They needed it the most. Out of all the others that prowled society, among men with eyes like fish and women with hair, fur, or eyes in the wrong places, ghosts seemed the loneliest. So afraid, so full of regret. It just didn’t sit right to do nothing about that.
In real terms, ghosts looked like normal people, with colors faded, and bodies see-through as if someone had turned the opacity-knob down a few percentiles in photoshop. If there existed ghosts that hung around corpses, I didn’t find any. I found them in busy malls and abandoned parks at night, crying, staring listlessly, muttering to themselves about regrets, about their anger, about browser histories, about families. To my deepest core, it convinced me of one thing: Everyone is afraid of dying and the unknown that lies beyond that wall, of going through that last fateful metamorphosis.
“It was nice of you to listen to me ramble on, deary, but I best get going,” said the old woman behind the gas station. She wiped away a tear that disappeared as it hit the ground. This place belonged to her husband once. Then the pandemic hit, they lost profits, got bought out. Now, it was part of a large gas station chain. A tale as old as capitalism.
I’d spent the past half hour listening to her life’s story. It helped. Some ghosts wanted to be heard before leaving into the afterlife. Some just needed a hug.
“I’m sure you’ll land in a good place,” I said and gave her a hug.
“Oh, you really are a sweet one,” she said, even as my hands phased right through her. “Here, have a gumdrop.”
She handed me a piece of candy. The candy was see-through. When I looked back up she was gone, as was the candy.
Dang. I kinda want something sweet now.
Helping ghosts felt nice. It’s a selfish thing, doing something just because it makes you feel nice. But, if there was someone out there measuring happiness and pain on a scale, I hoped that they saw me weighing in on the right side.
I was pretty certain that, to a normal person, the others were either invisible, or just looked like entirely average people. Mom refused to go to a doctor with me when I complained about them in grade school. Dad wasn’t a fan of paranormal horror in movies, let alone real life. Poor Dad. I never could bring myself to tell him that the world was filled with leshens and the likes of loch ness monsters.
The other others, I ignored, and they ignored me. Ghosts weren’t scary, just odd. Weird. Overlooked. I could vibe with that. Ghosts couldn’t harm me, but I wasn’t taking my bets with anything that had sharp teeth. Sure, sometimes someone leapt over a two-story house in one go and no one batted an eye, but was that my problem? If they could do that, then they were doing just fine. Probably.
It was the year 2039. The TV in the gas station was playing a cartoon, or anime. One of those rainbow-hued classics, with the power of friendship and love weaponized into pink beams and explosions galore. A magical girl show, twenty years old, like me. I felt drawn to it. It was a fantasy, but it was fun, colorful, safe, and so much the opposite of how I saw the world.
I was a fan, to put it mildly.
Wonder if cryptids have superheroes. Wonder what they look like.
I must’ve been staring for a while, because I could feel the cashier’s gaze roaming over the back of my neck.
He stared blankly at me with a pair of near-glowing red eyes. I didn’t let it bother me, nor how his hand was deathly cold when it brushed against mine. He smiled. I smiled back. And decided that this was not the best place for a pit stop at midnight.
Pretty sure that cashier was a vampire, I thought to myself as I left the gas station with a sixpack of energy drinks in hand. He could’ve been something else too. Pretty hard to get an accurate idea of cryptids when so much pop culture is just… wrong.
They did nail the spaghetti monster though. Props to the internet for that.
I was a bit woozy from the flight home— eight hours from Manchester to Chicago — and I fumbled the keys to the pickup truck my bestie Clem had lent me. It was decorated in and out with small plushies holding hands on the dashboard or dangling from the rearview mirror.
I fumbled it again. On the third try, I got the key in the hole, only for it to break the moment I twisted it.
I closed my eyes and dropped my face on the window. When I opened them again, there, in the foreground of the reflection of the blinding gas station logo was me. Short dyed hair in a pixie cut? Check. Boring brown eyes? Check. Smooshed eyeliners. Oh yeah, that’s me, Samantha, alright.
You fuckup.
I only managed to get in the truck because I’d left the window partially open — suspicious activities in front of gas station cameras at midnight, hooray! Driving up the Tuskegee Memorial Highway there’d been a sudden urge to vent all the stuffy air. In hindsight, a near friggin’ prescient move.
