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The rain falls like pouring buckets and the humidity rises past any available measurement. Thousands of green glowing eyes cast the two shadows of Jane and Rist as one. The mire girl's mental armour floods down her body and waterfalls off the stone's glacially worn shape. In this moment, she's euphoric and willing to let herself go.

Rist holds her, kisses her, yearns with every caress of her soft, warm lips and pulsing breath. She embosoms Jane by the small of her back with her right hand and runs her left upon Jane's flush face. Jane can feel Rist's fingers move lower and lower on her back until they're no longer touching her back. Jane moans the moment fingers reach between her legs. She can hear Rist's heart skip along in the excitement and the collapsing mystery of the event. And in that moment, for a single moment, Jane places her hands on the skull mask lady's ribs and abs and kisses Rist back before pushing herself away to jump backward off the slick stone. The green lights dim and fade as Jane holds herself and lets the moment penetrate her mind. It's like she's looking at Rist for the first time and her heart excitedly pounds, somehow pumping like it never does when she's running or even, dying.

Rist sits down on the rock as the rain spits off her drench skin in tiny floods, creating many bigger, earth soak deluges. She lowers her brow. Her long mop soak hair sticks to her face. She watches Jane and then looks at her feet as if she's done something wrong.

Jane witnesses this and walks over and hugs her and whispers with her forehead on Rist's skull cap, "first of all, I love you. And now that...I..."

Jane lifts Rist's face with her own face, their eyes meet.

"I feel it. But I can't go fast like this, Rist. I need...I don't know...time we may not have? I want to. I'm just...I'm confused...I'm not used to the feeling of butterflies in my belly that'er this all encompassing. I wasn't expecting this or to feel the way I do about...about you."

Jane pauses and bites her lip. She needs Rist to see her face clearly so she moves the beautiful soaked hair from in front of Rist's eyes. She runs her fingers through her friends scalp, making sure there's nothing wet clinging upon her face and then Jane lets her arms dangle around Rist's neck. She leans her face into Rist's and maintains eye contact.

"I love how your body feels against mine in that way and what that means and how it...it feels like you've given me a part of you that I haven't noticed before, like something has always been missing before...I don't really know how to fully explain it...but I know how I feel...and...

Jane wonders if Rist can see the tears in her eyes. She can clearly see Rist's tears through the rain. The mire girl places her hand on Rist's cheek and returns Rist's initial, intimate intention. Jane kisses Rist on the lips.

The dawn penetrates its dim light through the dark and ominous storm clouds. Jane dies as Rist begins to passionately kiss her.

                  ****

She opens her malachite windows to the world and witnesses Rist sitting on the ledge of the cavernous van with the side doors open. The skull mask lady's in the black cerement militant attire and dangles one leg out the van while holding her other knee under her pressing face. Her head rests her cheek on her crease torn cloth witnessing the distant climb to the tracks. There's still rain spitting against the aluminum roof of the van. Jane's wearing her Ghost jacket and nothing else. She sits up and tightly wraps the jacket around her torso and crawls to Rist and kneels feet crossed beside.

The mire girl wraps her arms around the skull mask lady

"I'm sorry I died. I'm sorry Rhie died. I'm sorry you were alone today."

"Jane. Do you want to know a secret?"

The mire girl releases her friend and nods and stares into the overcast night.

"I fell in love with you back then. I was confused. I thought I liked men. I did, but that went away every time I noticed you. Your mannerisms, the way you would talk. The serious look you'd get on your face when you were thinking. That same look I've seen time and again since you came back to me. Your voice would penetrate me and give me goosebumps and all I wanted to do was listen to it. Your smile would always brighten my day. When you were pissed off...I loved it. You were ferocious and sexy and oh my god, how you could control a room of men with just a look, a glare, a simple gaze. You had no idea and I don't think you know even now the kind of power you have. I couldn't get enough of you in my life. But you were with...(garbled noise)...and you were happy. You seemed so happy. And then you died. When that happened, an important part of me went with you. I never, ever felt how I did about you with anyone else and I never really got over you. And all of these feelings have been resurrecting within me since you've been back. You say that I'm authentic? No. I'm a pretty good actor. I loved Rhie, I truly did and I still truly do but it's not the same thing. I can't explain this very well either, but this is how I feel about you, Jane. I'm not trying to wear a mask with anyone but I know I'm not when it comes to you. I love you, Jane. I always have."

