The Ghost's Curse

Chapter One

Meg didn't want to die.

The sound of static reached her ears from the next room and she wanted to scream. She nearly did scream, but no sound came from her open mouth. She wanted to run, get away, but that girl—that thing would just follow her. There'd be no point. She stood on shaking legs and started walking. She meant to walk outside, get some fresh air, maybe try to escape.

Meg's breathing became ragged and heavy. When she had first seen that stupid tape on her old VCR, she'd laughed at it. She'd laughed even when the phone rang. She'd never thought this was real. And that was why she hadn't made a copy until it was too late. By day five, she finally knew it was all real when she'd been seeing things. She'd made a copy then, but no one would watch it. Why would anyone watch a tape that could kill you in a week?

With each step she took, she grew more and more afraid. Her heart pounded inside her chest, almost like it would break out. When she walked inside the living room, the first thing she noticed was the sound of static. The second thing was that the sound was coming from the T.V. The same T.V she had unplugged yesterday, after a dream—or nightmare.

It was that girl who had shown it to her, trying to torment her with glimpses of her fate. But though it was unplugged, it was turned on, sounding static, showing that same picture that had haunted Meg's dreams for days: the well, surrounded by skeletal trees. She turned back, tried to open the door. The handle wouldn't turn. She saw her breath coming in clouds as she exhaled, felt cold sweat oozing from every pore. It was like she was suffocating, even though she was gasping in breath with the desperation of a drowning girl.

"No," she whispered. "Don't let this happen to me. Don't let her kill me."

She didn't even know who she was talking to. A deity, the others in the house, the ghost herself, maybe herself. But if anyone could hear, they gave no sign. On the television screen she saw a hand slowly emerge from the well. The girl inside was climbing. Meg tried to reassure herself that she couldn't possibly harm her from inside a television. That wasn't possible.

But as she came closer to the screen, she felt her blood run cold. As soon as the girl put her arm outside the screen, Meg stumbled back. This wasn't happening. She was dreaming, had to be dreaming. This wasn't possible. The girl was crawling out of the television screen. That wasn't possible. She was getting to her feet. It wasn't possible. She was coming closer. It wasn't possible...

As the girl walked jerkily towards Meg, she was paralysed by a feeling of pure terror. She couldn't run now. It was too late. It had been too late since she had seen that video.

Spike sat sprawled on the staircase, smoking a cigarette. He needed a break from all this. Not just the clearing up, though that was tiring enough. He wasn't sure what he meant. A break from life..? He scoffed at his own absent thought. A break from life. Like that was possible.

"Spike! You're supposed to be helping!"

Spike ignored Angel. Let him cope on his own for a while. Wasn't like the broken things would care. Spike didn't know why he stayed here. Probably just that he had nowhere else to go, since his apartment had been ruined after the battle. Spike had thought about trying to catch up with Buffy for a while, but never had. Maybe he'd been scared, maybe he'd wanted to give her space. He didn't know.

So he'd come here, to the Hyperion Hotel. It didn't look like much right now, the lobby filled with debris and the windows boarded up, but they were working on fixing it up. They were planning to restart Angel Investigations, that private detective agency of Angel's. Him, Angel and Illyria. Wherever Illyria was right now. She should've been helping them. She was probably out beating up some demons. Her way of coping with grief, Spike guessed.

"How long is this going to take? I'm already bloody sick of it." Spike put out the cigarette on the carpet, then stalked down the stairs over to Angel.

Angel didn't reply, or make any indication that he'd heard him.

Spike sighed, and began putting the splintered remains of a table into the skip outside. "Just wish you'd say something. Silence is giving me a headache." They had been silent a lot recently. None of them seemed to have anything to say.

Angel looked over at Spike from his chair. "What exactly do you want me to say? I don't know how long this is going to take, Spike."

"I'll tell you what, it's probably gonna take a while with it being a one-man job. What are you doing to help, exactly? Because I can't be sure, but it looks an awful lot like you're just sitting on your arse."

"I'm thinking," was Angel's only reply.

Spike scoffed. "Thinking. Right. Brooding, more like. Sulking, even, that fits you better."

"And what do you expect me to do? Everyone's dead, Spike. Fred, Wesley, Gunn... They're all dead. We're the only ones left."

