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𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐄 : 𝐀 𝐒𝐔𝐃𝐃𝐄𝐍 𝐕𝐈𝐒𝐈𝐓

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The ghosts were everywhere.

They crept through walls and passed through tables, unbothered. Some wore old hospital gowns, their feet bare save for a few with dirty socks on. There were even a few towards the back, lurking, wearing bloodied clothes that I could only assume was what they died in.

They died here like you will, one day.

They weren't the only ones in the room because on three metal tables were three bodies, all covered with thin white sheets. I knew instantly that the middle table was what held my mother, because there were two ghosts hovering around their respective tables.

Mama, where are you? Don't you wish to see me? Mama, please?

None of them looked dangerous, rather, they all looked kind of calm and lost.

The gray consumed all of us, their faces hollow and pale, looking eerily like skeletons. I took comfort in knowing they wouldn't hurt me. They needed me.

I caught the eyes of the watchful spirits as they all suddenly realized I was not like them, I wasn't just another dead thing, and that I could see them for what they truly were. I searched their faces, part of me hoping I could find my mother amongst the growing crowd.

But she wasn't there, because these were all faces I didn't recognize.

"You can see us," a voice from the middle of the pack stated. The man came forward, standing in front of the small group that was forming, beginning to resemble a chanting crowd outside a locked store. The ghosts were coming together, standing in a huddle before me. They came from the walls and from the floors like creatures being woken from a deep slumber.

"Why can't we go back into our bodies?" another man asked, pointing to the closest body on one of the tables. "Because it always works in the movies."

"Please, you have to help us," a woman whispered and I could see the tears in her eyes. "I have a husband, a son–"

"My baby!" another wailed. "Where's my baby?!"

A woman raced forward, clutching at my shirt as I yelped, stumbling backwards as she screamed. "Help me, please, you've got to help me! Get me out of here, get me out!"

"How come you can see us and no one else can?" the one who had spoken first asked once the woman had released her hold. He was older than the rest, like he knew what this world we were in was actually like. He gave me a curious look, changing his stance as he looked me up and down. "You're her, aren't you?"

"The necromancer, the necromancer," they echoed, whispering to themselves. The news of me being here spread through the small crowd, some ghosts gripping each other as they stared.

"We've heard of one coming, we didn't believe it," the older man said. "You're the one."

I frowned, feeling the bubbling beginnings of panic rise to my throat. "Surely there have been others before me–"

"Not like you, you're the one we've been waiting for."

"Save us," they whispered. "Send us home, please, send us all home!"

They moved forward as a hungry animal, reaching out towards me with fraying hands and claw–like fingers. They will get you, my heart sang. They will get you and never let go.

I didn't get another word in before the gray faded out entirely and the ghosts were gone. The morgue was empty save for me and Hex, and I let out a sigh of relief. They had vanished the moment the world moved into color and it felt like I could breathe properly again. It seemed like no time had passed at all, because Hex was speaking to me like there hadn't been five minutes of missing time between coming in here and up until now.

"We conducted a pretty standard autopsy at the police's request," he explained to me as we neared the middle table. He took hold of the chart hanging off the metal slab, holding it out for me to see. Although I didn't really understand what I was looking at, I could understand the check mark in the little box indicating cause of death. "It was suicide, I'm sorry."

"Was there anything suspicious I should know about?" I asked before clarifying with, "Like, will I need to talk to the police again?"

He shook his head. "I already notified them that it was a run of the mill suicide–" He cleared his throat. "–I'm sorry about that."

"Better this than murder, I guess," I whispered.

He handed me a small plastic bag and it was heavy in my hands. "I'll give you a few minutes to yourself, when you're done just come back to the office," he told me before leaving my side. I heard the doors open and close from behind me as I stared at the sheet. My hands itched to remove it, to see her face one last time.

Will you smile one last time for me? Will you tell me you love me? That you didn't mean to leave me?

