It was a dark, stormy night, and very little light from the moon shone in through the dense cover of clouds. There were no sounds, at least which could be heard by the human ear, except those of pouring rain and booming thunder. There was not a soul stirring. Everyone was either asleep or wishing they were.

            The girl was one of the latter, wishing that she was asleep. Wishing that she could sleep.

            She had lost the ability long ago, when she had departed from the land of the living and joined that of the dead. Sometimes it was a blessing to not need any rest, yet other times it was a curse.

            Nights like these were when she most considered it a curse, for it was on a night just like this that she had died. It was nights like these that she got the most severe flashbacks, and wished more than ever that she could make a sound that others could hear.

            She still haunted the room where she had perished. How could she not? The circumstances of her death had not been discovered, and she could not communicate with living souls to let them know what had happened.

            So she sat by the old, creaky window, waiting, watching, and remembering.

             Hinges on the door downstairs creaked.

            “Papa?” It was a young girl’s voice, sounding high-pitched and lonely contrasted to the booming thunder.

            There was no reply.

            “Papa?” the girl called again, softly. “Are you back?”

            There was another creak. The girl recognized it as the sound of the bottom step being stepped on. She grew frightened.

            “Papa! Please reply… please say something!”

            “I’m back.”

            The girl sighed, and a soft breeze blew through the room. It was the most she could do to affect the world of the living. She shifted her position on the window seat, marveling at how her translucent body moved. Though she had been dead for a long time, she was still unused to her intangible form.

            She gazed out of the window, watching the rain pour down in sheets. From somewhere nearby, she could hear a dog barking, begging to be let in out of the cold. She heard its master open the door, and the squeal of the unoiled hinges brought back another memory.

            The large door to her room opened. Hoping with her whole heart that it was her father and not anyone else, she stood up.

            Her hopes were dashed.

            When she saw who was standing there in her bedroom doorway, she let out a sob and collapsed to the floor.

            “I told you I’d be back,” the man said, his voice low and gravelly.

            The girl could only whimper, too terrified to make any other sound.

            “Did you really think that you could escape?” he asked. “Did you really think that I wouldn’t find you?”

            The girl gazed at him, her whole face a mask of sorrow and fear.

            “I gave you a chance!” the man said harshly. “I gave you a life that anyone could have wanted. And… this is how you repay me? By betrayal? Really, Joan, I had thought better of you.”

            Joan finally got up the courage to speak. “You wanted me to steal. To murder. That was not what I had bargained for…”

            The man chuckled darkly. “What did you expect? When you joined my club, you knew all about us.”

            “Not all about you,” the girl whispered.

            “Do you remember what I did to Oscar? The mail boy who found us?”

            Joan blanched; she did remember, very well.

            “Then you know what I am capable of. However…” the man continued, his voice taking on a sly and conniving tone, “I am willing to give you a second chance.”

            Joan gazed up at him in horror. “A… second chance?”

            “Come back to my club. Join us once again.”

            “Join you? Again?” Joan felt shivers running up her spine. “Why would I do that?”

            “For a chance of redemption,” the man said.

            The look of repulsion on her face said all that he needed to know.

            Joan was shivering, though she felt no cold. The fear was still there with her, even after many years had passed. She shuddered and shook her head. If she had the ability to cry, tears would have been streaming down her cheeks. Oh, Oscar… she thought. That had been a dreary, sorrowful day.

            It was a dark afternoon – there was a thick layer of clouds over the sky which seemed to threaten imminent rain. In the old, abandoned courtyard, a trial was beginning.

            “You stand here today, guilty of trespassing against us,” the man said loudly, making his voice reverberate so all could hear him. “You are here because you have seen us. You are here because you know of us.”

            A boy was standing beside him, a bag of mail slung over his shoulder, his hands bound by thick ropes. His tousled brown hair waved about as he glanced frantically about, trying to find a friendly face in the hostile crowd surrounding him. He did not see any.

            “So what?” he challenged, defiantly tossing his head back. “I know of you. I know of plenty of things.”

            The man gave a coy smile. “But we are not like ‘plenty of things’, young man. We are unique. But… we are not heartless. That is why we are giving you a chance.  A chance to join us.”

            The boy looked shocked. “Join you? A bunch of criminals?”

            That was when his eyes locked with Joan’s. His shocked expression grew much more confused and appalled.

            Joan knew that he was shocked to see a girl among this group of ruffians. She shuffled her feet and looked down at the ground. Around her, the crowd was moving, angered but not surprised at the boy’s response.

            “What is your name?” the man asked. “What are you known by?”

            The boy glanced up at him, then back at the crowd – but Joan had been hidden by the mass of people. “Oscar,” he said loudly. “My name is Oscar.”

            When Joan looked back up, the man was smiling. “Oscar. Good. Thank you for telling us, and sparing me the pain of having to break it out of you.”

            Oscar’s eyes grew wide in terror.

            “After all,” the man continued, his voice sounding casual and light, “I do enjoy knowing the names of my… victims.”

            Joan looked away. Never before had she heard such anguished screams.

            Joan began sobbing, sobbing uncontrollably. She made no audible sound, but an observer of the supernatural would have been able to discern awful moans and yells. This observer would have also been able to see a young girl, body racking back and forth, crying at seemingly nothing in particular.

            But of course, there wasn’t an observer, and if there was Joan would have told him her entire story. She would have told him everything, from how she was an orphan on the streets, and how the man had found her and promised her a home and food, to how she had seen Oscar brutally murdered, and how she knew that she could not live with these kind of people. She would have told him how she ran away, and how the man had been unable to catch her, yet was able to call after her “I’ll find you. I’ll be back!” and how she had lived in terror with her adopted father ever since. And finally, she would tell this observer of how the man had held up to his promise – he had found her.

            The man gazed down at her. “You were young and naïve,” he said, attempting one last time to change her mind. “But you have grown, have learned. What say you now? Will you return?”

            Joan gazed up at him with repulsion and sorrow written clearly over her entire face. “Return with you? A bunch of criminals?” she asked, mimicking the tone that Oscar had used when he was on trial.

            An expression of enlightenment flashed briefly over the man’s face, before it was quickly covered by anger. “So… Oscar did leave his mark on you after all,” he said slowly.

            The girl was silent, and hid her face with her hair.

            “Is this really what you want?” the man asked. “You know what I can do to you.”

            Joan gazed up at him, tears in her eyes, her whole body shaking. “A painful death is better than a guilt-filled life.”

            The man’s eyes darkened. “This is your last chance, Joan.”

            She uttered a single word: “No.”

            Joan sat by the window, shaking, sobbing, all in silence. She wondered if she had been right to resist the man. She could have had a long life. She could have been happy.

            Then she remembered the sounds of Oscar screaming, and the terror she felt in the man’s presence, and she knew that she could never have participated in such cruelty.

            No. She wouldn’t have been happy. She would have been miserable.

            She heard the creak of the door. This time it was not a flashback – it was real.

            Joan straightened her back and gazed at the door. No one had come into this room since… well, since she had been murdered. So it was with great curiosity that she observed this newcomer. She wasn’t afraid of it – why should she be? She was dead, with nothing more to lose.

            The figure which slipped through the door before closing it again was as translucent as she. With a start, Joan realized that she recognized the figure, though he was now greatly changed from the time she had last seen him.

            “Oscar,” she whispered.

            The ghost looked up at her. His face, though intangible, was clearly taut and stressed. “I was looking for you,” he said.

            Joan could almost feel a tremor running through her – except that she couldn’t feel anything. “For me? Why?”

            “You were there,” he said, eyes gazing intensely at her. “Why? Why were you there? You were so young… and… and a girl. But a child. And you were there. With them. I saw you. Why were you there?”

            Joan’s spirit sank as she heard those words, and she had to stop herself from going into another sobbing fit. “I – I was an orphan…” she murmured. For some reason, she felt as if she had no choice but to explain herself to this boy. “On the streets. Starving, I – I was so hungry… and they promised – they promised they would give me food… a home… all I had to do was… was…”

            Here she broke down. Turning away from Oscar and towards the window, she hid herself from him, from the shame, from the guilt.

            A few tense, awkward moments passed before Oscar asked, in a softer tone, “What did they tell you to do?”

            Still facing away from him, Joan’s lips began to tremble. “I had to steal. Everyone had to steal. Most had to do worse… but I was young… and a girl… so they let me off easy. But the man – he – he said that I would have to prove myself someday. Or else they would make me leave… and I’d have to go back to the streets… back to starvation…”

            She trailed off here, unable to speak any more. She was surprised that she had been able to speak at all.

            Joan finally glanced away from the window and saw that Oscar had sat down next to her.

            “Did they hurt you?” he asked quietly.

            She shook her head, then spoke after a pain-filled pause. “But they threatened to.”

            “Did you ever get away?” Oscar asked.

            Joan nodded again. “Once. But he – he found me. And…”

            She felt her emotions welling up, threatening to come out. She choked back a sob as she saw the glint of the man’s knife in her mind’s eye, and an overwhelming, confusing torrent of thoughts flooded through her as she recalled blood dripping to the floor during her final living breath.

            “And he killed me,” she finished softly, so softly that it was almost nothing but a breeze.

            Oscar gently placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Even now, Joan still felt thrill at the feeling of being known about, cared for.

            “I’m so sorry,” Oscar said.

            Joan gazed up at him, and if she had been alive more tears would have come to her eyes. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

            Oscar gently nodded.

            Joan felt like she could open herself up. “No one’s ever understood me before,” she cried out suddenly, and then was silent.

            Oscar said nothing for a moment, then replied, “I know that feeling.”

            If ghosts could cry, two friends would have shed many tears that night.