly.

"See how you like this!" he shrieked. "Get her!"

42

Throw Down

There was an awkward pause. His minions stared at him with dumb looks. It would appear that their programming wasn't as foolproof as he'd hoped. He sputtered at them in anger.

"That was your plan?" I asked. "Get her?"

"Shut up!" he said.

"No. I like it," I said. "It's simple, but ineffective."

"I said get her!" he shouted again.

This time it seemed to finally kick something loose with the zombie army. This was totally going to tip this fight in his favor. All of them turned and descended on me.

It was like a scene out of a zombie movie. Which made sense considering they were basically a certain flavor of zombie. And we're talking one of those new zombie movies where everything was in full gory color and the zombies could move at full speed. Not some old black and white flick where all the zombies were shuffling along and even a rolling overweight buffet on a scooter could get away from them. At least for as long as their batteries lasted.

After that I’m pretty sure that would be the biggest zombie feast ever, but the less I thought about that while I was surrounded by a literal zombie horde the better.

The horde hit me and I imagine it was what it felt like to get tackled repeatedly in a football game. Not that I'd ever been big on playing tackle football. With the way I was predisposed to death that seemed like an invitation for a broken neck or something. No thank you.

I liked to avoid the deaths where I had to linger and deal with the pain for a little while.

I was thrown down to the ground in what amounted to a dog pile. Like a real dog pile. The football team and most of the cheerleaders along with managers and coaching staff were piling on around me since they were the closest to the field.

Not the most pleasant experience, let me tell you. I mean the cheerleaders might not have been so bad, but I could’ve done without the sweaty football players or the old people trying to rip me apart.

Considering my predisposition to untimely deaths, it was a miracle I didn’t land on something critical on the way and break my neck.

"This is not fighting fair!" I shouted.

"I don't have to fight fair," Graham shouted. "All I have to do is hold you down long enough to do the same thing to you that I did to the last one who dared challenge me!"

That really pissed me off. The last one. The “last one” he'd done this to was my dad, and that was still, understandably, something of a sore spot for me. I tightened my grip on my scythe, but I couldn't do anything with it. There were too many zombies grabbing at me for me to wave this thing around without worrying about doing some damage. Real physical damage that might stay with them after this was all over.

Assuming this ended with me winning, which was feeling less and less likely with every passing moment.

I cast my head from side to side. If this was one of those old-time serials this would be the point where I was tied down on the railroad tracks with a train coming towards me and the dramatic announcer talking about how this might be the end for Gwen.

It was sort of a weird situation for me. Because all through my life, at least after the first time I'd accidentally met my untimely demise, I'd faced numerous situations which could've been the end for Gwen, but every time I'd faced one of those situations I'd come through on the other side because of my unique family legacy.

This was the first time I’d actually faced a situation where I seriously had to worry about this being the end.

I needed to figure out what the hell to do about this. I glanced from side to side. Zombies all around. Even if I managed to break free from the ones holding me down I’d still have to get through the rest of the crowd that would try to do the same damn thing.

I was basically doing my best impression of that totally hot redheaded girl in Return of the Living Dead. Yet another horror classic that was forbidden in our house so of course I’d gone out and grabbed a copy at the rental store. Yes our town was small enough with spotty enough Internet access that there was still a video store doing brisk business.

Though of course I was preserving some of my modesty whereas the hot redhead had been providing a little bit of early ‘80s fan service that was still operating at full strength for a girl watching that movie thirty years later.

There had to be a way out of this. There had to be a way to…

Dark lines. Running out of the back of their heads. Those lines all snaked around until they hit that obelisk. More of those lines stretched out from the obelisk towards the bleachers. Lines stretched towards the concession stands where this whole charlie foxtrot had started for me.

I'd cut those lines before with my scythe. And I wondered if I could do something about them now. Clearly I wasn't going to be able to use my scythe, not when it was being held firmly in place by former friends staring down at me with creepy vacant zombie eyes, but my scythe wasn’t the only weapon at my disposal.

Darkness rose around me. It turned into flailing tendrils. I focused on those dark lines and the tendrils of darkness snapped onto them. I pulled as hard as I could, and really hoped this wouldn’t hurt these people. They were my friends, after all. Well, a few of these people were friends.

Either way none of them deserved to get hurt because of what Graham was pulling here today.

Still, there was nothing for it but to do what had to be done. In this case doing what had to be done meant doing something about all the minions Graham was using to try and give me a very bad day.

So I pulled harder. I couldn't even describe exactly how it was that I did it. Just that I was exerting force with those dark tendrils, and the more I used them the more I got used to it. The more it seemed natural to do this.

I'm sure my dad had to go through some sort of training or something before he got to this point, maybe the plan had been for him to be my Obi Wan or something before I graduated to varsity level crap like this, but I was going to have to figure this shit out on my own. At least if I wanted to save the day.

I didn’t have time to train. I was going to have to learn all this crap on the job.

I opened my mouth and screamed. What came out was an unearthly wail that terrified me. I had trouble believing it was even coming out of my mouth, but it couldn't be any of the other creatures. Their mouths were open in silent screams, but there were no zombie moans coming out of these guys.

"What are you doing?" Graham yelled. "You're ruining everything!"

His mouth went wide and with a final scream I pulled. All the dark tendrils that had been attached to all the zombies he was controlling like oversized puppets yanked out.

Everyone went limp at the same moment, and then a bunch of souls started to escape from the obelisk and go flying back into the people who'd been so recently added to his zombie horde. Including my friends he'd captured that first fateful night.

"No, you've ruined everything," I shouted, pulling myself up. “You might try to tell yourself that none of this is your fault. That you’re paying people back for treating you like shit. Well you’re the asshole here, Graham. I’ve always been your friend, and you've always treated me like shit. You always treated everyone like shit, and that's why you are where you are today. That's why no one likes you. Not because you're geeky or something!"

Was it harsh? Maybe, but this seemed like a time for harsh truths.

The people I’d freed looked around and blinked in obvious surprise. Though one in particular looked like she was out for blood.

Everyone else was disoriented, but Stacy had more experience with coming out of the funk created by having her soul ripped out and put back in. Her eyes fell on Graham and she looked furious. She ran at him and actually threw herself in the air. I didn’t think she’d be able to make the leap, but there must’ve been some adrenaline pumping through her because she grabbed him by the feet and dragged him to the ground.

From there it didn't take long for the others to snap out of their funk and pile on. Meanwhile I took advantage of being free to run through the crowd with my scythe. I lashed out with the darkness everywhere I could. Yanked on those glowing dark tendrils running to the possessed. I cut a wide swath through the glowing lines with my scythe and everywhere I cut dark necromantic lines snapped back and souls flew out of the obelisk and into their original vessels.

I was actually starting to enjoy this.

Whether it was by scythe or by using my weird death power to rip those connections out of their heads, I really hoped that didn't cause any permanent damage, the moment the connection was lost their soul shot out of the obelisk. From there the newly restored zombie looked to Graham and joined the pile Stacy had started.

It didn't take long before there were enough people freed around me that I figured it was safe enough to go up and have a look at the obelisk itself without worrying about more zombies trying to attack yours truly.

I floated up and stared down into the thing, then reached out to touch it. Only as I touched it I realized there were still so many souls trapped in there. All the people in stadium, basically, and from the noise all those souls were making they sounded really pissed off.

Understandable since they just had their souls ripped out of their bodies.

Feeling all those souls in there also reminded me that I was about to be in a world of hurt. I looked up and saw zombies streaming down from the stands on both sides. Way more than the small crowd of popular people, cheerleaders, and football players Graham had enslaved around the float.

I figured I had maybe a minute before that crowd hit us, and when that happened it was going to be zombies versus the living. I had no doubt the zombies would be able to hold the small crowd I'd freed while Graham did his nasty work on them all over again. Basically if I didn't figure something out soon we were screwed.

I looked down at my scythe. Looked at the obelisk. Shrugged. It's not like I had many options at this point. I was willing to try anything, and I didn't have much time to try it.

I raised my scythe and let out another one of those unearthly wails as I put all my strength into my swing. I brought the scythe down, point first, right on top of the crystal.

The thing cracked. Spiderwebs appeared all along the top. Spiritual energy puffed out of the thing like it was waiting to break free.

I smiled. I figured if I could crack the thing then I could destroy it. I wheeled my scythe back like a baseball bat and thwacked it across the top, again point first.

This time the result was far more spectacular. The crystal shattered and spirits flew to their rightful owners. None of them would be stuck in Graham’s creepy undead collection. The force of souls blasting out knocked me back.

Okay then. His necromantic force wasn't enough to bother me when he was controlling it, but I guess knocking all the spirits out at once was enough to knock me on my ass. I tumbled ass over teakettle through the air, hit the ground, and everything went dark for a little bit.

43

Death

When I woke up I was more than a little disoriented. I stood and saw spirits flitting all around, and for a moment I worried I'd hit hard enough that it killed me.

A tumble like that would be more than enough to off someone. People never appreciated just how easy it was for somebody to take a quick fall and that's all she wrote.

