When she leaves the library, defeated, the rain is heavy, and beats at the world relentlessly, as if in the midst of a tantrum. "Why?!" it might be screaming. "Why are you so, so, so unfair?" It's so aggressive in its onslaught that she has trouble just pushing open the door wide enough for her to slip through, the pads of her fingers pale against the rivers streaming down the other side of the glass. Eventually, she manages. But the moment the sky realizes she's there, it turns its attentions on her, screaming not only at the ground, but at her empty hands, empty head, empty heart. "Why?!" it screams. "Why are you so, so, so unfair?"

Lacey hears none of it. Instead, she hears her own complaints, just barely hears her own gasps and groans against the cold rain, and hears her own loud call of, "Really? I have to walk home in this shit?"

She wraps her arms tight around her body, trying to lock in all warmth. But the wind hits brutally at her cheeks, biting down and sucking like a leech, and the glistening bony fellas across the street staring intently at her only help spread the shiver up her back. A bystander walks right through them and curses at the sudden chill that runs through their shoulders before carrying on. Lacey narrows her eyes at the spirits - if they can even be called that at this point. "What are you looking at?" she mutters.

For a moment, they simply stare back in the same absent way they typically do, cheeks hollowed to nothing more than zygomatic arches and a pale mandible. But then there's a shaking motion in the ribs of a few, as if they've finally learned how to laugh again, and their ghastly bones twine together as they dance away, down the street and through the rain. Their skeletal feet cause heavy ripples in the minor rivers the street has now become. It's so heavy, the downpour, that the water runs rapidly downhill, down the inclines on either side of her - one side running towards downtown, and the other to the more left-alone parts of Carrick, Iowa.

Now these fellas, they relish desolation and decay, for they can find solidarity in weak foundations. They can find a proper place to finish rotting. It's obvious which way they go.

Lacey watches them leave. She thinks, Good riddance.

And yet, these shy, mocking things are the only spirits that have acknowledged her existence in the past few days. The ones most incapable of interacting have laughed at her.

She feels cold and lonely in their absence and she hates it.

In an attempt to leave the feeling behind, she turns the other way and focuses on stopping the violent shivering. Searching the library for newspaper clippings and contemporary true crime novels have proven useless, and after hours of scrolling through the internet on the computers inside, all she has to show for all of her hard work is that now she knows where not to look. Also, where to find coupons if she ever finds herself back in 1993.

Other than that, her pursuits have been fruitless. She's no more knowledgeable as to who the little ghost girl is than she was this morning, last night, since meeting her. Staring out towards downtown, with its cozy cluster of buildings all lit up to combat the rain and dimming afternoon, she knows she's back at square one. She has no idea where to go next, where to start. If the library and the internet can't help, then what the hell will?

She stands on the incline, on the outskirts. The rain falls so meanly it hurts, and the sky is a dark blue, lightened by grey, and tinged far off with a smear of red, pink, purple trying to sneak between the cracks. It's getting late, it's been cold. She should just quit for the day. Go home, try again tomorrow. Or not. Just go home and never make another attempt. She squeezes her eyes shut. There I am again, she thinks, my lazy ass. Let's just start at getting home before we get drastic. I wanna be warm.

So Lacey turns back towards the street the bony fellas had walked and starts making her way down, staying strictly on the sidewalk to avoid getting soaked clear down to her socks. There are others rushing by, just off work, with their heads down and umbrellas high, but she ignores them, centered completely on the chill in her own bones, where she's stepping, on getting home before dark so that...thing is less likely to approach. Her chest clenches, gut flitting. I can't stop looking yet. I'm not safe.

Suddenly, she's craning to look at the details of the periodical passersby. She wants to see their eyes. The subtle curve of their lips. How they hold their jaw, the strength of their legs as they stride up the hill only to go back down. She wants to see if anyone holds her gaze, because then she'll know who to avoid. No one does.

Except one man. He's distant, and Lacey can't actually tell if he's looking directly at her, but he's facing her, and seems desperate to catch her attention. The attention of anyone. Even from far away, she can see him swinging his head this way, that way, face darting around as he runs, sprints, up the street. He's slowed by the incline and the water rushing for his feet, and he stumbles once, twice, but catches his balance each time and continues climbing rapidly. Lacey stops walking. Takes a step back, even.

He's not wearing a raincoat or holding an umbrella. He wears only a tan t-shirt, jeans, and boots, all equally drenched. Lacey looks beyond him, to discern where it is he came from. A ways away, on a wide bridge crossing the Epling River, a semi truck sits abandoned, the door flung open. This man definitely looks like a trucker - the wide belly, the baseball cap pulled over his eyes. The moving beard. Now he's close enough for her to see his mouth moving. But she can't hear his words. His voice blends into the drumming static of water pelting asphalt.

Lacey opens her mouth to say, "Are you okay?" but panic stops her. There's this wild, scared look in his eyes, and he's panting. Maybe the rain rolling down his face in thick beads is sweat; maybe the soaked tendrils of hair descending from his chin aren't moistened by the angry sky at all, but his angry fear.