Hey, at least the door key isn’t the same as the ignition key.
How does everything good only ever happen to you by accident?
I tried to drown those thoughts out with loud music. There was a nervous twitch in my fingers, I was nervous because it was the end of my break between semesters, the end of my stay, and I’d somehow still not told Mom or Dad that I dropped med-school for…
It didn’t matter. They probably wouldn’t even be mad. Just disappointed.
It was twenty miles to Creektin, to home. Twenty miles of driving underneath boughs of trees, flanked by Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. Just me, loud-as-heck pop-music from the late 2000s, and an unhealthy amount of caffeine and sugar. Oh, and the odd fairylights flaring up in the forest. Can’t forget about those.
This is probably my most paranormal day of the year; welcome to Creektin I suppose, I thought as the lights suddenly came closer.
A blur of fur smashed into the front of my bestie’s car. I choked on a mouthful of monster, slammed the brakes, wheels coming to a squealing stop. The airbag tasted awful, like the worst mixture of bitter and burnt. My heart was beating a mile a minute, my hands clammy and chalky. But hey, better that than being dead, right?
When I finally got the dang bag out of my face, I saw…
A werewolf. There was a ten-foot werewolf in the rearview mirror, and a ten-foot werewolf-sized dent on the Toyota’s left side. It was wearing an oversized blue miniskirt. A man was floating maybe a foot above the ground a little bit to the left of the creature. He tapped it on the chest with the butt of a gnarled, wooden staff and the werewolf spewed blood.
“... what you get for acting distracted,” he said in a terse tone. “You’re done for the day. I’ll have an associate take over from here. The next time we meet, don’t be such a disappointment.”
Our eyes met.
Goddammit. Why me, why now, why ME? No, don’t come over here, no, no, no—
He rapped the door with his staff. His beard was full of flowers, and one of his eye sockets was hollow. I cranked the window down a couple inches.
“Yes?” I asked, as if I hadn’t just hit a half-ton missile of fur and muscle with my bestie's car. At least it wasn’t smoking. At least it wasn’t on fire.
“Take care of her. She is tired and hungry,” he said, snaking a hand through the window and dropping a handful of coins in my hand. “For the damage, and your service. Do not cheap out on it. This girl is going to save the world one day.”
“The entire world, or just the part that matters?” I quipped back. In hindsight, not my brightest move.
The wizard chuckled darkly. I chuckled with him, albeit a lot more nervously.
I blinked, and he was gone. His werewolf… creature… thing was still groaning on the floor. Dammit.
For a moment, I just sat there in shock, staring dumbly at the coins. They were heavy, and much shinier than a quarter. I really hoped they weren’t quarters. How stupid would it be to find out that wizards used quarters as their main currency?
Back on track. Technically, I could have driven away, pretended I didn’t see anything like I always had. Maybe that would even work, for a time.
But then a werewolf-punching wizard would know that I did. And he’d come find me to ask why. And then he would find out that I hug dead people, that I don’t belong, and then then…
I got out of the truck before I could think myself into a spiral. There was a werewolf bleeding out on the road. And I’d kick myself if I just sat there and did nothing.
+++
There weren’t enough bandaids in the world to fix the many problems plaguing this girl.
She — and the werewolf was quite clearly a she — was huge, for one, over ten feet tall if she stood upright. It made her heavy. Combine that with the wildly poofing beige fur that darkened until completely black towards her feet and hands, and she was as difficult to move as a five-hundred pound bean bag and just as hard to handle while limp.The wizard had deposited her on the truck bed via telekinesis, because of course telekinesis was real. And wouldn't you know it, now her legs were dangling off the back, and I had to find a way to stuff them all the way up her fuzzy butt if I didn't want them to drag across the asphalt.
“Goddammit, why are you so fuzzy?” I huffed, catching a mouthful of fur.
And then there was the blood. Oh, there was a lot of blood. The cargo bed looked like I’d tried to dispose of a murder victim. She was only half conscious while I loaded her in; then she promptly clocked out. Her breathing was raspy, and broken ribs were only the start of her internal injuries. No matter how traumatic my workplace experience as a paramedic was, it meant that I knew how to sew specific types of flesh wounds. These were not among them.
