An incessant ringing rattles against her nightstand, and she flings an arm out, smacking wildly at the buttons on her clock. "Where's the snooze?" she mutters against the pillow. There's a wet spot her cheek rolls into. Drool. Gross. "Where's the snooze?" When her fingers flail against every button on the alarm to no avail, she slaps her hand down on the wood. A vibration spreads into her palm. She stretches an eye open, only one, and winces at the brightness of her phone and the blue morning. There's a name on the screen: Giddy Boy.

With an attractive grunt, she grabs the phone up and slides the green phone to the side, pressing the screen to her ear. "What?"

"Good morning to you too, sunshine," a warm and way-too-enthusiastic-for-five-thirty-in-the-morning voice teases. "I needed to talk to you. I think I've got a plan on how to deal with this Darcy ghost."

Lacey squeezes her eyes to a close. "This couldn't have waited until an hour where old people and newborn babies weren't the only ones awake?"

"No. No, cap'n, not at all. By my logic, our investigation is stunted by the things following you around, and if we want to break and enter places peacefully, we need the proper deterrents which, in this case, is ghost salt. The sooner we get ahold of that, the sooner we'll be able to pick back up with Erie." He rustles on the other side. "I'll explain later. Meet me at the park at around, uh....eight?"

"Yeah. Whatever. Eight."

Before he can go off on any other tangents, she slams her thumb against the big red button. Tossing her phone against the nightstand with a worrisome clatter, she buries her face back into the pillow and descends into sleep once more.

She's not unconscious for long. The morning light drifts in through the yellow curtain on her window and shines in her eyes, and knowing in the back of her mind that she needs to be up in a couple of hours leaves her wavering on the cusp between asleep and awake until she finally decides to get up.

Groggy and blurry-eyed, she patters around the house, replacing some of the salt lines while Jeremy is still asleep. He's got today off, which must be nice with all of the electrical work he's had to do with shortages and basement flooding throughout the past week. She's hardly seen him. Then again, maybe that's a good thing-

He slips into the hallway just as she's turning back into her room. A loud yawn alerts her to his presence. "What are you doing up, Lacey-bug?"

"Uh." She rubs a hand over her face and presses fingertips into the roundness of her cheeks. "I need you to drop me off at the park." A pause. "Please."

He shoves his fingers into the corners of his eyes, wiping away sleep. "Sure. I can do that. Is someone gonna be there with you though? I'm not sure I'm comfy leaving you there by yourself with everything that's goin' on."

"Yeah. I'm meeting Gideon."

He nods in approval, then unleashes another yawn and stretches his arms behind his head. He turns to head back into his room, too, but he shoulder-checks the doorframe and has to reorient himself. Lacey chuckles. He snorts to himself. Other than Gideon's wake-up call, today might be a good day yet.

They're on the road an hour later, the both of them still fighting back yawns. As Lacey watches the scenery pass by, she takes note of the wet concrete, the little streams hugging the curb, branches knocked free of trees and into yards. "Did it rain last night?" she asks.

"You didn't hear the storming?" He flicks a finger against the radio and twists the knob to a healthy volume. It's still scratchy and hard to follow, but she picks out the words well enough.

"...shows no signs of letting up any time soon. Thunderstorms are expected to pick up again at noon today and continue into the night, possibly into tomorrow morning. Heavy winds are expected to accompany the showers, so make sure you take anything you don't want to blow away inside, and move your trash cans to as obstructed a location as possible. Be sure to check into your local weather station for hourly updates. Janet, back to you."

They pull into a little convenience store lot just off the side of the road and Jeremy pops his door open. He's in and out in minutes, and upon hopping back into the driver's seat, he tosses two canisters of salt into her lap. "Don't think I didn't notice your sneaking," he says, "just take it easy on the salting. It's concerning."

Her cheeks redden. Oops.

They're crawling down the street a few seconds later, and before she knows it, he's parked in the lot in front of the park and she hops down, salt cradled to her chest.

"Be careful. If you see anyone you don't know, run. Call me if Gideon isn't here in the next ten minutes."

"Dad, I'll be fine."

