“Please just do something,” Suzy said, digging deeper into her dermis.
Pam could hardly bear to see or hear her friends suffering like that and struggled to keep a level head along with her faith in Charlotte.
“I don’t want to make it worse, Prue.”
“I get that she needs to come back on her own, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t use a little kick in the ass.” Prue grinned, winding up her leg. “Time for a silent fright, if you know what I mean.”
Virginia watched the bickering continue, different suggestions made and plans proposed—all discarded, as they were unable to reach any sort of consensus. It seemed like everyone was more worried about themselves than about Charlotte.
“All I know is, it’s just not the same here without her,” Virginia said. “I miss her.”
They knew what she meant. They all did.
“No one to talk fashion with,” CoCo mourned.
“No one to do spaz dances to my sets,” DJ fretted.
“No one to play air cello in our band,” Metal Mike agreed.
“No one to teach us,” Virginia added.
“No one to understand,” Rotting Rita whimpered.
“Or inspire us,” Pam concluded.
“Good riddance,” Maddy cheered. “We all get a chance to start over. Just what I was hoping for.”
“Me too,” Prue barked at her. “A second chance to hate you all over again.”
Charlotte walked by the bare living room, where a Christmas tree draped with lights, decorations, and presents should sit but didn’t. Gladys wasn’t much for spending on anything but necessities, especially when it came to Charlotte.
She stopped for a moment and gazed longingly at the empty spot. It reminded her of her friends, of Eric, celebrating in the Great Beyond and all the fun they must be having without her. Charlotte could see them in her mind’s eye, but only as flickering images now, difficult to bring into focus, like the scratchy frame of a long-lost family film showing on a vintage movie projector. She was struck by a sudden wave of melancholy. Shouldn’t Eric have been the one to come get her? And then it passed as quickly as it had come, like a kink in her neck, a reminder of an old injury. The thought of Eric hurt, but not as much as it had the day before. That’s the way these things are, she guessed.
“Time heals all wounds,” she said to herself, recalling the old saying.
Now that she was back and alive, it was hard to harbor any regrets. The Great Beyond was in a losing battle for her mind now, if not quite yet her heart.
Charlotte laid on her window seat, covered herself in cushions, and closed her eyes. Suddenly the semidark room went pitch-black. It was cold and terrifying. Over in the corner, by her bed, a ring of swirling black smoke appeared.
“Hey, ghostgirl,” a haunting voice growled through the dark smoke and putrid smell overtaking the room, rattling the furniture like a plane flying too low over the house.
Charlotte spun around to see a figure, a girl, not much older than herself looking straight back at her. She was wearing a black cloak that hung to the floor and black roses and crow’s feathers around her head. Her eyes glowed green.
“Don’t call me that,” Charlotte said, both offended and petrified. “Please?”
“Why not?” Prue hissed. “It’s who you are.”
“Not anymore, it isn’t,” Charlotte replied, a defiant look crossing her face. “Who are you?”
“Prue,” she shot back, realizing it was worse than she’d thought. “You don’t remember?”
Charlotte looked the girl up and down blankly, and after a minute, it clicked. Kind of. “Yes. Of course. I’m just tired.”
“You think because you make a little wish you can change everything for everyone?”
“I’m really just concerned about myself right now. For a change. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to do some Christmas shopping for my friends.”
“Mind if I tag along,” Prue hissed, “for a little Christmas present?”
Charlotte cowered as the wraith before her twirled faster and faster into a whirlwind of black, plucking Charlotte by the sleeve just as she reached maximum speed and flew out the window and into the void in a puff of acrid smoke. In an instant they landed at the Kensington house. Petula’s bedroom, to be exact.
“Oh no, spirit,” Charlotte pleaded, covering her eyes. “Not here.”
“Yes, here,” Prue cackled, her old terrifying swagger on full display.
“I won’t look,” Charlotte insisted.
“You will,” Prue commanded.
