The scarecrow flashed forward and darkness followed it. The Witch’s Staff came up to meet the first of the two sickles, the weathered wood of the broom sturdy as steel itself. But with a twist, the sickle swirled around it, caught it, and threw it out of Sabrina’s hands. The damned thing’s twin tore into her arm, the crescent so sharp the pain registered as an absence of connection more than anything else.

Help won’t come. Help won’t come and if you shout for Fatima it will put the Cunninghams in danger. You’re on your own.

The ghost tugged, and Sabrina was pulled off balance as her skin was peeled into. This was familiar pain. The sliced flesh bled white fog. Tendrils of ghost fiber pulled itself back together, and she summoned the broom again, the flickering embers shedding dim light. All it illuminated was the tree, the fence, and the grass. Beyond that was indiscernible shadow.

“I can smell your fear, little Gravewalker.”

The voice of the ghost was hollow, ragged. It was the grasping of demon faced trees in the Autumn night. It was rusted needles and weather rotted wood, jagged splinters raised, ready to catch cloth and flesh.

Sabrina didn’t listen. She calmed herself. Life returned to her hand, even as flesh deadened itself in preparation for the next attack. Within her, her own protector phantom thrummed alongside her heart. She made a slow turn, trying to make as little noise as possible. It could come from anywhere. She moved to put the tree at her back.

The wind rustled and a sharp claw slashed along Sabrina’s lower back before she could protect it. Milk white ectoplasm sprayed along the ground, lightly tinged with blood. It was so cold.

You can’t protect them. You can’t protect Caleb. She’ll suffer like I did. I won’t be there for my sister. No one was there for me.

The words were Sabrina’s own. She knew they weren’t, but the knives drove their way into her flesh. That wasn’t the only voice in her head, though. Grandmother’s words pushed back. Du kannst helfen.

Sabrina caught the Scarecrow as it made its retreat and swept the Staff out to get it. The handle hit only air, and the mad, hoarse cackles. Even like this, her body was already starting to ache. Muscles would get sword. And every cut gave voice to the daggers whispering in her mind.

Being Bruce Wayne fucking sucks. Next time she wouldn’t leave the bullet proof costume at home.

“I know your game!” Sabrina growled in a harsh whisper. It didn’t matter if she screamed for Fatima or not, her voice came out far away, swallowed by the darkness.

“Do you?” the voice came from her right, and Sabrina moved to strike. The cut of the sickle came from the left, and low. The blade sliced around her calf, and was deep enough that she felt the bone being cut. She stumbled to one knee and pins and needles pricked spikes of ice in her skin as the leg reknit itself.

There’s no hope. I’ll fail her. She’ll see the knife as a release. Just like I did. Coward. The Harvestman will be a mercy.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Sabrina growled, teeth grit.

She expected the next blow as she was getting to her feet, and manifested the broom. It caught the crook of the blade and Sabrina jerked outwards, throwing the attacker off balance. She thrust forward and met it head on, cracking their skulls together.

Maybe a dead thing didn’t need brains, but Sabrina’s blow was hard enough to jostle her own vision. It all went white before everything settled back into place. She couldn’t keep doing this. She couldn’t stay on the defensive forever.

The scarecrow—the Harvestman—stumbled back and Sabrina went to follow through. She put everything into it and even when it caught the Staff in between the blades, the blow was strong enough to snap the thing’s spine. Undeterred it swayed and cackled, spine twisting with a sickening crunch as it all twisted back into place. By then the thing was back outside the fading light of Sabrina’s broom.

“What is my game?” the Harvestman said with more spiteful laughter. “You straddle life and death, Gravewalker. You and that witch you carry. You should have both stayed dead.”

Sabrina pressed her back against the tree, and held the handle of her broom out defensively. The voice was a distraction, look for a shadow moving. That would be the solution. “I killed you once, I’ll do it again.”

“You cheated!” the voice hissed, and the sickle came from the darkness without the Harvestman behind it. Sabrina easily knocked it aside. It would be too logical for the next blow to come from the same directly, she knew it woul—

Something sharp and hooked tore down her spine, raking into it.

Do I really think sensitive little Caleb will be able to handle a sexual assault? A hate crime? She’ll lose her friends. She’ll struggle. I should have given up. I should give up. I did give up.

