by Elle Adams
I walked on down the foggy street, thoroughly spooked for possibly the first time in my life. Were there no living people in this town? The email I’d got from Carey hadn’t indicated the town was uninhabited, but it sure looked that way to me. This was officially the creepiest town I’d ever been in—and for a Reaper, that’s saying a lot.
I rounded a corner and found the entire road blocked by ghosts. That was the last straw. I might not carry a scythe like an official Reaper, but I could improvise if I wanted to. In an instant, shadows crept around my feet and surrounded me like a shroud. Then I put on a deep, sinister voice, “Leave, now.”
The ghosts fled, every last one of them. Some cried, “Reaper!” as they flew away. Others just vanished into thin air or swarmed away from me, dispersing throughout the town.
Only Mart remained behind, shaking his head at me. “Was that really necessary?”
“I was asked to banish one ghost,” I told him. “If I hadn’t got rid of the spares, I’d never be able to get the job done.”
“You just wanted an excuse to bring out the dramatics,” he said.
“If you want to believe that, it’s fine.” In truth, I wished I’d just stayed in bed. Hawkwood Hollow was a literal ghost town in the worst sense possible. Either some horrible magical plague had killed off the population, or they had generations of ghosts hiding among the living without anyone being inclined to do anything about it. The latter option was more likely, but you’d think the local witches who had the ability to see ghosts would have staged a mutiny by now. Or hired an actual Reaper.
Maybe this was the true reason why this Carey person had invited me here, and she’d conveniently forgotten to mention that there was more than one ghost in town. More like a hundred.
I spotted someone on the bridge heading towards me. Finally, a living person. She was maybe fifteen or sixteen at most, though her outfit made her look younger—a school uniform in shades of white and mustard yellow, bright red socks patterned with broomsticks, and a pair of red goggles perched atop her head.
The girl bounded up to me. “Are you the Reaper Witch?”
“Call me Maura,” I said. “Are you the person who emailed me?”
Had she seen the ghosts flocking around me? If she was a witch herself, then she might be able to see them. I couldn’t imagine Hawkwood Hollow would be a pleasant place to live for anyone who had the ability to see ghosts—which generally, was about a third of the total number of witches and a hundred percent of the Reapers.
“I am, yes.” She rocked back on her heels. “I didn’t know who else to ask to help. I’m Carey.”
“Shouldn’t you be at school?” The question escaped before I could consider keeping my mouth shut. But I’d come here specifically to avoid trouble, and witch academies could be pretty hardcore when it came to truancy.
She lowered her gaze. “Um, yeah. I took a day off, because the ghost is particularly active this week and I need the footage for my blog.”
“Blog?”
“Yep.” With every step, those goggles of hers bounced on her nose.
“What are you wearing?” I asked.
“Ghost goggles. They make it easier to see spirits.” She looked up at me. “Are you really her? The Reaper Witch?”
How in the world had she heard of me? Okay, there was that time I’d agreed to be a guest on a popular witching show a few years ago, Hannah’s Hauntings. I was pretty sure about five people had watched that episode, so it was a little bewildering that anyone might actually remember it.
“Just call me Maura,” I said. “You run… a ghost blog?”
“Yes,” she said. “Not a very popular one, though. Not yet. I have three subscribers. But when they find out I have the Reaper Witch here to help me, they’ll tell all their friends, I’m sure. We’ll go viral.”
We? No thanks. I did not need any publicity. Even the most obscure blog might draw the sort of attention I’d prefer not to deal with if I could help it. Namely, the Reaper Council.
“I’m not sure you’d like that,” I said delicately. “I’ve never been in a town this haunted before, and to be honest, I’m not all that keen on being followed by ghosts everywhere. I’m going to deal with that spirit of yours, as I promised, but then I have to run back home.”
“Hey!” Mart said indignantly. “Not keen on ghosts? What am I, then?”
