"So..." Arielle covered her mouth and coughed again. "So if I were to go upstairs... what would happen?" She cringed. "Aside from the raging migraine and the stomach ache, that is. Will I faint? Throw up? Be... rebooted, or something?" She wrinkled her nose. "Can ghosts die again?"

"Oof." Penelope floated over and waved at Arielle. "Calm down, or your brain will explode. You need to learn to take it easy." She lowered one arm to her side and lifted the other to rub her palm over the back of her head. "Look, you won't faint or throw up or... be rebooted? Whatever the hell that means. And no, ghosts can't die again. But they can... be transferred."

"Transferred?" Arielle blinked, still having trouble ignoring the mild red glow in Penelope's eyes. Why hadn't it left? Was she still in anger mode, repressing her crazy self to not freak Arielle out? "Transferred where?"

"Well, if you... push your limits one time too many, if you ignore the perimeter and try to pass through it... you might be switched over to a different realm." Though she'd resumed her nonchalant demeanor, Penelope's face twitched for the quickest of seconds; so quick Arielle might have missed it had she blinked again. "And it's not a fun area, so if I were you, I wouldn't press my luck. Don't venture upstairs."

"I don't want to," said Arielle, crossing her arms as a chill coursed up her spine. "But... what other realm is there? The Void, the... Soul place, and... what else?"

Penelope immobilized, her pupils rounding, her fingers stiffening. "Terror."

"Terror?" Arielle cocked her head. "Are you saying it's a realm of terror, or...?"

"That's its name." Penelope spun away and wavered over to the other room on the ground floor; the one Arielle hadn't ever bothered to check out. She stopped in the doorway and sighed before pivoting to Arielle once more. "The Terror Realm. We ghosts... don't talk about it."

The chill in Arielle's spine spread from one shoulder to the other, expanding from her neck to her waist. Its fluctuations were like an icy blanket being placed on her back and vibrating its coolness into her skin. "Terror realm? So what... it's like hell, or something?" Penelope began to frown, so Arielle held up her hand and shook her head. "Sorry, I know, heaven and hell don't exist, but I need something to compare all these weird dimensions to. Something to prepare me."

Penelope shot over to her, and her whooshing caused a slight gust to batter against the walls, as if to rip the wallpaper off, to shred through it. "Nothing prepares you for Terror. Nothing."

Her eyes were like saucers, the chords in her neck rigid, and her arms like planks of wood. What had her so on edge about this other realm? She was here, in the Void, stuck of her own accord; so how did she know enough about the Soul and Terror realms to spook her so much?

"And besides, you won't go upstairs to test this out, will you? I don't want you risking yourself. You might not be transferred or sucked in right away, especially for a first offense... but it's best not to taunt fate."

Taunt fate?

Arielle gulped, wishing the goosebumps crawling over her skin would disappear. "I mean, considering how sick getting close to those stairs makes me... no, I won't try anything. But... you're implying there are ghosts that... push their boundaries? That don't stay within their perimeter and that they're... punished for it?"

Penelope shrugged. "Sort of." She huffed and her breath brushed through her greasy locks. "Look, I only know what I've witnessed. I've seen spirits refuse to confine to the Void, refuse to sort out their unfinished business. And when they barreled through their perimeter limits after several attempts, something snatched them and yanked them through some... some rip in the dimension, I guess? A shadowy figure, one whose presence emits so much terror that I nicknamed the place it came from as Terror. I have no clue if that's its real name; I don't even know if Soul Realm is a real name, either. These are assumptions based on what I've discovered."

That made more sense to Arielle. Penelope had witnessed specters moving on to the recycling process, and had watched newbies rebel and be swallowed into a dimension of darkness. She had been around for a long time, after all, though Arielle still wondered how long that was.

This is how she knows so much about everything—she's old, observant, and wise?

