Chapter Text
“Glimmer, I really don’t think this is a good idea,” Bow says. He’s staring out of the front windshield of his car up the hill in front of them. They’re a few miles out of Bright Moon proper, parked on the side of a dirt road in his dads’ old Jeep—the only car either of them have that could handle the rough, unmaintained road that took them up to this spot. But neither the road nor the hill itself draw his interest.
Bow’s gaze is fixed on the house. It juts up awkwardly from the very top of the hill, several stories tall and little more than a shadow in the moonlight. From here, all he can make out is the pointed slope of the roof and the boxy outline of its shape.
“Chill,” Glimmer says from the passenger seat. Bow drags his eyes away from the house and looks over at her, only to find her rolling her eyes. “It’s just a house, Bow.”
“Sounds good,” Bow says. “So we go back to town and tell Sea Hawk that it’s just a house. Just an old, creepy house.”
“Well, I could do that,” Glimmer says. “But you’re a terrible liar. And I’m not gonna wimp out!”
“C’mon,” Bow says. “It’s just a stupid dare. We don’t have to actually—“
“Are you coming or not?” Without waiting for an answer, Glimmer hops out of the passenger side door and slams it behind her. Bow looks back at the house. He could swear it’s a little bigger and a little darker than it was the last time he checked.
We’re so going to die.
Bow opens the driver’s side door and hops out.
“If anything weird happens, we’re leaving,” he says, trying his best to glare at Glimmer over the hood of his car. She rolls her eyes again, thoroughly unswayed by his glare.
“Fine,” she says. “Now c’mon. Let’s go take a look.” Bow locks his car and shoves his keys in his pocket, shaking his head as he follows Glimmer off the road.
They cut across the ditch, hopping over a thin trail of water at the bottom. On the other side, there’s a few feet of grass and vetch before they hit short, thick trees. There’s less vegetation on the ground in the woods, but they block out the light from the full moon. Bow stumbles over three roots in his first three steps.
“I can’t see shit,” Glimmer says from beside him. Bow grabs his phone from his pocket and flicks on the flashlight function, aiming it at the ground. The dirt in front of them is almost more root than dirt; a web of half-buried limbs coats all of the earth in sight.
“Watch your step,” Bow says. Glimmer doesn’t respond, but she slips her hand into his. Bow does his very best to not think about the contact. Glimmer is touchy; she always has been. Nothing has changed on her end. He’s just a lot more aware of it than he used to be.
“We should get out of the woods pretty quick,” Glimmer says after a moment of them both staring at their feet, trying to navigate the woods without tripping. “It didn’t look like they went far up the hill.” Bow nods. His hands are sweating, which both—he imagines—is very unpleasant for Glimmer, and makes it difficult to hold onto his phone. He can’t help it, though; his heart is pounding in his chest.
It’s just a house.
Sure enough, they emerge from the woods after only a minute or two of staring at their own feet. Bow glances around them, wondering why the woods have stopped where they have. Nothing looks different about the soil, and nobody has cut trees down up here in…a very, very long time.
Bow’s phone flashlight flickers. He frowns and looks down. Maybe he hit the button on accident? But his phone is locked, the screen black. The flashlight button isn’t pulled up.
The light goes out.
“What the fuck?” Bow mutters. He hits the home button, intending to turn it on again, but the phone screen stays black. He tries the side button next, holding it down for a long few seconds.
“What’s going on?” Glimmer asks. Bow shakes his head. Eventually, a dimly glowing symbol comes up onscreen: an empty battery and a power cord.
“It’s dead,” Bow says. He stares at the screen for another moment before he returns it to his pocket.
“What percentage were you at?” Glimmer asks.
“Like, eighty.” Bow glances up at the house again, which is now a lot closer to them, looming dark and sharp against the sky. “I think this counts as something weird happening.”
“Oh, come on,” Glimmer says. “We haven’t even made it to the house yet!”
“My phone was charged!”
“It’s also, like, five years old. It could’ve just died.” Glimmer pouts at him. “We have to at least make it to the house.”
“You try your flashlight,” Bow says. His phone is old. If Glimmer’s works, maybe he’s just paranoid.