"And your point would be? We couldn't have saved them. You know we couldn't. It was too late. So why don't we get all this stuff cleared up so we can start saving the people it's not too late for? Help the helpless, yeah? Like you said. That is what we do, right? 'Sides, we're not dead, right? That's gotta mean something."

Just as Spike finished speaking, the door opened and a girl walked in. She was small and chubby, her eyes wide and tear-filled. "H-hello," she said. "Is this Angel Investigations? My friend said you guys could help me. I don't know if that's really true or not, but I need help and I don't think anyone else will take me seriously. Please, you have to help me."

"Well, this was Angel Investigations," Angel said. "We were gonna start working from here again, but it might be awhile. As you can see, we're actually busy clearing up right now."

"Oh," the girl said, looking down. "So you won't be able to help?"

"Shut up, Angel," Spike said. "We could use a break from all this anyway. If she really needs our help, she's got it. Right?"

"Okay. We'll help her. That's what we do," Angel said. He looked back at the girl. "But you have to explain to us what you need help with."

She sighed. "You'll just think I'm crazy."

"You'd be amazed by what we'd believe," Angel said.

"Okay, so... there's this tape, right? Like a videotape. And if you watch it, you'll die in seven days. It's not supposed to be true, and I didn't think it was, not at first. It was just something we said at school, just to scare each other. But then we—me and my sister—met these people. They share the tape between them. They say it's an experience. They like the adrenaline rush, I guess. They all survived. I don't know why, I don't know what it is they do. But... my little sister Meg watched it. She died a week later. The doctors all said there was nothing wrong with her. Her heart just stopped. But that's not possible..."

"What, that cursed tape? Like the stupid urban legend? Sorry love, but that's a load of rubbish," Spike said.

The girl scowled. "I said you'd think I was crazy."

"Ignore him," Angel said, shooting a glare at Spike. "Is there anything else that might have happened leading up to your sisters death? Anything you can think of?"

"Well, Meg was having a lot of nightmares. She was really scared all the time, like there was something after her. I think she was hallucinating as well. She wouldn't talk to me as much, even though we were normally really close."

"Your last name Samuels?" Spike asked. Angel looked at him curiously.

"Uh, yeah. How do you know that?"

"Newspaper. An article on your little sis. Mentions you as well, actually. Like you said, a fourteen year old girl just dropping dead—not normal. Doesn't say anything about a tape, but why would it? It's only supposed to be an urban legend, like you said. Looks more like they're trying to make out it's some kind of epidemic."

"So you'll help me?" The girl's face was hopeful.

"We'll see what we can do," Angel said. The girl walked out of the building, giving the two vampires a brief glimpse of blinding sunlight.

"So, what do you think? Cursed videotape, or something else?" Spike asked, turning to Angel.

"I'm leaning towards something else, but honestly? I don't know."

Grace felt like a thief, poking through her sisters room like this. She didn't think she should be looking through a dead girl's things, but it wasn't as if Meg would care. She couldn't care about anything any more.

The mirror on the wall over the bed reflected Grace's own image back at her, pale and wide-eyed. She breathed deeply and tried to slow the pounding of her heart as she looked down at the tape in her hands.

It could have been anything. Hell, it could have been a recording of Lilo And Stitch. But Grace knew immediately what it was. It sounded corny and stupid and utterly lame—but she could feel it. Her hands trembled as she pushed the tape into the VCR. Nothing happened. She noticed that the TV had been unplugged, so she plugged it in without giving much of a thought as to why Meg would unplug it. It seemed like an odd thing to do, but didn't really seem worthy of a second thought.

As the tape started, a ring of blue light came up on the screen. Somehow, Grace got the impression that it was being seen from below in a deep, dark place. After that first image, a series of strange pictures showed up on the screen. It wasn't exactly scary. The tape was only a few minutes long. Grace didn't know what to feel now. She certainly didn't feel like she was going to die in seven days. Her phone rang, startling her and, assuming it was one of her friends from a school, she picked it up.

"Seven days," said the voice on the other end. It was unmistakably a child's voice, yet it sent a chill down Grace's spine. Some part of her had still thought that this was completely stupid, that it couldn't be true. But when she heard that voice, cold and emotionless, she knew in some part of herself that this was all true. With that voice, it all sunk in. In exactly seven days, she would be dead.