“But—you came all this way,” she said, without so much as a glance in Mart’s direction. “My mum runs the Riverside Inn, so we have plenty of space. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”
It came as a surprise to hear the town had any tourism at all. “That’s nice, but really… I can stay an hour or two, but no more.”
It seemed in bad taste to mention I needed the payment, but if I didn’t find a way to pay this month’s rent, I’d end up spending next month camping in a field. I had exactly one marketable skill, as the universe seemed determined to remind me. A warm room sounded like heaven, I wouldn’t lie, but I hadn’t planned to wind up in a town with more ghosts than living people. The sheer number of lost spirits pointed to a problem far deeper than any single haunting. A problem which would require more than one ex-Reaper to handle.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “Okay.”
“I didn’t mean I’m not happy to be invited here,” I added, with a twinge of guilt. “Honestly, I’m surprised anyone even remembers that interview.”
“I’ve watched it so many times I can recite it from memory,” she announced. “I’ve been a fan of Hannah’s Hauntings since the beginning. I especially liked the episode with the haunted toaster.”
Oh, boy. “Is this haunted house nearby?”
“This way.” Carey turned on the spot, skipping along as though we were going to Disneyland and not a haunted house. Her goggles wobbled on her head, while I followed more slowly, my second thoughts multiplying.
“C’mon.” Mart nudged me from behind, sending a wave of ice-cold down my arm. “It’ll be fun. I’ve always wanted to stay in a haunted inn.”
“You’re usually the one doing the haunting,” I whispered. “I’d have thought you’d want to leave more than I do, in case the other ghosts steal the spotlight from you.”
“Nobody can replace me,” he said. “I’m unique.”
“Weren’t you just telling me you didn’t like the look of the place?” I hissed. “Now, be quiet, before she realises I’m speaking to a ghost and wants to look at you through her ghost goggles.”
Given that she hadn’t already spotted Mart, I figured her ghost goggles could use some fine-tuning. She didn’t seem to have noticed the other ghosts, either. While I’d frightened them off earlier, some of them were already starting to creep back into view at the edges of the streets.
A ghost, a blogger and a Reaper Witch walked into a haunted house. It sounded like the start of a bad joke. I just hoped it wouldn’t end like one.
“Who’s the ghost, then?” I caught up with Carey. “If I know her name and what she looks like, it’ll be easier for me to identify her.”
Carey slowed her pace. “The ghost is a local woman who lived alone. This is her house.”
She indicated a large Victorian detached house which sat alone on the riverbank behind a rusty gate and a low garden wall of crumbling stone. The door was painted red, though faded, while the whitewashed walls were battered with wear and tear. One of the downstairs windows was boarded up, and another had cracks spiderwebbing across the glass. Despite the air of neglect about the place, however, the house itself was practically the size of a mansion. Way too big for a single person.
“Whoa,” I said. “The ghost lived here?”
“I want to live here,” Mart declared, jumping over the wall and marching straight through the closed door. Serve him right if he got sucker-punched by a ghost.
“Mrs Renner has lived in that house for decades,” explained Carey. “The place was in the middle of being renovated when she died, so it’s a bit worse for wear
. Unfortunately, anyone who’s tried to fix up the place since has been driven off.”
“Oh, so that’s why you need me to get rid of her,” I surmised. “I’m guessing it’s difficult to sell a house with a screaming ghost in it.”
She nodded, her goggles bouncing on her forehead. “Yeah, she’s been causing trouble for the renovators all week, so I thought I’d hire someone to take care of the problem. No witch or wizard has been able to get rid of her.”
“Okay.” Now we were speaking my language. “I’ll need to talk to the ghost before I can figure out how to proceed. Should we head inside?”
“Sure.” She pushed open the gate and fiddled with the ghost goggles, hitting a button on the side. “I’ll just turn the microphone on.”
“Turn the what on?” I was starting to wish I’d just gone into the house alone instead of consulting with her first.
“Are you coming in here or not?” Mart called out.
