She made her way back towards the middle of town, where she knew she would find Red.  Roana closed the door and the sound could be heard as Josephine made her way into the fog.  She glanced skyward and admired the darkened hues and depressing purple color scheme as the faint sound of conversation and her own footsteps weighed on her mind.

--

As time passed, more and more people came out into the bad air of the town.  At first, there was no one but Red and a few vendors who ventured to their stands and set up to sell their goods.  Red had stopped at a few of them and glanced around, but he didn’t find anything he needed. Then one of the beaked doctors came out.  He wore a top hat with a pink posy inserted into the white band.  He wore long, black robes and carried a long pole that curved at the end, suspending lanterns from it that produced an eerie yellow glow in the fog.  His mask was black with blue lenses and the mere sight of his darkened figure either brought hope or fear into people.  It depended on who was asked.

He trudged through the town square, stopping to purchase a few things from the vendors before he made his way to a house that had a guard at the front door.  On the wooden door, there was a red cross that was crudely painted on to signify that a plague victim lay inside.  It was forbidden to come anywhere near a house that was infected unless the person was a doctor.  

It was their means of trying to contain the rampant disease that flooded their town.

Footsteps approached Red, the sound of shoes clacking against rocks caused him to turn around and pull his gaze from the doctor to see Josephine walking swiftly to him as she clenched the fabric of her dress in her hands to keep from tripping on her own clothing.  Her expression was concentrated and stern as she pierced a hole in him with sight alone.

“Hello?” Red was a little confused as to why she was walking up to him.  Didn’t she say that she didn’t care about his stories earlier? What was going on? Did she change her mind?

“Okay, okay,” Josephine closed her eyes and held a begrudging visage, “I’ll play your stupid myth buster game.”

“You will?” Red arched an eyebrow.  Why was she having second thoughts about this?

“Let’s just get it over with,” the girl trudged past him and began to head in the direction of the graveyard.

Red turned and ran after her to try and keep up. “I found out some more information about that lady. She was hung for sorcery. It’s really bizarre because I don’t know what kind of sorcery that she was accused of or what people saw her do. There’s something fishy about all of this. Anyway, I’m more interested in the real deal.”

There were a lot of muddled details in Gladys Goldwell’s persecution and it really depended on who he asked about it as to what kind of story he got. No one that was questioned really knew much about her or had even seen her.  It made him wonder whether or not she was someone who even existed at one point.  Was she just a myth? Was her story passed around like some strange game of round robin?

If it was real, there were so many inconsistencies in the story and quite a bit of contradictions going around. At least a few pieces of information coincided with each other, so there were certain things that were said that Red knew were overarching facts, no matter how generic they were.

Josephine’s words penetrated his thoughts as she told him ‘let’s go’ and the two of them made their way to the outskirts of town. Footsteps sounded against the ground as the two of them propelled themselves forward.  The cold air beat against their forms and they passed the few people who walked the streets of Conversion Town.  

“Graveyard, here we come!” Red cheered aloud as the two of their forms vanished over the horizon.

They passed houses, some derelict after their inhabitants passed from the plague.  The structures were forgotten in time and appeared dingy and lifeless, with flaking, warped wood and decaying material.  Grass had grown high around them and red paint flaked from the crosses painted on their doors.  

The farther away the two of them got the more structures dissipated into the earth’s natural beauty.  Soon, the only thing that lay before them was a field of grass with a few trees that were twisted, darkened and ominous in the fog.  The open fields were desolate and devoid of life.  The darkened grass waved slowly in the wind, adorned with a few flowers that grew in the wild and remained unpicked by beaked doctors and florists who hoped to gain money for selling them to ward off the bad air.

Spying some daisies to use as a sacrificial gift, Josephine plucked the delicate blossoms from the ground and held them in her hands, taking them with them. 

Soon, the two of them came to the graveyard.  The only indication that it had even existed out on the edge of town was a spindly, winding path in the dirt that was nearly overgrown with foliage.  Josephine and Red stood at the old, iron arch that welcomed them into the burial grounds.