Charlotte slowly removed her fingers from her eyes, frightened of, but all too familiar with, what she was about to witness. Damen was splayed out on the bed, thumbing indifferently through a tabloid magazine. Waiting. Finally, a demanding voice broke the silence.
“Can they see us?” Charlotte asked timidly.
“No, you’re invisible, just like always.”
“So,” Petula insisted more than asked, “do you have something to give me?”
“That depends,” he said, flashing his best bedroom eyes at her.
Charlotte was cringing, partly from the fact that she was invading their privacy, but mostly from jealousy.
“Anything wrong?” Prue asked sarcastically, reading Charlotte’s pained expression.
“Don’t even,” Petula teased, approaching his open arms and then leaning away just as he grabbed for her. “I meant my gift.”
“It’s not Christmas yet!” Damen pushed back.
“You are not getting out of this on a technicality! Lots of people exchange gifts early. Now cough it up.”
“Such grace,” Prue growled. “Who wouldn’t want to be like her?”
Damen was desperate to change the subject but Petula put on the full-court press. “What did you get me?” he asked.
“Bet you it’s a ticket to The Nutcracker,” Prue joked.
Petula shimmied up to him seductively and ran her fingers through his hair and over his lips.
“The gift that keeps on giving,” she said. “Me.”
Damen reached for her once again.
“Season’s greetings,” he moaned passionately.
Petula grabbed his hands and pushed them away.
“But if you want to unwrap it . . .”
He couldn’t take any more. Neither could Charlotte.
“Okay, okay,” Damen conceded. “The truth is . . .”
“Yes?” Petula said, her tone turning considerably less romantic.
“I didn’t get you anything.”
“WHAT?!” Petula screamed.
“How thoughtful,” Prue croaked. “Who wouldn’t want a guy like that?”
“You don’t know him.”
Prue could see she was getting under Charlotte’s warm and blushing skin.
“Neither do you.”
Petula grabbed Damen by the collar of his button-down shirt and tried to pull him toward her like a mob enforcer collecting a debt, but instead only managed to pull herself closer to him. Same difference, she figured.
“Yet!” he explained. “I didn’t get you anything yet.”
“This is why The Wendys haven’t reported back! I am a girl who demands to hear bad news right away. Just wait until I see them.”
“We’re all a little short on cash, that’s all.”
“We? Are you trying to say The Wendys are empty-handed too?”
“Empty-headed is more like it,” Prue said, laughing manically.
“Don’t worry! We have a plan,” Damen said.
Petula crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently.
“The Christmas clock is ticking, Damen.”
“Not just for you, Goldilocks,” Prue murmured under her breath but loud enough for Charlotte to hear.
“What’s your strategy?” Petula demanded.
“It’s a surprise for you,” Damen said. “I can’t tell. I promised.”
“You know my motto?” Petula informed. “Promises are meant
to be broken. You will tell me.”
Petula nearly assaulted him, rubbing her body against his, gripping his face and shoving her tongue down his throat as if it were an intubation tube.
“She’s going Guantánamo on him,” Charlotte murmured. “Take me away from here.”
“Don’t you want to see how it ends?” Prue asked slyly.
“I think I know how it ends.”
Prue whisked Charlotte away once again, this time to the center of town. Charlotte couldn’t help but choke on all the black smoke as it cleared.
There was Scarlet, looking as if she was about to enter a travel agency.
“Where is she going?”
“Probably planning her escape from this hellhole like everyone else,” Prue rasped, eyeing Charlotte with disapproval. “Well, almost everyone.”
Scarlet stopped, looked in the window of the agency, mulling over a creepy poster for what looked like travel to Poland, but didn’t enter, instead continuing to the indie record shop next door, carrying a sack of CDs and vinyls. Charlotte and Prue followed. The shop was small and dingy but neat, sectioned off by genre, condition—used or new—and format: vinyl, CD, and even cassette. Vintage concert posters papered the walls, and retro re-creations of record and tape players decorated the shelves, reminders of another era. “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” by The Ramones blasted through the speakers. A few classic Christmas albums displayed at the register were the only other nod to the season.
“Hey, Scarlet,” the hipster cashier said.
“Hey.”
“What’s up?”
“Just selling a few things.”
She handed over a stack of vinyl and compact discs.
“Nice stuff. Good taste as usual,” he complimented. “Must be hard to let them go. It’s like your past, right?”
“It always is,” she said. “But some of them aren’t as good as I remembered them—you know what I mean?”
“No.”
“Sometimes you just have to move on.”
“Wise words,” Prue said.
Charlotte just looked on, transfixed by her friend.
“Besides, my sister, Petula, has been ‘borrowing’ them, and she brings them back with all kinds of funky stains on them,” Scarlet complained. “I don’t want to provide the sound track to her sex life.”
“Yeah,” he said, and cringed. “I guess you can just load them up on your phone anyway.”
“I could, but . . .”
“You won’t. I know. It’s not the same.”
The cashier did the calculations and gave Scarlet the best deal he could. He handed the money over.
“That’s it?”
“Best I can do,” he said, shuffling through the vinyl. “Nobody cares about these anymore. Not much value.”
The clerk’s words had a familiar ring, and she felt a twinge from deep in her childhood rear its ugly head.
“Except to me,” Scarlet said. “Oh well. Tough to be an analog girl in a digital world.”
“Time waits for no one,” he offered.
“Definitely not.”
Scarlet put the cash in her coat pocket and started to leave.
“Christmas shopping for someone?”
“For myself,” she replied. “Maybe.”
Charlotte was intrigued.
“Cool,” the guy responded.
“Isn’t it crazy the shit people do for Christmas?” Scarlet mused. “Things they wouldn’t even do for themselves.”
“Word,” he said. “So much pressure.”
“Get this. Petula’s friends are planning to trick this stalker chick who follows them around into something crazy. She’ll probably do it just for a chance to get in good with them and my sister. I hope she doesn’t fall for it, but if she does, it will be her funeral. Exactly what she deserves.”
“Harsh,” Prue noted.
Scarlet’s opinion of Charlotte hurt her deeply.
“I want to go home,” Charlotte said, tears beginning to flow. “Please!”
“Whatever you say,” Prue agreed, sure she’d finally made the desired impression on Charlotte.
They returned to Charlotte’s house.
“Are you through?” Charlotte asked, gathering herself. “Because like I said, I have some shopping to do for my friend, and it’s getting late.”
“Friend? What friend? Didn’t any of that get through to you? We’re your friends, Charlotte.”
“All that will change once they get to know me.”
It was apparent that the longer Charlotte stayed, the harder it would become to convince her to come back.
Prue literally felt like she was talking to a stranger.
“I hate to break it to you but nothing has changed for them, only for you. You might feel closer to Scarlet, Petula, and The Wendys, or even loverboy Damen, but you are still invisible to them. It was ghostgirl who changed them, who knows them, not Charlotte.”
“Not true! Damen spoke to me on the street yesterday, and The Wendys have even invited me to sign a Christmas card for Petula. My name right under theirs!”
“Don’t you remember how it was?” Prue explained. “You’ve told me the stories so many times I know them by heart.”
“Yeah, well, that was then.”
“No, actually, it’s now, Charlotte. This is then. Don’t you see? By coming back, you’ve undone everything.”
“Well, good, because a lot of things needed undoing,” Charlotte sniffed.
“I can’t believe it. You made so much progress. We all did,” Prue said, throwing her hands in the air in frustration.
“It depends on how you define progress, I guess. I get a do-over and I’m not going to screw it up.”
“They are mean and petty, Charlotte. They victimized you for your entire life. Hardly worth everything you did for them, let alone what you are doing now.”
