I reached out to steady him, and my hand passed through him.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. “Have to wait. Be brave. Help has to come.”
“You’re awfully lucid for a…” I stopped before finishing the sentence.
“Are- are you calling me something bad?”
I was so caught off guard by the direct response I couldn’t put two and two together at first. He wasn’t drawing a conclusion. He was responding to the word ‘lucid’.
“Lucid is good. It means you’re… awake, aware. You’re making a lot of sense.”
“Oh,” he said.
The thing was getting closer.
“Where’s the short fence?” I asked.
He didn’t respond, but flickered and traveled a good ten feet away, already walking as he arrived.
Still moving a little too slowly. I wanted to be running.
We reached the fence.
I’d hoped for metal. I’d hoped for barbed wire, or more chainlink or chicken wire. But it was short, plastic, and from the height, apparently meant to keep rabbits or other pests from spilling over to another section of the park. The cheap look of it was disguised by a hedge. I couldn’t see with the snow, but my gut told me there had once been a walking path here, when this area of the park was more traveled.
All it was now was a stupid, pointless boundary, in the middle of the woodland.
“You couldn’t go home, huh?” I asked. The monster was close, but I couldn’t find him, scanning the trees. “How’d you get stuck out here?”
“I got lost. My backyard opens out onto the park. I saw something… someone? I went to look, and I got turned around. Scary noises, and growling. I wanted to leave, but there was always something. I tried following the paths, but then I’d see the wolf standing there.”
“He let you go?”
“I… I don’t think so. This bush is how I escaped the first few times. I’d follow the hedge, and if I saw or heard him, I’d climb over and hide on the other side. I- I use the water to hide my scent, washing my boots, like I learned about in school, but yesterday, he was there, and he saw me. He attacked, and I ran over, and he didn’t follow. There are two places I can use to escape, like that.”
“The stream and the hedge?” I asked.
“When I can, I go to the road. I follow the hedge, and I have to leave it behind to peek. I look for cars. Then trouble comes and I have to run harder than I ever run. There’s nowhere else I can go where I have a place to run to if I need to hide.”
“So you wait,” I said. “Getting hungrier, more tired, thirsty…”
“And cold at night. But I’ll be okay,” he said. He said it like he was reassuring me. “I’m tougher than I look. And smarter. Did you see my treehouse?”
“I saw.” I kind of want that chickenwire.
“I’ll be okay,” he said. There was more of the ‘ghost’ to his voice, as he said it. “I just need to wait. Help will come.”
“Hasn’t it come already?” I asked. “I’m here.”
“You’re not really real,” he said. He started to reach out, then dropped his hand.
I looked down, and saw the streaks of glamour, turned into insulation.
Mucking with his senses?
He was capable of rationalizing, but not entirely capable. He remained a ghost.
My eyes moved back up to the line of trees, searching for a large form moving through the woods. I couldn’t pinpoint our stalker with the meager connection.
“What year is it?” I tried.
“Twenty-thirteen, I think.”
“Twenty-thirteen,” I responded. “Right.”
Just last fall, then. No small wonder he was so lucid. He’d practically died yesterday.
Help was never going to come for him. There were wards, to keep people out and away from the monster in the woods. He’d been lured or spooked into entering the area, and there hadn’t been a way out.
Now that he was a ghost, he’d retained all of the prey instincts and tactics and desperation that had kept him going, up until he’d stopped. Such was the imprint he’d left.
It didn’t explain why he’d been so typical a ghost before, though. In the tree, by the river, looking through me.
There was more to this particular riddle.
I investigated the fence. Sure enough, it was plastic. Faux picket fencing, waist height, churned out by machine, with interlocking panels.
No reason it should stop the monster.
The bush… I had to push off the snow that layered over the top, to get a better view.
Holly.
“Run.”
“Run?”
“Over the fence, over the bush.”
He had to climb over the bush, passed through the snow that layered it, as if it wasn’t there. Which it wasn’t, for him.
I simply leaped, rolling over the top of the edge, and landed on the other side.
I had to look twice before I saw it, lurking. I could make out the red eyes, glowing in darkness. It was breathing hard, from the long run.
I looked down, and the boy was shivering.
Evan spoke, “He wants to eat me. He won’t let me sleep, growling and sending things. He won’t let me stop. Then he grins. He smiles. Because I’m not happy and he enjoys it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s… what he is.”
“It’s never going to end,” Evan said. “Help’s never going to come.”
“Hey,” I said. “I-”
The Other lunged. Evan screamed, backing up, as the goblin-beast ran towards us.
The reaction had to be a replay, the movements were too natural. The ghost tried to retreat, and he fell instead. He screamed.
The goblin, the Hyena, Evan’s Wolf, the monster… whatever it was, it stopped short of the hedge. It paced there, on the other side, looming, looking down on a child who had been reduced to stark terror.
Petty.
Vile.
The hedge served two purposes. It hid the shotgun, for one thing, which let me pull the trigger, with less than ten feet between me and the monster.
It also meant that when the shotgun did fire, there were shreds of holly mixed in with the shot.
The monster reacted, rearing up, flinching, shaking his head as if to get the offending materials loose.
I could have raised the shotgun, to get a better shot, but I kept it where it was, firing again through the hedge. Further away, less direct. But there was the wind rune, and that counted for something. A little more oomph.
He still flinched, reacting. He growled, breaking the perpetual silence, and backed away to a safer distance. One open eye glowered at me. The other squinted.
I fumbled with the shotgun until I managed to open it up. I reached into one pocket for ammo, and reloaded rather clumsily. I could have managed better, but I wasn’t about to take my eyes off the Other.
Evan stepped closer to me. He’d stood up without traversing the space in between. Switching too rapidly to another state, another piece of script.
Wonder and fear both. Awe?
I imagined it was the same expression he’d had on his face when he’d discovered the water was a boundary the Other couldn’t cross.
“Like I said, kiddo, help already came.”
The ghost was kind enough that he didn’t disagree. Script or no.