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Or maybe just three more.
The next picture, nothing.
This will be the last one.
But in this picture—
Not nothing. Something up ahead, disappearing around a tree. I zoomed in on it.
The heel of a bare foot, mid-stride.
I hurried to that tree and took another volley of photographs, then started sca
Ashleen. And she wasn’t lying on the ground, comatose. She was standing up, walking around.
I looked up. “Ashleen!” I called. “Ashleen! It’s Alexis!”
There was no answer. I sped up to a trot, as fast as I dared go on unfamiliar terrain.
“Hello? Ashleen? Are you out here?”
I went about fifty feet before stopping to take more pictures. If I could find the bright white light that I’d seen when I found Kendra, I’d know Lydia was nearby and I could force her to lead me to Ashleen. I took one last exposure and looked down at the screen.
“Oh,” I said, taking an unsteady step backward.
Ashleen was standing in front of me.
But only in the picture.
It was like I was suddenly two people: myself, stu
Ashleen, a girl I knew well enough to call a friend—a girl whose party I’d been to a few days earlier—was dead.
I’d never seen the ghost of a person I knew before—I mean, besides Lydia. But Lydia was no friend to me.
I wandered away and sat on a fallen log, squeezing my eyes shut to hold back the tears. I couldn’t let my emotions take over. I couldn’t let myself think about Ashleen’s mother or brothers—or my mother—or anyone at school or how they would react. Not out here in the middle of the woods. Not when I was a sitting duck for Lydia to attack.
“Stop it,” I said out loud. “Stop it. Get a hold of yourself.”
For a moment I sat among the soft sounds of the February night. There were no birds singing, no insects creaking—only the rustling of the pine trees around me.
I sighed and looked at the picture again.
Ashleen stood a few feet away from me, staring right at the camera. She was barefoot, wearing a light purple dress made of gauzy layers of fabric. The top was detailed, ruffly, and feminine. But the bottom of the dress just kind of…disappeared. I mean, looking at it, you couldn’t really say, “That’s the bottom of the dress.” It just dissolved into the air.
I stared at it, with a sense déjà vu, until it hit me: it was the dress from the dream I’d had the night of Ashleen’s party.
I looked around, suddenly in a panic, thinking that not only had Lydia just crossed over from bad ghost to evil ghost, but that there was a distinct possibility she could invade my subconscious mind, too. But even if she could plant dreams in my head, why would she use a purple dress? As far as I could remember, I’d never seen Lydia wearing a dress like that one. What could it mean?
I looked back down at the picture and studied Ashleen’s confused expression. Sometimes ghosts don’t understand what’s happened to them—they don’t even know they’re dead. So they just wander, thinking they’re in a dream.
But it wasn’t the look on her face—or even the dress—that bothered me the most.
No, the really bizarre thing was that, in her left hand, Ashleen held a bouquet of yellow roses.
In all my pictures of ghosts, I’d never seen one actually carrying something that wasn’t part of what they wore when they died. For example, one day I’d taken a picture of a woman downtown—she wore a long black Edwardian-era dress and walked hunched over, with her hands out in front of her. The whole effect was startling and horrible, almost demonic, like she was prowling around, ready to strike out at someone.
Then, after watching her pass countless living people without even noticing them, I realized what she was doing: pushing a baby carriage. Only, the baby carriage didn’t exist in her ghostly plane. Have you ever heard the saying, You can’t take it with you? Well, it’s true. Unless you’re wearing it, you can’t.
So why—and how—was Ashleen’s ghost holding roses?
There was something else in the last picture. I glanced at the photograph and noticed, over her shoulder, a bright white spot of light, barely shining through the trees.
My heart raced. I raised my camera, removed the lens cap, and flashed off a few more exposures.
Ashleen had begun to wander away, but the light was still there. It was getting closer, in fact.
“I’m sorry, Ashleen,” I said into the night air. But I wasn’t focused on her any longer. I had to get rid of Lydia before she could do this to anyone else.
“Lydia!” I called, in the direction of the light. “Stop being a coward and show yourself!”
I reached for the charm book and opened it to one of the pages I’d bookmarked. My hands shook as I looked over the spell. Should I immobilize her first and then send her away? Or just send her away? The immobilization spell was much shorter. I had a better chance of actually finishing it.
I began to read it aloud.
“Excuse me.” Lydia’s voice interrupted me. “What are you doing?”
I raised my voice and kept reading.
Lydia slapped the book from my hands.
As I knelt to pick it up, she got right in my face. “I asked you a question. Why are you out here in the middle of the night?”
“I know what you did,” I said. The bookmarks had fallen out of the book, so I flipped through the pages. I found the “move to a transitional state” first and held the book in an iron grip.
Lydia looked over my shoulder. “What does that mean? A transitional state? Permanently? Do you know what that sounds like?”
“It sounds awesome,” I said, starting to read.
“No,” Lydia said, having the gall to act appalled. “It sounds like limbo. Like a gray void. You would put me in a gray void forever?” She tried to knock the book out of my hands again, but her fingers passed right through it.
She was weak right now. I stopped reading and looked at her, unable to pass up the opportunity to tell her off.
“You made the choice,” I said. “You’re the one who killed Ashleen.”
Her eyes went wide. “Who’s Ashleen?”
“Give me a break.”
“No, seriously. Who’s Ashleen?” She looked around. “Is there a killer out here?”
Oh. My. God. “You’re already dead, Lydia,” I said. “And if you didn’t kill her, who did? And why does she have your yellow roses?”
“What yellow roses?” she asked. She was begi
Biggest, fattest “whatever” in the history of humanity.
I glanced down at the page and opened my mouth to read the spell, determined not to let her distract me again.
And then—
The laugh.
It swirled in circles just like it had in the empty field—a tornado of malevolent energy, with me at its center. I felt it pulse against my skin like the wings of a thousand evil butterflies.
And in one motion, the book was ripped from my hands.
It exploded into dust in midair.
I shrieked, unable to stop myself, and covered my ears with my palms. Then, in a panic, I turned to run, my camera bouncing against my side. I felt a crunch and the rough jolt of a tree trunk against my hip, and changed directions.
Still, the laughter followed me, wrapping around me as tightly as a spider binding its prey.
If only I could find my way out of the woods—back to my car—
But my mind flailed like a bird with a broken wing. There was no way I would be able to focus enough to find the trees I’d marked. I’d be driven deeper and deeper into the woods—and if I didn’t freeze to death or fall off a cliff, I’d be driven mad by the laughter.