"Wow, Abe, never took you as one to read teen lit."

Abe jumped from the page he was reading. He hadn't heard Liz knock or come into his bed(bath)room. He had been sitting in a tub of lukewarm water and was probably about a quarter through the book.

"What?" he said.

"The Falling and The Fallen," Liz pointed to the book in his hand. "That's total teen lit. What's up with it."

"Our dead girl wrote it," he stated, going back to the book. "I think she wrote about what killed her."

He didn't see Liz roll her eyes, but he could feel the disbelief rolling off her in waves. "Abe, she didn't write about what killed her. Ten to one says the book is a teen romance, like all the other crappy teen writers out there."

He said nothing, and she left.


The thing was large. That's all she could see at first. Just a large shadow, standing at the foot of her bed. She wished that she had remembered to bring her brother's hockey stick to bed, but it was nothing more than wishful thinking made by a panicking girl. There was nothing she could discern from the shadow, other than two red pinpricks that must've been its eyes.

Who knows how long she stared at it? She couldn't tell. But after staring at it for what felt like an eternity, she finally spoke: "Yes? You need something?"

"You shine in the dark," the shadow said. "Do you know that? You shine. Like . . . like a flashlight."

Abe was right: she did write about what killed her. But Liz was half-right, too: it was like teen romance on downers.

He didn't know why he was still reading it. He finished three (or was it four?) times already. But he felt like there was something he was missing. Something important. He had to be missing something. Had to. There was no reason that he should be missing so much.

After flipping through the book, ignoring all the knocks on his door, and nearly dropping the book in his full tub of water, he finally decided to call it a night.

That was the first of many nights he dreamed about her.

But this didn't feel like a dream, this first encounter (and later, he would find out, it wasn't a dream, but that was later). He was suddenly awake and sitting in his bathwater, and the girl was sitting on the closed seat of the toilet.

Forearms resting on her knees, one hand fiddling with two large rubber bracelets on her opposite wrist, and a pair of limp white headphones snaking our of her pocket and disappearing into the mass of hair surrounding her head. She actually had on a pair of large clunky black-and-white glasses. But he could still feel her blue eyes were on him as her hand kept flipping part of the bracelet and letting it pop! back.

Flip. Pop! Flip. Plop! Flip. Pop!

But she wouldn't speak. Not a word. Not a single goddamn word to give him some sort of clue.

Not that he didn't try to get her to talk. He asked her questions concerning her death - "Do you know what killed you? Why did you write that book? Why didn't you run?" - but she didn't speak.

However, when he asked about why she didn't run, she smiled. It wasn't a coy smile, or a faint smile - this was a cruel smile, that would've chilled the normal person to the bone. It was enough to make his insides squirm with anxiety.

It was the all-knowing smile of a ghost.


He awoke with a jolt, splashing some of the now ice-cold water onto the floor. The girl wasn't sitting on his toilet; he was completely alone. Thanks to the lack of clock and window, he couldn't tell what time it was, but he knew it was somewhat early.

He was going to dismiss the entire thing as a dream (as he often did when he had those horrifically realistic dreams of Nuala), but then he saw the bathroom mirror. Someone had drawn on it with black marker.

HIDE YOUR BODY FROM THE SCARECROW.

A shudder went down his spine.


Okay, FF . Net is pulling a stupid move here, but I hope you guys like this chappie!