At some point, an undetermined point where Lacey stopped paying attention, the bony fellas broke off and ventured elsewhere, leaving she, Gideon, and all that's left of Erie to carry themselves on sore legs and burnt lungs down the suburban streets where Lacey lives. The fleshy pink of the morning sun is gone, leaving only thick grey in its wake. Spring is not just underfoot on Lore's Hill, either; in the yards here, the grass is greener, though drowned, and the trees are fuller, less menacing and twiggy.

Every time she looks at the flannel in Gideon's hand, however, all this fresh hope dies, and she picks up the pace.

She's so focused on getting back home - that's what they'd agreed upon earlier - that she doesn't notice the house they pass or the fact that Gideon stops following at her heels. His thun-thun-thun rapidfire knock breaks her out of her reverie and she whirls on him. He stands at Erie's porch, waiting for an answer. When there's none, he fumbles in his pocket and out comes a ring of keys, one of which he shoves into the lock.

It works, and he disappears inside.

"Ah, shit," Lacey says. She sprints after him and stumbles through the open door, slamming it behind her. The house is empty. Laurel must be at work, or more likely, at work with police to find her son. The heat isn't on, and the walls throb with chills every time their rustling echoes through the hall.

It's just as she'd seen it last time she was here. Dustier, though. Teal walls, closed blinds, dark hallway full of pictures that contain none of her. A shadow darts past the bright window in the room at the end of it. Lacey purses her lips and walks to Erie's bedroom.

It's unchanged, save the lanky, sweating man pacing back and forth with the skin of his thumb stuck between his teeth. "Nobody will expect us here," he says around the nail, eyes darting from one spot of the room to another, bed, floor, wall, ceiling, fan, cage, dresser, and on and on. "I...okay. Okay, we need to think. We need to stop and...and do what Lacey would do."

He changes the trajectory of his pacing until he's staring her in the face and has his hands clamped on her shoulders. "What would Lacey do?" he asks. There's stress in his tone, and a crease on his forehead.

It takes her a minute to realize he's being serious about the question. Right. I see dead people. I have value here. She takes a deep breath. A soft tink sounds on the window. The ghosts are back. Whatever the fuck this flannel being where it was means, our priority is still finding Erie above all else. "Our plan is still the same," she says, firm. "We find a ghost who knows what's up and go from there."

As if the heavens break out in the skies above, a thick wave of Benevolence spills into the room behind her, from the hallway. God, she's forgotten what this felt like. Malevolence and neutrality has made its roots for too long, and this feeling is new: a rejuvenating flush of air in her lungs, and the scent of dried out petals. There are slight deviations with every spirit. She knows exactly who this one is before she's even turned around.

"Carol!" she shouts, whirling so fast her hair whips her in the face. "Fuck yeah, Carol!"

Never has she been more excited to see this misty, wrinkled face, already set in her usual soft expression, tinged by a slight furrow of sternness in the brow. "What have I told you about that sailor's mouth, Miss Waits? Ought to wash it out with soap, I should."

Instead of rebelling with some dumb retort, she runs forward and throws her arms around the fragile shoulders of the dead woman. She's cold as a bottle left to sit out in the snow, straight to the bone, but it bothers neither, and they embrace as if they're long lost relatives. Carol hmphs. "I've missed you too. But hugging, mm, that's not like you at all. So tell me: what's scrambled that brain this time, darling?"

Lacey splutters a laugh and swallows it down. "Whisk. But the electric kind. On high power. There's shit all over my walls."

"Oh, dear!" Carol exclaims. "That's no good at all! Well, I'd take a gander and say I know exactly what's got their hand cupped over the off switch. Anyone who knows anything about electronics knows there's a way to bypass the switch - even this old fart right here."

A flurry takes the breath right out of her lungs. "You know how we can get to Erie?"

Carol cocks her head back and forth. "I can't say where, exactly, the boy is. But I can tell you how to figure it out. I present to you: the plug sitting in the wall. Now, clairvoyance, in my experience with such mediums, ought to have a broader reach than you've played around with. You've started having visions since coming here, yes? I've been told you've been having visions down the grapevine. In some cases, the dead is all a person can experience, but in others, there's a demonstration of far-reaching, untapped potential. I see that in you now, Miss Waits.