The thrown sickle had come back, to stab Sabrina in the back. The thoughts repeated themselves over and over, drowning out any attempt Grandmother made to counter them. She squirmed and writhed with Sabrina, reveling in the pain.

A ghost isn’t alive. They don’t remember the sensation. Ghosts like the Wicked Witch and Amy and the Black Veil Bride, one of the reasons they bond is to be alive. To feel what their partners feel. But nowhere are you ever more alive than on the verge of death. Sabrina could feel it as well, could feel her pulse pounding, the blood and ectoplasm making every vein and nerve tingle with liminal power.

The agony of life, they call it. Its intoxicating, when you’ve been dead. To dance with death. It can keep you on your feet when you’ve been torn apart. To know that even if you die, you can stave off the harvest, at a cost. Ignore the lies. Push them away. Live.

Sabrina stumbled forward, staggered by the sickle. The second one came down near her shoulder, cracking the scapula.

Let it happen. Let him take you. How many times has this happened before? Let this be the last one. You deserve it.

Grandmother pushed back the thoughts.

Leben.

Sabrina was trying.

The Harvestman dragged the blade down, leaving them hanging there against the bones in her hips. She felt cold hands in her back, and the flesh tore. It was taking all her strength to keep the wounds manageable. All she had to do was survive. To live.

She manifested the Staff behind her, between the two of them, and used her own side as leverage to throw him off. The pressure of it hurt, and it felt like something was squelching it’s way out, but a bruise to the hip was better than being blood eagled. She knocked the sickles down, but each one raked along her hip bone as she did.

How can you think there are positives?

Would you wish this on your sister?

They fell to the ground in a pile and Sabrina slammed the Witch’s Staff down on them, her will meeting the Harvestman. Its broke first, and the blades shattered into mist. She knew they’d be back, but it was cathartic.

“You want to protect the young one,” the rasping shadows said, its eyes glinting. The face it wore was stitched with heavy, rough yarn and the holes in the eyes and that jagged Glasgow grin had the faintest glow of a Samhain bonfire.

Sabrina said nothing, and let the Witch’s Staff fall away. It was the connection between her and Grandmother, but it was too unwieldy for this. She didn’t need a staff. She had come here without most of her tools. But she hadn’t come with none of her tools. She slipped that pink scarf off her neck. It wasn’t just a fashion accessory.

Once upon a time it had been the ghost of a courtesan. She was murdered by a baron or duchess or some member of the nobility that she thought loved her. In death she went mad, and tried to preserve ‘love’. She kept victims with their abusers, she drove people to kill the spouses of those they obsessed over. Sabrina had put her down, and this was the Lonely Courtesan’s corpse. When she held the scarf out like this, you could even see the Turin-esque impression of her face. The Lover’s Lips. She’d been smothered with a scarf just like the one she became, after all.

“I’m going to kill you,” The Harvestman taunted, the light now gone and Sabrina’s vision cut down. She’d still adjusted enough to make out the vague shape of him. The two bloody crescents smoked back into its hands. “And then, if you don’t stay in the Underworld I’m going to kill the transvestite.”

“I’m going to rip your face off.” Sabrina whispered into the darkness. She had each end of the scarf wrapped around one of her fists.

The Harvestman lunged forward, but she didn’t go to defend herself. She knew it wouldn’t be a frontal attack. And there, at the last moment it flickered. She felt the breeze coming, and twisted. She caught the first blade in the scarf, twisting it around to catch the hook. The second one came right after it, and Sabrina let it catch her side and tear at her flesh. She could deal with the ice and pain.

It’s over.

Damn right it is. She caught the blade as it pulled out, in the scarf. Twisting the scarecrow’s arm in knots, she locked the weapons together, trapping them along her own arm. She reached out and grabbed the thing by the right wrist with her left arm, making a knot. The tangle of pink that was the Lover’s Lips bound them together.

Now Sabrina was the one who sensed fear. The Harvestman’s laughter had been cut off, and it thrashed, trying to get away. She grabbed the front of those black robes and slammed her head into hit again. They were both staggered, but she had known it was coming. While the ghost was still punch drunk, she reached out and grabbed the burlap face.

It came off easily and the man’s face behind it was familiar, but hard to place. He could have been anyone. Young, but not too young. Shaggy hair, just a little too wet. He was pale, with dark eyes. The anger on his face flashed. Then despair. The whole costume of the Harvestman had been pulled away, the darkness with it, and all that was left was a normal ghost.

Sabrina had seen that face. Once before, very briefly.

His shock and terror melted away, replaced with a scowl. He was weaker now, but Sabrina had been battered to Hell. He twisted, pulling her off balance and slamming her against the tree. Her back was slowly healing, but spine and ribs were still exposed. In the confusion, he freed himself and grabbed the mask from Sabrina, then fled.

She summoned the Witch’s Staff and flung it like a javelin at the man as he ran, but before it hit him he discorporated.

“Now who’s the coward…” Sabrina said, coughing up blood. She couldn’t bulwark it all, and even the flesh of the returned dead has a breaking point.

The muscle of her thigh seized up, gripped tight and twisted by agony. It was worse than the rest of it, even though she hadn’t been cut there. She fell to the ground as it spasmed. Her cane was nowhere to be found. Did she throw it off in the bedroom? Down the hall?

She struggled to at least get up on her knees.

Du bist nicht allein.

She had friends. She wasn’t alone.

Caleb ist nicht allein.

“Fatima!” she called out. Her lungs hurt from being scrapped with blades. But they were holding together.

Grandmother’s image was outside of her again. She appeared briefly and then became a flicker of pyre flame sparks, wafting on an impossible breeze towards the house. Sabrina pulled herself towards the tree, and once again set her back against it. It hurt, but that just told her she was alive. When she let her hand fall to the ground she felt something strange, and picked it up. It was another little knot of string.

“Was zur Hölle…” she muttered. The string was broken in the same places. She pinched it around the knot and held it. There was the spine of some plant piercing the knot. From this angle it looked like a body. The big bundle of knot at the top was a head, and the smaller knot below formed hips. The ends of string were arms and legs.

“It’s a poppet…” That damned thing used a poppet on her. She pulled the other one out. They were the same style.

Sabrina pulled the spine from the little string doll. She thought it might loosen up a headache, or wash away the fear she was still feeling for her family.

She pulled her hair back out of her face and realized how much of it was wet with ectoplasm and blood. Still had a headache, still felt afraid for Caleb and the others. Her shoulders slumped. “Guess this is all me.”

Fatima came running out of the side door with Grace behind her. As soon as they were out of the house a colorful fifteen foot dinosaur formed beside Fatima and started prowling the area, looking for threats.

When they got closer, Grace stopped in her tracks, looking around at the blood, and Sabrina’s tattered clothes. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It was more blood than you wanted to lose in an afternoon, but the ghostly viscera she’d lost was nothing but dew. “Holy…” she gasped, then quickly tapped her fingers to forehead, heart, shoulder, shoulder.

“That bad, huh?” Sabrina asked, her voice was hoarse and ended as a bloody cough. She whispered. “Sorry, lungs are still healing.”

Each woman took one of Sabrina’s arms and helped her to her feet. The cane was pressed into her hand.

“What happened?” Fatima asked, “should I call Frank?”

“Nah,” she said, waving the question off. “We’ll be fine. Grace, down in the basement there’s a crapload of salt. I want you to start pouring it around the perimeter of the house.”

“Was it a reaper?”

Grace gasped, “Sabrina, your back!”

“Oh, yeah, it probably looks like shit,” she coughed. It was getting better. She was good enough to walk back to the house. “I’m going to need one of your shirts.”

“What happened, Rina?”

“I can only handle so many questions when I’m trying to regrow my organs and keep from flashing the neighborhood,” Sabrina groaned.

Fatima bit back her question.

“It was a reaper, yeah.”

“Still out there?”

Sabrina nodded.

“Amy hasn’t spotted anything. She doesn’t smell anything, either, but…” Fatima sighed, “it’s a ghost. There’s not much to smell.”

“It’s what she knows. She’s an animal.” Sabrina had finally started breathing right. “Grace?”

“Hm? What do you need?”

“I need you to help me ward the house with salt. I’m fine, I’m healed. You don’t need to worry about it.” She didn’t seem convinced. But she nodded anyway. “And, hey…”

“Yeah?”

Sabrina hesitated, then pulled Grace in for a hug. She let out a startled laugh, but hugged Sabrina back.

