Chapter 2: Solitude

Fear surged through him, powering his body like liquid fuel as he darted out of the graveyard.    Red didn’t think, he just let his feet take him far away from the source of the scream. He let out labored breaths as he ventured over uneven ground and headed down the crudely made path back towards Conversion Town. Leather brown shoes hit the ground uncomfortably as he stepped on stray rocks haphazardly.  It sent sharp stabs of pain through his legs but his mind was too frenzied to pay it any attention.  

He had to get as far away as he could. Red felt the breath of death on the back of his neck. From the way that Josephine acted, he was certain that she had been cursed by the spirit of Gladys.  This was a terrible idea and he didn’t know what to do, but he sure didn’t want to find out what Josephine would do to him when she woke up.

He had to find someone who could help him.

“Okay, now I’m freaked out! What the hell was that? What happened to Josephine?” He asked himself aloud, paying no mind to how he would look, babbling to himself like an insane man as he ran through the myriad of queries in the confines of his mind.

Soon, houses came into view and neared him with each step that he took. The fog slowly revealed the looming shadows and silhouettes to be trees and structures.  Red darted through the small town, paying no regard to the few who walked the streets or the glances of confusion that they gave him as he ran by.  There was one house that he needed to reach, one person that would have some kind of knowledge of what was happening to Josephine so that he could know how he could help her battle the demons that ravaged her body. 

The faster he ran, the more the thoughts of Josephine’s possible fate wore on his senses and ground down his psyche.  No matter how he tried to avoid thinking about it, his mind would go back to her ear-piercing scream of anguish. It was something that shook his very core, something that resonated in the depths of his ear canal and pierced his brain.

There was something about the quality of that scream that fueled his urgency.  Red approached the very house that he had sought out.  It was a small, drab building with high windows to keep thieves from peering in and a large, wooden door that was weathered with the moisture of the foggy atmosphere. Frantically, Red beat on the door until it slowly opened to reveal Roana.

“Hello, this is Roana,” she introduced herself in a calm tone.

Roana was surprised to see him, although her features remained stoic. What was Red doing at her house, pounding on the door like he was being murdered in the streets? Where was Josephine? She had just been talking to her and said that she and Red were going to the graveyard. Worry crept upon her as she silently assessed the situation. Nothing good could come from this.

“Something bad happened,” Red’s voice was steeped with a mix of urgency and fear.  His expression was one of pure horror.  Roana could see that in the depths of his dark eyes, he saw her as a lifeline.

“So, the rumor is true?” Roana jumped to the most direct of the possible worst case scenarios. It was outlandish to ask such a thing, but nothing was outside of the realm of possibility.

“I don’t know, but Josephine is in trouble. I don’t know what happened to her,” Red’s words were panicked and he rushed to relay the information.  His eyes were wide as time flew by all too quickly for him.  Anxiety bathed his form and he felt on edge.

“What happened?” Roana wanted to know what exactly the two of them encountered at the gravesite.

Red began to explain his story that they were trying to figure out if the ghost of Gladys Goldwell was real. They had gone to the graveyard and tried to summon her and Josephine began to feel strange as something he could not see began to happen within her. The girl looked terrified and her skin turned pale. She was scared but Red felt compelled to stand guard and watch the entrance.  He had originally written the situation off as far less dire than it actually was. Red needed to make sure, above everything, that they didn’t get caught, and Josephine feeling unwell was less important to him than the offer of death that awaited them if they were to be accused of witchcraft.  

“She didn’t want to do it, but I bugged her to,” Red’s voice trembled as his story came to an end and he was overcome by a crushing realization of guilt. “Oh my god, this is my fault.”

“You can’t control the actions of others through the power of suggestion. They have to be preset to succumbing to those decisions,” Roana tried to chide the storm raging inside of Red.

