by Jeyn Roberts
“Go,” he says.
Tatum swallows heavily and takes a deep breath. She grabs the keys and turns, running toward the SUV before Claudette can compose herself enough to give chase. But something makes her stop.
Molly.
She can’t do it. She has to find her. Tatum is the only reason Molly is there. They have to escape together. Turning, she runs off in the direction of where she thinks her friend might be.
The barn.
She spots Molly on the ground by the dilapidated doors. Tatum doesn’t know what to do. How can she save Molly from something she can’t even see? Maybe she doesn’t have to. Remnants only go after ghosts, right? If she can put herself between Molly and them, maybe that’ll buy Molly some extra time to get away.
“Molly! Come on, I’ve got the keys.”
“Get away.”
“Not without you.”
She’s about to grab Molly’s hand when someone shoves up against her, pushing her to the ground. It’s Levi; he’s appeared out of nowhere. Grinning from ear to ear, he’s breathing heavily and trying to grab her breast in the process.
“Get off of me,” she hisses.
“I knew you were a slut,” Levi sneers.
She manages to wrestle herself free and crawl toward Molly, who reaches for her to help her up. The only problem is that they’re completely surrounded now. Molly has her invisible demons, and Tatum has Levi. They’re going to have to fight their way out.
“Let’s do this.”
The second the words are out of her mouth, she feels something press against her body. Something trying to get inside. It’s the strangest feeling, like she’s being doused in both hot and cold liquids at the same time. One part of her feels like she’s jumped into a lake after a sweltering day. The other half is snuggled up under a blanket while snow falls on the mountain outside her cabin window. The feelings are contradictory, but at the same time they make perfect sense. The presence pushes its way in, and suddenly her eyes are blinking without her permission. She watches her hand reach toward Molly. Struggling, Tatum forces it back down.
“Are you going to let her just do that to you?” someone whispers, but the words are coming from inside her brain.
It would be easy; all she has to do is walk over to Claudette and slap her. Fighting back. Why hasn’t she thought about that before? Claudette may be strong, but so is she. Equal. The warmth is now spreading through her system, making her muscles spasm and weaken. It’s as if someone has draped an electric blanket over her skin, tucked her in nice and tight. All she has to do is close her eyes and she’ll be dreaming of better places than where she is.
Hit her. Hurt her. Get revenge. Make her bleed.
No, she thinks. The words echo in her mind. “NO!”
Mentally, she sees herself standing in front of the Remnant that’s trying to invade her body. A young man, not older than twenty. Long hair spills across his shoulders. He’s dressed in nineties grunge clothing: plaid shirt, steel-toed boots, dirty jeans. His chin has the beginnings of a goatee.
“You can’t make me,” she says. “This isn’t about Claudette anyway. It’s about Molly.”
“Why do you even want to bother with that ghost?” the man says. His eyes are bright blue, almost neon. They glow inside his sockets. She half expects laser beams to come shooting out. “Give her to us and we’ll go away. We don’t want you or your friends. You’re just playthings to us.”
“You can’t have her,” Tatum says. “I won’t let you.”
“Why do you care?”
“She’s my friend.”
“She’s a haunter. She has no friends.”
“You’re wrong.”
It takes every ounce of energy in her body, more than any she’s ever needed. She’s never concentrated or wanted anything so badly before in her entire life. She imagines herself pushing this man, shoving him so hard that he flies back to the nineties.
Tatum’s eyes open.
She’s alone in her body.
And she can now see the Remnants. Dozens of them with their faceless souls watching her. The nineties Remnant is on the ground by her feet. She recognizes it only because of the stupid boots. The rest of it is slowly sinking into the ground. She turns to Molly, who is watching her with a look of utter surprise on her face.
“Did you know they can do that? Get inside us?”
Molly shakes her head.
“That’s what they’re doing to the others,” Tatum says. “They’re getting them to fight each other. They think it’s funny. Can we stop them?”
“Yes,” Molly says. “Knock them down. They have trouble getting back up.”
