Liam ran the sleeve of an old sweatshirt over the dusty shelf in the garage, then plopped the old bear on it. “This will probably be the best place to do this anyway,” he explained. “Otherwise, Luke might walk in on us, and I have to imagine that it would complicate matters if the potential demon knows we’re on to them.”

We stood in the dark garage, illuminated by one of the stupid ghost hunting flashlights that Liam apparently insisted on bringing with him everywhere. At least this time, the flashlight top was fully screwed on, so it wasn’t flashing every few seconds. “Ahh, yes, demons are known to hate garages.”

He bumped his elbow against mine to shut me up. “Ideally, it’s not a demon, and is instead some lost little ghost girl who loves living in this bear, and we know the dark makes them more comfortable.”

“That’s not true actually,” I corrected him.

“Wait, what?” he asked, grabbing my shoulder lightly to turn me toward him. He didn’t seem too concerned about it, so I just smiled at him innocently.

“Ghosts don’t care if it’s dark or light - I’m pretty sure that’s just something that like Zak Bagans made up and everyone just follows it. Same with those flashlights,” I said, pointing to the light source. “It doesn’t do anything except make it annoying to see. If ghosts could adjust them to make them work, there would be a lot more easy ways to get your attention.”

Liam let go of my shoulder with a little ‘hmmph’ noise, as though he would have never considered that that was false. I ignored him, instead leaning down to look at the bear. The glass, lifeless eyes stared back at me.

Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do at this point. With every other haunted object I’d interacted with, I would barely get into the same room as the object before a ghost would come springing out. In general, ghosts that possessed objects were lonelier than ghosts that just haunted buildings, possibly because they got less of a chance to see people. But, if the ghost was in the bear, it hadn’t been there for very long, so it probably wasn’t very lonely yet.

I cleared my throat. “Hello!” I said, as cheerily as possible, as if we weren’t in a dusty, dark garage. “My name’s Andromeda! What’s your name?”

Silence rang through the room as we waited for the response, but nothing came. “If you’re in there, we just want to help,” I said gently.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Yeah,” Liam chimed in. “We want to help you and make sure you’re not still in our friend.”

“I’d say you’re not helping,” I shot over my shoulder, “but I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in here anyway.”

Liam’s eyebrows raised, nearly imperceptible in the dark. “You can tell that already?”

“You say that like I haven’t been talking to ghosts for nearly 30 years.”

“Touche. Well, I guess we can just leave Boo Buddy here and -”

“Brrr…it just got cold in here!”

Liam froze as the bear spoke the words in the tinny, pre-programmed voice that it always used. I stared at him curiously, wondering why he was concerned, but then I noticed the chill creeping over the room. Within a matter of seconds, the room must have dropped at least 15 degrees. “What the fuck,” Liam whispered, then locked eyes with me. His eyes were wide - apparently the garage wasn’t prone to random cold spats. I was about to suggest that maybe the air conditioning kicked on in another part of the house when Liam’s crappy flashlight died, leaving us in a pitch black room.

My lungs suddenly burned, as I couldn’t pull in enough oxygen. This was just like my dreams, I tried hard to keep myself from thinking, but it was true. The only thing that would have made it more realistic would be the feeling of that cold, taloned hand against me.

Tears sprung from my eyes as I whirled around, trying to find any source of light (the doors hadn’t been airtight, after all - why couldn’t I see a crack of light from underneath them?), and getting ready to fight anything that got close to me.

When I felt a hand close on my wrist, I screamed and tried to shake it off. When that didn’t work, I tried to claw it off. I didn’t process the noise around me for another few seconds. Even when I could hear, I could barely process sound above the beating of my own heart. But what I did hear was Liam saying “Shhh, Andi, it’s me. I’m here.”

“Liam?” I cried. I didn’t want to be in this world by myself, and I didn’t want to have to fight off the creature on my own, but I definitely didn’t want him to get hurt too. “Liam, you have to get out!”

“I’m not leaving you.” His voice was strong, and I felt a pull on my wrist from the same hand I’d just been clawing at. I think I realized it was Liam’s hand, and I allowed myself to be pulled into him. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. “I’m here. Just breathe. Nothing bad is going to happen with me here.”

I did my best to listen to what he said, and I tried to match my breathing to his own. It was hard to do, though, but as I felt the dampness of my tears against him, it was like a splash of cold water, and my heart rate started to calm.

“That’s it, slow breaths,” he said, slower than he normally talked. “We’re going to start walking toward the house together, okay? I don’t know why the light went out, but I know that if anything wants to get to you, it’s going to have to go through me, okay?” I whimpered, and he just chuckled lightly. “Even through this, you sound like you’re worried about me. But you don’t need to worry - I can hold my own, even against demons. Come on.”

Slowly, we started walking toward the door to the garage, step by step, as Liam carefully kept the pace even enough that I wouldn’t be brought back to the edge of panic. But by the time we’d almost gotten to the door, I was more numb than anything. Fear has a strange way of doing that to you - as soon as the danger has passed, it’s hard to feel anything anymore. So I didn’t feel anything except the ever-pressing darkness and the warmth of Liam’s arms.

We were only a few steps from the door to the garage when it suddenly flung open, the sudden light blinding my already sore eyes. In the doorway, Caitlin stood, holding a golf club like a bludgeon. She looked between the two of us, confused at first. Then she took in my face and immediately turned to Liam, her face already turning red with anger. “And just want,” she said, her voice rising with every word, “in the god damned fucking hell do you think you’re doing?”