The cemetery gates creak as I squeeze through. Flanked by tall trees and four pillars standing like sentinels, a wide path winds its way into darkness. Nearby, there’s a small wooden gatehouse with shuttered windows. Beyond, the path branches off into densely wooded areas dotted with dozens of tombstones.
“Why the heck did she come in here alone?” Emma says.
“I was chasing her,” Matthew says breathlessly. He glares at Erin’s raised eyebrow. “Not like that. She was upset because we had a stupid argument, and she ran off. We need to find her!”
“Maybe she just tripped?” Charlotte says hopefully. I hope that she’s right. Beatrix is one of the good ones, even if she is dating that idiot with the muscles. I hate the thought that something’s happened to her. It’s enough to push my own problems to the back of my mind, if only for a few minutes.
“Or whoever’s behind Rose’s ghost has got her, and based on the shit they’ve been pulling, I don’t trust them not to hurt her!” Matthew says.
“Rose is behind Rose’s ghost,” I say quietly. I’m trying to convince myself at this stage.
“If someone took her, they can’t have gone far. Let’s separate and find her,” Erin says.
Matthew nods and points shakily at a box. “We brought some flashlights for the original game, so everyone grab one.”
We each take a flashlight and turn them on. The faint light isn’t as comforting as I’d hoped.
“Wait, shouldn’t we stick together?” Emma says, eyeing the darkness nervously.
Matthew ignores her. “Charlotte and Emma, you’re with me. Erin, Amber, and Grayson, you go that way.” He points into thick foliage where there’s barely a path.
“As if.” Amber laughs. “Erin and I will come with you, Matthew.”
Matthew’s jaw hardens, but he gives a tight nod. “Fine,” he mutters. “Emma, Charlotte, you go with Grayson.”
“Seriously?” Emma says, glaring at me. “We get him?”
Charming. It’s like being at elementary school again. Always the last to be picked for a team.
Matthew jogs away with the Loves at his heels. That leaves me, Charlotte, and Emma.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m tougher than I look.”
Emma gives me a glare of disgust. “Let’s find Beatrix and get out of here,” she says.
“What do you think’s happened to her?” Charlotte whispers, sticking close to me as we walk.
“She’s probably fallen over a bush,” Emma grumbles. “I can’t believe we’re in here searching for her when…”
I glance at her. “When what?”
“Nothing,” she mumbles, speeding up. Her eyes dart anxiously around.
A distant scream makes us stop.
I turn on the spot, sweeping my flashlight’s insubstantial beam of light at my surroundings. Bushy trees have already risen to surround us. Among the overgrown foliage are a number of mostly obscured graves. Long woody creepers cling to tree trunks like tentacled monsters. Overhead, fine branches are skeletal fingers that reach down to scratch at my hair.
It’s creepy as fuck.
Dead leaves feel squishy underfoot as we trip between shrubs left to grow wild. Small patches of sky are visible through the canopy, bleeding slashes of moonlight onto the ground.
I see something on one of the long-abandoned graves. I bend down. It’s a femur, glowing with an eerie light. I touch it with a shaky finger and realize it’s not actually there. It’s a projection via my smart glasses. The bone vanishes, and my score goes up by five points.
“Not fair,” Charlotte says. “You got there before I could.”
“Seriously?” Emma says. “You still care about points?”
“I care about Anton,” she says.
As I straighten, I notice that Emma’s picked up a heavy branch to brandish as a weapon. I’m not sure what she thinks she might meet in here. “Careful where you’re waving that thing,” I joke.
She doesn’t laugh, just tightens her fingers on the branch. “You never know what you’re going to find,” she says quietly.
“And yet here you are, doing all of this for a school newspaper,” I say, not meaning it to come out quite so sharply.
“And here you are. Trying to prove yourself to your dead ex-girlfriend,” she says. “Therapy would be safer. Come on. I think Beatrix’s scream came from over here.”
She rounds a corner and comes to a sudden halt. A ghost is drifting a few inches above the ground like a cloak hanging on a peg. Its fiery eyes are closed, as if in suspended animation.
Charlotte screams, then immediately claps a hand over her mouth. It’s too late. I have enough time to glare at her before the ghost shudders and awakens, fixing those burning eyes right on us. Then it unhinges its jaw and launches itself with claw-hands outstretched.
