It had been a week since the party.
Ernest lay in his bed, the cool moonlight streaming through his open window followed by a breeze.
And then there was a figure.
"Mary Ann?" He sat bolt upright.
She smiled sadly. "Hello, Ernest."
"How..."
"Krishanti brought us all back. Kind of. Only sometimes."
"Please... I want to be with you."
"I want to be with you, too. But you'd give so much up."
"I would give up anything," Ernest whispered. She walked across the room to him and gently took his hands.
"Your freedom. Your life. It's not just anything, Ernie, it's everything," she murmured.
"Mae... you're everything."
"You might not come back at all."
"Mary Ann... please."
"Would you do this for me, Ernest? Or are you doing it for you?"
"I'm doing this for us."
"That wasn't the question."
"For..." he paused.
"It's okay, Ernest. You can let me go if you need to."
"No. No! Mary Ann!"
"Ernest."
A whisper of an echo and she was gone.
~~
Ernest was floating in nothing.
Not black or white or any other colour, not warm or cold or room temperature or body temperature.
Just absolutely nothing.
Something, a hand, perhaps, reached out to him after an undeterminable amount of time. He couldn't see it, couldn't feel it, but he knew it was there.
And he was pulled out of the nothingness and into Edgar Allan Poe's study.
Edgar, Annabel, Lenore and HG stood there. They were all ghosts except for Edgar.
"What..."
HG looked pleased. "Ernest!" He turned to Lenore. "It worked!" He whispered excitedly. She patted his arm fondly. "Yes, dear."
Edgar smiled awkwardly. "Hello. You died and are now here in ghost form."
"Hi. What?" From the vast void of nothing in his mind, he remembered: the squeal of rubber on pavement, the sicking crunching crumple of bones and metal.
"Do you remember?" Lenore asked.
"Yeah. Okay. So I'm a ghost." Something ocurred to him. "Wait.. you guys are here. Are the others...?"
"Yep," Annabel smiled. "I'm going to get someone."
Edgar, HG and Lenore followed her out of the room. After a short moment, the door opened and closed again.
Ernest froze. The woman grinned at him.
And then she was in his arms and they were holding each other close. "Mary Ann," he mumbled into her hair.
"Ernest. You came."
"I told you I would," Ernest said thickly through tears. He laughed into her hair. "I told you."
She pulled back the tiniest bit just to look up at him. "I..." She had tears in her eyes, shimmering and silver.
"What's wrong, Mae?" He asked.
"You're here. Nothing's wrong." Mary Ann pulled him down and kissed him and Ernest kissed her back. They broke apart when they were out of breath. Mary Ann looked up into his eyes intensely. "Ernest, I... I love you."
He grinned and gave her another quick kiss. "I love you, too, Mae."
A/N: I hope you enjoyed this story!