"I need to be sure that's the case." For the first time in a long time, his voice doesn't tremble; he is firm, solid. This isn't negotiable. She nods. Okay. She'll keep him at peace. With a tense smile, he puts the car in reverse and starts backing out. She waves as best she can at him with her free hand, and then he's gone and she's alone.

In this weird, desolate playground. Excellent. Amazing. Beautiful. God, I'm an idiot.

Lacey, with nothing else to do, wanders. She wanders into the mulch, dulled a dark brown from the rain, and kicks the flakes up with her yellow sneakers, exposing the muddy earth underneath. She wanders in front of the swings, which creak against a scarce breeze, hardly enough to feel. She wanders to a bare spot to the side, far removed from the equipment and laden with rubber ground. Her legs sink into it the smallest bit. A gasp strikes her lungs, cold and hard. Right. This must be the playground from that dream. Or memory. Or whatever it was.

This park must be from another realm entirely, though. In the dream, the whole of the area had been clear and visible to the eye, bathed in the heated glow of the sun, like it'd been popped in an oven and the red tubing blazed all around to bake the little kiddies into crisps. Probably why the worm got so dry. But here, now, the morning sun runs through the clouds in a grey filter. The world is ashen, diseased. The flamboyant colors that should pop off the metal and plastic comes across faded, and a light mist hovers above the ground. It lingers in the wide open space and extends far into the fringe of forestry beyond the tall fencing that keeps anything from getting in, and anything from getting out. Probably for the better, considering how the distant gush of the Epling River skirts on the wind. Wouldn't want toddlers running off and taking the plunge. Wouldn't want them to wind up like Stella.

Lacey grinds a palm into one of her eye sockets. "I shouldn't be out here. I don't wanna be out here." A suck of air. "I'll be fine I'll be fine I'll be fine. Fuck."

As if to punctuate her expletive, a faint clatter of what sounds like metal comes bumbling from the other side of the park, atop a hill. On instinct, she pulls the two boxes from her big sweatshirt pocket and flicks the tabs open with her thumbs, already galloping backwards. Her face pales; blood runs cold. "No, no, no no no," she hisses.

From the fog emergeth a metallic stallion, and atop it, a big fucking idiot.

His face is obscured, but the "Woohoo!" in his voice is unmistakable. That dork barrelling down the hill on his bike, a white sheet flapping behind him as he bumbles towards her, can't be anyone other than Gideon Lucas. Lacey flattens her features and slams the tabs shut. I'm going to kill him in this park today.

When he comes to a stop, he slams on the brakes, and his tires squeal and burn against the rubber ground. She imagines he's probably got a stupid grin on, but she can't really tell, namely due to the white bedsheet with two holes cut in the middle for eyes draped over his head. She squints through the holes and his blue eyes blink back at her. "What are you wearing?"

"Oh, this? I thought if I tried to appear more like the ghosts you're about to contact, y'know, like all droopy and fluttery like-," he wriggles a hand out from under the sheet and swishes the fabric through the air, "-then they'd be more willing to cooperate. Or, like, this could be a sign that we come in peace, trying to relate."

He nods his neckless head and grabs hold of the handlebars. With a great deal of difficulty, he tries to remove himself from the bike, but the sheets become tangled in the chain and his legs, and he has to give it a good yank to completely detach and punt the kickstand into place. Once he's done, he turns to Lacey. "Is this offensive?"

She has no words. Absolutely none that are appropriate for the location. Instead, she bunches a great deal of fabric in her hand and yanks the sheet off his head. His honey-brown hair springs up, sticking in all different directions. "Hey!" He snatches the sheet and rolls it up in his arms, hugging it to his chest.

Lacey rolls her eyes, but they catch on something protruding from behind his shoulder. It's long, red, foam-tipped. "Is that...is that a Super Soaker?"

His brows lift into his forehead and he grins, turning to the side to show the bulky backpack hanging from his shoulders. How it hasn't completely burst, she's not sure, but she's not entirely positive she wants to know what all he brought for this venture, either. "Gideon. What are we doing here? I need an explanation or I'm calling my dad to take me right back home. I want to sleep."

