Paisley smirked. “Whichever. But there isn’t just some angry schoolteacher ghost here. It’s something older. Something they’re not even sure is human.”
Opal hadn’t admitted it to her friends yet, but she believed in ghosts. Viscerally believed in ghosts. She wished she didn’t, but she’d believed in them since she was a kid in her first house in North Hollywood. The fear had lingered long into her middle school years. When her dad showed her the first cut of the Teke Teke–based horror movie he’d directed, she forced herself to stay awake for two days straight, terrified to shut her eyes and see the severed torso of the Japanese schoolgirl ghost leering from the edge of her bed.
Then that lady had told them about this town, about the old witch who haunts it.
Opal hated the wordold, especially when it came to the supernatural.Oldmeant experience.Oldmeant grudges and accumulated power and confidence.Oldmeant beyond the sphere of what humans could comprehend. She’d take a hundred ghosts of humans oversomething old they’re not even sure is human.
“Don’t freak me out, Pais!” Opal called, even though she knew Paisley wouldn’t be listening to anything beyond the movie she was making. Opal hugged herself as shivers racked her body.
Paisley continued, “This lady we met in town said she’s like, half woman, half goat.” She sat on the rock next to Harlow. “But you don’t see that. This lady said her grandmother first saw the witch when she was nine years old. The woman stopped at a bus stop and asked the grandmother where the inn was. She was told not to talk to strangers, so she didn’t say anything. Then the woman started asking personal questions. She asked about her sick sister, asked if the cut on her side had healed, shit the woman would’ve had no business knowing. The lady’s grandmother asked how she knew all this and she said she reads minds. That she had her heart cut out and now the little pieces are all spread to every other girl in the world. She then unbuttoned her shirt and there was a giant scar where her heart should be.”
Opal squeezed her eyes shut, praying the images wouldn’t return. She could make up a nightmarish version of this goat-woman-witch. But that hadn’t been what got her. Horror books didn’t scare her, but movies did. Because images imprinted.
And that shop had two images on the wall. One drawing on yellowed paper in a protective frame, detailing the top half of a beautiful woman with sharp cheekbones and flowing black hair, piercing brown eyes that looked right at you. She was naked, breasts and flat stomach leading down to something morphed between human and animal, a woman’s thighs with pubic hair that spread out beyond what Opal had seen in anatomical drawings. Thighs that got thin too quickly, abruptly ending in sticklike legs covered in that same black hair. Down, down, until they ended in hooves. Tattoos covered her arms, or hair, Opal hadn’t been able to tell from the drawing. She could only see that the artist had signed it 10/09/62. Opal had no idea if it was 1962 or 1862.
Then there was a photo, washed out and yellowed. Black background and a figure carved out in white.
The exact silhouette of the witch, its eyes suddenly white like a deer’s.
Opal hated it. She hated it so much.
“Paisley, SHUT UP!” Opal yelled.
But no one listened.
Harlow laughed, finally acknowledging Opal. “Why was she half goat? Is that some Christian thing?”
“The lady says new girls in town see her,” Paisley said. “That she follows them. That she—”
And that’s when Opal saw it.
The same figure from the photograph, long hair flowing. Another inhabitant of the cage, separated by centuries but still surrounded by the same trees.
“Paisley, who’s that?” Opal calls out.
As if Paisley could save them.
(Maybe this was all punishment for what they did to Emma.)
It was only then that Paisley deemed Opal worthy of joining her little video, ignoring Opal’s question. Her back was turned to the figure. Opal’s hands hovered over her mouth, terrified. Begging like a little kid.Go away go away go away.
But it didn’t move.
“What’re you—?” Paisley said before finally turning around.
Paisley and Opal screamed together.
Nine
Seeing Paisley’s face again feels like I’ve sunk into a waking dream. Paisley mostly keeps the camera off herself, switching between selfie mode and turning the camera on Harlow and Opal as Paisley talks about a witch offscreen. She talks about a human-goat creature, something that gets my heart pinching in fear. It’s too detailed to be anything Paisley could come up with on her own. And the fear in Opal’s voice—it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard before. Opal’s certainly one to scream and whimper and yell watching horror movies, but there’s always an air of lightness. Not like this. In this video, you feel her fear growing.
But the video itself is over quickly. A scream sounds through the woods; the phone drops.
The video ends.
Beck grips my shoulder, shooting my heart to my throat. “Let me watch the video again,” she says. I hand Beck the phone. She scrolls back a few frames before the ending. “What were they seeing?”
I take my own look. I’ve watched enough horror movies and ghostshows to know what we’re looking for. Silhouettes, human figures. Human-like figures. But there’s no disruption in the tree line.
