It Was Just a Stick

     It wasn’t something that immediately caught her eye. When she walked through the city, it was just one of those things that blended into the background. However, the more she listened to the voices around her, the more often she looked at it.

     It was just a stick.

     In the yard of an empty house, near the rotting fence, the stick was jammed into the ground, and looked like it had been there for quite some time. Briar Dallas didn’t know who’d just put a stick in the ground without growing something on it, or anything of the like, but she knew that the stick was important in some way. What way? Who the hell knew? All she knew was that every time she paid attention to the stick, the ghost that had her brother’s voice told her to walk away, very loudly. So, Briar did.

     Curiosity’s one of those things that won’t leave you alone, no matter what. Despite your best intentions, it springs up at the oddest times, and when Briar was walking slowly home, tired from the long day of painting, she couldn’t resist it. Looking at her bony, paint-stained hands, she wondered for a moment if she should just leave the stick be. Briar smiled down at her square-tipped fingers as she stood over the crumbling stake, then leaned over and grasped it firmly. For a moment, the ghostly voices that constantly spoke to her seemed to scream in unison, making her stumble back, losing her grip on the stake. Blinking her light grey eyes, Briar looked at the stake and frowned. The swirl of ghostly shrieks had died down almost the moment she released the stick. Going forward, she toed it lightly, examining it from every angle. Briar scratched her head, puzzled. The medium couldn’t quite figure out what it was about this stake that made the ghosts scream. She shrugged again, and caught ahold of it, bracing herself to pull. The bone-thin artist threw her whole weight onto the stick, hauling at it. Then…something hissed from beneath the stake that made her scream and lose her balance, which yanked the stake from the ground. Briar lay still, shaking, and watched a slow, grey mist seep from the small hole the stake had occupied. She trembled, curling around herself as the mist floated off on the breeze, and wondered just what she had done. For when she had first given a tug, Briar had heard a thin, reedy voice speak.

     "You pull, and I will push."