"Do you show up in photos?" Ali asked, fiddling with a camera.
"I don't know," Patty said curiously, "Nobody's taken any of me since I died."
Before Ronnie could dive out of the way, Ali snapped a picture of them on the sofa.
"Hey!" he said indignantly.
Patty put an arm around him and squeezed his shoulder. "Don't worry, dude, you're beautiful!"
Ali made a face at the camera. "Huh."
"How do I look?" Patty asked with a grin.
Ali gave him the camera. "Dunno."
Foley leaned over the back of the couch to see. "What the fuck."
Ronnie silently agreed. He looked surprised at having his picture taken, but Patty...in Patty's place was a warped silvery-blue shape, slightly smeared around the edges.
"Creepy," Ben commented, smiling.
"Let's all take some together!" Patty suggested, "Come on!"
They huddled on and around the couch so Patty could take some photos, pulling faces even though the camera wouldn't pick them up.
After about a million, he gave the camera back. "Get these printed out!"
"I will," Ali promised, grinning as he looked through the pictures.
"That's properly spooky," Foley said, cuddling up to Patty, "Not showing up in photos, and all that. Very ghostly."
Patty grinned. "Do you guys wanna see my body?"
Ronnie's stomach twisted weirdly.
"Is it still out there?" Ben asked, "Surely it's just bones by now, if anything."
Oh. His corpse. Ronnie wasn't sure why he was relieved, or why he found himself wondering if Patty had ever taken his dress off in front of the others too. He beat the thought back. It was none of his business. Patty could do what he wanted.
Patty shook his head. "No, it's still all there. Hasn't really changed since I died. I go there when winter ends and I can't make new vessels to walk around in."
"Why can't you make vessels when winter ends?" Ben asked.
"I need snow to do it," Patty explained, "It's weird, but the snow where my body is never melts anymore, so I stay there for most of the year."
"Huh." Ben looked around at the others. "I mean, that definitely sounds worth seeing."
"It's a bit of a drive, you should all take food and water."
Once they had some supplies from Ronnie's fridge packed, they piled into Ben's car, Patty riding shotgun to give him directions.
"Where is it, exactly?" Ronnie asked after a while.
"Near the house I used to live in, up past O'Connor River."
"There's nothing past O'Connor River. Nobody lives out there."
"Not anymore, but my family lived there for generations."
Ronnie was sure he'd know if anyone had ever lived there before, but he let it go. "What happened?"
"They died with me," Patty said, as if it were obvious.
"I'm sorry."
Patty shrugged. "It's okay. They can't leave the house, but I still talk to them a lot. Take this next right."
A while later, a large house appeared ahead of them, much to Ronnie's surprise. It didn't look particularly rundown, either, almost as if it was still lived in.
At Patty's instruction, they parked up around the back. A sense of dread washed over Ronnie as they stepped out into the cold. It wasn't hard to imagine that countless horrible things had happened in that house.
To his relief, they didn't stay there. Patty led them out into the trees, reassuring them that he disabled all the bear traps forever ago. They followed a single set of footprints through the snow. Patty's?
The place didn't have any distinctive markers. It looked exactly like any other patch of snowy forest and if Patty wasn't there to show them where it was, Ronnie doubted they'd ever be able to find it. There was nothing to find aside from a small, familiar form curled up in the snow before them, leg stuck in some kind of sadistically modified bear trap. The same one Patty had been caught in the first night Ronnie met him.
Unfortunately, Ronnie had seen a few hypothermia victims before. He never got used to how his stomach twisted when he was called out to help recover a body. The worst times were when they were just so close to shelter and for days afterwards he thought about how nearly they survived and how different the world might've been if they had.
This was different. He knew that Patty was a ghost and, therefore, had died at some point. He'd known it long enough that he could say he was used to the strangeness of the idea, and it wasn't like Patty made any effort to act like he was alive. Despite that, there was something about seeing those milky eyes staring sightlessly at the clouds that just made it too real. It sickened Ronnie to think of how afraid Patty must have been that night. How alone he must have felt.
He looked away, reminding himself that Patty was right there, laughingly commenting on how gross and weird his corpse looked.
"So the snow here never melts?" Ben asked, crouching to get a closer look.
"Never," Patty said.
"You're in pretty good condition. No signs of decay at all. I would've at least expected animals to have torn you apart."
It. That wasn't Patty. Patty was talking to them. He was fine.
Patty shrugged. "Animals don't really come through here. I think it's the house, they just know to stay away from it somehow."
Ronnie didn't blame them. That place was fucked.
"What were you doing out here?" Foley wondered, "You don't even have shoes."
"I was trying to get to our cabin near the river. There's a radio there, I was going to call for help."
Ronnie frowned. "Weren't the phones at your house working?"
"It was a weird night," Patty said, sitting on the ground and looking at the body, "I had a date planned. My sister Talia went down to the basement to ask our uncle something. Nobody but our aunt and uncle were ever allowed down there and we all thought it was because they wanted privacy since their bedroom was down there. They never even let Tabitha, our maid, clean down there." Patty exhaled, hugging his knees to his chest. "Turns out they had human bodies down there. Talia caught Uncle John cutting one up or something and she freaked out and he killed her. Then he killed Mom and Aunt Sal went to the kitchen to kill Tabitha and Dad told me to run."
Anger stirred in Ronnie. What kind of fucked-up world let something like that happen to someone like Patty?
"I was kinda cornered," Patty continued, "I didn't even have time to get a coat, I just ran outside and tried to get to the cabin. I didn't follow the road because I thought John might figure out where I went and catch up to me. Then..." He gestured to the body on the ground.
Ronnie could barely look at it.
"People always talked about how that house made people go insane. A lot of people did fucked up shit there. Never thought it would happen to us, though."
"Do you want us to bury it?" Ronnie asked, nodding at the body.
Patty looked surprised. "No, that's okay. I don't even know where I'd want it buried, and the ground's frozen solid anyway."
Ronnie let it go. Maybe Patty would figure out what he wanted done with it later.
"I'm gonna say hi to Talia," Patty said, "Do you guys wanna come?"
"Your sister?" Ali asked, "Where is she?"
"Back at the house. Everyone's still there, but...I don't know, she's the only one who still remembers anything. I don't think anyone else even knows they died."
The journey back seemed to go by much faster, maybe because Ronnie was so glad to get away from the reminder of everything Patty had gone through. His unease returned as they approached the house, walking around to the front.
"Wait here." Patty walked up to the door and knocked. All was quiet for a moment, then it opened.
A tired-looking girl answered it.
"Hey!" Patty hugged her tightly for a moment. "Where are John and Sal?"
"In the basement," the girl answered.
"Are Mom and Dad awake?"
The girl shrugged.
Patty turned back to the others. "Come on! We'll be fine for now. This is my sister, Talia!"