"It is perfectly normal for you to have been too afraid to experiment, to have been too comfortable where you were to stretch your fingers. But now...hm." She drums bony fingers against a sun-spotted chin. "Have you heard of astral projection, darling girl? Or perhaps dowsing?"

Lacey blinks. This world she never asked to be part of just keeps sprawling out so far she can't see where it ends. She dreads Carol's next suggestions, and yet, she listens, because what other option do they have?

"That look tells me all I need to know. Right, well, sometimes, a piece of our souls leaves our bodies. Not a large piece, not enough to mean death or incapacitation to us, but a small piece, all the same. It can break and spread out from an individual in many ways. The most common I've seen it happen is in grief. Often, the piece returns, but it's never sutured back in place quite the same. In your case with some of your visions, I'm assuming you felt yourself go someplace else entirely. But you came back to yourself. If you've done it once before, you can do it again."

"I..." Lacey trails off. Her mind runs with the woman's words: Elijah's broken soul, the strings she saw hanging from Janie, flying through the air to slam back into her own body after the bony fellas had helped her find Ro. It all adds up, the things Carol says now, but those were all accidental encounters. She grunts and clenches her fingers. "I can take a hint. You want me to try the, what was it, dowsing? And the other big one. My question is how the hell am I supposed to know how to do any of it?"

"What's that?" Carol nods at the flannel. "The boy won't stop eyeballing it, so it must be important."

Lacey huffs. "Erie's. We found it somewhere it shouldn't've been."

The woman's puckered little lips curl upwards. "Then there you go. Assuming something terrible happened while he was wearing that, it'll be easier on you. Use it. I'm no clairvoyant so I can't say how, but I've heard a few things in my deceased days. I have full confidence you'll figure it out, Miss Waits. Just use the shirt. And your soul. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to blow down salt so those-" her face sours "-malevolent spirits don't interrupt your hard work."

With that, the scent of dried petals fades.

A strangled noise Lacey can't explain rises out of her throat and she plops down aggressively onto Erie's bed. It's a hot minute before she catches Gideon watching her, eyes glinting but fingers digging tight into the flannel. He's stiff, and his single step forward is reflective of that fact. "You said dowsing. Dowsing is where you try to locate something. I learned that from a video game."

"That's nice," Lacey says, her mind elsewhere. Something light thwumps onto her lap. She glances down. Her fingers slide across the cottony material of Erie's sleeve until it ends and falls limp across her thigh. She glances up, a brow raised.

Gideon licks his lips, then gestures with his head. "Use it. Do whatever you have to do to find him."

"That's the thing, though, I don't know what the 'whatever' in that statement is. I've never done anything like this before."

He knits his fingers together and takes a deep breath. "Okay, well...let's think, then. Have you ever really tried to reach out to anything that wasn't already on its way to you before? What did you do in those instances?"

A solid question, with much pondering attached. Well, there was that seance in the warehouse, but there was a step-by-step occult guide to follow, which she...left in the warehouse, beautiful. Is there anything else, anything? She's about to give up - it doesn't take much brainpower to realize just how detached from her own paranormal abilities she's been - when a distant memory dips into the pool and snatches the hook.

"A couple weeks ago, I tried to summon Darcy through my mirror. I just figured I got lucky there."

"Then do what you did there," Gideon stresses, clasping his hands together in a plea. "Please. I'll leave if you need me to, I'll go clear across town, just-"

"Stop talking and sit in the corner." He blinks, but obliges. Good. She takes a deep breath. What she needs to do first is get into the proper headspace. She keeps the deep breaths coming, holding them deep in her lungs before letting them go, over and over, for a few minutes. At some point, her eyes flutter to a close, and she drives her fingers deep into the fabric in much the same way Gideon had. A smooth rhythm comes to her soon enough, and a sensation like she's sinking into a vat of melted butter falls over her. Thankfully, the smell doesn't accompany it.

