The crunching of gravel snaps Leia out of her stupor. She looks over her shoulder, still clutching Charlotte's body. "Oh my God, Leia what–" Ava's voice trails off, her words consumed by the fog tendrils gathering around them. Ava crouches next to Leia, her hand pressed over her mouth.

"This is our fault. Had Lucas and I not run away, then she probably–" Ava reaches a shaky hand out towards Charlotte's body, her hand coming into contact with the sticky blood covering Charlotte's shirt. She snatches her hand back, shock stinging her fingers.

"No, it's mine. She didn't want to do this. Charlie didn't even wanna sign the yearbook, and I talked her into doing it. If I hadn't done that, none of us would even be here right now." Leia brushes a few strands of hair out of Charlotte's face, and for a second she can almost imagine Charlotte's sleeping, and they're all as far away from this reality as possible.

Ava shakes her head, scattering her tears across her face. "You can't blame yourself. We didn't know...we didn't know."

Lucas bends down, and eases Leia away from Charlotte's body. He tries not to grimace when he comes into contact with the coagulating blood that's covering Leia's arms. "Come on, let's uh...give Charlotte some space while you fill us in on what happened." He tugs on her gently again, and she gives way, stumbling away from Charlotte's body.

Leia sniffs, wiping away half-dried tears and the remnants of a runny nose. "There's not much to say. It was hard to keep track of everything while it happened. All I remember is Cynthie cut me off, and I turned and ran back to find Charlotte. The bullies caught her at some point, and then Cynthie she–" Leia swallows hard and licks her lips. "She held me down and made me watch while they–"

Crumbling into tears, Leia leans against Lucas. "I'm sorry, I can't."

Lucas rubs Leia's arms and shoulders, trying to rouse her out of the depths of her despair. "It's okay, you don't have to. We get it."

A silence descends onto the trio, and stretches out for its own tiny eternity. The night continues to grow colder, the last breaths of winter still hiding within the late spring winds. It seeps into their bones, chilling their fingers and thickening the fog around them. Ava hops from one foot to the other, in a futile attempt to stay warm.

"What do we do now? I don't wanna stay out here any longer than we have to. What if...what if they come back?" Ava claps her hands on her upper arms, her breath puffing out in small clouds of warm water vapor.

"Well, we were on our way to the science lab when...when everything happened." Lucas lets go of Leia, stooping over to pick the yearbook off the ground from where Leia left it. "This won't end if we don't finish it. I don't want to wait for those ghosts to hunt me down too."

"Can we cover her before we go?" Leia looks over at Charlotte's still and lifeless body. "I don't want to come back out here and see her like that again."

Lucas nods, understanding fully. Ever since he had first laid eyes on Charlotte's dead body, he'd felt sick to his stomach, and was anxious to get away from it. "Yeah, there's probably a tarp or something around here, let me go look."

He trots off, leaving Ava and Leia to stand in the dark, the moonlight casting its blue-silver glow over the outbuildings. Any metal caught in the light gleams dully, and the fog reflects the light back, brightening with an eerie, otherworldly glow. The moments pass, and Leia stares into the middle distance, her mind, body and soul growing numb.

Lucas comes around the outbuilding with a black square in his hands. He steps up next to Charlotte's body and slowly unfolds it, the heavy woven plastic crackling with each layer that falls down. Eventually, it's large enough to drape over Charlotte's body, and he lays it down over her as gently as possible. He pulls the tarp over her eyes, enshrouding her fully.

"There. We'll figure out what to do with Charlotte after we're done with...whatever's waiting for us in the science lab." He walks over to the girls, and hands the yearbook to Leia. "If you want to go back to the classroom, Ava and I can finish sorting this out."

Leia shakes her head, clutching the yearbook to her chest. "No, I have to see this through. For Charlie."

The trio walk down the path towards the science lab, their steps muffled by the surrounding fog. Panic rises up Leia's throat, her heart thrumming against her ribcage. By the time they reach the science lab, Leia is half-expecting the bully-spirits to jump out of the fog and attack them yet again.

But no attack ever comes. "Why aren't they stopping us from going in?" Leia, looks back over her shoulder again, her voice dropping low.

"Maybe they can't? If Cynthie's body is in there, it might be some type of....I don't know, forbidden location for them." When Lucas raises an eyebrow, Ava shrugs in response. "Sometimes there's rules for spirits and curses like that."

Leia catches a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye. "Well, whatever the reason, we should get inside before anything happens."

