Young Writers Society

Dean wanted to point out that ghosts didn't work quite like that, but found himself unable to speak for once in his life.

The ghost in question had just walked straight through the wall he was standing beside.

He wildly glanced between the wall and the ghost, unsure of how she had been able to sneak up on him when he had been keeping such a close eye on the streets. He was already worried by her ability to ignore the restrictions of ghostlihood - this straight out terrified him, even though he'd never admit it.

"Whatever you do," he hissed, "don't freak out."

Charlotte and Herobrine had both gone incredibly pale. Beside them, Zalio had stiffened. Kartiel's eyes were flickering between green and purple, dark scales beginning to grow on his bare skin as he stared at the ghost. But he should have known that his warning wouldn't help.

Piper screamed and clung to her cousin.

The ghost flickered in response.

Aegeas and Lasan looked up from the fireplace and stared into each other's eyes, each tilting their head in the direction that everyone else was looking. Aegeas was the first one to look that way; he quickly grabbed one of Lasan's oversized hands and put it over his mouth.

The lizard quickly placed the other hand over his own mouths as he joined Aegeas in staring up at the ghost that had arrived. Neither of them had seen anything so strange in a long time. It was pale, flickering, monstrous, and so humanly inhuman.

And then Piper screamed. Aegeas and Lasan quickly joined in.

Dean hurried to retrieve his bat from where it was laying on the ground a few feet away, but was hit by the horrible realization that it would be absolutely useless if the previous attempts to deal with the ghost the traditional way had failed. He was left awkwardly standing there with the bat in one hand and the other in a tightly curled fist.

The ghost was staring at none of them. Dean guessed he should have taken that as a good thing - that meant it hadn't noticed them yet, despite his order being ignored by people screaming. But all he could think about was how it was only a matter of time before she stopped thinking about her death and started noticing who was presently in the room-

She suddenly was right in front of him, staring right up into his face.

Her clothes weren't too old-fashioned; the color-drained dress was from somewhere in the mid 1900s, and her hair fit the style of the 1960s. She wasn't that big, either. He easily towered over her, even if she had stood on the tips of her toes. Dean couldn't see any visible signs of death yet, so it had to be something hidden. She had to have died from something in the air, or some sort of medication. Or maybe she had just straight out had a heart attack, or something else that was relatively simple. It was hard to tell when the death wasn't visible on the outside.

The ghost flickered again. She was still staring at him, eyes widening as she reached a hand out to touch him. He recoiled back - not because he was scared of dying, but because he wasn't prepared to fake his death if the touch led to a suddenly fatal attack.

But the tips of her fingers brushed up against his leather jacket.

"You're not here," she said, her voice shaking. The flickering continued, growing more and more frequent. "You can't be. You weren't here before. I already looked into this house. How could-how could you be here?"

He stared at her, and she stared at him.

"This doesn't make any sense," he said, furrowing his brow as he looked down at her. "You're not acting like a partial."

She suddenly looked very small and afraid. "You're t-talking to me. Are y-you one of his? He said that I still...that I still had time left before I had to return. I don't want to go back yet. I still don't understand."

Dean studied her. "Don't understand what?"

"What...What happened here," the ghost said. She flickered one last time, and her form became solid - color washing over it as she continued to stare worriedly up at him. But her form didn't exactly match what it had looked like only seconds before; the 1960s dress was exchanged for a white sundress, and her short - bizarrely white - haircut lost the hairband and instead gained a little braid dangling down one side.

She looked up at him with nervous gray eyes.

Aegeas and Lasan sat frozen for a few seconds, staring up at the ghostly woman who now seemed more lost and confused than menacing. She was also dressed more normally than she had before, even if white dresses weren't exactly common.

The otter let go of Lasan. "Who's him?" he said. "And what did happen?"

The young woman let out what sounded like a surprised scream and ducked behind the thing closest to her - that thing being Dean. Ghosts didn't have the extraordinarily cold touch that Hollywood liked to portray them with, but their touch would always be slightly cooler than it had been when they were alive.

But when her hands grasped onto him and she leaned up against his back, all he felt was warmth. She was enveloped in the residual warmth that accompanied magic, but was also warm as in the alive sort of way. His eyes widened in surprise when he realized that she couldn't possibly be a ghost.

She peeked around him. "There-There's other people here," she said, hands grasping him trembling significantly more than before. "Did he send you, t-too?"

The ghost hiding behind Dean was somehow more startling than when she had appeared in the first place. She wasn't intimidating at all - she was as afraid as they were. Especially over this 'he,' whom Aegeas guessed was an actual menace. Anyone that commanded that much control and fear had to be.

"Does she think we're human?" Lasan whispered.

"No clue," replied Aegeas, before speaking to the ghost. "No, he didn't send us. We don't even know who he is."

