Chapter 3
Moon Over Marisol - Book 1: The Ghost Town Forest
Alright, things just got complicated.
Last chapter, Marisol met the ghosts. This chapter, she meets the ghost who runs the show—and it’s worse than she thought.
Miss Brennan. THE Schoolmarm. The one from the cautionary tales whispered at witch school centuries after she died. Control disguised as care. Discipline that leaves scars you can’t see.
And she’s here. Running this town the same way she ran everything when she was alive—with precision, frost, and the kind of quiet cruelty that makes even the dead afraid.
Marisol’s starting to realize this assignment isn’t just about replanting a forest. It’s about what happened to the forest in the first place. And who made sure it stayed gone.
Let’s see how bad this gets.
CHAPTER 3
The Ghost Town Forest
I stared at the ghost, and the ghost stared back. Tibby sat down and started licking his paw again, completely unbothered.
The ghost tilted his head, studying me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. “You ain’t from around here.”
“No,” I said.
“Didn’t think so.” He took a step closer. His boots still didn’t touch the ground. “Name’s Clayton. Sheriff of this town. Or was. Or...” He frowned, like he’d lost his train of thought. “Well, doesn’t matter. Point is, we don’t take kindly to strangers.”
I looked at the empty street. The collapsing buildings. The complete absence of anyone alive.
“Seems like you don’t take kindly to anyone,” I said.
He blinked. Then let out a short, dry laugh. “Well now. Got some sass on you, don’t you?”
Before I could answer, another door creaked open across the street—the church. A man emerged, arms spread wide like he was about to deliver a sermon. He wore black robes and had the kind of expression that said he was always three seconds away from talking about the Lord’s mysterious ways.
“Friends! Friends!” he called out. “Let us not quarrel with our guest! She is here, and that is a blessing! The Lord works in mysterious...”
“Oh, shut up, Reverend,” Clayton said.
The Reverend stopped mid-gesture, looking genuinely wounded. “I was merely...”
“You were merely bein’ tiresome, like always.” Clayton turned back to me. “Don’t mind him. He’s been tryin’ to save our souls for thirty years.”
“Forty,” the Reverend said quietly.
I opened my mouth to ask about the forest, but another door swung open—the saloon this time. A man drifted out, translucent and blurred at the edges like the others. He was polishing a glass, an invisible glass with an invisible rag. The motion was so automatic, so stuck in a loop, I wondered if he even knew he was doing it.
“Gus,” Clayton said by way of introduction. “Owns the saloon.”
Gus nodded at me, never stopping his polishing. “Ma’am.”
“Hi,” I said.
The Reverend stepped closer. “What brings you to our humble town, my child?”
“Assignment,” I said. Then, because I was curious how they’d react: “I’m supposed to replant the forest.”
The silence that followed was even deader than they were, if that was possible.
Clayton’s expression went flat, the Reverend’s smile faltered, and Gus stopped polishing for half a second before starting again with renewed focus.
“The forest,” Clayton said slowly.
“Yeah.”
“There ain’t no forest.”
“I noticed.”
“There ain’t been a forest in...” He stopped. Frowned. “In...”
He couldn’t finish. Like the memory was there but just out of reach. Like trying to grab water with your fingers. I could see him struggling with it, his translucent face twisting with the effort of remembering something that should have been simple.
“Long time,” Gus supplied, still polishing. His voice was flat and careful.
“And good riddance,” the Reverend said, though his voice had lost some of its earlier warmth. “That forest was wild and uncontrolled. We cleared it for civilization. For progress.”
I looked at the leaning church, the collapsed buildings, the empty street baking in the sun.
“How’s that working out for you?” I asked.
The Reverend bristled. “Mighty fine. We built something here. Something meaningful.”
“Did you?”
Before he could answer, the air changed.
It got heavier, colder. Like someone had opened a door to a room that had been sealed shut for decades. The temperature dropped—not gradually, but all at once.
I could see my breath for just a second, a white puff in the desert heat that shouldn’t have been possible. And underneath the dust and heat, a new smell arrived. Something like old paper and chalk dust and the particular staleness of a room where nothing is ever allowed out of place. Where every book sits at exactly the right angle and every desk is precisely aligned and the air itself has been trained to behave.
Tibby’s ears went flat against his head. His tail puffed out to twice its normal size.
I looked at him. “What...”
Then I saw her.
