Young Writers Society

Once upon a time, in a place that was arguably not Earth, a monster hunter named Annabeth Medford met a normal boy named Edward Smith. During the events of Aureate Hollow, the two realized that they were from completely different time periods: Annabeth being from the 21st century, and Edward being from just years before World War II.

But after that story concluded, the two went their separate ways. Time caught up. It's only been a short period of time for Annabeth since then, but for Edward it's been countless decades. When the two suddenly find themselves whisked off to an abandoned town, they'll have to adjust to just how much time can affect a friendship—and solve the mystery of what happened to this forgotten town.

The EMF detector finally calmed down, and Annabeth sighed in relief. She put the device in her bag. The spirits had left in peace after days of unraveling the mystery, and the couple were more than grateful.

"Thank you, Annabeth," said the man again, shaking her hand. "I don't know what would have happened without you."

"Think nothing of it," she replied, and gently freed her aching hand. "It was my pleasure. I'm just glad they didn't mean any serious harm." She slung her bag over her shoulder.

"We'll keep you updated if they come back," said his wife, opening the front door for her.

"Appreciated, but I highly doubt it," said Annabeth. "Once their business is finished, spirits will never return to the living world. Goodbye, and thanks for the hospitality."

The couple waved again and closed the door. Annabeth walked down the street, passing pedestrians left and right.

It was lucky that this mission was a couple of blocks from her house, because she was getting hungry, and she really wanted to change out of her uniform.

Suddenly, a white light emitted out of somewhere, blinding her for just a second.

Annabeth steadied herself against a pole, rubbing her eyes. When she opened them, she gaped.

This wasn't Briar Springs.

"Should we go with the glazed or the chocolate ones?" Schadel asked.

Edward tore his gaze away from the window. There were storm clouds in the distance, but the agency wasn't all that far from South Haven's only Dunkin. If they rushed back, they would probably be able to beat the rain.

...Or they would have a box of soggy donuts.

He peered down at the display glass, narrowing his eyes behind his sunglasses.

"Chocolate," he finally said.

Schadel gave a little nod. It was only when he saw the cashier's intrigued look that he remembered he needed to sign something too. It was a pain having to sign everything out on top of saying it; Schadel couldn't even understand ASL unless she focused.

Which, from the look on her face, she wasn't.

He signed out the word, then waited for the order to be completed. Once they were all set, the two headed out into the streets--Edward in charge of carrying their donuts.

"I hope they like the donuts we picked," Schadel said.

"Claire likes anything," Edward pointed out. "Liz actually has taste, but you can't go wrong with chocolate donuts-"

There was a sudden flash of bright light. Even with his sunglasses on, it was still blinding. It took a few seconds after the light died down for his vision to clear, and a few more after that for him to realize that he wasn't in South Haven anymore.

He blinked.

Then he spun around, still holding the box of donuts in his gloved hands.

"Schadel?" he called out. There wasn't any answer. He was all by himself, and he couldn't see a rift or a weird mirror anywhere. There wasn't any reason for him to be suddenly transported to some other town. The last time that had happened, he had at least seen the rift.

The only other person nearby was a girl just a little farther down the street. Something about the combination of her red hair, violet eyes and the outfit she was wearing sparked a memory, but it lingered on the very edges of his consciousness.

He glanced down at the box in his hands.

"Of course I run into someone when my hands are full," he said, groaning. He awkwardly moved the box around so it was underneath his arm. "Why couldn't Schadel have been the one to carry the box?"

Hands finally free, he signed, Hello. Do you know where we are?

Annabeth blinked as she righted herself up. That was...strange. Incredibly strange. She wracked her memory, but there were no spirits or monsters she knew of that could transport someone into an unfamiliar location.

Something like this had happened before she woke up at Aureate Hollow. But, why was it happening again?

Before she could take another step, there was another flash; and farther down the street, a boy appeared, holding a box of donuts. He called out for someone.

Annabeth adjusted her leather jacket and walked towards him curiously. He turned and saw her, and he groaned, muttering about his full hands. He signed to her.

She knew limited sign language after taking one failed course at the local youth center, but she interpreted it as Hello and where. But, why did he sign when she clearly heard and saw his mouth move.

Annabeth raised her eyebrow at him. His face was covered, but there was something familiar about his voice.

Then, the EMF detector went off in her bag.

There was a beeping coming from the girl's bag.

Edward stared.

"Your phone is ringing," he said, gesturing at the bag. Then he groaned again; this was his second time forgetting to sign today. But the gesture hopefully was understandable enough on its own, so he wasn't going to try signing out something, too.

But the longer the phone beeped, the more he realized he recognized the kind of beeping. That wasn't a phone.

That was an EMF detector.

...So he was dealing with a ghost hunter.

He studied her behind his sunglasses, trying to figure out what the best thing to do was. He could try to play dumb, but the detector wasn't going to stop with him so close by.

"That's not my phone..." she said curiously as she swung her bag in front of her. Why was her EMF detector going off?

Annabeth looked around. There shouldn't be any spirits around. A main street in broad daylight wasn't exactly a hotspot. She unzipped the bag and brought the device out, scanning it.

The beeping sped up She held it in front of her and waved it around slowly, and when it was in front of the boy, the detector went crazy.

Annabeth lowered it and tilted her head, gazing at the boy, but the sunglasses stopped her from seeing his eyes.

"Who are you?" she asked curiously.

He froze.

...She had heard him. Edward wasn't fazed by her seeming to discover he was the source of the EMF detector going off; he was too busy grappling with the realization that the ghost hunter before him could actually hear him. Only people with magic or a sensitivity to hidden side of the world could hear him.

