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The electricity buzzed and hummed, and somewhere in the main part of the barn a stack of crates fell over. Jack gasped, eyes wide as she looked around for the cause of the disturbance. Lucy ran to the door and peered out.
The lights died. The entire barn, inside the workshop and in the main room, went dark.
“Lucy?” Jack’s voice trembled, and she raised her flashlight.
But even the flashlights flickered and died, plunging them both into darkness.
“Jack?” Lucy said. She was barely more than a shadow, but somehow she reached Jack.
The girls grasped each other’s hands, making their way slowly to the workshop door. But before they could get there, a wind swept through, and the temperature in the room dropped colder than the night air.
Jack released a breath with a shudder, and it puffed silver white in the dim light from outside the window. The barn fell silent, even the creaking settling into nothing.
Something started glowing behind her, and they turned to face it. At first it seemed that the fog had somehow made its way inside, but the mist coalesced into something more, into the shape of a person. The form was that of a young woman, older than them but not more than twenty or so. She wore a tattered dress in a simple style from about twenty years ago, but that wasn’t the most startling thing about her.
They could see straight through her.
She drifted in place, floating inches off the ground in front of the work bench. Though the wind had disappeared after that single gust through the barn, her clothes seemed to blow behind her, billowing around her body.
“Lucy?” Jack whispered.
“I see it,” Lucy whispered back.
“What is it?”
“A ghost?”
Jack shuddered. A ghost on the farm? She’d never seen anything like this before. As far as she knew, the farm wasn’t haunted. She’d never even heard of an accident more serious than a broken arm or leg. Certainly nothing fatal.
The ghost stared at them for several long, chilling moments before drifting backwards through the wall of the workshop. The room fell back into darkness, the glow of the spirit gone and the electricity dead. But outside, it sounded as if the wind was increasing. And there was something else, something Jack couldn’t recognize.
“Come on,” Jack said, grabbing Lucy’s hand and pulling her through the dark.
The flashlight beam cut through the dark, illuminating a path through the barn and back to the farmyard. Outside, the yard was alight with the silver-blue glow of ghosts.
Ghosts filled the pumpkin patch, drifting among the clouds of low-lying fog, the curls and swirls of vines, the bright orange pumpkins. They seemed to float aimlessly, some moving along a path, others stationary. There were old, young, human, non-human, any variety of creature Jack could have imagined.
It seemed as if the entire spirit world had dumped itself out in her yard.
Jack clicked off her flashlight, now that it was working again, and ducked back into the relative protection of the barn. A small ghost cat drifted by, one she would recognize anywhere by the bright, star-shaped patch of white on her nose.
“Sammi?” she breathed.
The ghost cat turned slightly toward her and meowed, a faraway, echoing sound, before prancing along on its way. But rather than feeling frightened, Jack felt warmth spread through her from the cat’s response. Sammi had been close to her years ago, one of the few barn cats her mother allowed inside the house. She remembered staying up far too late, until the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs struck four, just playing with and petting that sweet old cat.
The sweet old cat who had passed away two years ago at the ripe old age of seventeen.
“What is this?” Lucy said softly, following Sammi with her eyes.
Jack’s mind raced through the possibilities. Nothing made sense except one thing: the seeds.
“Maybe,” she started slowly, “it’s the seeds. Maybe the key she meant was a key to the spirit world.”
“Or maybe it just unlocked whatever held them back,” Lucy said. Was that a quiver in her voice? Was Lucy afraid of ghosts? She wasn’t afraid of anything!
And yet, for some reason, even though Lucy trembled, Jack wasn’t scared. These ghosts didn’t seem dangerous. They were just living their afterlives. Right?
“It’s okay. We’ll be okay.” Jack held her hand toward Lucy. It was outlined in the silver ghost-glow, clearly visible, and Lucy grabbed it so tightly Jack half-feared it would cut off the circulation to her fingers.
Lucy didn’t respond other than that, but there wasn’t time. As if responding to some call they couldn’t hear, all the ghosts, including Sammi, began drifting in unison toward the trees. The wind pushed at their backs as if urging them on. Jack leaned forward, stepping partway into the yard as she strained to see to the end of the patch. She couldn’t quite make out where it ended or where the ghosts were bound, but before the trees, there was an odd yellow glow.
“What’s that?” Lucy said, pointing at the glow.