I stood and brushed myself off. It was encouraging that there was dust I could brush off. Dust didn’t cling to spirits. Apparently these robes weren't immune to getting a little bit of dust on them.

"Okay then," I said. "Not dead. At least not yet."

I looked up to the obelisk. It was sparking and sputtering where I broke the crystal, and that steady glow was gone.

Unfortunately it looked like destroying the obelisk, or more particularly the crystal on top of the obelisk, wasn't enough to take care of the zombie horde threatening to smash us. That zombie horde was making a lot more noise now. I looked in horror at the mass gathered around the float pulling it down, obelisk included.

I sighed. Damn it. It would appear that no matter what I did, it wasn't enough to stop them.

"Crazy, isn't it?"

I wheeled around. Stacy stood next to me smiling. Stood. She wasn’t floating. She'd clearly regained her body, so I suppose that was good. A small win in the face of the very big loss that was the zombie horde ripping that float down. No doubt they all thought I was somewhere in the middle of the dogpile.

The undead. It turns out they weren’t all that bright.

"Why did you stay in your body while everyone else is still zombies?" I asked.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

I pointed at the crowd.

"All of them. They’re still attacking. The idiots didn’t realize I was thrown free.”

Stacy giggled. It was nice to hear that giggle. It was a reminder of a time when things hadn't been so crazy.

Though I suppose it was a sign of just how crazy everything had gotten that I was now thinking of Stacy being ripped free of her body and following me around as a ghost as less complicated times. But on balance it really was.

I guess it was proof of the old phrase that no matter what happened, it could always get worse. Or crazier.

"Wait," Stacy said. "You think that zombie horde is looking for you?"

"Well duh,” I said. "What else would they be doing?"

Stacy stared at the zombie horde. It was a grim stare. The more I stared the more I got the feeling I was witnessing something just as horrible as anything else I'd seen tonight. Maybe more horrible.

Granted watching a bunch of people having their souls sucked out of their bodies was a pretty nasty thing. It's just that I knew the whole soul sucking thing could be reversed. From screams I heard coming faintly from inside that pile of “zombies,” Graham’s screams, there was something going on in the middle of that pile that couldn’t be reversed.

"What are they doing?" I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"Giving him a suitably ironic ending?" Stacy asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Man brought low by his own creation," she said. "Don't you ever pay attention to all that thematic crap in English class?"

I sighed. I'd been afraid she was going to say something like that. It didn't make it any less disquieting to see it happening to someone who I had, once upon a time, considered to be a friend. Sure he hadn't been much of a friend there at the end, but still. It didn't mean I took any pleasure in watching him getting violently hoisted by his own petard.

"Damn," I said. "I want to stop them, but…"

"But what?" Stacy asked. "You want to turn him into the cops? Something tells me there aren’t any laws on the books about creating an undead zombie horde with your necromantic powers.”

She was right, but that didn't mean I had to be happy about the fact that she was right.

"I suppose this is where we've been headed all along," I said.

"You shouldn't think like that," Stacy said, her voice quiet.

"Really?" I asked. "How should I think about a sort of friend getting ripped apart by that crowd?"

Honestly I was surprised the crowd was even capable of something like that. I wouldn't think the people in this town could do something that terrible, but then again the circumstances were far more terrible than most people usually had to deal with in their lives.

Who knew what would happen if a person who wasn't used to having their soul regularly ripped out of their body suddenly found themselves experiencing that unfortunate joy?

“It didn’t have to end this way,” Stacy said, her voice still quiet.

“It didn’t?” I asked.

“Nope. There were two ways this could end," Stacy said. "One was with an entire football stadium's worth of people having their souls ripped out of their bodies, and the other is what's happening over there. The needs of the many and all that."

"Whatever you say Spock,” I said with an eye roll. For all that I kept the guys apprised of the latest developments in the Star Wars saga, I’d always been more of a Kirk and Picard kind of girl.

The tenor of the crowd had changed just a little. It took me a moment to figure it out, and it turned my stomach when I realized what had changed. Graham’s screams came to an end.

"I guess it's done," I said.

"There’s nothing you could have done," Stacy said.

"It doesn’t make me feel any better about it," I said.

Only no sooner had the screams stopped than I realized there was still very much something I could do here. Because there was a spirit floating up out of that pile. A spirit that was just a little overweight with glasses.

It always struck me as odd that someone would become a ghost and wear the clothes and fashion accessories they had when they were still alive, but I didn't make the rules.

Graham was rising out of the dogpile that’d just killed him. He spun, looking very disoriented. Like he had no idea what had happened or how he'd gotten here. I’d seen that look plenty of times with the recently deceased, though I was surprised to see it from him considering what he’d been dabbling in that led to his untimely demise.

Then his eyes came to rest on me, and Stacy next to me very much alive, and his eyes went wide. He flipped around like he was going to try and make an escape, but he overcorrected and went flipping over and over instead of escaping.

“What an asshole,” I said.

"Let's get him!" Stacy said.

That was good for a double take. I looked at Stacy and then back to Graham, but I didn't look directly at him. I looked off to the side, up at a big stadium light, to test her.

"You can see him?" I asked.

"Of course I can see him," she said. "But he's over there. Why are you looking at that light?"

I followed her finger, and sure enough she was pointing directly at him.

"Is something wrong?" Stacy asked. "You look like you've seen…"

She paused and blushed. Smiled. Seemed to realize exactly what she'd been about to say. I couldn't help but giggle.

"Sorry," she said. “The phrase just sort of came to mind.”

"No problem," I said. “I’m just surprised you can see him. Seeing dead people usually isn't something the living are able to do. You couldn't do it before, right?"

"She can see us?" Luke asked, floating down.

Stacy jumped and whirled around. I did a little jump of my own. I hadn't realized those troublemakers were hanging around. They must’ve made their escape when I smashed that crystal, but they didn’t have any bodies to disappear back into.

They gave a little wave, and it was pretty difficult to miss how Jake was staring at Stacy's ass.

"Yes I can see you pervs,” she said. "And I don't appreciate you staring at my ass!"

"This is going to be a bummer," Arnold said.

"Tell me about it," Jake said. "She's going to be able to see us in the locker room!"

Stacy made a disgusted noise. "How do you deal with these guys?"

"Mostly they’re an acquired taste," I said. "Plus they didn't dare show up in any locker room I was ever changing in, so it was never much of a problem for me."

I decided not to mention how I'd used one of my more recent deaths to do some similar gawking. The less said about that, the better. Especially since Stacy’s tone clearly said she took a dim view of that sort of thing.

"Hey!" Luke said. "That guy is getting away!"

"Not on our watch!" Jake said.

They flew into action. They floated over the dogpile of people still trying to get a piece of Graham. I wondered what that was going to look like when this was all done. An entire stadium of people who'd gone mad and killed a high school kid was the kind of thing that made headlines.

Luke, Jake, and Arnold flew over that crowd and grabbed Graham as he finally stopped tumbling and managed to shoot off towards the bleachers.

Luckily he was still having some trouble controlling his ghostly form. It was odd that he’d have trouble with that considering all the time he’d been spending around the dead and undead lately.

He might be having trouble with the whole ghostly floating thing, but I didn't have any trouble flying. Not now. I rose above the crowd. Some of them pointed, obviously surprised to see someone flying, a few clearly terrified when they realized the someone flying over them was in dark robes with a scythe, but most of them were still preoccupied with the whole angry mob thing.

Not to mention someone flying over their heads was probably the least weird thing that’d happened from the crowd’s point of view considering everything else that’d gone down tonight.

The guys tackled Graham and they all flew under the bleachers. A moment later they came out, tugging Graham along with. He was struggling, but I was more interested in watching a bunch of detached souls grabbing each other. I’d never seen that before, but I guess it sort of made sense.

I floated up to him and held out my scythe. That was enough to put a stop to the fighting. Even though these guys were my friends, they still looked at that scythe nervously. Like they expected me to cart them to the other side or something.

I smiled. "You guys don't have to worry," I said. "I'm not going to take you anywhere you don't want to go. You should know that by now.”

"Thanks," Arnold said. “You had us wondering for a minute the way you were throwing your piece around.”

I turned and pointed the scythe to Graham next. He went crosseyed as the point went up under his nose. “You should be very worried. I’m going to take you exactly where you deserve to go."

"What are you Gwen?” Graham breathed.

I tilted my head to the side. Considered that for a moment. Sure it was a cliched line, but it was a good question.

It was a question I'd had some time to think about. Sure I hadn't exactly been happy about the prospect of going into the family business when my dad told me about it, but now that I'd had a chance to experience it firsthand I had to admit this was kind of exhilarating. Even if it had also been terrifying and crazy.

"I'm a reaper," I said. I grinned what I hoped was a suitably evil grin. "And you're going to have the honor of being the first spirit I carry to the other side.”

44

Who Shot First?

Darkness moved out from my body again, though this time it surrounded me in a cloud rather than focused tendrils. It was weird how quickly I'd gotten used to this.

I guess it was kind of like riding a bike. Difficult to figure out the first few times, but once you got the hang of the motions it was pretty easy.

