Escape from Windenburg | 12

If things started out innocent and even adorable with the unexpected appearance of the ghost blobs, they quickly took a more sinister turn, as you might expect from any good horror movie (even when it's one you're living out in real life). Hour after hour, the unexplainable occurrences in the house seemed to multiply. Rav stayed busy kicking at and stomping on the strange twisted roots that kept cropping up everywhere, a job that proved a good fit for her more volatile tendencies.

Meanwhile, Alejandro and I were kept perpetually on our toes by the illuminated runes on the floor that seemed to shift to different rooms with no rhyme or reason. We were more than a little freaked out, having perused the stack of books he'd managed to cram into his backpack and found nothing that matched up with or even offered us a vague clue as to what we were dealing with. But at least he and Rav had stopped glowing purple for the time being.

Of course, that small relief turned out to be short-lived. As we tried to maintain normalcy by preparing lunch, we heard Rav screaming from the living room, "It's another one of those goddamn runes! I swear, if those scheming little ghosties are trying to curse us..." She was unable to finish her thought, her attention having been entirely diverted by the sight of Alejandro sulking past. "You're purple again!" she gasped.

"I know," he replied dejectedly. "And I hate to break it to you, but so are you."

It seemed all there was left to do was perform yet another seance. Clearly, we'd cracked open whatever paranormal barrier existed around the house, and our only options were to either run away like cowards or fully surrender ourselves to the spiritual realm. Maybe the strange little ghost we'd seen floating about all day was a sort of protector, guarding the human spirits we really wanted to make contact with from meddlers with bad intentions. But our intentions were pure - or at least that's what we told ourselves - and maybe if we tried hard enough to communicate that, the ghosts would understand.

Unfortunately, rather than make peace, our seance attempts only seemed to strike a nerve. Once darkness fell, we heard a great clatter and roar in the distance and went cautiously downstairs to investigate. Right away, we saw that our friendly companion had been replaced by a far angrier variety of ghost blob. Worryingly, this one spewed fire and had two rows of aggressively sharp teeth.

We had no idea how to convey our peaceful intentions to this inflamed creature. Alejandro's attempts to calmly reason with it seemed only to rile it up more. Rav took a more assertive approach, ranting and raving at it relentlessly to give it a taste of its own medicine.

Shockingly, her approach proved the most successful, as the ghost abruptly vanished, hopefully for a permanent return to the netherworld. We couldn't help celebrating with an adrenaline-fueled high-five. But Alejandro had doubts about how well her method had really worked. "It just can't be that easy," he insisted. "Those little ghouls aren't going to go down without a fight."

Within minutes, his grave prediction was proven accurate. The incensed ghost blob returned with a vengeance, swooping down upon us so forcefully I momentarily felt it against my skin, like a cold, slimy hand dragging along the back of my neck, causing goosebumps to erupt across the surface of my entire body.

Worst of all, he brought along reinforcements. Until now, we'd only had to deal with one of these little guys at once. If we kept provoking them, they might keep multiplying, and who knew what might happen then. Instead, we changed tactics, doing our best to ignore them in the hopes that they would vanish on their own.

Needless to say, we barely managed a wink of sleep between the three of us that night and came dangerously close to abandoning ship half a dozen different times. But we all felt that it was important to stick the weekend out, even if we ultimately learned nothing useful from the experience. At least we would be able to take some pride in the fact that we refused to let the house beat us down.

By morning, the ghosts seemed to have gotten bored of toying with us, but, unfortunately, the house possessed a bag full of additional scare tactics. While attempting to prepare breakfast, though none of us had much of an appetite, I was improbably attacked by a swarm of screeching bats. They seemed so real. I even felt the air shift with the force of their flapping wings. But when Rav and Alejandro came running at the sound of my screams, they saw nothing but me flailing around like an idiot on my own.

Then I narrowly averted catastrophe as I somehow managed to set myself on fire while frying an egg. This time, the threat was very real. Luckily, Rav was quick on her feet and managed to locate and grab the fire extinguisher within seconds. In that short time, however, I saw my whole brief life flash before my eyes. It was far too close of a brush with death for my liking, and I sensed that it wouldn't be my last if we continued to stay in the house.

