A/N: I decided to write one more story for the Monkey & Maeve Halloween Writing Challenge 2022, but I didn’t know what. Then I thought, okay, I’m going to start a random play of songs in my music playlist (hundreds of songs to choose from) and whatever comes up first will be the “inspiration” for the story. That proved to be the Pentatonix version of Say Something. All things considered, it could have been much worse. I don’t know what I would’ve done with Tarzan Boy, for instance. XD In any case, I didn’t want to write anything completely depressing, so pretty much all I took from it was the title.
Say Something
The small fire crackled cheerfully, sending up a bright shower of sparks as Mart idly poked it with a long stick.
“Well,” Dan prompted. “C’mon, dude. We know you must have some really good ghost stories to tell. Get into the spirit of things! Pun entirely intended.”
“Yeesh. That was really bad, Cowboy.” Trixie leaned over and lightly shoved his shoulder.
He grinned at his friend, unrepentant. “I gotta be me, Freckles.”
“That was not you,” she shot back. “That was you channeling Mart.” She paused and grimaced. “Pun totally not intended.”
“I do have a good one,” Mart said slowly. “And I can tell it, if you clowns are through?”
Trixie held up both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “We’re done. Entertain us, bro. What’s the point of hanging out on Halloween night if you don’t tell at least a few good ghost stories?” She settled back in her folding chair and regarded her brother expectantly. “If it’s good enough, I’ll even make you another s’more.”
Mart rubbed his chin and nodded. “Okay. So, this story takes place right here in the preserve.” He waved a hand toward the dense woods across the clearing from where they sat around the firepit outside Mr. Maypenny’s cabin. “And as it happens, it was on Halloween about seventy years ago now, I guess.
“There was this girl, Maggie Durrant. She’d gone to see a movie in town with some friends and after, she was supposed to drive back home to the farmhouse where she lived with her parents and two brothers. Only she never made it. The next morning, Maggie’s car was found abandoned on the shoulder of Glen Road and there was no sign of her. The police found a boy’s letterman’s jacket on the passenger seat, but that was it. She hadn’t been in an accident, and the car started just fine so it wasn’t a matter of a breakdown or running out of gas. She’d just stopped for some reason no one could determine and… disappeared. There were search parties and investigations and just nothing. Days went by, then weeks, months… years, and eventually even her friends and family lost all hope of ever seeing her again. The jacket it turned out belonged to a boy she went to school with. He’d loaned it to her that night because she was cold in the theater. He’d fallen under a little suspicion after her disappearance, but there were plenty of witnesses who could testify he’d gone straight home after the movie.”
“Okay, this is creepy so far,” Trixie said, “but I thought we’d agreed to ghost stories, not missing person cases?”
“I’m getting to that part. Ten years after her disappearance, also on Halloween, a group of kids went trespassing here in the preserve, playing a game of Ghost in the Graveyard. They were running around, chasing each other and scaring themselves silly, when one of them saw a girl walking along, just off the path. She was limping, and he thought she needed help, so he called out to her. She didn’t respond and he called to her again. At that point, one of his friends caught up to him and when this kid tried to explain about the girl, he realized she’d vanished.
“He took a lot of teasing about his ‘phantom.’ The next day, he decided he’d probably imagined her or something and eventually he forgot all about her. But jump forward another 10 years and he’s now a high school track star. He’s out jogging on Glen Road a little before sunset, Halloween night, and he sees a flash of movement off in the woods. He doesn’t know why, but he’s drawn to it and he follows. It’s the girl. The same girl with the same limp. He calls out to her, but again just like last time, she ignores him. ‘Hello?’ he calls after her. ‘Can you hear me? Can you speak?’
“At that, she does turn and look his way. She opens her mouth, but… nothing. She doesn’t actually say a word even though he swears he can see her lips moving. He finds himself frozen in place, terrified though he doesn’t quite know why, but before he can even manage to do or say anything more, she vanishes.”
Dan picked up his can of soda and grinned before taking a sip. “Okay, dude. You got us. This is getting good.”
“So this guy, he decides he wants to know more about his ghost. He does some research and finds an old newspaper story about the disappearance of Maggie Durrant. He recognizes her from her picture right away. The girl in the woods is definitely Maggie. Or, at this point, he figures, Maggie’s ghost. He tries to find her again but after searching for more nights than he can count for several years on end, he gives up.