“I left my phone in the car.” Glimmer shrugs. “These jeans don’t have pockets.” Bow groans. “Hey, I don’t like it either,” Glimmer says. “Blame the misogynistic fashion designers.”
“Fine,” Bow says. “We’ll go to the house. I’m not going inside.”
“We’ll see,” Glimmer says. She tugs at his hand, starting up the hill again. Bow wonders if she knows she’s found his weakness. She could take him anywhere, including into old, creepy, rumored-to-be haunted houses, if she led him by the hand.
The rest of the climb goes without incident. By the time they reach the house, Bow swears it’s half as far from the road as it appears to be. It only takes them a few minutes to climb the hill, and he could’ve sworn the place was at least a mile off the road.
“Huh,” Glimmer says, leaning back on her heels and craning her neck to look at the house. “Pretty big, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” The house is three stories tall, judging by the windows that Bow can count on the outside. He can’t quite tell what color it’s painted—despite the full moon, it’s dark enough out that everything looks grey—but the trim is bright white. Shockingly white, in fact, for a house that’s been abandoned as long as anyone can remember. One of his dads grew up in Bright Moon, and Bow has heard the same ghost stories about the house from him as he has from his classmates since he was a little kid.
“Let’s go in,” Glimmer says. She starts to pull him forward, and Bow yanks his hand out of hers.
“Absolutely not,” he says. Glimmer turns around gives him a look. “It’s not safe, Glimmer! There could be animals in there, or—or people. Squatters.”
“Or,” Glimmer says with a grin, “there could be ghosts.”
“I’m serious,” Bow says. Glimmer sighs.
“You can stay out here if you want,” she says. “I’m gonna go look. We can tell Sea Hawk you wimped out on Monday.”
“Glimmer—“ Glimmer turns around and climbs the porch steps. They creak quietly under her feet. They, too, glint bright white in the darkness. Some moss has grown on them, but the paint underneath shines through, almost glowing.
“Fine, I’ll come with you,” Bow says, and follows Glimmer up the steps. He can’t just let her walk in there alone. It’s not like he can protect her if there are ghosts in there, but if there’s animals, or people, or something else mundane, he might be able to. He can’t exactly let his best friend get rabies from a bat bite without even trying to help.
“C’mon then,” Glimmer says, glancing over her shoulder at him. He steps up beside her, and they both turn to face the front door. It’s wooden, with a plain metal knob that shines dully in the moonlight. The wood is painted…green, Bow thinks, though it’s hard to make out in the moonlight. It doesn’t show a single sign of decay, as far as he can tell. No rot, no moss, no missing pieces. Like however many decades of weather and animals haven’t even touched it.
Bow doesn’t like it one bit.
“Here we go, I guess.” Glimmer sounds a little nervous too, now. Bow doesn’t comment on it. He’s too busy keeping his own breathing even. It’s stupid. He shouldn’t be scared. He only half-believes in ghosts.
Glimmer turns the knob and opens the front door. Bow winces preemptively as the door creaks open. Its hinges, at least, sound old. But it doesn’t reveal anything except the dark inside of a house. Glimmer is the first to step across the threshold, and Bow follows close behind. He closes the door behind them. He isn’t sure why. Maybe he’s just seen too many horror movies where doors get slammed by ghosts.
“It’s so fucking dark in here,” Glimmer comments. Bow glances around and reaches the same conclusion. The moonlight from outside is flooding through the windows beside the door, casting long, thin beams of light, but between them, it’s impossible to see anything.
“Should we look around?” Bow asks. He doesn’t want to, but standing still feels worse, somehow.
“Yeah,” Glimmer says. “Hey, is it…warmer in here than it is outside?” Bow frowns and thinks about it for a moment.
“…Yeah,” he says. “Maybe the heat from the day stays in? It seems like all the windows are intact, so it wouldn’t be able to escape.” He wanders over to the closest window out of curiosity. There’s nothing remarkable about it. It’s a simple sheet of glass—scratched in places, but not cracked, not shattered. It’s also…clean. Perfectly transparent. Like someone scrubbed it just hours ago. He leans closer to the window, frowning deeply, reaching out to touch it.
Someone coughs.
Bow screams, jumping in place and spinning around. Glimmer bursts out laughing, pausing to cough again mid-laugh before she goes back to mocking him. Bow’s face burns with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” Glimmer says, once she’s done both coughing and laughing. “It’s dusty in here.” Bow frowns at her, arms crossed pointedly over his chest, and she rolls her eyes. “It was pretty funny,” she says. “What were you looking at, anyways?” She comes over to him, peering at the window.
“The windows are clean,” Bow points out. “Like, really clean.”
“Huh.” Glimmer tilts her head. “They sure are.”
“That’s weird, Glimmer. How long has this house been here?”
“Like a hundred years,” Glimmer says. “It was already abandoned when my grandparents moved here.”
“So the windows shouldn’t be clean,” Bow says. “How long did it take for that house way out on Serenia Street to get run down?”
“Two years, maybe.” Glimmer frowns. “But people go trash that place all the time. Nobody ever comes up here.”
“Still,” Bow says. “This place is…” He doesn’t finish the thought.
“You’re just afraid of the dark,” Glimmer says—which is true. Bow is afraid of the dark, just as any normal, sane person should be. “Let’s look around at least a little bit.” She starts off down a hallway to their right, and Bow follows reluctantly in her footsteps, fists clenched nervously at his sides.
The hallway doesn’t extend very far; they barely start down it before it stops at the base of a staircase. There aren’t as many windows here, and Bow has to squint to make out the faint red carpet on the stairs. They go straight upwards into the darkness of whatever lays on the second floor of the house.
Glimmer puts her right foot on the bottom step of the stairs. Even in the dimmest moonlight, Bow can see the thick layer of dust that plumes upward from the carpet beneath her shoe.
“We shouldn’t go up there,” Bow says, grabbing Glimmer’s arm. She glances back at him. “The stairs could collapse. We have no idea how structurally sound they are.”
“Oh, come on—“
“Glimmer.” Bow tries to emphasize his words. He needs her to take him seriously. The stairs might not be stable. And, beyond that, looking at them makes Bow nervous. He doesn’t feel like they should go up there. Like, whatever is on the second floor, it’s emanating danger.
But Glimmer wouldn’t take that seriously, so Bow says, “I’m serious. You could get really hurt.” Glimmer looks at him for another long moment, then steps back off the stairs. Bow lets go of her arm and sighs in relief.
“Okay, we’ll stay down here,” she says. “But you gotta help me open that.” She points past Bow’s shoulder, and he turns, eyes finding a closed door beneath the staircase.
“Why this one?” Bow asks, already walking over to the door.
“I dunno,” Glimmer says. “Aren’t you curious?” Bow shakes his head. He’s mostly curious about when they’re going to leave.
Bow grabs the doorknob—another plain, old-fashioned, metal thing, but this one, unlike the front door, doesn’t have a lock on it. He twists it to the right—or rather, he tries. It slides barely a centimeter in his hands before it jerks back to its original position. He twists it again, harder this time, and meets even more resistance.
“What’s wrong?” Glimmer asks from behind him. “Is it locked?”
“It doesn’t have a lock,” Bow says. “I think it’s stuck on something.” He twists again, and this time, the doorknob turns all the way.
Before he can push forwards, the knob is ripped from his hands. The door flies open. Bow stumbles back a step, eyes straining in the darkness to see what lies beyond the doorway.
It’s a girl.
She looks around Bow’s age, as much as he can tell in the darkness. He makes out brown hair, tan skin, and a dress in a style that’s been dead for at least a century before the girl moves. She shoots forward, running around Bow before he can even try to step out of her way. He spins in place and watches as she sprints back down the hallway towards the entryway.
Before she gets there, she vanishes.
“What the fuck,” Glimmer says. Bow turns to her slowly and finds her staring down the hall after the girl, eyes wide. “What the fuck.”
“Was that…” Bow isn’t willing to say it. He wasn’t—he didn’t not believe in ghosts. He hadn’t discounted the possibility. But thinking something might be possible is very different from seeing it.
“I…” Glimmer shakes her head slowly, turning to face Bow. “I…” Bow reaches out, grabbing for Glimmer’s hand in the darkness, and he finds it immediately. She holds onto him so tightly it hurts, the bones of his hand creaking together.
Something thumps against the ceiling from the second floor.
“Shit!” Bow hisses, jumping in place. He looks up—which is useless, of course, since there’s a fucking ceiling.