“Run!” I yell.
In retrospect, shouting wasn’t the most sensible idea because the noise summons more ghosts. The three of us race down the paths, ducking aside as slashing claws try to swipe at us. Every time Charlotte screams, more ghosts seem to join the chase.
“Stop flipping screaming,” I say from between gritted teeth.
“I can’t help it.” Charlotte sobs. “It’s a reflex reaction.”
My heart beats so hard I can hear it. There’s a visceral terror to being chased, even though the ghosts aren’t real. I’m hating every second of it. But this game is my only link to Rose. I need to see her again. I need to hear what else she has to reveal about her murder. I’m so close.
“Can’t you exorcise them like before?” I gasp.
“That’s not how Sleeping Ghosts works. You have to outrun them for two minutes.”
So I run, uncoordinated limbs tangling, constantly on the verge of falling. Emma’s faster than me, and Charlotte throws herself over tombstones and through bushes with a seemingly unstoppable determination. Soon, they’ve put several yards between me and them. They don’t have to outrun the ghosts; they just have to outrun me.
I’m forced to duck as another ghost lunges. I roll to the ground, kicking up stinky leaves and lumps of mulch. When I scramble to my feet, the two girls are gone, racing off into the trees. A ghost dives at me with its cloak streaming behind it. Smoke billows from its open mouth.
I race under a stone archway with big Egyptian pillars on each side. I find myself on a curved path around a crescent-shaped row of mini stone houses. There’s another ghost up ahead, so I move to double back, but that’s a no-go too. I’m blocked in. All I can do is press myself into a dark gaping doorway and stay as silent as possible.
I figure I’m a goner, but then the ghosts slow down and vanish. I made it. Somehow. I push myself out of the doorway and, as quietly as possible, follow the path, taking more care to watch out for the ghosts. I haven’t gone far though, when my foot squelches in something. I shine my flashlight at the ground.
The mud’s wet, but I can’t see where any water could have come from. Then I notice dark splashes up the pale stone wall next to me. Blood. There’s so much of it, sprayed in long spurts across the bricks. My stomach churns as my mind conjures images of blood spreading across white tiles, so much of it that it trickles along the cracks.
I lift my flashlight higher. Written above a doorway are the words: Where was all the blood?
I stagger backward, nearly slipping on the mushy puddle. I want to believe it’s a trick, that the blood’s not real. But it smells like a butcher’s shop, gamey and metallic. There’s a trail of bloody handprints smeared onto the walls, as if someone was dragging themselves along. I follow the trail with my shaky flashlight beam. It leads down some stone steps descending beneath an arched entrance. A metal gate stands slightly open.
“Hello? Beatrix?” I whisper, but no one answers.
I creep down the steps. The handprints become less frequent. Through the archway, there’s a long tunnel with little alcoves off to the sides. Each is full of square plaques, some of which are missing to reveal coffin-sized holes in the wall. It’s a catacomb or a crypt—I’m not sure of the difference. Somewhere dead people are kept.
I think about turning back, but I can’t abandon Beatrix if she’s in trouble. I advance slowly. A shuffling noise makes me pause. There’s something hiding behind a brick pillar. Not a ghost. Whatever this is, I can hear it breathing.
I creep closer. The breathing stops. They know I’m here. I freeze. I want to run away, but I am too scared to move. Suddenly, a shape leaps out from behind the pillar. I stumble backward and fall. The figure screams, brandishing a chunk of rock like a weapon.
There’s so much blood. Thick red drips run down their face, and more is soaked into their clothes. Their hair—two long braids—is sodden. It takes me longer than it should to realize that it’s Beatrix.
“Whoa, whoa, it’s me. Grayson,” I say. A message flashes on my lens. Winner, winner, winner. I’m briefly furious with Rose. The girl I knew would never play such a mean trick.
Beatrix lowers the rock. “It’s you,” she whispers. Her chest is heaving. “I was so scared.”
“Who did this to you?” I take her hands, even though they’re sticky and slippery. “Where’s the blood coming from? Are you hurt?”
How can she not be hurt? It doesn’t make sense.
“It’s not my blood. I got a message with some coordinates, but when I got there, someone had rigged a bucket of blood to fall on my head. I panicked and hid down here because I didn’t know what to do.” Her voice cracks and she starts to sob.
