Chapter 21 – Elise #2
Graham’s eyes widened. “The Specter?”
“That’s our guess,” Elise said. “He must’ve hitched a ride when Kevin grappled him. Or maybe earlier. We don’t know how long it’s been.”
Kevin exhaled shakily and raised a hand. “Actually…”
They both turned toward him. His usual levity had faded, replaced with something tight and uncertain.
“She’s right,” he said quietly. “I didn’t notice at first. It’s subtle. But now that I’ve been fully materialized for a while…” He frowned, flexing his fingers like he was testing the air. “I feel… thinner. Like there’s less of me in the room than there should be.”
The ghost woman nodded, solemn and sharp. “Yes. The more you fade, the stronger the presence will grow. It’s using you as a foothold. A tether.”
Kevin glanced at Elise, and for a moment he looked almost—fragile. Transparent in more ways than one.
“I don’t know how long I can hold my shape,” he said, softly.
Elise’s stomach dropped.
“How… how fast are you fading?” Elise asked.
Kevin shrugged—but it wasn’t his usual breezy deflection. It was smaller. Quieter. Tired.
“I don’t think it’s hours,” he said. “At least, I hope not. But it’s probably not weeks either.” He tilted his head, as if listening inward. “Maybe days? I might be able to tell more once I’ve… felt it a little longer.”
Elise crossed her arms, shoulders drawn tight. Absorbing that.
“He’s guessing he’s got days left,” she said to Graham, her voice clipped at the edges. Controlled—but only just. “But it’s not a sure thing.”
Graham looked at her, really looked—at the set of her jaw, the too-still way she was standing. She wasn’t trembling, but she was bracing like she might start.
He stepped closer.
Both hands on her shoulders. Firm. Grounding. Present.
“Hey,” he said softly. “I might not understand all of this. I don’t know how to fix it. But you are not alone in this. Not for a second.”
Elise met his eyes. She didn’t speak. But she didn’t look away.
The old woman’s voice cut through the silence like a conductor’s cue.
“This is all our problem now,” she said crisply.
She turned her gaze back to Kevin, nose wrinkling like she smelled something rotting. “You’ve infected our opera house with the stench of this evil. Whether you meant to or not.”
Her tone was flinty. Final.
“This thing won’t take root here. If it already has, we’ll tear it out—even if it means cutting loose whatever’s already been claimed.”
Her eyes lingered on Kevin—not cold, exactly, but calculating. Measuring him again. Weighing what he might cost.
The intent was clear: if it came down to saving him or saving the theatre, she’d choose the building. Without hesitation.
Elise stepped forward, her tone sharp. “Who’s we? Who else is around here?”
The woman looked at her, slightly surprised by the interruption, before turning on her heel and striding back toward the worn wooden chair.
She moved like she still had bones, every step precise and full of purpose.
Reaching down, she picked up the cane propped against the wall, its weight somehow real in her ghostly grip.
Then, without warning, she rapped it sharply on the floor. Twice. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot.
She felt Graham flinch. He’d seen the cane move. Heard it strike the floor.
“Girls, come out!”
There was movement in the mirror.
Elise turned toward it, eyes narrowing.
In the reflection, just behind the frame of the door they had entered through, three small figures slowly peeked around the edge. They wore matching black leotards and short, flowing skirts that moved like they were underwater. Their hair was pulled into perfect, identical ballet buns.
Elise turned toward the physical door to get a better look.
There was no one there.
She frowned and focused, inspecting her senses like checking the weather.
They weren’t at the door. Not really.
They were in the mirror.
She turned back and saw them again—still there, still watching. Their eyes were wide, luminous, a little too still. They didn’t move from the reflection of the doorway, like they weren’t entirely sure they were meant to be seen.
“You’ll only find them in mirrors, the dears,” the old woman said. “They can’t stand it any other way.”
Elise stepped a bit closer, studying them.
She couldn’t tell them apart.
She didn’t know if it was the monochrome way they appeared—glassy, grayscale, edges flickering—or if they had been triplets in life. But they were utterly identical. Three carbon copies of the same dancer, standing with toes pointed inward and hands clasped behind their backs.
She raised a hand in a gentle wave.
After a brief pause, all three of them waved back—hesitantly, and in perfect unison.
The old woman gestured past them, toward the shadowy wall they hadn’t yet turned to face.
“And that,” she said with calm finality, “is our mime.”
Elise turned—
And jumped.
A hulking figure stood less than a foot away, looming in absolute silence.