“What was that for?” she said, a smile on her face. Then she realized that her arms had blood and a mysterious snot substance that seemed to be smoking. “Oh! Rina, what the heck!”

“Oh, sorry. Yeah, I might need a shower.”

As they came to the door, Caleb came out to see the commotion. “Woah, what happened to you?”

“You should see the other guy,” Sabrina teased. She couldn’t look at Caleb for long. The thoughts the Harvestman had cut into her were gone, but the fears remained. She was worried even without the help.

“Are you going to be… okay…” Caleb’s voice trailed off and he was looking at Fatima.

Grace didn’t seem to notice. “It’s going to be okay, squirt. You won’t lose your second favourite sister.”

Sabrina followed Caleb’s gaze. That little laundry bag from earlier had strings along the sides, and those strings were slung over Fatima’s shoulders. The red of the shirt could be seen peeking through the mesh.

“Pff, after Aliza you’re both fighting for second.” Caleb tried to play it off as nothing. He quickly started up again, eyes darting to the bag, then to Sabrina, as if she didn’t catch that.. “You look like you fought a lawnmower.”

“I kind of did.”

“Was that the ghost in my room?” He wondered, “are me and Lilith going to get to sleep tonight?”

“Maybe. I didn’t stop it, but Grace is going to go get the salt and ward the house,” Sabrina said pointedly. “Right, Grace?”

“Fine, fine,” she said, “now that I know you’re okay, I’ll help be a ghostbuster.”

The throng of people had come inside by now, and John and Charity were added to the people fretting over Sabrina’s torn clothes and blood stains.

Sabrina had left a dozen or so jars of salt just for this occasion down in the basement. Fatima know the ceremony well enough, and while phantom known as The Main Exhibit wasn’t as talented in occult matters as The Wicked Witch was, Amy’s power was all that was needed, not her talent. That meant Sabrina could take care of herself. She needed a shower.

Thankfully there was one downstairs, where she could be away from the rest of the family. She sent John and Charity upstairs, telling them they could get dinner ready. They said everyone had already eaten lunch before she’d gotten here, but didn’t put up too much resistance. They understood that getting them to make something was more about getting them out from under everything.

Sabrina would need to speak with Caleb. He had seen the bag and recognized it, and it wasn’t the shock of realizing someone found your cosplay. But that could wait. Sabrina needed to be alone, underneath the scalding water. She locked the bathroom door and looked in the mirror. She saw herself, but there was another face there as well. A face in a memory.

“I’m so sorry,” Sabrina said to the recollection, rubbing her face and sniffling. These emotions were all her own, not brought about by a vengeful ghost. Not directly at least, not supernaturally. She’d done this. She turned away from the mirror and let the water wash it all away. The white tile at the bottom of the shower was stained with red, and the phantom wounds mixed with the real ones. The tears came out, washed down the drain with the rest of it.

People like her, they could take massive amounts of trauma, but they’d still die eventually. You get burned, stabbed, crushed, cut to ribbons enough and eventually you’ll run out of strength to keep yourself together. Even if they die, revenants are tenacious, and so are their phantom partners.

They can continue to stave off the reaper for a price. That price was that their death would go to someone else. It was the young man from before that she saw in the mirror. Sabrina hadn’t killed the ghost that wore The Harvestman’s mask, but she was the reason he died. She had seen him in the mirror years ago, when he was unfolding the straight razor.

Sabrina died when she was eight and the Wicked Witch had brought her back to life in exchange for housing the ghost in the place her soul had left behind. But it wasn’t the only time she died.

There’s no hope. I’ll fail her. She’ll see the knife as a release. Just like I did. Coward. The Harvestman will be a mercy.

I should have given up. I should give up. I did give up.

Sabrina punched the wall of the bathroom hard enough to break her own knuckles. The fading wisps of smoke poured from the skin and the bones snapped back into place, but it was enough. The agony of life was enough to shove away the thought, pushing it back enough to think. The voice was her own, even if the words had been brought to the surface by the Harvestman. They weren’t lies.

Sabrina had given up once. Just over twenty years ago, when she was new to the Cunninghams. When she was still Daryl. She saw the knife as a release, but it wasn’t. She still didn’t want to die, and Grandmother didn’t want to let her. She wasn’t going to give up. But she had killed the Harvestman, long before he found that mask.

The night that she killed herself.