“What was that?” Glimmer sounds scared now. Bow has never heard that tone from her before. He hates it.
“I don’t know.”
Thump.
Another one. A little louder this time. Then—thump—another. Thump. Another.
“Are those footsteps?” Glimmer whispers, and Bow’s heart sinks as he realizes that yes, they absolutely are.
Suddenly it’s windy in the hallway. Bow’s jacket flaps against his arms and goosebumps rise on the back of his neck. Glimmer steps closer, pressing up against his side, and Bow squeezes her hand as reassuringly as he can.
“Hide.” The voice isn’t Glimmer’s, and it isn’t Bow’s, either. He’s never heard it before in his life.
“Did the wind just fucking talk to us?” Glimmer whispers. “Why is it windy?”
Thump. This one is accompanied by a creak, and Bow realizes suddenly that, whatever it is that’s walking around, it’s coming down the stairs now.
“Hide,” he whispers harshly, echoing the wind’s advice. “Come on. In here.” He uses their joined hands to pull Glimmer into the open door. He stumbles in after her, ducking his head away from the low ceiling that he can just barely see in the dark, and yanks the door shut with his other hand.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.
The footsteps pass over their heads and continue down the stairs.
“Oh my God.” Glimmer’s voice comes out wheezing. Bow pulls her closer, wrapping his arms around her back. It kind of feels like they’re about to die. He’d like to be as close to her as he can while that happens.
“I heard you.” The voice comes from outside the closet. Or—voices? It sounds like a chorus, layered and echoed. It’s deep, rasping, and heavy somehow. It makes Bow’s mouth go dry in fear.
“I know you’re here,” the voice says. “Come back out here, Catra.”
Catra?
“It isn’t looking for us,” Bow whispers to Glimmer, so quietly he’s almost just mouthing the words. She nods against his chest, and Bow realizes that she’s trembling. Her fingers are digging into his back. She’s just as afraid as he is—maybe more.
He rubs her back gently and pulls himself out of her arms.
“Bow,” Glimmer whispers—a little too loud.
“Shh.” He wishes he could see her. “I’m just going to look.”
“Bow!” Glimmer grabs the hem of his jacket. “Are you insane?”
“I want to see.” He can’t explain the urge, really. The girl who’d run out of the closet—the ghost—she had looked scared. And this thing, whatever is out there, is calling a name. Looking for the girl. Bow just…wants to understand. He wants to know what’s going on.
Maybe, somehow, he can help.
Glimmer’s fingers fall from Bow’s jacket. He eases himself forward, pressing himself silently against the door.
“Catra,” the voice calls again. “You know I’ll find you eventually.” Bow wraps his fingers around the doorknob. He takes a deep, steadying breath, presses the side of his face against the door right next to the frame, and slides the door open. Barely an inch. Just enough to see out with one of his eyes.
At the bottom of the stairs is a figure. Not a person, a figure. It towers over the room, eight feet tall or more, and glows an angry red, but it doesn’t illuminate the room around it—like a blacklight. As Bow watches, the patches of dark, purplish red seem to slide down its body, interspersed with black beneath. Like some kind of sludge dripping down, though none of it falls from the bottom of the figure, where it’s hovering several inches off of the floor.
“Catra,” the figure says, and its mouth moves. Its face is…far removed from human, but not quite far enough to be animal. From here, Bow can make out pale green skin, barely visible beneath a web of veins of that purple-red sludge. Long black hair floats behind it, unbound by gravity. “Aren’t you a little old for hide and seek?” Without waiting for an answer, the figure starts forward. It settles onto the floor, the layers of sludge and darkness obscuring where Bow assumes it must have feet.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Slowly—agonizingly slowly—the figure heads down the hall. It doesn’t vanish like the girl had. It walks all the way down the hall, into the entryway, then it turns right, away from the door, and disappears.
Bow closes the door and realizes he’s been holding his breath. He lets it out and gasps for fresh air. His throat is tight with fear.
“What was it?” Glimmer whispers. Bow shakes his head.
“It—I…” He swallows hard. “I don’t know. I can’t…”
“Is it gone?”
“Yeah,” Bow says. “Yeah. For now.”