After rescuing me from the brink of death, Rav was apparently concerned about my safety, too. She abruptly dropped her sarcastic act, and her voice took on a dead serious tone. "Dude, I know you're trying to prove something to yourself here," she told Alejandro, "and, congratulations, you've done it. After dodging those pesky little slime balls all night, I officially believe in ghosts. But let's be real. It's time to pack it up before this house ends up eating Rowan alive."

"She's got a point," I agreed hesitantly, as painful as it was to admit defeat. "I'd prefer to leave this place with all of my limbs intact, and, besides, I don't really see what genuinely useful information we're learning here."

Despite the nervous energy he'd been projecting all weekend, Alejandro was suddenly the picture of confidence. I wasn't sure what had changed for him overnight, but something had clearly clicked in his head. "Come on, guys," he replied coolly. "If we're making the house angry, that means we're onto something real. We can't just throw that away. We might never get an opportunity like this again!"

But Rav was hardly convinced by his pleas, no matter how passionately expressed. "I'll give you 30 more minutes with that crystal ball, Miss Cleo," she retorted, stomping angrily into the living room. "But if one of your ghost buddies touches a single hair on Rowan's head, we're out of here." I was shocked but touched by how fiercely she was defending me. Just a few short weeks ago, she'd barely been able to bring herself to acknowledge my existence. She'd made such a sudden turnaround that it almost gave me whiplash, but I was grateful for her support.

Still, I couldn't deny that even as I was terrified, I was still convinced there was some secret knowledge to glean from this experience that would illuminate what path I should follow next. I distracted myself from visions of ghostly anvils falling onto my head with one of the magical tomes I'd borrowed from Alejandro. Now that I'd shaken the rust off my spellcasting abilities, they were beginning to feel like a natural part of me again. Without even realizing it, I'd levitated the book and started turning the pages with magic.

"Whoa," Rav exclaimed, fascinated enough to take her eyes off her knitting. "How did you ever even learn to do that?"

I shrugged my shoulders, genuinely at a loss to answer her. "I guess I just started doing it," I finally replied. "I remember watching my mom read like this when I was a kid, and I always thought it looked so cool. But she died before she could teach me, so I just had to figure it out myself, like almost everything else."

"Do you really think you can bring her back to life?" she asked soberly.

So Alejandro had told her. I sighed heavily, overwhelmed by such a weighty question. "I don't know. Some days I do and some days I don't. But I have to believe that it's possible because I'm not ready to live in a world where she's actually gone for good. Honestly, I'm not sure I ever will be."

Our unexpectedly deep conversation was interrupted by a sudden shout from Alejandro. I'd almost forgotten he was upstairs, brooding over how to make a breakthrough at the seance table that would convince Rav we needed to stay. When we rushed in to see what he was so excited about, he was standing in front of the portrait of Guidry, which - thankfully - was currently clear of any ghostly companions. "I know exactly what we should do!" he exclaimed breathlessly. "In fact, we've been going about this all wrong the entire time. We've been reaching out to the ghostly realm without any clear focus, and all we've gotten back is uncontrolled chaos. We need an actual subject, a single vessel to channel all of our energy into, and who better than Guidry himself?"

Rav and I weren't entirely convinced by his plan, but we decided to go along with it anyway. If we were only going to allow ourselves one more go of it, we owed it to him to take this final seance as seriously as possible. Alejandro immediately took command of the crystal ball, his voice more booming and authoritative than it had sounded all weekend. He had a mission, and he was determined to see it through. He summoned all of his stored-up wisdom to formally request Guidry's company. All of a sudden, the ground beneath my feet felt light as air, almost as though I were actually physically hovering. Was I just getting swept up in the moment?

"Holy shit!" Rav exclaimed, and my chair suddenly slammed back to the floor with enough force to jolt me out of my reverie and convince me that I actually had been airborne. "You were floating! I can't believe it. You were actually fucking floating, Ro!"

Although I'd been distracted and forced back down to earth, Alejandro was still in the zone and seemed to rise higher and higher with each passing moment. He still muttered incomprehensible invocations beneath his breath. "Did you hear that?" Rav asked, suddenly glancing over her shoulder, her face twisted in genuine fear. But I hadn't heard anything.