“Let’s do it.”
They stand side by side, waiting for the Remnants to make the next move. The closest one, standing right next to Levi, steps to the side and through him. Levi stiffens and tilts his head as if he’s listening. Slowly a grin forms on his face. His eyes stay on Tatum.
“That’s not good,” Molly says.
“I’ve got the keys,” Tatum says. “Maybe it’s time to split.”
“Yeah,” Molly says.
They turn together, pushing their way through the crowd, and it’s almost too easy. The Remnants are backing off and not giving chase. They make it to the fire before coming to a dead stop. Molly reaches out and grabs Tatum’s hand.
More Remnants are coming out of the woods. Dozens and dozens of them. But instead of coming straight for Molly, they’re brushing up against the partiers instead. Tatum watches as one passes through one of the boys. He stiffens, turns, and punches the kid next to him.
“What the hell, bro?” The boy shoves back. Within seconds, they’re rolling on the ground, punching each other while others cheer them on.
Tatum spots Claudette. She’s screaming at Graham. Tatum can’t hear the conversation, but she’s pretty sure Claudette doesn’t have as much support as she had a few minutes ago. Graham looks disgusted. Juniper is in tears.
Meanwhile, the frantic fighting of teenagers is getting out of control. Influenced by the Remnants, the kids are practically tearing each other apart. Tatum watches two girls team up against a boy, beating him down to the ground, where they kick at him. She spots one of the girls from her English class, bleeding from a cut above her eye and digging her hands deep into the hair of another.
These are the kids who have made Tatum’s life miserable, but she can’t run away and leave them. Not like this. She glances at Molly, hoping she might be able to offer a solution, but she can tell Molly doesn’t have a clue what to do either. Maybe they can lure the Remnants away. Maybe if they leave, whatever spell they hold will be broken.
Juniper is suddenly beside Tatum, her eyes swollen with tears.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
So not the time for an apology.
“She told me if I didn’t go along with her, she’d do the exact same thing to me,” Juniper says.
Tatum knows this is a lie. No, Juniper didn’t need to be blackmailed into taking Claudette’s side. She did it for the same reason everyone else did: Claudette is the popular girl. She’s the princess. She’s the one the lemmings follow.
But this isn’t the time for a full-on confession.
“Take these!” Tatum tries pressing the keys into Juniper’s hands. They drop on the ground and Juniper reaches down to pick them up.
“Get out of here, Juniper,” Tatum says. “Go back to town and get help.”
“But—”
“Just get Scott to safety. Get help.”
Juniper looks like she wants to argue, but she notices that a group of angry teens is steadily moving toward them. She reluctantly nods, then loads Scott into the SUV before climbing into the driver’s seat. She hesitates, but Tatum screams at her again.
“Go! Get help!”
Levi reaches the SUV first. His fingers scratch along the hood as Juniper screams. She puts the machine in reverse and peels rubber. Soon she and Scott are nothing but fading red lights as th
ey head off toward the highway.
“Just you and me now,” Tatum says as she turns to Molly. “We can’t leave. You understand, right?”
“What a pair we make,” Molly says. “And no, we can’t leave. We’re responsible. We have to finish it.”
“Let’s make them regret messing with us, okay?”
“Deal.”
They stand their ground as the Remnants slowly move in.
“What happens if they get you?” Tatum asks.
“I become one of them, I think. That’s what happened to Mary.”
Tatum thinks back to the incident at the marsh when she watched Mary disappear. Now she knows the truth, and she’s going to do everything she can to make sure this doesn’t happen to Molly. But how? There have got to be at least a hundred Remnants closing in the gap. Tatum can only throw herself in front of so many at a time. Yes, she managed to keep the one from influencing her, but it took almost all her mental energy. She’s not sure if she can do it again. If more than one of them comes at her at the same time, she knows she’s going to be toast. She’ll turn against Molly whether she wants to or not.
“Got any great plans?” Tatum asks.
