He claws at the air, gathering mist in a vortex. A ring of ecto-mist forms between his hands as he moves them in a circle. This mist . . . it’s not the electric-blue color I’m used to. It’s red, like blood.

He walks back and forth. The wood groans underneath him as a garble escapes his mouth. Grrblgrrblgblrrrrrrrrglbrrrrrr. It’s like something’s drowning in his throat.

His movements become more abstract and odd.

He walks in tight circles. “We’re bonded now, Matteo. Inside and out. One and then another. We look out for each other.”

Hissing—intense hissing, like colonies of warring serpents. No, an army of cicadas. Chattering.

And then, a tragic weeping, like a grieving mother.

“Shut up.” The voice of the person—the poltergeist—thunders from everywhere as if it’s responding to the whispers. “SHUT UP. SHUT UP, I SAID! ”

I can’t rip my eyes away from his head and neck, which seems ripped through by the air itself, like a biscuit tin popped and spiraling. His skin is the color of caulk, and it’s in constant motion, there in one angle and fading in the next. His hair is ratty like cornstalk. He grabs a fistful of it, and lightning blinks to reveal his pale, expressionless eyes. He’s looking directly at me.

“Shut up . . .” He hits his head against the glass—BOOM. And again, like he’s using it as a battering ram.

My family will be waking up. They will hear this in their world too.

Or will they? Sounds like that—loud thumps—tend to carry from dead world to the waking realm.

Any minute now someone will come and save me from this before the glass shatters . . .

Or . . . this thing is going to break in and murder me.

“Shut up . . .” His voice is like an old, rusty locomotive. “No!”

His face . . . It’s the same face of the shooter on the news.

I knew it. Matteo’s killer was not human.

This ghost of Sawyer Doon has skipped its death loop and decided, of its own free will, to come back and kill more people.

Now it’s at my house.

“LET GO OF ME!” He’s banging his head against the window, like he’s punishing himself. “NEVER.”

He pulls his head back by the hair, and light washes away the scene. A tug of wind snatches me through the darkness. I catapult upward through space, through the walls of my house, their boundaries immaterial now. Streaks of blue and pink spill through my eyes as ecto-mist rushes like volcanic vapor over my body. And then I’m gasping myself awake, coming from the cold opaque astral state to the box of my bedroom.

There’s a blinding white beam in my face. “Jake.” When Benji cuts the flashlight off, the hallway light outlines his silhouette. “You’re having a nightmare.”

I . . . Was I?