He wore a classic black-and-white mime outfit: tight striped shirt, black suspenders, trousers that clung too tightly to his frame.
White gloves stretched over hands that looked more like catcher’s mitts.
His painted smile was wide and cracked at the edges.
His eyes, outlined in thick black makeup, never blinked.
And he was grinning. Not happily. Just… grinning.
Elise’s heart clawed at her ribs.
She took a step back.
“We call him Giggles,” the old woman said, completely unfazed. “We don’t know his real name.”
Kevin—who had drifted closer, visibly unsettled—tilted his head as if tuning a ghostly radio.
“I think it’s Frederick—”
“I like Giggles better,” the old woman snapped, her tone brooking no disagreement.
Elise couldn’t look away. Giggles was still standing too close. Still smiling. His chest rose and fell slightly, as if breathing—though he most certainly wasn’t alive.
She leaned toward Graham and whispered, “It’s a mime. They have a mime. He goes by Giggles.”
Graham didn’t move, but his eyes widened in alarm. “Oh, good,” he said dryly. “My nightmares were feeling underrepresented.”
Elise’s phone buzzed in her belt bag. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen—Cici. Right on time.
She quickly declined the call and typed out a message:
Will call in 5. Communing with the very interesting local ghosts.
Sliding the phone back into her pocket, she turned to the old woman.
“I appreciate the introductions, Miss…?”
“Myrtle,” the woman supplied crisply.
“Miss Myrtle,” Elise echoed with a respectful nod.
“I think we might know what this evil is. It was following us before it ever tangled itself up with Kevin.” She glanced at him, and he gave a noncommittal jazz-hands shrug.
“My friend—she’s a witch, a good one—she’s been working on banishing spells.
I think she’s going to be able to help us. ”
She held up the phone as she said it, but Myrtle narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the device, as though it might be cursed or contagious.
“She’s very smart,” Elise added gently. “And more importantly, she’s on our side.”
From the green room beyond the hallway, voices echoed—low laughter, the squeal of a rolling trunk. The load-in crew had arrived.
Elise stepped back toward the door. “Thank you, all of you, for the introductions. We’ll be back soon—I just need to check in with my friend and…” she gestured toward the hallway, “…pretend to be a normal person for a little bit.”
Myrtle gave her a curt nod. The mirror girls waved in eerie unison, and Giggles tilted his head ever so slightly—Elise couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a goodbye or a threat.
She smiled tightly and gave a small wave. “See you soon.”
Then she and Graham slipped out the door, leaving the ghosts—and the echo of the bell—in silence behind them.
The hallway outside the studio felt brighter now—no less haunted, maybe, but decidedly more mundane.
A familiar hum of backstage life had returned.
Elise, Graham, and Kevin moved as a quiet unit, weaving past a stagehand wheeling a set of flats and a tech adjusting a clipboard with grim determination.
As they neared the wig closet, a crew member passed them in the opposite direction, an empty dolly rattling ahead of him. They peeked into the doorway, and there it was—the wig trunk. Dead center in the middle of the room, like a loyal pet that had finally found its way home.
Elise exhaled, some unspoken pressure releasing from her chest.
Graham turned toward her, watching her face. “So… that was intense. Or is it always like that with your ghost friends?”
She gave a small laugh, more exhale than sound. “More intense than usual. I don’t get rattled easily, but that definitely stirred something.”
Kevin drifted past them into the closet, poking at the trunk like it might contain snakes or sequins—or both. “Personally, I found them charming. Especially Giggles. Such presence.”
Elise shook her head, lips twitching despite herself. But the humor didn’t fully settle. Her pulse was still high, her palms still damp, and the encounter settled heavily into the pile of worries she’d been carrying from city to city.
She pulled out her phone again, her thumb hovering. “We need to talk to Cici. Soon. If what Myrtle said is true… we’re running out of time.” She tapped Cici’s name and hit speaker.
“Hey,” she said the moment it connected. “You’re on speaker.”
“Hey, boo,” Cici’s voice came through, slightly tinny. “Talk to me. How’s it going in Creepsville?”
Elise looked at Kevin, then Graham. “Okay, so. No Specter sightings yet. But… we talked to one of the local ghosts—Miss Myrtle, former dance instructor, terrifying presence—and she says something evil has arrived here. She could smell it. And she thinks it’s connected to Kevin.”
Kevin gave a sarcastic little bow. “Apparently I’m radiating evil now. Love that for me.”