In front of the arch was a stone with words chiseled into it that read ‘Conversion Town Memorial Gardens’.  The stone was damp from the fog and weathered with time.  The rusty arch loomed above them as they walked into the graveyard, down the path of stone that was uneven and overgrown.  The two of them looked around at the various graves, all in different states of decay.  All around them crosses loomed, straightened and leaning, tombstones and concrete plates on the ground that all held different names of those who were buried there.

A feeling of being watched crept over them as they continued to walk through the graves, scanning each one for the correct name.  Cold air nipped at their skin, giving them goosebumps as the gloomy skies threatened to rain on them.  Dew from the grass clung to their clothes as they walked down the rows of stone.  Finally, they came across a broken tombstone that stuck from the ground.  The severed piece lay in front of it, face down in the ground but the name engraved on it was still completely intact. 

It was the name they had been searching for: Gladys Goldwell.

Josephine glanced at the name, studying it for a moment.  It was as if the reality of the legend she had heard Red speak was staring her down.  She hadn’t expected to find it at all and had written it off to be completely fictional until this moment.  

Dread and realization crept into her form as she locked eyes on it and her grip on the flowers in her hands tightened..

“Alright,” she finally spoke to catch Red’s attention, “here we are the grave marker.”

“I’ve found it, but only to figure out it was actually real!” Red was excited before his voice took on a different tone. “It’s kind of freaking me out.”

He felt much the same as Josephine.  Red had half-way expected not to find it at all and looked a little shocked to even be standing before the actual grave.  This was no prank, nothing faked to catch them off guard. This was the grave marker of a real person named Gladys Goldwell.  This was the myth herself, in the cold ground.

Being there made him feel a mixture of guilt, sorrow and intrigue. There was no turning back now.  He had spent all of this time looking into the mystery of Gladys Goldwell and now that she was in front of him, he wasn’t going to just leave this be. The woman at least, was real despite the stories that surrounded her and he wanted to know if they held any merit.

He was going to see this out until the end.

“Alright, I guess we have to summon her, right?” Josephine glanced back to the red-clad male who stood behind her and pulled daisies out of his pocket.

“That’s the way it goes,” Red took the flowers, held them up and looked at them.  Taking a breath, he walked up to the grave and laid them in front of it.

“You’d better hope that no one sees us doing this,” Josephine warned him. “Do you know what we’re risking being out here summoning a ghost?”

If anyone were to see them engaging in such satanic rituals, they were sure to be tried as witches and hung high for the world to see their sins.  The last thing that Josephine wanted was to suffer that kind of fate.  The thought of standing there, overlooking the faces of those who knew her as she took her final breath haunted her.  She had many close encounters with death in the past, and she didn’t want to feel any of that again.

Red turned to walk over to the path where he had a straight shot of vision down to the arch. “I’ll watch to make sure that no one is coming,” he shouted as his dark eyes kept sight down the path.  If anyone were to come walking up, whether it was a doctor or someone coming to visit the graves, he would know and they would be able to make an escape before whoever it was even entered.

It was a flawless plan.

Josephine stared down the grave. It was as if she and it were the only things that existed in the conscious world.  The girl trembled, not wanting to do this.  Her stomach felt like she was free falling and a rising sickness welled within her.  She pulled at the clothing that covered her breasts as her rising body temperature made things a little hard to concentrate on.

Fighting off the heat, she gestured down to the grave and concentrated all of the energy that she could muster as she began the summoning process.

“I call forth the spirit of Gladys Goldwell. Come into the mortal plain and show yourself. Give me a sign that you’re here!” Josephine commanded as Red watched with anticipation from the path.

His voice was laced with excitement. “Is this happening for real?”