The immediate surroundings fall away to nothing. Thoughts vanish, and noises take hold. The light smack of Erie's window screen against the glass. Air running through the vents and lifting dust. The tiny scrape of bedding against the rat's slick coat as it burrows. A wind chime tinkles out back. This feels like it did before. This feels right.

Her fingers tighten around the flannel, and a cool button nudges her knuckle. She knows her shoulders sway the smallest bit - her own body struggling to keep itself upright - but it's a far-away issue. She swallows, and dry lips move against one another in a whisper that sounds from a thousand different sources in the room:

"My soul will find yours."

Air ceases to be, the pulse of blood in her veins ceases to be, and for a moment, she thinks that maybe she ceases to be. But no, no, she's still tethered to it. If she were dead, she'd likely be somewhere altogether different, but instead she simply feels air beneath her rear as she rises. Above her, the ceiling breaks open, and then she's outside, looking down at the shingles. She tries to blink, but can't - there's no need for blinking, not here, not now.

She lifts her head. Carrick is different up here, even from only a few feet of difference. Here, the roofs of suburban homes sprawl out in a pod, and over there, that's where downtown begins, the glistening streets populated sparsely with those more inclined towards the outdoors. One wrong turn of the head, though, and her eyes stare directly into the sun - a sun she hasn't seen since Stella's funeral. It doesn't hurt, but it blinds. It distracts.

She has to find Erie. Yes, she does, she knows that much. Although she doesn't hold it in these hands (where are my hands?) the soft material still lays upon them, a reminder collecting sweat.

Refocused on the task at hand, she tries to continue upwards. This succeeds for a while, but the strain around her "ankles" gets tighter the higher she goes, and by the time she's level with the top half of a tree, pain shoots through her being. She sinks lower for quick relief. Assess. What's wrong here?

Erie. I don't feel any sort of connection to Erie.

She must say this out loud, somewhere, because a small voice echoes around here, from all places at once. "Think of a time when you were close. Connect yourself that way. Try." Gideon.

Instinct says to obey, and so her mind does, and this skybound world slips into something new- no, something old hey who the heck are you oh I'm

"Lacey. Lacey Waits. You're standing in my light."

She stands across from a boy her age, his lanky figure haloed by the burning sun. His shadow stretches long and far across her chalk pictures, and now she can't tell where she's supposed to draw. It's annoying. He's annoying.

"What're you out here drawing, anyhow? Ghosts?" The boy squints, and the raw umber of his forehead shines with sweat. He wipes it with the back of his hand and then rubs the residue off on his green shirt. "Why're you out here drawing ghosts? That's spooky. You're spooky."

She scrunches her nose and scuffs the asphalt with her daffodil boots. "I'm drawing my friends." And, for good measure, to make sure he steps out of her light, she adds, "See how you're not here? It's because-"

"It's gonna rain soon, y'know that? Your spooky ghosts are gonna be washed away. Don't you see the clouds?" He points to the part of the sky opposing the sun, where the end of day threatens to rise higher.

Lacey saw the clouds far before she made the decision to come out here and draw. It hasn't rained yet, so it probably won't. She crosses her arms over her chest, smudging chalk over her sweater in the process. "I see them. I don't care. My friends will be fine."

"Your friends are gonna wash away," the boy says, widening his eyes and nodding to her, himself, like he's telling her a valuable lesson.

Lacey simply shrugs. "They'll come back. They always do. "

The boy blinks at her. Then, most unexpected, his lips lift. He's smiling at her. "Let me see your chalk."

"No," she says, but he stoops down and grabs a stray chunk anyways. In his own shadow, he drives the chalk against the ground, and the scrape grates on her ears, especially since she doesn't know what the end result will be. Eventually, though, he stands back, finally out of the light, and wipes his hands on his pants. "There," he says with sure finality. "It's me. So now you know even if your friends get washed away one will always come back."

She stares down at the drawing. It's not a bad drawing, not at all. "What's your name?" she asks, still staring at the ground.