The darkness inside the science lab engulfs them until Ava's hand lands on the lightswitch. She flicks it on, and the dim yellow-white fluorescent glow fills the lab. The smell of formaldehyde and other various chemicals burns in their nostrils, but it's nothing out of the ordinary. Leia herself hardly notices the smell of it anymore.

She feels a pang in her chest, the memory of Charlotte floating up out of the miasma of smells. "Just the other day, Charlie and I were in here, just talking about...life in general. She asked me who I had a crush on." A soft, melancholic smile plays over Leia's lips. "I should have just told her then, not that I would have been any good for her. Charlie needed someone she could depend on."

"She did depend on you though, Leia. She always turned to you when she had a problem with the club, or anything else really. It was to the point that I thought she didn't really like me, because it felt like we never talked outside of the club." Ava lays her hand across Leia's shoulder, and smiles.

"When I first joined the club, I thought Charlotte was gonna kick me out at first. She always seemed to be mad or something when she looked at me. But then when you would get there, she would....I dunno, she would just light up and be a completely different person. You always made her happy, Leia." Lucas draws in closer to the girls, and then wraps Leia into a big hug, squeezing her tightly.

"You did everything you could, so stop beating yourself up, okay? I can't watch one of my best friends beat herself up like this." He holds her by her shoulders at arm's length, his face full of concern.

"Okay, I'll uh...try my best." Leia does her best to smile bravely, but the sour guilt still coats her tongue.

"Good. Now...where should we start looking?" Lucas turns, looking around the room for some kind of sign where Cynthie's remains could have been stored.

Ava's forehead scrunches together, and she starts pacing around the room. "If I remember right, Emily's journal said something about a closet they were closing up...ugh, you don't think she's somewhere in the walls do you?"

Lucas blanches, his warm-toned tanned skin going pallid. "That's...there's no way, right?"

"Well, if she's not, then we'll find out." Leia draws in a deep breath, then walks over to one of the walls and starts pounding on it. Her fist bounces off, and the wall thuds dully, with little noise reverberating through it. "I think any existing walls are probably solid, while a closet is probably just covered over with drywall. If we go up and down the walls pounding on them, I think we'll find it...if it's there to find."

With that, each of them takes a wall and goes up and down it with their fists. After pounding for several minutes, Leia is just about to ask for them all to take a break due to how sore her hands are when she hears Ava cry out.

"Okay, this spot is definitely different! Come over here!" Lucas and Leia trot over to where Ava's crouching against the wall, her fist resting on the spot she just thumped it against. She raises her hand again, and lets it thud against the wall. The resulting sound is thinner and with a strange echo to it that no other spot in the walls possesses.

"We might have found it. Now, it's just a case of how we get back in there." Ava stands up and dusts off her pants, dirt and small specks of flaking paint clinging to her jeans.

"I have an idea. There were a few loose tools in the bus shed, where I found the tarp for– Anyway, I think I saw a hammer. I'll go back and grab it." Lucas goes to rush out the door when Leia catches his sleeve.

"Take the yearbook with you. The ghosts haven't tried to bother us here, but if you're out there on your own, there's no telling what they may try." He hesitates, but Leia insists with another firm tug. "I'm not losing another friend tonight."

He nods, takes the yearbook, and darts out the science lab door. Ava rests her hand against the wall, lost in thought. Leia walks up to her, uncertainty welling up in her chest. She starts to say something, but closes her mouth again.

It only takes Lucas a few minutes to return with the hammer in question, but from the look on his face, he isn't alone. A bone-gray hand clutches around his throat, and he eases into the room. Leia and Ava don't know how to process what they're seeing at first, but when the hammer goes flying by their heads and embeds itself in the wall beside them, the mystery dispels itself.

A small brunette peeks around Lucas's shoulder. "Thanks for making this easy and back yourselves into a corner." She nudges around the tall boy holding Lucas by the throat and throws the yearbook towards them. It skids across the science lab floor, thunking against Leia's side.

"That doesn't work on us. Only Cynthie's afraid of it, because it reminds her too much about what we did to her." The brunette smiles at them, like a cat licking up the remnants of her cream.

The two other girls step into the room, then lunge forward and pull Leia and Ava to their feet. The one holding Ava wrenches painfully on her injured hand when she does. "Ow! Stop it, you don't have to do this. You never had to do any of this."

The brunette clicks her tongue on her teeth. "It's not my fault you're this dumb. You wouldn't get it even if I did try and explain."

"Emily Williams!" Leia screams, shrugging off her captor and striding forward. The dead girl lunges after her, but Emily raises her hand, stopping her from laying hands on Leia again.