“And so another ten years goes by. And it's Halloween again. Our guy is married and he’s got a young son. He still goes jogging every evening, mostly now to keep in shape and just for the love of it. When he comes to almost the same part of Glen Road and sees Maggie walking along, he realizes that he’s not even surprised. Somehow, he’d expected her without even consciously knowing it.
“He chases after her, just like before. ‘Maggie!’ he calls out. ‘Maggie! I just want to help you! Can you tell me what happened to you?’”
Mart paused and poked at the fire again. Trixie and Dan exchanged glances. “And…?” Trixie said as Mart let the silence stretch on.
“And she looks at him. She opens her mouth. Nothing. She says absolutely nothing before she just vanishes. Poof.”
“Poof?” Trixie repeated with a half-smile. “Poof?”
Mart shrugged. “There one moment. Gone the next. Our guy knew she wouldn’t be seen again for another ten years. When his son got a bit older, he told him about Maggie. And he’d pieced something together. Each time he’d seen her, she wasn’t quite in the same area. Each time, she’d been moving in a direction toward the lake, getting closer and closer to it, if that really was her destination.
“So now we’re another ten years in. This guy’s son is about fifteen. He’s fascinated with Maggie's story and he convinces his youngest brother to go out with him and search for her Halloween night. They start at roughly the spot on Glen Road where their dad says he first saw her and they make their way toward the lake.
“Sure enough, they find Maggie. She’s limping along and when they call to her, at first she ignores them, but eventually, she turns and does the same, silent, mouth-moving-but-no-words stare. There doesn’t really seem to be any sort of threat, yet both boys have never been so scared in all their lives. They couldn’t move. They couldn’t cry out. They were absolutely petrified with fear until she suddenly disappeared
“Unlike their dad, neither of them ever went searching for her again. If Maggie has been appearing on Halloween night on each ten-year anniversary since, no witness has come forward to say anything.” Mart slumped back in his seat. He picked up his water bottle and drained the last of it.
“Wait,” Trixie said. “That’s it? That’s the end of the story?”
Mart looked over at her. “Well, not quite the end. Both boys grew up never truly getting over that night. In fact, they moved away. Far away. States away. Their middle brother inherited the old family farm on the property bordering the preserve and they were happy to leave him to it. But the younger brother, he never had a family of his own and so he handed the story down to one of his nephews. His ‘inquisitive’ nephew who was always ‘up for a good yarn.’”
“Hang on…” Trixie leaned forward, staring at her brother with narrowed eyes. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yep,” Mart replied, leveling his sister and friend with an intense look. “We have a family legend about a ghost and didn’t even know it. At least, not until last August when Uncle Andrew was visiting and told me the tale. And today? This Halloween? We’re at another ten-year mark, so Maggie could be out there tonight walking around. In fact, Uncle Andrew said by his calculations, she should have reached the lake by now. We could go look for her if you want. Who knows? Maybe we could be the ones to finally solve the mystery of whatever happened to Maggie Durrant.”
Trixie sat back with a laugh. “Okay, well done, bro. Well done. You told a spooky story and worked in a challenge you knew would be hard for me to refuse.” She glanced over at Dan. “What do you say? You wanna put out the fire and go for a walk down to the lake?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course!” Dan stood with a wide grin, clapping his hands together. “No way are we going to just let Mart’s story end here.”
Twenty minutes later, Mart switched on his flashlight and led them to the path that made an almost direct line to the Wheelers’ lake. Much to his chagrin, his sister and best friend traded turns suddenly jumping in front of him or letting out sharp yells in an attempt to catch him off guard as they made their way along. “We’re almost there,” he said finally in a pained voice. “If you clowns are through?”
“Geeze, dude,” Dan mumbled with a low chuckle. “Can I just remind you that once upon a time you were the one considered the class clown?”
Mart didn’t bother to respond. He stilled and pointed toward the lake. There, on the dock, they could just make out the figure of a young woman.
“No way,” Trixie exclaimed softly. “Oh, mad props, bro! This is awesome. Who is it? Who’d you get to play Maggie? Di? It’s gotta be Di.” Laughing, she suddenly took off at a run. “Maggie!” she shouted dramatically. “Maggie! Can you hear me? What happened to you?”
“No! Trixie! Wait! That’s not… Dan, dangit, c’mon!”
With Mart and Dan racing along behind her, Trixie sprinted toward the girl on the dock. As she got closer, the figure turned.
“Trixie!” Mart yelled again.
