Moonlight
To be perfectly frank, Anne had not wanted to go. But, as Corey would insist every time, a bet was not something to be made if you weren't going to follow through with it. Especially now that they were upperclassmen. What this had to do with the integrity of betting she had no idea- although she suspected Corey had watched a few too many teen movies- but what it came down to was that she could not back out of this one. If she did, Corey would never let her forget it, and Vanessa would make sure he didn't forget either.
Anne nearly shot out of her Winter Track jacket when her cell phone buzzed on the hard wooden bench next to her. Corey had at least allowed her to bring her cell phone, in addition to a heavy blanket and a thermos of hot tea (he had seen too many slasher films to be that stupid, he claimed). A quick glance at the photo ID on the phone told her it was Corey.
Flipping the phone open, Anne whispered "Hello?" She heard his newly developed sleepy baritone on the other end, and her toes thawed instantly.
"Anne? You're all settled? Vanessa's key worked?"
"Yes, Corey, I'm in and I'm freezing thank you for asking."
"That bad, huh?"
"Well in case it escaped your notice they didn't have indoor heating in the 1750's, and I can't exactly light a fire in here, unless you want to explain to my parents tomorrow morning why they had to post bail on a breaking and entering charge." Anne mentally chided herself. She was always so snippy with him, no wonder he liked Vanessa more.
Corey chuckled. "Technically you didn't break anything to get in, did you?"
"Doesn't matter. They'll get me on burglary, then, for jacking Norm's keys."
"Except that was all Vanessa. Like her dad even noticed."
Anne sighed. "Like she'd take that kind of heat for me."
"I would."
"Well you're not the one who made the bet, are you?" Anne retorted. Stupid, she immediately thought. If she'd been clever she could have turned that into some flirty innuendo. But even without Vanessa there to steal the opportunity she couldn't manage it.
"No," Corey admitted, "but you knew what you were getting into."
"I didn't think she'd actually do it! And you didn't either!" she added, before Corey could protest. He also didn't realize that the only reason Vanessa had jumped into the frigid lake was because he had been there to see just how "daring" she was.
"Fair enough. But don't think I didn't- oh shit, hold on!" Anne heard the rustling noise that could only mean he'd covered up the mouthpiece of his phone. Drumming her fingers nervously on the bench, she waited through a few moments of anxious silence until the steady sound of his breathing returned to her ear.
"Corey? What happened?" Anne asked, hoping he wouldn't say "Cops."
"Just someone passing on the road, it was no one. Look, I can't stay parked here anymore or someone's going to get suspicious. I'll pick you up at 6am, okay?"
"Is sunrise that early now? Damn you and your daylight savings time, Benjamin Franklin."
"That's funny, I didn't think he was one of the ghosts that hung around the Tavern."
"He's not," Anne rolled her eyes, which of course Corey couldn't see. "It's called a sense of humor, you might have noticed I use mine when I'm particularly nervous?"
"What makes you think I don't do the same?" he answered.
"Why would you be nervous? I'm the one locked in a haunted building."
"Exactly."
"Look, you know Vanessa made me promise that if I get caught it's just me, so I don't see what you're so worried about."
There was a brief pause, and then, "She did?"
"Yes," Anne replied, confused by his hesitation. Unless…
When he didn't reply, she cleared her throat and said, "Hey man, I thought you had to go?"
"Oh, right," Corey replied, "yeah, sorry. I'll see you in the morning. And, uh, Anne? Stay warm."
"You too," Anne replied without really thinking, and then heard the dead air that meant he'd hung up.
Smooth.
Anne placed the cell phone back down on the bench, after making sure she had set an alarm for 5:30am. Part of the bet had been that she would stay up all night, but she doubted she'd stay awake much longer than her butt would on the uncomfortable wooden furniture.