"That's your name, isn't it? We all know what you did, and I know enough about you to know that Cynthie was a much better person than you ever could have hoped to be. So that's why you must be stuck doing her bidding." Leia sneers, hoping that if she can shift the focus to herself, Lucas and Ava may have enough time to get away.

"Oh, you think someone like you could know anything about me? Well, you're wrong. Dying was the best thing that ever happened to me. No matter why it happened." He eyes flick nervously over to Johnny for a moment, then back to Leia.

"Now that I'm dead, every ten years I get to live through one of the best times of my life again. I can scare, torture, and kill little idiots like you, just like I did Cynthie, and just like back then, no one will know what happened to you." Emily stalks towards Leia, each step forcing Leia further back. Her sunken eyes gleam with pure malice under a haze of sheer manic craze.

"Oh, stupid little girl...this might be Cynthie's curse, but it's my dream come true." Emily pushes Leia against the wall, then snaps her fingers. The other bully-spirits drop their grip on Ava and Lucas, then surround Leia tightly. "Let's start with this one first."

"You guys get out of here!" Leia shouts over the tops of the spirits heads, struggling against their grip as Lori and Julie pin her to the wall. Johnny flicks out the blade of his knife, and touches the point to Leia's face. She closes her eyes, screaming again. "Please, I don't want you guys to see this."

Lucas and Ava stare in dumb silence, fear rooting their feet to the spot. Tears well up in both their eyes, and with a concerted effort, Lucas grabs Ava by the shoulders and shoves her out of the door.

Before they're halfway out the door, they feel themselves pushed back into the room. Charlotte's ocean blue eyes stare them down, full of righteous fury. They stumble back, not fully sure what they're witnessing.

"Stay away from my friends!" She shouts, and a wind rushes out from her, buffeting and shoving down the bully-spirits. Emily shrieks, fighting back to her feet and turning to face Charlotte.

"You shouldn't be here! We're the only ones that get to come back!" Emily rushes towards Charlotte, her hand stretching back behind her and winding up for a punch. Just as she raises her balled fist to strike, an invisible force wraps itself around her, and freezes her in her tracks.

"I can do whatever I want, and there's nothing you can do to stop me, Emily. I'm not going to let you hurt the girl I love." Charlotte stares Emily down, her blonde hair trembling around her face, stirred ever so slightly by an unseen breeze.

"You...can't do this." Emily chokes out, pushing with all her supernatural strength into the force holding her away from Charlotte. "How are you doing this?"

"I didn't die regretting the person I was, that's how. Cynthie would let you hurt me if she wanted you to, but since she doesn't, there's nothing you can do." A satisfied smile creeps over Charlotte's lips. "Maybe you should have tried harder to be a good friend."

With a wailing scream, Emily and the other bully-spirits evaporate into the thin air, banished away to whatever pocket of reality they sit in when not manifesting physically. Charlotte's shoulders slump, and her head hangs in front of her. "Whew, I don't know that I would have been brave enough to do that while I was alive, but I'm glad I did it now."

Leia pushes away from the wall, and rubs the spot on her cheek where the knife point drove into her skin. A small smear of crimson comes away on her fingertips. She looks up at Charlotte, her eyes darting to the door behind Charlotte, legs tensing to run.

"It's okay, Leia. It's just me. Before you say anything, just wait. I came here to help you guys. I told you I wasn't going to chicken out and abandon you when I know you need me." Charlotte steps forward slowly, holding a hand out in front of her.

"H-how?" Lucas scrambles back away from Charlotte, shock written across his face.

"Yeah, how are you here, Charlotte? How are you...so okay?" Ava pulls her knees into her chest protectively.

Charlotte looks over her shoulder, ear bent towards some source that the others cannot see. "I'm okay because I didn't die with any regret. Had I held onto something that I wish I said or did while I was alive, I would still be in pain, stuck in the moment of my death. So I guess I have you to thank for that, Leia."

Leia blinks, then tries to shake the cobweb-thoughts clouding her mind out of herself. "I don't know how much you have to thank me for, Charlie."

"I do though, because you loved me back. Had I not had that from you well...it doesn't matter. What matters now is that I'm here to help you break the curse." She smiles brightly, and for a small moment Leia can almost imagine she's still alive and well.

"And how are we going to do that?" Ava pulls herself to her feet, her stomach still nauseous, and her legs shaking slightly.

Charlotte jerks her head towards the hammer still embedded in the wall. "You're going to need to open up that closet first."

Lucas hesitates, his mouth opening and closing, but eventually he comes to a decision, and yanks the hammer out of the wall, and starts pounding it into the spot the closet lies beneath. After a few strikes, he reveals a void behind the wall. Ava stands up, helping to pull the drywall away with her good hand. Leia walks over, and stares down into the space slowly opening up in front of her. Once the majority of the drywall falls away, they peer into the vacant holes in the skull of Cynthie's dried husk-body, and know what they've finally found.

