Here In Spirit

Heads bowed, they murmured in unison.

How praying one night a year was truly honouring him – or her – was one of the many questions sixteen year old Blayne would like to ask, but as dusk was quickly approaching she also knew the value of the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality.

Halloween night was a unique experience in the Bardsell house. Maggie and Thomas Bardsell – owners of Here In Spirit, and Blayne’s parents – made freeing Spirits their life's work and Halloween was their busiest time of year. Trick or Treat - words Blayne had never uttered as her friends did, as her little brother did – was over for Blayne before it ever really got started.

She’d been six years old the day her mother searched high and low, only to find Blayne standing in the attic as if in a trance, pointing at the floorboards. “She said she wasn’t a witch,” Blayne said to her mother, “and her name is Agatha.”

Maggie could only call it trusting an instinct she’d been born with as, using herself as a human shield to protect her daughter from the unknown, she began tapping at the floor with an old tire iron lying nearby, prying loose the floorboards to expose the hollowed out compartment below. Uncertain just what she was seeing, all she could do for a moment was stare...until the scream let loose by her daughter had her shaking herself back into action. 

To be continued...