Graham's eyes went wide. He tried to struggle against the ghosts holding him, but that didn't do him any good. No, they were doing a pretty good job of holding him in place.

"You might as well give up Graham,” I said.

I thought back to my earlier encounter in the woods around the Thomas mansion when I’d turned my powers on Stacy. How I'd grabbed her with one of these tendrils and pulled us to the other side for a terrified moment. A terrified moment when I'd been convinced the reapers waiting there would descend on Stacy and force her to go through that portal along with the steady never-ending stream of other people moving through the gate.

There was just one problem. Graham was surrounded by my friends I didn't want to send those three chuckleheads to the other side any more than I wanted to send Stacy over.

Something told me they wouldn’t want to go to the other side considering they’d been hiding out on this side for so long. At least not until they realized just how bad some of the new Star Wars movies were when I eventually got to them. And that could be awhile considering how I'd been parceling out those tidbits of information.

The terrible future awaiting the franchise was part of the reason why I’d been taking my time telling them about what was coming. They still thought the Timothy Zahn books with badass Grand Admiral Thrawn were the best thing since sliced bread, and I didn’t want to take that away from them by introducing them to Emo Ren and the Copypaste Order.

"What are you waiting for?" Luke asked, pulling me out of my brief distraction.

"Well I've got a problem here," I said. "I can't exactly hit him without taking you guys with me."

Arnold stood tall. He looked like he was about to face down a firing squad or something.

"If that's what it takes then it's a sacrifice we’ll make," he said.

"What?" Jake asked. "We're not going to do that!"

"We're not?" Arnold asked.

"Of course we aren’t you idiot,” Luke said. "We're going to let this guy go, dive out of the way, and let Gwen here take care of business. Right?"

"Sounds like a plan to me," I said with a grin.

They looked at each other. "On the count of three."

"Does anyone else think this feels like when Lando was holding Han hostage?" Arnold asked.

"What are you talking about?" Jake asked.

"Well it's just that he's a fellow spirit, right? Should we really be helping Gwen send him to the other side? We’re making a deal with a dark robed wizard thing to sell out one of our fellow spirits.”

I rolled my eyes. "You're being ridiculous."

“Totally ridiculous,” Jake said. “The guy might be a ghost, but he’s an asshole who just sucked us into his giant penis-shaped crystal thing.”

"Wait a second," Graham asked. "You guys like Star Wars?"

“Duh,” Arnold said. "Who doesn't like Star Wars?"

An increasingly large and vocal chunk of the Internet, but I didn't bother explaining that to them. It would involve teaching them concepts that were completely unknown to a teenage boy who checked out of the land of the living circa the early 1980s.

Like a world where computers were interconnected to the point that the Internet was a thing, or what a personal computer even was and how they had more than one color on the screen these days.

That would be complicated enough without trying to explain a world where people disliked Star Wars. I mean I guess if they’d stayed alive long enough to see the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when no one gave a damn about Star Wars they’d know that world, but they’d checked out when George Lucas was on top of the world.

"Of course I like Star Wars!" Graham said. "It's awesome! Well, except for Jar Jar, maybe."

I felt the situation slipping out of my hands. I'd been drip feeding them Star Wars information mostly because it was fun to watch them squirm, but what if Graham came along and suddenly he was willing to tell them everything that’d happened since they kicked the bucket?

I was really starting to wish I’d never shown them Empire. Not if Arnold was going to be a jerk and compare me to Darth Vader.

Graham looked between the guys holding him down. He seemed to sense that the mood was turning in his favor too.

"Yeah, Star Wars is great!" Graham said. "And I especially love all the changes Lucas made. It makes it so much better. You guys would love it!"

"Changes?" Luke asked. "What changes are you talking about?"

I braced myself. This was something I hadn't told them about either. Not all that much, at least. I’d even hunted down a VHS copy of the original versions of the movies they'd seen when they were in theaters rather than going with the much easier to find special editions.

These guys still thought VHS was witchcraft, after all, so I hadn’t bothered going for something more modern.

I wasn't sure how they’d react to the special editions considering how their release had been the first of many polarizing moves that pissed off original trilogy fans. The last thing I needed was to accidentally create a bunch of geeky poltergeists terrorizing the school because they were pissed off because Hayden Christianson replaced the old dude at the end of Jedi.

"Oh yeah," Graham went on. "Lucas made a bunch of improvements that were really needed. He updated all those crappy early ‘80s effects…"

"What do you mean crappy?" Arnold said.

"You know," Graham said. "There was just a lot of stuff they needed to change. He added that great scene with Han and Jabba talking in Mos Eisley, and changed it so Greedo shot first."

“What?" all three of them said at once.

So much for the mood turning against me. Suddenly I was back in the game. Not that I’d ever been really worried that they would turn against me. Not really.

Not that I was worried these three idiots could take me in a fight, for that matter.

"Well yeah," Graham said. "Otherwise Han Solo is just a cold-blooded murderer, and that's not cool, right?"

“Han shot first, bitch," Luke said, and tossed Graham towards me. "Take care of him Gwen."

Graham seemed to realize just a moment too late that he'd been thrown to the wolves again. I winked at Luke and blew him a kiss.

"Thanks," I said.

"We were always on your side,” he said, shooting Arnold an irritated glare.

“I kinda figured, but it’s nice to know,” I said.

I wrapped the darkness around Graham and we slipped between worlds. It was a weird feeling that left me a little lightheaded, but it had to be done.

When we reappeared we were on the other side. There was no mistaking where we were what with the wide stream of glowing souls making their way towards that gate.

It was the same as the last time I’d visited this place. Though it didn't creep me out nearly as much this time.

Maybe that was a sign of some changes with yours truly. The place didn’t intimidate me as much because I’d been through so much that a place swarming with my fellow reapers didn’t seem as bad. The fact that I was thinking of them as my fellow reapers spoke volumes, for that matter.

The giant spires of rock jutting out over the stream of people were still there. The people flowing towards the gate looking like they were either seeing the most wonderful thing ever or the most horrifying thing they’d ever see in their afterlife were still there as well.

Though if what they were seeing in the gate was bad then I figured that was nothing on what they could expect when they got to the other side.

There was one big difference in the place this time. All the reapers who’d been up on those spires before watching everything weren’t up there now. No, they were down on the ground level. More particularly they stood around me in a semi circle.

One moment they hadn’t been there and the next they were. Okay then. Can you say creepy?

One of them held out a hand which fell out of their robe. It wasn't skeletal, but I could see bones through their skin. Just like my skin had looked when I got ready to kick Graham’s ass.

I could understand why people who caught a glimpse of a reaper when they were on death’s door, quite literally, would think reapers were made entirely of bone. That was a weird special effect, and it’s not like most people were in their right mind if they were on the verge of shedding their mortal coil.

"Gwen," Death said, for this was none other than the big guy. That deep voice rolled over me and seemed to make everything around me shake.

"I've brought a necromancer for you," I said, trying and failing to keep a slight tremor out of my voice.

Death reached up and pulled his hood back. He looked surprisingly young and in pretty good shape for being the personification of the end of life. I guess reaping burned a lot of calories.

"Your eminence," I said, getting down on my knees in the same way I'd seen my dad do previously. The same way I hadn’t the last time we met, but I could learn.

"Please Gwen," he said. "Get on your feet. You're embarrassing me. You don’t kneel after what you did today.”

"Sorry," I said, a blush coming to my cheeks. I worried that I was in deeper trouble than I’d thought. After what I’d done today? “I mean I didn’t mean to do it. I didn’t know he was a necromancer, and I know I should’ve told my dad as soon as I knew but I didn’t want my friend to get in trouble and stuff sort of got out of control and…”

A semi-skeletal hand landed on my shoulder and shut me right up. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “In fact you could say you did everything right. More right than anyone in your position has any right to do.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t in trouble with the big guy. At least not too much. Talk about a relief.

"Can you please tell me what the hell is going on here?" Graham asked. "Are you like a higher authority or something? Can you please tell her to let me…"

His words were cut off as Death flicked a finger. Darkness shot out and landed on Graham's mouth and he went blessedly silent.

Death turned to me and arched an eyebrow. Smiled. Though it was a bit of a creepy smile. After all, when Death, the Death and not a deputy reaper, smiles at you it's more than mildly terrifying. Even if I knew I wasn't in any danger myself.

Graham didn’t seem to be smart enough to realize how much danger he was in though, for all that he was always going on about how smart he was. Then again it’d always been my experience that the people who talked loudest about how smart they are were usually the ones who got themselves in the most trouble trying to act super smart.

"I would be very interested in an explanation of every step that brought here today with a necromancer in tow, Gwen," he said.

45

Portal

"Well, it's kind of a long story," I said.

He hit me with a sharp look. All those other reapers gathered around us looking more than a little intimidating didn’t help. I decided this would be a good time to go ahead and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Tell me in your own words what happened. Please.”

