“Austin,” Richard says warningly. “She could be dangerous - we don’t know if -”
“She’s a kid,” Austin snaps. He scoops the pile of bones into the overturned box they came from, and carries it back towards the stairs, towards the ghost.
“What are you doing?” Mac asks. Austin ignores the question.
“Did you get killed here?” he asks the ghost girl, looking at her as best as he can over the top of the large box in his arms. “Did someone who works here do this? Because if you tell me who they are -”
The ghost girl snorts. “No way. I got jumped on my way home from school by some guy. He used some…chemical thing to melt my body in his bathtub, and hid the bones in that box, under a bunch of books he donated here. I guess he figured he could skip town before anyone ever found them.”
She shrugs, as if her murderer’s modus operandi doesn’t particularly matter to her. Every word out of her mouth feels like a punch to Austin’s gut, and he struggles not to drop the box, his hands shaking with revulsion. Her body was melted down? I’m going to hunt down the guy who did this and make him hurt. He doesn’t deserve a quick death.
“I can’t believe no one found those bones before now,” Mac says softly.
“The man who killed you - do you know where he went after he left town?” Austin asks, trying and failing to keep his voice even the least bit measured. “This is evidence, we could find him and arrest him -”
“Don’t bother.” the girl says flatly.
Austin narrows his eyes at her. “Why not? You don’t want him to -”
“He’s already dead.”
“What do you mean?” Richard asks. He and Mac are drifting closer to the stairs, flanking Austin to get a closer look at the ghost girl. “You can’t have died more than a couple decades ago, from the looks of you. The man who killed you might still be out there, killing more kids.”
“No, he’s dead,” the ghost girl says with alarming certainty. “I followed him around for a while after he killed me. Didn’t have anything better to do. He worked out in the mines, and got caught in that big cave-in.”
Austin and Richard look at each other, each trying to gauge if the cave-in is something they’ve heard about before, or should know about. Mac lets out a horrified little gasp.
“The Mining Disaster?”
“The what?” Austin asks. From the weight Mac puts on the words, it must be something serious - some dark part of town history. He wonders why he’s never heard anyone talk about it before now. Maybe it’s the kind of thing people like to forget happened.
“There was a big mine shaft just outside of town that caved in and killed about forty people,” Mac explains. “They closed it right after - it’s still out there, just abandoned. They teach the mining disaster as part of town history in school, here, so that everybody knows not to go out and play in the old mine shafts. But that was…that was in the 60s.”
“I’m older than I look,” the ghost girl says, a little smugly.
Austin readjusts his grip on the box of bones, trying to process. So the fucker who did this is dead. And he died pretty violently too, which is a bonus. But she’s been a ghost since she died, which means her haunting this place isn’t a freak accident caused by her bones being disturbed. More than likely, she’s here by choice.
“What do you want us to do with these?” he asks, indicating the box. “We could give them to your family, or bury them in the cemetery outside…”
The ghost girl pauses, fiddling with the frames of her glasses and screwing up her face thoughtfully. After a long moment, she shrugs again.
“I don’t really know. I didn’t ever think anyone would find them. Or be able to see me. But I don’t think you should give them to my family. It’s been a really long time, and they’ve all kind of gotten over it by now.”
Richard gives her a funny look. “You don’t think they’d still want to know what happened to you?”
“My dad’s dead, and my mom is - she’s pretty sick, so I don’t know how she’d take it. Probably not great.” The ghost girl twirls a lock of frizzy hair around one finger, looking down at the floor. “You don’t have to do anything with my bones. I want to stay here.”
“Why?” Austin asks. He sets the box down on the ground so it’s not in the way of him looking at the ghost girl. “I mean, why here? I get that it’s where your body is, but you know you have the freedom to go anywhere you want, right?”
“I like it here,” the ghost girl says, tilting up her chin in a challenging, defiant way. “Everywhere else in town is boring, and there’s nothing for me to do except spy on people. At least here I can read books, even if I don’t get to pick what to read.”
“I understand,” Richard murmurs. “I used to miss reading. Turning pages is hard, even once you figure out how to manipulate physical objects. They’re just so thin.”
“Sometimes I come in here to read over people’s shoulders,” Mac agrees. “But if no one’s reading anything good, it’s kind of useless.”
“Wait.” The ghost girl looks at Richard, her eyes bright and intense behind the thick lenses of her glasses. “You can manipulate physical objects? Like touch things?”
Richard looks startled. “Well…yes. It takes a lot of practice, but it’s possible. For a ghost as old as you, I would have thought that you had at least tried to do it before.”
“No one told me I could!” The ghost girl says, a little angrily.
“I didn’t know either,” Mac chimes in.
Richard chews his bottom lip, considering the other two ghosts. Austin can see the gears turning in his head, coming to a conclusion, and knows what Richard is going to say as soon as the first word is out of his mouth.
“Well, I could teach both of you. It might take a while, but it’s not like any of us have anywhere to go for the foreseeable future.”
Richard laughs at his own joke. No one else does. Austin picks up the box of bones again and walks to move it back on top of the desk where it sat before, tuning out the three ghosts as they all begin chattering about lessons and times to meet up. He looks up at the grimy window near the ceiling, and the moonlight spilling out of it.
In a way, this feels like a hollow victory. Austin almost wishes that the library ghost had turned out to be malicious, a challenge, something to fight and destroy. It would have been good catharsis - but Austin knows, more than anyone else, that sometimes catharsis takes a long time. And sometimes it never comes at all. Better to take things for what they are. At the very least, he has another ghost in town who he can come to for information, and Richard and Mac have a new friend.
“Hey,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets as he approaches the stairs again. “I’m going to go. I need sleep, and probably a doctor.”
Richard’s eyebrows furrow in concern. “You’re okay to get home by yourself?”
“It’s not far.” Austin tries to smile. He’s so tired that even forcing an expression feels draining. “I’ll be okay. I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad.”
The ghosts shift aside to let him up the stairs, Mac saying a soft “bye, Austin” as he passes by her. Austin gives her a little wave. His body still feels sore, but he thinks he can make it home. He hopes Otter and Landis are still awake so he can tell them about the night he’s had - they probably aren’t going to believe it.
austin coming home: hey boyfriend and soon-to-be-boyfriend you guys are not gonna believe my WILD and SUPERNATURAL night
landis: [has a stab wound from a demon]
otter: [witnessed a demon summoning and possession for the first time]
austin: okay. so maybe you will.