Jane takes in Rist's words with a stunned knowing and also as the emotion driven interpretative reflection of her own memories. She witnesses herself through someone who loves her. She doesn't want to escape into her own head and leave a silence between the two, so Jane leans against Rist and wraps her arm around her friend's bent leg, letting the jacket she wrapped tightly around herself loosen.

"Ok. Let's go slow. I'm paying attention. I felt it last night in the living room. My mind needs to catch up with my heart."

Rist goes to kiss her on the cheek and Jane turns her face at the last moment to kiss Rist's lips. Rist looks with surprise.

Jane says, "slowly, not dead stop."

The skull mask lady smiles and runs her hand through the mire girl's hair. Rist touches her lips to Jane's and the two friends make out.

                                              ****

Jane closes the van door and on-looks at the darkness of the overgrown tall grass field beneath the iron train track and hammer hard gravel road. Rist's already at the grassy hill incline border of concrete and chain link fence the way up and out. Jane follows as they continue their trek toward Glanton and the beginning curl of the dead dark osteal nail forest.

The mire girl hurries to catch her friend. Lover? Yes, lover. Doubt of such doesn't exist in Rist and taps into Jane's trust and haunts the inner house of her thoughts. Is the idea of her and Rist a soon to wain novelty? No, Rist's no novelty. And she thinks Jane has a power? So does Rist and she used that power last night. Jane certainly loves Rist but she's also falling in love with Rist.

As Jane climbs the wobbly chain link fence and jumps over and lands two feet and two hands upon ancient grey corpse concrete sloping somewhat verticality, she hazards at the steep crack crumbling incline to the gravel and steel flange wheel tracks. And she crawls toward the summit silhouette of Rist who's there to catch her in hands and pull her up when she's a footfall away from the top crook.

They haven't spoken since Jane put an end to what was becoming wet and drippy and heated in the van. Her jacket had been removed and she knew Rist would've gone much, much further with her fingers and lips with the mire girl's taste upon her tongue. Jane had to be the one to break away, so she did and left Rist panting. She had got dressed and noticed Rist was already walking away from the van toward the incline leading out of the hidden field.

And so now, as they both walk along the iron tracks, Jane asks, "Are you ok? Did I do something wrong?"

"No, I did and I needed to walk it off. I'm just thinking now, that's all. I can't get you out of my head and I need to for a little while because of what's ahead of us."

Jane nods to herself and kicks an odd lost puzzle piece stone and finds relief in the echo of Rist's voice and reasoning within the sense of her own bubbling spell of anxiety.

"The dark forest. I've seen it from a distance. It's like tentacles curling, like it's trying to catch the dead city so it can chew on it."

"Yeah, it's not a natural forest. It never used to be there. It's one of the many experiments of the government that we fought against. They grew it in the poorest part of the city to punish the poorest people for basically being poor. One day the area was hovels and soup kitchens and the next, well...a forest of death. No one that I know of made it out alive."

"Are you telling me the forest killed the people living there?"

"The government did but yes. It's like the seeds ate them and that's how the forest got so big. Human flesh and bone is what we think it fed on. Then it died and became what it is now. I've climbed through there before. Some of the trees can be toppled very easily. But some are like metal. There're other types of trees in that place, too. Mimic trees which look like the elms and ironwoods and oaks and pines. But the whole damn thing grew on top of the streets and around the houses. The roots are surface and they cover up everything. Even the grass and flowers in there, I think, are of the same brutal experiment. A dangerous imitation of the natural world."

"Do you know if anything actually lives in there? I thought that the slaughterhouse people did."

"Maybe, Jane. I don't know for sure. I only know what I know about the slaughterhouse people through the Ghosts and I can't believe a word of it anymore. Can anything actually live in the dark forest? I really don't know. But we're are about to find out, I think."

"The two of us can do this, Rist. If anyone can, it's us."

Jane slips her hand into Rist's and the skull mask lady smiles lovingly at her. She brings  Jane's hand to her lips and kisses her knuckles.

An hour of steady walking and on again, off again hand holding leads the two friends around upon a particular sign. Glanton street hangs like a prophecy that's already come to pass. And to their left, just before the midnight strikes it's wayfare, lies the distant mass of the deceased predatory trees.

The burnt dog carcass still lays rotting underneath the rust and black bent sign. And Jane can already make out the impaled skeletons and the rotting flesh of the Ghosts victims nailed to the distant wooden twine twist Möbius tentacle branches. The blue tarp hasn't come undone from around a genderless facial expression with a tongue lopsidedly hanging from a lipless mouth. She can't tell if the mouth made of rage or laughter.