So I spilled everything. Going to the mansion. Running into a necromancer. My friends getting captured by the necromancer, except for Stacy. Discovering the necromancer was actually a dude who’d been a kinda-sorta friend I’d known since I was a little kid. Chasing him down. My dad getting captured. Getting knocked out after discovering the obelisk in the Thomas mansion basement. Following Graham to the football game and fighting him. Freeing everybody who'd been enslaved in the stadium. And finally capturing Graham, though I did leave out the part about Luke, Jake, and Arnold.

I wasn't going to throw them under the bus, even if there had been a touch and go moment there when I worried they were going to throw me under the bus for Star Wars spoilers.

When I was finished with my crazy story, and believe me it sounded even more crazy when I laid it all out, Death was beaming. Which totally wasn’t the kind of look I ever expected to see from the personification of the eventual and inevitable end of life.

Okay then. Unexpected, but if the big boss was in a good mood I wasn’t going to knock it.

"You’ve certainly had a busy couple of days," he said.

"Tell me about it," I said with a roll of my eyes.

He turned to one of the reapers standing beside him. He nodded. They took a step back and disappeared in a cloud of darkness similar to the one I'd been tossing around ever since all this nonsense started.

"Neat trick, that," I said. “Wish I would’ve had someone to explain all those tricks to me.”

Death wrapped an arm around my shoulder. I suppose that's the kind of thing that would freak most people out, but it was surprisingly comforting.

“You did well, Gwen," he said. "You’re at the age where your abilities start to manifest, but you had a trial by fire that most reapers never have to go through. Normally you would have some training, and even with that training you would never go up against a necromancer without far more experience. That you came through this fight on top, especially when he’d managed to capture an entire stadium of souls, speaks very well for you.”

Darkness appeared again and the reaper who’d been sent off to run an errand reappeared. There was another reaper beside him. Black robes flowed and flapped in a breeze that didn’t otherwise exist. Another one of those cool little special effects that came with the job, I guess.

The new reaper tossed his hood back and I realized with a start that it was my father. I smiled and ran up to hug him. I didn't care if all the stuffy reapers around us were watching. I was so happy to see him that I didn't give a damn what any of them thought.

Death chuckled behind me. It was a rustling sound like dead leaves mixed with the grinding of bones tumbling over one another in a grave that’d been disturbed, but again that's the kind of imagery and sound effects that I'd been surrounded by my entire life so it was more comforting than creepy for me.

Though I'm sure there were plenty of living people out there who would’ve pissed their pants if they heard that. An instinctive reaction to hearing Death coming close, and all that.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I should’ve warned you. I should’ve done something."

Dad hugged me. A tight squeeze. He shook his head.

"It's okay," he said. "I underestimated your friend, is all, but you did great honey. So great!"

He released the hug and I stood a little taller. For the first time in a long time he was looking at me with something other than anticipation of what trouble I was going to get into next. Which I suppose is a look that's pretty universal from fathers to teenage daughters all around the world and all throughout history.

Then he turned to Graham. His expression wasn't nearly as warm and inviting as it’d been with me.

"As for you young man," he said. "You got lucky."

I noticed a few of the reapers standing around us nudging each other. Clearly they thought it was hilarious that my dad had been taken by not only a necromancer, but a young necromancer who was still in high school. At least he’d been in high school. Something told me they didn’t have high school where he was going.

I frowned. It was nice these guys could find so much humor and amusement from the living hell that had been my life for the past couple of days.

"How did he manage to beat you anyway?" I asked. "You took out the last one, didn't you? I figured that guy would’ve been a lot tougher than Graham.”

Dad looked down. Blushed. He actually looked embarrassed. And from the way his buddies were getting even more rambunctious it was something he was going to have trouble living down. Pardon the pun.

“I’m pretty sure your buddy here got his start when he found some of the stuff that was left over in that mansion. Sloppy on my part. I didn’t realize there was a basement that held some of the old necromancer’s toys,” he said.

Graham stood up a little straighter. Like he was actually proud of what my dad was saying. He had the good sense to keep his mouth shut, but it wasn’t going to do him any good. Reapers weren’t like cops, and keeping quiet wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good. He was going where he was going no matter what.

“When I realized the "necromancer" I was going up against was a kid who'd been over to my house to play with my daughter it threw me for a loop," he said. “That was enough of a distraction for him to get in a cheap shot, and then the rest you know."

I turned to Graham. Narrowed my eyes.

"You attacked my friends, you attacked my dad, and I'm going to take care of you once and for all."

I whirled around. Looked at Death. I wondered if he was going to chide me for getting so pissed off at Graham, letting my personal feelings get in the way of doing the job, but he simply shook his head and chuckled.

"Be my guest," he said, gesturing towards the massive portal. "Everybody has a first, and you bringing in a necromancer for your first is a pretty big deal. Far be it for me to stop you from the fun part."

"I'm sorry Graham,” I said, surprised to find that I meant it. "I really am."

I could afford pity now that I knew I’d won. I really did feel sorry for the guy. He'd led an unhappy life that was mostly based on a few bad experiences he'd had in early middle school that shut him off from the world. Bad experiences that didn't allow him to see when people were reaching out to him. Trying to be friends.

It was a sad situation all around, but a situation could be sad and at the same time he still needed to be taken care of. He was the one who made the choice, after all, to turn to dark magic he'd found while exploring an old mansion basement. He’s the one who decided to use that magic to turn people into zombies so he could have some weird semblance of popularity where he was the puppet master pulling the strings.

He was the one who decided to take out an entire stadium full of innocents. He couldn’t be allowed to remain in the world and do that again.

Besides, he’d died fair and square. I might get to come back when I died, but the rules were different for me and my family. The people he’d soul sucked might’ve gotten a second lease on life, but that’s because they’d never been truly dead.

No, for all his magic Graham was a mortal and he’d been killed fair and square. Rules were rules, and that meant one thing now.

"Time to go Graham," I said.

"No!" he said, but he couldn't stop me.

I took him by the arm and floated over the stream of people moving towards that gate that was whatever it needed to be based on what a person got in their afterlife. Whatever Graham saw couldn’t have been pleasant because it didn’t take long before he was struggling.

Not that it did him any good. We were on the other side, and this was the reapers’ realm. My realm. This was the place between the mortal world and whatever was waiting for mortals on the other side, and there was nothing that could stop me here.

Graham screamed and held his hands out in front of him as I tossed him through the gate. Red lightning crackled and then it was over. He was gone. The whole thing was actually a lot faster and anticlimactic than I’d imagined.

I hung my head and sighed.

Sure we’d been fighting each other there at the end, but that didn't change the fact that I’d known Graham for most of my life. I couldn't help but feel a small pang of regret, even if I knew I’d done what needed to be done.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It looked up to see my dad. Then another hand landed on my other shoulder. I turned in the other direction and was surprised to see Death himself floating there looking at the portal.

"You did what you had to do," my dad said. "I know he was your friend, but…"

"He wasn't my friend," I said, my voice cold. "He was an asshole who tried to kill everyone in our town so he could be popular. That's not a friend. That's someone who needs to be taken care of."

"And you did a surprisingly good job of it Gwen," Death said, a hint of approval in his voice. "Do you have any idea how many of us would have trouble with a necromancer?"

"He was new," I said.

"New or otherwise," Death said. "What you did was impressive. Just look how easily your dad got bested."

I looked up to my dad in time to see him roll his eyes.

"I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"Probably not," Death said. "So I guess it's a good thing for you we're not technically living to begin with."

"Right," dad said. "I suppose we should get back to the other side. The guys were saying something about an entire stadium that got hit with some necromancy?”

"Well yeah," I said. "I think he had some grand illusion that he was going to make himself popular by turning everyone into zombies who could only do what he said."

"That's a new one on me," dad said.

"It would've only been a matter of time before he tried to take over the world," Death said. "They all start with necromancy for their own reasons. Some of those reasons even sound good, but it always ends in the same place with world domination this and overturning death that and it’s nothing but work for us. Better that you stopped him now before he had a chance to really cause trouble.”

"Totally agree there," I said.

"Well let's go," dad said. "It's time for you to learn about the less fun part of this job."

"You mean fighting a necromancer who almost beat me was supposed to be fun?" I asked.

"It is next to dealing with the local authorities," dad said. “Something you should already know plenty about considering how many times I’ve had to cover up your many deaths. This one is going to be a pain in the ass that makes all those times I covered for you look like child’s play in comparison.”

"We might send some extra help this time around," Death said.

"Great," dad said with a roll of his eyes. “Just what I need. The guys hanging around pointing out that I got my ass handed to me by a teenager.”

46

Cover-up

"He's seriously going to buy that?"

"He’d better," my dad said, watching a cop who hadn’t seemed all that inclined to believe him walk away shaking his head.

It was interesting to watch my dad work this angle of the job. He walked around flashing a badge whenever an authority figure even looked like they were about to question him.

I'd never even seen him use that before. Mostly I'd only ever seen him in the robes, and one time I'd caught a glimpse of him walking out the door with his scythe.

I'd never seen him walking around in a suit and tie flashing a badge at a bunch of local cops though. It was actually kind of fun watching dear old dad play secret agent man with the local constabulary.

“Heads up,” dad said. “That was a beat cop I just sent packing, but this is the sheriff. Have to be a little more circumspect with the higher ups.”

