A/N: This is taking forever but I am now getting interested in the story again myself. I may add a few scenes before this one to show what Ghost is normally like and how Clarity's presence is affecting Natty too. Due to the amazingly annoying change in keyboards buttons recently, I now have to go back and get rid of all the bloody Euro signs in the first chapters. God, I hate computers.

Chapter 4: Like calls to Like

Steve toyed with the guitar strings idly, only dimly aware of the choppy riff that his fingers drew out of the tired guitar. It had taken him weeks to learn it, weeks of hand cramps, sleepless nights, the skin of his fingers splitting with resistance as he drove them into the tight, steel strings hour after hour. It had been all he wanted, to learn this one piece, it gave him something to do, something to aim for, something to keep him from giving up. It had taken him weeks to learn but now it was easy, so mechanical. He could probably play it in his sleep, could probably play them all. If he got a new one, he could probably play that too within not too long. He could play it now but that didn't make him feel better at all, it was all the same.

He laid the guitar down and reached for his bottle of warm beer. Even the booze was the same now, always the same. Tonight would be no different: a couple of Buds here, at the house, a few Natty Bohos at the Yew before the show, about half a bottle of Jack Daniels after show and a mutedly hellish hangover tomorrow. He sighed, his breath smelling like today's beer, this morning's breakfast and last night's Jack Daniels. It was always the same.

And that was just it, wasn't it? All of the songs now played at the same, lazy rhythm, all of the notes fell on the same uninspired ears. The same town. The same people. No passion, no drama, nada. All Steve had was a belly full of booze and a head full of nothing. And Ghost.

Steve rapped gently on Ghost's bedroom door, already halfway into the room, still clutching the warm beer that he would force himself to drink at some point. Ghost was knelt on his bed, stretching up against the wall, a chunky, bright pink pen in his hand, scrawling something new in the wild mess of song lyrics and quotations that he had had created over the years, his loose, white tee-shirt lifting so that Steve could see the small of his back, the soft kidney dimples that Steve had only ever noticed before on girls. All Steve had was Ghost, and Ghost would follow him anywhere.

Ghost didn't turn around when his friend entered the room, didn't stop his writing to smile at Steve as he usually would, didn't beam with excitement at the new snippet of wisdom that he had chosen to adorn his wall with or had chosen him. Instead, he held the pen fast in his fist like a child and continued to write his pink sentence slowly and precisely.

When they were kids, Ghost had complained that he only had a single black pen to write poetry on his wall with, one black pen for every thought in his head, no matter what it was. He hadn't really been complaining, Ghost never really complained about anything, but Steve had seen into those eyes, those clear, revealing eyes and had known that Ghost's world was not and should not be limited to black and white, that Ghost's world was pregnant with brilliant and strange colours, hues that had tastes and smells and emotions too, colours that were filled with life and bursting with new, even more vital colours. Steve had sold four of his favourite baseball cards to a boy in the 8th grade, Jimmy Tozer, so that he could buy a pack of bright, chunky pens, usually given to the smallest of children, for Ghost. He had left them underneath Ghost's pillow for him to find. He never said a word about it, never took the credit, and Ghost knew enough to never mention it either, to never say thanks. And now neither of them ever spoke about how a new packet of pens always appears underneath Ghost's pillow every year on the same day.

Steve looked up at the wall, at the random lyrics and quotations stretching themselves across the surface and around each other like climbing vines around forgotten garden ornaments. The new one seemed to sit in a gap in the centre of an old collection of words, as though everything on the wall had been fashioned around this one space, as though since he was a child, Ghost and the wall itself had been waiting for this one sentence.

Like calls to Like,

And I am calling to you.

The words appeared more straight and rigid than Ghost's normal script. Gone were the extravagant loops of the y's, the flowers over the i's, the care free, chaos that was Ghost. If Steve hadn't seen Ghost writing this with his own eyes, hadn't watched the delicate hand trace every letter carefully almost with his whole body, he would have sworn that is was written by somebody else.

'Is that part of a new song?' Ghost's body seemed to recoil at the sound of Steve's voice, seemed to shrink with disgust or frustration at the idea of being interrupted whilst in the middle of something sacred. Steve had never seen this is Ghost before, it had never been in Ghost before but somehow, Steve knew to fear it. Whatever it was, Ghost seemed to shake it out of himself. His eyes almost crossed and when they turned to land on Steve, a look of pure fright, intrigue and confusion shone dully inside. He stammered, trying to speak, something working quickly in his brain that Steve probably would not understand.