Cynthie's body sits with her knees folded and tucked up underneath her, and her arms crossed over her chest. Her flesh has deteriorated away, and what remained is brown and shrunken to the bones. Her white teeth peek out from under ochre lips pulled back into a sneer. What's left of her white blouse and skirt are stained with rusty brown stains, the last remnants of the life that once flowed through Cynthie's veins.

"She's...mummified, or at least partially." Leia crouches down beside the remains, looking them over closely.

"How is that possible?" Lucas leans against one of the countertops, trying to keep himself from joining Ava on the floor.

"I mean, she's been sealed in the wall for so long and undisturbed, so the normal decay process has been drawn out. So there's a lot more of her left than maybe there would be if she'd been dumped outside somewhere." Leia hears the shuffle of feet, and whips around, to see Charlotte standing close behind them.

"You'll have to burn them, both the body and the book. Cynthie's spirit is bound to her body, but the curse is bound into the blood on her yearbook."

"And how do you know that will work?" Ava leans forward, her expression skeptical and wary.

"Because Cynthie said so." A collective gasp passes through the trio. "It's okay, she wouldn't lie to me. She wants to be free of this curse just as much as you do."

"Okay, so...say that we burn Cynthie's body and her yearbook. What happens then? What happens to you?" Leia stands in front of Charlotte, her fists clenched to her sides. "I don't want to lose you."

Charlotte shakes her head. "But I'm already lost, Leia. I don't want to be stuck here, bound to this school for all eternity. Cynthie never did either. It's just sometimes, when you die that violently, you can't ever leave. With your help though, we can both be free."

Leia thinks for a while, then finally nods. "Okay. Ava, grab one of the torches out of the supply closet."

"Are you sure we should–"

Leia cuts Ava off. "Yes. I don't want Charlie to suffer anymore than she already has." Leia makes eye contact with Charlotte, who smiles back at her softly.

Ava places the blowtorch in Leia's hand after she picks up the yearbook. She turns it on, but hesitates before she touches it to the book. "I should never have convinced you to sign this stupid thing. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Leia, really. I knew what I was doing. Especially after the nightmare. I never told any of you, but mine was a little different. I didn't see the perspective of one of the bullies. I saw it from Cynthie's." She looks away again, listening to the unseen and unheard speaker.

"If there's anything else you'd like to say, now would be the time. I don't think I'll see any of you ever again." Her voice hitches, and her face pinches together for a moment. Charlotte wipes away a tear threatening to fall off of her cheek.

"What's there left to say, Charlie? I know I'll never be able to make up what you've done for me. I'm sorry I couldn't save you." Leia grips the torch tighter, inching it closer to the book.

"Yeah, we owe you our lives." Ava wraps her arms around herself, drawing her hand tight into her abdomen.

"Really, it's what any of you would have done for me, if you could. I wish we had more time with each other but...this year was always going to come to an end anyway, wasn't it?" The tears Charlotte had been holding back find their way down her face, but never land on the floor.

"Man, this is the first time all year that I've actually been sad to think about graduating." Lucas chuckles, running his hand through his hair. "I wish there was more we could do for you, Charlotte."

"Just don't forget me, okay? The rest of the world probably will, but not you guys. I couldn't bear knowing that you guys never thought of me again." Charlotte's lips tremor with the sobs caught in her throat.

"We could never forget you, Charlie. Not ever. How could I forget the girl I love?" Leia tries not to shake too badly as she touches the torch to the yearbook, which catches rapidly. She throws it down on Cynthie's remains, watching as the flames latch and consume the desiccated body. Leia glances back over her shoulder, but Charlotte is already gone.

For a while, the trio is left with nothing but the crackling flames eating through the remnants of the past. Gray smoke starts to fill through the lab, making everyone cough. Leia tries to pull the hem of her shirt over her nose and mouth to filter it out, but still the stink of burning decay makes her eyes water. "Should we get out of here? I don't think this is good for us to be breathing in."

"You're right. You all need to get out of here." The group swivels around, eyes flying open wide. Cynthie stares back at them, and for the first time since they've seen her, she's unbloodied and proportional.

For a moment, Ava's heart stops in her chest, and claustrophobia closes her lungs. "W-hat do you want from us?"

"Nothing that you haven't already done. I just wanted the chance to tell you how sorry I am. I never wanted any of this." Cynthie looks down at the floor, scuffing her shoes in the gathering ash.