Penelope perked up, tipped her head side to side, then snuck over to the door, glancing through it as if seeing something on the other side. "Hey, I have something... to do. Real quick." She twisted to Arielle and smiled; not a gesture filled with warmth, but not malicious either. The red in her eyes was still there, glimmering like an outline of scarlet sparkles, but no negativity radiated from her, for once. "So... sit tight, okay? Explore the downstairs, maybe try to grab those curtains... test out your strength a little, yeah? I'll be back soon." Her voice was eerily calm, with a soothing nature to it; almost motherly, caring. And so out of character for her usually cryptic self.

"Uh... okay?" Arielle lifted her hand to wave, but Penelope crashed through the door before being able to respond. "Gosh, she is weird."

She felt the urge to creep outside and follow Penelope. Where did she go when she took off, and why did she always leave so suddenly? She'd looked like she'd heard something—a voice summoning her? A bell chiming in the distance? Maybe the longer one stayed in the Void, the more one picked up on other sounds and smells that newcomers didn't?

But what could she possibly have to do that warranted such vague departures?

Arielle moved away from the door and gazed at the stairs. The earlier chills—that she'd finally managed to control—resumed, skipping up her arms, down her legs, lodging in her tummy.

Upstairs. What was so frightening up there that she'd be forbidden to venture to it? All her trauma had occurred downstairs, in the very room she was floating in. The outline of her corpse—dim but still there—was a constant reminder that she was dead, and that she'd died here. Falling down the stairs and stabbed to death by pieces of a mirror. Why wasn't her ghostly body more fearful of this area, instead?

"Falling..." She tapped a finger to her chin. "Is that why I can't go up the steps? Because I fell, and this Void place assumes I'm afraid of falling again?" She chortled. "But I can't fall... I float now."

Slowly, she approached the bottom step. With every breath she took, pain flared up in her temples, searing across her forehead, banging in the back of her skull. Nausea bubbled in her throat and the chills in her stomach became throbbing pangs, deep cuts, dangerous gargles.

"Fuck..." She gritted her teeth and tried to ignore her misery, but as she braced to glide up past the first step, a bitter breeze blew her backwards. "Fuck!" Her eyesight became blurry, and she wobbled to and fro, dizzy with dread and agony.

She knew that if she forced herself, if she slammed into the breeze, she'd get through. It was strong, but not impossible to overcome. But as she peered at said breeze, watching it pulsate, forming an invisible barrier between her and the stairs, she shook her head. She'd basically promised Penelope that she wouldn't test her limits, that she wouldn't attempt to go where she wasn't allowed to.

Nearing her face to the breezy barrier, she sniffed at it. It had no odor; only cool air prowled up her nostrils and expanded in her lungs. But it did make sounds—breathing sounds. Like with every pulsation it was expelling oxygen then sucking it back in. And she could have sworn she heard it talk.

"Stay... stay... no... stay..."

"That's... odd." Clutching at her abdomen with one hand and massaging her temples with the other, she backed away and waited for the quivering breeze to dissipate. And once she'd reached the front door, the whooshing wind fizzled out of existence, no longer barring her route. "Interesting. So it pops up when it senses my intention?"

Too weak to attempt another go at it, she dragged herself to the living room. She hovered over the couch, desperate to learn how to sit, how to feel the cushions against her behind, how to melt into them and never get up again. Did she have time to understand how to do these things? Or would she figure out what was holding her here, deal with it, and move on to a vegetative state where she'd wait to become someone else?

Penelope had mentioned that once in the Soul Realm, you forgot everything about who you were. But Arielle wasn't sure she wanted to do that. Despite the trials she'd been through, despite the death surrounding her... she'd liked this life. She'd enjoyed being Arielle Daniels, a quirky nerd who loved to play with makeup and hang out with her friends. And recently turned bisexual, which she was sad to not have had a chance to experience more. Her love for Jade had opened so many doors—but her death had slammed them all in her face.

Maybe she'd meet a nice ghost to bond with. If her unfinished business solving took too long, she'd take a trip away from this house and seek some other poor soul who was stuck, and they could be stuck together. Guy or girl, she didn't care—she craved a companion that wasn't the ever-elusive Penelope.