Several things occurred to Trixie at once. First, the girl was most definitely not Diana Lynch. Second, her brother sounded genuinely frightened as he called her name, and third, she was moving way too fast. She almost fell as she stumbled to a halt, her arms windmilling to keep her balanced enough to remain on her feet.
The girl stared at her, her expression forlorn. “I just wanted to see the stars,” she explained. “It was such a pretty night and I thought out here, by the lake, there wouldn’t be any streetlights to obscure the view…”
Trixie opened her mouth to speak, but only managed a high-pitched squeak.
“But I didn’t make it,” Maggie continued. “I… fell somehow. I rolled down into a gully and hit my head and… and that was it. I ended up beneath an old log and I guess no one ever found me?”
“Uh,” Trixie answered faintly, her tone still unnaturally high.
Maggie raised her head and looked up. “It’s just as beautiful as I thought it would be. It’s amazing, isn’t it? It feels like the whole universe is right there and you could almost touch it if you tried.” She smiled as she spoke and, with one last glance in Trixie’s direction, she gently faded away like a mere wisp of fog dispelled by a soft breeze.
Trixie stood blinking in disbelief. She was only half aware of both Mart and Dan at her side, trying to claim her attention. It was Dan’s insistent tug on her arm that finally brought her around.
“Trixie?” he said anxiously. “Are you okay? Say something!”
She swallowed hard and gripped Dan’s hand in hers. “Well,” she rasped. “I guess that solves the mystery of Maggie Durrant, huh?”
“What?”
“Stars. Lost. Fell down. You heard her.” Dan and Mart were staring at her oddly and Trixie frowned. “You did hear her, right? You were right behind me.”
“We could see her mouth moving, Trix,” Mart replied, his brow furrowed in confusion as he looked to Dan for confirmation. At his friend's nod, he continued. “But she wasn’t actually saying anything. That was the scariest thing I have ever seen. Ever.” He visibly shuddered as his eyes tracked to the spot they’d last seen Maggie’s ghost.
“Oh, wow. Uh, okay. Weird. I could hear her just fine.” Trixie blew out a breath and shook her head. “Didn’t see that coming. ‘Course, I didn’t see any of this coming. Let’s, uh, let’s go home, okay? I can tell you the ending of the sad tale of Maggie Durrant, but I think I want to do it while sitting in front of a comfortable fire with a nice cup of hot cocoa to drink.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me, Freckles,” Dan agreed. “And maybe we can leave a few lights on, too, yeah? Just, you know…”
“Yeah, Cowboy,” she said with a crooked grin. “I know. We’ll have the farm so lit up, it’ll look like Christmas, not Halloween.”
“Well,” Dan prompted. “C’mon, dude. We know you must have some really good ghost stories to tell. Get into the spirit of things! Pun entirely intended.”
“Yeesh. That was really bad, Cowboy.” Trixie leaned over and lightly shoved his shoulder.
He grinned at his friend, unrepentant. “I gotta be me, Freckles.”
“That was not you,” she shot back. “That was you channeling Mart.” She paused and grimaced. “Pun totally not intended.”
“I do have a good one,” Mart said slowly. “And I can tell it, if you clowns are through?”
Trixie held up both hands in a conciliatory gesture. “We’re done. Entertain us, bro. What’s the point of hanging out on Halloween night if you don’t tell at least a few good ghost stories?” She settled back in her folding chair and regarded her brother expectantly. “If it’s good enough, I’ll even make you another s’more.”
Mart rubbed his chin and nodded. “Okay. So, this story takes place right here in the preserve.” He waved a hand toward the dense woods across the clearing from where they sat around the firepit outside Mr. Maypenny’s cabin. “And as it happens, it was on Halloween about seventy years ago now, I guess.
“There was this girl, Maggie Durrant. She’d gone to see a movie in town with some friends and after, she was supposed to drive back home to the farmhouse where she lived with her parents and two brothers. Only she never made it. The next morning, Maggie’s car was found abandoned on the shoulder of Glen Road and there was no sign of her. The police found a boy’s letterman’s jacket on the passenger seat, but that was it. She hadn’t been in an accident, and the car started just fine so it wasn’t a matter of a breakdown or running out of gas. She’d just stopped for some reason no one could determine and… disappeared. There were search parties and investigations and just nothing. Days went by, then weeks, months… years, and eventually even her friends and family lost all hope of ever seeing her again. The jacket it turned out belonged to a boy she went to school with. He’d loaned it to her that night because she was cold in the theater. He’d fallen under a little suspicion after her disappearance, but there were plenty of witnesses who could testify he’d gone straight home after the movie.”
