Arielle and Stella stumbled out of the Eastern State Penitentiary so fast, their legs were sore and throbbing. Shaken beyond belief, Stella spat out her guts in a trash-can by the parking lot, and Arielle steadied herself against her car. Hands trembling so much she had difficulties holding her phone, she stared at the screenshot, at the black creature trying to slide away before she caught it.
The bars clunking and rattling. The banging, the slamming. And Stella's ear-piercing scream—that attracted crowds of curious onlookers. The scene replayed over and over in Arielle's mind and she pinched the bridge of her nose, inhaling, exhaling, desperate for her heartbeat to settle.
Would Jade have wanted to endure this freakish shit?
She'd kept her cool—she provoked whatever the thing was by asking direct questions, by being firm and confident—but truthfully, she was anything but cool. Her intestines had liquefied and her belly had bubbled with fear, anxiety, terror. She'd be doing the same as Stella if she didn't have an intense phobia of throwing up; the sound alone turned Arielle's senses to mush and made her want to faint.
No... someone has to drive us out of here.
Stella hobbled over, her cheeks almost tinted lime-green. "Ugh..." She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. "Now can we leave? Did you get what you came for?"
Arielle locked her phone and slid it into her bag. "What I came for?" She groaned and stomped her feet. "Fuck, that was insane. But... yeah, we're done here." She recalled how quickly they whipped around corners and shoved past worried tourists and threw their headsets and MP3 players at the entry clerks. Neither of them wanted to spend another minute in that place.
"What time is it?" Stella planted her hands on the roof of the car and stretched. "Our reservations in Richmond are for later, but our room might be ready if we arrive early."
Arielle didn't care what time it was. She unlocked the vehicle and urged Stella to get in the passenger's seat. "Come on, let's go."
"Can you drive?" Stella huffed as she squeezed inside and jammed her head against the headrest. "Ugh, my stomach..."
"I'm in better shape than you," said Arielle, buckling her belt, starting the engine. "We need to get far from here... for both our sakes."
"Thank fuck that was the worst part of our tour." Swiping a hand over her sweaty forehead, Stella blew out a breath. "Eastern State Penitentiary should be the worst on our list."
They pulled out of the parking lot, and Arielle's palms still shook. Gripping the wheel for a little over four hours, to haul them to Richmond, Virginia, would be tough... but this place gave her the creeps the longer they stayed. In the rear-view mirror, she glimpsed the castle-like structure and could have sworn she saw grim shadows dancing by its towers. Cackling at her, mocking her for running off so fast, for not sticking it out to hear what they had to say.
Sorry, Jade. We weren't ready for something so intense.
"Stel... back there, I... I don't know what came over me, I—" She wriggled in her seat, unable to get comfortable, "—I snapped at you, and I'm sorry. With your background, I trust your instincts, but when you said we should leave, I... I couldn't. I needed something more than that picture. Something to debunk it or... it's like I needed to play Jade's role too. If she'd been there, she..."
Stella snorted. "She would have tried to get through those bars to run after the shadow, yeah." She extracted a water bottle from her bag. "I'm... I'm not mad. This is new to me, too, I... I've never experienced something like that. Like someone was twisting my insides. And it was the same sensation I had in Block Eight, but... meaner, fiercer. It hurt." She chugged a few gulps, then offered the bottle to Arielle, who declined. "Maybe it's good we stayed, since it... triggered something in me."
Turning onto the freeway, Arielle cracked her neck back and forth. "Triggered something? Already? Jade would be so pleased right now." She smirked. "Oooh, Stella, you're becoming a medium, you're accepting your powers, you felt something spooky—"
Stella tapped her shoulder and scoffed. "Hey, don't push it! I never confirmed it was something spooky, it might have been an allergic reaction to the bagels—"
"—that you eat every other day! Come on, Stel, admit it—that was ghostly! Someone communicated with you and you sensed it!" Seconds before she'd been horrified and ready to delete the paranormal picture and never mention it again, but still, Arielle squirmed on the inside. Was her friend finally leaning towards accepting her heritage? "You're opening up!"
