“What do we do?” asked Julie in a hushed voice, breaking the tense silence that hung in the air.

  The trio had kept quiet for a whole minute, waiting for whatever ghost they had heard to float through the wall or ascend from the floor below. Yet, since the shriek, they had heard and seen nothing except for each other. The unseen enemy hiding somewhere out of sight made the situation all the more terrifying for Jack and Julie.

  “We get the hell out of this town,” said Arc, keeping his pitch low and soft. “Idol be damned. The plan was to take care of things before the spirits woke up and I don’t want you two getting hurt. Can’t say I fancy meeting these ghosts much myself.”

  “No need to tell me twice,” said Jack, looking out the window. “What’s the plan?”

  “We make for the stairs and the pair of you keep close. You see something, you say something. I’ve got a single Arcane Shot and it can hurt a ghost, but they’re immune to weapons unless they choose to go corporeal.”

  “A single shot?” asked Julie. “What about the—”

  “Is this really the time to ask about the other cartridge?” snapped Arc, leading the way from the room and back into the hallway. “If it would help, I would say it would help.”

  He ran down the hall with the twins nipping his feet the entire way, dreading the idea of getting separated from the spellslinger. Upon reaching the stairs, Arc’s face contorted into an expression of utter horror as he watched a trio of spectral figures floating up and towards the trio.

  The ghosts were translucent with an eerie bluish-green tint to them. Their forms emanated a wispy vapour that streaked out behind them before fading into nothing. The first figure was of an old man whose mouth was agape as he reached out towards Arc with his spectral fingers. The other figures, a middle-aged man and an adolescent woman, raised their own arms as they floated towards Jack and Julie.

  Arc glanced to his left and to his right, looking for somewhere else to run, only for more ghosts to emerge from the rooms on either side of the group. The encroaching horde of undead were once men, women, and children, all of whom had once lived in this town before being condemned to forever roam its hallways and streets in the darkness. It seemed as though the awakening of a single ghost had stirred the rest of them and they knew they could have an early dinner this evening.

  “Upstairs!” barked Arc, hurriedly pivoting and giving the twins a shove.

  They sprinted for the staircase at the far end of the corridor, only to find ghosts ascending through the floorboards from the lower level. All three ignored the rising ghosts who reached out with their hands, grasping at the living humans desperately trying to escape a terrible fate.

  Jack and Julie took the stairs two at a time and Arc took them three at a time while the undead continued their pursuit. Arc took an educated guess that the ghosts wanted the three to join them in being bound to the town, but the method of the kill was something he had no desire to discover, whether by being caught or watching the ghosts pilfer the souls of the younger ones.

  The trio emerged onto the third floor and, as the swarming ghosts started to fill the corridor around them, Arc stashed his gun. He grabbed the twins and threw them over his shoulders, deftly stepping between the lunging phantoms and charging straight for the door at the far end of the hallway. He tucked his head low, knowing what he was about to do would be painful, especially without having fully recovered from his goblin-induced injuries. Ah well, there was no other choice.

  He rammed into the door, breaking through it with his skull and continued his run, skipping over what would have been the mayor’s desk. He kicked his way through the glass balcony doors, shattering them into thousands of tiny fragments that scattered across the floor and flew into the town below. He skidded to a halt, almost topping over the stone railing, but managed to remain upright with the shaken twins still hanging over his shoulders.

  With a sigh of relief, he set the dazed duo back onto solid ground and turned to look inside the town hall. He could see the phantoms slowly retreating downstairs, knowing that they could not reach their prey who were now safely in the daylight. They need not waste their energy, for it was only a matter of time before darkness took hold.

  “That was too close,” said Jack, flopping onto the ground and running his hands through his brown hair. He took deep breaths in and out to try and calm his nerves, but his heart was pumping too wildly.

  “You saved us again!” cried Julie, joining her brother on the floor.

  Arc was clutching his pained head and cursing under his breath. “Only after getting you into this mess,” he said as his piercing blue eyes remained fixed on the now-empty corridor. “I shouldn’t have treated this job as if it were still a solo run. I should have left you somewhere safe and then come here alone, only bringing you into Purdue once I was certain there would be no spirits to worry about. I’m a fool for not being more cautious.”

  Julie slouched over as Jack patted her on the back. She was on the verge of tears but held them in knowing that crying wouldn’t make the situation any better for anyone.

  “Why do they want us dead?” she moaned, throwing her head up.

  “Why do goblins want to eat people and why do bandits want to pillage people?” asked Arc. “It’s just in their nature. Fighting against one’s nature is no easy task and lonely spirits who have a grudge against the living world are probably the ones you can rely on to rebel the least.”

  “How do we get down from here?” asked Jack, standing up and looking over the balcony to a set of stairs below. “I reckon that’s a forty-foot drop. Maybe fifty.”

  “I used my rope trying to get the jump on Colt the other day,” sighed Arc. “It would have been nice if you two plundered that too.”

