The Lost Chronicles

The Blue Girl Cont

 

I was the first one to wake up the next morning, rolling over to keep the sun out of my eyes. We hadn’t bothered closing the curtains the night before, being so tired from running around the forest.

 

I sat bolt upright, remembering what had happened, and our promise, or Avalon’s promise, to the ghost.

 

I swung out of bed and shook Avalon awake, although it took a few minutes and she got in a few good shots before she clued in to who was shaking her. I suspected she knew the whole time and just didn’t want to get up.

 

“Come on,” I said. “We have to go bone hunting. Unless you want to go tell the sheriff or whatever they have here, which would be the sane thing to do.”

 

“If we tell someone, they’ll either think we’re nuts, believe us and try to hunt her down, or think we’re covering up a crime with a crazy story,” she said, shoving the covers aside. “Besides, it’s been a hundred years. There’s nothing for a cop to do that we can’t.”

 

Once we got ready and scarfed down some toast, we started searching for the tool shed.

 

We located an old, rickety looking shed to the side off the house. Inside were all types of gardening tools; weed whackers, mulch, wheelbarrow the shears Mrs McKraken had used. More lined the walls and lay on the floor.

 

We pulled out a shovel, a bucket, and a pair of gloves that I insisted upon.

 

Twenty minutes later, we were arriving at the rock, looking for the path to the creek. Another five, and Avalon was knee deep in the water, jeans rolled up and flip flops off, scooping shovelfuls of silt onto the bank.

 

Wearing the gloves, it was my job to search through the muck, keeping an eye out for the ghost, despite what the journal said about when she appeared.

 

I was about to tell Avalon that she was wrong, and that all I had found were a few sticks and rocks, when I spotted a long, curved piece of bone, brown, as if someone had rubbed a tea bag over it or soaked it in coffee.

 

Gritting my teeth, I pulled it out of the pile, rinsed it off in the creek, and tossed it into the bucket before continuing my search, hating how often Avalon was right in her wild theories.

 

A few hours later, Avalon had dug out a good portion of the creek bed onto the bank, and was helping me search through the silt.

 

More than a few times when I found bones in the pile, I regretted the toast I had eaten and fought to keep it down. I thought for sure I was going to lose it when we found the skull, part of the back smashed to bits.

 

The bucket slowly filled up with bones as we tossed silt back into the creek, stirring up little muddy clouds in the water.

Eventually Avalon tossed the last handful into the water and sat back.

 

“Well, that’s all there is to find. Anything not here got carried off by animals. This will have to do,” she said.

 

“I can’t believe we just dug up a hundred-year-old bones,” I muttered. “We’re completely insane.”

 

“Yup, but it’s for a good cause,” she reminded me. “We’re gonna set her free. Come on.”

 

She stood up, grabbed the bucket, and wandered off, leaving me to take the shovel and follow her.

 

“So, where are we making the grave?” I asked.

 

“We’ll make it at the rock, using it as a headstone. She spends all her time there anyways.”

 

And so we found ourselves, two hours later, at the rock, with a hole large enough to bury one of us and about waist deep dug at its base.

 

I had no clue how Avalon was being so chill about burying the ghost’s body, but she even took the time to scatter the bones in a way that they looked like a skeleton.

 

We almost had the full skeleton, just missing the back of the skull, bits of the spine and most of the small bones from the fingers and toes.

 

It took us only about half an hour to fill the hole and replant the flowers, which we managed to keep mostly intact and

together.

 

Covered in dirt, exhausted from the day’s work, and needing food, no matter how grossed out I was, since we had skipped lunch, we finally made it back to the house.

 

We didn’t even bother to put away the bucket, shovel, and gloves, instead just leaving them on the porch and heading inside to take turns in the shower.

 

The rest of the day was spent hanging out in the living room, trying to find something interesting on TV. The best thing on was a Ghostbusters marathon.

 

We waited until the sun started to set before heading back out to see if burying the bones had done any good.

 

By that point, we had worn a clear path to the rock, the grass and plants so trampled and shoved to the side we could probably have found our way in pitch black.

 

I turned on my lantern as we reached the rock, the sun’s rays fading.

 

“So, do you think she’s gone?” I asked Avalon, glancing around.

 

“I don’t know. She should be, she’s got a proper grave now,” she replied. “She’s shown up every night so far, so if we don’t see her tonight, that’ll be our answer.”

 

We waited a short while more, shining our lights into the trees and trying to spot a blue shimmer.

 

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard giggling behind us.

 

Spinning around, we spotted the ghost, dancing and swirling around the rock, a smile on her face.

 

“You’re still here,” Avalon said, stating the obvious.

 

“Still here,” The ghost repeated, giggling. Her voice still echoed through the trees like before, but there was no underlying hiss. Instead, it was soft, pleasant, almost musical.

 

“But, you have a grave,” I told her, pointing to the dirt patch over her bones.

 

“Have a grave, still here.”

 

“Did you choose to stay here?” Avalon asked.

 

“Choose to stay here,” the ghost confirmed.

 

“Are you, happy? At peace?”

 

“Have a grave, happy, at peace, choose to stay here.” The ghost twirled, giggling again.

 

“So, you aren’t going to go all crazy and kill us or anything?” I clarified. She shook her head before zipping around, weaving between us.

 

“And you’re going to hang out here for a while?” Avalon asked. The ghost paused long enough to nod again.

 

“Well, I guess we have to give her a name,” I said.

 

“Well, what about Avira?” Avalon suggested. The ghost stopped in front of her and nodded, a grin still spread across her face. “Alright, Avira it is. Nice to meet you.”

 

“Nice to meet you,” the ghost repeated.

 

“I guess that notebook we found will have to be changed,” I told Avalon. “She’s different now.”

 

“Well, maybe you should make a new one,” Avalon said. “You can sketch Avira and her rock, and record everything we

learned about her. And you can do the same thing for anything else we find.”

 

“You think there’s going to be more in this place?” I asked.

 

“Well, we’ve got all summer. Let’s find out.”