“Right,” I said, pretending I had some idea of what the heck he was talking about. I figured this was a good time to shut up, watch, and learn.

The sheriff didn't look like he was happy about seeing my dad. He shook his head as he approached my dad and watched the city cop stalking off looking pissed off.

"You know I hate it when I see you at one of these things," he said.

"I know you do Earl,” my dad said, clapping him on the back. "But those are the breaks when you're in this line of work."

Earl looked at the hand on his shoulder as though he wasn't really all that happy about it. I shivered and wondered what it would feel like to have people acting like that around me. Probably not good. I wondered if Stacy would start acting that way considering everything she knew about me now.

"By the way Earl,” dad said. "Have I ever introduced you to my daughter Gwen?"

Earl turned and put his hands on his considerable gut. He looked down at me with a mixture of friendliness and worry.

"I didn't know you had a daughter," he said.

"Sure do," my dad said. "I don't like to talk about my family when I'm on official business and all, but she's going to be helping me out with some of that official business so…"

Well okay then. Maybe the reason Earl was uncomfortable about my dad laying hands on him was because he totally knew what the family business was.

Though I guess that made sense. If anyone out there would know about the family business it would be local emergency services considering how often their job intersected with ours. And there I went thinking of it as “our” job. Not my dad’s job.

"Is that the truth," he said.

"Sure is," my dad said. "Would you believe she's the one who brought the necromancer in this time?"

Yeah, he definitely knew about our special job. That felt weird. I was so used to my dad telling me I needed to keep quiet about the family business that it was weird seeing him talking to someone about official business as though it was nothing.

"Nasty business the last time around," Earl said. "I'm surprised you'd let your daughter get involved after what happened to…"

He trailed off. Blushed. Clearly he was about to go into territory he realized might not be the greatest in present company. Territory that got uncomfortably close to my mom who was probably back home right now haunting the upper floors of the house where she’d spent most of her time when she was still among the living.

"It's okay Earl,” dad said. "We've had years to get used to it. To answer your question, I got caught by surprise today. Gwen here came in and cleaned up the mess."

Earl nodded and put a hand to the brim of his hat.

"Well I'm much obliged to you for taking care of this nasty business before it got too out of hand," he said.

His eyes cast around the stadium. It was a look that said he clearly could’ve done without all the craziness here tonight. That was something I could identify with.

"Good to have you around," he said with a tightness to his eyes that said he’d rather we weren't around at all.

Dad put a hand on my shoulder and walked us away from Earl the sheriff.

"You have to get used to him," dad said. "He knows what we do around here is necessary, authorities around the world know that, but it doesn't mean they’re entirely comfortable with knowing we exist. There are a lot of normal people who don't care for being told the supernatural exists.”

"Good to know," I said with an eye roll. "Everyone I work with in a professional capacity for the rest of my life is going to hate me."

"Not hate," dad said. "They're going to be wary of you, but they should be. You take the spirits of the dead and move them over to the other side. It's a big responsibility. It's the same way people act weird around cops or lawyers. You do something that's necessary and important that people might not like, but that doesn’t make it any less important or worth doing."

"I know," I said. "If anything this experience has taught me that, but it's still weird."

"I know," my dad said. "But you'll get used to it with time."

I paused and looked around the stadium. There were ambulances and fire trucks and cop cars all around. Lots of cop cars. So many that I’d stopped trying to count them. The lights flashing off of all of them were blinding.

"I can't believe they called out the cavalry like this," I said.

"Well a bunch of people having their souls sucked out of their bodies is the kind of thing that can cause some medical issues," he said. "You did what you had to do to save them, but there are going to be a few people in the hospital for a few days recovering."

I looked down. I felt bad about that. I’d sort of suspected what I was doing wasn’t good for them while I was doing it, but it’s not like I’d had much of a choice.

"None of that," dad said. "You did what you needed to do. Don't ever let anyone make you feel bad about doing what you need to do."

"This guy is right," a voice said from behind me. "I tried to tell you the same thing earlier when they were ripping your buddy apart!"

I turned to see Stacy approaching. She had a big beaming smile on her face that was completely at odds with all the emergency services gathered around us.

I smiled, but I also felt a little sick to my stomach. On the one hand it was a good to see Stacy. Like it was very good to see Stacy. But on the other hand…

I guess there was a part of me that still worried that now that all of this was over she wouldn't be interested in me anymore. All those times I’d wondered if she was only hanging around because I was the only person who could see her came roaring back with a vengeance.

Dad smiled. "Nice to meet you again. Alive and well, that is.”

"Same to you," Stacy said, sticking her hand out.

"You know it's odd," dad said. "I thought I knew most of Gwen's friends, but I don't think we've ever been introduced."

Stacy's grin only grew wider. She looked at me and winked with a twinkle in her eye. It was good to know that being ripped out of her body and then shoved back in hadn't taken away her sense of mischief.

"That's because Gwen and I only recently started dating," she said.

I blinked. Well then. That was one way to come out to your parent, I suppose. Dad blinked as well, but didn't seem to be overly surprised.

"Well then," he said. "That's certainly some news."

Stacy looked between the two of us and seemed to realize for the first time that she might’ve given away a little more than she'd intended with that bomb she’d just dropped.

"Oh crap. You didn't know?" she asked.

"I didn't," dad said. "But that doesn't mean it's an unpleasant surprise or anything. It’s a surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.”

Stacy rolled her eyes. “I owe you a surprise anyway. Discovering your girlfriend is actually the living embodiment of death itself is the ultimate surprise.”

Dad laughed and shook his head. He turned to me and smiled.

"You know this girl seems to be taking this a lot better than I've seen anyone take it when they discover the truth about us. It took your mom…"

He stopped. Took a deep breath. Let it out. The pain was still there, even all these years later, but it wasn’t as bad as it’d been back when that wound was new.

"Sorry," he said. "It took your mom at least a month to get used to the idea of what I did for a living. Pardon the pun. That this lady is so cool with it so soon should probably tell you something, Gwen.”

He winked and patted me on the shoulder. "I think I'm going to go take care of more business. We're going to have a hell of a time trying to get people to convince themselves that what happened tonight wasn’t actually what happened tonight, but we’ll pull it off. It’s amazing what people will tell themselves to deny the existence of the supernatural.”

"You could always tell them it was part of the homecoming parade," I said.

Dad put a hand to his chin. Scratched it thoughtfully even though he didn't have a beard there to scratch.

"You know that's not a bad idea," he said. "Not a bad idea at all."

He walked off, shaking his head the entire time. Maybe I’d just made his night a little easier. Maybe not. I was still getting used to the family business, after all.

"Did you really just tell your dad to try and play off a stadium full of people getting their souls ripped out of their bodies, shoved back into their bodies, and then killing a high school kid as part of the homecoming festivities?" Stacy asked.

I shrugged. "I figure if I'm going to be in the family business then I might as well get used to coming up with ridiculous excuses."

“Yeah, well that whopper you came up with is right up there with swamp gas from Venus causing an explosion or something," she said.

"But they’re going to buy it," I said. "Something tells me people won't want to think about what actually happened here tonight."

Stacy suppressed a shiver. She moved her hands up and down her arms like she was trying to get warm. She looked particularly inviting with the way she stood there in her cheerleading uniform that Graham had apparently had her put on before he had her body doing its little dance on his ridiculous Thriller float.

"I'm just glad this is all over," she said. "For now, at least."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"What do you think it's supposed to mean?" she asked. "You heard what your dad said. You’re in the business now, and what about what you told me before?"

I wracked my memory to try and figure out what she could be talking about. I’d told her a lot of things over the past couple of days.

"I don't know what you're talking about,” I said.

"All of this," she said, throwing her hands out. "The supernatural is real! Necromancers are real! There's a bunch of other stuff out there that's probably totally real!"

"Well yes," I said. "But that's usually the kind of thing that terrifies the normies. Not the kind of thing that gets people excited."

Stacy put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side as she eyed me.

"And what have I ever done that would make you think I was a normie who wanted to run at the first mention of something supernatural?" she asked.

"I guess you have a point there," I said.

I moved in closer. All this talk about the supernatural was all well and good, but there were some things that were far more pressing on my mind. Besides, I didn’t want her to think too much about supernatural things that could be lurking out there.

Going after a necromancer had been bad enough. I didn’t want to think about vampires or werewolves or other monsters that’d made appearances on the big screen right now.

I wanted to think about me and Stacy and what was going on between us.

"So were you serious?" I asked.

"About hunting down supernatural monsters with you?" she asked. "Totally! It's going to be so awesome. We’ll need to figure out a theme song and everything! Do you think adopting a brown great dane would be taking it a little too far?”

I rolled my eyes. "That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it."

She blinked. "I know it?"

"I was talking about us," I said. "Whether or not we're an item. You called me your girlfriend but I don’t recall making anything official. So are we dating, or what?"

I held my breath and suppressed a shiver born from nerves that were far more intense than anything I felt when I was fighting a necromancer.

