The Human Retaliation [on hold]

Chapter 4: The Ghost's Shadow

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***The Week that Follows ***

A couple more days slithered on, the director had a couple more short conversations with the strange couple, but these newer talks were behind locked doors—meetings not even his closest officials got to listen in on.  What they were talking about was lost, but Miss Malaway most certainly knew, it had to be the ghost—the little girl.

She’s been appearing more frequently now, but instead of the corner of someone’s eye or off in the far distance, it was always in that chair.  The little girl always had the exact same pose, holding the armrests just as tight and that blank stare forward into the distance.  But every time she appeared it wasn’t the same ghost. 

The visual would change, that square that looked like a brick hit her face was slowly fading and the dirt on her legs and arms would increase and decrease—swirl and change like she was getting cleaned and dirty all over again.  The scratches on her arms were healing and she was beginning to look slightly healthier. But one thing never changed, the dress, the pink dress she always wore.  It was always brand new, always fresh, and always there. 

More people started seeing the ghost sitting in the throne; it started with just very important officials such as Miss Malaway or the Director himself.  Then less important started seeing her until just recently the ghost showed herself to a group of touring children.  Closing the hall was mentioned, but they simply couldn’t—there’d be no real reason for it and closing the most watched building in the world due to a haunting would escalate much worse than a few people claiming to see a ghost.

Guards were set up right next to the throne and instructed to not look at the ghost if and when it appeared, this is to suggest to any viewers that maybe the girl wasn’t there, that the guards couldn’t see her and it was all in the viewer’s mind.  The Seat to the World being haunted was an acceptable assumption for the people to have—it could give grounds to the reason why the Director refused to sit in it, a question he’s refused to answer in the past.

So the girl continued to appear, her human guards mere inches away and frozen like statues.  But after the first guarded day Miss Malaway got some discerning reports from the two guards on duty for the latter half of the day, when the ghost decided to appear four times, were absolutely certain that little girl was no ghost. 

Bellyerds, the man who took the left, explained that he once leaned a bit too far over, touching the girl’s skin.  Even though he had his dark gray long sleeves rolled all the way down he could feel her arm.  He and Orion both claimed to be able to feel the warmth from her skin being so close.  But even so it was when the girl vanished or appeared that she felt the most real.  Whenever she would go or appear the wind would swirl and the smoke that spread about was warm and thick. 

Something had to be done.  There was only one known creature on Earth that can appear and disappear with that exact smoke.  Only one type of being that can heal that fast and have those terrifying black eyes the close-up encounters claimed to see.  And the last time a creature like that appeared three billion people died.

Was this a second attack?  Was this another attempt to finish off what was started in the Fourth World War? One of them exterminated a third of the world’s population, what if there were still more? Why is this one teasing them with her appearance—why the throne? 

Something had to be done, her teasing had to come to a stop, she had her guard down now—this little girl is way too confident letting men get that close to her.  They can be killed, killing the last one was how they ended the war.  This one was no different, chemicals warfare, a fast attack, and a big gun with a spray.  Next time she appeared Miss Malaway was going to have her little ghost in a thousand pieces all over the throne.