Page 101 of Love at First Fright

My legs wobbled. Bat kept his arm around my waist.

He glanced at the dark, starry sky, then back at the garden. “It’s almost time now.”

“Time for what?”

Bat didn’t answer. Just kept watching the garden with an expression I couldn’t read.

The world lit up.

Light bloomed across the garden in waves of impossible colour. I flinched, instinctively stepping closer to Bat. But it wasn’t danger—it was light. Ghostly flowers unfurled from dead branches—roses that glowed soft pink, wisteria cascading in luminous purple curtains. The skeletal hedges burst into silver-green life. Vines wound through the archways, dripping with spectral jasmine that filled the air with phantom sweetness.

My jaw dropped.

Where moments ago there’d been only decay and shadows, now an entire garden blazed with ethereal beauty. Trees that had stood bare now bore leaves of translucent gold. Flowerbeds I hadn’t even noticed erupted in riots of blue and white and crimson light.

“It’s alright,” Bat said quietly, his arm still firm around my waist. “Just Thomas’s garden. The real version.”

I stared, heart still pounding but slowing now. Gradually. The beauty didn’t completely erase what I’d just felt, but it… helped. Gave me something else to focus on besides the memory of cold earth and crushing pressure.

“Beautiful, right?” Bat’s voice was soft.

“It’s…” I couldn’t find words. “Yeah. Beautiful.”

The garden Thomas tended all day. The plants that looked dead in sunlight. This was what he’d been caring for. What he’d been trying to preserve through decades of patient, invisible work.

My throat tightened.

“Come on.” Bat’s fingers squeezed mine. “Let’s get even further from that grave.”

I didn’t argue. My legs felt steadier now, but I still kept close to Bat as we walked. The path glowed faintly underfoot—moss and mushrooms releasing tiny motes of light like fireflies.

Pretty. Safe. Away from that horrible patch of earth.

The path opened onto a small clearing.

A pond stretched before us, its surface smooth as black glass. Lilypads floated across it, their flowers luminescent white. More trees surrounded the water, their branches hung with dozens of windchimes. Each one rang out in the gentle breeze, creating layers of sound that wove together into something almost melodic.

Haunting. Otherworldly.

I stood at the pond’s edge, transfixed, as my chest finally loosened.

The windchimes sang. The ghostly flowers swayed. Bat’s fingers were laced with mine, and I focused on that—the solid reality of his hand, cold but there.

“I forget how lovely this area is,” Bat murmured. “Thomas put the windchimes up decades ago. Said music should be everywhere, not just in the piano room.”

One chime rang out clearer than the others, a pure crystalline note.

Bat turned to face me suddenly. “Dance with me.”

“What?”

“Please.” His brown eyes fell impossibly wide, rimmed with smudged black eyeliner. “I haven’t danced since I died.”

Part of me wanted to say no—wanted to go back inside, away from gardens and graves and whatever the hell had just tried to pull me underground. But another part…

“Bat, I—”

“Please, Charlie.”