We pulled into the diner’s parking lot, still open late into the night, and Percy and I walked in with him carrying the ancient stack of loosely bound of papers. Amanda behind the counter as always, reading a book and blaring music, she only looked up briefly before suddenly letting out a horrified sound and rising to her feet.

  “Oh my god, Bee, are you okay?” the waitress asked, and I realized the bandages probably did look rather concerning.

  Brushing it off, I looked away briefly and half-told her, “I got into a little accident, I’ll be okay.”

  “Oh, a little accident,” the woman declared in the sort of incredulous tone only a southern woman could summon, “looks like a lot, I’ll say.”

  “I lost the eye, but honestly could have been a lot worse,” I tried explaining, realized it made it sound word, and quickly tried to change the subject, “how have you been?”

  “Well, better than you it looks like,” she muttered, furrowing her brow as she glanced over at Percy. The woman getting an almost devious smile at seeing the man as she nodded to him and purred, “who’s this one?”

  “This is Percy, we grew up together,” I told her quickly, frowning as I added on, “we just needed somewhere quiet to work, if you don’t mind, I know it’s late.”

  “Kitchen’s open for another couple hours, you’re not a problem,” the woman shrugged as she took a pad out, “What can I get you?”

  “I’m not really too hungry,” I muttered, furrowing my brow as I realized, while I hadn’t exactly skipped dinner, I’d not exactly ate much the last couple days. Some popcorn and dinner today, coma yesterday, some left over pizza the morning before that. Not to mention the fact I’d be unlikely to eat much the next couple days trying to get this solved, maybe I needed to force myself. “Normal for me.”

  “Alright, rare cheeseburger, fries, chocolate shake,” the woman listed off, looking at Percy with a small smile, “anything for you, handsome?”

  “Um, sure, same thing,” the man muttered with a furrowed brow, “any other flavors on the shakes, if you don’t mind my asking, ma’am?”

  “The three basics,” she shrugged, giving me a slight dreadful feeling.

  “Strawberry?” the man asked, and before I could say anything Amanda wrote down her name for it and called back, “we got a Lovebirds special!”

  The chef looked up from the back window, looking disappointed at Percy, curiously at me, and giving me a concerned wave, and I returned the gesture even while I declared, “I’m ordering a fucking float next time.”

  Amanda giggled and Percy and I walked over to my normal spot in the corner where nobody would hear us.

  At first I sat in my normal spot, looking out towards the diner door, before realizing that put my right side towards the rest of the restaurant. Percy switched places, and I found I could see the aisle but not anything behind me. Finally giving up, I moved back to my old spot, and Percy sat beside me while I had my back at an awkward angle against the bench. Sitting side by side we laid the book between the both of us, and the man shook his head as he told me, “your dad would kill me if he knew I took this.”

  “Well, he’s trying to kill me, so welcome to that club” I muttered, flipping the book open as I began scanning through the various sections. The first section written entirely in Gaeilge with English translations added between the lines, the next chunks became a mix of dialects, handwriting, and dates. Mixed in with some shitty line drawings of silhouettes, symbols, and the like, it was all horribly organized. Misha’s at least the benefit of being a journal detailing specific encounters in chronological order, this was someone writing whatever they knew as it came to mind.

  All the same I flipped through trying not to complain, reading the heading of each section as I explained, “my — who knows how many times — great grandma started this in the like 1600s. She married some rich English guy who didn’t mind her going to ‘knitting groups’, and she started this in Irish so no one could read it.”

  “I know, I was there when your dad told me that,” Percy said slowly, and I stared at him a moment before he nodded and gestured to the book, “you were filling the time while you searched.”

  I nodded, falling into a deliberate silence as I flipped through until I eventually find a title that looked familiar to what Misha had told me.

  “Bean Dúnmharaithe,” I read aloud, sure I was mispronouncing every single syllable at once. The next paragraph in Gaeilge was only a few short sentences. I tilted the book to me and read the translation, “spirit of a woman killed by one she loves. Erases the history of anyone who confronts her of her death, as she was erased, even no body remaining except in her lair. Creating a realm around her to which even she is unaware of the illusion made. Potentially a myth, though it would make sense if I didn’t remember encountering such a creature.”

