My momma used to tell Gabby that, if she was naughty, the Piper would come and take her away. And take her away he did, when Gabby turned nine. I heard the Piper, so I know I’m not crazy. He plays when the Ghouls come. He played when he drove Gabby into the light at the end of the tunnel in the satiny hill.

Gabby is my daughter, Gabby is my best friend, and Gabby is dead. Three weeks after her ninth birthday, she shivered out of existence like the snow melting on the road outside the cabin, and then I heard it — a hollow sound that I would've blamed on the wind if it didn’t have a creepy melody: high, yet low, distant, yet right beside me.

She rose, clear and shimmering like in the movies, corporeal, yet almost extra-dimensional, and a black-suited figure who looked like an older version of me grabbed her hand, and led her to our driveway. They got in the car, and I swear I saw them drive away. But when I blinked and looked again, the car was right back on the driveway, with no one nearby.

That alone made me believe in the supernatural. For almost a decade, I neglected my job and my social life, scouring through the deepest, darkest corners of online forums, where I learned that ghosts are losts souls who have “unfinished business”. But even the most stubborn can't persist forever, and, eventually, everyone gives up. I gave up, after years of searching for ghosts, I gave up and I just drove.

I don’t remember getting in my car. I don’t remember driving for miles and miles in my trashy old truck from Minnesota to Ohio, where the Ghouls are. But I remember entering the town where no light competes with the stars but the soft glow of the few street lamps lighting the single road that runs through the small town. I used to love small towns like Ghouls. I used to love the idealistic “small town where everybody knows everybody else”. But that kind of town only exists on television.

And Ghouls, Ohio might not exist at all.

Ghouls attracts wanderers. I guess we're all wanderers, then, because one way or another, we all end up in Ghouls. And when you do, you will hear the Piper.

The town as I remember it looked like a reverse-oasis: though surrounded by lush grassland dotted with clusters of trees and a few hills, Ghouls itself had cracked soil and cacti. It was there that you could find people who nod and say “good morning” to you as if they have known you their whole lives.

And perhaps Jeanne, at least, did know me.

Jeanne, the tall woman with slender arms, whose silver bracelet glinted as she asked me, “Which room?”

Jeanne, the woman in a red dress who smiled as I told her, “Room Nine,” choosing the age my daughter was when she died.

Jeanne, the woman with ebony hair, who told me,“Up the stairs and to your left. Everything is exactly how you left it.”

Jeanne, the woman with stunning emeralds for eyes, who kept asking, “You’re sure I don’t know you?”

“No, you must be confusing me with someone else. Thanks for the key,” I said, before turning to walk towards the wooden staircase. I felt an old man run into me as the key clattered to the ground.

“Sorry,” I said, kneeling.

“You should be,” the man snapped back in a thick southern accent, the heavy smell of alcohol percolating through his stained teeth, before stepping on my hand and striding away briskly.

“Sorry about that,” Jeanne called in her British accent. “That’s just crazy old Jenkins.”

I shook it off, and started walking the nine wooden steps up to the dim, carpeted halls. I felt more and more at home, until at last I reached the gold-lettered “9”.  As I entered, I was greeted by the smell of Momma’s spaghetti, and the lovely black and white wall clock, which looked almost exactly like one I had at home. I prepared to hang my clothes, only to find, already hanging, clothes in my favorite colors, black and blue.

“Was something wrong with the room?” Jeanne asked as she took back the key I handed her.

“No,” I said. “The room’s already occupied.”
“Room Nine, right?” She laughed. “Nobody ever takes Room Nine.”

“Why is that?”
“Well,” she chuckled. “Jenkins’ cousin died in that room and afterwards, Jenkins noticed that any person who slept in that room for longer than a month died within a year.”

Chills.

“It isn’t true,” she said, “or at least not completely true. The cousin was the only guest to ever sleep in Room Nine, as she moved in when the B&B first opened. And after her death Jenkins ran around saying ‘it’s cursed, it’s cursed’ and no one’s slept there since.”
Fewer chills.

“You should go see Jenkins if you’re curious,” Jeanne said.

Two days after I arrived, I decided to visit Jenkins’ house. He must have had taste, as it sat in the most beautiful clearing on a tall foundation that allowed him to see both the hills and the town. But he must not have been rich, either, for this foundation was cracked. As I went to stand on his porch and knock on the door, it gave me pause: would it be able to hold two people’s weight?

But I knocked anyway, and was surprised to hear from beside me, “Can I help you?”

It was funny. Jenkins was sitting on a log on his porch, but I hadn’t seen anyone when I first walked up. I tried to speak to him, but he did not respond. He stared in one direction the entire time, pausing only to take sips out of his one dirty cup. After a while, I left.

Well, I saw no reason why I wouldn’t come back. It was the most beautiful part of the woods just East of Ghouls and the man didn’t seem to have a problem with it.

He spoke the ninth time I returned. I could barely make out what was being said, but he invited me into his house.