I strapped her down with cargo belts and began driving.
I’m supposed to take care of her. What does that mean? Why did I even agree to this? I mean, the answer is obvious: I still have some sense of self preservation. On the scale of stressful things, helping a werewolf can’t be much different than helping ghosts. But why did the wizard not realize that I’m not ‘in the know’?
We’d been driving for a couple minutes before she gave even the faintest hints that she was conscious. I’d left the divider window behind the backseats open. That way she could tell me if I needed to slow down, or if she needed anything else.
“Oh thank god, you’re still alive.”
“Ugnf,” she grumbled. “Ow. That freaking liar didn’t hold back at all.”
Maybe she just didn’t hear me.
“I, uh, hello?” I couldn’t exactly turn back to see what face she was making, so I adjusted the rearview mirror. “Ma’am? Do I drive you to a hospital or a vet?”
She snorted, as if I’d told her a funny joke. “Neither. It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“I can count the number of broken ribs every time I hear you breathe. You hit the front of a pickup with the back of your head. You have whiplash, at the very least, if not brain damage and a damaged vertebrae.”
“I told you. I’ll be fine.”
The back of the truck exploded in orange glitter effects, and I freaking smashed the brakes. In the quiet that followed, I heard her breathing evenly. There was still blood spattered in bits here and there, but her wounds were gone, magicked away at the drop of a phrase.
She looked a bit embarrassed. “... I should’ve told you I was casting a spell. Sorry.”
I stared at her for a moment. “What? Oh, no no no, it’s fine.” It totally isn’t. “This is a spell-proof car.” Why are you lying? Why are you trying to impress this girl you just met?
“Spell-proof, huh?” The werecreature hummed thoughtfully. “Sounds handy. Where’d you get that?”
“... the internet?” A pause. “It’s not entirely spell proof. On second thought, I may have been scammed.”
She snorted. “Figures.”
Alright. She bought it, I think. Now keep driving and don’t freak out.
That spell was kinda cool though.
“Do you like music?” Everyone likes music, idiot. “What type of music do you like?”
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“Something quiet,” she mumbled. She looked near ready to conk out.
The radio immediately started blaring Hooked on a Feeling. I wanted to slam my head into the steering wheel again. This was beyond missing the mood, this was actively torpedoing it from all sides.
“‘Ats fine,” she muttered, and then she slumped down.
You heard her. That’s fine. Everything’s fine. C’mon Sam, you’ve got a billion questions. Now’s the time. Stop waffling about. Ask. Now.
“Sooo… what were you doing out this late at night?”
“Hunting.” she huffed. “I haven’t slept in three days.”
What is that supposed to mean!? Is she hunting wizards?
“Training wasn’t supposed to go this long,” I heard her mumble from the back seat. “Sorry ‘bout the car.”
“It’s not mine. A friend lent it to me.”
“She a good friend?”
I stared at the spiderweb crack running up the corner of the front window. “The best.”
The werecreature shifted. “Sounds nice. Having friends.”
Some time passed in silence.
“Addy,” she mumbled. “I’m Addy.”
“I’m Samantha.” A self-driving car passed me and merged with way too little margin for comfort. “Flipping…! Ugh. Sam’s fine. Is Addy short for Adelaide? It has to be; I can’t imagine anyone naming their child Adobe, or Adderal, or Adonis — that’s more of a male name anyways — and wow, I’m just talking your ears off, aren’t I?”
“You do talk a lot.”
I gave a nervous chuckle. “Yeah, umm. Yeah. Sorry.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” A bassy yawn rumbled through the Toyota all the way to my back seat. “Keep talking.”
So I did. Even though my hair stood on end and my mind was circling around how everything was going to go to crap, I yapped and yapped and yapped. Cars, games, local facts, animal facts, bug facts, spider facts, every topic was breached.
Halfway through explaining the difference between texan and mexican tarantulas, I could hear her snoring faintly.
She used me like a podcast to fall asleep to. Wow. Rude.
Conversation wasn’t her strong suit, evidently. But other than that, she seemed nice.