Who was she?

"I'm Edward," he said. "Edward Smith. I'm a part of Schadel's Necromancy Agency."

Reapers wouldn't use EMF detectors. They didn't need to. But even though he knew she probably wasn't a reaper, he still offered Schadel's name as protection. He didn't want to be reaped anymore.

After a pause, he took off his sunglasses to reveal a pair of blue eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Annabeth had never heard of Schadel's Necromancy Agency, but her parents had drilled politeness into her, so she answered his question.


"I'm Annabeth Medford," she said. "I'm a Monster Hunter, though some people have coined me the Monster Whisperer." She smoothed down a couple of frayed hair. "Wait -Edward?"

Annabeth looked into his blue eyes, memory working away. The name clicked. "Edward from Aureate Hollow?"

Monster hunter? That was something he hadn't heard of before. But something about still was weirdly familiar—just like her first name and the place that she mentioned. They had met before. They had to have. She recognized him, and he sort of recognized her.

"I'm from New York," he corrected, since that was obviously the most important point to make right now.

After another awkward moment passed, he leaned down to place the donuts on the ground. It was ridiculously hot wearing his public outfit on top of his uniform, and he really didn't feel like keeping it on if she could hear him and see him.

He took off his hat and tucked his sunglasses in his pocket, but the only other thing he could really do quickly right now was take the bandages off of his head. He took them off with ease and speed that came from a lot of practice. When they were finally off, they revealed a man who wasn't really that much of a man; he had only died a month after his eighteenth birthday. There was a hollow look to his face that hadn't been there prior to his death, but his blue eyes had a life to them that contrasted his pale skin.

"So am I," said Annabeth faintly, but you already knew that she silently added.

So many questions zoomed through her head, but that all stopped when Edward shed his outer clothes, revealing a uniform underneath. He also unraveled the bandages around his head.

The sight of it all reminded her of The Invisible Man, but she couldn't bring herself to laugh. Instead, she stared at his face, and everything made sense.

The pale skin, why he hadn't aged, and the EMF detector beeping at him.

Edward was dead.

Annabeth sucked in a deep breath. "Edward, do you remember anything from that place," she said slowly, "or Hester, or Forest, or Vee?"

Hester? Forest? Vee? Annabeth was rattling off names like they were supposed to mean something to him, but his mind was struggling to keep up with the conversation. It was almost like when he tried to remember the faces of his classmates in Connecticut from before the war.

But Annabeth wasn't dead. The EMF detector hadn't gone off until he had gotten closer to her. If she was a ghost like him, it would have been making noise from the moment he first saw her here. Anyways, she looked too modern. If she really was from so long ago, then she probably would have looked slightly out-of-time like the reapers usually did-

A memory of a shaking forest and an underground world started to come back to him.

It felt like a dream when he tried to remember it. He had thought it was a dream afterwards. That was way before he died. Way before he met Schadel. Magic just wasn't a thing that existed to him outside of books back then.

But he knew that magic existed now. He had just been trying to explain how he had gotten here with magic, and had been trying to explain how Annabeth knew him with magic, too. That dream hadn't really been a dream. Everything at Aureate Hollow had been real.

...It really shouldn't have taken him that long to realize that. If Claire ever found out, she'd tease him for weeks.

"I remember falling," he said. "There were some strange people underground. And you were from the..."

He faltered.

"...21st century."

Which he was from now, too.

Annabeth nodded. "Yeah...that's right," she said softly. She shifted uneasily on her feet. "Did you die in the war?" she asked.

Feeling another awkward pause, Annabeth glanced around, taking in their surroundings.

There were stores lined up, and they all looked open. In fact, they even looked downright inviting. And cars were parallel parked against the sidewalks. A perfectly normal street on a normal day.

But there was something troubling her.

"It's kind of quiet, isn't it?" she said. "Not a lot of people out. No one out, really."

"That was when I died," he confirmed.

The folds and stains of his uniform had a tendency to hide the bullet wound right above his heart. Schadel had offered to help him learn how to properly hide it, once, but he had never taken her up on the offer. The uniform usually gave him being a ghost away.

He followed her gaze as she scanned the area around them.

"It's like a ghost town," he commented. He reached down and picked up the box of somewhat flattened donuts, awkwardly slinging his trench coat over his shoulder in an attempt to free up his hands a little more. "But ghost towns usually are older, and I don't think I've ever seen one that looks so lived in before."

He hadn't actually been to all that many ghost towns before, but he had seen enough of them in TV shows on his tablet to know what they were supposed to be like. And Schadel had taken him and Claire to one last month when Liz was having a family day with her brother.

"Let's look around," said Annabeth. "Maybe we'll find someone."

Better to look for answers first before jumping to conclusions, Greta always said.

She opened the door closest to her -a coffee shop- and stepped inside. The place was empty.

"Hello?" she called out. "Is anyone here?"

But no one answered. No one even came out of the Employee door.

Annabeth exchanged a confused look with Edward and walked up to the counter. There were coffee cups and pastries on the tables next to it, but she didn't pay too much attention to them.

She rang the bell.

No one came when Annabeth rang the bell.

If someone had, Edward would have probably been more surprised than he currently was. It seemed like the people here had been whisked away as suddenly as he had been taken from South Haven.

He put the box of donuts down on the counter and ran his fingers along it.

"There isn't any dust," he said, turning back to Annabeth. "And the pastries still look fresh, too."

He took his hand off the counter. The sight of the pastries was starting to make him feel hungry, but now really wasn't the time to eat.