Part 3: Waiting

Barry jumped in after her, catching one of her arms that was thrashing towards the surface. And in a good timing, as well. Her arm, with the rest of her body, had just fallen limp. He lifted her from the water and frantically threw her on the edge of the lake. Trying to remember the beat to CPR, he pushed on her ribcage until she leaned up for a second and started coughing up quite a bit of water. Her eyes were barely open, and she shivered as they slowly closed. "Are you okay?" Barry asked.

"This was a nice visit," she mumbled, water in her nose, "now how do I leave?"

"It's kind of a final thing."

"Obviously not," she said. "How did I almost die right now if I'm supposedly already dead?"

"Well, I mean…" Barry struggled to find the words for it. "It's like…" his voice trailed off as Anais raised an eyebrow. "You're dead up there," he pointed towards the bleak sky, "by their standards. But you came here instead of… wherever you would normally go. And when you die you become immune to some things in general. But you always become immune to what you died from. That's how I can breathe water, that's how you probably couldn't."

"What's the general immunity?"

"Uh, sometimes…" Barry said, picking up a rock, "If you're lucky, or depending on what you are, you can be immune to different amounts of brute force." He jabbed the sharp side of the rock into his leg. "And as you can see, I got really lucky," he explained after a sharp gasp in pain, as the open patch in his skin that was overflowing with blood started to close, leaving barely a trace behind.

Anais shuddered at the sight of the blood pouring out and abruptly stopping; But it was calming in the way that there seemed to be not as much pain to him as there should be, and the blood glowed luminescently in the moonlight that made it past the thick fog. His skin completely closed around the cut, leaving a very faint mark behind. She looked at the cut on her ankle from earlier, realizing she was obviously not as lucky. The bleeding on her own leg had stopped for the most part, but it was still hurting badly.

"Do you need help with that?" Barry asked after seeing her stare blankly at her bleeding leg. The cut had gone so far that the bone was visible, and if Barry hadn't been raised in the most notorious town of fright he would've been queasy. She nodded. He stood up and went to one of the nearby vine bunches, and picked a very large leaf. He put it over the cut, Anais winced, and he wrapped the leaf around her foot. "Just hold it, I guess."

He sat back down and looked at the mark left on his leg. 'Why'd I do that?' he thought, brushing his fingers over the very faint scar. He picked up a rock and fidgeted with it, wondering how much more time they had to wait while Anais continued to press down hard on the cut.

"So," Barry started, "how was your day?" Anais simply stared at him and huffed. "No- no I mean-" he tried to fix what he said. "Before you died- how was your day?"

Anais sat and looked at the leaf on her ankle being held tightly to the cut. After a while, she spoke up, "Boring." Barry looked at her, confused. She looked back at him. "My day was boring. . . up until the moment I ended up here." She went back to silently staring at the cut. He nodded, understanding what she meant. When he had died, he was barely even six years old. He was taken very early, but he didn't remember much of his time on Earth. He couldn't figure out if it was being dead so long or something about being dead in general that makes you forget. Maybe it was just being five years old and having the attention span of a goldfish. But he used to be such a fast runner.

Barry fidgeted with a smaller, dead leaf that he hadn't realized he was holding. He tossed and twirled it between his fingers, zoning out again. He stayed in this state of admiration for unconsciousness for a few seconds, and found he was staring at Anais' hair. He quickly turned his head away and almost fell over from where he was sitting, catching himself on his right arm. Anais almost took a quick glance at the sound he was making but only flinched her head in his general direction. He stared at the ground where his hand was, fighting the urge to look back. When he did, he was in awe.

Anais' hair was slowly turning back from the dead white to her normal dark red. From the ends, the white started retreating to the roots.

"Uh-" Barry started.

"I mean I was about to get $150 for babysitting," Anais interrupted, not hearing him. "Mrs. Angeline, this sweet old lady down the street has these nephews- I hope they're gonna be okay without me there."

"Well, I can't really get you out of death," Barry stated.

Anais' head shot sideways to face him, "Is there anyone who can?"

Barry shrugged, "Probably not." Anais turned back to the cut and slumped her shoulders with a sigh. He wanted to say something about the hair, but thought it best to keep his mouth shut.

Fifteen minutes. Fifteen more minutes of waiting; of long, painful silence. Barry had nearly fallen asleep, and the bleeding on Anais' ankle had almost finally come to a halt. Fifteen minutes of awkwardness, when Barry saw something from the corner of his eye. Silhouettes past the fog, quickly approaching the lake. Now, in the city where everything only exists to be scary, living there means there's nothing to be scared of. They have a set of rules saying that no citizens can trigger any PTSD that they know of, hint at anything sexually terrifying, or actually harm anyone who they are trying to scare. This meaning, that Barry had not a fearful bone in his body when he stood up and shouted "Who's there!" at the figures past the fog. He saw that one was much taller than the other, and the closer they got he made out they had tall hats.

Helga and Zelda, the town witches.

"Finally," Barry said, relived. Anais turned to him and then the direction he was facing to find what he was looking at.

"Who are they?" She asked, seeing the figures of two people in long dresses walking towards the lake. It only took about a half second to see that they were coming a them alarmingly fast.

The taller figure stopped, the smaller one following, at the other edge of the lake. "We're over here!" Barry yelled to them. He turned to face Anais, though her eyes were still locked on the now fast again figures whirring towards them. "They're fine. Don't worry." As the two witches sat their brooms down and made it to the other side of the lake, Barry introduced them. He put his hand on the shoulder of the taller one, "This one's Zeldamine. Helgamine is the other one."

The taller one smacked his hand off of her shoulder, she must've been at least a foot and a half taller than him. "Never get it right, do you boy?" She shifted her dress and leaned down next to Anais, "My name is Helga, Zelda is my sister over there." Anais looked at Zelda, who was looking into the lake.

"Is that a bottle down there?" Zelda said, pointing into one of the higher levels of the lake.

"Looks like it, yeah," Barry responded.

"Cleaning spray?"

"Yes ma'am."

"Isn't doing much, is it?"

Barry sighed annoyedly while Helga lightly took the bottom of Anais' face and turned it towards hers. She looked directly into her pupils, analyzing, then raised an eyebrow. "Gray rings. . ." she said, letting her face go. Zelda shot up at Helga, revealing she only had one eye, and they looked at each other. Helga nodded, "We'll have to take her to the mausoleum to be sure."

"Be sure of what?" Anais spoke up.

"You know what they say about a new one," Zelda said with a faint and well-hidden smile.

"Good omens," Zelda whispered, a gnarly grin creeping onto her face. "Good omens, indeed."