“Let’s find out,” Jack said, still feeling more fascinated than fearful.
She tugged at Lucy’s hand, but Lucy dug in her heels. “I don’t know about this, Jack. That’s a lot of ghosts. What if they’re dangerous?”
“What if they have something to do with whatever is supposed to save the farm?” Jack shot back.
Her heart fluttered again. She had to know what the old woman had meant, whether those seeds could possibly do something to save the farm.
The girls locked eyes, silently arguing for several long moments, until Lucy shifted back and forth on her feet a few times, rolling her eyes.
“Oh, fine,” she finally said. “Let’s give it a try. But at the first sign of trouble, we run, got it?”
“Sure, got it.”
“And maybe call the priest.”
Jack nodded. “We can try.”
“Try?”
Jack didn’t respond, but she grabbed Lucy’s hand again and pulled her into the mist. The mist parted around their feet, and the farther they walked from the barn, the stronger the wind pushed them toward the glow. Its howling increased to a moan, a sound that pierced to Jack’s heart and froze the marrow in her bones.
Jack glanced over her shoulder. They had only traveled a few steps, but the farmhouse suddenly seemed almost a mile behind them. And the edge of the patch was no closer.
The howling grew even more fierce. Maybe it wasn’t the wind after all.
They fell into line with a trio of young ghosts that looked like they had just left a ’90s boy band concert. The crinkles in their hair glinted with their glow, and they had star stickers stuck to their faces that glittered with every movement. But while Jack would have expected them to chatter with each other in excitement the way she’d seen on TV, they were silent, solemn, as they progressed through the field. In fact, there was no sound from the ghosts at all.
Nothing but that howling. And even the howling was turning more into a wail.
Jack glanced at Lucy. She was so pale that she could have been a ghost herself. And much as Jack hadn’t feared the ghosts, there was something about this howling that terrified her. It wasn’t like the spirits drifting toward the glow. There was something dark, dangerous, about it.
The ghosts began to slow, forming a circle around whatever was glowing. Even though they were all transparent, it was impossible to see anything except something that looked like a gargantuan pumpkin stem. There were simply too many of them, their otherworldly glow bright as they gathered.
A hush fell over the assembled spirits, the wailing echoing into silence so heavy it was suffocating. As if by some unheard signal, the spirits just in front of Jack and Lucy parted, leaving an opening just wide enough for them to see. If they really wanted to (which Jack certainly didn’t), they could squeeze through to the center.
As the ghosts moved out of the way, the largest pumpkin Jack had ever seen came into view. So it had been a pumpkin stem she saw over their heads! The pumpkin itself was light gold with vertical orange stripes and speckles, and it stood twice her height.
And seated on top of the pumpkin, facing away from them, was a hooded figure, a ragged gray dress poking out from beneath the cloak. She sat with legs crossed, gazing out toward the trees, which still seemed just as far away as they had when the girls had set out earlier. Long hair escaped the hood and waved back toward them in the wind, but, strangely, Jack couldn’t feel that wind anymore.
And then she began the wail again, a fearful melody that morphed into the most beautiful—and terrifying—song Jack had ever heard.
There was something wrong with this. Something that seemed familiar, like a nursery rhyme she knew from her childhood. One meant to be a warning, like so many of the real rhymes and fairy tales—not that idealized whimsy television and movies tried to make them out to be.
But whatever it was, she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
And then the woman rose on top of the pumpkin, still facing away from them. The song crescendoed, and Jack’s breath caught in her throat. It was so full, so rich, of a melody. But the notes sent chills down her arms, froze her blood in her veins.
This wasn’t right. This was dangerous.
She turned toward Lucy. “Come on, we should go.”
But Lucy wasn’t paying attention to her. Like the spirits, she stared up at the woman with her neck craned, expectantly awaiting... something.
The woman slowly turned, holding a sustained, keening note. Jack gasped as her face came into view. It was ghastly white, but more alarming were her eyes. They shone red, both with an unusual glow and the puffy redness of crying. Those scarlet eyes fixed on Lucy, and Lucy went limp as the woman pointed a long finger at her.
The world began to spin dizzyingly, and Jack sank to her knees. The cold, wet ground seeped through her jeans, but she barely felt it over the numbness that had already overtaken her from the woman’s singing.
She slumped to the side, seeing the woman floating slowly down from the pumpkin... straight for Lucy.