It wasn’t just he who had contributed to Josephine’s decision to venture to the location. Before Josephine even went to Red, she had consulted her for advice.  However, Josephine still had a choice in whether or not she wanted to even entertain the idea. Roana felt there was equal parts blame in all of this.

“She summoned her but she never said whether or not she felt like killing people. She was freaked out, then she screamed and fainted,” Red repeated the details of the incident.  It was something he couldn’t stop thinking about.

It was something he couldn’t stop feeling guilty about.

He never wanted to transform his friend into a killer.

Red was afraid for many things- potentially turning his friend into a mad woman with a carnal desire to end lives, the fact that he could have infused a malicious spirit into her and robbed her of her freewill and any all sense of who she was, and the fact that he could have just watched her take her last breath as Gladys pulled her into the depths of the afterlife with her.  He shouldn’t have begged her to do this. He should have heeded the warnings and not been too curious.

He wanted to go find a hole especially sized for him to crawl in and never attempt to get out of.

“You didn’t help her?” Roana’s voice took on a sharper tone and her eyebrows furrowed. 

Did he really do nothing but run straight to her? Roana was disappointed, as Redway usually didn’t act in this manner.  

“Spirits find you in the darkness,” Roana began to explain. “They live and breed within the depths of it. That is their element and it allows them to haunt us. The light is the escape route, the safe place, the antithesis of the darkness. White letters written on a black background can distract you from the abyss but you are still looking into the background.”

She continued, “People are afraid of the dark for a reason. With the absence of light, we are vulnerable. The unknown births fear. Paranormal entities can only find you if you’re knowledgeable of them. The more knowledge you have on them, the more danger you will be in. You’re only being stalked by a ghost after listening to the faint whispers and trying to find out what they are saying. If you ignore them, they will only agitate you. Knowing about them allows them to find you. It makes you a target. Paranormal entities are generally very fast. It could be a convenience or advantageous design. They choose their prey based on knowledge. It was inevitable. That fatal darkness held something waiting. That was not something Josephine was meant to have seen. You can’t develop defenses against a truly efficient predator, even if you try.”

If Josephine had been consumed by the spirit, it was because the two of them decided to dabble in things they were not meant to. Redway and Josephine could not even begin to fathom the amount of power that the paranormal could have over their lives. Someone who was so interested in the occult and the afterlife, such as Red should have known this and taken better precautions.

“Do you think the ghost killed Josephine?” All of that talk about the properties of ghosts and just what they could do to the psyche and human condition made him fear the worst.

“When you choose to investigate, you play a game of Russian Roulette,” Roana replied.

“Did she talk to you about this?” He had to know. Surely, there was a reason that she came back to him and gave into his curiosity after vehemently rejecting him. Something changed her mind, whether it was her further contemplation on the issue or consulting another.

Roana nodded, “Yes, she said she was unsure but made up her mind to go forth.”

“If you knew this, why did you let her?” Someone should have tried to stop Josephine. Roana was usually the voice of reason between the three of them. Red didn’t know why she would have supported her going with him at all.

The dark-haired girl frowned. Anger welled up in her being as she stared Redway down with unfeeling, blue eyes. Why would he try to deflect the blame to her? Did he really just try to subvert what was actually going on here?

“I cannot make anyone do what is against their will to do,” Roana’s voice took on a sharp, cold tone. “Besides, the known beckoned. Even if I have the advantage, the truth is I too didn’t know if the consequences were a product of theory or truth. You wanted her to just as badly. That means you were every bit, if not more capable of stopping her, but instead encouraged her and left her after she fainted.”

Red should have felt bad about it. All of the decisions he made in this situation were negligent and dangerous. He could say what he wished but he had no excuse for offering her up as a summoner and then just leaving her when she was in distress. Roana didn’t like that Redway was trying to paint the blame on her when he was the one who started all of this and insisted on persisting.

Redway felt the stab of her words and flinched a little.  She was right.  He could have helped but he didn’t. He should have been the summoner and asked her to watch the gates, but he failed to do so out of his own fear. 