I ignored him. So did Carey… which suggested she couldn’t hear ghosts. If our unwanted spirit accosted us inside the house, I’d have to handle her alone. Nothing new to me, but the house seemed empty of both living and dead aside from Mart, while my long-dormant Reaper senses didn’t detect anything waiting on the other side of the door. The old woman’s ghost must be hiding deep inside the house.
As Carey gave the goggles another shake, I cleared my throat. “I don’t know if you’ve ever tried recording a ghost before, but they don’t tend to show up on camera.”
“I know.” She pulled down the goggles, revealing lenses so thick and dark it was a wonder she could see through them. “That’s why I have these. They’re fitted with spirit lenses which can detect ghosts.”
“Can you actually see anything else through them, though?” I asked dubiously.
“Not really, but I only have to put them on when there’s a ghost in my line of sight.” She pulled them up onto her forehead again.
I could think of at least a dozen problems with that theory, but I decided not to burst her bubble. Yet. “Do you run the blog by yourself?”
“I do,” she said. “This is the first time I’ve been near an actual ghost, so I need to get as much footage as possible.”
I cast my mind around, but I couldn’t for the life of me find a polite way to tell her to give up the goggles and let me handle everything else. Ghosts had a tendency to mess with technology, and besides, I didn’t want her camera to record me in action if I had to pull out all the stops to get rid of the ghost. The living weren’t supposed to witness a Reaper’s work. Even an unofficial one like me.
Carey adjusted her goggles and pushed the gate open with a loud creaking noise. Then, she said, in a dramatic whisper, “And here we are, entering the abandoned house of Mrs Renner, who tragically died last week when a door frame collapsed on top of her.”
“Wait, that’s how she died?” I asked, momentarily forgetting every word I said was being recorded. “Was it an accident?”
“Good question.” Her voice dropped to a whisper again. “Her death appeared to be a tragic accident, but the rumours circulating the town of Hawkwood Hollow say otherwise. Only her ghost can tell the truth.”
“Carey, you do realise your recording device won’t pick up a sound from a ghost, don’t you?” I said. “Only us.”
“This one is different.” She tapped the side of the goggles. “It picks up on sound waves, and it should work equally well on the dead as the living.”
“Have you used it on a ghost before, then?”
“No, because I haven’t been allowed into the house,” she said. “They just removed the police tape this morning.”
I halted, halfway through the gate. “So we’re breaking and entering.”
“It’s not breaking and entering when nobody lives in the house,” she said. “Is it?”
Magical laws were not my strong point. “Technically, her ghost lives in the house, so she’s within her rights to throw us out.”
For all I knew, the magical law enforcement would have an issue with us being here, too. Yet the absence of anyone on the streets suggested nobody was keeping a close watch on the place.
Her brow furrowed. “What? She’s dead, though. The dead don’t have rights.”
“I wouldn’t say that where she might hear you.” I dropped my voice, glancing over my shoulder in case anyone had seen us enter the garden. “Ghosts can be a little… territorial. And sensitive. They don’t like being reminded they’re dead.”
“Even when you’re banishing them?” she said, now looking thoroughly confused.
“Banishment is usually a last resort,” I told her. “I try to reason with each ghost first to convince them to leave of their own accord, before using that option. So we have to treat her like she’s still one of the living and then try to persuade her to leave. If that doesn’t work…”
If that didn’t work, then the scythe came out. Not that I had one of those anymore, and I most definitely would not be carrying out a banishment with a teenage girl as my audience. Even if she couldn’t see ghosts, she could see me, and Reapers were as terrifying to the living as they were to the dead. Or so I’d been told, anyway.
“The house is mine now,” Mart called out from behind the door. “You can’t come in.”
Honestly. It seemed he hadn’t found the house’s other ghostly inhabitant yet, at least.
“Who was she, then?” I asked Carey. “Mrs Renner, I mean. Did she have any family? Anyone who’s likely to be irked at us for breaking in?”