  “We used what little we had tying you up.”

  “It’s alright. We’ll have to think of something. My legs are so battered and bruised that I think they’d snap if I dared jump so we can rule taking a great leap of faith out.”

  Jack squinted back into the room. “The spirits are gone; couldn’t we just make a run for it?”

  “The spirits are out of sight, but they’re certainly not gone. Now that they’re aware we’re here, they’ll be lurking quietly until they see a way of reaching us. They know that time is on their side, not ours and that the sun will set eventually.”

  “It won’t be much longer,” said Julie, looking towards the sun that was already moving beneath the western horizon.

  “What we need to do is destroy that idol from the balcony,” said Arc.

  “You make it sound easy,” said Jack. “We couldn’t even find it when we were going through every room in this building. It mightn’t even be in this building.”

  “If it was going to be anywhere, it would surely be here,” muttered the spellslinger.

  “You continue to sound confident when we’ve seen no evidence to suggest that that’s the case.”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Arc walked towards the doorway and peered into the mayoral office. He looked from desk to cabinet to table and took in every little detail that he could, but none of them yielded as much as a hint that would help him find the stone idol. Had he known for certain it was in the room, he could have taken a few targeted shots that might have blown it apart, but it seemed like a waste to do such a thing blindly.

  “Can I ask you about the other spell cartridge now?” Julie asked Arc, looking at the Golden Hawk.

  Arc answered without looking away from the room, desperately raking through every inch of it with his eyes over and over in search of the idol. He knew the odds of it being there were slim, but his backup plan to escape was undesirable so he clung to the fading remnants of his hope.

  “There are eight schools of magic, Julie,” said the spellslinger, “and each cartridge is colour-coded to the school. Red is for evocation spells, like Arcane Shot. If it ain’t a red bullet, then it ain’t dealing much damage, at least not directly. The white ones are from the protection school and can help guard you in various ways, much like the name suggests. The wizards of old had many tricks up their sleeves, you know?”

  “And what does your white cartridge do when you shoot it?”

  Arc grinned while still watching the room. “You’ll have to wait and see now, won’t you?”

  Jack suddenly rushed into the room and wrenched open the cabinet doors and all of the drawers before scurrying back to the balcony. As he sidestepped the desk, a ghostly hand reached from under the floor to grab his legs, but he was too quick for it.

  “You’re a madman, Jack,” chuckled Arc. “But I respect that.”

  “No idols,” said the young man, nervously looking into the room for spirits, but the hand he had narrowly avoided had vanished again. “It looks like we’re out of options. We’ll need to head downstairs to escape.”

  Arc nodded. “We’ll need to head downstairs, but we’re not going to go down the stairs.”

  “I don’t want to know, but tell me more,” sighed Jack, sensing more danger on the horizon.

  “These floorboards are old and brittle. Julie managed to break one with just an unlucky step. All it takes is enough force to break a big enough hole and we can drop down to the second floor, right? Drop down one more and we’re back on the ground. And don’t forget that we’re more or less directly above the entrance. See for yourself.”

  Julie leaned over the balcony and saw the steps leading into the town hall. As she leaned back up, the statue in the square of the old man with the book caught her attention. She remembered how he had been facing the entrance.

  “Go on,” Jack said apprehensively.

  Arc continued. “If we can break through the floorboards, we can hop our way down and bypass the long back and forth along three corridors. Once we’re outside, we have a small window to make a clean break for it. It’s our best shot.”

  “Isn’t there anything less dangerous that we can do?” asked Julie. “Maybe run down one corridor, take the stairs, and then try our luck jumping from a second-floor window?”

  “That is an option,” said Arc, “but we’re still braving the ghosts to do that…not to mention broken legs.”

  “Whatever we’re doing, we need to decide quickly,” said Jack as the sun slipped lower and lower. “We haven’t got much longer. Getting out of the building is one thing, but if we can’t get out of town before sunset then we’re in a whole heap of trouble.”

  “Very true,” said Arc. “I’ll just make the decision for us, alright? Alright.”

  Arc grabbed his hammer from his pack and slammed it forcefully into one of the floorboards by the balcony door, breaking the wood with ease. He grabbed the nearest half of the broken plank and pried it up, revealing the rotten ceiling from the second floor underneath. He thrust the half-plank into the ceiling and the plaster caved instantly, leaving a small hole that revealed the floor beneath. Arc smiled to himself as the dusty, mouldy crumbs of plaster rained down.

  “And we’re meant to be able to do this quickly?” asked Jack. “I can’t see how this will work.”

  “This was just me testing the waters,” said Arc coolly, daring to take a few quick steps into the room.

  He ducked under the mayor’s desk and pushed up from a squatting position, taking the heavy load on his back. He felt his cuts and scrapes tearing as he strained himself before flinging the desk over his shoulder and letting it crash into the ground. Arc stumbled backwards and was pulled onto the balcony by Jack and Julie as the desk crashed through the floor, taking the ceiling with it and then smashing through the second floor right after. When the cloud of dust had settled, all three could see the ground floor visible below.