'No, It was, erm, just something someone told me once,' he hesitated, a look of utter confusion and disturbance on his face, 'but I can't remember who.' He trailed, wandering off inside the expansive forest of his memories, both past and future, turning them over one by one in search of something that he was sure must be there. Steve could see it in his eyes, could see him searching under every leaf and twig of his life, under years or moss and growth. Steve sat down on the bed, Ghost still kneeling, looking off into a distance that was within rather than without. Steve rested the beer on the bedside table, clearing a space amongst the random pieces of paper and coloured stones and well-thumbed books.

'You know, I think she's angry with us.' Ghost looked down at Steve as though only just noticing him in the room.

'You can feel her too?' Ghost sat himself heavily next to Steve, relief and confusion still troubling his brow. 'I can feel her coming, here, but I don't...' Steve grabbed his hand.

'The T-bird. I think the car is angry with us.' Ghost sighed and slid himself off of the bed, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his head in his hands, his pale hair curtaining his face completely. Steve didn't know what to do. Perhaps he should go down there, squeeze Ghost, tell him that he understood and that everything would be fine. Perhaps that's what he wanted to do but he didn't move except to reach out and pick up the warm bottle of Bud from the table and sip it.

'I mean, we haven't taken her anywhere, not since we resurrected her. I think it's time...' He looked down at Ghost, trying to gauge a reaction, expecting a tired smile, a little nod of agreement. But the little face eyes didn't appear, the face didn't show itself, the shoulders didn't move. 'There's this town, in Mexico...' The sentence never ended. Ghost shot off of the floor at almost warp speed, his eyes blazing with fury that Steve had never witnessed before, rage that surely could not have come from inside of Ghost alone. Ghost stood above Steve, his face flashing with emotion, mostly hatred, as he looked down at his friend, his breathing harsh and faltering.

'I'm not going anywhere, you can't make me.' Steve didn't move. He had faced vampires, ghosts, all manner of strange things that most people didn't even know existed or at least pretended not to, but nothing had scared him as much as the look of desperate contempt in the eyes of his peaceful Ghost. He wasn't scared for himself, but scared for his friend, scared that something had got to him and that he, Steve, was powerless to stop it.

'We'll come back, we just need to get out for a while Ghost. What's there kept here so long?' Ghost seemed to shiver involuntarily as he glared with such contempt and desperation that Ghost could never create.

'Fuck off, Steve! You're not taking me away from my family because you've fucked up your own life here, because everyone, just everyone knows you're a fucking loser!' There it was. There was the proof that Steve needed, the proof that Ghost hadn't turned on him at all, the proof that something unnatural, something supernatural was happening or about to happen in Missing Mile and that he. Steve, had to get Ghost away from here before it took him over. Ghost threw himself back onto the floor, sobbing silently, his shoulders gently shaking. He looked up at Steve with wide, teary eyes, the eyes of the boy that Steve knew and loved, eyes without the cloudy film of hate.

'I don't know what's happening to me, Steve. Take me away from here, tonight, before the gig, before It happens.'

'We can do the gig, it'll be fine. Then we'll leave right away, I promise.'

Ghost hugged his knees.

'Just take me away, Steve.' Steve's beer was now empty and how he wished he had another, no matter how warm and thick.

'There's this town. In Mexico.'

Chastity dragged her case up the stairs, wondering just how many bugs she had already killed deep within the crumb and dust thick, green carpet. The steps beneath felt harsh and dry, the kind of neglect and decay that no amount of carpet laying can ever truly disguise. She hesitated, reaching out her hand to lean on the dusty banister, her breath coming in short breaths as she set heavy case down. The sound of thudding boots alerted her to somebody coming up the stairs and the case was lifted again and taken away ahead of her. Chastity didn't need to look up to know that it was her sister, the sudden chill and cracking of the air was evidence enough. She continued up the stairs, vaguely aware of how little her twin struggled with the loaded case that she herself had been trying to drag up the stairs for the last ten minutes.

The room door was open when Chastity got there and it was no more inviting than the rest of the house. 'Couldn't we have just gone to Rayleigh? There's a real motel there.' She lay on the double bed next to her sister who was sat silently, elbows resting on knees, her body not even moving to breathe, it seemed. 'Do you reckon that we're the first guests at this B 'n' B ever?' Clarity remained silent, not even turning to acknowledge her twin's presence in the room; Chastity wondered if her sister's soul was actually still in the body or if it had flown away somewhere else for a while leaving this motionless, quiet shell. Perhaps the true soul of her sister had died years ago and this...this...

'What if they're not there, at this club?' She pushed the previous thought out of her head; you could never be too careful around Clarity, she knew things. Clarity tilted her head and glanced at her shaking twin, a glazed, distant look plastered on her face that shook Charity more than the usual torrent of rage would have.

'They'll be there, I can feel it. Like calls to like, we all know that!' And at that moment, as Clarity rested her old gun on the bedside table, her sister thought again that maybe they were no longer sisters at all, that this...this...monster that shared her face, was simply something else.