Someone is standing over her. A shape. Gauzy and flickering. Mookie yells, screams, “Get away from her!” He runs toward Nora, boots cracking on crumbling rock. With each footfall new pain jolts through his shattered arm but he doesn’t care because whoever is standing over his daughter is going to pay.

The shape begins to move away from her. Walking slowly toward the shelf’s edge, toward the abyss, toward what Mookie assumes must be the Maw-Womb.

No.

No, no, no.

It’s then he sees. Sees that the person walking away from Nora is–

Nora.

Flesh shifting, shimmering. Opaque. Fading in and out.

Her ghost.

His daughter’s ghost.

Mookie wails. He refuses to believe it – she can’t be dead. Not now. Not after all this. Not after the fortune placed in his pocket: Caput Mortuum. Life-saving Death’s Head. He barrels toward the body. Collapses on it. Feels her neck.

No pulse.

Lifts his hands to her mouth. No breath.

He stands, almost falls, but gets his feet under him.

He hurries over to the ghost walking ineluctably toward the edge.

Nora’s eyes are empty caves. Her mouth a pitch black tunnel – soundless and without breath. Hitching step by hitching step she shambles forth.

He waves his hands in front of her. Tries to grab her, but his hands pass through her.

He weeps. Blubbers. Tries to hug her, hold her, shove her–

She moves past him. Through him.

She’ll walk to the edge. He knows that now. That’s where all the ghosts go, isn’t it? To the cusp and over. Into the abyss. Toward the writhing worm-gods beneath.

It’s then he decides: If she goes, I go.

Food for worms.

Gnashed by the teeth and heat and acid of the Maw-Womb.

He staggers back to the body. Weeping. Pulling her limp, rag-doll body close against him. He kisses her brow – a brow already gone cold. He wipes hair out of her lifeless eyes–

And leaves a purple streak across her forehead.

A message. An opportunity. One last chance.

He fishes in his pocket. Pulls out one of the mushrooms – still glowing in his palm, though the glow has softened. He pries open her dead mouth–

Mookie looks over his shoulder, sees her ghost is close to the edge now, moving faster than he anticipated. The ghost skips ahead five feet, then ten, disappearing and reappearing as she closes in–

He shoves the Caput Mortuum death-cap into her mouth.

Forces her jaw to chew. But it’s rubbery – a dead jaw is not meant to chew.

So he takes two fingers and shoves it down her throat. Far as it will go.

The ghost is almost at the edge. Arms out. Head up. An angel about to be received into hell.

He massages Nora’s cold throat.

Feels the clot work downward.