Copyright © 2025 by Brittany Noelle
CASSIDY
THE COSTUMED CROWD MERGES into our personal space on the porch. Feathers and leotards and wigs spill through the front door as Chloe’s friends laud the decorations, completely at ease—as if no fight had happened.
“Nice distraction,” the largest of her friends, and the one who fought the strange not-pizza-guy, compliments me, clapping my shoulder with a large hand. I flinch away from the tall Viking, every inch of exposed skin suddenly fragile. I witnessed what those hands can do, the blood on the not-pizza-guy’s face flashing through my mind. “Ooo-kay.” The Viking-boy guffaws and follows Chloe inside.
Not wanting to be alone, I rush after them. The house lights surge at my entrance, but no dark voice sounds in my head. The scattered candles remain motionless on the floor, destroyed pizza a red smear across the carpet. No one seems to notice the strangeness of it all. I struggle to breathe, to think in a straight line. What if there’s nothing to actually notice? Maybe it’s all in my head. I should call Dr. Green.
Chloe scoops the other intact pizzas from the coffee table and waltzes into the kitchen with a huff. “Creep. But hey, free pizza.” She sniffs at the spilled pie and ignores the mess of candles, sauce, and broken light fixture. Doesn’t question a thing.
In the kitchen, there are cheers and plates and review of the recording of the fight on multiple phones. Before she can join her friends, I grip Chloe’s wrist and whisper, “Should we call someone?”
Chloe shrugs. “The guys can handle it.”
Viking-boy agrees with a triumphant snort on her other side, snagging half a pizza to himself.
I curl inward, hands on my shoulders, to hide as much as possible. “Handle it?”
Chloe bites into cheesy bread, a half-giggle escaping. “You know what I mean.”
“Didn’t look handled at all.” I glance out the kitchen window, looking for a cherry red cap and dagger eyes. “I think we should at least call Russ.”
“We’re fine. Don’t need Uncle Cop ruining the night.” She hip checks me, subject changed. “Maybe I spruced you up too much. Got a delivery boy already jumping at you.”
I shake my head. “He wasn’t after me… Or… Maybe he was.”
Chloe is onto the next topic, the next thought, the next planet. Bouncing around as she always does.
She greets her guests with a wicked witch laugh to match the Halloween decor. Costumes fill the cramped kitchen. A princess, two musketeers, a tight-fitting cat suit. They lose track of me in the conversation while Viking-boy reenacts his final blow. I take the chance to slip away to the bathroom before anyone can cast me a confused smile. These aren’t my friends, and I am not calm enough to pretend they are, to pretend I’m sane. The noise of their collective voices filling the house is loud enough that I can’t hear my own thoughts.
I lock the door and sit on the toilet, covering my face with shaking hands.
None of this makes sense.
The stranger. Kane. That’s what she called him. He’d heard the voices. Spoke to at least one of them as if there was another person in the room.
Then there’s the dark voice, the one unimpeded by my medication. Is he connected to the light falling? Did I have an episode? Attack Kane? But how could I have done any of those things? Are the voices in my head more corporeal than I want to admit?
Tears form under my hands, my breaths quake. Every mental wall I built as a child—every way I kept the terrible things out—crumbles.
In the darkness of my palms, my mind bends backwards into dark memories, to the dead eyes of small twin boys. We’re so cold, they’d said, all those years ago. Cheeks icy, holding hands at the foot of my bed. It was the only time the voices in my head visually manifested. In the middle of the night, their shivering pleas for help consumed my nine-year-old ears and I couldn’t ignore them any longer.
I listened, I followed.
They led me through the midnight summer, miles from home, across a deserted cornfield to a secluded and rundown barn. To a rusty farm tool basement, to a whining freezer, to their tiny physical bodies wrapped around each other. Frozen to death. I tried to explain how I had found them to authorities, but of course no one believed me. They questioned my family for days, then weeks.
It was Mom’s last straw—my stories, my ‘dangerous behavior.’ She lined up so many appointments. Brain scans, lights in my eyes, ink blots, specific questions about how I knew where to find them and how many voices are there and do they ask me to do anything I’m uncomfortable with. Any time I entertained ideas of ghosts and phantoms, my doctor changed medications, upped dosages. Mom even separated from Dad and moved us across the state line after the investigation proved my innocence, unable to handle the negative attention of the town. I learned to never mention my invisible spirit theories again. It only caused trouble for others. I’d become an expert at lying to my therapists, pretending the voices were part of some schizophrenic diagnosis. Until eventually, when the meds dulled my sense of self and my memories, I finally believed the sickness was real. I’m crazy. That’s what Mom thought. That’s what everyone thought. It was easier to agree. It made sense. Enough at least to just go along, swallow my pills, and strain to be normal.