Something's different though. Something's there that wasn't there the last time Jane peered in this direction. When she realizes what it is, her eyes become saucers and she begins looking around very warily.

"Oh, god."

"What is it, Jane?"

"We need to get out of the street. Get out of the street, now!"

Rist looks confused but follows Jane's lead. They run toward the "in between" of two desolate storefronts of what used to be a cabinet workshop beside a flooring showroom. They quickly sit, crisscross applesauce, against a peeling yellow paint cement block wall.

"Oh, Rist. Oh, fuck."

Jane has tears dripping down her cheek and wipes them away. She looks directly into Rist's eyes while holding her own shoulders. Panic.

"They put his head on a pike."

The look on Rist's face goes from confused adrenaline to absolute horror and devastation.

She pulls off the rucksack and unzips one pocket. Two Beretta pistols find their way in front of Jane. Rist looks at her with tears and an expression of righteous rage.

"You see much better in the dark than me. You take them. If they want to fuck with us like this, I think I want to fuck with them, a lot."

"Alright. We have to find them first. Guns will draw attention. Do we want their attention or do we want it quiet?"

Jane looks directly at Rist's hunting knife. Rist looks at the blade and then up at Jane. Rist gets the idea as she nods. Jane places her right hand on Rist's shoulder.

"I won't need it, but you will. And we need a vantage point. I'm going to climb to the top of this building to see what I can see."

Rist nods as Jane gets up, takes her boots off and begins climbing the wall, placing her fingers and toes between the curve mortar gaps of the cement blocks. She hears Rist whisper, "you're crazy amazing."

The building is three stories high and Jane finds a decent vantage point on top of a stair enclosure that looks like a tiny shed upon a tarred roof. She climbs upon and can immediately make out white faces on either side of the street at the final block before the forest. They're also spread far enough that it will be difficult to go around them without being noticed. Jane witnesses there's no formation to where any one Ghost is positioned but there's one place where the Ghosts are few in number. They seem less concerned about a particular street furthest to Jane's left. There's no way that Rist and Jane are heading into the forest from Glanton street. Too many Ghosts are waiting and they're armed with Mateba revolvers and Socimi sub-machine guns. Silver Pigeon and Witness Steel.

Jane's watched enough and decides it's time to go. She climbs off the stairwell enclosure and then down the cinder wall and back into the "in between." Rist's there to grab her as she jumps down. Her hands accidentally touch Jane's belly and ribs under her tank top. Jane holds Rist's hands in those positions for a moment and then lets them go with a flush sigh.

"We're going to walk over a few blocks to Holden street. There aren't as many assholes over there. I also don't see the strategy in how they're positioned. It's like they've massed mostly at Glanton but have left themselves spread out to look like they're everywhere."

"I don't know what they're thinking."

"Ok, well, I'm going to kill a bunch of them quietly. Would you like to join in?"

Rist nods, "I hope one of them is Pete."

The skull mask lady pulls the hunting knife from its sheath that's belted around her calf. Jane puts her boots back on and puts her jacket in Rist's rucksack with the two guns. They both cover their heads with grim reaper hoods. Their demeanours are that of shadows in the dark and they move like faceless spectres.

It takes them ten minutes to reach Holden street and another five to get close to their targets. Rist is the first to kill. She slowly creeps behind and stabs a lone Ghost numerous time in the throat as her knife hacks from a side angle. The enemy bleeds out without a sound. Jane's next. She walks behind a bigger Ghost and breaks his neck so hard that his head almost twists off. She catches the body under its shoulders and rests it down to the ground quietly. Jane kills two more in a similar fashion as Rist hacks another throat in the dark. Then things go bad.

Rist spots Pete. He's standing by himself, shivering with his arms crossed holding a Tanfoglio Witness Steel pistol, probably thinking that the fresh dead bodies are alive and breathing and are protecting his back. Rist drops the knife and pulls out her large and long Smith and Wesson. She sneaks up behind him and places the barrel in his ear. In that moment, Pete screams at the top of his lungs, "they're here! Over here!"

