1: The Misinformed Women, Part Three

Connie’s Convenient Convenience Store significant in Cierto because it was one of the eleven locally-owned establishments in town. Despite this, it wasn’t particularly visually interesting. It was square brick building with an ugly teal overhang and a sign with the store’s named painted plainly onto it. It had a large glass window on either side of the door, allowing one a look inside.

Given the time of day, the store was, of course, closed, and the area around it uncomfortably silent, with only a streetlight half a block away giving off any sort of consequential light. Often times a few drunk kids or a homeless person or two could be found there that early in the morning, but Andrew and Eugene lucked out. They were alone.

“It’s closed,” Eugene observed, and Andrew shot him a look that said “Thank you, Captain Obvious.” Eugene looked back to the store curiously. “So we’re breaking in, then?”

Andrew nodded. “The security system is out for the weekend,” he explained. He had thought about this a lot on the drive there. How he would do it, whether or not he could get away with it, et cetera, et cetera. It was very simple, there would only be one moderately hard part. But still, he found himself hesitant. If he’d had anything resembling a calm composure, it broke when he really thought about what he was about to do. “This is so messed up,” he whined. “This is illegal, this is my job.”

“This is our lives!” Eugene exclaimed. “They’re gonna - they’re gonna freaking kill us if we go back there! We’ve gotta do this passing thing, Andrew.”

Andrew held his head in his hands, racking his brains for any alternative. They could just move out, live somewhere else. Surely there’d be someone in town looking for two paying roommates, or, or. “We can call the police!”

“‘Oh hello, officer, the victims of the Roger Jenkins case just tried to kill us in our apartment, could you arrest them or perhaps defer us to the Ghostbusters? I think Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd could really give us a hand right now.’ Yeah, that’ll work out splendidly! They’ll think we’re high or something and I’d probably fail a Breathalyzer right now and oh god just break in and get us some candles already.”

Before Eugene had even finished talking Andrew had already resolved to go through with it. He took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and released it in an attempt to mimic Steven’s breathing technique and, to his surprise, it actually seemed to work. Feeling a bit more sure of himself, Andrew walked around the back of the store, and Eugene followed.

“There’s a loose brick around here somewhere,” he explained, kneeling down beneath one of the windows behind the store. “One of my co-workers stashes his pot here so he doesn’t have to bring it home.” He felt around for about twenty seconds before he found the right brick, but once he did, it came out without much of a fight. And then, brick in hand, he went back to the front of the store.

The window broke much more easily than Andrew would have imagined. He was expecting at least a second or third throw, but after just one the window collapsed in a rain of glass as the brick sailed into the darkness of the store. The hardest part was done. Andrew headed into the store, stepping carefully over the mess he’d made.

“That was so cool!” Eugene whispered as he followed suit.

The inside of Connie’s Convenient Convenience Store was just what you’d expect from such a place; there were a few rows of snacks and other cheap goods, displays containing things like batteries or iTunes gift cards, and back wall lined with refrigerators. It was rare for Andrew to be there when it was quite this dark or quite this quiet, and something about it made him even more uncomfortable than breaking in. He hadn’t seen a single person other than Eugene since the ghosts appeared and if it weren’t for the pain he’d have thought he was dreaming. He still hadn’t ruled out insanity.

Candles were located near the middle of the store, next to the extremely large “party sized” bags of Funyuns and Fritos. They were stout, cylindrical, and came in a variety of scents. Andrew took a handful of vanillas, pines, fresh sheets, and Marge’s Homemade Baked Pie (sponsored by Marge’s Homemade Baked Goods, one of Cierto’s other locally-owned businesses). Andrew put all the candles in a basket he had grabbed on the way over and handed them to Eugene, along with the note from that book back at the house. “Here, take these and put them in a circle near the front of the store like it says on this picture. I’m gonna go get a lighter.” As he started walking towards the counter, where the lighters would be, a thought stopped him. “Hey Eugene, where did you get that book, anyways?”

“The old hand-written one, right?” he asked. “Gilbert, the guy who lived there before us, requested that it be left in the apartment before he offed himself. Guess he knew about this stuff.”

Andrew didn’t say anything and went back to looking for a lighter. Mr. Davis knew about this stuff? And there were three ghosts in their apartment and a serial killer living beneath them? He didn’t see exactly how that all fit together, but if that was a coincidence, it was a damn big one, and one he was very thankful for, assuming this actually worked.

The lighters were very easy to locate; even in the darkness Andrew knew Connie’s Convenient Convenience Store like the back of his own hand. But just as he was about to grab one, the whole display began to shake a bit.Andrew recoiled in surprise and watched the display rack in horror as a box of cheerios fell and hit his head him from above. He cursed and turned around. Sure enough, more cereal was from the display behind him.

