If left alone, Henrietta probably could have slept for well over twenty-four hours. Her rest was interrupted, however, sometime in the late afternoon. Surprisingly, it wasn't Bradley barging in to send them out all over Colorado again—it was the sound of glass smashing. One of the many coffee mugs that cluttered her nightstand appeared to have picked itself up and smashed itself against her wall. Heart pounding in her throat, Henrietta sat up in bed and watched as the mugs floated through the air and smashed themselves one by one, until there were none left and her carpet was dusted with broken ceramic shards.
Feeling oddly calm, Henrietta waited until it seemed that the onslaught was over. Then, she groped around on her nightstand, lit a cigarette, and pulled out her cellphone to call Dylan. He picked up on the fourth ring.
"Hen, what the fuck," he slurred groggily into the phone. She took a drag off her cigarette and exhaled before speaking.
"It's here."
Ten minutes later, Dylan was flinging her door open and cursing as he practically stepped on a jagged piece of shattered mug. He had Georgie and Dylan with him, and Bradley was there too, no doubt having heard the commotion from downstairs.
"What the hell happened?" Bradley demanded.
"It's here," Henrietta repeated. "I don't know how we missed it, but it's here."
"How do you know?" Evan asked, looking around the room suspiciously.
Georgie rolled his eyes. "Are you serious? Look around you."
Evan folded his arms and glares at Bradley. "Well, what the fuck? I thought you were supposed to be on top of this shit. How did you miss that one of them was in your own house?"
Bradley looked stricken for a moment, and then he hung his head. "It's impossible to truly predict a spirit's comings and goings with technology. They're intrinsically opposed. I thought the stuff I had would work well enough, but it didn't. It must've been under our noses this whole time, and heard everything we said. It's probably listening to us now."
Georgie flopped down on the bed, looking bleak.
Dylan took a more optimistic approach. "So that's it, then. We kill this one, we're golden, right?"
Bradley sighed. "In theory, yes, but—"
"No theories," Evan interrupted. "I'm tired of this. Let's just give it the old one-two and go back to reading poetry and staring at each other. Remember when that was all we did?"
Bradley gave another put-upon sigh. "Whatever. Whatever. I can't stand in your way, this wasn't my fault."
"Alright," said Henrietta, only just then able to come back from what she had seen. "Alright, let's go. We'll call you if things get too crazy."
Bradley nodded and made for the door. He seemed to waver back and forth between saying something, and then just settled on "be careful."
"Yeah," said Henrietta. "Make sure mom and dad are out of the house." That was about as far as they were willing to go into the realm of mushy family exchanges.
Bradley saluted her, and not long after that they heard the rattling of the garage door opening. Henrietta hoped grimly that whenever they came back, they wouldn't be returning to a roomful of corpses.
The four of them assembled themselves in the center of Henrietta's room—Henrietta west, Evan north, Dylan south, Georgie east. They joined hands, like last time, and concentrated on focusing their energy. Conditions were much quieter this time, and it was easy to reach inside herself for the energy she knew would be there, but once she had reached it, it felt almost like it was locked.
She couldn't access it, draw it out, focus it towards anything—she could feel it there, but that was it.
Cracking an eye open, she could see from the expressions on the other's faces that they were having similar problems.
-Hausinge-
After a few more minutes of unsuccessful probing, Georgie dropped Henrietta's hand abruptly. "This isn't working," he said with a grimace. "Maybe the spirit has to show itself to us, or some shit like that before we can do the mind-bolts thing."
Henrietta shrugged. His guess was as good as any.
"We should go looking for it," Evan proclaimed. "I just want to get this over with."
"We all do," Dylan reminded him. "But how?"
"Maybe we should split up," Henrietta said. "See if we can draw it out that way."
"Have you never seen a horror movie in your life?" Georgie asked her incredulously. "That's the worst idea ever."
"Whatever," said Henrietta sullenly. "Have any better ideas?"
Georgie sighed. "The thing can probably hear us talking right now. No matter what we do, we're playing into its creepy insubstantial hands. There's nothing we can do but wait."
"No, fuck that," said Henrietta emphatically. "If we do that, it'll just stay here forever, or until it drives us crazy, or it'll just pick us off one by one. This is my house, and I'm not sharing it with some lame conformist boner of a ghost."
Dylan nodded. "Maybe there's some way to send it a message it can't ignore. Like the way it gets in our minds—I thought I could do it, to the last one we killed."
"Might work," Henrietta shrugged. "Give it a shot."
Dylan shut his eyes tight, appearing to concentrate as hard as he could. For a few seconds, all was silent, but then Henrietta felt his voice ringing through her mind, clear and confident where the spirits' had been cacophonous and chaotic. "Listen up, motherfucker," he said. "Get the fuck out of here, or we'll make you get out."
Evan cast Dylan an approving look. "Nice."
Dylan just shrugged flipping his bangs out of his eyes. "Whatever."