  “Please tell me there’s a bit more to that?” Percy asked, leaning on his hand as he watched me move onto the next section.

  English, written in an overly flowing cursive, I had to take my time trying to understand it as I slowly read, “Encountered one such creature in…no, encountered tale of one such creature in New Spain, and learned of it from the… tea women near the gentleman’s club?”

  “Witches who worked for upper class people, usually poorer magicians looking for a quick entrance into society,” Percy explained, getting a strange look from me, “tea women sounded less suspicious than any other term for magic, and witches use a lot of plants in their stuff so people passed it off as packages of tea leaves. Some of the traditional hunters down south still call witches that. A gentleman’s club was a place upper class men could hang out in Victorian times, not what you’re thinking.”

  “Nerd,” I muttered, continuing the reading, “These spirits are created through the completeness of their denial. Murdered by one who they loved, they could not believe even until their final breath that it was happening and when they came back they continued to deny it. Normally women and children, these spirits were common in Europe for a time due to misunderstandings of fey behavior. Wandering the earth in carefully crafted ignorance they only turn violent when reminded of their unholy state. One variant seems perfectly human, seemingly bringing an air of stillness to those around them and to create illusions to uphold their reality, while the second bares the marks of their death.’

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Two such women had heard second hand stories of such creatures, as I impart them now for they represent these two types. One a woman of Parisian houses of sin, she appeared fifteen years past her death and was marked by a sudden decline in workers. She was a dedicated worker, seeming to have only killed a man or two once every few years which could be said to have been low for some women in her field. Three chaps were sent looking to investigate her, and none questioned anything until finding a record of her name in a newspaper and realizing the mistress they heard screaming never seemed to appear to them. Her body lost to the pauper’s fields, a witch had to ward off the whole business to trap her there and cleanse the building at once.”

  “Okay, well, if we can’t find the body we can do that,” Percy interrupted me, sounding almost hopeful about it, “how hard would it be? Ward the campus late at night, get a witch to-”

  “We’re not doing that,” I snapped, closing my eye as I felt tears trying to form. Trying to keep my cool, I merely told him, “we’re finding something better.”

  Percy nodded, gesturing me onwards as he urged me on “keep reading then.”

  “The second woman told me of a murdered woman from her homeland of,” I stopped frowning as I sounded out the poorly written name, “Honshu? Honshu, which was an upper class woman murdered some centuries prior by her husband, a high ranking soldier. Wandering the countryside still baring those deadly cuts, she would stop travelers for conversations and only spare those who did not mention her wounds. Later becoming a form made real of easier hidden wounds and more aggressive disposition, the ghost itself was dealt with when a Shinto priest found her bones hidden within a well and gave her proper funerary rites.’

  “These spirits are highly dangerous, acting and seeming human in almost every way. They should not be bargained with, and can not be helped in any known method. It is not that they do not know they are dead, but that they are in a complete denial of this fact they do know. Reacting violently when confronted by the truth, they will kill whoever is forcing them to see the truth before sliding back into their previous state. Potentially either hiding this from memory, or in some way the magic of their nature protecting them from this truth.”

  I let the last words hang in the air, leaning back in the bench seat as I stared down at the page blankly hoping something more would come of it. Nothing did, and with a shake of my head I said, “this was fucking worthless.”

  “We know how to deal with it now,” Percy offered, watching me slam the old stack of papers, half bound together, shut. He cringed at the action and, twisting his face, asked, “you…you don’t want to stop this ghost do you?”

  “I do,” I muttered, feeling like I was going to cry as I shook my head in disbelief, “it’s…you wouldn’t understand.”

  “It’s your girlfriend isn’t it?” Percy asked, his face turning stone cold by the realization as he shook his head, “she dresses like she’s from the fifties and…well, the way you dressed I didn’t fully question it, figured two people with weird fashion senses ending up together made sense, but yeah.”

