Maggie’s shoulders stiffened. “What?”
“I was walking to my car.” My voice cracked. “It was really dark and there was this woman. . .” My hands started to shake. “She was covered in blood. So much blood!”
Maggie was frozen beside me, her eyes wide.
“But when I tried to get help,” I continued, the words rushing from my lips, “There . . .” The words stuck in my throat. “There was no one there.” My voice came out as a whisper, but the words seemed to hang thick in the air as if I had shouted them.
Maggie was still unmoving, her face a mixture of confusion and awe. I could almost see the wheels turning in her brain as she tried to process the information. I sat still and tried to let her make sense of what I told her, but seeing her speechless was really freaking me out. What if she doesn’t believe me? What if she thinks I am completely crazy? What if I am crazy?
Finally, she took a steadying breath and asked, “No one else saw her?”
“No,” I squeaked.
Maggie nodded slowly. “I think you better go back and tell me the whole story.”
I went back to the beginning, right after I walked out of the comic book shop. I rehashed every single detail—the woman’s appearance, the strange connection I’d felt, her sudden disappearance, and how I had run for my car and seen her behind me.
“Oh my God,” Maggie said when I stopped speaking. “That’s—”
“Crazy?” I finished for her, letting out a huff. “There’s more.” I pushed up the sleeve of the hoodie I’d thrown on in the car.
“Holy crapkittens, Styles!” She yanked my arm forward to get a closer look. “Does it hurt?”
“It feels better now than it did half an hour ago, but it still stings.”
Maggie’s already wide eyes practically bugged out of her head. “I can’t believe this.”
“Well, that makes two of us.”
“So she just grabbed you, gave you the Dr. Doom treatment, and then you passed out?”
“Well, yes. But . . .”
“But what?”
I hesitated, but finally spit it out. “I heard her voice in my head. . . . She knew my name. It was like she was trying to tell me something.” I looked down at the ground. “But I couldn’t understand.”
“You’ve been working really hard lately, staying up late, studying a lot.” Maggie was chewing on her bottom lip. “Is it possible that . . .”
“That I made it up? That it was just some weird mind trick?” I gripped the wood beneath my fingers even tighter. “I don’t know, Mags. I don’t know what to think.” Heat rippled through me. “I keep looking for a logical explanation. Maybe it was an early Halloween prank or some figment of my imagination. But the voice in my head and this.” I thrust my arm out. “There’s nothing logical about it.”
Maggie paused, thinking. Then she took a deep breath. “Well, we have to start thinking a little less logically, then.” She pulled out the comic book she had shoved in her back pocket and tapped the cover. “I’m sure Peter Parker was as confused as you were when he suddenly woke up with superpowers.”
“You can’t compare what happened to me to a comic book,” I scoffed. “It’s not like I got bitten by a magical spider.”
“First of all, that spider was radioactive, not magical, but you’re missing the point.” She pointed to the cover again and rolled her eyes. “Maybe there are things in the world that you can’t explain and you just have to believe they’re possible.”
“You sound like a fortune cookie.”
“Try to stop being . . . you for a second,” Maggie said, ignoring me. “Throw logic and reason out the window.”
I scoffed. That was like asking me to stop breathing. Yet, she had a point. If logic couldn’t explain it, then there was nothing left to turn to—except, of course, the impossible. I sighed.
“Do you think . . . maybe it was a ghost?”
“That makes more sense than anything else.” Maggie’s face lit up at the suggestion. “And you know, small towns are known for paranormal activity. Wasn’t Mr. Reinhard saying just the other day that Sherman burned down most of Lothbrook during his march through Georgia? I bet—”
“It was just a thought,” I broke in, fighting the urge to laugh. “A stupid idea, really. Forget I mentioned it.”
“Don’t do that,” Maggie said. “Don’t play it off like it’s nothing. It can’t hurt to explore all the possibilities, right? Now, think. Is there anything else you can remember about her that might help us figure out who she is and why she attacked you?”
“No,” I said. “I told you everything.”
“Hmmm, okay. Well, I’m sure we can figure it all out.”
“Oh yeah? How?”
“What about the census records at the library? You said it looked like she was from the olden days. Maybe there’s some kind of record of her or her family.”
“It’s possible, I guess, but I don’t even know her name. And it’s not like we can look up ’the dead girl who attacked me’ in the index,” I countered.
Maggie pushed the hair from her eyes and leaned forward. “Well, you know, if we could somehow figure out where this gal is buried, we can salt her bones, burn them, and—”
My mouth dropped open. “Are you serious right now?”
“What? I’ve been marathoning Supernatural. There was this one episode where Sam and Dean—”
“Wait. Supernatural? Seriously, Mags?”
She pursed her lips. “Don’t start with me, Styles. That show is legit.”
I groaned and dropped my head in my hands.
“Okay, fine. No bones, no fires,” Maggie said, yanking on my arm. “That means the first step should probably be to try and contact her. This woman obviously reached out to you for a reason. Don’t you want to find out what that reason is?”
“Of course I do. But I seriously doubt a TV show is gonna help us.”
“You underestimate the sheer awesomeness of the Winchester brothers,” Maggie said with a dreamy smile. “But look, we could try a more classic approach.”
“Such as?”
“What about a spirit board?”
“A Ouija board? We used to play with those at all our old middle school sleepovers. They never worked.”
“That’s because we were too chicken to ask it anything important. Come on, Styles. I know we’re totally outside your comfort zone, but you have to try. Why are you fighting this so much?”
I chewed on my bottom lip for a few seconds before answering. “I guess I’m just a little . . .”
“Scared?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m used to relying on books for everything. Concrete facts, hard evidence—things that can’t be disputed. None of this makes any sense, and I don’t do well with . . . with stuff like this.”
“What? You?” Maggie interjected, feigning shock. “I never would’ve guessed that.”
“You know what I mean. I just have a feeling that this, whatever this is, is big. And it makes me really nervous.”
“I know it’s kinda freaky, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Maybe something incredible is about to happen. Hell, for all we know, you could be turning into some kind of ghost-
seeing mutant with special powers.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement.