“Angel,” a voice whispered from beyond the blackness. I opened my eyes. I was standing in an aisle of old books, completely alone. I took a step forward and realized, with an unfortunate wobble, I was wearing heels…and the black dress from Ethan.

“Hello?” I said, stupidly. There was no answer. I pressed myself against one of the bookshelves and peered over the edge, spotting nothing of significant relevance beyond another dozen rows of books. Somehow I had spontaneously ascended into an old, dust-ridden library.

I looked back down to the books in my own row, resting my eyes on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I pretended I hadn’t seen it. I wasn’t in the mood for metaphorical allusion, and the last thing I wanted to do was give the universe the satisfaction.

“Angel,” the voice whispered again. I knew I had heard it that time. I ran out from the book aisle and looked around the room. Somehow, it looked different than before. Smaller. Darker.

I walked toward one end of the room, eyeing each aisle as I passed, searching for whoever the hell was screwing with me. However, I didn’t see anything other than a few books and loose papers on the floor. And I wasn’t about to be baited into picking any of them up.

I reached the end of the room and craned my neck down the two opposing aisles along the wall. Nothing. So I turned back the other way. And nearly had a heart attack.

A slim man in a hoodie stood at the other end of the room, his face shrouded in darkness.

“Angel,” the voice said, almost growling this time.

Nope. Nope nope nope. Nope nope nopity fucking nope. He was fine where he was, on the other side of the library. In no version of this incident would I have the moronic sense to approach him and get shanked by the hook hands or scissor fingers hidden under those sleeves. Instead, I’d be staying put, ignoring whatever the hell that was.

“Angel,” he called again.

Nope. I grabbed the nearest book from the shelf and opened it to the middle. Don’t mind me. Just reading this here book.

“Angel!” the voice barked, causing me to involuntarily jerk my head up, just in time to catch the figure pulling the hood down from his head.

I dropped the book to the floor. It was my father.

“Dad?” I said, taking a step forward. He stepped backward, still staring at the ground. “Dad…is that you?”

The overhead light flickered. Because, you know, the situation wasn’t dramatic enough already.

“Dad.”

He lifted his head up from the floor to reveal a pair of pale white eyes sunken into his skull. He raised a finger to his lips, then turned his back to me, opening a door I hadn’t realized was there and stepping into the next room. I slowly walked forward, breaking into a hard pace after a few feet, and then an outright jog until I reached the open door. I stopped when I realized the adjoining room was flooded in darkness.

“Dad?” I asked, though notably more quietly than before. If it really was my dad in there…he needed to cut this shit out.

“Come with me, Angel,” his voice whispered.

I took a deep breath and stepped inside. The wooden door slammed shut behind me. Fuck this fucking day.

As I reached my arms out to feel around the blackness, a match was struck at the opposite end of the room, lighting an old oil lamp held by what appeared to still be my father. He walked away from me, down a hallway which clearly manifested itself out of nowhere.

With every cautious step, the backs of my heels echoed across the wooden floor. I ran my hand across the wall of the hallway, grazing picture frames and carvings far too dark to read. Something pungent hit my nose, causing me to nearly choke on my own spit.

“Where are we going?” I asked, trying my best not to inhale whatever the hell smelled like sour chicken.

“We’re going home, Angel.”

Home? Unless this was an elaborate tunneling system through the fabled underground of inner-city Chicago, I’m pretty sure we missed our turn.

“Dad, just talk to me!”

I stopped walking. This was ridiculous.

“We’re going home,” he repeated, turning to face me. He held the lamp just under his chin, low enough to black out the rest of his face above his smile.

“Raise the lamp,” I ordered, feeling the last word shake a bit as it left my mouth.

He dropped the lamp, letting it shatter as it hit the floor. At once, the hall was dark again. Perfect.

The only sound I could hear was my breathing, until I heard the footsteps. My dad, or whoever he was, was coming toward me. I felt around for my phone, when I remembered I was in the goddamn black dress and lacking pockets.

“Don’t come any closer!” I yelled as convincingly as I could. If this was Ethan’s doing, I’d be ripping him a new asshole.

“Angel,” a voice cried. But it wasn’t my dad’s. It was an elderly woman’s. Abigail’s.