It was funny. I’d fought off a nasty necromancer using death magic to try and take over the town and I got kudos from dad and Death himself, but all I really cared about was Gwen’s answer here on the field surrounded by flashing emergency lights.

47

Girlfriend

She cocked her head to the side and looked at me with a look that I figured would've been reserved for an alien that had come down from another planet or something.

"I'm insulted that you’d even ask that," she said.

“Come on," I said. "Think about it. You're a cheerleader, and I'm… Well I guess I'm just the weirdo nobody really knows all that well."

"I knew who you were," she said. "I knew who you were even if everyone else thought you were the weirdo, but I don't think anyone really thought that about you."

"Easy for you to say," I said. "You're the popular cheerleader, after all. Top of the pecking order. I was zombie girl who got run over by a bus because she was staring at the popular cheerleader’s ass.”

That earned me a smile, but it didn’t stay there for long.

"Come on Gwen," she said. "Where’s all this ‘80s teen movie pecking order bullshit coming from anyway?"

I giggled. I couldn't help myself. It was such a ridiculous mental image. Yet she was also sort of right.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I guess I kept thinking you might've only been interested in me, you know, because I was sort of the only person who could actually see you and…"

Stacy's eyes narrowed and I figured I'd said something wrong. She held a hand over her heart.

"Now I'm really insulted," she said. "I can't believe you’d say something like that!"

"I'm sorry," I said. "It's just that…"

She waved a hand. "I'm going to forget you ever said that, and I'm going to make this as clear to you as I can in the only way I know how, you big worrier.”

Stacy stepped forward. She had an almost predatory look in her eyes. Her hands went down to my waist and she pulled me in close. Her lips pressed against mine, and boy did that feel good! I mean sure I’d pressed my lips against hers when she was a ghost, but that was nothing compared to kissing her now that she was a flesh and blood person.

My toes curled and a nice little tingling ran up and down my body. Damn. When she gave me a kiss I could tell she knew how to give a kiss, to paraphrase a lyrical master who’d been escorted through the big gate far too soon.

Finally, frustratingly, that kiss came to an end. She looked at me and cocked her head to the side. She looked so beautiful. The perfect pretty high school cheerleader, and she was all mine.

Sure I was a girl which sort of went against that whole picture perfect high school couple narrative, but it was the twenty-first century. It was time to rewrite the rules about what made a perfect high school couple, and I was happy to start rewriting some of those rules with Stacy.

"So what do you think now?" she asked. "Still wondering if I want to be with you? Still think I'm only doing it because I'm using you for your sweet death abilities or something?"

I shivered. "If you are just using me then I suppose I could get used to it.”

Stacy grinned. "I thought you might say something like that!"

"So what now?" I asked.

"What now?" Stacy asked. "I think we go to the dance. What do you say?"

I blinked. "The dance? What are you talking about?"

“The homecoming dance?" she said, again looking at me like I was a space alien or something. "They have it after the homecoming game every year? Pretty sure they’re skipping to that now since it looks like they're not going to be playing any more football tonight."

"Why would they have a dance after everything that happened?" I asked, not quite believing it.

Stacy shrugged. Pointed over to a group of teachers who were trying to herd students away from the stadium and towards the school.

"I don't know," she said. "But we can go over there and find out. What do you say? Want to be my date to homecoming?"

I didn't know what the teachers’ game was holding a dance after everything that’d gone down tonight. I did know that it sounded really nice having Stacy asking me to be her date, though. So I figured why not? It would hardly be the craziest thing that’d happened to me lately, though it would certainly be up there.

"Sounds like fun," I said with a grin.

"I was hoping you’d say that," she said, offering me her hand.

I took that offered hand. Her touch was just as electric now as when she was a ghost. Maybe more electric now that we were both flesh and blood. There was none of that strange tingly feeling I got when I touched a ghost.

It would’ve been a perfect moment were it not interrupted by three mostly dead chuckleheads who came from an era that was a little less enlightened about girls dating girls.

"Oh come on," Luke said. "Can you two get a room or something?"

"Don't say that!" Arnold said, sounding indignant. "That was just getting good!"

"Can you two make out again?" Jake asked, looking hopeful.

I rolled my eyes and a disgusted noise emerged from the back of my throat. Men. Even when I wasn’t interested in dating them they still found ways to disgust me.

"You guys are terrible," I said.

"I'm more interested in those ‘80s movies Stacy was talking about," Luke said. "Tell us more about those!"

"What's going on here?" a deep voice said.

I wheeled around and was surprised to see my dad standing right there. He moved as quietly as a cat when he wanted to. Though there was so much noise going on around us with all the cops and ambulance dudes running around that it’s not like he had to try very hard to sneak around.

My eyes went wide. Crap. I didn’t want him to find out about these three. Only he looked up at them floating there accosting his daughter and her girl and shook his head. Smiled.

“Wade? What are you doing out here?” Luke asked.

"Wait a second," I said. "You guys know each other?"

My dad turned and looked at me like I was crazy. "Of course I know them. Why do you think they’re still hanging around this high school all these years later without getting their butts carted to the other side?”

“Wait, carted to the other side?” Jake asked.

My dad turned to them and for a moment he wasn’t his usual self. No, for just a moment darkness surrounded him and black robes appeared, but then he was back to normal.

“Holy shit. You’re the dude who’s always coming after Gwen?” Luke asked.

“Well yeah,” he said. “You guys never made the connection? It’s not like everyone can see you idiots.”

“Huh. Guess I never thought of that,” Jake said.

I looked between Arnold, Luke, Jake, and my dad. The way they all stood there grinning they could almost all be goofy teenagers, except for the fact that my dad was much older. Though he'd supposedly been quite the dork back in the day.

"Your dad is friends with these pervs?” Stacy asked.

"Pervs?" my dad asked with a frown.

"Wait," Luke said. "Wade the Great is Gwen's dad and that dark cloud dude?”

“Wade the Great?" I asked, arching an eyebrow.

My dad blushed and looked away. "It was a nickname the guys had for me back in my younger days."

"He was the greatest wizard ever in our old D&D campaign!" Arnold said.

"But what are you doing here now?” Luke asked. “You still haven’t told us what’s going on.”

"And how did a dork like you make such a hot daughter?" Jake continued, then seemed to realize that maybe he'd taken things a step too far and went quiet.

My dad glared at Jake for a long moment, darkness surrounding him. Tendrils rose and seemed to be going for Jake, but then dad shook his head and the darkness receded. It was weird seeing that from him. I’d never seen anything like it before, but I guess someone perving out on his daughter was enough to tick him off to the point that he started showing off some of his death magic, or whatever the heck that stuff was called.

"I should've known when I let the three of you go free that something like this would happen someday. I suppose it’s karmic payback or something that you’re doing this to my daughter, but remember I’m the only dad in this town who can actually threaten you guys, even if we are buds.”

They all swallowed and nodded. They looked like they were going to be on their best behavior. I rolled my eyes. Of course my dad would be overprotective.

He turned to me and grinned. "So you know these jerks?"

"They've kind of been a fixture of my high school life," I said. "But I never said anything because I was afraid you’d carry them off to the other side, or do something embarrassing like what you just did.”

“Well excuse me for wanting to protect my daughter,” he said.

I flicked my finger. A tendril of the death magic flew out and whipped Arnold across the butt. His hands moved to his backside and he jumped.

“I think I’ve got it under control, but thanks,” I said.

“Maybe you do,” he said. “And as for getting carted to the other side… I guess you could say these guys get a special dispensation. They were my friends, are my friends, after all. And I was there that night."

They all went silent. They all looked down. They all got like my dad did when someone mentioned my mom. Which is to say clearly someone had mentioned something they’d rather not think about.

“Huh, so that’s how you’re still around. You can't die,” Luke said. “Same as Gwen here.”

“What was I supposed to do?” dad asked. “I didn’t want to watch my friends get carted to the other side. No thank you.”

"So what about you getting all angry when you realized I was hiding Stacy to keep her from going over to the other side?" I asked, putting my hands on my hips and glaring at my dad.

Honestly it felt a little weird to glare at the old man. He smiled an embarrassed smile that I imagine a lot of parents got when they realized their kids had called them out for doing the exact thing they were trying to tell their kids not to do.

"You'll understand someday," he said, glancing between me and Stacy.

“Well I think I understand now. You did the same thing I did, but I got in trouble for it. Not to mention these guys legitimately died. Stacy had her soul stolen by a necromancer. Seems like a big difference if you ask me,” I said.

“Trust me. You’ll understand the magic of ‘do as I say, not as I do’ if you ever decide to have kids of your own someday,” he said.

“Kids of my own someday? That is totally not a conversation I’m having right now. I’m going to a dance with my girlfriend," I said. "The four of you knuckleheads can hang around and talk about Star Wars or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever, but I have a date with an actual girl which is something I don’t think any of you did all that much when you were still among the living.”

"Ouch," Luke said.

"Low blow Gwen," Jake said.

"No," Stacy said. "A low blow is something you guys are never going to get in your current state."

All three of them put their hands over their hearts and fell back as though they'd been shot. Then they rolled around laughing.

"I like this one Gwen," Jake said.