“Okay, this is creepy so far,” Trixie said, “but I thought we’d agreed to ghost stories, not missing person cases?”
“I’m getting to that part. Ten years after her disappearance, also on Halloween, a group of kids went trespassing here in the preserve, playing a game of Ghost in the Graveyard. They were running around, chasing each other and scaring themselves silly, when one of them saw a girl walking along, just off the path. She was limping, and he thought she needed help, so he called out to her. She didn’t respond and he called to her again. At that point, one of his friends caught up to him and when this kid tried to explain about the girl, he realized she’d vanished.
“He took a lot of teasing about his ‘phantom.’ The next day, he decided he’d probably imagined her or something and eventually he forgot all about her. But jump forward another 10 years and he’s now a high school track star. He’s out jogging on Glen Road a little before sunset, Halloween night, and he sees a flash of movement off in the woods. He doesn’t know why, but he’s drawn to it and he follows. It’s the girl. The same girl with the same limp. He calls out to her, but again just like last time, she ignores him. ‘Hello?’ he calls after her. ‘Can you hear me? Can you speak?’
“At that, she does turn and look his way. She opens her mouth, but… nothing. She doesn’t actually say a word even though he swears he can see her lips moving. He finds himself frozen in place, terrified though he doesn’t quite know why, but before he can even manage to do or say anything more, she vanishes.”
Dan picked up his can of soda and grinned before taking a sip. “Okay, dude. You got us. This is getting good.”
“So this guy, he decides he wants to know more about his ghost. He does some research and finds an old newspaper story about the disappearance of Maggie Durrant. He recognizes her from her picture right away. The girl in the woods is definitely Maggie. Or, at this point, he figures, Maggie’s ghost. He tries to find her again but after searching for more nights than he can count for several years on end, he gives up.
“And so another ten years goes by. And it's Halloween again. Our guy is married and he’s got a young son. He still goes jogging every evening, mostly now to keep in shape and just for the love of it. When he comes to almost the same part of Glen Road and sees Maggie walking along, he realizes that he’s not even surprised. Somehow, he’d expected her without even consciously knowing it.
“He chases after her, just like before. ‘Maggie!’ he calls out. ‘Maggie! I just want to help you! Can you tell me what happened to you?’”
Mart paused and poked at the fire again. Trixie and Dan exchanged glances. “And…?” Trixie said as Mart let the silence stretch on.
“And she looks at him. She opens her mouth. Nothing. She says absolutely nothing before she just vanishes. Poof.”
“Poof?” Trixie repeated with a half-smile. “Poof?”
Mart shrugged. “There one moment. Gone the next. Our guy knew she wouldn’t be seen again for another ten years. When his son got a bit older, he told him about Maggie. And he’d pieced something together. Each time he’d seen her, she wasn’t quite in the same area. Each time, she’d been moving in a direction toward the lake, getting closer and closer to it, if that really was her destination.
“So now we’re another ten years in. This guy’s son is about fifteen. He’s fascinated with Maggie's story and he convinces his youngest brother to go out with him and search for her Halloween night. They start at roughly the spot on Glen Road where their dad says he first saw her and they make their way toward the lake.
“Sure enough, they find Maggie. She’s limping along and when they call to her, at first she ignores them, but eventually, she turns and does the same, silent, mouth-moving-but-no-words stare. There doesn’t really seem to be any sort of threat, yet both boys have never been so scared in all their lives. They couldn’t move. They couldn’t cry out. They were absolutely petrified with fear until she suddenly disappeared
“Unlike their dad, neither of them ever went searching for her again. If Maggie has been appearing on Halloween night on each ten-year anniversary since, no witness has come forward to say anything.” Mart slumped back in his seat. He picked up his water bottle and drained the last of it.
“Wait,” Trixie said. “That’s it? That’s the end of the story?”
Mart looked over at her. “Well, not quite the end. Both boys grew up never truly getting over that night. In fact, they moved away. Far away. States away. Their middle brother inherited the old family farm on the property bordering the preserve and they were happy to leave him to it. But the younger brother, he never had a family of his own and so he handed the story down to one of his nephews. His ‘inquisitive’ nephew who was always ‘up for a good yarn.’”
