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Now there was nowhere else to flee to as the only other door led to the morgue, and the morgue had zero exits.
“What the fuck do we do now?” Grant shouted.
“Try to stay out of the way until hopefully Mrs. Charles wins?” Huck grimaced.
“Couldn’t one of you ghostie guys go poof through the wall?” Cary demanded. “Hey! Hot dude in the dress!”
“Wait, me?” Precipitation blinked. “Why, you delicious stack of man, I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s—”
“Yeah! You! I’ll be your stack of meat later! Can you go get some fuckin’ help or not?”
“No one else is here!” Myrna wailed as she clung to Finn. “I let them go home early tonight because everybody was going to be filming!”
“Fuck!”
Mrs. Charles emerged from the destroyed hall, marching back toward Baus to engage him in battle again.
It might have been Huck’s imagination, but he swore that her purse was bigger now.
Mrs. Charles smacked Baus with the possibly magically growing purse until he had to retreat back into the hole in the wall. She was soon back on top of him, hitting him mercilessly while Baus howled.
Baus shouted something else in more of that crazy Latin, but then something even crazier happened.
Mrs. Charles stopped hitting him and replied in the same damn language.
Baus offered his hand and very politely helped Mrs. Charles climb off of him. He crawled out of the hole, and the two continued to chat back and forth. There was a lot of pointing and head shaking, and then Mrs. Charles turned to smile at everyone.
“Mr. Baus would like to apologize,” she said. “There has apparently been a very terrible misunderstanding.”
“Misunderstanding?” Grant echoed. “Him wanting to take over my body is just a terrible misunderstanding?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Charles nodded firmly.
“No!” Janice was up now, groaning and panting frantically. “I have waited years for this! Years! I am not letting the ghost of some crazy old bat ruin this for me! I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but this is—”
Mrs. Charles waved her hand and Janice slammed back into the wall.
Janice did not move.
Mrs. Charles smiled as if nothing had happened and continued, “Mr. Baus speaks Latin exclusively, most unfortunate these days as it is a language few know. It is quite serendipitous that Latin happens to be my very favorite, and I can assure you his words have been translated most erroneously.
“He wishes not for any vessel or body to inhabit. He only needed someone with a psychic gift to break the lock of the spiritual prison he’s been trapped in. He never meant to harm anyone. He said that he tried to show you, but he is afraid that you didn’t understand.”
“Show me…?” Grant frowned.
“What is she talking about?” Huck asked urgently.
“Oh! Shit! He did.” Grant’s eyes widened. “I saw these images like a big flipbook. Like with you, Huck.” He looked up at him. “When you were climbing down the ladder, the support thing on the side actually broke. The ladder was going to fall.”
“What?” Huck scoffed, his stomach twisting uncomfortably. “What are you saying?”
“The Thing, Baus, was trying to help you,” Grant explained. “He was trying to grab you to keep you from falling. I saw it.”
“So, his murdering me wasn’t actually him murdering me?” Huck had no idea how to feel about that. He’d always known he was murdered by the Thing in the Stairs and spent his entire afterlife hating it. Being told that his death was actually an accident and that the Thing had even been trying to save him was shocking to say the least.
“I don’t think it was!” Grant squeezed Huck’s hand. “I saw what happened to Rebecca and Precipitation too. The Thing was trying to keep Rebecca from leaving with some woman, maybe even the person who killed her, and he tried to warn Precipitation when his sister was sneaking up behind him.”
“Really?” Precipitation blinked in surprise. He’d gotten up from where Mrs. Charles had thrown him, and he was now standing with Rebecca. “I don’t… I don’t know if I remember that.”