"She's a keeper!" Arnold said.

“Hot, too,” Luke said.

“Yeah,” Jake said.

“Hotter than Carrie Fisher in a gold bikini hot,” Arnold said.

I rolled my eyes and took Stacy's hand. Not for the first time I regretted ever tracking down those old VHS copies of Empire and Return. I marched over to where they were gathering students and funneling them into the high school.

As we got closer I could even make out what poor beleaguered Ms. Nelson was saying.

"That's it," Ms. Nelson said. "Right this way please. Just come into the high school and we’ll have a nice dance and forget about everything that happened here tonight."

"I still think it’s weird that they’re having a dance after everything that happened,” I said.

"Is that weird?" Stacy asked. “I guess it probably is, but I'm also guessing it's what everyone needs right now."

"Maybe you're right," I said, looking around at all the smiling faces of kids who seemed to have forgotten their souls were sucked out of their bodies not a half hour prior.

So we followed everyone into the school. To the homecoming dance waiting for us in the gym. Maybe it was a little weird, but it was no more weird than anything else that’d happened to me lately.

Besides, with my hand in Stacy's everything felt pretty right in the world!

48

Magic Dance

I suppose I should’ve been prepared for the stares. Sure I'd had people giving me odd looks before. The whole zombie girl was only the most recent example of people giving me weird looks from time to time.

I'd always gone to great pains to not be the dark and brooding death obsessed goth chick that one would expect from the daughter of a reaper and a future reaper herself, but it hadn't done a damn bit of good.

Or maybe that was just a touch of the paranoia all teenagers dealt with at some point. The feeling that we're being watched. That everyone has their eyes on us when, in reality, most everyone else is too concerned with their own drama to give a damn about what everyone else is going through.

There were definitely stares hitting us tonight, though, and I knew it had nothing to do with any weird "daughter of the grim reaper" vibe I might be giving off, or even my zombie girl reputation, and everything to do with the fact that not only was I dancing with another girl, but that girl was none other than Stacy. The beautiful cheerleader that everyone in the school either wanted to be or wanted to be with.

Well all those people staring could eat their hearts out. I grinned as I held my hands around her and she pressed herself close.

She definitely wasn't leaving any room for Jesus in our slow dance, as old Mrs. Roberts from middle school English would demand.

"You know, I never would’ve thought all of this craziness would lead to a moment like this," I said.

"Really?" Stacy asked.

"Well yeah," I said. "I mean if we hadn't had everything that happened with Graham, you getting your soul sucked out of your body and all that, then none of this might have happened."

Stacy cocked her head to the side. Raised an eyebrow. Her lips compressed to a thin frown.

“Are you really that oblivious?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"All of this was a set up," she said. "If I had my way then this was going to happen one way or another. It just so happens that I had to become a ghost for a few days in the middle, which was a little weird and not originally part of the plan, but at least everything worked out."

I shook my head, not comprehending. Sure I had a pretty good idea of what I thought she was trying to tell me, but I couldn't be sure that what I thought she was trying to tell me and what she was actually telling me were the same thing.

Maybe she was right when she said I was oblivious, because I was sure feeling out of it right now.

"You're saying this would've happened no matter what?" I said.

“Duh,” Stacy said. " Who do you think set up that whole trip out to the mansion in the first place with Zach? Who do you think was the one who got those guys to invite you along?"

She paused. Seemed to think about that. "Well I guess they were thinking about inviting you along anyway, but I was the one who insisted on it. Even when that creepy Graham guy wanted to come along. I wanted to get to know you a little better, if you know what I mean."

I looked across the room to where Zach was dancing with Tiffany of all people. I guess being turned into zombies together had brought them closer or something. He saw me looking and gave me a nod and a subtle thumbs up. Nicole and Greg were also dancing a little closer than old Mrs. Roberts would’ve appreciated, but they were so busy sucking face that they didn’t see me.

I didn’t see Dave, but I knew he was out there somewhere. He’d been one of the first to give me and Stacy a weird look, but it didn’t bother me all that much. I’d never acted like I was interested in him for all that he’d clearly been interested in me.

Odd that I could pick up on him being interested in me but I’d been oblivious to Stacy having the hots for me. I guess the idea that the cute cheerleader I’d been crushing on since I started developing crushes would be interested in me was too crazy for my mind to pick up on all the obvious signals she’d been sending my way.

My mind reeled from these revelations. "So you mean that whole trip out to the mansion was you trying to get close to me?"

"Well duh,” she said, moving a hand down and giving my butt a squeeze. Which was the kind of thing that even the high school teachers might get a little annoyed with if they saw it, but we were out in the middle of the dance floor so I figured it was a safe enough move. She must’ve made the same calculation, and it felt like a good one.

I could get used to her pulling moves like that!

“I’ve thought you were cute for a few years now," she said. "The only question was whether or not you were into girls. I mean I'd heard rumors, but there are all sorts of rumors like that and it doesn't necessarily mean they’re true."

I felt lightheaded. Damn. All this time I'd been looking at Stacy and imagining what it would be like to get with her, and it turns out the entire time I was doing that she was doing the same thing with me?

I know this is such a teenager thing to say, but that revelation felt even bigger to me than the big revelation that I was going to be going into the family business. It was more of a surprise than learning that Graham was a necromancer.

A world where reapers escorting people to the other side was a family business and a childhood acquaintance who I was slowly losing touch with was an evil necromancer trying to use his magic to become popular was a world I could understand. A world where Stacy had the hots for me all along, though? That was a little more difficult to believe.

I smiled. I knew a good thing when I had it, and I wasn't going to complain that she’d succeeded in her pursuit.

"Well in that case I'm glad everything worked out," I said.

"You and me both," she said. "Now how about you lean in for a kiss? I think that's the least you deserve for being the big hero and saving the day."

I honestly didn't feel like a big hero who’d saved the day. I was getting hit with a heck of a case of imposter syndrome right about now, but again, I knew a good thing when I saw it. When a girl like Stacy asks you to kiss her, you don't hesitate. You just lean in for that kiss!

So that's exactly what I did. This time when our lips brushed together it was way more intense than anything we'd done before. I shivered and my toes curled as she pressed her lips against mine. Then our mouths were opening and I was making out with the hottest girl in school on the dance floor.

When I came up for air I wasn't sure how much time had passed. I did know that the slow song we'd been in the middle of was over, and it’d been replaced by a fast song that people were bumping and grinding to. I guess the teachers were so busy taking care of some of the more egregious bumping and grinding that they didn't have time to deal with our make out session.

Sure there were a few guys around the edges of the dance floor who were grinning and elbowing each other as they looked at us, but I ignored them. Let them have their little thrill watching two girls making out somewhere other than their computer screen.

Perverts.

Stacy grinned. She didn’t seem to care about the guys staring either. She even winked at one and blew him a kiss which got him to blush and look away. I guess there was something to be said for being shameless.

"That was a hell of a kiss," she said.

"You're telling me!" I said.

"We should really do that more often," she said.

"You're telling me!" I said again, my mind short-circuited by that kiss.

Hey, can you blame a girl? It was a kiss I'd been dreaming about for a long time, and actually having it happen had caused a couple of synapses to stop firing correctly.

"Hey, are you going to be okay?" Stacy asked.

"I think so," I said. "You just short-circuited me there. That tends to happen when you have an experience you’ve always dreamed of but never thought would actually happen."

Stacy grinned. "Why Gwen. Are you saying you've been checking me out for awhile?"

"Well duh,” I said. "I figured that much would be obvious by now. I've had the hots for you forever!"

“Likewise,” she said, then smacked my shoulder when she saw the look I gave her. "I don't know why that comes as a such a surprise. You're a total hottie. Anyone would be lucky to have you!"

"Well you're the lucky one who gets me," I said. "How does that feel?"

"Pretty great," Stacy said. "Even if you are a grim reaper who might have to carry me to the other side someday or something."

I thought about my mom. About Luke, Arnold, and Jake. About Stacy. All people I knew who got a little wiggle room when it came to the whole “going to the other side” thing.

“Something tells me I have a little leeway about that sort of thing, but hopefully that's something we don't have to worry about for a very long time."

"Sounds good to me," Stacy said. "Better to focus on living. Leave that other stuff to the professionals."

Besides, it seemed a little early to be locking down forever. Not that I was going to say something like that and ruin the moment, but we were still in high school. Even if we were seniors.

She grinned and leaned in. Kissed me again. And for a little while I was distracted from everything that had happened. Being in Stacy's arms made me realize that yeah, life was worth living.

Even if I would occasionally have to take people to the other side as part of the family business.

49

Supernatural

Stacy flopped down next to me on the bleachers and let out a huge sigh. I reached out and took her hand, and she interlaced her fingers in my own. Something was wrong, but from the smile she gave me she wanted me to drag it out of her.

"What is it?" I asked.

She glanced at me and arched an eyebrow. "What would make you think something was wrong?"

“First off you mentioned something being wrong. Way to give it up. Second, you sat down and did the whole big sigh thing. I know these bleachers aren’t much fun to slam down on like you did. Especially when you're wearing those tight shorts.”