And when I did finally see her, I couldn't help the growing emotion as I collapsed onto the small stool by the table. Ugly, angry, horrible tears pooled and ran from my eyes like hot water from a shower. My body was sweating, a dampness covering my face and neck like I had stood in front of a humidifier for too long. 

Her face was still and pale, her lips a dull blue from the asphyxiation. Her eyes were closed and I almost wished they were open so I could see myself in her one last time. I looked away, feeling the bag Hex had given me. All of the belongings she had been wearing were inside, her old wedding ring, her little diamond earrings, and her cross necklace. The hospital had thrown out the scrubs she had been found in.

I wanted to hold her hand, cry into her arms but the note still burned in my pocket. How dark and evil it all seemed, to be warning your only daughter of something coming to get her, to bring her to a similar fate as herself.

You're next.

So ominous and dark and something my mother would never have left me, not even as a suicide note. She was never the one to be so mysterious, to leave me with a cliffhanger so brutal that if cut and sliced at my wordless throat. I didn't know whether or not the 'you're next' meant there was someone coming after me, I was going to die next, or both.

I didn't get further into my thoughts before I heard the whispers.

One voice, from somewhere off behind me. It was distant before it got loud, hushed before it was right over my shoulder.

"Blaire," it whispered and I got a sudden rush of chills down my back. It was here in the room with me, but my eyesight hadn't changed, not yet. It spoke again, as if trying to get my attention, "Blaire."

I knew it was there, but the gray didn't coat my eyes until I spun around in the seat. My world went gray and I saw the dead again. They swayed from corner to corner of the room, sometimes passing through the walls. They seemed unamused, annoyed, suddenly ignoring me as their eyes darted to something past me, someone I hadn't seen yet.

Were they afraid of him too?

"Blaire? Are you deaf?"

The man was tall, dark hair graying with the right amount of stubble across his cheeks. He wore a long tan trench coat, like something you'd see in a television show. There was blood dripping from the side of his head, flowing down his cheek and neck, the red getting lost in his clothes but I could see the steady drops hitting the tile floor at his feet. 

His eyes were dark and he studied me. His features mimicked mine, his stance was similar and I had a hard time catching my breath as he stared, waiting for me to finally speak. And when I did, I was out of breath.

"Dad?"

He didn't seem too surprised to see me like I was of him, the shock still residing deep into my finger tips. But he nodded, motioning for me to follow him as he glanced at the ghosts behind me. "Let's go somewhere more private to speak."

Why are you here and not her? Why you?

We walked outside into the hallway, my father standing a couple feet away, hands in his pockets, back facing me. He stayed silent, keeping his eyes on something far in front of him. When he did speak, it vibrated into my bones, "I'm sorry to hear about your mother."

I didn't say anything, keeping my eyes fixated on his back. His voice was the same, everything about him was the same, except for the blood. It pooled and followed him and I was suddenly worried that if I got some on me, it'd follow me into the human world and outside the gray.

It will drown you like it does everything else.

"I'm surprised I haven't seen her here yet."

I cleared my throat, finally gearing up to speak and I expected my voice to be strong, to be confident but what came out was soft and meek, the complete opposite. "What is here, exactly?" Tell me, please, I wanted to beg. Tell me why you made me like this.

"Limbo, the astral, or what you have been calling it–the gray."

"How do you know I call it that?"

He seemed amused with me, turning to finally face me with a small smile creeping at his lips that he wouldn't dare show fully. "It's what I called it before I learned, I just assumed."

I crossed my arms over my chest, feeling suddenly very nervous to be talking to him, to finally have a conversation with him. I hadn't said goodbye to him, the night he died. Hell, I don't think I'd properly spoken to him for days before the accident. "How did you die?" I blurted out, barely catching my tongue in time.

He stopped moving and I noticed he stood with his feet on the ground, not hovering like some did. His eyes met mine and he breathed, "What?"

"How did you die?" I repeated myself. "I've heard two very different stories and I just–" I shook my head, sighing. "–it feels like everything I've ever known was a lie, there are so many things I don't know about–"

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner."

I closed my mouth that I didn't know was hanging open after being cut off. His apologies meant nothing to me, not after everything. Not after all the lies.

"Your mother and I...we thought you couldn't see them, but we were wrong."

"Did you die because of what you can see?" I asked. "Did you die because you could see them, too?"

He nodded and didn't speak. The blood was suddenly blooming across his chest, the red opening up like a slow drip faucet that wasn't turned off all the way.

"Just tell me," I whispered, taking a step closer to him. "How did you die, dad? Was it the car accident or was it something else?"

When he finally said it, a chill over took the hallway, icy and cold like the clawed grip of water. 

"I was killed."

Of course you were. "What?"

"I was murdered, Blaire, I'm sorry–"

I held up a hand, shaking my head in disbelief. The car accident, we had seen the car at the impound lot. The police got us and took us to your body at the hospital. We got the reports back, we saw what happened to you, you liar. You pathetic, untrustworthy, monster– "But we found you–we saw you in that car–"

"My body was moved there."

"What?"

Breathe in and out. One, two, three...

"I was killed somewhere else and they took my body there so people wouldn't get suspicious over what really happened," he explained, shifting his weight from either foot. "We didn't want people asking questions."

"But how did the police not get it? How did a medical examiner sign off on something like that?" I was out of breath again, my head pounding ever so slightly against my temple. But I had to stay standing, I had to stay focused, I couldn't be passing out.

"He had people on the inside, working for him–"

"Who's he? Who are you talking about?" I stopped talking, eye narrowing as I hissed out, "Are you talking about the guy who killed you? Dad–"

"His name is Archer Crow, the man who murdered me."

He works at the church, dad, he worked with you. A man you worked with killed you, how are you okay with this? How are you not bleeding rage?

"What–?"

"Don't go looking for him, Blaire. He's a dangerous man, don't go out looking for revenge. It's all in the past–"

"Like hell it is," I snapped, pointing a finger at him as I said, "I just found out you were murdered and the guy is still out there? Walking free?"

"He has dangerous people working for him–"

"But you were working with him, too! You and–and Crow were working together, for years–"

"Things change."

"Why would he kill you?" I shook my head, rubbing my forehead. "What did you do to make him kill you?" He stared at me, a slight twinge in his eyes and I knew I had hit a nerve. I continued with, "He works at the Clandestine Church, he works with that guy who is taking care of mom's funeral and all of our money, why the hell is the guy who is working with your killer doing that?"

"Things are complicated–"

You are not my father. You are not the man who tried to raise me when he realized he had failed.

"Will you stop with that bullshit, just tell it to me straight and don't make everything seem like such a goddamn mystery!" My heart was racing, this was too much for me. This was all too much. I took two deep breaths, one hand pressed against my stomach as I tried to control myself before speaking. "I'm going to get him, I'm going to expose him and his criminal ring–"

"You don't know what you'll be getting yourself into, those men shouldn't be messed with. You've seen what they did to me, they can do it to you too–"

"They probably did it to mom," I said, interrupting him. If they could stage Cage Lake's death, I wouldn't doubt that they could do Louise Lake's either. Two Lakes down, I thought to myself. One to go.

They killed you, didn't they? They took you from me. I knew you would never leave me like this, you were too good, you loved me too much.

"Don't go looking for trouble, I only came to explain things to you, ease you into all of this," he said and I let my eyes settle on the blood that was spreading. It was deep and shiny and looked as if it had completely soaked through his shirt and coat.

"Ease me into it?" I laughed, shaking my head. "This was all thrown in my face and–and you had fucking mom lying for you, all this time and god, why the hell are you bleeding everywhere?"

Cage looked down at his feet, the blood was pooling against his shoes. "I'm a geata. Only for spirits."

"Uh–a what?"

"Gateway. It's Irish, honestly Blaire, I thought you were more bilingual than this."

I knew Cage's family had some Irish blood in them, something I only learned about after he died. It wasn't as if he'd sat me down and taught me about his heritage, his parents life before me and mom.

Frowning, I opened my mouth to say something but the blood beginning to pool under his feet told me otherwise. I closed my mouth, keeping my frown. I had learned only a little Irish when I was younger, something my mom told me could be 'fun' but we dropped it after a few tiring months. Who knew it'd come back and bite me in the ass.

"I don't have much time," he explained to me in a quick voice, drawing me close to him. "But, you are in danger, Blaire. I can't tell you from what and I'm sure you already know, but you have to know that dangerous people are looking for you. Find out what really happened between me and Archer Crow and it might shed some insight into what is really going on. People are going to die, Blaire. People that you care about, but you will have to carry on. Do not dwell on the dead. You won't have too long, but just please, be careful–"

And all at once, my father disappeared.

Fuck you, you coward. All you ever do was leave.

I stood in the hallway, mouth open in strangled shock because what the hell just happened? My world shifted and I was standing in color, but the blood pooling on the ground a couple feet away from me did not disappear with the gray. It stood out against the white tile vibrantly, making the pounding in my head feel just a little worse. The blood bubbled and began to spread out slowly against the floor, as if it were crawling.

As if it were alive.

I took a quick step back as something shot out of the blood like it was straight from a horror movie. I didn't stick around to see what it was before I had spun around, making a run for it, a dying scream on my tongue. I had made it to the end of the hallway, head turning and making eye contact with Pandora who was sitting outside Hex's office with Ace.

I opened my mouth to say, go, go, go, but I was cut short.

Something warm and sticky had wrapped around one of my ankles and I was yanked to the ground with a loud thud. I laid there breathless, my plastic bag of my mother's belongings had fallen somewhere in front of me as the thing around my ankles tightened its grip and slowly started to pull. It hauled me down the hall at a slow pace as I tried to grab at the floor, hoping my hands would stick and I could pull myself to safety, but nothing seemed to work. As I tried to get to my knees as the thing tugged on me, it suddenly jerked me back to the ground. My chin smacked into the tile with an awful crack that left me stunned. I was wrenched down the hallway so quickly I couldn't get my mouth open to scream.

I watched ahead of me as Pandora rounded the corner, looking at me with wide eyes. Behind her, Ace appeared, both of them running towards me. I made the quick decision to look behind me and I let out a wild crazy scream, seeing a hand covered in blood wrapped around my ankle. At the front of the pool of blood, there was a face so distorted it didn't quite look human jutting out of the blood.

Hungry, hungry, hungry, it seemed to scream at me.

I couldn't get out another scream before I felt my lower half be tugged into something thick and gooey and I'd like to pretend it wasn't blood. I liked to pretend that it was only mud, thick, warm, red mud. I kicked my feet, hoping to get whatever had gotten me to loosen it's hold as I clawed at the tile as more of my body slipped into the surprisingly deep pool. I wondered what the security cameras saw, if they saw anything at all.

Young girl dragged down hallway by monstrous blood creature. Run for your lives.

The blood looked real and even felt just as real once I was fully submerged. I didn't quite understand the whole geata thing, but one thing I sure did know was that the job came with a lot of blood. I didn't like how deep the pool actually was, after all, it had just been a normal hallway moments before. But when I broke the surface, kicking and choking, I didn't want to stick around to see.

My mouth was full of the thick metallic liquid and as I coughed I felt it shoot out my nose from being dragged under so quickly. I felt two pairs of cold hands grab my own above the pool, pulling me halfway up. I kicked my way out the rest of the way, breathing heavily as I sank to the ground. I looked back at the pool, seeing it bubble and slowly melt away as if it were never there.

Pandora got me to my feet, seeming unbothered by the amount of blood that had run off onto her as she hissed, "What the hell was that?"

I opened my mouth to speak, to rush something out but Ace stopped me, snapping, "We don't have time for this–" He held up the small bag of my mother's belongings. "–we have to leave, now."

He grabbed me by the elbow and suddenly, the three of us were racing down the hallway and away from the scene of the crime. I noticed behind me that the bloody footprints I assumed I was leaving weren't there at all, that the blood that dripped off of my like sweat and rain vanished before hitting the ground, as if a spirit was wiping it away through the air. It seemed that if the blood touched something human, something very alive, it wouldn't leave. When we sprinted into the lobby, I caught a glimpse of the security camera footage on the computers.

There was nothing on them, the screens blurry and gray and distorted. I said a silent thank you to whichever ghost had decided to be on my side tonight. We escaped silently through the front doors, hightailing it towards my truck that sat alone in one of the side lots. I fumbled with my car keys before Pandora tore them from my hands and unlocked the car, jumping into the driver's seat as I rounded the side for the passenger's door, Ace coming up behind so he could jump into the back.

I was thankful Pandora was thinking more than I was, as she grabbed an old towel I kept in the back and threw it over my seat to keep the blood from seeping into the old cushions. I was even more thankful when she started the car and we were driving away like we were fugitives.

Pandora was the first to speak, voice wavering as she took a cautious glance at me and we made eye contact before we both looked away. She swallowed loudly and said, "Don't get me wrong, I think I'm pretty traumatized from that, but what the hell just happened? I mean, like, a blood monster came out of the floor! How is that even possible?"

"How were we able to see that?" Ace asked after she was finished, his head popping up between us, his arms on the seats. "Because we signed up for hospital visits, not–"

"Blood monsters?" Pandora finished for him.

He nodded and said with a grunt, "Yeah, the blood monsters."

My face was stiff when I began to talk, the blood drying against my skin. It cracked and flaked when I moved my mouth, my body caked with the thickening goo. "It was a geata. Some gateway for ghosts, but I don't know what the hell that blood monster was."

"A geata?" Pandora asked as Ace gasped out, "Ghosts?"

"Guess we forgot to tell him," Pandora murmured.

"What do you mean ghosts?" he asked, now demanding answers from the two of us. "And why are you so calm about this? She just said it was about ghosts!"

Silly boy, not so brave now that the undead are involved.

"I just decided to swallow the crazy and believe her, that's why," she said back, but I could hear the faint hints of fear towards the ends of her words. She was scared and it was because of me.

"My dad could see them," I told him, keeping my eyes forward and on the road. It was dark out, the sun long gone. "My mom called him a necromancer, said I was one too."

"And you believed her?"

I nodded. "How could I not? I had just seen one, saw one the next day, too. It was hard to ignore." I shook my head this time, letting out a small laugh of disbelief as I said, "I mean, like, my eyesight goes gray and suddenly they're just...there! Time freezes and they speak to me, as if it's the most normal thing in the world."

Pandora slowed at a red light, finally looking at me. "Did you see them at the hospital?"

"A group of them, just wandering the morgue..."

"What else did you see?"

I frowned. I saw a liar. I saw a coward. "I saw my dad."

Ace perked up, hands gripping the seat heads tightly. "You saw Cage? What did he say?"

"Well, not a lot of good things, actually."

"Like what?"

The light changed, green casting shadow into our car. The blood on my arms and clothes looking brown, the deep red looking muddy. If only it was just mud, something that didn't belong running through someone's veins.

"Told me the truth," I said. "Your truth."

"He admitted it to you, didn't he? He finally told you–"

"Told you what?" Pandora asked, turning on the left turn signal, the ticking drowning out how loudly my heart beat was in my ears.

"That he didn't actually die in the car accident, that everything Ace told me was true," I sighed, picking at the blood caked under my nails. When I looked up, my neck and hair were so stiff that I felt the blood crack and flake. "Told me he was murdered by a guy named Archer Crow."

"He works at the church, though, why would he kill your dad? Didn't they work together?" Pandora murmured curiously.

"He said that 'things change,'" I mocked, rolling my eyes to hide the fact that I was feeling panicky. To hide the fact that my whole life was built around lies. "He even said that I was in danger, that dangerous people are after me."

"It's the Morticianers, Blaire."

The seriousness in Ace's voice made my blood run cold as we pulled into my driveway. Pandora killed the lights and the three of us sat there for a moment, letting the information sink in.

"Those men who work in the church, are they all a part of that group, too?" Pandora asked, shifting in her seat so she could face us. Her features were dark without the headlights on.

Ace nodded. "Macabre, the man at the hospital, he's one too. He was one of the men I heard talking about killing your dad–"

"Do you know who the other was?" I asked, interrupting.

He shook his head. "I didn't see them fully, but I recognized Macabre's voice tonight."

"How do we stop them?" Pandora questioned, giving us a wide eyed look. "Because it's not like we can just sit back and let them go on normally, they kill people. Shouldn't we go to a cop or something?"

I shook my head. They covered up Cage's murder, there was no way we could trust them now. 

"They could help–"

"I don't trust them, at least not their head detective," I informed them as Pandora murmured under her breath, "Shit, I forgot," as I continued to explain to Ace, "When he questioned me about my mom, his eyes...they just changed color. Like a switch flipped and his eyes were black, the whole eye completely black."

"He's definitely an inside man," Ace groaned, slamming a hand against the seat behind my head. "Hell, they probably have spies all over this goddamn town."

Pandora held up at hand. "But how do we stop them?"

"We?" I stared at her, I didn't expect her to get on board, much less help me.

She rolled her eyes. "Duh."

"It's going to be dangerous, we don't even know what we're going up against–"

"And you think I'm going to let you do it alone?" she laughed, easing the tension. "Conspiracy theories, ghosts, and a secret group of killers in a church? No way I'm standing on the sidelines for this."

No way I'm going to step back and let you die alone, that's more like it.

"We could die," Ace spoke up and the tension was back, thick and agonizingly uncomfortable. "They're trained killers probably already coming after you."

"The note," Pandora gasped, sitting up taller in the seat. "The suicide note you found, Blaire, oh god, it was them–the Morticianers–they had to of done it!"

"Note?" It seemed like we really had forgotten to inform him with everything.

I sat up, digging around inside my pockets. I had nearly forgotten I had put it in there before leaving home for the hospital. When I handed it to him, the white paper was now a weeping red.

"You're next," he mumbled before handing it back. "If they could kill and then stage Cage, I wouldn't be surprised if this was them, too."

"But how are we going to stop them?" Pandora asked again. "Because we're high schoolers, I don't know how well we'll be going up against a group of trained killers."

"We need more information, hold on–" Ace got out his phone, typing quickly before smiling and exclaiming, "Here it is! Almost forgot all about this." He showed us the screen as he smiled fondly and said, "Madam Wrath's Spiritual Guidance dot com."

"And how is this going to help us?"

"She knows everything, I mean, come on! Her bio even says 'knows all, sees all.'"

I frowned as he pulled his phone away. "And why do you know about her?"

"Believe it or not, but the Clandestine Church has a flyer of hers up on their bulletin board. She's a known friend of the church, but also a known trader of information." He pointed at the screen, "Even says here that her family was one of the founders of the town, helping in the construction of the church. She even says she'll be glad to retell history and 'evoke evil and bring forth spirits to answer any and all questions.'"

"Might not be a terrible idea," Pandora smiled as I did.

"She's a medium, having been traveling across the state to spread knowledge, offer spiritual guidance, and contact the dead. She's also a fortune teller, she reads palms and tarot cards." His smile mimicked ours as he told us, "And looks like our medium is in town until the end of the week."

A comfortable smile pulled at my lips. "I guess we know what we're doing tomorrow."

i hate this chapter too wtfffff 

it'll get better....i promise....chapt 13 kinda slaps ngl so hold on for that one 

vote/comment or the blood geata will get ya