When I was a child-- I mean a real child, not as old as the one that lived in the pink house in the Catskills-- I used to have these awful nightmares. There would be these dark, foreboding figures, shadows along the walls and ceiling of my room. They would creep up to my window and burst out and I would see them escape down onto our front lawn and douse everything in shadow. And then they would travel all across the town and then they would fly up into the stars. And they would eat, and eat, and eat until all that was left up in space was just them and this inescapable blackness, like Earth was suddenly sitting at the bottom of a deep cave.

And I would wake up screaming and crying and begging for it to stop until finally, finally, my mother would rush in and she would pull me close to her breast and she would hold me. I would feel the air pull into her chest and then release, and that would slowly soothe me until I felt safe enough to go back to sleep.

As she walked back to her room, she would turn back and smile at me with a wave. I would smile back, and then I would pull the NASA-themed sheets back above my head and I would fall into a deep sleep. And, for that night, the ghosts would be at bay.

I was thinking of all this as Lily led me up the winding staircase towards the turret at the top. It was a difficult climb, much worse than the day I went up there with Cynthia. The wind was howling and the turret moved ever so slightly left and right, and compounding this was rain pooling down the steps from either a hole in the roof or an open window. The pink house had withstood many storms, but few quite like this.

“Don’t worry, dahling, the rain’ll stop soon.”

“But what makes you think my grandmother will be up here?”

“Well, haven’t you seen her up in the window? And where else might she be, dahling? All the other bedrooms are occupied.”

Lily was right, as usual. All the other bedrooms in the pink house were occupied, and I had been in every other room. But last time I was up here, it was empty. There’s nowhere for Grandmother to sleep up here. 

We reached the top of the winding staircase and Lily turned to face me.

“Ready, Freddy?”

I nodded, meekly. I could feel a ball forming in my stomach, rolling over and over again and growing bigger and bigger. I was going to meet my grandmother.

Lily pushed open the wooden door leading to the top of the tower and I was hit by a gust of wind so strong that I almost lost my footing. Lily reached back and grabbed me by the end of my shirt, before pulling me back towards her and kissing me on the lips.

Caught by surprise and suddenly unable to breathe, I tried to back away before realizing that this is what I wanted all along. I was suddenly aware of everything around me, the wind and rain hitting my forehead as Lily kept me close with her hand on my back. The smell of her perfume hitting my nostrils. The feeling of her hair as I slowly moved my hand up her back and towards the back of her head.

Lily was kissing me, and as far as first kisses go it wasn’t half bad.

After what felt like a decade had gone by, she backed away into the room.

“Come on, dahling, let’s go meet your grandmother.”

I followed her and stepped into Hell itself.

If the kiss was the rainbow, the tower was the hurricane-- and almost literally. The room was far different than when I had come with Cynthia. The walls were wallpapered a garish blue checkerboard pattern but were stained yellow from smoke and neglect. Pictures hung from the walls, off-centered and weirdly spaced, which for some reason made me even more nervous than the fact that every picture had these figures with jet-black eyes and looks of hatred and malice. There was a bed in this room: black cedar and without sheets. 

And all around the room, papers were being tossed around and getting soaked by the rain and wind blowing in through the glass window. Blood red skies pooled in behind the rain, as though the falling water wasn’t coming from clouds but rather from the River Styx. I turned to Lily, who stood in the doorway with the same look of sheer bewilderment that probably showed on my face. I heard glass shatter behind me and turned towards a broken hourglass sitting on the floor, and an ancient woman standing over it.

“Oh, now who might you two be?” the old lady crooned, a smile enveloping the deep wrinkles on her face, turning them smooth if only for a moment.

“Uh . . . um--”

“I’m Lily, and this is Fred! It’s a pleasure to meet you!”

Lily swiftly walked towards the old woman with her hand outstretched. The old woman looked down at it before smiling and shaking. Lily sat on the edge of the bed and turned to face me.

“Freddy, aren’t you gonna shake your grandmother’s hand?”

I looked at the old woman in front of me. Her smile was wrong, somehow. Like between those empty gums there was a black hole that would swallow me whole if I even dared walk too close to her. Or like the smile wasn’t really there but was a creation of my mind. Like I was going crazy and was only imagining a smile.

I smiled back towards the old woman and walked towards her. She grabbed my hand and shook it too vigorously for a woman her age, and then led me to the edge of her bed beside Lily.

