Lights flashed. Roaring reds and boisterous blues, flickering faster and faster, dizzying. Sirens swirled through the air in rhythm with said lights—deafening and dreary, as if fifteen different screams echoed in a spiraling circle of darkness. Voices joined the symphony—gruff, grumbled, garbled, their words muted but their volume incessant and loud.

Then there were the cries. Someone sobbing, someone screeching, someone addressing a crowd with soft, reassuring sentences that made no sense. "Death... murder... suicide. Can't determine... can't figure out. No further questions."

Hushed discussions took place; and they repeated, over and over, like a hammer on a nail that just would not go into a steel-lined wall.

"Cause of death: mirror shards piercing through skin. Reason: unknown. Victim's name: Arielle Daniels."

The sharpest of migraines sliced across Arielle's head, reaching from one temple to the other. Its agonizing throbbing prompted her to blink her eyes open, to reach out her arm, hoping to find a bottle of Ibuprofen to soothe the ache—

But all she felt was... nothing. Breeziness, as if she were floating in mid-air and swinging her arms around to propel herself higher. Had she miscalculated where her nightstand was? Or was she in someone else's bed?

Damn, these nightmares keep getting worse.

Eyes widening, she stared at a high ceiling covered in cobwebs, at beams nearing breakage, at a color, a faded, sepia-toned maroon she wasn't familiar with. Her bedroom didn't have high ceilings, nor would she have any webs in it, as she was terrified of spiders.

This was not her house.

"What the..." as she spoke, she pulled her chapped lips apart, and a metallic tang lingered in her mouth. Had she gotten drunk the night before? Bit her lip or her tongue? Knocked a tooth out?

She stretched her arms, again feeling the weightlessness, the nothingness on either side of her. And as she thought of it, she realized she felt nothing beneath her, either. Was there such a thing as a mattress that gave you the impression of flying?

Maybe she was high; she rarely did drugs, but with all that had happened lately—

"Whoa." She stilled, as her brain lurched to life and filled with memories in disarray, coming at her like a swarm of angry bees about to prick her skin.

Mom, Connor, Rachel, Jade. Ghosts, hunting, prisons, school parking lots, haunted Ouija Boards, the ocean, a lighthouse, death. House fires; Stella, Stella, Stella.

"St-Stella?" Her voice was croaky, as if she hadn't used it in months. "The other stuff is true, but Stella? What the..."

More flashes seeped into her head—flashes of herself tumbling down stairs, gyrating into a black hole, as a girl with raven hair snickered and sneered at her. Then she was driving, speeding along a highway, parking at a rest-stop, following a gust of wind into a forest—

"No." She gulped; there was that coppery taste again, pungent and putrefying. "No... that was a dream. It was all a dream, right?"

The visions weren't done unfurling. She viewed a colonial-style house, with brick foundations, lofty windows, a doorknob that wouldn't budge. Crooked banisters and uneven steps and closets with blood on the walls. Figures forming in wind, a girl with raven hair spitting out truths to her, warning her, forbidding her from leaving—

"Stop!" She grabbed both sides of her head and squeezed, closing her eyes to focus on what was real. Because those visions—they were nightmares. They hadn't happened, she'd imagined them. No way was Stella dead; and no way had Arielle ventured into some house in the woods and gotten locked in and bullied by a spirit. Absolutely no way.

Arielle's migraine worsened, but instead of staying in one spot, the pain spread. It developed in her upper thighs, shooting to her abdomen, creeping up to her liver, her lungs, her heart. It stabbed—as if thousands of knives plunged into her repeatedly, jamming in and out and in and out until all her organs were deflated, bloodless, dead.

Wincing, she shifted her hand down to one of the imaginary wounds on her belly. But upon passing her fingertips under her shirt and over the tender flesh, she pried her eyelids apart and sat up.

Several small scars slashed across her tummy. Scars she'd never had before and that shouldn't have been there. She'd never been wounded in that area, had no surgeries to open her stomach, never even scratched herself enough to leave a mark.

The pain intensified as she peered around herself for the first time. Everything was gloomy, ethereal, mysterious. The walls were gray, the ground under her a light charcoal, the atmosphere hazy. The same sepia-tone she'd viewed the ceiling in seemed to surround her, as if she were stuck in an old-time photograph. And as she peeked at her hands, she realized she was that color, too. Her skin wasn't its usual peachy shade; it was ashy, like that of a corpse. A cakey substance stuck to her fingers, crammed under her nails, and dotted along her knuckles. More scars were there—as if she'd punched into a wall until her bones broke.

She had punched something in her dream, she recalled. She'd crashed her fists on the concrete, while huddled next to her car, mourning Stella—

"Fuck. No." She heaved herself up to her feet, though for some strange reason her shoes didn't seem to touch the ground. "It wasn't real, it wasn't."