Rist pulls the trigger and blows Pete's head completely off. Everything becomes slow motion. The body collapses at her feet into a lump of human garbage while gun powder smoke fills Rist's breath. She breaths fume in like a cigarette and breaths it out. Jane grabs Rist by the arm and pulls her harshly toward the forest. Then time speeds up again. Jane and Rist sprint into the thick, curling mass of wooden horror. And some of the Ghosts follow.

Ten feet in of climbing over and under and around many roots and branches, gun fire fills the air. Jane pushes Rist ahead of her and the skull mask lady stumbles and falls. Then Jane feels a lava pain in her head and blacks out.

When she opens her eyes, she doesn't have control. She's barely there at all. She's almost less than a passenger watching through the looking glass of what has been let loose. She knows what happened as the white hot lava pain cools. She was shot in the back of the head. She rises and notices that a Ghost has Rist pinned down with a gun in her mouth. The Ghost's beaten her and torn up her clothes and is now mentally torturing her and looks like he's deciding to shoot her or not. Another Ghost lays dead beside her.

Jane quickly pushes Rist out of the way and the Ghost fires into Janes belly, possibly killing some butterflies. And then she opens her mouth to let out a crackling, horrific unending laugh. She howls like a mechanical Halloween Christmas gift as she pulls the Ghost's heart out of his chest and shoves it down into the depths of his throat. Then the sounds of bone and cartilage popping and cracking fill the night as Jane's head turns all the way around and looks directly at Rist. Jane's green glowing eyes are as wide as her open mouth.

What used to be Jane screams with the voice of the terrifying terrible echoing reverb distortion of a destroyed Rhie, "ruuuuuuuuuuuuuuun!"

Then her head continues popping and cracking and turning until the three hundred and sixty degrees is complete. She hears Rist get up, make shuddering cries and flee away into the darkness of the dead trees.

Jane drifts away from the looking glass of her eyes. She's not in control. She's not even a thought in whatever has a hold of her body now. Jane fades away.

                  ****

Silvia watches the forest through her mask. She's shivering with fear because she heard that laugh. The laugh that Pete had described when he heard that thing ripping Janice's head and spine all the way off at the fairgrounds.

She watches from behind a water barrel as three of her friends come running out of the forest and then past everyone and toward the street. They don't stop running.

Then a Ghost walks out of the forest, staggering in the darkness. Someone points a flashlight and when the light hits, everyone gasps at once. Her face looks chewed off between her eyes and lower jaw. The dying Ghost falls to her knees and then plants what's left of her face into the ground. At that moment, skull masked heads begin flying out of the woods and smash against concrete and tin walls like canon balls made of flesh. They explode into gore upon impact because whoever's throwing them is beyond any one Ghost's strength.

Silvia trembles and urinates in her pants and realizes that she needs to leave and the sooner the better.

"Fuck this, holy fuck!"

A torn mask head flies and it's nose glances her nose and for a moment she's eye to eye with the severed head. Then it continues its trajectory and crashes into the building just behind her. Brain and skull and teeth spray the side of her jacket, coating her in someone's former countenance.

Silvia drops her gun like it matters and bolts out from behind the water barrel and runs as fast as she can down Holden street, following the three most intelligent Ghosts of the night.

                  ****

"You killed my woman, you bitch! You hear me! Do you fucking hear me! You wrapped her in the scaffolding, you piece of shit!"

Warren wears a red shirt with a floral pattern embroidered upon it. He's a big guy, and not a Ghost. He's in the woods for one simple task and that's revenge. Janice was a horrible person but she was his horrible person. His wild ride. His Queen!

Warren holds a giant, double blade, black hilt battle axe that he made himself in his weapon shop. He also carries a double barrel shotgun. The man isn't afraid. He truly isn't. Not yet.

He's heard the screams and the breaking of bones and the ripping of flesh. He's witnessed the aftermath laying upon the roots and body parts rammed within the roots and trees, like the bitch was trying to feed Ghosts to the giant dead flora. And in some cases, where the dead lay, the trees look a bit more lively.

He witnesses body after body. Some are torn in two, some are gutted and some are twisted into unnatural positions. All of them are headless.

He stalks a noise up ahead. A pounding, thudding vibration attracts his ear and sends signals to his brain for analysis and then a swiftly well thought out decision. Maybe that's how it works. But maybe something else decides. Whatever decides, Warren moves his legs quicker and he steps over roots toward the banging.