"Then why? You've hurt so many people Cynthie." Leia's voice is quiet, her cough resounding much louder over the flames as they catch around the wooden frame and leap out of the closet.

Cynthie's eyes flash, her brows snapping together. "You don't know what it's like. Being stuck like this twists your mind in ways you'd never expect. I've been trapped for so long, still feeling every stab wound Johnny gave me. All I really wanted was it all to stop, to finally be able to rest peacefully." She bites her lip, looking away from them and hiding her tears.

"Look, I'm sorry you didn't get that. But why did you have to take Charlie away from me?" Leia coughs again, but forces her way through it, determined to make Cynthie meet her eyes.

"It's hard to explain, and I don't have the time. You all would have died eventually, had Charlotte not passed so at peace. I let her come back to you, to help you, more than I ever could." Cynthie smiles ruefully. "Not that I was trying all that hard to help you anyway."

"It seems like every decade or so, I feel more awake, and I can think more directly. That's when my yearbook comes back to me. Then, and only then, do I have a chance to interact with the living, and I can give it to someone, to chain them directly to me...once they write their name in the yearbook, of course." She pauses, carefully meeting Leia's eye to make sure she's understood.

"And at first, I try to help them, or at the very least I stay away. I leave messages when I can, and hold back the others for as long as possible. But whatever clarity I have starts to slip away, and horrible pain clouds my judgement all over again." She looks down at the ground, her head turned sideways, and her blue eyes starting to gloss over again.

"Eventually, I let my own murderers kill all of them, one by one. I can't help it. It's the only thing that seems to satisfy that...urge deep inside me. It's this...dark and horrible desire, to see others hurt the way that I did, and when they do, it feels so much better." A blissful smile crosses Cynthie's face, and she closes her eyes, lost in the moment.

" Overtime, that desperation has just festered into the curse you're all under now...but you won't be for much longer, as long as you get out of here. I've been keeping the fire from destroying this building for as long as I can, but without my body, I can't stay tethered to this world much longer. So again, I'm sorry, and I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me." Cynthie slowly begins to fade, her silhouette blending into the flakes of ash.

Leia coughs again, the soot condensing and growing heavier with every second. "She's right. We shouldn't still be here. The way that fire's going, it's gonna take the whole building."

"Shouldn't we call 9-1-1 then?" Lucas takes his jacket and holds it over Ava's head.

"Yeah, but let's get outside first, then we'll call." Leia does her best to cover her face, then stumbles towards the door, shoving it open with her shoulder. Once out into the clear night air, their first inhalation causes a round of coughing between the trio. Leia bends over her knees, hacking out what soot was trying to collect itself in her lungs.

"Hey, we're up here at the high school, and one of the outbuildings caught fire. Yep, hmm-mmm. We're outside now. No, we're the only ones here. We uh, organized a lock in..." Lucas's conversation with the emergency operator fades away as he turns away from Leia. She looks towards the burning building, the flames spreading faster than she could have imagined. With a billowy womp, the windows are blown out as the orange flames from an explosion push them into shattering shards on the ground. She stands in awe, staring at the gaping maw of what had once been a young girl's unfortunate tomb.

Ava comes to stand next to her, watching the fire devour the science lab. She clutches her borrowed coat tight over her shoulders. "Why's it burning like that?"

Leia shrugs her shoulders, the fire reflecting in her eyes. "I'm not sure, but my guess is that the fire hit the chemical storage locker, and the building's old, after all. I just don't know what we're going to tell the cops when they get here."

"Yeah, it's gonna be hard to explain– hey, where's Charlotte's body?" She points towards the tarp they used to cover up Charlotte, but it lays flat on the ground, crumpled up like it had been tossed to the side.

Leia swallows, saliva going down her throat in a hard ball. "I...I don't know."

"Well, we didn't move her, do you think that...Cynthie...?" Ava pulls the corners of the jacket tighter again, shivering despite the comfort.

"Maybe she had something to do with it, I don't know. I don't understand anything that happened tonight. I guess...let's just be thankful we won't have to look at her like that again." Leia folds her arm protectively over Ava's small form, guiding her back over to where Lucas is standing, and further from the inferno blazing in the doomed science lab. He takes the phone away from his ear and wraps Ava in a bear hug, holding her close to his chest. A tear runs glistening down his cheek when he locks eyes with Leia momentarily.

Blue and red lights flood the space in between the main body of the school and the outbuildings, followed by the keening wail of sirens. Tires screech somewhere in the school parking lot, and before long the group finds themselves surrounded by concerned faces, and enveloped in their parents' arms.

Word Count: 4,884

Word Count (Total): 30,638