“It’s OK. I think the game’s over.” I help her sit against the wall, and use my sleeve to wipe some of the blood from her face. There’s so much that I can taste its bitterness in the air.
“What’s going on, Grayson?” she says. She’s shivering. I push her soaking hair off her forehead. She rests her head against my chest, her temple against my sternum. I wonder if she can feel how fast my heart is beating.
“There was a message on the wall. Where was all the blood? I guess you found it,” I joke.
She sits back and tilts her head so that her throat’s exposed, the only clean part of her. “I found her, you know? The water was pale pink with her blood.”
I clench my teeth. I don’t want to picture Rose dead, but I can’t help it.
“And Rose’s ghost was right; I didn’t call the police immediately. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to find Matthew first. And that decision haunts me to this day, even though she was already dead, and I couldn’t have helped her even if I’d called an ambulance right away.”
“What about the cleaning products?” I choke out. “You were seen carrying cleaning products that morning near the pool house.”
She fixes me with this hurt, surprised look. “I walked past the pool house, but I didn’t go in. Anton got drunk and was sick in his studio, so I cleaned it up before anyone else saw. That’s what I do. I take care of my mess of a brother, night and day.”
She starts to cry, resting her forehead against her blood-soaked knees.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I put an arm around her shoulder, and she nestles into me. “I really wasn’t accusing you. I’m… Tonight has been a lot.”
“I know,” she says, her voice muffled. “I didn’t mean to take it out on you. It’s not your fault.”
I stretch my legs in front of me. The tunnel is so narrow that I can almost touch the opposite side.
“Why are they doing this?” Beatrix says, getting her tears under control, save for the occasional hiccup.
“Revenge, I suppose.”
“You still think it’s Rose, don’t you?”
I don’t know how to answer that.
“Whoever it is, they were right. I was jealous of Rose.” She sighs sadly. “God, it feels like they’re taunting us. Trying to humiliate us.”
I nod. I had the same thought. Only that doesn’t sound like Rose. Either she came back different, or… No, I don’t want to think about this.
Beatrix shakes herself and fakes a businesslike expression. “We should find the others. Matthew won’t be happy that I went off by myself—and look what happened!” She gestures to her blood-soaked clothes.
“It’s hardly your fault.”
“I doubt he’ll see it that way.” She sighs. “We had an argument.”
“What about?”
“Nothing important. I don’t like the way he looks at Erin Love. I can’t help but think there’s something between them. Have you noticed that?”
I can’t say that I have. “You don’t need to be jealous of Erin. You—” I can feel my cheeks heating. “Well, you’re…you know, OK.”
She raises an eyebrow, smirking at me. “That made me feel so much better.”
“Beautiful. I meant to say beautiful.”
She bursts out laughing, both of us blushing furiously. “That’s high praise coming from the boy who dated Rose Tavistock.”
I remember we’ve not really spoken since Rose outed me with that horrific love letter. “I’m sorry I lied to you.”
“I’m not angry,” she says quickly, “but I’m slightly confused about why you’re here.”
“Revenge,” I say truthfully. “I wanted to ruin Anton’s contest. It’s not fair that he gets to start over when it was his world that got her killed.”
“It was her world too, you know?” she says, watching me closely for my response.
I smile ruefully. “When I met Rose, she had braces and frizzy hair, and her favorite thing in the world was reading. It was only after Anton got his hands on her that she changed.”
“That’s not how I remember her. She was always so confident and together, the whole time I knew her. Every man she met fell at her feet.” Her face suddenly darkens.
I nudge her knee with mine. “If it’s any consolation, I literally just fell at your feet. In terror, admittedly. But it’s something.”
“You’re ridiculous.” She returns my smile, then narrows her eyes at me. “But I’m pretty sure your girlfriend wouldn’t approve.”
She says girlfriend like it’s a question.
I clear my throat. “Um, no girlfriend,” I say. I don’t know why, but it feels like a betrayal. Rose is dead. Even if it is her ghost, I need to accept that I’m never getting her back. I have to let her go. My whole body sags into the ground at the realization.
Right then, the gate bangs open, and a flashlight beam finds us. I look away from Beatrix’s gold-flecked eyes in time to see Matthew standing in the tunnel. “What the hell have you done to my girlfriend?” he cries.