“No family here in Hawkwood Hollow,” she said. “She didn’t leave a will behind, so nobody knows who’s going to get the house. Anyway, I don’t think it counts as breaking in. Nobody’s been here since the police left.”
“Did the police think her death might not have been an accident?” I asked.
She shrugged one shoulder. “I don’t know. I mean, I know they questioned everyone who was at her house recently and didn’t draw any conclusions, so I assume they gave it up.”
Hmm. One major reason a lot of ghosts stuck around after death was due to unfinished business… like an unsolved murder. But I’d have to take up that line of inquiry with the ghost herself.
“If you don’t have a key, how were you planning to get in?” I scanned the front of the house.
“I do have a key.” She reached into her pocket and whipped out a jagged metal shape with triumph. “It’s homemade. Fits every lock. Well, it should. I haven’t tried it yet.”
Oh, boy.
My doubts continued to multiply as I crossed the garden to the doorstep. If Carey failed to get us in, I could use that as an excuse to leave, but something about this situation struck me as suspicious in multiple ways. A ghost, a dropped murder case and a lack of a will left behind equalled trouble in my book.
And that wasn’t even getting into the sheer volume of ghosts here in Hawkwood Hollow. It wasn’t natural, even in a magical community. But I couldn’t think of a subtle way to ask if the town had suffered some horrible tragedy in the past. From what I’d seen of the ghosts, they’d ranged from old to new, from elderly pensioners to the occasional child or teenager. There was no pattern to it whatsoever.
There came a click as she turned the key in the door, which swung inward. “It worked?”
“Yes, it did.” Carey beamed and put the key back in her pocket. Then she tapped on the goggles again. “We’re about to enter the abandoned house, where Maura the Reaper Witch is about to have a showdown with a ghost. Who will be the victor?”
Me, I hope. I’d never met a ghost I couldn’t banish… and with luck, the spirit would bring some answers about what was really going on in this town.
3
Despite its size, the house was as dilapidated on the inside as it was on the outside. The wallpaper peeled off in strips, revealing the brick beneath, while patches of carpet dotted the stairs on our left-hand-side. On our right was a living room, containing nothing except a grand piano coated in dust… and Ma
rt, hovering above it. He waved furiously, but I paid him no attention. I’d rather not have to explain to Carey that another ghost had already entered the house.
“She died here.” Carey pointed to a doorway in the middle of the hall, separating one half of the house from the other. “Can you see her ghost?”
“No ghosts here.” Except my brother. “If I start talking to myself, that’s usually a sign one of them has come after me.”
“Maura is the ghost whisperer,” she said into the microphone. “Her unique ability to communicate with spirits is second to none.”
Mart cracked up in silent laughter. I gave him a glare, smoothing out my expression as Carey frowned at me. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t think we should raise our voices in here,” I said. “Just in case. What exactly did the witnesses say the ghost did to scare them off?”
“Huh?” She blinked. “I heard she kept slamming the doors, mostly, and someone said they heard screaming.”
“I’m trying to gauge how strong she is,” I said. “The most powerful ghosts can move objects around, turn lights on and off, things like that. Screaming is annoying, but fairly harmless.”
“Hear that?” She lifted the ghost goggles, raising her voice. “Maura claims the most powerful ghosts can affect the physical world. Join us as we uncover the secrets of Mrs Renner, whose mysterious death has baffled residents of Hawkwood Hollow. How powerful might she be?”
Mart snorted. “Hey, if that thing works on ghosts, can it hear every word I say?”
I didn’t respond, but Mart began to sing at the top of his voice. I mimed elbowing him in the spine and a flood of icy cold swamped my entire arm.
“Cut it out,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.
“Some ghost goggles those are.” Mart flew behind Carey, blowing on the back of her head. I suppressed a sigh. He was determined to make a nuisance of himself, it seemed, and I found myself fervently hoping that Carey’s recording device didn’t turn out to work on the dead.
