He found himself back at the register. The aromatic smell of peppermint and dark chocolate still hung in the air, but its fragrance was tainted by something metallic and familiar.

It was a harsh scent that he had grown accustomed to. While he, himself, did not consume the substance, he was still a vampire, afterall……

“Blood……” Noël brought his hand to his head and nervously twirled a lock of his hair. “It must be abundant and fresh if its scent can’t entirely be masked out by this smell.”

He turned his head towards the spirit, expression simultaneously both resigned and resolute.

“We’re getting close now,” is what Noël told his faceless companion. She tightly clasped her hands together in response.

The creaky steps following him as he stepped across the wooden floorboards were absolutely deafening to the ear. While the ghost girl could not completely speak [if it was due to her lack of a mouth or something else entirely, he did not know], she was humming a light-hearted rendition of ‘Ring Around the Rosie.’ Truth be told, he was beginning to feel like the protagonist in a horror novel, but who was he to discourage her attempts at creating music?

His loud, cacophonic, creaky footsteps abruptly came to a halt once he reached the backroom door.

Time fell to a complete standstill as he reached one small, pale hand out to the scratched doorknob.

He could hear absolutely nothing.

Even the ghost girl ended her song.

The world had gone still, but soon…it will end…for everyone except him.

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Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes and…yanked the wooden door open. He was taken aback by how strong the scent of blood and decay had grown.

Amidst opening his eyes, he was admittedly unsurprised by just how chaotic the backroom was. If possible, it was even messier than the storefront. Stacks and stacks of wooden crates were precariously placed one on top of the other—all of which reached up to the ceiling.

What caught his attention, however, was a frayed gray curtain hidden behind the crates.

Noël couldn’t see it, but he just knew.

Behind that curtain was the key to this little ghost’s salvation.

Afterall, that was where the awful metallic scent of blood was strongest.

Coughing lightly as he pushed back cobwebs, Noël slowly made his way to the curtain. The faceless ghost followed in-suit, noiselessly and impassively.

“Are you sure you’d like to see this,” Noël asked. “There are other methods to ensure your transfer to the other side. To be quite honest with you, I will not promise you won’t like what you see here. No, it’s not a promise, but a guarantee.”

Moving to stand in-front of the curtain, the faceless ghost beckoned towards Noël. Please…do this for me, is what she seemed to say.

Noël blankly stared at the curtain for a final time. He grimaced at being in such close proximity to the harried veil separating them from whatever may be hidden from view and…pushed the grainy, ragged cloth aside.

The ghost was a perfect caricature of sheer horror as she brought her hands up to where her mouth should be. Backing away from the sight of decay that had been revealed from behind the curtain, her long, light hair [still covered in blood and bramble] fluttered back. Her resemblance was uncannily similar to that of a wrathful ghost.

“Is…this you? Or…who you once were?” Noël questioned even though he knew the answer. His eyes were downcast and hollow. “Now that we’ve found you, I suppose the only thing left is to give you a proper burial.”

His frown deepened as he continued to stare at the look of terror etched into the skeleton hidden away behind the curtain.

Or, well, her complete lack of a face…

The skull’s face was viciously smashed in, but he was positive that if there were traces of a face, it would have been frozen with shock.

It was apparent the girl’s skeleton was locked away for decades. Yellowed and cracked with age, if he could hazard a guess, he would say the poor girl had been dead for at least fifty years. Cracks were visible all over, but the worst would have to be around her ankles, as if she had taken a great fall. The skeleton’s night gown was covered in dried blood and sticks…its resemblance was exactly similar to that of the ghost girl’s own intangible copy.

Most grotesquely, however, were the large amounts of dry gray hair still attached to her skull.

Due to its age, clumps of hair had separated and laid about the ground in messy heaps. Blood still clung to the strands of hair.

Noël turned to look at the spirit. She was completely unresponsive, but he could not blame her. The odds were that she subconsciously knew her remains were in this room. But…was it fear or something more that kept her away from this room for so long?

While he was more used to speaking with the dead than the living, there were many things about the former that he still did not understand.

Though, he doubted anyone could ever truly know the thoughts and machinations of the deceased. Even he, a boy who died once, still had little to no idea what the more permanent aspects of the afterlife would be like.