Ghosts - part 4

Hi! Thanks for visiting my blog :) This is part four of a little story I'm writing. For anyone who is new here, I would recommend you start at part one and work your way through. Happy reading!

Even as I triple check that the door is securely bolted, I know it will do no good. After all, what door keeps out ghosts?
I can hear my mum moving around downstairs, but to my relief, she doesn't come up and make another attempt at trying to get me to tell her what happened. I sink onto my bed, my head in my hands. What I really need is to talk to Peter, but if he's so insistent on not seeing me that I can sit outside his house for a whole day without him coming out, I guess that isn't an option.
I pace around the room, trying to think. The ghost said I was hers now, that I'd have to perform small tasks for her. I have no idea what she meant, but I do know that I don't want anything to do with it. If only I hadn't gone to Peter's house last night... if only I hadn't seen the ghosts swirling around him... if only I hadn't started this whole nightmare...
Most unfortunately, I am still pacing when it happens. Had I been lying down, I could have tried to persuade myself that I was asleep and dreaming, but obviously that isn't going to work now. I don't get any sense of it. I just turn around and there she is, the same pale white shape.
"What do you want?" I gasp, flattening myself against the wall.
"I told you, Belle, all we want is a little help from the living in expanding our borders. When you saw us with Peter last night, you were bound as he is, for only one who has seen us can be bent to our will.
"Now, to work. You're new at this, so I only ask one thing for now. There is an old man who sells fish at the market. Do you know who he is?"
I find myself nodding dumbly.
"You'll need to kill him for us. That's all for tonight."
"That's all? I'm not going to KILL someone!" I yell.
"What did you think we'd want?" she asks, giving me a condescending look. "We're ghosts. We select the living to join us, to help us expand our world. Those who can help must be brought to us. We can't do it. You must."
"What would you want to expand your world? What's the point?"
"The point, my dear girl, is that we want what you have - the power to touch and move things, the power to speak and be heard by others, the power to eat, drink, breathe... all these things you take for granted, we would give anything for. With enough ghosts, we can overwhelm the world of the living and take them."
I goggle at her. "You tell me that and expect me to help you?"
"You will help me whether you like it or not. Here, take this," she says, holding out what looks like some kind of ceremonial knife. It is just as ghostly and transparent as her, but as soon as she drops it on the floor, the knife clunks down, becoming solid.
"You will need to kill him with this," she says. "Only if killed with one of our knives will be become a ghost and be able to help us - otherwise his spirit will escape."
I press myself into the corner, ready to fight, knowing that any form of fighting I've learned will probably be useless here. "I'm not doing it," I say. "I'm no murderer."
"That's what they all say at first," she says, smiling sadly. "You'll learn. You can scream, Belle; no one will hear you; when I am with you, you are lost to the world, in a bubble of silence."
I open my mouth to ask what she means, but then the pain hits me. It is pain unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I am screaming so loudly that my throat feels like it will tear. Every nerve in my body seems to be on fire. Then it stops.
I realise I am lying on the ground, panting.
"Are you ready to do it yet?" she asks, seemingly merely bored.
I glare up at her. "I will not kill for you."
The pain is back and I am screaming again, begging for it to stop, anything, just make it stop.
"I don't know how to kill," I gabble as soon as she takes the pain away again. "I'd do it if I could, but I don't know how; I'm sorry."
"All humans know how to kill; it is in your blood. Will you do it now?"
Knowing what it will bring, tears streak down my cheeks as I shake my head.
I brace for the pain to hit again, but before it can, my window bursts open. "Stop!"
For a second, I think I am hallucinating, driven out of my mind from the torture. When I turn and see him, though, I am sure that he's real. I would recognise Peter anywhere.
"Leave her alone!" he says to the ghost. "Leave her, and I'll take her place!"

To be continued