With a groan, Stella adjusted her position, tipped her head to the side, and crossed her arms. "Whatever, wake me up when we're in Richmond, okay?"
Arielle pressed play on the CD player. A mix of nineties tunes blared out, and she relaxed at last.
The rest of this trip should be a breeze—our other stops are much less intense.
***
But the next stop, according to Stella, wasn't less intense.
"The Hollywood Cemetery is one of the most haunted places in Richmond," she said, browsing the articles she'd saved on her tablet before they left. The moment she woke from her two-hour nap, she scrambled to prepare them for what was to come. "There's the Richmond Vampire—which is more of a legend than an actual ghost thing. The moans and noises from the Pyramid. And the dog statue and grave-site where people claim they've seen a girl playing late at night and heard growls and barks." She sighed. "Well, at least it's not a massive prison where a shit-ton of inmates died."
"Are you kidding me? It's a cemetery! Everyone in there died!" She pressed the gas pedal too hard and the car flew forward, but Stella had no reaction and continued to read.
"Right... and the places we have after are no better. Jade chose lesser known spots but made sure they were full of haunted tales. Fuck," Stella lowered her tablet and tugged down the sun visor as the clouds above parted and released bright, warming rays. "Let's hope that crap in Philly was a glitch. If I am developing something... it better not make me sick again."
Arielle hadn't enjoyed the dizziness she'd suffered through, either. A part of her still rushed with adrenaline, yearning to whirl the car around and return to the prison, to yell at the specter that thought scaring them was funny. Or to fling insults at the employee who'd likely played some sick trick on them.
But Stella's unease and illness were real. And they meant something.
Arielle remembered the occasions on Jade's TV-shows when the hosts were ill or out of it after encountering spirits or...
Possession? No, no, it can't be. It can't.
By the time they rolled into Richmond, their moments of sunlight were far behind, because rain and fog welcomed them to the city. Their hotel room wouldn't be ready until six o'clock, and it was four, so they rolled by the Hollywood Cemetery for a sneak peek.
Jade wanted a cemetery in Hollywood, California, but... Arielle and Stella couldn't afford a road-trip to the west-coast, nor could Jade swing the costs by herself without angering her parents. So there they were, cruising down the east-coast, enjoying its mild early spring weather, exploring its hidden haunts.
The cemetery was located on the north bank of the James River. They drove by the entrance and stopped to peek inside from the comfort of the car.
Several dozen feet behind the parted black iron gates, the Chapel Office with its bright red door caught Arielle's attention. "It's so... bizarre," she said, wondering if ghosts could feel rain.
If they exist, that is.
Stella rubbed her upper arms. "It... it's giving me vibes, but... nothing like the Penitentiary. Hopefully, it stays that way." She peeked at her phone and started typing a text-message. "Should we go find something to eat? I'm starving, and my stomach is aching for food."
"Yeah." Arielle couldn't pry her gaze from the red door, oddly captivated by it. "Right, we should..." For a split second, something fizzled to life in front of it. A blurry image, a washed-out figure, in and out of focus—
That thing again?
The being with the same dark, long locks she'd noticed—or so she thought—in Jade's bedroom window. It seemed to float before the door, bobbing up and down in slow motion. The raindrops didn't affect it, and it kept its chin dipped down, a slither of its pearly-white forehead visible. Immobile, flashing, blinking, then it slowly lifted its jaw—
And vanished.
"Ari? Ari, let's go, you're holding up traffic." Stella shook her. "Arielle!"
"Huh? What?" Returning to reality, Arielle tore herself from the vivid crimson door and the thing she might have seen or conjured from memory. "Oh, shit." Cars honked behind them, and she pushed the gas pedal, hurrying away from the gates.
She'd never told Stella about what she saw at Jade's mansion—so trying to explain this apparition, real or not, would take too long and too much energy.
"Sorry, sorry, I... I got stuck remembering something about Jade and it... it froze me."
Once they'd distanced themselves, they found a small diner near their hotel. They entered, were seated, and perused the menu.