“Let’s get out of here.” Glimmer’s hand finds his again, and her fingers shake as she laces them through his. “Now. While we can.”
“Right.” Bow squeezes her hand, takes a deep breath, and opens the closet door.
The hallway is empty, abandoned, without a single sign of the ghost girl or the thing that had stalked her only moments ago.
“Run,” Glimmer says, and Bow listens.
They sprint back up the hallway. Bow grabs for the front door handle and practically cries in relief when it turns easily in his hand and opens. They aren’t trapped.
Glimmer runs out the front door first, but Bow is close behind, slamming the door behind them and jumping down the front steps in one leap. They half-run, half-stumble down the dirt hill, hands still locked together. They don’t slow down until they hit the forest.
Bow takes one last look back up at the house, and he could swear he sees a faint red glow in one of the second floor windows.
“What the fuck was that?” Glimmer says, gasping. Bow shakes his head.
“Back to the car first,” he says. “I want to get out of here.” Glimmer doesn’t argue with that. They hurry through the forest, tripping over roots all the way down. He finally has to let go of Glimmer’s hand to catch himself the third time he almost falls. Eventually, though, they make it through, back to the ditch by the road and the shape of Bow’s Jeep outlined in the moonlight.
Bow has to fumble with his keys for a moment, but the minute the doors are unlocked, they pile into the vehicle. Bow hits the overhead light immediately. The inside of the car, the dim LED light, and the quiet beeping from the dashboard as the car reminds him to fasten his seatbelt are all strongly at odds with the way Bow’s heart is pounding. He starts the car, flicking on the headlights as bright as they can go.
The only thing in front of them is empty, unmaintained dirt road.
“Holy fuck,” Glimmer says from the passenger seat. Bow grabs for her hand again, and Glimmer gives it to him, twining their fingers together and squeezing. “Fuck. What was…that girl vanished.”
“Yeah.” Bow swallows hard. “She was—she was a ghost.” He feels kind of stupid saying it out loud.
“Yeah.” Glimmer leans back in her seat, closing her eyes. “What the fuck,” she says again. “Ghosts are real.”
“Yeah.” Unbidden, Bow starts to laugh. He tries to stop it at first, but it’s fruitless. Ghosts are real, and so is whatever that figure had been, and he and Glimmer have just spent their Saturday night getting the shit scared out of them in a literal haunted house.
Glimmer laughs, too. A little less enthusiastically than Bow, but she sounds just as relieved and terrified as he does. Eventually, they both fall quiet. Bow’s heart is finally settling in his chest.
“What was the other thing?” Glimmer asks after a moment. “The thing you looked at.” Bow shivers slightly and reaches over to turn the car heat up.
“I don’t know,” he says. “It wasn’t—it wasn’t human. Or maybe it used to be. It had a face, and it talked, but it wasn’t…” He shakes his head. “It—it was tall. Really tall. And covered in this…glowing stuff, this kind of dark red stuff. It glowed.” He’s repeating himself. He doesn’t have the words for what he saw in that hallway.
“It sounded angry,” Glimmer says. Bow nods. It had sounded evil. And that girl, who had been hiding in the closet he opened, in the brief glimpse of her face that Bow managed to get, she looked scared.
“I can’t fucking believe I have to believe in ghosts now,” Glimmer says after a minute. “Who the fuck is ever going to believe that I saw a ghost in a creepy house?”
“I will,” Bow says. Glimmer gives him worn-out smile and squeezes his hand.
“Thanks, Bow,” she says. “It can be our absolutely insane secret, I guess. Can we go home now?”
“Yeah, of course.” Bow reluctantly lets go of Glimmer’s hand, putting the Jeep in gear and starting a three-point turn to head back down the road.
Bow drives Glimmer back to her parents’ house on autopilot. It’s a route he’s driven a thousand times—though not starting from the house up on the hill, of course—so he doesn’t have to think about it much once they get back into town. It’s very lucky that he knows it so well, because his brain is fully somewhere else. He’s thinking about the girl in the closet, how scared she had looked and how fast she had run from the monster that came down the stairs.
Catra, the monster had called her. With a name and a house, he could have a place to start researching. Maybe he can figure out who she is, how she ended up haunting the house, what the thing is that’s trying to hurt her.
Maybe, somehow, he can help.