  I nodded, letting out a small sigh as I admitted, “I…she was in a class photo from the fifties, like a decade before everything started. I don’t know why, but the killings are speeding up recently and-”

  “I know why,” Percy interrupted, furrowing his brow as he pulled out his phone. I watched him, even as Amanda came over and handed us our food and drinks, and he frowned as he passed it over. The college website showed the entrance of a library, three large screens in the center showing several photos of a science classroom through the decades as he explained, “they put this up over last summer when they digitized all their old files. It has a like, ten minute loop, has a bunch of pictures from over the decades of classes and events. All of the pictures are on the website, a lot of clubs and classes are using them as free references. What do you want to bet your girl’s part of that?”

  “Fuck,” I snapped, rubbing my forehead in annoyance as the fact struck me like a hammer, “people see it, they point it out as a joke or because they think it’s a family member or something. It reminds her she’s dead, and you end up with a huge uptick in the deaths because people are pointing it out.”

  “Which basically means everyone who needs to read, print, study as a group, do research, get tutoring, or literally fucking anything else, is at risk,” the man muttered, rubbing his forehead slowly, “I don’t think we can stop this.”

  “We get The Lady to force them to remove the picture off the website,” I muttered, frowning as I shifted in place, “we…we get her to remove the picture everywhere she can, delete the old student records, we shred all the physical stuff, we-”

  “Would that even work?” he asked, resting a hand slowly on mine, “I…I mean, stops the uptick, but you’d be playing with fire. People will find evidence she’s dead, you’ll let it slip, something will happen.”

  I nodded, forcing myself to eat slowly as I tried to think of an excuse, like maybe having something on my stomach would help. It didn’t, I like throwing up with each bite forced down my throat, and I didn’t even look up as the bell of someone entering rang.

  Not until someone sat across from us, and I looked up to see Andrew watching on with a conflicted stare as he sighed out, “you’re pretty bad at communication, you know that?”

  “I’m asking for help, it’s why he’s here,” I said, nodding at Percy.

  “Isn’t he the guy who shot out your eye?” Andrew asked.

  I answered, “no,” and Percy admitted, “yeah.”

  “It’s complicated,” I muttered, closing my eye in annoyance, “look, I don’t need your help, we’re…we’re working on shit, I-”

  “Look, The Lady put me in charge of making you seem human,” Andrew interrupted, crossing his arms as he leaned back in the bench, “I know something’s going on, and I want to help you out as much as I can.”

  I shook my head, ready to snap at him before I admitted, “we’re…we’re working on figuring shit out, alright? How the fuck did you find us?”

  “Samuel saw you missing, said you must have put together that he figure out the ghost and panicked,” Andrew explained, furrowing his brow as he tilted his head with a smirk, “he didn’t know Tara was out on a date, so I said you must have taken her car and I thought you mentioned something about Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond.”

  “Thank you,” I muttered, looking down at the book in defeat, “not a lot of good it fucking did, I just…I just postponed the inevitable didn’t I?”

  “I’m not sure, even Samuel didn’t know where she’s buried,” Andrew groaned, pulling a newspaper clipping from his pocket he passed over. A man photographed in front of the church, the title read Local Pastor Comments on Daughter's Disappearance with a small bit of text after.

  I tried not to read it, and with a shake of my head asked, “what’s so bad about me going to a cemetery then?”

  “Well, I was taking a wild guess he didn’t know, but I’m also guessing he’s afraid you both somehow figured out where she’s buried and would hide the body,” Andrew said.

  It would have been a good idea.

  Find the body, hide it, no one would ever be able to find it again, and Barbie couldn’t be destroyed normally. Hell, if they thought she was bound to the campus they might not even think to ward her old house immediately. It’d buy me time, time to figure out what to do, even if I got killed it meant Barbie would live.

  It’d mean more people would die.

  I sighed, tracing my fingers along the photo on the newspaper, looking at the church behind the man as I finally told them, “I know where she’s buried.”