With her disposable camera she took a couple of pictures of the moonlight streaming in through window and with any luck the dust motes would look kind of like a vapory image. If worst came to absolute worst, she thought, she'd mess up the negatives a little and get reprints. She would have rather used her digital camera, where Photoshopping a vaguely human shape would have been much easier, but Vanessa had insisted on using "real film" since it was better for "capturing restless spirits." Anne wasn't a film nut, but she did know enough about old school hoax photography to realize that it didn't really matter what kind of pictures she took- she could fake it either way. She wasgoing to get something supernatural out of the night, even if she had to manufacture it herself. She wasn't wasting her night and she wasn't going to let Vanessa show her up again.
Anne settled back into the cocoon of blanket she had made, sipped her tea slowly, and gazed absently around the Tavern. The Seneca Valley Restoration Village had only been officially closed for a grand total of three days, but already the buildings had been swept, polished, and prepped for the winter dormancy. As long as she didn't break anything or make a lot of noise, she should be able to avoid getting busted.
Of course, it wasn't the trespassing that made the Tavern a risky place to spend the night.
Anne didn't really know the details, but Vanessa had said that almost ten years ago Emily Nash, a girl who worked at the Restoration during the summer, had disappeared after her last day of work and hadn't been seen until the following spring, when she was found, dead of course, in the woods about a half mile away. And as if this wasn't bad enough, Vanessa said, the girl had claimed to be seeing ghosts for a few weeks prior to her disappearance. Ever since then, the place had been, naturally, haunted, although no two accounts of the so-called hauntings were the same. This was very lucky for Anne, because it meant she could invent any kind of ghost story she wanted, throw in a grainy photo that she could always say she got off the Internet if any adults asked, and put the whole thing behind her as soon as she could.
Anne hadn't noticed she'd nodded off until she woke up to cramped legs and the sound of crickets. Looking around, she could see it was still very dark out, and the moon was still bright and high in the sky. Midnight, she guessed, maybe 1. She stood up, stretching out her sore limbs, and picked up her tea. Thankfully, it was still warm. As she sipped it, she paused. The crickets that had woken her, she noticed, sounded quite odd. In fact, they didn't sound like crickets at all.
They sounded more like muffled crying.
Anne turned, wondering if maybe a small animal had been injured outside the Tavern, when she noticed the moonlight bouncing off of something by the cooking grate, which was also odd because the grate was nowhere near the window.
It was a girl wearing a colonial-period dress, but looking like she'd stepped out of an old photograph, slightly blurry and shaded in grays. Anne could see her shoulders shudder with crying, and was wondering if she was in fact still dreaming when the girl stood up and, still crying, ran out of the Tavern. Without opening the door.
This caught her attention. Dropping her tea, Anne sprinted towards the exit and unlocking the deadbolt (a peculiarity she most definitely noticed) she threw open the door and hurried after the pale form now running across the Reservation grounds towards the woods.
She couldn't have run very far, but trying to keep up with the girl had been difficult as she kept dodging between trees and dipping out of sight, only to appear much farther to the left or right of where Anne had mentally projected her path to be. Anne had thought she'd lost her for good when she took her time to pick her way across the rocks of the small creek that ran through the forest, since the girl had simply tore right through the water and had gained quite a bit of ground during Anne's delay. But somehow she picked up the trail, and followed until the girl finally stopped…no, no collapsed in a clearing.
Anne took a step towards her, and noticed that now the girl was not alone. There was a boy, and he was another…another ghost. They had to be ghosts, how else could it be that they cast no shadows in the moonlight, that she could see through them like water or smoke, that they stirred no leaves and rustled no branches as he pulled her to her knees and cradled her in his arms? It was so strange, and as she watched the girl went from black and white to…not colors, they were both still translucent, but that was the only way Anne could describe it to herself later. She looked like someone who had finally gotten their strength back after a long illness. She looked like how Anne felt on the first real day of spring, when she could finally stand outside in her bare feet and drink in the sun after a long gray winter.
It was then that they both looked up at her, and Anne went cold again.
"Ahm…" Anne opened her mouth to say something that would convince the ghosts that she didn't want any trouble, and at the same time realized that it probably didn't matter what she said or did anymore, not if these were actual ghosts. They stood, and Anne took a step back, suddenly very concerned for her health.
The girl ghost, more a young woman really, she couldn't have been older than Anne, gave a smile and said, "Hello, Anne."