He splashes closer. Finally, she's able to discern what it is he's saying. Hollering, more like.

"...In the river! There's somethin' in the river! Sittin' there, in the river!"

A shiver runs through her soaked form.

"A body in the river!"

By now, the others passing by have stopped to look at the running man, and a few umbrellas lower at the news, scraping the concrete and leaving each pretty little head exposed. Hands raise to mouths. Faces freeze. Ears listen in again. Lacey is so set on watching them all stiffen at the news that she hardly notices when the splashing closes in on her, and then stops altogether.

"I got outta my truck to check the bridge," his voice says, close and loud and breathy. Lacey's head snaps forward so fast she nearly catches whiplash and she stumbles back a step. He isn't put off by this. "I got outta my truck to check the bridge, 'cause of the water lappin' up all over it. And then I saw it." He smacks his lips together and sucks in air. "And then I done saw it. A body."

Eyes wide, Lacey blinks. Her breath hitches. A name comes to mind: Erie. She presses a set of shaking fingers to her lips and stares out behind the man towards the bridge. Oh, please, God, no. Shouldn't her clairvoyance allow her to breach the future too, to allow her to see, without seeing, who it is? It doesn't. It causes an uncomfortable creeping under her skin only. It's stupid.

The others standing in the street begin to make their way down to the bridge, some keeping a steady pace, some running, slipping, for the chance to catch a glimpse. The trucker looks out at them. "Someone, call the police!" The craze comes back into his face, and he runs past Lacey, towards downtown. His desperate yells proceed. "Call the police! Call the police!"

Alone again, she feels a craze come into her own eyes, a blurry one that makes the world swirl together. The rain is lifting rapidly but each drop still feels like something mean and morbid.

Maybe it's a mean and morbid curiosity that makes her follow the others who are running to the bridge.

Her shoes slip down the sidewalk on the way down, but she regains her balance after the sharp fluttering of imminent falling forces a gasp out of her throat. Faster, faster, and the fluttering rises, but in a painful, violent way, a ricochet from rib to rib. Someone ahead of her slips and falls flat on their ass. They scramble back up in a hurry - maybe they have a name in their mind, too, maybe that's what makes them ignore their soaked rears and dirt-smeared hands and keep running. Maybe that's what makes all of them keep running. Maybe that's why, by the time the incline of the road flattens out, there's a crowd already formulating on the bridge, and maybe that's why, when each new arrival closes in, they stand on tiptoes and crane their necks around every frantic head to see if what the trucker said is really true, if there really is a body in the river, if it belongs to one of their own.

Or maybe they just want to see a dead body because nothing exciting ever happens in Carrick, Iowa. Maybe these people will stoop that low. Maybe they realize it, but don't care.

The reality of these people's intentions makes Lacey bitter, and though she hesitates stepping onto the wide cement bridge at first, her angry doubts of others push her forward.

The water of the river has risen with the rainfall. It laps mildly over the edge, slicking the road. The rain itself has slowed, but still plops onto the watery bridge and spreads ripples out towards everyone's feet. When she walks forward, water permeates the fabric of her yellow shoes, drenches her socks, makes her feet cold. Her lips curl in disgust but she squelches onward. The crowd is thick, though, and pressed tight together, with no opening she can see. Her chest flutters again, a harsh, wracking flutter. "Move, damn it," she whispers, knitting her brows and considering pushing a way through.

There's gasping and muttering at the front. She can hear it vaguely, but then the bits and pieces start moving backward through other people's mouths, closer to Lacey. She strains to catch what they say.

"Oh, that poor girl!"

"I think I'm gonna be sick."

"How long d'you think she's been dead? Can't be more than two weeks. Went missing two weeks ago. D'you think she died the moment she went missing or was it later?"

"Oh, God, this'll crush her family. Absolutely crush them. I can't imagine how I'd react if it was Susanna down there - I don't even wanna think about it!"

"Where's the goddamn police? Fuck, man! This is fucked!"

It's obvious it's not Erie, so Lacey releases a pent-up breath and lets herself relax a bit. She almost feels guilty for it - he may not be dead, but someone else is. There's less fear in her because of it; as a matter of fact, she's almost more prepared to see who it is now that she's sure it's not someone she knows. I shouldn't look regardless. It'll be stuck with me.

And then, a unanimous agreement shared in the air, one voice proclaiming it louder than the others:

"It's time to call Elijah."

She knows Elijah. Familiarity strikes a chord in her chest. It thrums. I need to look.

Her feet squelch forward and her moist hands grip onto the trickling fabric of windbreakers covering strangers' arms. She shoulders a way through at first, but the closer to the rail overlooking the river, the tighter and less budgy the crowd gets. Her stomach tingles after a brief and violent shock of anxiety, and she starts to shove people aside, using the bulk of her weight to force a way through. Some share dirty looks; most remain transfixed on the scene below, unbothered. Most keep their hands latched on tight to the metal rail, knuckles stark white. One woman turns away and detaches, hands held over her mouth as she stumbles off the sidewalk and into the watery road, probably to release her stomach contents on the other side. Lacey takes the opportunity and hops onto the concrete, into the open space, her own hands latched tight to the slimy metal. Then she looks down.