“What’s going on down there?” Eugene called.

“They’re here!” Andrew shouted. “They followed us, hurry up!”

Andrew reached for a lighter and, as he expected, an unseen force began pulling against him. This time, however, he was able to overpower it easily. So easily that when he yanked the lighter away from him he nearly fell down. Confused, he turned to look at the aisle behind him only to see that the cereal was moving at a snail’s pace, much like the book on Eugene’s bookshelf back at the apartment. When the ghost tried to lift it up, the cereal fell harmlessly out of its grip. Andrew let out a laugh. “Eugene, I don’t think they can hurt us here!” he said. “They’re dropping everything!”

Relieved, Andrew grabbed a second lighter and ran the short distance across the store to Eugene, to find that he had set up the circle, which was about two feet in diameter. Andrew tossed Eugene a lighter, and the two set to work lighting the candles as the aisles of the store shook furiously but harmlessly around them. The finished circle looked less impressive than Andrew had imagined in his head; it looked anything but supernatural as it glowed dimly in the moonlit store, releasing a peculiar mixture of aromas.

“I don’t think it worked,” Eugene said. Andrew had to agree. “I was expecting…I dunno, a light or something, or a chime, like in a game.”

“I guess we’ll have to start considering-” Andrew began to say, but they were both distracted by the faintly glowing form that appeared before them in the circle. She appeared gradually - as each part of her body entered the circle, it was made visible to them. The woman looked like somebody had splashed cold water on her. Andrew recognized her as the third ghost he had seen, the one who broke the mirror.

This ghost was clothed in a bath robe and slippers, and her hair was tied up in a bun. Her face was plump and, despite only looking to be in her middle thirties, plagued by some worry lines and wrinkles. The most notable thing about her - other than her being a ghost - was the stitches that went around her neck, as if holding her head to her body.

Now that he had a good look at her, Andrew knew why he recognized her, and he could hardly believe it. Just the way he’d heard her verbally described on numerous occasions probably would have been enough to recognize her, but he could never have forgotten the time he had seen her picture taped to a dartboard in Professor Wells’s office. “Oh my god,” Andrew said loudly. “Tracy Roth? Is that y-” Andrew’s question was cut off by a very loud pop followed by a rush of chilling air as Tracy blinked out of sight. Andrew’s vision suddenly went blurry and his head hurt for several seconds. When things cleared again, he found himself looking at the young girl he had seen in the mirror earlier. She was standing across from him, on the other side of the circle.

“Look what you did!” she yelled, looking rather horrified. “You just sent her to Oblivion! You’re the worst Sandman ever!”

“The worst what?” Andrew asked.

“Who are you talking to?” Eugene interjected, but Andrew ignored him.

“Oh now you can see me! Not before you send a poor woman to eternal…darkness, badness, whatever!”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t know what I just did.”

The girl sighed. “Saying her name activated The Passing, Dummy McDumbDumb. And if a ghost Passes without contentment in their heart or whatever they go to Oblivion instead of The After! God, how do you not know this stuff?!”

“Why the hell would I know any of this?!”

“Uh…Andrew, there’s nobody there,” Eugene said.

“So you’re seriously not the new Sandman? You aren’t here to replace Gilbert?” Andrew shook his head. The girl made a frustrated sound. “Well, suddenly all of this makes a lot more sense.”

“Well, I’m glad one of us thinks so,” Andrew said. It was about this time that Andrew noticed the other ghost in the store, the naked girl from before. She had ceased her mess-making and was staring at the scene unfolding, her expression a mix of anguish and fatigue. It was hard to tell because there were no tears, but it looked like she may have been crying. Again he noticed her bruising. Andrew looked back to the younger girl. “You said something about contentment? If I help her out before I do this, that’s better for her?”

She nodded. “Yes. She’ll go to The After. That’s what Death called it, anyways. It’s like Heaven, I guess.”

Andrew began walking towards the girl, who was hovering a few inches above the ground next to the trading card section. In a single fluid motion she floated a foot or two backwards. “Stay away!” she shouted, her voice hoarse and frightened.

“It wasn’t me,” Andrew said, trying his best to sound soothing. “I didn’t do this to you. Neither of us did.”

“I remember,” the girl sobbed. “I remember I remember I remember I-” she stopped talking for several moments and just stared at Andrew. “I saw what you did to her.”

“I can help,” Andrew insisted, taking another step toward her. She didn’t back away this time. “What’s your name?”

“He said he was going to help me,” she said, her face contorted with despair and the horror of recalling a memory that Andrew couldn’t fathom, and hoped he never would. “He said he would help me and then he hurt me and I woke up except I wasn’t me anymore and I remember I remember I remember.” Andrew tried to speak but she interrupted. “I remember he said, he said that he’d hurt others and that he wanted to hurt others and you can’t let him. He was so. He’s a monster. I remember…I remember.”