“I’d suggest running,” Molly says. “But I think we’re beyond that.”
“Wait,” Tatum says. “You can go back, right? Get out of here. Leave them to me. They can’t hurt me the way they can hurt you. Maybe they’ll grow bored if you leave and they’ll take off. The fighting might stop.”
Molly turns and takes Tatum’s hand. “I can’t do that. You’re in this because of me. If I hadn’t taken that stupid premonition so seriously, I wouldn’t have put you in any of this danger. Don’t you get it? It was a test. Some sort of stupid test and I failed it. I made this happen.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I should have known.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
They both pause. There’s not a lot of time left. In less than a minute, they’ll both be fighting for their lives.
“I think the afterlife sucks,” Tatum says. “Whether it’s God or some flying monster who likes spaghetti.”
“It was getting better,” Molly says. “My world. We found everything we’d forgotten. It truly was improving.”
“You never did tell me your story,” Tatum says.
“If we get out of this, it’ll be the first thing I do.”
“I’m done waiting,” Tatum says. She lets go of Molly’s hand and picks up a thick stick from the ground. The edges are charred from being in the fire. “Time to fight. I’m not dying today. I have to get out of this hellhole of a town first.”
Tatum charges. She rushes past the fire and straight into the crowd of approaching Remnants. She drives her stick straight into the chest of the closest one, trying to impale it. The stick breaks against the pale skin, but not before the Remnant stumbles and falls. It hits the ground and instantly begins to sink.
One down. Ninety-nine or more to go.
Tatum starts shoving. She doesn’t look back at Molly, but she knows the ghostly girl is there when a Remnant falls beside her. It flails against the dirt, almost as if it’s making muddy snow angels, before quickly sinking out of sight. Someone grabs the back of Tatum’s jacket. It’s the guy from English class. They’re all influenced by the Remnants, all her classmates, and that makes her feel a little better. At least she knows it’s the monsters making them behave homicidally, and not their stupid loyalty to Claudette. Tatum pulls away from him, dodging the punch he aims at her face. But she can’t bring herself to hit him back; it seems wrong, considering he’s not in control of himself. Instead she backs away, holding the stick above her shoulders to show she means business.
This isn’t so hard. Once the Remnants are down, they don’t get back up. But more are coming; it’s getting harder to keep up. Tatum manages to do a double tripper, by pushing two of them against each other. A hand snakes around her waist, pulling Tatum tight. Trying to break free, she twists until she’s down on her knees. Three Remnants fall upon her, and Tatum can feel them trying to invade her mind and body at the same time.
Go get the girl. Make her pay.
It’s like a gigantic tug-of-war going on inside her body. All three creatures are fighting to take control first, mentally slapping one another, trying to force the others out. Tatum’s head spins, her eyesight growing blurry as she fights for herself.
Then something miraculous happens.
Someone screams.
Tatum freezes. The Remnant holding on to her hair looks up, just in time to get a baseball bat right across its face. It begins to disintegrate into the ground.
Strike!
More shouts echo across the clearing. Tatum manages to shrug off the last Remnant, mostly because it’s too busy watching the scene unfold around them. It falls back and sinks, one more gone to wherever these monsters go.
There are people everywhere. No, not quite people. Ghosts. They rush through the bushes, spreading out around the Remnants and confused teens, forcing their way into the melee.
“Parker!” Molly gets up off the ground. Her skirt is covered in dirt, and she’s got a cut on her cheek. “How is it possible? I made you go.”
“I was wrong,” Parker says. “It’s not about the energy needing to recharge. It’s about necessity. I hope you don’t mind—I brought some friends.”
A lady rushes past them with a white fluffy dog at her heels. She’s got a leash in her hands and she’s using it as a whip. She smashes the metal clasp right into the face of the closest Remnant, forcing its head to snap back in surprise. A girl dressed in a school uniform rushes in, flying straight into a pack of the creatures, screaming like a banshee in Japanese. Tatum’s pretty sure she’s using a steady stream of curse words.