"Alrighty!" He whoops again to himself, quietly this time, and shimmies his way over to the bike so he can toss the sheet over the seat. "The plan. You're being followed by a poltergeist, yeah? And you said that ghosts who make binding deals with the malevolent whatevers can't cross salt. Wait, wait, I need to backtrack. We're at the park because poltergeists are typically children, according to Google, and I'm thinking we're more likely to get what we want out of Darcy if she's in her comfort zone even if she is technically almost a forty year old woman. Really, we're all children at heart in this cruel, unfortunate world, so is she being unreasonable? I dunno. I say if they're shorter than four feet, they get a free pass, but amusement park officials would say otherwise."

"I need you to get to the point in the next twenty seconds or I'm leaving."

"Okay! Okay." He claps once to himself and begins tossing his head from one side to the other, a subtle dancy bob. "Darcy is the one keeping the ghosts banned, right? And if you need salt-breather salt to make any substantial leeway in, y'know, life, we'll just have to find a way to take it. And so, I present to you: Operation Bill Murray!"

Saliva gets caught in her throat on the way down and she chokes a little. After recovering, she twists her face up and blinks. "Operation...Bill Murray."

"Yeah," he nods with enthusiasm, "like the Ghostbusters. I watched all the movies after I left your house the other day."

Strangling people is bad, strangling people is bad-

"So! Plan A. We make a summoning circle, but get this, the circle is table salt, that way if she goes mean ghostie on us, she can't get out."

Lacey parts her lips to respond, closes them as she rethinks how to put this, and tries again. "That wouldn't work."

"Why not?"

"You can't summon a ghost that's made a binding contract with Malevolence within an enclosed area of salt. It'd be pretty useless if they could just manifest inside whenever."

His jaw sits open for a while and his eyes scan the playground. Then, something clicks. "...Okay, well, a circle of salt. But get this, it has a hole in it."

She closes her eyes, rubs a palm over her cheek. "I- hm. I mean, we can try, but I can't guarantee it'll work."

"That's fine! That's what the back-up plan is for. If it does work, though, the rest of Plan A will just be you asking nicely - emphasis on nicely! - for Darcy to unblock the salt-breathers."

Good luck getting me to achieve that. "And if she refuses?"

His nose crinkles and he splays his arms towards the sky, a declaration settled in his throat. "Plan B!"

A flock of black birds perched in the branches of a nearby tree, only a few leaves budded up in preparation for spring, caw and lift themselves into the air, gliding in a scatter, no formation. She traces the flight path of one. "You're scaring the birds," she says.

"Oh," he says, enthusiasm momentarily abated, "sorry." In a swift motion, he slips an arm out of the backpack strap and slips his fingers beneath the other, sweeping it free of his shoulder. The bulge at the bottom hits the mulch. Then, Gideon's knees do. He fumbles to unzip the pack the rest of the way, but eventually he's elbow-deep. "If she can be summoned into the partial circle, we just fill it in the rest of the way. If she can't, things get a little more complicated, and for that, we need supplies. Thankfully, I am great, so I came prepared. Basically, I wanna have two lines of salt drawn on either side of the park, that way if she takes off in either direction, she'll eventually run into a line she won't be able to cross and this'll slow her down."

"Slow her down? What, are you gonna tackle the ghost?"

He glances up from the bag, wide-eyed. "Can I do that?"

"No."

He shrugs and pulls a tiny glass salt shaker out of his bag, followed by a water bottle with the label ripped off. "Well, anyways. If she doesn't run off, I'll come down and scare her towards one, and that's where you come in. You," he hands her the salt shaker, "are gonna throw this to keep her in place long enough to finish the ring around her. If Darcy's the one keeping your ghosts at bay, she'll be stuck long enough for them to come through, right? Right."

He drives both hands into the bag and comes out with a full stack of wide buckets, each of them clanging against one another as he places them in the mulch. "We'll put some of these around the park and carry our own and be like, 'Spare salt? Spare salt ma'am? Just a little salt, sir, so that I may purchase a hearty vegetable.' Sound good?"

It, debatably, does not sound good, but it's the only idea they have and Lacey'll be damned if she sits here in the cold, wet air trying to come up with anything better. She nods, and Gideon launches to his feet. "Oh, wait!" A memory pops into his eyes and he introduces his phone, gingerly inputting the password. "I also downloaded a ghost-hunting app that way I know where she is even though I can't see her. See?"

He holds it up. There, in the center of his screen, is a green radar, with a brighter emerald light spinning in circles. A yellow dot pops up in the corner. He gasps.

Frustration flares in Lacey's throat and she smacks the phone away, much to Gideon's fumbling displeasure. "Get rid of that. And if we're gonna do this, we'll have to get out of here as soon as Darcy crosses the line. Once she does, she'll have every demon in Carrick tracking my ass, starting right here. I'm not kidding around." They might be tailing her right now, lurking in the shadows of the equipment she can't see. An uncomfortable chill skitters up her back. "Let's get this over with."

He's content to follow through with the request. They decide to draw the lines on either side of the park first, and Lacey tosses one of her salt boxes into Gideon's clumsy hands, which earns a cheeky grin from him. Despite the wide smile, there's something in his face that, dare she say it, worries her. His face is dirty, hair oily like he hasn't properly washed it in a few days. It certainly smells unwashed when he gets close enough. There's a red filter over his eyes, raw, tired, bloodshot. He plays it off well, though. Surely, he'll find it in him to pass out early tonight. Jogging around the park like he is, setting down the buckets, ought to exhaust him enough to prevent him from not getting a good night's sleep.

Even if he doesn't, it's not her problem. He'll figure it out himself. She's got her own shit to handle.

Starting with this partial salt circle. She shakes salt out into a ring, the heavy swish quiet in her hands, and leaves the smallest gap, small enough to fill with a quick dump of the box's contents. It's rough against the mulch, but it ought to do the trick all the same, pretty or not. The only issue - which she realizes only once she's stood in front of it, ready to begin - is that she doesn't know how to summon a ghost of this caliber. Well, she does, but last time she'd had help. Candles and mirrors, the cover of night. Now? Sheer willpower.

Grunting, she pulls out her phone and sets it in front of the circle, socket pulled out so it stands slanted in the mulch. It's not much, but it's some sort of reflective surface. A black mirror in and of itself. Hopefully Gideon is right about the location. He's up in the tower of the jungle gym, the highest point where all the slides diverge from. He gives her a thumbs up. Unfortunately, from under the bedsheet. He ducks down and then it's all up to her.

Wonderful.

Although a wriggle of anticipation sits in her chest - anticipation of the worst - she takes a deep breath, holds it, and lets it go, over and over again until her heart is slowed, the tension in her muscles fades, and the world is sharp. The distant gush of the river fills her ears and the swing chains rattle and tug, thick noise. Everything smells of wet earth, wet wood, wet spring. The back of her hand moistens, and she glances down at the glistening of sweat despite the chill seeping into her clothes. Her gaze shifts into the center of the circle, and she gulps. This is all familiar. I must be doing something right, then.

A fatigue crosses over her eyes and she presses words up from the bottom of her throat. "Darcy Wepler of Carrick, Iowa, I summon you."

Nothing in the air changes, not even the faint feeling of someone lingering, listening. Her eye twitches. Reaching half in this world and half in the next, she absentmindedly stretches her foot out and kicks away the circle, breaking it into billions of dust-sized pieces. The black mirror is repositioned. She drifts a few feet away from where the circle was and zeroes in on a spot in the mulch. All the gushing and the rattling and wind whistling fades into a harsh ringing. Her voice tunnels outward. "Darcy Wepler, I demand to speak to you. Any time in the next decade would be nice."

There it is, a turning of the breeze, a heavy taste of honey in the air that previously held the savor of a million dead worms. It settles in the middle of her chest, thick and sick. It's nauseating, and Darcy's bitter glance through eyelashes and black hair dripping with groundwater doesn't exactly help. She's certainly got the weary-worn expression of an almost forty year old woman, but the baggy overalls she wears make her look smaller. If this weren't a whiny poltergeist, Lacey might've pinched her cheeks.

She gets right to the point. "I found out more."

This short statement is enough to quell the vicious squint in the girl's eyes; they widen, like she's being tempted with ice cream. "Tell me, tell me!"

"You said you were never buried," Lacey says matter-of-factly, "and I'm here to tell you that's simply not true. I found your grave yesterday. They recovered your body years ago. Theoretically, you should be at rest."