Now I just had the entire trip to find a way to explain to my parents that I was having this random stranger over for serious, non-wizard related reasons. As good a time as any to cash in a favor with my little sister.
“Hey phone,” I asked my creatively named smartphone. “Text Lily. Ask her where she is.”
The phone bleeped in its holster. A moment later, I got a reply.
<
<
Right, there was that. It was a reward since she’d managed to sit down and get her first A in seven consecutive school years. They’d be gone until early in the morning.
You should’ve accompanied her. The little gremlin adores you.
“Heya Lily, I’ve got a friend over. Not sure when you, Mom, and Dad are arriving home but, uh, could you maybe delay them for an hour or two?”
My phone bleeped a few more times.
<
<
<
<
Lily texted me a few more meows plus a blurry tilted picture of actors in cat make-up. I texted her some meows back and it was basically a done deal. I was so, so tempted to take a picture of the werecreature snoozing on the back of the truck. But she didn’t show up on the camera, like every other creature always did.
In a few minutes a familiar cul-de-sac appeared under the streetlights. Shadows played along picket fences, windows reflected the pickup’s one good headlight. I pulled up to our driveway. Addy shifted the moment we stopped with a snort.
“We’re there already?” she grumbled.
I briefly considered telling her we weren’t, turning around, and offloading her in the hospital in Sault Ste. Marie. This was my house after all. She was a stranger I’d just met, kinetically, less than half an hour ago. Her claws were larger than some kitchen knives. On a scale of stress and tension, my life without involvement of the others had been a three out of ten. A wizard yeeting a wereperson at me out of nowhere was an escalation all the way to level twelve.
It’s kinda exciting though. What secrets doth thou hide, fuzzy werelady Adelaide?
“Yep,” I said. “We’re here.”
“Sweet.” She practically poured out of the car like a liquid mass of fuzz. “Ugnf. One second.”
“I’m assuming your spell doesn’t remove fatigue, does i—”
“Compaction.” She muttered the chant as if lazily ordering a pizza.
What happened next I will never forget.
Her body turned rainbow-colored. Like an epileptic’s worst nightmare, or like a super mario star power, shades and hues ping-ponged from the tip of her snout to the claws on her toes. Her fur stood on end as if electrified, then she shrank. Smaller and smaller and smaller and… and I could see it all. The rainbow was a distraction, an illusion like whatever made a vampire retail worker seem normal. Her body melded and deformed, bones clacked, snapped, and pulled in on themselves. A sped-up disco beat played in my ears.
She had a friggin’ theme song.
The whole sequence took less than three seconds. She finished with a twirl. A short girl stood in place of the furry behemoth. Her hair was a stark black running down her back in curls, and her skin was distinctly Okinawan. Two dorito-shaped ears poked out of her hair. She had normal hands, normal feet, and a tired glare that looked like she was angry at herself or the world. The bags under her eyes were so dark I almost mistook them for eyeliner. No joke, she looked like she was about to fold in on herself like a lawnchair. But somehow, she persevered.
Her disheveled vest-tank-top-miniskirt combo gave off a mix of punk and trailer trash. Her socks were a brightly colored and mismatched orange and brown. She looked around my age, plus minus a year or so.
She brushed her miniskirt down, picked at the lace hidden inside her denim vest, and looked up at me. “What?”
Frills and lace. A transformation sequence. Supernatural resilience.
Then it clicked.
Magical girl… wereraccoon?
“I, you…” I stuttered, only partially aware of how suspicious I was acting.
“I know. I’m small for a wereperson.” She snorted indignantly. “Sorry to disappoint.”
“You call that small!? Your feet were almost dangling off of the truck bed. The entire car tilted the moment you got on board. If you're small, how big is a normal wereperson? And I am anything but disappointed. If anything, I think you’re…”
She looked up at me. I looked down at her. I could see her point, though it wasn’t exactly a fair comparison. People called me the beanstalk at the best of times. There were worse names a girl over six foot five was called at school. Intimidating. Scary. Tits-on-stilts.
And she was the exact opposite, small and eyecatching and a bit more buff than I’d expected of a magical girl.
“... cute.”
“Wha— I am an honorable and distinguished Custodian.” She spluttered indignantly. “I am Weretanuki Adelaide. I-I’m not cute.”
She took a tired step, buckled, then fell right towards the rose bushes. She grumbled when I caught her with one arm.
Oh my god. Her voice is so squeaky when she gets angry. She’s adorable.
I blinked, playing her last words back in my mind. “Oh. Tanuki. Japanese raccoon dog. That explains the fur patterns. Is that were-racist? Is were-racism a thing? Or do you call it specism, since tanukis and wolves are different species? Was that a weird thing to ask? It probably was. Sorry, don’t answer that. Stupid question. Let’s get you inside before people complain about the lightshow.”
“‘S invisible,” she grumbled as I fumbled for the key. “It doesn’t matter.”
I dropped the key. In the exact same instant, her hand shot out and she caught it without even looking at it.
“Here.”
She dropped it in my hands again.
“Oh, uh, thanks.”
Shepherding her inside was the easy part. She flopped down on the couch like a bag of potatoes, still holding an empty… energy drink can?
“When did you drink that?” I asked.
“Weren’t those complimentary?” She turned around, guilt written all over her face. “Sorry. I’ll pay you back.”
“What? Nonono, that’s like, not a problem at all.” Caffeine and sugar were the last things I needed in my system right now. I wasn’t getting any sleep today anyways.
She wasn’t planning on actually getting any sleep either since she was chugging energy drinks like that. She seemed the type to crash into someone’s life, make a mess of things, and then leave in a flash. In all likelihood she was going to lie on the couch, doze off for a while, and then she’d be off, out of my life, away and over the hills. And I’d be left with a million unanswered questions.
That wasn’t acceptable. So, after closing an open window and chucking my shoes in the wardrobe, I joined her on the couch with two cans of Coke and a bag of chips.
Addy barely moved, even as my impact bounced her like a dead fish on a trampoline. Slowly, one eye peered up between dark curls.
I gave her my best ‘let’s be friends’ smile. “Want to see my pet spider? He’s really cute.”
“Mnf. Not really?”
“Oh.” Fair. We couldn’t all be arachnophiles. “Wanna play some video games?”
She perked up.
So, I played some smash with the magical weretanuki girl. The first round, I won handily. Judging by the way she moved, she’d never played this game before. The second one was a bit more of a struggle. From the third one onwards, I didn’t win a single match.
“How are you this good!?”
“I’m cheating,” she said before throwing another grenade at my character’s face.
At some point Foggy, our twenty-year-old housecat, came prancing by.
“Heya Foggy.”
“MeeoOOOWWW,” the deaf, half-blind cat complained at me.
I gave her some scritches under her chin, as the old lady deserved. My hand went right through her.
The screen turned blurry. Addy stopped to look at me a few seconds after I’d stopped moving.
“I-I’m sorry. My cat just… sorry.” I sucked in a deep breath and wiped away some tears.
Truth is, the old lady had been slowing down over the years. We were all expecting it, and though some part of me regretted that it had to happen while I was here, another part was glad that I could comfort her after her final moments.
She purred, snaking through my legs without a care in the world as I searched the house. She didn’t seem bothered to be a ghost. Heck, she looked used to it. Maybe there was some truth to cats having nine lives, and this was just a casual thing for her.
I nearly chuckled at the idea. Then I found her, a white-as-snow mop just lying in my parents’ bedroom. The creak of the door was awfully loud in the silence that followed. Old Foggy Foghorn looked as if she’d gone down in the middle of a nightmare, fur ruffled and standing in every direction, eyes unfocused, half-lidded. Her teeth were bared and her claws wet, the tips dipped in some sort of… black ink?
“Samantha. Get back.”
Addy, who’d been shadowing my steps, pulled out an ornate dagger from nowhere. It had no handguard and looked unbelievably sharp. In one second it was as large as a knife. Then she twirled it clockwise. Now it was as large as her forearm.
Her miniskirt flared as she loped over to the bed in three quick steps, sliced grandma’s old hand-made lamp, stomped on it like a roach, and in the same motion stabbed a pillow from straight above.