“So, how can I help the two of you today?”

“Well, Freddy here wanted to meet his grandmother, and I thought I’d bring him up.”

“Oh ho ho, is that so!”

The woman’s laugh was sickly sweet, like a razor inside a candy bar. It was malicious, even though she was trying to hide it. I recoiled, and Lily put her and on my knee to soothe me. It didn’t work. The woman slowly calmed down and then glared at me with pitch-black eyes and a sick smile.

“You won’t find your grandmother here, Freddy.”

“Then who are you?” Lily piped up, obviously as enticed by these events as I was petrified. The woman turned and looked at her, and smiled again.

“Call me Morrigan, sweetheart.”

“Are you a ghost?”

The woman, Morrigan, seemed to recoil for a split second from this remark, before smiling again and staring directly into Lily’s soul.

“Why, you’re a smart one aren’t you dearie? A ghost? Not quite . . . I could be the First Ghost, though, if you want to think of me as such. Why don’t I get some tea for you dearies?”

Morrigan stood up and hobbled over to a small cupboard attached to the wall. I didn’t see any water boil or tea being poured from a teapot, but she came back almost immediately with three cups of tea on saucers. Lily took hers eagerly and started sipping it, I took mine and set it on my lap. Morrigan smiled at us.

“Listen, dearies, at that storm out there. It’s going to be a real knockout here soon.” 

I started to say something, anything, to get some clarity to what was happening around me, but Morrigan cut me off. 

“We don’t have too much time, Freddy. Why don’t you let me talk, and I’ll try to answer as many questions as you may have?”

I felt myself nod, though I couldn’t remember telling my head to do that.

“Okay, dearies, let’s start simple. We all believe in Ghosts, right?”

“We do, right, dahling?” Lily gave me a strange, inhuman smile. A mirror of the old woman sitting in front of us. I nodded, unconvinced.

“Well, of course, you both do! Freddy, you of all people should, certainly. Now, I’m here to tell you that Ghosts exist and that you and you will both be responsible for so many of them!” 

The old woman poked both of us in the chest as she said this. I recoiled, and Lily smiled.

“And, you’re one of them?”

“Well, as I said, not exactly. Almost. Maybe you should consider me the Queen of the Ghosts oh ho ho ho.”

Morrigan laughed, that sick, twisted laugh and then stared at me.

“Fred Benton, I don’t know that it was fate that brought you here today or that girl beside you, but you need to stop them.” 

“Wha-”

“You need to stop them, Fred. That’s your part in this. You need to stop them. You need to stop them. YOU NEED TO STOP THEM.” 

The old woman was shouting that phrase over and over. My hands gripped the side of my bed. Lily sipped her tea beside me, blissfully unaware of this exchange or choosing to ignore it. After some time, the old woman stopped.

“Some time from now, you will meet my sister. Trust her. Believe in her. She will be the beginning of your salvation. You must go.”

I looked down and saw that my teacup was empty as Morrigan picked it out of my hands. I turned to face Lily, who was pouting.

“Will we ever see you again, Granny?”

The old woman grinned.

“Oh ho ho, everyone sees me again, at the end.”

And with that suddenly I woke up on the floor of the room at the top of the turret. Water had pooled all around me and I was soaked. Lily was lying a few feet away, beside the lone chair in the empty room, and I crawled toward her.

Just then, the door of the room burst open and Cynthia and my father were standing there, looking stern. My father dashed at me and picked me up off the floor.

“Fred, what are you doing in here?”

“I-- uh--”

“Cynthia, I told you we should never have let him in here. Come on, get up. We’re going downstairs to get you cleaned up.”

He pulled me along beside him towards the doorway. I turned back to see Lily, slowly rising from the floor. My father followed my gaze and saw her standing there.

“And I never want you near my son again!”

I started to protest, to say that it wasn’t her fault, to say something, but Lily cut me off.

“It’s okay, dahling, really. We’ll meet again. I promise.”

With those words trailing behind us, Cynthia closed the door of the room at the top of the tower and my father dragged me down the stairs. He would keep his word, and I wouldn’t see Lily again that summer. Or the next summer. Or the summer after that. But, one summer’s day, only a few years before the incident in Ellis and the Hell that would come after, I would see her once more.

She kept her promise, too.