  “See?” grunted Arc, clutching his side.

  “Should you see a doctor when we get to Pembroke?” asked Julie, feeling a small surge of hope that she may live to see another day.

  “That would be wise,” said Arc. “But for now, we drop and pray we don’t break something on the way down. Jack, I want you to go first and I’ll follow with Julie. If any of the ghosts come for you, I’ll take my one shot and give you a chance to escape.”

  “And what about you and Julie?” asked the young man, not wanting to leave his sister behind.

  “I’ll scoop her up and throw her out the door while the ghosts do whatever they want to me. I’ll put her life before my own, I promise you.”

  “Alright,” said Jack, leaning into the mayor’s office and trying to work out the best angle of approach. He knew that if ever there was a time to trust the bounty hunter, it was now. “I’m going to jump over to the left and then shoot for the right. Once I’m down, I’ll make a break for the door.”

  “Good,” said Arc with a confident smile. “Let’s get cracking, eh? We’ve got maybe minutes before we lose the last of our light.”

  Jack rushed into the mayor’s office and lowered himself into the hole, swinging himself over to the left and landing on the second floor. As Arc and Julie followed, Jack dropped down to the first and the horrifying shriek of dozens of ghosts echoed out as they emerged from the walls, eager to catch the prey that had willingly fallen into their midst.

  “Go, go, go!” Arc called, desperate for Jack to move out of the landing zone.

  He clutched Julie tightly as he threw himself down, landing on the floor awkwardly and rolling over, dropping his spellcaster and watching despairingly as it flew across the ground and towards four ghosts that encroached upon him. He pushed Julie onto her feet and scrambled over to his gun, reaching out an arm and curling his fingers around the barrel.

  The spellslinger forced himself to his feet and spun his weapon around as a ghost reached for Julie, opening its mouth as if to try and suck her soul from her body.

  “No, you don’t!” Arc cried, pulling the trigger and launching an Arcane Shot.

  The orb of magical light struck the ghost on the side and it wailed as its body dissolved in a flash of vapour before vanishing from sight. Arc dove out of the way of six pairs of lurching hands and sprinted outside, following Julie through the doorway and into the last remnants of daylight.

  “We did it,” sighed Jack, hugging his sister tightly. “You’re alright?”

  “Thanks to Arc,” said Julie, grabbing the spellslinger’s free hand and shaking it vigorously. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  “As much as I love being showered with praise, let’s save that for later,” he replied. “Run!”

  Arc, Jack, and Julie sped down the stairs and towards the town centre, aiming for the street on the opposite side of the statue. They bounded over the iron fence surrounding the square, vaulted over the railings at the far side and then stormed straight down the road. Before they had even run fifty yards, the last remnants of light vanished and the sun disappeared behind the hills, opening the gate for the spectral forms that faded into existence.

  “Oh no,” gasped Julie.

  “This way!” called Arc, turning and running back to the square, hoping that one of the other roads out would be clear.

  Much to his dismay, ghosts were appearing on every road, passing through the walls of the shops and houses, even starting to float their way down the steps of the town hall. There was no easy way out and Arc was out of all offensive cartridges that could aid their escape. As he turned towards the square once more, desperately seeking a way to safety, an idea burst into his mind.

  “Could it be?” he said, looking towards the statue and pulling out his revolver. “Anateer guide my bullets.”

  He took careful aim at the statue’s leg and fired all six rounds, blowing chunks out of the stone. He hopped back over the iron fence and climbed onto the plinth, shoving the statue with all his might, but it did not budge. As Jack and Julie ran to him, he hurriedly shoved three more rounds into his cylinder and leapt back to the ground.

  He shot each of them into the statue’s other leg and then whipped out his hammer. He struck the bearded figure’s legs until the last man of Purdue rigidly fell from his resting place and smashed onto the concrete slabs below, breaking into a dozen chunks. From his broken book, rose a bluish-green mist reminiscent of the vapour emitted by the ghost he had shot in the town hall. As it faded away, there was an eruption of screams from the ghosts as they were all whisked from this world, trickling out, never to disturb the living again.

  “The idol?” asked Jack, rubbing his eyes and clutching his head. “The statue was the idol the entire time?”

  “I always heard they were small things,” shrugged Arc as he walked over to the stone book and picked it up. “Well, I guess that’s that. I’ll take this piece and that’ll have to do for proof of the job being done. At least it’s safe to stay here now that the ghosts are no more.”

  “That’s not happening,” cried Jack and Julie in unison.

  “Alright,” said Arc with a shrug. “It just seems like a real shame to let all these fine buildings go to waste. We’ll go find another miserable cave for the night if that’s what you really want. You must both enjoy sleeping on the ground.”

  The exasperated twins gawped at Arc who chuckled and strolled along, as though their ordeal in Purdue was already a distant memory to him.