Suddenly, I found myself cast in the role of skeptic. Although the levitating had been new and briefly exhilarating, after several more minutes had passed without anything else happening, I was ready to call it quits. This had been a fun little diversion, at least until it had grown deadly, but it was beyond obvious by now that it was getting me nowhere when it came to reversing the fate of my mom, and I was starting to grow frustrated.

As I turned my back on the table, one thing stopped me dead in my tracks. "Look behind you," Rav whispered gravely. "I can't be the only one seeing this."

 Slowly, as though we were in a movie, Alejandro and I pivoted and saw before us none other than a ghostly manifestation of the face we'd all memorized from the painting, one Claude Rene Duplantier Guidry himself. "You rang?" he asked in a surprisingly resonant voice that seemed to shake the very foundation of the house, and we all shrieked simultaneously in disbelief.

Once we had our wits about us again, we invited Guidry to join us at the table, and Rav decided such an esteemed guest called for fancy drinks, even though the only thing we could find to serve them in was a dusty sleeve of disposable party cups and despite the fact that Guidry himself was incapable of partaking.

"I have to say," he told us, seeming more amused than anything else, "you kids are persistent. I'm not in the habit of revealing myself to just anyone, you know? Most of the people who show up here are just hack ghost hunters looking to make a quick buck. But you kids seemed like you needed a win, and you stuck out the creepy crawlies a lot longer than most. I assume you have questions you're hoping I can answer?"

"Only about a million!" I blurted, too curious to try to logically wrap my head around the fact that I was holding a conversation with an actual ghost outside of my dreams. "For starters, I understand you were quite the paranormal enthusiast back when you were, um, alive. Did you ever hear of anyone trying to raise the dead?"

Guidry's expression turned distant and wistful as he reminisced on his past. "Yes, of course, I heard stories, but I never had the pleasure of witnessing such a feat myself or even accruing any hard evidence that it had successfully been done. That was mostly the domain of spellcasters, and they were awfully cagey about their methods in those days. Trade secrets and all, you know?"

"What if I told you we had a spellcaster in our midst right now?" Alejandro said, clapping a hand on my shoulder enthusiastically.

I immediately blushed, and Guidry winked at me with a ghostly twinkle in his eye. "I might've guessed as much. This room is positively brimming with magical charge."

"I'm mostly self-taught," I mumbled self-consciously, unable to meet his gaze. "And I only recently got my abilities back after a bit of a dry spell. I'd hardly call myself a pro."

"But you desire to return someone you love from the spirit realm?"

"My mom," I admitted, swallowing the lump that formed in my throat at the thought of her. "She was a powerful spellcaster herself, but she died when I was just a kid. She sacrificed herself to save the Magic Realm from an attempted coup." Rav and Alejandro exchanged a stunned glance. Although I'd shared bits and pieces of my past since revealing my magical abilities, I'd still glossed over a lot of the details. "I think she might be caught in a sort of in-between place, and I think she wants me to help her get out of it."

Guidry nodded thoughtfully, seemingly not surprised by anything I was telling him. "I believe it's possible, though I've never heard tell of a single spellcaster powerful enough to do it on their own."

"What about a spellcaster who's accompanied by a kick-ass medium?" Alejandro asked, still buzzing from his success.

"Maybe," Guidry allowed, "but these sorts of spells can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Alas, I was never capable of producing a single speck of magic myself, so I'm no expert, but I think what you really need is a Sage. That level of control and nuance only comes with centuries of mastery, I'm afraid."

Immediately, my heart sunk to the pit of my chest. "The last thing I heard about the Sages was that they were all dead," I replied somberly. Rav, by now as captivated by all this as Alejandro and I were, gasped dramatically, like an audience member witnessing the big plot twist in a stage play.

 After that, Guidry didn't have much more to say. He may have been a ghost enthusiast when he was alive who was now an actual ghost, but that hardly meant his knowledge was boundless. It was a complicated subject with complicated answers built on guesswork and experimentation more than anything else, which made me nervous. Was the small chance of success worth the risk when the odds seemed much higher of getting everything all wrong instead?

