Lost Souls

Chapter 2

Silver Hollow was a weird place. It looked normal. Or at least it was trying to. There was something about the town that Esmeralda could feel was out of place. Like one of those spot-the-difference picture books, where the oddity was right in front of you but you had to put in the work to find it.

She always sucked at those.

The busy street was overwhelming to look at. So much going on and Esmeralda had no idea where to go. Small businesses in white-walled buildings lined the streets. An old man was reading a newspaper on a decrepit street bench. He seemed tranquil. Unbothered, even by the little girl that skipped around the bench and singing unintelligibly.

A kid rode his bike up and down the street, seemingly unworried about the cars on the road that seemed to ignore his daredevil antics.

A group of three women in matching teal tracksuits jogged down the busy sidewalk, pushing baby strollers, their yellow ponytails bouncing behind them. A small Scottie with matted grey fur trotted behind them.

A woman, probably homeless and disturbed, cried at strangers on the street. Her skin was caked in dirt, her hair was a tangled and frizzy mess, and she wore a torn and muddy dress.

Esmeralda wondered how everyone could go by her without even offering a look of sympathy. No one offered change or food. Esmeralda felt a need to help since no one else seemed to care. But what kind of help could an amnesiac ghost offer?

Esmeralda pushed forward, an attempt to move deeper into the town she found herself in. She gave the woman a smile and a nod as she passed. The woman, tears in her eyes, gave a look of despair in return.

The woman let out a chilling wail before grabbing Esmeralda's wrist. The woman's grip sent a psychic pain through Esmeralda's being. She tried to pull away. But she failed.

She looked at Esmeralda with sunken eyes and asked, "How?"

Confused, Esmeralda responded, "I don't understand."

"Hey!" the bicycle boy called over to them, stopping his ride in the middle of the road. "What are you doing? How are you—"

A red van glided down the road, the boy and his bike directly in its path. Esmeralda tried to warn him, scream and shout for him to move, but the words refused to surface in time.

The car ran through the kid.

The car continued on its path and the kid remained on the road, unaffected.

He peddled over to Esmeralda and the woman, calling out chirps of excitement. A look of awe was on his pale face. "Are you one of us or one of them?" he asked urgently.

That's when Esmeralda was able to see what was beneath the surface. The truths in front of her.

The woman who held her had a large red stain of her dress, beneath the brown. A wound sat at the center. A black and red hole that she wore like an accessory.

When Esmeralda looked at the boy on the bike, really looked at him, she could see right through him.

The little girl that danced around the bench appeared, without warning, before Esmeralda. "Who are you?" she asked with a tilted head, grabbing at Esmeralda's knees.

The small dog that trailed after the jogging women turned its head. It darted back to them and began circling the group, barking and howling. As it made its laps around her, Esmeralda noticed a furless patch on its scruffy body. Where she should have seen delicate pink skin, she saw four curved slender stark white bones, one of which was broken into two smaller portions.

"What are you?" the kid on the bike demanded.

"How do I?" the woman caressed Esmeralda's face with her other hand.