"This reminds me of that one place." Stella turned a page and chuckled. "That beat-up place we stumbled into after partying in our first years of college? What was it called? Damn."
Salivating at a picture of a juicy bacon burger with fries, Arielle looked up. "Oh... the Rear-End?" She grimaced—she never liked that dumb name. "The dingy one by the freeway? How does this pleasant spot remind you of that? The walls here are clean."
"The vibe, you know? Diner, greasy food, weird-looking people." She side-glanced at a nearby booth where a man with a palm-tree shirt, spiked blue hair, and ripped leather pants drank from a bright bubblegum pink milkshake. "It brings back memories."
Not sure what good memories she has of that place. I have none.
"How we'd text each other half-drunk and promise to meet there? Laugh at our fake ID's and eat the most disgusting grub possible and blackout on the bench until the sun came up and the owner begged us to leave because we'd scare his morning crowd?" Setting down the menu, Stella giggled. "We would scare his morning crowd? Ha!"
Arielle nodded, but she disagreed. Her recollections were different. Yes, they drunk-texted. Jade would communicate from the upper-scale house parties she attended with her rich ivy-league school friends. Stella chatted from her trashy low-class bars. And Arielle messaged them from her two-square-inch dorm room in her community college, pretending to be out with her roommate.
But she hated her roommate and rarely went out unless she was with Jade and Stella.
And when she turned up at the diner, more often than not, Jade didn't join them. "Oh, she picked up some dude on the way. She apologized, said she'd meet us tomorrow for coffee," Stella would mutter, stumbling inside in her high heels.
The thought made Arielle's saliva bitter, acidic, impossible to swallow. Sure, she'd had her share of adventures with guys, but reminded that Jade did, too, stirred an inexplicable irritation in her gut.
Jade had met Trevor last year, and he reined in her horrid habits. But in her first semesters of college, she was wild, on some bender to drive her parents crazy. She drank copiously, woke in a different bed every other weekend, wound up with phone numbers she didn't have knowledge collecting. Yet she showed up to her classes in her impeccable outfits and with all her homework completed.
Arielle always admired her. Jade, her beautiful best friend that she aspired to be more like, yearned to spend more time with, thought about more often than she should—
Shit, no. Not this again.
"Do you remember that time she wandered in with some shady dude who snuck into one of the parties she was at?" Stella flipped her shiny locks to one side, scratching at a red patch on her neck. "Oh, man, we worked so hard to talk her out of that one. But it'll make Dad so mad, she said."
They ordered their food, though Arielle's hunger drowned beneath her mountains of questions and guilt and confusion. "Can we change the subject?" The snark in her tone caused her to wince. "Sorry, I... I don't like talking about those days."
"Why?" Stella angled closer, shoving the salt and pepper shakers aside. "Because of school? Because you didn't attend some prestigious crap-pile like she did? Come on, we both told you no one cares about that."
"Stel, please—"
"—yes, she mentioned those dumb frivolous events she went to, and she had little time for us back then, but trust me. I knew her for a long while, Ari, and she preferred hanging with us at places like this. Promise." She reached across the table, her warm, plump hand finding Arielle's and squeezing. The giant rings on her fingers scratched against Arielle's skin, and she winced, but Stella wouldn't let go. "She loved us, not those morons she drank with. And things were getting better, they were, and..." She sniffled, and her gaze dropped to her lap.
Arielle snatched her other hand. "Hey, hey." She forgot the unsaid words, the conflicting emotions towards Jade, shoved down for years; she moved them aside to focus on Stella.
Jade... is dead. But Stella is alive, and she's here, and she needs me. We need each other.
"I'm seeing the truth of Mom's predictions at last and feeling shit, and she... she's not..." Thick tears drizzled down Stella's reddening cheeks.
Arielle whipped into the booth beside her, cuddling her, brushing the hair from her wet face. "It's okay, it's okay. Wherever she is... if she's anywhere... she knows. She knows."
They stayed that way until their meals arrived and ate in silence. Both were too miffed and messed up to say anything else—Stella wanted to accept who she was, and Arielle... didn't.
She loved us... and I loved her.