"Erie."

"An eerie boy?"

"And spooky girl," Erie says, giggling to himself. He sticks out his palm. "Shake my hand so it's official."

"So what's official?"

"Us being friends."

She's skeptical, definitely. Does she really need more friends? She's already so overwhelmed by all the ones coming to her day in and day out, keeping her up at night. It's miserable. But this friend seems like he'll be okay. She caves, drops the chalk, and takes his hand. They shake. She even smiles a little. This will be nice.

"You have a fat hand," Erie says.

She knits her brows together and pushes him over with a mighty shove. He topples atop her ghosts and the first raindrop splashes against the back of his hand.

The old dies in place of the new and there's something...a pull, an attraction, a slight sway in a particular direction. She can drift a bit higher, and when she does, the winds push her a few feet to the right, away from the direction of the flooded lake. She tries to glide on it, to push it farther, but all strains only give her a few inches of distance. If it carries on like this, they'll be here for the next two weeks. They don't have two weeks. They have a day.

"It's stronger and I've got a vague direction, but I can't push it much further without breaking the connection. I don't think this is gonna work. I'm sorry. This is, like, futile, I can't do it."

The rush is breathtaking. One second, she's floating there, and the next she's back in Erie's room, with Gideon lunging towards her. His being must have radiated something so strong that he disrupted everything just getting nearer, and once he stops, kneeling at her feet, she sees what it was he'd been radiating. His breaths are hoarse and eyes wet. His chin quivers a few centimeters from her knees. Desperation.

This desperation is what brings him to clasp his hands over hers, tight, painfully tight. This desperation is what brings a "please, please fucking find him" to his lips.

This desperation is what sends her right back into that astral place where her soul may wander, and this desperation is what joins his soul into the mix.

It's not entirely clear, but she knows he's with her. She feels the flannel and the warmth of his hands, the energy pulsing through them into hers. If he wasn't, she wouldn't shoot a whole mile upwards and a mile outwards, the world a swirling mix as she tries to catch her bearings on this suddenly super fucking strong signal.

It's Gideon's doing. It's all his doing.

"Don't let go. Don't you dare, not until I say. You're steering this fucking ship."

The house is miniscule beneath them. Carrick, even, seems smaller than it is, but at the same time endless, with its lake and forests and fields with no set boundaries. They hover for a while, ticking back and forth like a compass needle. And just like a compass needle, it steadies, and then they're headed east, towards the train tracks. Then across them.

Gideon's grip tightens. They glide rapidly over the fields, faster and faster until the dead land is a passing blur and the various abandoned buildings scattered throughout appear as nothing more than big lumps of dirt. It doesn't stop. They go out and out and out, and something in her says there's too many places out here he could be.

"You took us too far, Gideon. There's no fine-tuning at all. It's too much. We need more to connect us to Erie. Something extra. Find something, now."

The warmth of his hands departs, and she feels half of her come back to reality while the other half remains suspended in The Other Place. It's like sitting somewhere and being so tired you're asleep and yet, you're still awake, but if you try to write down what's being said to you, all that comes through is distant, unrelated gibberish, half-melded with the real world and the unconscious.

There's a metallic squeak, then more rapid, smaller squeaks. The air writhes. Gideon's warped silhouette walks sideways to rejoin her. The flannel slips out of her fingers and reality becomes more pronounced. Gideon sits beside her on Erie's bed, and his hands work as fast as his feet had when he was thinking on them. He swaddles Ray, Erie's rat, in the flannel, leaving space for his cinnamon-spiced milk-white head to poke through. He cups the little guy in his hands, and then carefully beckons Lacey to do the same, each of them supporting one side, their fingers overlapping.

When Lacey speaks, it's slurred. Everything droops. "Concen...trate."

She sinks too quickly back into the astral plane the moment she closes her eyes. The world blurs again as they speed onward on the sun and skies, but everything is fresher here, and she feels wide awake, fully capable. Like a needle full of life was just jammed straight into her veins. The rat's energy combined with their own must be enough. Finally.