To his credit, Guidry seemed to feel bad that he couldn't offer me any more definitive advice, so he offered to stick around for a while and help us combat the nasty little ghost blobs we'd conjured before him. According to him, these were the remnants of more aggressive spirits, perhaps even demons, that had been vanquished by past mediums. As irritating as they were, they were only a minor nuisance in comparison and not particularly dangerous on their own. To our relief, it seemed their pointy teeth and fiery auras were mainly for show.

 "I'm sure you'll figure out a way to help your mom, Rowan," he told me as he scrubbed furiously to remove the creepy vigils that kept appearing on the ground. Suddenly, my arms began to glow with a familiar purple light, and he winked at me conspiratorially. "Do you know why the other ghosts refused to mark you?" I shook my head. "They could sense your power, and so they thought it best to leave you alone. You're stronger than you even realize. I may not know much about magic, but even I can tell you're destined to do something great."

I wandered away, so caught up in my thoughts that I barely even noticed the strange relics that continued to crop up around the perimeter of the house. As good as it felt that Guidry believed in me, I couldn't help wishing that for once in my life I'd be given a straightforward answer. But the universe refused to make my quest an easy one at any turn, which I had to admit made sense. After all, if reviving a dead loved one was as simple as baking a cake, everyone would be doing it, and death was vital to the universe's balance. Surely, though, it could make an exception for me? If it only granted this one request, I would never ask it for anything again.

Before he left us to survive one last night in the house on our own, Guidry gave Alejandro a little pep talk, too. "You've got talent, kid, and determination, which is the more important of the two by far. All great mediums have to start somewhere. Just keep at it, and you'll be summoning more ghosts than you can count before you know it."

He also hinted that we would get a much better night's sleep if we gathered up all the ceremonial candles left around the house by former mediums, scattered them near our sleeping bags, and left them burning the entire night through. While it may have presented a fire hazard, it did succeed in keeping us guarded from any paranormal disturbances while we dozed.

The next morning, we were feeling well-rested and generally much more relaxed about occupying a haunted house. While just yesterday we had been itching to leave the place, now, we decided to take stock of the weekend's findings before packing it in. "I can't say I'm feeling very encouraged," I admitted. "All I really got from Guidry is that I should seek out a Sage for guidance. But the Sages were all killed years ago by the same man responsible for my mom's death. Hell, I don't know if the Magic Realm itself even exists anymore. The only time I've visited it since I was a kid was in my dreams." I paused for several seconds, remembering how real that supernatural visit with my mom felt, and then added hastily, "At least, I think it was a dream."

"The answer seems obvious to me," Rav exclaimed, seeming genuinely invested in my dilemma, though, to her, I think it still registered more as the plot of an over-the-top fantasy movie than real life. She hadn't truly wrapped her head around the stakes involved, which became even clearer when she suggested without a moment's hesitation, "You have to go to the Magic Realm!"

I couldn't help snorting derisively at her suggestion, no matter how well-intentioned. "That's way easier said than done. My mom had a way of getting there through magic alone, but she didn't get the chance to show me how, and I never came across it in her books. That means I'd have to get there through a portal."

"Do you know where this portal is?" Rav asked me.

"Yes," I admitted. "I think I could find it if I had to. But it's got to be at least 100 miles away! Besides, we're totally ignoring the fact that all the Sages are dead."

"How many of these Sages were there anyway?" I could tell she was getting frustrated with the web of complications I was weaving.

"Three."

"You're telling me there were only three people in the entire world qualified to fill the position?" She let out a short, barking laugh. "I highly doubt that. These were smart people, right? They had to have other skilled spellcasters waiting in the wings to take over for them. What if they wanted to retire? It's not like they thought they were going to live forever."

"Well..." I began slowly but then thought better of dropping the bombshell known as the potion of immortality on her.

Luckily, Alejandro intervened. "Rowan, we're going to get you to that Magic Realm if it's the last thing we do. Maybe it's a crazy idea, but I think we were brought together for a reason, and after this weekend I believe that even more. I would've lost my shit in here in 15 minutes or less if it weren't for you. But in the end we managed to achieve exactly what we set out to, and we can definitely do it again." I wish I shared his newfound confidence, but I was willing to put my faith in his prediction anyway. At any rate, I was glad to finally have some real support. I would have surely given up by now if I was still all on my own.