A Beautiful Deception

Tara knew better than to walk past the swamplands near dusk, but the bitchy girls at Henrietta High had scattered the contents of her gym bag into the waiting marshes. As she stepped across moss and wet spots, she could see her favorite ballet flats sinking into the murky water. And, hell, the clothes probably wouldn’t even be salvageable.

“Your stuff’s right where it belongs,” Laurie Hemp had said, sneering, after the school day was over. “Where everything goes to die.”

Laurie thought she was being cute, with the little allusion to the incident that had started Tara’s high school career last year: in the girls’ showers after gym class, Tara had screamed and claimed to have seen a dark shadow looming in one of the stalls. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, if the other girls hadn’t panicked and thought there was a Peeping Tom staked out in the room. When the gym teacher found nothing of the sort, Tara was deemed a pariah by the other girls and a troublemaker by the teachers.

It hadn’t been a great way to start her freshman year.

And it only got worse from there as her single mother thought Tara was “acting out” because of the divorce. Little did Eliza Hayes realize that their attic was haunted by Granddad and the pesky poltergeist of a squirrel who had gotten trapped and died in the confines. Even at home, Tara had no peace.

As she side-stepped over muck and tree roots while wearing only a t-shirt and her gym shorts, she felt sweat beading on her upper lip. Of course her luck was that she grew up in a muggy climate, only to realize that her body would never really acclimate to the environment. Hell, if she could, she might apply for college in Alaska. Anything to get her far, far away from here.

But for the moment she just had to figure out how to retrieve her possessions as quickly as possible before the bus left.

After collecting her ruined shoes and little things like chapstick and deodorant, Tara had just grabbed her windbreaker jacket—only to feel a tug when she tried to pull her hand away. Long, spindly fingers gripped her wrist.

“How fun, a visitor,” the fingers’ owner said, revealing its face to be a girl—maybe twelve or thirteen, with wet curls of black hair—whose left eye was missing. Tara tried not to dwell on the fact that it looked like the girl’s skull was bashed in too. When she came across stray ghosts like this, they were usually the product of homicide—left to rot in the hidden places people rarely dwelled.

Tara swallowed down the urge to vomit. It wasn’t the first time she had seen gore from a ghost, but that didn’t make each time any less horrifying or sickening.

“I just need my jacket,” Tara said, willing her voice not to tremble or quake. Any hint of fright could make a docile ghost turn into a raging pit of anger and spite. Some ghosts wanted to pretend everything was normal, that they were still alive to some degree, and any acknowledgement of being deceased had a tendency to make them...snap.

“Do you want to play a game?” the ghost asked, its ruined mouth moving and revealing bloodied teeth. “It’s been so long since someone came to see me.”

Tara just shook her head and tried to appear as normal and friendly as possible. “I can’t. I have to get home. My mom’s waiting for me.”

“Oh.” The ghost’s grip loosened ever so slightly. “We don’t want your momma to be mad at you. Will you come play with me sometime? A tea party might be nice.”

Tara tried not to focus on the missing eye or anything else that was wrong with the ghost’s face. She couldn’t erase the thought that this girl had died gruesomely—alone and in pain, never to feel warmth or love again. Most ghosts that lingered were the same.

“Sure,” Tara said as she urged a smile onto her face. “I’d love that.”

The ghost’s fingers let go of her arm entirely. But this time, the girl’s form shook as she hugged herself with her bruised and bloody arms. “It’s so cold,” she whispered. “Why is it so cold?”

Before she could rethink it, Tara found herself pulling the jacket around the ghost girl’s thin, broken shoulders. “Take this,” she said. “You’ll be able to keep a bit warmer this way.”

It didn’t matter that Tara still felt sweat pooling under her t-shirt. To a ghost, there was no such thing as warmth anymore. And it never hurt to give a ghost a gift because no one could ever be sure what would be the trigger to send them to the afterlife.

But the ghost stayed, still corporal and present to Tara’s eyes. No passing on then. Tara smothered a sigh.

At least the ghost was smiling. That was something.

“You’re so kind,” the ghost whispered. “I think we should be friends.”

Tara tried not to grimace. Horror and sadness alike warred within her. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s be friends.”

The ghost smiled again, and this time Tara could not help but see the glimmers of the young girl who had been before she had been murdered. From the swatches of fabric still clinging to her form, the ghost was probably at least a few decades gone. Who knew how long she had been missing—or how long her family had been waiting for some kind of closure.

When the ghost—appeased for the moment—settled back into the swamp, Tara tried not to think of the bones lurking beneath the water. If she put in an anonymous tip to the police station, then maybe this girl might have a chance to rest at last. That was all anyone could hope for, especially in places so frequently haunted by spirits that could not find peace for what had been done to them.

Tara looked up at the cloudy sky. It was going to rain.

And she realized she would really miss that jacket.