Page 4 of Kindred Spirits

“Sorry, Ben,” I mumbled and rolled him onto his side. I eased him into the recovery position and pulled a clean blanket down off the couch to cover him.

Just as I was getting him comfortable, the worst possible thing happened. I heard something scraping around out nearthe generator. This was the worst time for my house ghost to go turning off the power in search of his evening snack.

“Oh, no you don’t,” I grumbled and got to my feet. I grabbed the baseball bat by the front door and stormed outside without bothering to stop for my coat.

Leaves crunched underfoot as I made my way around the side of the house. Trees like oak, maple, and pine stretched as far as the eye could see in every direction, which was exactly the way I liked it. The downside to living out in the middle of nowhere was that meant I was off the grid. There was too much tree cover to get enough solar reliably, so the house’s power ran on a backup generator most of the time.

For some reason, though, this ghost seemed dead set against letting the generator run while he was active. Every night, he came by and banged around outside until he got it turned off, and every night, I had to brave the dark to turn it back on.

Not this time, though. Tonight was the night I caught him in the act.

I came around the back of the house to where the generator was, bat ready to swing. There was one final bang on the generator before leaves rustled, moving away from it.

“Not today!” I shouted and charged, swinging the bat at where I saw the leaves moving.

I had no idea if a metal bat would affect a ghost or not, but I’d read somewhere that iron could. The iron percentage in that bat probably wasn’t super high, though, so I didn’t expect much to come of my swinging.

Imagine my utter shock when the bat cracked against something solid.

And then the way my heart stopped when that something roared in pain.

Terror and guilt rippled through me, turning my skin ice cold. I dropped the bat only to have something invisible smack it awaybefore it could hit the ground. An unseen force swept me off my feet. There was a sharp sting in my left ass cheek and I hit the ground. Hard. My head bounced, and I found myself staring up at stars through a hole in the forest canopy, unable to move.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck! Why can’t I move? I can’t move!

Leaves crunched and footsteps came closer. Heavy footsteps. The air in front of me shimmered slightly, as if it were distorted. Hot air huffed over my face like some invisible bear was sniffing me.

I swallowed, heart racing.I’m dead! Whatever this is, it’s going to kill me.

Tears pricked at my eyes when I squeezed them closed, but not because of my fear. Yes, I was scared of whatever was leaning over me, huffing my scent like an addict with a glue bottle, but I was even more terrified that I couldn’t move my limbs.

What if I was paralyzed? I panicked as I realized it would be a long time before anyone would find me. It was October in northern Michigan, which meant the temperatures could plunge below freezing at night. Of course stupid me would pick that day to forget my coat.

And Ben wasn’t getting up anytime soon.

I was completely fucked, and not in the good way.

An ethereal blue light suddenly appeared above my face. At first, I thought it was somewhere distant, an airplane in the sky. As my vision adjusted, I realized it was just inches from my face, dangling from nothing. The light was teardrop shaped, and glowing a magnificent ghostly blue. I blinked, expecting it to disappear like a hallucination, but it was still there, still beautiful, but it’d shifted to a pale green. As I watched, it faded back to blue… then green again.

The light belongs to whatever the hell is leaning over me, I realized.My ghost?Maybe I wasn’t so fucked after all.

“Help…me…” I managed.

The light danced a little closer.

There was the sound of a shotgun chambering shells somewhere back toward the house, and a familiar voice demanded, “Get away from him, you bitch!”

Honor? God dammit, what the fuck washedoing here? Didn’t I tell him to fuck off?

The shotgun fired, a blast of rock salt exploding in the air above me, briefly illuminating shimmering black skin, a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth on a distended lower jaw, and huge milky white eyes.

Holy shit. That was the freakiest looking ghost I’d ever seen.

The ghost let out an ear-piercing shriek and the distorted air in front of me shifted.

Another roar echoed through the trees behind me.

Since when did lions live in Michigan?

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