He could hardly believe it! For once, he was finally able to act out his dream of taking part in the history of the paranormal entities that infested his town. This was truly a day to behold.  Red’s eyes concentrated with anticipation as he watched the events unfold before him. His blood pumped and he felt antsy, wanting something- anything to happen at this very moment to either prove or disprove all of the information he had been gathering for days.

This is what his research came down to!

This was the moment of truth!

Josephine felt herself sweating more and more. It tickled her skin and made her feel colder.  Her head hurt, as if a headache had come on and her breath escalated.  She had been feeling ill on and off, but this was something different. Her body was blazing, and pain riddled her form, biting into her bones.

“I feel strange,” her ragged voice caught the boy’s ears.

“It’s happening,” but he was too caught up in his own triumph to make anything substantial of it.

Green eyes darted around as paranoia overcame her. She looked up at the sky, which seemed as if it were spinning.  She turned her head every which way as the grounds around her were more daunting than before. The trees were like sinister figures that lurked in the fog, waiting to come down on her without a moment’s notice.  The graves were ominous and reminded her that death seemed so certain.  She may have been able to escape its grasp in the past, but the threat was forever lurking in the fabric of reality, waiting to one day claim her as it did so many others.

“Why do I feel like I’m being watched suddenly?” She asked no one but herself. Her eyes continued to dart wildly about. She took on the look of someone who had gone insane with quick, jerking motions and an unpredictable sense of movement.

It was just like her nightmare.  This feeling of being so completely alone, yet still feeling eyes on her was so certain, but she knew that it wasn’t Red who had been staring her down.  No, this felt as if the very heavens themselves were watching her, judging her misdeeds that she had taken part in during her life on earth.

It was as if all of her sins were laid out for the world to see, all of her vulnerabilities were leaking from her and up for scrutiny.

“Here it is! The moment of truth!” Red called out with his hands in the air, inadvertently sickeningly celebrating his friend at her worst.

‘I can’t believe it! I don’t see her but I can feel her. My body aches and I keep feeling an alternation of cold and hot. My head is pounding. Ugh…this is strange,’ her thoughts were going at a hundred miles an hour as the sky continued to spin, even faster than before as it swirled into a myriad of colors.  Her hands kept attempting to pry her clothes away from her flesh. It felt as if merely touching her was burning her alive.  The pain was severe, so much so that she lost all sense of where she was and what she was doing.

After fighting her way through another spell, she turned with agony and anger on her face to yell at Red. “If you get me possessed, I’ll kill you and put you in the Memorial Building.”

“Hey,” Red held up his hands in defense, “I told you this was on a whim. Don’t blame me! You summoned her!” 

He wasn’t about to admit to anything beyond what was happening.  Redway didn’t want to be haunted, maimed, or anything else by entities that were both paranormal and worldly.

Josephine paused, standing rigid as sweat rolled down her face and her eyes widened. 

“Oh my god,” her voice spoke, barely above a whisper and her form was pale with fear, “do you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Red was confused. 

Why was she acting as if she had been scared stiff?  Was she being possessed? He really didn’t feel comfortable approaching her when she was acting like this.  This wasn’t Josephine. She never acted this way.  It was as if she was disoriented. There was something very wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on what.

“I hear a heartbeat and everything is burning,” Josephine had been reliving those same feelings of her dream.  Was the heartbeat hers? Was it the heartbeat of Gladys? “I’m actually scared. This is freaking me out. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Hands gripped her head as she hunched over, afraid to look at anything around her.  It was as if the elements were out to get her and the most simple of objects appeared terrifying.  Oh, how she wished that she was encompassed in darkness!  Not knowing what lurked beyond was far better than knowing and having it all look as if it wanted to reach down and take her life.

“You don’t feel like killing me, do you?” Red was apprehensive when he asked and took an unsteady step towards her. The grass was crisp beneath his feet and seemed like the loudest thing around him.

“I’m not sure,” her sights jutted skyward again and her breath escalated. “Everything is so hot and my head is killing me. I feel like I’m going to hyperventilate.”