She spun to glance at the spot she'd been laying in, and gasped. A chalky-looking outline drawn on the floor gaped back at her. It was in the shape of a body, in an eerie lounging position. One of those outlines that the police used in movies, to draw out the victim's exact area of death, where they were last seen—

"No. No, no, no."

She twirled to her left, and saw the other thing that had plagued her nightmares—the stairs. The rusty banister and the wobbly steps looked the same as she'd recalled, but thick, bright gray tape roped them off, disallowing anyone to use them.

"Is that... yellow tape?" She meandered closer, still unsure why she couldn't feel the floor beneath her, but too focused to figure it out.

On the tape she saw the words Crime Scene—Do Not Enter. The same stuff used in those cop TV shows, used by the FBI when investigating an accident, a murder.

"The fuck..." She swallowed again, cringing at the disgusting flavor still glued to her tongue. "And why is everything in black and white? Am I going blind or something?"

As she stared at her hands again, she shook her head. She slid one hand between her breasts, adamant on understanding the ache dwelling there. Not only did she discover more scars, but as she rested her palm there, waiting, worrying, she sensed nothing beating beneath it. Nothing beat in her chest.

"Oh... shit. Oh, shit." She glared at the chalky outline below, at the cut-off stairs, at the stains on her hands, then dared a glimpse at her feet.

They weren't pressed to the floor; they were levitating an inch or two above it.

"What in the actual fuck—"

Footsteps came from behind her; from above her. She whipped around and located the balcony—the one she'd ran up and down in her dreams, to escape the terrifying specter that wanted to kill her.

The specter... the girl?

Her mouth plopped open, but no sound escaped.

It... wasn't a dream. It wasn't a dream?

The footfalls grew louder, accompanied by voices. They were distant and faint, but as she craned her neck, she pieced together what they said.

"... must be downstairs, then," said a man, his voice excited, bouncing and shifting like a kid on Christmas morning.

"Where the body was found, maybe?" That one was a woman—stern, to the point, not a hint of joy in her, unlike the man.

Arielle froze, hovering over the shape of what she was now certain was her own body. Where could she go? What was she supposed to do? The people were approaching—their footsteps and voices were getting closer. They would notice her, question her presence at this apparent crime scene.

Through her suddenly blurry vision, she spotted two blobs appearing from a doorway upstairs, leading to the balcony. They walked, slow and steady, one of them holding a device in the air, the other tiptoeing, bringing up the rear with caution.

"Arielle Daniels?" said the first one—the man.

Arielle stuck her chest out, and her eyebrows shot upwards. "Huh?"

She watched as the two continued down the length of the balcony, heading to the stairs. And as they descended, neither looked at her. Neither saw her. They crawled under the tape and arrived on the main landing, looking left and right, unaware someone else was there.

I'm invisible?

As they prodded over to her outline on the ground, on instinct, she moved out of their way. And as she moved, she caught sight of something to her right; something leaning against a wall near a doorway.

She slithered over to it and kneeled, taking in the odd position of it. How it slanted back but almost seemed to sag, as if it had lost its life. But objects didn't live, did they? It was a mirror, lined with copper patterns and designs, but lacking the actual reflective surface. A daunting empty space gazed back at her, and as she fixed on it, squinting, angling closer and closer, she remembered.

The mirror broke. The shards... attacked me?

None of said shards remained, from what she could tell. But she recalled when they'd been resting on the ground in a perfect semi-circle, after breaking out of the mirror's frame. And when they'd been summoned into the air, elevating, pointing at her, preparing to dive in—

"Arielle Daniels, are you here?" The man's tone took on a deeper, more serious vibration as Arielle pivoted to him. He brandished the device in front of him, and a flashing red light shined straight ahead, the only color in the otherwise drab house. Everything else was gray or a washed-out maroon—gray clothes, gray hair, gray lips. Maroon eyes, maroon skin, maroon shoes. Even the woman, who stayed near the front door, one hand on something hanging from her hip, was faded.

Arielle rotated to the dilapidated mirror, then glowered at the stairs, then found the trace of her body. She narrowed her gaze on every angle of herself, drawn in white paint; her extended legs, one arm at her side, her head twisted abnormally to the left.

"It was... real." Arielle immobilized, shock shuddering through her system. The girl with raven hair was no illusion; she was the bully, the specter, the one who wanted Arielle dead. "Ghosts... ghosts can kill?"

"Arielle Daniels, please respond," said the man, growing impatient, his gaze concentrated on where Arielle's mangled body once was. "Can you speak? Can you tell me how you died?"

She knew. She'd known it since the instant she discovered the mirror, the tape, the contour of her slender self scribbled on a sepia-hued hardwood floor.

"Oh, shit."