These people are ghosts. From the look on Molly’s face, she can tell her friend knows them. She’s beaming at Parker like he’s just done the greatest thing in the world. And from Tatum’s perspective, it’s true. The Remnants are starting to back off, overwhelmed by the number of ghosts pushing into the clearing. They pull back from the teenagers, leaving bewildered students to pick themselves up off the ground and look around blankly. A girl beside Tatum is alternating between crying with loud, ugly sounds, and mumbling about how her outfit is ruined. She’s positive she’s going to be grounded when she gets home.
A Chinese man picks up a smoking log and throws it like it’s a pillow. A dark-skinned boy in rags grabs hold of a Remnant’s arm and shoves the creature face-first into a tree. A group of Remnants manages to get a girl in eighties rocker gear to her knees, but before they can convert her, other ghosts come to her rescue. When she climbs to her feet, she screams in victory and plays some air guitar riffs.
The area in front of the barn has gone into complete overdrive chaos.
“They’re falling back!” Molly screams.
And they are. The Remnants are retreating, heading toward the trees, running as if their afterlives depend on it. Tatum trips one that gets too close. It goes down in silent screams.
Tatum spins around, hoping to get another one before they’re all gone. There are still plenty fighting. Instead she comes face to face with Levi.
“It’s not over,” he hisses.
Stabbing pain rushes through Tatum’s body. She staggers back, away from Levi, looking down at her chest. Something silver is sticking through her shirt, right in the middle of her stomach. Suddenly she’s falling, and she isn’t aware that her legs have stopped working until she hits the ground.
Levi stumbles back, his hands covering his mouth, wiping Tatum’s blood all over his lips. “You deserve everything you get,” he says.
Lying on her back, looking up at the sky, Tatum is surprised that she can’t see the stars. There are only clouds up there and a bunch of smoke from the fire. She tries to raise her head, but the pain is too severe. Using her hands, she feels along her body until she finds the end of the knife, sticking straight up. Tatum tries
to pull it out, but the pain stops her.
Molly is down at her side in seconds.
“Tatum, no,” she says. Molly presses her hands against Tatum’s wound, possibly to try and stop the bleeding. It only makes things hurt more, but Tatum can’t get her mouth open to tell Molly to stop. Wetness drips down her side, uncomfortably cold; suddenly her teeth are chattering, and she can’t control them. The uncontrollable shivering only makes things that much worse.
“Ouch,” Tatum whispers, unable to think of anything else.
Maybe they’re drawn to the smell of blood or the fact that she’s dying, but suddenly the Remnants stop their fighting and begin pushing their way toward Tatum and Molly. Even the ones that are slowly sinking into the ground start clawing their way back up to the surface.
“Hold on,” Molly says. She gathers Tatum in her arms, surprisingly strong for being so tiny.
Molly drags her through the crowd, dodging Remnants and the fighting ghosts. Hands reach out and grab at her, tearing at Tatum’s clothes, reaching for her hair. Molly tries to push them back, but it’s nearly impossible without dropping Tatum. Then Parker appears at their side, sweat soaking his hair and fancy shirt.
“Get her somewhere safe,” Parker says.
“Phone,” Tatum mumbles.
“What?”
“Call for help. Phone. Kids.”
“Yes,” Molly says, finally understanding. “One of those kids has to have a cell phone. I’ve seen them. We can call for help.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
Parker disappears.
“Come on, Tatum,” Molly says. “Don’t leave me.”
Tatum wants to sleep, but Molly’s voice is loud and clear through all that fog. Tatum closes her eyes for a prolonged period, just a small rest before having to deal with everything again. The pain is gone now, replaced by numbness. She’s in shock, she assumes, and it’s not really so bad. So much better than the stabbing pain tearing apart her stomach. Why does Mom always talk about shock like it’s dangerous? She can’t remember. It’s actually quite refreshing, a nice change.
“Tatum, stay awake. Please.”
She opens her eyes.
They’re in the barn.