An overhead light clicked on, revealing an empty room with just me and the woman I had escorted into the afterlife only hours ago, now standing three feet in front of me. She was still wearing her pink muumuu. She was still hunched over slightly. In fact, everything about her was exactly as I remembered…except for her eyes.

“Why didn’t you save me, Angel?” Abigail asked. The whites of her unblinking pupils burning into my own.

“W-what?” I replied, still attempting to figure out whatever kind of sadistic bullshit I had stumbled into.

“You didn’t save me, Angel. Why did you let me die?”

I took a step back. This was too much. Where was Ethan?

Abigail moved closer.

“Tell me why you let me die.”

“I, uh—you wanted to go, right?”

“Why did you kill me, Angel?”

I took two more steps backward, when a second voice called out from behind me.

“I didn’t want to go,” Joseph said. I spun around to face Pizza Hut’s white-eyed delivery man, sobbing as he held a box of pepperoni-pineapple. “I would have done anything. You let him kill me. You let him murder me.”

“No, I—” I began, hoping to find a way to reason with the dead pizza guy.

“You did,” a third voice boomed. I turned to see my large alleyway attacker leaning against the wall. “Just like you murdered me.”

“Oh, come on!” I yelled. “You tried to strangle me. You tried to kill the other guy. You deserved it!”

“Did I deserve it, Angel?” Abigail asked. “Is that why you took me?”

“What did I do?” Joseph asked, stepping closer to me. “Tell me what I did!”

“Would everyone just shut up?!” I screamed, raising my hands as a form of shield from their dead souls. “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t want any of this!”

“Are you going to kill me too, Angel?” Dad’s voice asked. I turned again to find him standing in the only unoccupied direction of the room. He was holding the golden watch in his hand. It was ticking.

“Stop it,” I demanded.

“Are you going to walk me into the shadows? Tell me everything will be alright?”

“Shut up.”

“But you don’t know if it will be alright. Do you, Angel?”

“I said stop!”

“Maybe your mother is there, Angel. Maybe we can look for her. Together.”

“No!”

“Angel?”

“NO!”

“Angel!”

“NOOOOO!”

I woke up, jerking myself up as my dad grasped my shoulder. I clenched my hand around his arm, panting. I was back in my room. In my bed.

“You alright?” Dad asked, letting go of my shoulder. “You were yelling.”

“I’m—yea, I’m—I’m okay. Bad dream.”

“You wanna let up on that death grip, killer?” he laughed. I looked to his arm and immediately let go, not realizing I had even grabbed it. It was dark in my room, apart from my bedside lamp. I’d been asleep for a few hours.

“So I was thinking Chinese for tonight. Yen’s?”

I looked to my closet, then to the mini trash can next to my bed. Ethan’s note was still wadded at the bottom, just under the plastic wrapping of an oatmeal cream pie.

“Sorry. Yea. Yen’s is cool.”

“Anything special?”

Everything was coming together again. I had dreamed the whole thing. This was my dad. My real dad. Everything was fine. Everything was okay.

“No chicken,” I said.

Dad smiled and stood from my bedside. “No chicken, it is.”

He walked out, flipping the light switch on as he left. I threw my head back into my pillow, giving a small laugh as I thought about everything.

“What’s so funny?” Ethan asked. He was standing in the corner of the room with his hands in his pockets, eyeing me curiously.

“Get out,” I demanded from under my breath, lifting myself from my bed.

“Now how’s that any way to treat your boss?”

“Get the hell out of here, Ethan,” I hissed though my teeth. “I’m eating Yen’s with my dad, and we’re having a normal night.”

“What’s Yen’s?”

“Seriously, Ethan. Not now.”

“You don’t even know why I’m here.”

“What’s to know? Someone died, or someone’s going to die, or someone already died and they’ve come back to guilt-trip me into thinking I murdered them, even though it’s all a bunch of shit. Everything’s shit.”

“Jesus, what kind of dreams are you having?”

“Just—I don’t want to hear it.”

“It’s the last job of the night, Angel. Last one ever, if you remember our deal.”

I covered my ears and walked to my bedroom door, ready to slam it shut behind me.

“He’s a rock star,” Ethan said.

I stopped walking and slowly spun around. “A rock star?”

Ethan nodded, showing his teeth again. “A rock star.”

I lowered my hands from my ears and straightened my shirt. If there was ever anything Ethan could say to persuade me…that was it.

I was going to meet…and kill…a goddamn rock star.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR