Halloween Tale 2019: Ansha's Revenge

In which I bring to you, in lieu of a specific Halloween story, another bit of my current Work In Progress. I picked this chapter because it fits as a short story too, and hopefully one that intrigues you to demand the rest. This isn't the first time that Ansha has been murdered, which she doesn't remember but she does seem to be getting the hang of it, and a chance of pay back too. Chapter 34 Scarcely aware of the chair to which she is tied Ansha is lost, lost in a cold fright that is elemental, that consumes like fire.
She has tried to hold on, to listen, perhaps for a bird call.

Sometimes she has heard birds singing, a soft wind pushing through branches.
But then the door shuts.
It smells in here, like butcher's slops.
She has also heard a hum, a refrigerator.
And a voice.

‘Tell me how that feels,’ the perpetrator asks, though they must know she cannot. ‘Isn’t this the most pain you’ve ever felt?’

A phrase swells through her, a sudden heat: I do not belong to you!
And a feeling like a hand on her brow, like flowers growing.
And a calm, as though things are as they should be.

Here I am, Ansha thinks: wherever this is - I belong to me. My life belongs to me even if you steal it, you will not own it. You are talking to yourself, voice, I am not involved.
This is a game, she thinks, not my game; I don’t know how I got here but here I am.

Why me?

What did I do? I was driving, I remember. Did I crash? I don't remember.

‘There’s nothing you can do about it,’ the voice says, before agony cuts out thought.
Ansha hears the drone of the voice less and less, is aware of fading.
Her heart stops, almost with a click. It flips to numb, allows a gentle emptiness. She knows her body will not recover. She knows this is not defeat. She knows because life is so wonderful she has been clinging to it even here, because the birds have been singing, because she has claimed ownership of herself, because her assailant is trying so hard to be in control.
She can feel the hand on her forehead, the steadiness, the loving calm. There is something good here with her.
She can hear a chorus whisper: ‘You can choose to live, this won’t be the end. This is a battle and not the war; this is as much your birthing as your dying, if you wish it, if you stay true.’
She asks, silently: what happened?
‘Too much to explain to you here, Ansha; who came to be by dreams and magic, who was forged from death.’
I remember I was in my car, did I die then too - was that real?
‘It was real in that world which is a story for later; for now you must make your choice, you must fight this battle.’ ‘I will win.’ Ansha smiles. ‘I win. Thank you.’ ‘Won what? And thank you? You're dead because I made it so! You - you are not in charge of this!’

The lone voice rises, walks away.
Ansha stands up, out of her body. She looks at the woman who has murdered her, and the woman stares back.
‘I didn’t say you could leave!’
Her face has a blankness to it, even in rage.
Ansha laughs and steps through the wall into a copse of trees where startled birds whir up, their singing turned to clatter. Ansha calls and the rest of the dead gather to her.

She feels their presence at first as a thickening of air, a mouldering that joins the scents of leaf mulch and pine and fresh dug earth. They are wispy as weblines, trembling into visibility. She is heartened by their shimmering, by their coming back to being.
‘What now?’ Asks a ghost boy. He is looking over his shoulder at the lock-up.
‘We do as we please.’ Ansha says. ‘What can happen to us now?’
The silence lasts for barely a beat.

In through the walls the spectres stream, spilling everything out of the refrigerator; opaque bags of flesh and bone, phials of blood. They tear up tarpaulins and let the floor soak while their murderer shrieks.
‘We do as we please,’ they taunt, and one of them whittles a mermaid into a thigh bone.
‘My femur,’ that ghost declares, ‘and now it’s art!’
Even the ceiling is slippery red; the walls flecked in bone. Skulls are being danced, scalpels brandished.
‘I did this,’ the bland faced woman shouts from the centre; ‘this is my work, my art, not yours!’

Something lands on the roof, shaking the lock-up, halting the festivities. Something with claws, with a body that drags. Flowers grow from each corner, covering the walls. The door shakes and falls to ash. One by one the dead turn into butterflies and flit through the doorway.

‘You cannot pass,’ Ansha tells the woman. ‘This door is open only to ghosts.’
The woman takes a gun from her pocket.
‘It’s nothing to me to take a new body. I have my own magic.’
Ansha steps through the door. She hears the gunshot as the door disappears, though she has no idea how she knew to tell the lie.

She leaves a half-headed ghost alone and trapped in the lock up; she leaves light and easy as a butterfly should.