“You can do it.”
Minutes passed while I had no sense of time, all my attention on doing what it took to force my body to move. To overcome the panic and anxiety, at least for the thirty seconds I needed. I’d slam the hammer into the wall and pull back a sizable chunk before jumping out of the way, giving the ghost space to shoot through. Then, I’d open the spirit box and help the artifact along in its capture of the vengeful spirit. The ghost wouldn’t have time to do anything, because dammit, I was faster.
I’d put the ghost in a time out like a naughty child before it used those horrific smokey claws on me.
“You can do it.”
I said it vehemently enough that my brain finally believed it.
My arms surged forward and up, hammer coming down on the wood with a loud thunk that shook the surrounding walls. In one smooth motion I pulled out the hammer, bringing a chunk of wall with it, and then did it one more time to make the hole bigger. Then, I jumped out of the way.
Everything went smoothly until I saw the ghost.
I’d caught a mere glimpse the last time, what with my quick death. If I’d seen it, I never would have tried this again. Access to the basement wasn’t worth having to deal with this spirit.
Unlike Zan, who looked normal and chipper, this ghost had features contorted in rage. Half of its face was covered in horrific burns, likely occurring shortly before death and becoming part of the reason for its rage. The other half was delicate and feminine, with long tresses of hair falling down to her waist. She wore a half-burned dress in high-class Earan style, hoop skirt exposed on the burned side while the other was delicate lace with hand-sewn fabric flowers.
Her blueish fog didn’t keep her features in focus for long, her attention focusing in on me. My stomach roiled and I would have thrown up if I’d been able to move. I couldn’t. Not because magic was stopping me, but because my panic had come back in full force.
I squeezed my eyes shut when she floated toward me, unsure if I wanted to see my death coming or be blissfully ignorant of when she struck. Behind my closed eyelids, visions of clawed hands danced, and I snapped my eyes open again. She was furious, but not as grotesque as the ghost I’d faced before. This visual may be better.
Screaming wordlessly, she dissolved into a mass of mist and flew forward, pushing through my body. I gasped and yelped, cold prickling my skin. My feet decided to move, and I spun around to face her again. She hadn’t stopped screaming, and I had a brief flash of hope that the sound would draw the attention of someone in the house.
Save me. Please. I thought I could do it myself, but I couldn’t.
The spirit box was shoved deep in my pocket. She was coming for me again, this time contorting one of her hands into odd claws and aiming for the wooden artifact. Nails sliced my skin, and I screamed along with her. The burn of ghostly claws was worse than any of the ways I’d died since coming to Hadley House. It was a mere scratch, tearing my clothes so the box would fall onto the ground, out of my possession, but it made fiery pain ripped through me.
I vaguely realized I was crying again, my freeze response wearing off and being replaced by flight. If I didn’t want to be ripped to pieces, I had to run. Whoever usually killed me could finish the job in the kind, quick way they always did.
My feet picked up, and I made it four steps when the ghost stopped screaming.
I froze, the rapid beating of my heart filling the sudden silence. When she didn’t fly through me, I slowly looked over my shoulder. She’d stopped dead, staring at Zan.
He was holding the spirit box in one hand, the other poised to open it. His expression was set into one of anger, but nothing like the all-consuming rage the other ghost felt. The anger on him looked protective. Of me, the woman who’d screamed at him first thing this morning.
Stepping forward, toward Zan and away from the female ghost, I held out a shaky hand. My fingers might, possibly, be able to grip the box long enough to open it and trap the ghost inside. That was the only option, because Zan couldn’t do it. There was too much risk of him accidentally sucking himself into the box too. He’d have to leave before I tried, but him protecting me was all I needed to push away some of the fear.
Key word being ‘some’.
“I can do it,” I said, trying to convince myself.
“You don’t have to,” Zan said.
He solidified the fingers on his other hand to flick open the box, pointing it away from himself. A scream rang out, bouncing off every wall of the office, and the ghost turned to flee. She didn’t get far; the box pulled her in, catching wisps of her smokey form and holding on for dear life. Zan was being tugged as well, the box holding tiny pieces of him, but not as many since he’d aimed the focus away from himself.
Before I could fumble through the words of a spell to capture the spirit for real, he spoke.
Beautiful words flowed from him, more confident and clear than anything I’d come up with. They were in Xurian, the oldest of the magic languages and the language our strongest spells were created from. I followed the sentence as I stared, something about being locked away for eternity, but mainly I watched him.
Zan’s blue glow brightened to white, much like his colouring with his ghostly blush. Magical energy rushed from him, stronger than what I could rustle up, and less than a minute later he’d sealed the screaming ghost into the spirit box.
His sigh was heavy and tired, but he placed the closed box on Felix’s desk and floated away from me. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I doubt my presence helped you calm down.”
Him showing up was the only thing that had kept me alive, so my level of calm was kind of irrelevant. Opening and closing my mouth like a fish, I didn’t have an answer for him. My body was calming with the imminent danger passed, but still tense. He’d saved my life, and I still couldn’t be comfortable in the same room with him.
How weak was I? And how did I fix myself?
After a few beats of me saying nothing, he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “I’m going to… get someone else. I don’t want you to be alone for long until you’ve calmed down.”