Not that I was complaining about her being in tight shorts, mind you. No, I actually quite enjoyed watching her exercise in the things. It was part of the reason why I was hanging out here while she was getting ready for cheerleading practice.

No need to distract myself to the point of having a bus slammed into me in order to watch the goods now.

"It's this new jerk in my biology class," she said. "He sat down next to me and was acting all weird. Like leaning in close and sniffing me and stuff."

"Seriously?" I asked. "Talk about a creeper!”

There was a time when I would’ve shrugged and figured a guy creeping on Stacy was the natural order of things, even if it was annoying and unfortunate. That was before we were dating. After all, Stacy was my girl now.

Sure there'd been some shock around the school when that became public knowledge. The homecoming dance had been a pretty obvious way for both of us to let the world know that not only were we both into girls in general, but we were very into each other in particular.

I felt a stab of jealousy thinking of someone moving in on her. Obviously this guy wasn't much of a threat, but that didn’t stop a touch of jealousy from flaring up.

Even if it was ridiculously irrational. This was my first serious relationship. There was a lot of stuff I was dealing with for the first time that a lot of my straight friends had gotten out of the way back in middle school when they started dating the opposite sex by default rather than realizing things were going to be a little more complicated in their love lives and keeping that on the down low for a few years.

"Why Gwen," Stacy said. “Are you jealous?"

"I'm not jealous," I said. I tried to play it cool and knew I wasn't doing a very good job of it. "Why would I be jealous of a dude? Why would you even be interested in a dude?"

"I don't know," she said. "After all, I did date a few guys before I settled down with you in my old age, right?"

She grinned and wiggled her eyebrows in a way that let me know she was joking, but that wasn't enough to save her from a slap on the shoulder.

"You're terrible," I said. "Besides. You told me yourself how much you totally didn't feel anything with those dudes. Don't try to make me think I should be worried because you had a few beards that didn’t get you all hot and bothered.”

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. The point is you shouldn't have to worry about some dude hitting on me, so why the jealousy?"

“I’m just getting used to this, is all,” I said. "So what did he do?"

"He sat there staring at me and clenching and unclenching his fists," she said. "It was the weirdest fucking thing. Like I wasn't sure if he wanted to fuck me or eat me. If that makes sense."

My eyes went wide and I laughed. "Stacy! That's so vulgar!"

"And you're surprised?" she asked.

"Well not really, but still."

"The point is the guy was weird. And pale. And I think he was wearing some sort of weird lotion or something."

"Really?" I asked. "Did he smell or something? I know a girl who wore this passionfruit stuff that smelled like pure ass. Like it was as though a skunk ate the passionfruit and then sprayed it out its backside and then they bottled that smell.”

Now it was Stacy's turn to erupt in laughter and smack me. What can I say? We became a couple of catty bitches when we got together, and that was one of the things that made our relationship work.

At least so far. I figured as long as we were turning the catty bitchiness on other people and not on each other…

"Now who's being terrible?" Stacy asked.

"What? It was the truth!"

"Right," she said. "Well this guy was using some sort of weird glitter lotion. I didn't even know guys used that stuff. Like if he wasn’t staring at me with so much intensity I’d think he was a friend of ours, if you catch my drift.”

A chill ran through me the likes of which I hadn't felt since I discovered that Graham was the scary necromancer chasing me.

"The product in his hair," I said. "Describe it to me."

"What do you mean?" she asked, though her face screwed up in a mixture of surprise and disgust that told me she knew exactly what I was talking about. "What does that have to…"

"It's very important," I said. "His hair care regimen. Tell me about it."

"I mean it was sort of feathered and sticking up. Like it defied gravity. He must've used a lot of hairspray to keep it like that. Like we're talking I wouldn’t want to walk too close to an open flame with hair like that."

I sighed. Clenched and unclenched my fist a couple of times.

"Damn it," I muttered.

"What?" she asked. "What the heck is wrong? Why do you look so worried?"

"Because I was afraid something like this was going to happen," I said. "And you're going to be insufferable for, like, forever now.”

"Look," she said. "If you're not going to take my assurance that I'm not interested in dudes then I don't know what else I can do to make you feel comfortable and realize that…"

I waved a hand and cut her off. For a wonder she actually got quiet. That didn't always happen when I waved a hand at her like that. Sometimes it just made her mad, but the making out that usually happened after we got over whatever argument prompted the handwaving in the first place usually made it worthwhile.

"I'm not worried about you and some guy," I said. "I know you're not interested in him, and even if you were interested in the dudes I know you wouldn't cheat on me."

"Well it's nice to hear you finally say that," she said. "Because for a minute there…”

"Would you please be quiet and listen to me," I said. "This is very serious."

"Come on Gwen," she said. "We faced down a necromancer together. What could possibly be more serious than that?"

"How about vampires?" I asked.

Honestly I wasn’t sure if vampires were more serious or not. I guess it came down to what really freaked a person out. Necromancers had always freaked me out more than anything, but that was probably more because of the environment I grew up in than any inherent terror they held.

I was pretty sure necromancers were something most normal people had never heard of outside of D&D players.

Given everything that happened with my mom its understandable that they’d be the great terror of my life. I could also understand why a normal person with normal parents who had normal jobs would be more afraid of a vampire.

Even though the jury seemed to be out these days on whether people wanted to run in terror from vampires or screw them. Which never made sense to me. You never saw deer making bestselling YA series about falling in love with a grizzly bear, for example.

I mean I know most people would counter that deer don’t have opposable thumbs so it’s not like they could even type out a YA novel in the first place, but that’s not the point. Only humans would be a prey creature that got all hot and bothered at the thought of getting it on with one of their natural predators.

Also? I could tell that Stacy was a fan of vampires, but in her case it was probably for her very own macabre reasons that’d had me worried ever since she discovered the existence of the supernatural and not because she wanted one to take a bite out of her, wink and a nudge say no more.

The way her face lit up at the first mention of the V word told me everything I needed to know. It told me that every fear I'd had ever since she discovered the existence of the supernatural had been perfectly justified.

"Don't you dare get that look on your face," I said.

"What look on my face?" she asked, trying and failing to look completely innocent.

Innocent wasn’t a look Stacy did very well. Especially not around me. I knew most of her cheap tricks by now.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about," I said. "I already told you. We're not going to be like the Scooby gang going off and hunting supernatural creatures!"

"Well of course we’re not going to be like the Scooby gang. They were hunting guys who owned old abandoned amusement parks wearing masks. We're going to be going after the real thing! I can't believe there's a vampire in our school, and he was hunting me!"

"You know most people don't get excited when they find out there's a vampire hunting them," I said.

"Well screw those people," Stacy said. "That sounds like the most awesome thing ever!"

"But it isn’t. There's a supernatural monster in our high school and…" My face screwed up in confusion. "How is it possible the guy is even able to be in our school in daylight?"

"I don't know," Stacy said, throwing her arms up. "You're the one who knows about the supernatural. Not me. Why are you looking at me like I'm supposed to know any of that stuff? Besides, finding the answers is part of what’s going to make this so much fun!”

"Well I mean…"

I gave up. Honestly I hadn't paid all that much attention when my dad talked about these things. It was a short-circuiting that’d happened when I was a little girl looking for some comfort after seeing a scary movie.

The whole conversation about how I didn't have to be afraid of monsters in movies had been really awkward in our house. He'd explained to terrified little girl me that I didn't have to be afraid of monsters in movies because, while they were very real, they couldn't hurt someone like me even if they wanted to. Or at of the very least they'd have to try very hard to hurt me, and they wouldn't dare go up against him.

So yeah. That had been cold comfort being a little kid who'd been told that yes, the supernatural was totally real and the only reason I didn't need to worry about it was because they wouldn't go after me in the first place. Not exactly the kind of logic that’s comforting to a little girl who just wants to hear that the scary monsters on the TV screen aren't going to jump out of that screen and try to kill her.

I’d sort of tuned out on the rare occasions he’d talked about that stuff afterwards. Call it a defense mechanism, though I was really starting to wish I’d paid more attention now.

"You know what this means, right?" Stacy asked.

"Oh no," I said. "There isn't a chance we're doing this."

"Except we totally are!" she said, sounding entirely too happy and cheerful for someone who’d just discovered that monsters were real and one of them was hunting her.

I mean she’d sort of discovered that monsters were real a long time ago, and this was the second time she’d run up against a supernatural horror, but that’s not the point. This wasn’t happening. I didn’t care how cute she looked when she started pouting!

"I've told you this before and I meant it. We are not hunting monsters!"

"Looks to me like you don't have a choice," Stacy said. "Because tall, pale, and sparkly has the hots for your girlfriend, and unless you want to find me dead on the side of the road with a couple of puncture marks in my neck you're going to have to do something about it now!"

I sighed. She was right, damn it, and from the grin that split her face she knew it. I could say we weren’t hunting the supernatural all I wanted, but if there was a vampire after my girlfriend that sparkly fanged asshole was going to find me standing in the way.

I guess we were going to go vampire hunting. She had me there.

Son of a bitch.

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