Page 44 of Squad Ghouls

Bronwyn was sitting in a floral rocking chair that hadn’t been there before, a set of knitting needles in her hands and a ball of yarn bouncing around her feet as she worked on something that looked vaguely like a pair of shorts.

A ghost I hadn’t seen during the introduction was half-hidden in the shadow, sitting with his back against the foot of my bed, twirling something between his pale fingers. Andrew, I guessed, as that was the one name Owain had mentioned that I hadn’t had a face for. Though he did look familiar… I pushed it aside. His head stayed mostly down, and he seemed withdrawn and hunched in on himself, like he wanted to be anywhere but there. I was very much on the same page.

Harri and Larri were bickering, trying to squish themselves together on a padded desk chair, growling and sniping at each other despite two other chairs being completely empty on either side of the one they were fighting over.

And closing the circle was the pirate, with a grimace on his face so sour it curdled my own blood.

Wait…where was microwave Slenderman?

“We’re going to have a conversation.” Bronwyn interrupted me checking the shadowy corners. “Have a seat.”

“I’m fine standing,” I said, but the moment I said it a pop sounded behind me just as the edge of a wooden chair hit the backs of my knees and I folded, arse thumping against the hard surface.

I glanced behind me and there was the radioactive cloud. “Fucking…”

“Are you always this dramatic?” Bronwyn asked.

I glared at her. “Well excuse me for not jumping for joy about a hostage situation.”

She paused her knitting to look at me over the edge of her half-moon glasses. “You are hardly a hostage. What with a weapon in your hand and the fact that you can, quite literally, walk through us.”

And she…was not wrong.

Owain’s friends seemed to be hovering around an entity level 3, the state of their corporealism seeming to flux and change. Well, except Popty. I didn’t even know if there was a classification for what he was.

Still, my mother had taught me to be kind to old ladies, so I placed my PolterPulse on my lap and folded my hands over it.

Bartholomew yelled in fright and pulled out his own musket, pointing it at me with a shaking hand. I didn’t know how to process it. Were we about to have a duel?

The other ghosts glanced over at him in exasperation, Popty’s dark essence pushing his hand down.

“Put it down, Barth. He didn’t do anything, you yellow-livered sea dog. You’re so jumpy,” Harri said.

“One can never be too careful. The seas are rough out there; there’s danger a’lurkin’ around every corner,” Barth said, waving his gun around.

Larri held his hand up. “Please stop shaking that thing. Last time you shot Harri in the arse.”

Harri gasped. “You promised never to share that story with anyone! You loose-lipped, snake-tongued betrayer of worlds!”

“It just slipped.”

“Oh, that’s always your excuse,” Harri said. “’I didn’t mean to fall on the reverend’s dick, my hole just slipped.’”

Larri gasped. “You promised not to tell a soul!”

“Did you bring me here to watch the Springer Show: Ghost Special?” I asked the rest of them as the idiots kept arguing back and forth in the background.

Bronwyn looked at Andrew.

“This was your idea,” she told him.

The reclusive ghost nodded before looking up.

“There is something you need to know about Owain,” Andrew said, his voice soft and barely audible over the sound of Harri and Larri’s chains rattling.

“That he’s insane?” I asked. “I think I got that when he tried to gentle-parent a ghost actively trying to kill him.”

“I want to be offended on his behalf and argue, but…you’re not wrong,” Bronwyn said. “There is a reason for it though.”