Read part one of this story here.
A cold hand brushed Tommy’s cheek. The touch dilated his eyes, turning his world into a bright light shining into his soul. He blinked several times in an attempt to clear his vision.
Slowly, his vision resolved into something more coherent, although his mind refused the images he saw. The lake was conflagration of purple and pink tongues of flame. The trees shivered and he could hear their branches chattering like teeth.
He turned around in his chair, the way you will when you see a gorgeous person driving past you in the opposite direction. What he saw stopped his heart.
The ghostly form became a beautiful woman, her eyes were full broken dreams. Every girl he had fallen in love with, every woman who had broken his heart; this was her. Aglow in her own radiance and glory, she was perfection.
The electricity radiating from her pulled the air out of him so fast that he couldn’t help but envision himself as one of those fruit pouch drinks. The kind that come with a straw you have to poke through the silver packaging, more often than not ending in a spouting mess vaguely resembling a punctured artery. Casper Sun, Caper Sun, something like that.
An air shattering screech removed all thoughts of fruit pouches and straws from his mind. It reverberated through the calm summer night like an earthquake. The ghost’s form softened, and she became translucent again, as though her scream was made up of the things that made her solid. Perhaps it had been.
Stretching her arm out as though the action was draining every last ounce of strength she possessed, she pointed her finger across the lake of purple fire.
Following the reach of her finger, Tommy’s eyes fell upon a tree he could have sworn wasn’t there before. Underneath the tree was a cross that oozed dark fluid like volcanic sweat.
Fear erupted Goose-pimples all over Tommy’s body, as though the dark ooze, like the cross, was trying to escape from his body. The ooze from the cross was evil, his was an eruption of fear. He clutched at his chest, sure that should he let go, his heart would explode inside him.
The ghost vanished. Tommy woke up.