Stella de Almeida was beautiful. Lacey knows this; she's seen the missing persons' posters covering up the other girl's face, she's seen an image, probably taken from Elijah's own family album, selected by hand to show her at her most glowing. But down there, caught on a section of land protruding from the forest on the right of the river, Stella's corpse is not beautiful. Her carcass is not glowing. Death isn't like that. Lacey has known that without ever having to have seen a body - it's common sense.

It lays there, caught facedown in the dirt, in the hardly stable mush of mud that makes up the place where the river and earth meet. Her legs hang off and dip under the water, body half-submerged, but even without the other half anyone can see that she's been stripped down as if going for a swim, all the necessities covered, but her back, arms, legs left bare and exposed. Lacey shivers for her, and for a moment, even considers that she must be cold that way. Maybe that's what happened - young, ambitious girl just wanted to take a dip, to swim in the river, but the cold froze her muscles, dragged her down, pulled her under.

But she can't theorize for long. The smell strikes her next, after the initial shock of seeing someone down there, dead flesh. It does away with any train of thought. Even as far away as it is, the odor is pungent and strong, almost overwhelming, and she finds herself empathizing with the woman who left. It's like meat left out to rot in the sun, but with a sickening sweetness behind it, faint but wafting in heavy clouds with the rest. Lacey'd seen the decomposition on Stella before, saw the bloated body and limbs, saw the greenish tint to her skin, noticed the crumbling, almost waxy substance growing in patches on her body, like soap scum left to build up for years and years. But even seeing all that, she hadn't at all anticipated the smell.

It brings Lacey to a crouch, and she squeezes her eyes shut as she pulls the collar of her sweater up over her nose and tries to breathe in the smell of her own, very alive skin. She notices her fingers shaking as they press the fabric against her face. The real kicker here is that, even though spirits have visited her for years, she's never actually seen a dead body. Hell, she hardly ever even sees the dead she speaks to take on a visible form - it's exhausting, she's been told. Seeing Stella, dead - seeing anyone dead - is something that's jolting Lacey out of herself for a moment. Death is a brutal, ugly thing. It's not like Romantic era poets and Tumblr emos make it out to be, it's not this mesmerizing and admirable experience. It forces her mind to whir. She's so young she's practically a child who would do this to a child there was a life in her and now it's gone and accidents happen all the time children are dying all the time children are dying right now where is God I still don't know if there is a God what sort of God would do this am I going to die like this too are we all going to die yes we're all going to die but I'm going to die too what am I supposed to make of that-

But for all of her thinking, it doesn't change the fact that Stella doesn't respond to the rain drizzling down on her, or the chaos of the crowd behind her, or the screaming or the crying or the gagging all caused by the sight of her. She just lays there, limp and shadowed by the dark and barren branches hanging over her head. She's just dead. She won't respond to anything, ever again.

Lacey pulls herself to a stand with some struggle. Her eyes can't take the sight of Stella anymore, so she turns back, eyes scanning the crowd, which has grown tremendously at this point for a small town in Iowa. Half of them are in hysterics. They cry out or they talk amongst themselves or they stand stiff and silent, eyes darting this way and that for direction on what to do. Someone declares that they're going to go down there and carry the body off to the station, but his announcement is shot down by three others who yell for good reason. There's evidence, dipshit. Everyone knows you don't touch a fucking body. Why would you even want to? Lacey's not sure if her disgust towards the man is warranted or not - regardless, she feels it, deeply.

She continues scanning the crowd, but her eyes catch on someone familiar. He's not firmly ingrained in her memory, but she's seen him just several hours ago, and the memory clicks. A pit in her stomach falls but by the time she thinks to turn back towards the river, he makes eye contact with her, and a glint of recognition flares in his face. Even despite the downturned lips and strained, scared muscles in his face, despite the solemn curve of his brows and the tension in his posture, when Gideon sees her, he seems to register an idea for himself, and takes a step forward, hand pressed gently to someone's back as he slips between two individuals.

Lacey's first reaction is to get away, an oh, hell no, not this whacko sort of attitude, so that's what she does: she turns the other way and starts slinking away from the scene, headed back the way she came, towards town. But police sirens are echoing through the whole of Carrick from that way now, singing into the wide air; red and blue flashes of light shoot between the trees and project against the grey gloom of the sky. It's yet another jarring experience that rattles deep inside of her, and it makes her pause. These are things that mean danger.

Pressure wraps around her upper arm. She turns on the perpetrator instantly, wet hair in her mouth and eyes on fire. She'll punch them, no hesitation. But Gideon's face is so twisted with emotion, wrenched and distressed with it, that she reconsiders. His lips part; his voice cracks. "We should search the riverbank when they're done. The police, when they're done."

Lacey's response is firm but shakes in her throat. She's cold. "No."