“Addy, wh—”
The lamp didn’t shatter, but deformed like putty, wiggling under her foot. The pillow chittered, a scree-scree-scree sound that hurt in my eyes. She finished it off with a twist-pull of her knife-sword, wiping black blood on her forearms all the while I was processing that there had just been something pretending to be the pillow Mom always slept on. A something that killed my cat. Something other.
“You, I—” Words were impossible to find.
“Don’t touch that black stuff, it’s a caustic carcinogen,” she said matter-of-factly. “Open the windows. Get a mop, preferably an older one.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, right,” I muttered. “Addy, what the fuck was that?”
“One of the eight deadly pests.” She stopped, slowly turning to me. “You… don’t know about them?”
“I…” Shit. I screwed up.
She squinted, realization dawning on her face. “Of course. You’re not a real associate… but you can see me. Somehow.” Addy groaned. “I fucked up. Again. Why me?”
She turned to me, who was to put it bluntly, frozen in place. My eyes flicked between the black splotches slowly evaporating into equally black smoke, her sword which could apparently change size, and the lifeless Foggy’s body.
Ghost Foggy was busy smacking the corpses as if to say ‘take that, and that, and that!’. It was surreal. But the surreal was real and as dry as my throat was, I needed answers.
I gulped, turning to Addy. “So. What was that?”
“Technically speaking, not something you should know about. Practically speaking, it’s dead. Don’t worry about it.”
“I will not stop worrying about it until you tell me what the hell just happened. Are you secretly keeping eldritch desklamps from destroying earth? How much of a problem are they; is it a local problem, a nationwide invasion? Is the world going to end?”
“Can’t tell you, not anymore,” she looked at me with those yellow eyes of hers.
“They killed my cat!” I stood up, towering over Addy at least in this form. A fat load of good that did me. I was just venting, just trying to make sense of this night. But I was pissed and I was scared and I just had it with not knowing how to make sense of this world I lived in. “What if there are more? What if they get my pet spider? What if they get my sister, my parents?”
“I’ll do a sweep of your house, just to make sure.” She looked ashamed just offering that much. “If you’re afraid of me, that’s fine. I understand if you don’t want me to stay after this.”
I blinked. “Seriously? You just cut that thing in two like, shwing, hiya! You were awesome. You can stay as long as you want.”
“But I’m a weretanuki.”
“Yeah. And?”
She just stared at me with a confused look. “I don’t get it. You’re supposed to be afraid. So why are you so nice to me?”
“Because you looked like you could use a hug too.”
Addy froze. “I don’t need a hug. I don’t need help. I don’t need anything, I—” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t tell you what that creature was. But, theoretically speaking, if there was a way to find out, what would you be willing to sacrifice?”
+++
I placed Foggy’s body in a shoebox, put one of Dad’s pistols on my bedside table unloaded, and went to bed. I never did answer her question. Maybe some part of me was still afraid to fully immerse myself in the land of magical cryptid girls. Maybe I was just a coward.
I didn’t sleep much that night. But I did sleep, evidenced by the fact that when I woke up, Addy was gone. The house smelled of freshly brewed coffee. The familiar voices coming from downstairs were almost enough to convince me that yesterday had been a caffeine-induced nightmare. But Foggy was loafing on my face and for once, her furry butt didn’t cause acute cat-fur suffocation. Being a ghost and all.
Slowly I got up and, still in my t-shirt and jeans, noticed the heart-shaped crystal lying on my bedside table.
My breath hitched. There was a note attached as well.
Thanks for the food, and the soft beanbag.
I met your parents. They’re nice folk. Your sister helped me feed your pet spider. You were right, he’s really cute once you get to know him.
It was nice.
Sorry about your cat. To answer at least one question: No, the world is probably not going to end for at least another ten years. Probably.
Sorry again for being awkward. I’m bad at people things.
Bye.
- Addy.
P.S. As a member of the Lodge of the Lykan, I humbly extend my recommendation to you, Samantha Rubens, to become a Society Associate. Associates assist Custodians with mundane tasks such as food & lodging, emotional support, knowledge of local cultures and terrain, and suspicious activity in exchange for coins. They do NOT engage in supernatural combat, casting assistance, or the cleanup of metathaumatical convergence events unless specifically volunteering. Take the crystal badge if you accept, or throw it away and drink the potion of forgetfulness if you don’t.