He'd scarcely gotten the word out when Henrietta saw it. It was huge, hulking and yet somehow constantly shifting—it melted seamlessly through her bedroom door and advanced on them threateningly, malevolent energy spiking through its every silent step. The most eerie thing about it was its silence; compared to the this one, the others were downright chatty.
The four of them quailed in its wake. Attempting to be brave, Henrietta grabbed for someone's hand, attempting to gather up her energy once more. The hand was cruelly ripped from her, however, as the thing picked her up and threw her bodily against the wall, just like another piece of ceramic.
She crashed to the ground, feeling just as shattered as one of the mugs. It hurt like hell to move even the slightest bit, and she cursed when she felt something warm trickling down her forehead to drip into her eyes.
Wiping the blood away, she saw Georgie looking at her with a stricken expression.
"Looks worse than it is," she managed, even though she had no idea whether or not that was true. Evan attempted to rush to her aid, but the spirit was rounding on him now.
Henrietta wiped more blood and concentrated as hard as she could. The energy was more readily available now that the spirit was here, as she'd thought, but it seemed bent on separating them. Just as she'd gathered a suitable amount, it seemed to do something like punching Evan in the stomach with astonishing force. He dropped to the floor and wheezed, all the air gone from his lungs.
Henrietta had never done it by herself before, and she knew it wouldn't be anywhere near as powerful, but she let the energy fly anyway.
It seemed to stun the spirit momentarily, giving her enough time to drag herself over to the others and help Evan up. Georgie and Dylan were frantically lighting candles in a corner, trying to revert back to their old rituals. "No," Henrietta managed. "We already know it won't work."
"So what do we do?" Dylan demanded, looking slightly frantic as he attempted to hold her up. Henrietta's head swam. Behind him, she could see the ghost picking itself back up again. "We have to do this fast," she said, struggling to focus.
She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated as hard as possible, harder than she ever had before, only hoping that the others were doing the same. It was difficult to focus, what with the whole head wound and all, but she did her best, and soon enough she could feel the energy building up inside her.
Signaling to the others, she concentrated as hard as she could and waited. Soon, Evan was turning himself towards the spirit, barreling towards them once again. Henrietta registered dimly that if this didn't work, they were probably all going to die.
Evan actually let out a shout as the energy left his body. For the first time, it was visible before impact with the spirit; gray as mist, or the moon, or smoke from a cigarette. It passed out of him and headed straight for the spirit, a full-on collision that stopped it in its tracks only seconds away from the four of them, by this point abandoning all decorum in favor of huddling together on the floor. Dylan clutched at Evan's arm with a horrified expression, anchoring him to earth, as the impact fought to lift him off the ground.
They watched as the smoke appeared to somehow rip the ghost apart on impact, suffusing it with an unearthly glow and eventually fading it away.
It stared at them with eyes like pits as the last of it faded away, and then, for the first time, they heard it in their minds.
Unlike the directionless cacophony of the others, this one spoke precisely, in a voice that filled them all with dread.
"Our time here has ended," it said to them. And that was it.
Henrietta stared at the place where it had been, almost expecting some kind of cheesy horror-movie. "For now."
But nothing else was forthcoming, and soon she came to realize that for the first time in days they were well and truly alone.
More liquid trickled down her face, and she wiped at it, alarmed that she was still bleeding; as her fingers came away from her face, however, she realized that she was crying.
She got herself back under control, wiping the tears away quickly and then looking over at the others, only to see that Dylan had begun to sob theatrically, and Evan was looking kind of teary himself.
Rolling her eyes fondly, she crowded in closer.
"This is getting dangerously close to group-hug territory," Georgie reasoned, the only dry-eyed one in the bunch. "I mean, we already fucking saved the day or whatever, there is literally no need to initiate a fucking—"
"Nah," said Evan, wrapping his arms as far around everyone as they would go. "Fuck it. We're doing this."
Soon, Georgie's protests were effectively drowned out. They stayed that way for longer than any of them would probably be prepared to admit.
Eventually, Dylan broke the silence.
"We should probably head to a hospital."
They had to settle for the free clinic, but as it turned out, none of their injuries were all that terrible. They just hurt like hell. Henrietta had sprained her wrist and bruised her ribs, Georgie's arm was broken, the scabbed-over scratches on Evan's arm had reopened, and Dylan managed to get off with only a few cuts and bruises, which they all made fun of him for mercilessly.
Even after dropping everyone off at their respective houses to convalesce, Bradley and her parents still weren't home. He'd texted her a little while ago to tell her that he'd dragged them into three movies in a row just to make sure they'd finished up in time. She had to admit he'd performed his job exceptionally well.
Henrietta returned to her room, surveying the destruction that the spirit had caused and knowing that she was totally going to catch hell for it later.
Not quite able to bring herself to care, Henrietta wrapped herself up in her blankets and settled down for her first good sleep in what felt like forever.