“Hang on…” Trixie leaned forward, staring at her brother with narrowed eyes. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Yep,” Mart replied, leveling his sister and friend with an intense look. “We have a family legend about a ghost and didn’t even know it. At least, not until last August when Uncle Andrew was visiting and told me the tale. And today? This Halloween? We’re at another ten-year mark, so Maggie could be out there tonight walking around. In fact, Uncle Andrew said by his calculations, she should have reached the lake by now. We could go look for her if you want. Who knows? Maybe we could be the ones to finally solve the mystery of whatever happened to Maggie Durrant.”
Trixie sat back with a laugh. “Okay, well done, bro. Well done. You told a spooky story and worked in a challenge you knew would be hard for me to refuse.” She glanced over at Dan. “What do you say? You wanna put out the fire and go for a walk down to the lake?”
“Are you kidding me? Of course!” Dan stood with a wide grin, clapping his hands together. “No way are we going to just let Mart’s story end here.”
Twenty minutes later, Mart switched on his flashlight and led them to the path that made an almost direct line to the Wheelers’ lake. Much to his chagrin, his sister and best friend traded turns suddenly jumping in front of him or letting out sharp yells in an attempt to catch him off guard as they made their way along. “We’re almost there,” he said finally in a pained voice. “If you clowns are through?”
“Geeze, dude,” Dan mumbled with a low chuckle. “Can I just remind you that once upon a time you were the one considered the class clown?”
Mart didn’t bother to respond. He stilled and pointed toward the lake. There, on the dock, they could just make out the figure of a young woman.
“No way,” Trixie exclaimed softly. “Oh, mad props, bro! This is awesome. Who is it? Who’d you get to play Maggie? Di? It’s gotta be Di.” Laughing, she suddenly took off at a run. “Maggie!” she shouted dramatically. “Maggie! Can you hear me? What happened to you?”
“No! Trixie! Wait! That’s not… Dan, dangit, c’mon!”
With Mart and Dan racing along behind her, Trixie sprinted toward the girl on the dock. As she got closer, the figure turned.
“Trixie!” Mart yelled again.
Several things occurred to Trixie at once. First, the girl was most definitely not Diana Lynch. Second, her brother sounded genuinely frightened as he called her name, and third, she was moving way too fast. She almost fell as she stumbled to a halt, her arms windmilling to keep her balanced enough to remain on her feet.
The girl stared at her, her expression forlorn. “I just wanted to see the stars,” she explained. “It was such a pretty night and I thought out here, by the lake, there wouldn’t be any streetlights to obscure the view…”
Trixie opened her mouth to speak, but only managed a high-pitched squeak.
“But I didn’t make it,” Maggie continued. “I… fell somehow. I rolled down into a gully and hit my head and… and that was it. I ended up beneath an old log and I guess no one ever found me?”
“Uh,” Trixie answered faintly, her tone still unnaturally high.
Maggie raised her head and looked up. “It’s just as beautiful as I thought it would be. It’s amazing, isn’t it? It feels like the whole universe is right there and you could almost touch it if you tried.” She smiled as she spoke and, with one last glance in Trixie’s direction, she gently faded away like a mere wisp of fog dispelled by a soft breeze.
Trixie stood blinking in disbelief. She was only half aware of both Mart and Dan at her side, trying to claim her attention. It was Dan’s insistent tug on her arm that finally brought her around.
“Trixie?” he said anxiously. “Are you okay? Say something!”
She swallowed hard and gripped Dan’s hand in hers. “Well,” she rasped. “I guess that solves the mystery of Maggie Durrant, huh?”
“What?”
“Stars. Lost. Fell down. You heard her.” Dan and Mart were staring at her oddly and Trixie frowned. “You did hear her, right? You were right behind me.”
“We could see her mouth moving, Trix,” Mart replied, his brow furrowed in confusion as he looked to Dan for confirmation. At his friend's nod, he continued. “But she wasn’t actually saying anything. That was the scariest thing I have ever seen. Ever.” He visibly shuddered as his eyes tracked to the spot they’d last seen Maggie’s ghost.
“Oh, wow. Uh, okay. Weird. I could hear her just fine.” Trixie blew out a breath and shook her head. “Didn’t see that coming. ‘Course, I didn’t see any of this coming. Let’s, uh, let’s go home, okay? I can tell you the ending of the sad tale of Maggie Durrant, but I think I want to do it while sitting in front of a comfortable fire with a nice cup of hot cocoa to drink.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me, Freckles,” Dan agreed. “And maybe we can leave a few lights on, too, yeah? Just, you know…”
“Yeah, Cowboy,” she said with a crooked grin. “I know. We’ll have the farm so lit up, it’ll look like Christmas, not Halloween.”