It began as an ordinary Octobers day in the week leading up to Halloween.

Anshee had a feeling it would not remain an ordinary day for long, though she didn’t say anything to anyone about her concerns. This close to the day the veil between the worlds of the dead and the living was the thinnest, strange things had a habit of happening. Usually they were small, like Bram suddenly losing his craziness and becoming almost meek…which might not actually seem small, considering Bram’s craziness was a large part of who he was.

Taking past experiences with Halloween and the week leading up to it as a warning, Anshee got up from where she had meditated in lieu of sleeping and walked towards the kitchen cautiously. Perhaps she was overreacting, but the memory of the incident with that ghost determined to stop her ex-husband from killing himself made her wary.

Whatever it was, she hoped it wouldn’t take too much time to deal with. Kiandre, the boy she’d met when the older people in the Cs had decided that she spent too much time at HQ (what did they know?), had somehow managed to get her to agree to meet him at the GRC for something.

When she turned a corner and was in the kitchen, her feeling was proven correct…at least she thought so. Bram, bleeding eye sockets clear to see, was perched on the table. Audrey was looking through the cabinets for some reason. Adone was sat in one of the chairs with a gun on the table in front of him. Eva was standing near Audrey, one of her arms linked with Wren’s as they talked quietly to each other (they had become close after the latter’s death). Florence was nowhere to be seen (she was probably off traumatising someone…)

Normally this wouldn’t have been strange, they usually did stuff like this.

No, the strange thing was that Anshee couldn’t see through them. She’d always been able to see through them, that was part of what made it easy to tell who was a ghost and who wasn’t without needing to see them do ghost stuff.

Today, they all looked relatively solid. Bram sometimes went intangible, often when he pulled a concentrated face.

“What?” she asked walking over to them. “Going on?”

Bram, as he usually did, elected himself as the spokesperson for the ghosts. “We think, though we are not entirely sure, that we have somehow managed to become…almost alive?”

That…really didn’t answer her question all that much.

Audrey closed the cabinet doors with an aggravated huff. “He means that we are solid and, though we haven’t proven it, we might be visible to people who are not mediums.”

“Ah,” was the young medium’s reply.

Distantly, she could hear the sounds of people heading towards the kitchen. Well, this could go two ways. Either it went okay or…it went badly. Very badly.

She sighed and sat down in the chair next to Adone. Florence dropped down from wherever she had been to sit opposite her.

As predicted, not even 2 minutes after she sat down, David  came into the kitchen followed by Lily,  and promptly paused at the sight of the Ghosts.

“Who…?” David began but Anshee cut him off, a look of annoyance on her face as she was forced to speak normally.

“These are the ghosts that follow me. Bram, the one without eyes. Adone, the one next to me. Audrey, the one by the cabinets. Eva is by Wren who i’m sure you’ve met before. Finally, Florence is the one sat opposite me.”

“Got to be honest, I thought you were lying about the ghosts,” Lily stated from the background, her arms crossed as she took in the group of ghosts, the theme song of ghostbusters playing in the back of her head.

“The incident with the pillows and the thing with the lights during that time we watched horror movies, you really thought I did that?” Anshee raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

“Okay so I was a little freaked out by that,” Lily admitted before continuing, “But I thought it may have been some elaborate prank you all pulled on me.”

“That time we all went to the park and I let Bram possess me, you didn’t think it was strange that i suddenly started talking with a male voice and going intangible?”

“I uh….,” Lily couldn’t find an excuse for that one. But still the brawler just wouldn’t believe that ghosts actually exist. “Ok, so that was weird.”  

“I feel offended that you didn’t believe in us. And after all that effort I put into messing with you,” Bram turned his face to look at her, somehow able to tell where she was even though he didn’t have eyes.

“Look, it doesn’t matter if we believed in the ghosts or not, we need to figure out why and how we can now see them,” David said, trying to get them all back on track.

Anshee shrugged. “This close to Halloween, strange things always happen. The fact that the ghosts are now visible to non-mediums doesn’t even rank into the top five strangest things that have happened to me over the years.”

“So as we get closer and closer to Halloween, are more strange things going to happen?” David asked her, he wanted to ask about the other strange things that had occurred but decided not to pry.

“Probably. Three years ago, I had to deal with the ghost’s personalities being flipped around. As it got closer to Halloween, their personalities got even more weird. Then, as soon it turned into the first of November, they were all back to normal.”

“So we have to deal with them until the first of November?” Lily asked the others, looking around at the group. When she realized the answer was a yes she sighed, grumbling under her breath “Great, just great.”

“Trust me, the feeling’s mutual,” Bram responded, smirking slightly.

“Flo thinks it’s fine,” the child-like ghost giggled out from behind her hand, hiding her trademark twisted smirk.

“Well, I don’t,” Audrey huffed, folding her arms over her chest. “How am I supposed to do my snooping if I’m visible?” the ex-reporter turned around to face the group fully, revealing her permanently wide grin in the process.

“Wait….snooping?” David’s eyes went wide, Did this ghost follow the members around just to get good gossip on them? If that was true then she probably knew about how much of a nerd he actually was.

“Yes, snooping. I’m a reporter,” a shadow crossed her face briefly and the wide grin seemed to become slightly sad. “Well, I was anyway.”

She seemed to read David’s train of thought. “Whilst I do sometimes follow the members around, I do have more interesting things to do with my time.”

“Like what?” Lily asked, actually curious to what ghosts did in their free time. It wasn’t like they could go to an arcade or bar.

Audrey shrugged. “Like look around for spirits that have the potential to become a problem if left unchecked. I also snoop around various criminal hideouts, that’s always fun. Nothing like coming face to face with someone who would try to kill you without a second thought but can’t because they can’t see you to remind you of the fact that you’re dead,” surprisingly, she didn’t sound bitter as she said that, just matter of fact.

Florence giggled without reason, as she was known to do, and smiled innocently at the non-mediums.

There was a sudden scream as Ellis rushed in, tripping over his own two feet. He froze in the doorway, blinking rapidly. He’d been screaming because he was a hyperactive eight year old with nothing to do. It was only logical to him to run around screaming. But… he didn’t know what to do with this, honey brown eyes big in surprise.

Anshee sighed. Looked like she would be explaining, yet again, what was going on. Why couldn’t it have been a normal day? Oh yeah…Halloween week.

Out of the corner of his eye, Adone noticed that Florence had hidden her mouth behind her hand and had somehow produced a bunny doll from somewhere. Inwardly, he sighed. He was the only one who knew about what she did to the boy who had just arrived and knowing her, she was bound to repeat it unless she was reeled in. Besides, the rabbit was always a sign of bad things to come.

“Florence,” the young girl froze when Adone pinned her with an unamused look. “Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.”

“Who, me?” she tilted her head to the side innocently. Adone wasn’t fooled. Actually, none of the ghosts were fooled, neither was Anshee. They had all spent too much time around the girl to be fooled by her cute and innocent act.

Before any of the non-mediums that were already there could ask what they were on about when they told the ghost named Florence to not do something, Lain and Parker walked into the kitchen.

This will forever remain incomplete…mostly because I’m no longer really close or in touch with the people who sort of wrote this with me.

@writersloth @strawberryspaceship @rmorada @rosella1356 @editedandwrittenbyhannah