hurt me?
Her subconscious remained silent, but she had the unpleasant sense that the answer was yes to both. Mist continued to swirl outside, but there was no sign of the woman. Slowly, cautiously, Keira approached the window again. She reflexively rolled her bare feet as she walked, minimizing any noise she might make on the wooden floorboards.
The storm was fading as the clouds’ load diminished, but the drizzle was still thick enough to block most of the outside world from her view. She could see faraway lights from the parsonage and, even farther beyond that and barely visible, the distant town’s lights. The rain-slicked tombstones protruded from the ground like rotten, crumbling teeth.
The ghost came out of nowhere, long fingers splayed as they pressed against the window. Keira flinched backward. If the glass hadn’t divided them, she was certain she would have felt the specter’s frozen breath on her skin.
Keira stopped an arm’s length from the window. She and the ghost stared at each other, neither willing to break eye contact, neither moving. The woman was close to indistinguishable from her surroundings; if Keira let her vision blur, the figure faded into the background. But when she strained, she could make out a myriad of details.
The woman wore an old-fashioned sundress with a high neckline. Although the ghost held no color, the sunflower pattern made Keira think the dress might have been yellow in life, and it looked as though it could have belonged to the seventies or eighties. Her long hair hung limply around her shoulders but was dry in spite of the rain. The drops, wholly indifferent to the ghost’s existence, passed through her.
The woman’s eyes had no pupils, iris, or whites but were completely black. Dead eyes, Keira thought again, and she took a slow, cautious step forward. The woman mimicked the motion, leaning toward to the glass. Keira didn’t know if the apparition could move through the walls, but the hand resting against the windowpane did nothing to interrupt the water droplets rolling down the surface.
A dark substance drenched the left half of the figure’s face and stained the sundress, contrasting with the summery floral pattern. It came from a hole at her temple. When she focused on the area, Keira could make out tiny bone fragments jutting from the injury.
She was murdered. Is that why she didn’t pass on?
The spirit’s lips moved. She was speaking, but Keira couldn’t hear the words. Against her better judgment, she stepped up to the window and angled her ear toward the glass.
She could hear the low reverberation of falling water and even catch individual pings as larger drops hit the window, but the ghost was either inaudible or too soft to hear through the storm.
Keira moved back and clutched the blanket a little tighter around herself. “I can’t hear you. I’m sorry.”
The woman’s face contorted. She was still speaking, forming the same phrase over and over with bloodstained lips. Her movements were slow and indistinct, but repeated so many times, Keira thought she could guess the phrase. Help me.
Uneasy, anxious nausea rose. She half wanted to call the pastor to come back—wasn’t it his job to make sure souls reached the next life? But even with her botched memory, she knew it wasn’t normal to see ghosts.
She licked her lips and leaned close to the window. “Do you need something?”
The spirit’s long hair drifted around her head as she nodded. It was as though gravity couldn’t properly touch her. She was speaking again, but the words came too quickly for Keira to have any hope of lip-reading them. The ghost motioned toward either the town or the parsonage—it was impossible to tell—then clasped her hands below her chin in supplication. She had begun to cry; tears ran down her cheeks, blending with the spilled blood, dripping into her mouth and off her chin. Her lips moved incessantly, the words inaudible but clearly desperate.
All Keira could do was shake her head. “I can’t understand you.”
The woman’s features twisted in distress as she clutched at her head. Lightning cracked, flooding the scene with blinding light. Keira squinted, and when her vision cleared, she felt uneasy prickles rise through her. The space beyond the window was empty.
Thunder rumbled through the cottage, rattling its windows and making Keira hunch her shoulders. She peered through the mist, searching for her dead companion, but all that remained of the woman was a fading handprint on the outside of the glass.
Chapter Four
Keira rolled over and groaned.