“I feel bad enough about it,” Red retorted, guilt evident in his voice. “I just…” His voice lowered and morphed into a tone of sorrow, “hope she’s okay.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” Roana was at a loss. If Josephine truly was possessed by the spirit, there was nothing that she could possibly have done to remedy the situation.  She was the daughter of a plague doctor, not a shaman or psychic. 

“Maybe you could go to her house and check on her. Your parents are beaked doctors, so if anything happened they would know how to deal with it,” Red thought that Josephine could have gotten sick and gone home.  She was sweating a lot when he tried to recall her last words.  

Roana’s eyes narrowed and she folded her arms over her chest, “Then why don’t you ask them?”

What nerve! Was she not qualified enough to handle the situation? Redway knew that she was studying to take up her mother’s profession as a doctor and yet he preferred that she handled the situation.  Roana wanted to slam the door in his face and tell him to solve his own issues.  The only reason she hadn’t done it yet was because she would feel horrible also leaving Josephine to suffer as he did.

“No! No!” Red yelled and put up his hands, swinging them around in a flurry of panic. “I want you to go for reasons!”

He couldn’t be shut down again! He didn’t want to be left to this problem all by himself! In his mental state, he had merely worded his sentence wrong.  He truly did want her to help him. It was why he even requested her and not her mother. Redway was only using her parents as an example of the skills that Roana knew.

He was such an idiot.

“To be a guinea pig? No thanks,” Roana wasn’t interested.

“Of course not,” Red was nearly yelling his words before his form slumped and he released a heavy sigh, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Of course not,” Roana wasn’t completely convinced, “because you’re too afraid to do it yourself.”

“No! Because I think you could tell me. I trust your judgment, Roana!”

“I’ll go,” she finally gave in to him, “stop making so much noise.”

“Thank you so much!” Redway’s anxiety dissolved and he felt an overwhelming rush of emotions. He nearly wanted to cry at the fact that he had someone else on his side.

“I won’t even make you go with me. Besides, I want to see if she made it home or if she’s still in the graveyard.” Roana wanted to check the last area that they were in first before she even thought about going to Josephine’s house. It was very presumptuous of Redway to even think Josephine could make it home.

“You don’t think it’s real, do you?” The red-haired boy wanted so desperately for someone to tell him that this was all fake and that Josephine would come walking up and be just fine.  He longed for the words to flow from his friend’s mouth and to have validation, to have relief of the crushing guilt that pained his physical form.

“I’m not sure,” Roana’s words offered no comfort.

“Well, there is one rumor I heard-“ Red just remembered something that held a great amount of importance. It may have had something to do with Josephine’s condition and her episode in the graveyard.

“Do you believe all the legends you hear?” Roana chastised him. 

Honestly, the fact that Red wanted to know the intricacies of a legend was what led to the problems that they were faced with now.  The stoic girl really didn’t want to hear anything more about some legend from him in a long time.

“Well, that one seems like it was true,” Red argued.  

If it wasn’t, then he wouldn’t be at Roana’s trying to convince her to help him.  He knew that she was probably fed up with his talk of ghosts, but he really did think that he was onto something. Roana needed to let him speak about this one thing, at the very least. It could have proven vital to this case with the other girl. 

“Or so you think. I’m going to be on my way,” Roana reached behind her and grabbed the door handle.  

Turning around, she faced the entrance of her house and took a step to retreat back into the warmth of the building.  Just as the cozy air caressed her skin, Red shouted for her to wait.  She was so nearly free of both him and his problems and now he wanted to hold up her progress even more.  The more time that went by, the more chances that Josephine was going to suffer to her own elements.  Did Redway truly want that? 

“What now?” Her tone was exasperated and she glared over her shoulder.

“Can you stop by my house and tell me if you’re okay?” Red’s voice was lower in octave, almost timid. “I’m really freaked out.”