Morningstar 💫🦇 Peter Parker (Discontinued)

𝖎𝖛. Grim Grinning Ghosts

       "But maybe 'cause it's too much h—up there energy." She points up, towards the ceiling. Obviously she doesn't mean the ceiling, though, which is what her brother would say.

       "Holiness?"

       "Yeah."

       "Maybe we should just make you meet an angel, and then if that's fine, you'll be able to contact the Pope," says Nate. "Can you let me know when he's coming, though? Dad loves him, has a calendar and everything."

       Isabelle looks at Nate quizzically.

       "So your plan, to help these ghosts, is to find a—winged thingie—" This means angel. "—see if I can speak to the—" She coughs. Apparently she can't say Pope either. Cool. "—without dying, and then, ask him to banish the ghosts?"

       Nate nods. "Sounds all right."

       Isabelle gives him a look.

       "Or, you could speak to your dad."

       "How would I do that?" says Isabelle.

       "It's easy," says Nate. "Get a Ouija board. There's all those YouTube videos about people accidentally summoning the devil, but like for you it'll work out all right."

      Isabelle sits up right, disturbing Cerberus, who lifts his head, and then goes back to sleep. She slips off of her bed, starting to pace up and down her bedroom, from the Clueless poster on the back of her door, to the window overlooking the side-street. (The view of the park's in the living room and kitchen, unfortunately.)

       "What we need is a way to figure this out... There's nothing on the internet about the house, apart from that it's haunted and Buzzfeed Unsolved did an episode there once. But like, even they didn't know... We need to look around, maybe, to see if there's anything in the house that could tell us what's going on—wait!"

       She stops pacing.

       "We know something!" she lets out.

       Nate raises an eyebrow. "We do?"

       "We do!" she says.

       Nate frowns. "... What?"

       "They died during a wedding!" says Isabelle, and a smile appears across her face, not because she's happy they died, but rather, happy that she knows something. "That makes it easier, right? Because that could mean that the wedding caused the bloodbath, because the ghosts looked like they had been fighting... Maybe the families were unfriendly, maybe the bride ran and the families fought... I don't remember seeing anyone in a big white dress, so..."

       "Wait — you didn't see the bride?" says Nate.

       Isabelle shakes her head no.

       "You didn't look around the rest of the house, maybe there are other ghosts," says Nate. "Maybe you could talk to them. Ghosts are restless spirits, right? Meaning ones that are evil or some shit... They're gonna go to where your dad's from, maybe they'll speak to you."

       "OK," says Isabelle. "Come with me, though?"

       Nate refuses to go inside the house, but he tags along, standing outside on the grass with Cerberus — or, at least, until Cerberus follows Isabelle into the house. Quickly — and by this, Isabelle means the second she lands into the house — Isabelle realises that she didn't close the ballroom door properly, and now the entire house is covered with ghosts fighting. She gets back outside, feeling defeated.