She hesitantly peeked out a bit further from behind him and looked at all of the other people present in the room. Each gave her a look that clearly said they were just as clueless as Aegeas and Lasan were. Taking a deep breath, the not-ghost took several tentative steps out from behind him.

"I didn't...I didn't think anyone would be here," she said. Her grip on Dean's arm tightened even more. "It was just supposed to be me."

"Who exactly is 'me'?" Kartiel said, seeming to finally gain the courage to speak when he realized that the woman was no threat to them.

"I'm Thymea," she replied, her voice shaking. Then she gave a horrified gasp, skin somehow becoming even more pale as she ducked behind Dean again. Dean looked around at the other people present in the room; had one of them caused the reaction?

"I-I'm sorry!" Thymea abruptly apologized. "I-I must have been the one to bring you here. I didn't want to, but sometimes my...my powers don't work the way I intend them to..."

"You brought us here?" Aegeas said. Lasan looked over at Aegeas's expression - those wide eyes never meant anything good. "Can you bring us back?"

"She said her powers are odd," Lasan said.

Aegeas glared back. "It doesn't mean she can't try," he said, crossing his arms.

She peeked around Dean again.

"I-I can't," she nervously said, eyes lingering on Aegeas. She took a deep, unsteady breath, and Dean was overcome by the incredibly strong urge to comfort her. "This place is still forgotten. You can only go back home once it's not."

Lasan tried to walk in front of Aegeas and speak first, but Aegeas managed to get the first word. "Forgotten?" he said, walking under Lasan's legs (Lasan cursed their height difference). "What do you mean by that? I'm pretty sure I know this place exists, so I don't think it's forgotten anymore."

Thymea frantically shook her head. "It's not-it's not like that." She nervously glanced at the confused faces of the other people present in the room - eyes lingering for the longest on Violet and Piper - and then she began to fiddle with the bottom of her dress. "It's hard to describe...When a-a place becomes forgotten, it's not just because people forget it's there. They forget its story. I've been trying to find out what the story is...but now you're here..."

Following Thymea's gaze, Aegeas's voice settled into something like a whisper. "But they know, don't they?" he said. "S-so we can all go back home?"

She shook her head again, but this time it was far more nervously than before.

"They're too new," she whispered. "They died too recently...Neither one of them would know what happened here..." She fiddled with the hem of her dress, her gaze returning to Dean as she scooted a little closer to him. She must have somehow been able to tell that he was a god--or that he wasn't a normal person--but that then brought up the question of what she was.

"What exactly are you?" Dean asked.

She gave him a look.

"You must know," she said, her voice trembling. "You're a g-"

"Hunter," he corrected.

She furrowed her brow, and tilted her head ever so slightly in confusion. "That's not what-"

"I should know because I'm a hunter," he loudly said, hoping to drown out any other objections she might have. "But I admit I haven't ran into everything yet, so an explanation would be nice."

She gave him another strange look, then abruptly turned her gaze away. "I'm the goddess of forgotten memories," she whispered. "This place...It falls into my domain."

Of all the (many) things that didn't make sense to Aegeas, the newest one just so happened to be the conversation between Dean and Thymea. So, he fixated on it.

"Wait a minute," Aegeas said, turning and pointing to Dean. "I don't know anything that starts with a 'g' and means 'hunter.' And you were talking over Thymea. What's your deal?"

Dean bit back a groan when he realized this wasn't going to be an easy one to get out of. Now that Thymea and Aegeas had both brought attention to the fact that he wasn't as normal as he appeared to be, he could feel the gazes of everyone else on him. Kartiel was folding his arms; Violet too. Charlotte and Hero just stared at him. Zalio watched him with a curious expression on his face, his head tilted ever so slightly to the side as a yawn left his lips. Piper was the only one of them who didn't seem to notice or care if she did.

He let out a sigh.

"Alright," he admitted, "you got me. I'm not a human, and I'm not an angel."

Violet's brow furrowed. "You're not?"

He nodded. "I'm not."

"But then that feeling earlier..." She frowned. "Was that...Was that a trick?"

"A little bit," he said. A betrayed look--and an angry look--flickered across her face, but it had been for the best then. They would have never believed him if he told the truth. Even now, he doubted they were going to believe him. "I am a hunter in some aspects, though. I just do it as a side job. My other job is a bit more stressful, and sometimes I honestly prefer things like this to it."

"You're avoiding the subject," Kartiel pointed out.

He gave him a look, and that promptly shut him up.

"What Thymea was probably going to say was that I'm a god," he said, and immediately Kartiel and Hero started glaring at him, while Zalio stared at him with wide eyes. "Not the type of gods you three are thinking about right now--a different kind. The kind that lives on Earth."

"So Dean's not your real name, then?" Charlotte guessed.

He nodded again. "It's not."

"Then who are-" She paused, eyes widening as realization dawned on her. "You-You're God, aren't you?"

"Guilty as charged," he confirmed.