“They are good people, Prue, no matter what you say,” Charlotte said snottily, checking herself out in the hall mirror. “I know they are.”
“This is worse than Virginia said,” Prue griped. “You are totally regressing. Caught up. It’s consuming you.”
“You’re just jealous that I’m alive and you’re not. Maybe that’s why your eyes are so green,” Charlotte quipped, running her hands all over her face, arms, and legs. “Body envy!”
The hurt in Prue’s eyes was obvious and Charlotte felt bad about saying something so insensitive, but she resented being criticized, being called out on her fantasies. Prue was tempted to spill everything. To explain to Charlotte how much her return to Hawthorne could mean for them all, the people she loved, or did once. But Prue remembered what Mr. Brain said and decided to go another route, one that might yield better results.
“What about Eric?” Prue asked. “Are you willing to just write him off?”
“Eric? I don’t see him anywhere. Do you?”
This time the visible hurt was in Charlotte’s eyes. Prue’s tone softened. You get more bees with honey, she kept telling herself. Trying to stop herself from strangling Charlotte with her own two ghostly hands. “It was just a lover’s quarrel. Not something to change your whole death over.”
“Not for you, maybe,” Charlotte argued as she headed for the front door. “But as far as I’m concerned, Eric is dead to me. You all are!”
“You realize, since you are now alive, I could kill you?” Prue said, her voice trembling in anger.
“And you realize that since you are dead, you can’t kill me? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some shopping to do,” Charlotte said, quivering in fear as Prue’s eyes turned to a fiery red.
Prue pulled her cloak up over her head and the black smoke began to grab and engulf her like hundreds of arms from lost souls from the other side. Prue rushed Charlotte, who was now coiled up in a ball to protect herself on the ground, and then slammed into her, all the smoky hands latching on to her, pulling at her, and then finally disappearing through the window.
“S
cary Christmas to all,” Prue said as the hands grabbed and her voice moaned into the icy darkness. “And to all a good fright.”
Scarlet arrived home and bounded upstairs, loudly, hoping to interrupt whatever illicit activity might be going on in Petula’s room. It was even more nauseating being so close to a sacred holiday. Petula and Damen were undeterred, judging from the noise spilling out from behind her bedroom door and oozing out into the hallway. It was impossible to ignore. She wasn’t sure if it was sex going down or enhanced interrogation. Possibly both, she considered.
“Sick,” Scarlet said as she passed and then abruptly stopped to eavesdrop, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“Tell me!” Petula commanded.
“Don’t break, dude,” Scarlet whispered to herself.
Petula’s charms were too much to resist, even for a football team captain.
“Okay,” he said.
“Come on, Damen, grow some Christmas balls, for God’s sake,” Scarlet mumbled.
“The Wendys are going to model tonight at this expo in town.”
“Model?” both Kensington girls said simultaneously.
A look of envy crossed Petula’s face.
“For money to buy you a gift,” Damen explained vaguely. “See-through caskets. Buried alive or something.”
Scarlet recalled her conversation with The Wendys earlier, hoping for a clue about what might be up.
“Amazing!” Petula shouted, wiping a single tear from her eye. “They are going to sacrifice their lives for me? How festive.”
We should be so lucky, Scarlet thought.
“It’s just for a minute,” Damen corrected. “Besides, I’m sure they’ll find some sucker to do it for them anyway.”
“Charlotte,” Scarlet whispered, confirming her suspicions.
“What do you have to do?”
“I’m working the graveyard shift,” Damen said, the smile on his face viewable from space. “Lowering them into the hole.”
Petula quickly gathered herself and returned to the matter at hand, turned on by the gossip even more than she was by Damen.
“Hmmm,” Petula considered, running through the latenight shopping hours at all of her favorite stores. “There better be time for you to spend that money on me.”
“Everything is open late,” Damen said, hope in his voice. “I just wanted to be able to afford something special for you.”