Anne's jaw dropped. "How did you-"
The girl pointed at Anne, who looked down to see her name embroidered on her track jacket. Anne grinned sheepishly.
The boy smiled too, and said, "It's cold, Anne. You should head back." Anne noticed a strange accent in his voice that the girl did not have, and wondered if this might be Emily Nash and her colonial ghost.
Anne felt a little grip of panic seize her. "But I don't know how to get back," she realized aloud.
"Follow us," the girl-ghost-who-was-probably-Emily said simply, and the two ghosts walked past Anne into the woods, making no noise as they went. Anne followed behind them, feeling clunky and awkward as she made the only audible footsteps on the brittle leaves. They led her back to the Tavern's door, and when she entered the building that was far warmer than she remembered she turned to see them starting to walk away again.
"Emily!" Anne called out without thinking, and the girl stopped and turned. Realizing there were just too many questions, Anne stood staring at Emily and John, not even wondering how she knew his name.
Emily smiled once more, touched her hand lightly to her temple, and called back softly, "Don't follow this time, Anne. And don't wait anymore."
As Emily and John headed back towards the forest and faded among the trees, Anne tried to figure out if the two ghosts were holding hands or if the whole thing was just a trick of the moonlight.
"Anne? Oh God, Anne, come on, sit up, please. Please be fooling, please please please just be sleeping, come on Anne-"
Anne woke up to hands roughly pushing her into a sitting position. She forced her eyelids half open against the morning sunlight, and yawned sleepily.
"Corey? What…what's wrong?"
"Oh thank God," was all she heard before he wrapped his arms quite firmly around her. He was very warm. When he finally let go he forced a mug of hot tea into her hands, which she drank much more eagerly than she had expected to, and he immediately launched into the nervous prattle she had grown used to on test days.
"Anne I was so worried when you weren't down by the road at 6, and you weren't answering your phone and when I got up here the door was unlocked and you were freezing cold and your breathing was so shallow, I thought…oh God, I thought-" he stopped abruptly and clutched her tight in another hug, and Anne finally shook the sleep from her head and it dawned on her how stupid she had been staying here all night, and she gripped Corey just as tightly.
"Shh, it's okay. I'm okay," she murmured more for herself. "She told me not to follow her, and I didn't."
Corey pulled back slightly. "Who?"
"Emily Nash. She told me not to follow her and John Mellender." The name rolled off her tongue like she'd known it her whole life, and she didn't bother to think about it. "She also told me not to wait anymore."
"Not to wait? For what?"
If Anne had been savvy and clever, she would have said, "This," and leaned in and kissed him suavely. What she did do was hesitate.
And then she realized that that was the whole point. She was waiting for a go-ahead, for an excuse, for something that might not ever come. The second she made up her mind to go for it, she realized that it was too late to throw in a witty quip, so she ended up just grabbing Corey's shoulders and pressing her cold lips against his warm ones for a full second.
Corey blinked, and asked, "A ghost told you to not wait to kiss me?"
Anne spluttered, suddenly hating herself for trusting a dead girl.
"No, I mean, well not in so many words, but she, I just-"
Corey let out a short burst of laughter. When Anne blushed, Corey took her hand in his and squeezed.
"You'll never get better advice, Anne, from the living or the dead," he replied, and kissed the inside of her wrist, leaving her feeling much warmer than she thought possible.
Corey met Anne's grin, and helped her to her feet, saying, "Come on, let's get you home. You need a good defrosting and some soup."
"Thanks," she replied as he draped her blanket across her shoulders and slung an arm over that, pulling her snugly against him. They locked the Tavern behind them and walked to Corey's car. Looking back just before she climbed in, she added under her breath, "And thank you too, Emily. Peace."
"You know," Corey said as she sat beside him in the passenger seat, "we could just defrost you here." Anne gave him a playful smack on the arm.
"Just drive, perv," she laughed. "We'll have plenty of time for that crap later."
"But what about the not-waiting-cause-a-ghost-told-me stuff?"
Anne shook her head, smiling.
Although he did have a very good point.