Then he spots her, punching what was a head into a thick, blood drenched root. She has black Ghost cerement pants and calf high boots adorning her feet but she's shirtless bare breasted. Her top must've been torn off by one or many of her victims tonight. She's crimson in a cover of gore. Morsels of skin flay and muscle and tendon ornament her womanly features. Her nipples drip blood. She's a sight. And when the girl notices him and looks directly at him with her sickly pale green eyes, he knows that he's made a grave error in hunting this one. He thinks in the way that a chipped hatchet blade rusts in the wilderness of bleeding tree.

That's no girl. That's nothing to seek revenge upon. That's death itself. I'm looking at death and it's staring back at me. Oh fuck.

He then says it out loud, "oh, fuck."

Death smiles and moves toward him.

"Boo!"

                                           ****

Saeed thinks in terms of himself through the curses behind his eyes.

Cowards! Running away. I will not flee the vicinity from a little girl.

Around fifty Ghosts remain watching the forest with their firearms pointing in such direction. Saeed's the next in line to be the Grand Ghost, now that Pete's dead.

That fool had no idea what he was doing. Though burning all of those houses was a good idea. I'm glad he listened to me on that one.

Saeed takes his Ghost mask off and looks around at the other Ghosts in his vicinity. He's the king now and they're his army. His loyal bodyguards. He's sent half his force into the woods and is contemplating sending more to replace those three cowards who fled. Then he witnesses one of his soldiers collapse out of the trees wearing a chewed face and witnesses severed heads fly like bulbous exploding cannonballs into the warehouse tin siding of each crumple crease building.

He wants to shoot the deserters and watches more of army flee ranks and for just a moment, his majesty thinks about joining escape. But no, he's the king. He'll stay and destroy that little girl.

Saeed motions for the Ghosts beside him to enter the woods. All shake their heads. One removes his mask and tosses it in Saeed's direction and retreats the situation at a brisk run down Holden street. Saeed shrugs and points his middle finger back toward and at the others. They sign language for him to also fuck off. Then something shivers the breach bark crust of trees before him.

His eyes widen with surprise as the girl, Jane, impends like a shadowy malediction into the clearing with an fang sharp grin drowning the whole of her face. She holds a clump of curly hair above the severed head of a rather flabby fat cheek whisker man in her left hand and grips an enormous blood clot battle axe in her right. She's topless in dead human drench. The sliver bones of Ghosts protrude as piercing shrapnel from her terrible flesh like tiny spine spikes.

Saeed takes a very long and detailed look at the adversary slouching toward him and realizes exactly who's head she's holding. Warren. The weapons master. The baddest son of a bitch Saeed's ever had the unfortunate luck to know. This man, this bear man destroyed an entire squad of government Leonards with a hatchet during the war. He was malevolent in his butchering and was a complete and total asshole to every life form he ever came into contact with. And there he is, bodiless and very much dead at the hands of this little girl. This Jane.

Saeed looks into the girls eyes. They're the sallow watchings of eschatology witnessing  him and unblinking. Malachite and ominous like God's come round watching with smiles like pigs heads on a pikes. And in this moment he's witnessed enough.

"Nope! Fuck this! Nope! Ok, guys! Fuck this! Time to leave! Everyone! Let's get the fuck out of here!"

Saeed turns away from Jane and begins running down Holden street with his kingly, Ghostly entourage. He picks up his feet and finds his inner sprinter. Saeed doesn't feel the axe guillotine him in mid stride. But he does wonder for a moment why he's not moving as he watches his headless body fall beside him.

                ****

A tall, thin black hood Stoker man looks out past a single pane shatter of windows from a house crawling with rotten pitch corpse trees and whittle sharp, Möbius roots. He watches the night and feels the death flowing through the abstruse hum of wooden sinuous convolution. Every misshapen crumble and buckle is an ouroboros cannibalising every other bole crack constriction. The man smiles like Aeschylus in his own bottle green grim eyes witnessing the filthy blacken cross frame window reflection and knows the monster can be taken total control over when told by its master. Like it did before when Muerte was let loose to perform finger force guttings and pretty decapitation persuasions upon his enemies.

"You're not ready, Jane. Not yet. Judith hasn't been around yet. That dead horse'll pull its entrails around here eventually. Until then, Jane, you're mine."

The shatters of window begin glowing green from outside as the emerald and malachite eyes blink open everywhere. The forest rages curiously with a deep aphotic haze of midnight daylight. The man turns away from his witnesses like they never mattered. Like they never really existed anyway. Like they never will.

"Watch all you want. You can't change anything."