But every once in a while, a voice would make itself known outside my body. I would have no explanation, no recourse. I would lie. Say I was the one to pull all the dishes from the cabinets and smash them against the floor. Say I had scared the neighbor’s dog into running into traffic. Say I had written the vulgar notes on the school chalkboards. All points against my own mental state in my files and paperwork. It was all I could do to keep reality grounded. What could be the other explanation?
Spirits? Undead?
On the toilet, I pull out my cell phone and dial nine-one-one.
Chloe’s voice drifts under the door. “A night of full moon haunts and intoxication. Sound good?” Agreement rumbles around the room. “Where’s my birthday sister?” Chloe steps down the hall. Her shadow sneaks under the bathroom door. My thumb hovers over the call, unsure what to say if I complete the dial. She knocks. “You ready to party, Cass?”
My heels tap silent on the bathroom rug. How can she recover so easily?
All I want to do is hug her close and cry. Not pretend that everything’s okay.
I should call. Then no party. No awkward conversation. No seance. Just us—horror movies, double-butter popcorn, safe and simple. Back to the best friend montage.
My mind ping pongs left and right, up and down, weighing different worries, different realities, thumb hovering above the call button. I want to go back to my laptop, my stories, my fantasy worlds. Where the world remains constant and in my control. I can’t handle this.
“Hey,” another female voice joins Chloe in the hall. Giggly and excited. “So? Is it tonight, or what?”
Chloe’s laugh is thin. “Oh no. I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
“Why not? You’re on the pill, right?”
“Well yeah, but… I don’t wanna talk about it right now.”
The other girl giggles. “Better spill deets, sista. Greg’s a monster.”
“… Really?”
She laughs again. Chloe joins in with a pitiful giggle. “Don’t worry so much. C’mon, let’s get this party started!”
“Uh, yeah. Just gimme a minute.” Chloe knocks on the door again. “C’mon, you can’t just sit in a bathroom all night long!” She forces a laugh.
The pill? Chloe hadn’t mentioned any of this to me…
Is one of those guys her boyfriend or something?
Shaking out of the dilemma, I pocket my phone and stand to my strange pin-up reflection in the mirror. Weird pizza men. Seances. And by the slurred sounds of it, alcohol swimming through super-senior veins. I don’t want any part of this. But Chloe does. For an obvious reason now. And I can’t just ignore that. Not now, during our birthday time together. She needs me. And maybe it’s the distraction I need.
I tug on the hem of the constricting shirt, imagining where my hip bones should show like Chloe’s. I brush a fingertip under an eyelid, imagining where eyeliner would swipe and flick, casting me as someone with knowledge, with grace. The librarian with mystique I so wish to be. But even that mental image feels wrong. I miss my glasses. My cozy sweater. Dressed up like some 1920s pin-up girl, I feel out of place. Wrong. Exposed. There’s no escaping how much I don’t fit in with Chloe’s new friends. How much I don’t want to fit in. Especially if it means wearing something like this to garner favor.
But dealing with some drunken jibes and meaningless conversations can’t be as bad as that fight. I can ignore it. My meds are kicking in. No disembodied voices to be heard for several minutes now. I can rebuild my fictions, my mental walls, brick by brick.
Ghosts aren’t real.
Still, I hold my breath, lean forward, and strain to see the side of my head, folding my ear out of the way. It’s hard to see, but as I turn my head just right, the scarred skin catches the bathroom light, shimmering deep gold. Twin curls—too precise to be an accident. Almost like a brand. A birthmark right behind the ear.
I close my eyes, the symbol burning behind my eyelids. A symbol I’ve understood since childhood.
Lady of Winter.
Without looking, I turn off the light and fight back tears. Every time I look, I expect it to be gone. But it never fades.
And Kane had a marking just like it. Matching swirls down his arms.
Refusing to let my mind spiral further, I tug open the door to my best friend. My foundation. My anchor. She drapes her arms over my shoulders, twists fingers behind my head, presses our foreheads together. Raspberry scents cover me, and the hug is warm and protective, as if her small body could shield all the threats of the world. Pizza-guys, monsters. Voice low, she says, “Birthday time?”
My heart clenches. I want to joke but can’t find my voice.
She grins, pecking my cheek with a dotted kiss.
The contact spreads trails of welcome heat over my skin like soft rose petals. She laughs, winks, and returns to her guests. The two boys dressed like mustached musketeers are smacking shoulders. Red plastic cups are in every hand. Half a dozen people fill the small kitchen. People I don’t trust; I have nothing in common with. Maybe even Chloe herself.
I press two fingers to my cheek, replaying the kiss again and again. Chloe’s stamp saved just for me, letting me know I am not alone. I haunt her steps, accept the distraction, and leave the bitter cold of dark horrors behind.