I took one, two, three steps into the musty air.

Four and I heard a chair being dragged against the floor behind me.

Five and I felt Jenkins’ warm breath from behind me.  

“Follow me,” he said.

“Uh…” I took a small sixth step.

“Follow me.” Jenkins stepped again and I felt his hand press against the back of my black coat.

Jenkins and I stepped, six, seven, eight, nine steps and out onto the porch when he called loudly, “you coming?”

A door opened from the back of the house and Jeanne pattered out. Jenkins pointed at the single road through Ghouls. “You see that car?” His voice was hard to hear through his country accent. The car drove into the hill at the end of the road. “It won’t come back,” he continued. “None of the cars that drive through Ghouls come back.”
“They all have the same driver,” Jeanne said. “A tall man in a black suit.”

“Looks like you, slightly older,” said Jenkins. He paused.

“Let’s take a drive.” Jenkins moved toward a beat-up truck that once tried to be red but failed.

Moments later, we were driving to the hill that the car had passed through. It had a tunnel right through it. It was like all tunnels save for the brick wall at the end of it. A dead end.

“Touch it,” Jeanne said.

“What?” I stared at her.

“Touch it,” Jenkins said, more forcefully.

I touched it. It felt like brick. So what?

Next we drove to the opposite side of the tunnel: same tunnel, except no brick wall. We drove through, unhindered, and headed towards town.

“Sometimes we see cars pass into the tunnel. No cars ever come back to Ghouls,” said Jenkins, “and nobody stops in town except to go through the tunnel.”

“So our question to you,” said Jeanne, “is what are you doing here?”

I thought for a moment.

How crazy would I sound?

“I’m looking for my daughter.”

“Is your daughter alive?”

I shook my head.

“I told you,” Jeanne nodded, unsurprised. “He’s a Chaser.”

“Let me answer your inevitable question,” Jenkins sighed. “A Chaser is someone who comes to Ghouls in pursuit of ‘the stories’. Legend has it that the tunnel is the tunnel, as in ‘the light at the end of the tunnel’. The people who founded this town said the hill was the gateway to the afterlife. Folks started saying the occasional wagon, and later, car, that passes through is carrying the dead.”

“Ghost cars,” he said. He made an ooooo sound. Oooo indeed.

“As a joke, the settlers named the town that rose by it ‘Ghouls’,” he continued.

“A ghoul,” said Jeanne, “was what the founders called the spirit of those who die as children but return to live their full lives near the hill.  They return with no memories, a few changes of clothes, and a silver bracelet, engraved with the initials they had in life.”

In unison, Jenkins and Jeanne shook the silver bracelets. Jenkins’ read “C. D.” and Jeanne’s read “G. N.”.

“They’re not real, of course,” Jeanne said. “A few years ago we started making these bracelets as a joke, printed with random letters.”

I sat in silence, not knowing why they were telling me this.

“You want a bracelet?” Jeanne posed the question as she exited the car.

I did want one, and told her so. Jeanne went inside, and, after digging around for a while, said, “Here, let’s see what your randomized initials are.”

I was about to read the bracelet she handed me when we heard something — a hollow sound I would've blamed on the wind if it didn’t have a creepy melody: high yet low, distant yet right beside me.

Jeanne looked up from the counter. “The Piper,” she said.

I looked at her, puzzled.

She sighed, and sat down in an armchair. “When that sound is made, it means a Ghoul has returned.”

She laughed. “The sound is really just the sound of cars whooshing through the tunnel.”

Just then, despite the late hour, there came a knock at the door. I rose to get it, and, opening the door, I saw a teenager.

Then I woke up, safely at home.

It was all a dream. It had to have been. A tunnel can’t be a dead end on the one side and a clear path on the other. There are no deserts in Ohio in the middle of lush hills. No middle-of-nowhere towns where one person talks in a southern accent, another in a British one. I had imagined it all.

Perhaps I’d even imagined seeing the Piper the night Gabby died — he did look like me. Perhaps I was seeing my own reflection, and the “ghost” was Gabby’s reflection. Perhaps I’d grabbed Gabby’s hand the way the Piper grabbed her ghost’s. Perhaps.

And all of the symbolism with nine, that had to have been imagined. The nine steps to leave Jenkins’ home. The nine steps on the stairs in Jeanne’s, where I lived in Room Nine. And didn’t Room Nine contain my furniture? I had placed these details in my dream because Gabby was nine when she died, I told myself.

I glanced at my analog clock. It was nine.

Right by it, I saw the sparkling silver bracelet Jeanne had given me. I turned it over, telling myself I was stupid to think that there would be initials on it.

But there were:

“G. N.”

Just like the letters on Jeanne’s bracelet. Perhaps she was a ghost child, who returned with nothing but a silver bracelet with those letters?

“G. N.”

Just like her name, Jeanne. Perhaps she had said those letters aloud, and used them to fashion a name for herself?

“G. N.”

Just like the initials of Gabrielle Nathan.