Andrew took another step towards her to make sure she was comfortable, and then he bridged the gap between them entirely. He reached out to her and she flinched away, but then relaxed and allowed him to place his hand where her shoulder should have been. The air was colder where she was, and it wasn’t quite solid but it wasn’t quite nothing, either. He shivered, both at the temperature and at the embarrassed realization that he was touching the shoulder of an attractive naked person under what was admittedly the least erotic circumstance possible.

“He’s gone,” he assured her. She looked at him, her eyes wide and her body trembling. “He’s in prison now, and they know what he did. He’s gone, and he’s not going to hurt anybody anymore.”

She stared at him blankly for a moment, and then she looked like she was going to cry again. “He’s gone?”

Andrew nodded. “Yes.”

It was quiet for what felt like at least a full minute. The young woman looked over his shoulder. “That thing you did. To the other one. What did you do? I heard that other girl say…Heaven? Did you really send her to Heaven?” Andrew nodded, knowing full well he was lying. Or at least, he was pretty sure he was. He wasn’t entirely understanding everything that was going on. “Can…can you do that for me, too?”

Andrew nodded again. He took her by the hand, useless though that gesture may have been, and led her over to the candles. He saw that Eugene was staring at his reflection in the remaining window in front of the store. The younger girl was standing next to him, and presumably he could see her in the reflection because they were talking about something. Andrew didn’t really understand how seeing a ghost in a mirror allowed you to hear them as well, but he also didn’t understand how there could be ghosts or magic candle circles and honestly he was a little unclear on gravity so he really didn’t question it.

At his instruction, the naked girl stepped into the circle, and Eugene and the younger girl turned around to see what was going on. Eugene, realizing that he couldn’t actually see any of it, went back to looking at the reflection.

Rather than reacting as though struck by a sudden chill, the naked girl looked kind of flushed. “It’s…warm,” she said. “Nice.”

“You did it!” the younger girl exclaimed. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like when you go to The After.”

“Heaven,” Andrew explained. The naked girl nodded, looking confused, but no longer scared. She was calm. “What’s your name?”

“Jennifer,” she said. “Jennifer Crawley.”

“J-jennifer Crawley,” Andrew repeated, trying and failing to sound official. He cleared his throat. “Jennifer Crawley.”

Jennifer smiled at him. “It’s so warm. It’s…thank you.”

She vanished soundlessly, and for a moment everything felt a few degrees warmer and the the room looked clear as day. In that brief moment, Andrew’s fatigue was forgotten. He felt warm and safe and comfortable and rested and he couldn’t say how but he knew that must be what The After felt like. Then things returned to normal and the feeling faded. Andrew shivered.

“That was awesome,” Eugene deadpanned.

Andrew turned his attention to the younger girl. “Your turn?” he asked.

She looked surprised at the notion, but she nodded, and took a wary step into the circle of candles. Her eyes widened with fright as soon as she stepped in. “No!” she shrieked and jumped back out of the circle. Her motion had more physical weight to it than the other ghosts’. She looked at Andrew and Eugene to find them staring at her.

“I…uh. It was cold. I’m not ready yet,” she said somberly. But she shook her head and smiled. “But hey, I don’t mind sticking around for a while if you don’t mind having me.” Andrew shot a look at Eugene, who was still watching the scene unfold from the reflection. He shrugged.

“Have you got a name?” Andrew asked.

“Millicent,” she replied. “Or Millie. Or Cent. Or Mill. Or M. I’m not picky I guess but I’m pretty partial to the first two.”

“Millie,” Andrew laughed.

He took a look about the store, surveying the damages. Apart from the window there was nothing awful, but the ghosts made a pretty big mess, and he did not envy whoever had the next morning shift.

“We should clean up,” Eugene said. Andrew looked at him like he was crazy. “They technically saved our lives and we broke their window. We owe them.”

“But I’m tired,” Andrew whined. “And I’m still in my boxers. And I just sent a ghost to Hell or whatever and come on, man we earned a good night’s sleep.”

Eugene sighed. “Fine. But I’m at least paying for the candles.” He reached for his wallet and walked to the counter.

When he returned, he and Andrew headed out to the car with Millie following after them, whistling an old-sounding song he did not recognize. They both had a lot of questions, but as the adrenaline faded and the night’s events really hit them, they decided the questions could wait until morning. He may have had a ghost whistling showtunes in the back seat, but all Andrew could think about was getting a good night’s sleep on the uncomfortable couch in his new haunted apartment.

     Steven would pay for this.