Page 121 of Specters & Spotlights

Elise couldn’t look away. Giggles was still standing too close. Still smiling. His chest rose and fell slightly, as if breathing—though he most certainly wasn’t alive.

She leaned toward Graham and whispered, “It’s a mime. They have a mime. He goes by Giggles.”

Graham didn’t move, but his eyes widened in alarm. “Oh, good,” he said dryly. “My nightmares were feeling underrepresented.”

Elise’s phone buzzed in her belt bag. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen—Cici. Right on time.

She quickly declined the call and typed out a message:

Will call in 5. Communing with the very interesting local ghosts.

Sliding the phone back into her pocket, she turned to the old woman.

“I appreciate the introductions, Miss…?”

“Myrtle,” the woman supplied crisply.

“Miss Myrtle,” Elise echoed with a respectful nod. “I think we might know what this evil is. It was following us before it ever tangled itself up with Kevin.” She glanced at him, and he gave a noncommittal jazz-hands shrug. “My friend—she’s a witch, a good one—she’s been working on banishing spells. I think she’s going to be able to help us.”

She held up the phone as she said it, but Myrtle narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the device, as though it might be cursed or contagious.

“She’s very smart,” Elise added gently. “And more importantly, she’s on our side.”

From the green room beyond the hallway, voices echoed—low laughter, the squeal of a rolling trunk. The load-in crew had arrived.

Elise stepped back toward the door. “Thank you, all of you, for the introductions. We’ll be back soon—I just need to check in with my friend and…” she gestured toward the hallway, “…pretend to be a normal person for a little bit.”

Myrtle gave her a curt nod. The mirror girls waved in eerie unison, and Giggles tilted his head ever so slightly—Elise couldn’t tell if it was meant to be a goodbye or a threat.

She smiled tightly and gave a small wave. “See you soon.”

Then she and Graham slipped out the door, leaving the ghosts—and the echo of the bell—in silence behind them.

The hallway outside the studio felt brighter now—no less haunted, maybe, but decidedly more mundane. A familiar hum of backstage life had returned. Elise, Graham, and Kevin moved as a quiet unit, weaving past a stagehand wheeling a set of flats and a tech adjusting a clipboard with grim determination.

As they neared the wig closet, a crew member passed them in the opposite direction, an empty dolly rattling ahead of him. They peeked into the doorway, and there it was—the wig trunk. Dead center in the middle of the room, like a loyal pet that had finally found its way home.

Elise exhaled, some unspoken pressure releasing from her chest.

Graham turned toward her, watching her face. “So… that was intense. Or is it always like that with your ghost friends?”

She gave a small laugh, more exhale than sound. “More intense than usual. I don’t get rattled easily, but that definitely stirred something.”

Kevin drifted past them into the closet, poking at the trunk like it might contain snakes or sequins—or both. “Personally, I found them charming. Especially Giggles. Such presence.”

Elise shook her head, lips twitching despite herself. But the humor didn’t fully settle. Her pulse was still high, her palms still damp, and the encounter settled heavily into the pile of worries she’d been carrying from city to city.

She pulled out her phone again, her thumb hovering. “We need to talk to Cici. Soon. If what Myrtle said is true… we’re running out of time.” She tapped Cici’s name and hit speaker.

“Hey,” she said the moment it connected. “You’re on speaker.”

“Hey, boo,” Cici’s voice came through, slightly tinny. “Talk to me. How’s it going in Creepsville?”

Elise looked at Kevin, then Graham. “Okay, so. No Specter sightings yet. But… we talked to one of the local ghosts—Miss Myrtle, former dance instructor, terrifying presence—and she says something evil has arrived here. She could smell it. And she thinks it’s connected to Kevin.”

Kevin gave a sarcastic little bow. “Apparently I’m radiating evil now. Love that for me.”

Elise continued. “She said it’s like something’s leeching him. That whatever’s tethering him is draining him and replacing him with something… worse.”