She didn’t just appear. She ARRIVED, drifting out from behind the general store like she’d been waiting for exactly the right moment, moving with the kind of precision that made everyone else look sloppy by comparison. Where the other ghosts blurred at the edges, she was sharp and crisp and defined. Like death itself had looked at her and said, “You know what? Fine. Keep your edges.”
Her high collar was perfectly starched even in death. Her bun so severe it looked painful. And her posture—God, that posture. It was so perfect it was a threat all by itself. The kind of straightness that said she’d spent decades teaching other people how to stand, how to sit, how to breathe, and would continue doing so long after she was dead.
She surveyed the street, her gaze sweeping over Clayton, the Reverend, Gus. They all straightened under her attention, immediately and automatically. Even as ghosts, even decades dead, they were afraid of her.
I watched Clayton’s hand twitch toward his hat like he wanted to remove it but couldn’t quite make himself do it. Watched the Reverend’s shoulders hunch forward, his expansive gestures shrinking in on themselves. Watched Gus’s polishing become more desperate, more focused, like if he just polished hard enough she might not notice him.
They were terrified, and they were dead. What did a ghost have to be afraid of?
Then her eyes landed on me, and I felt it—that cold, assessing stare. The kind of look that found every flaw, every weakness, every place you weren’t measuring up. The kind of look that made you want to stand straighter, speak clearer, be better even though you knew better would never be good enough. That catalogued everything about you in three seconds and filed it all under “insufficient.”
I’d felt this before. Not from her specifically, but from teachers like her. The ones who believed control was the same as care. The ones who thought breaking someone was the same as teaching them discipline. The ones who left scars that didn’t show on the outside.
My friends who’d had her at witch school. The ones who survived. They didn’t talk about those years. Couldn’t talk about them. And the ones who didn’t survive...
Something cold settled in my stomach.
Oh crap.
That’s HER.
THE Schoolmarm. The one from the stories. The warnings. The cautionary tales whispered between students centuries after she’d died, and she was here.
I kept my face neutral, didn’t let anything show. After nine hundred years, I’d gotten good at hiding reactions. At keeping my face blank while my mind raced through implications and consequences and how very, very bad this could get.
She drifted closer, studying me with the same intensity she’d given the other ghosts. Looking for weakness, for cracks, for places she could insert control.
“You look very familiar,” she said. Her voice was sharp as glass. Each word precisely enunciated, perfectly placed. “Have we met?”
“I don’t think so,” I said evenly.
Her eyes narrowed slightly. She didn’t believe me, but she let it go for now.
“I am Miss Brennan,” she said. “I taught at the schoolhouse here for many years. These men...” She gestured at Clayton and the others. “...require structure. Guidance. Without it, they become unruly.”
“We ain’t unruly,” Clayton muttered.
“You were about to let this stranger wander through town unchecked,” Miss Brennan said, not even looking at him. “That is precisely the kind of lax behavior that leads to chaos.”
Clayton’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t argue. Even dead, he couldn’t stand up to her.
She turned back to me. “This town has standards. Proper behavior. Order. I trust you’ll respect that during your stay.”
It wasn’t a question.
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
Her expression said she doubted that very much.
Gus shifted his weight, still polishing that invisible glass. Miss Brennan’s gaze snapped to him like a whip crack.
“Stand up straight, Gus. You’re slouching.”
He straightened immediately. The polishing motion never stopped, but his spine went rigid.
She looked at the Reverend. “And you. Stop gesturing so wildly. It’s unseemly.”
The Reverend, who hadn’t been gesturing at all, folded his hands in front of him. His face had gone paler, though it was hard to tell with ghosts.
She ran this place completely. The other ghosts might have thought they had some say, but they didn’t. She controlled everything. I could see it in how they moved around her, like water flowing around a stone. How they checked her expression before speaking. How they waited for her permission even when she didn’t explicitly give or deny it.
This was her town now. Had probably been her town when she was alive. And death hadn’t changed that one bit.
“So,” I said carefully. “About the forest...”
Her expression went cold—actually, physically cold. The temperature dropped another several degrees. Frost formed on the edges of the nearest window, delicate and precise and utterly wrong in the desert heat.
“That forest was cleared for good reason,” she said. Each word came out like a knife. “Civilization. Progress. Order. We built something better here.”
I looked at the leaning buildings. The collapsed porches. The empty, sun-baked street where nothing lived and nothing grew.
“How’s that working out?” I asked.
Her lips thinned. “You are impertinent.”
“I get that a lot.”
For a moment, we just stared at each other. I could feel Tibby pressed against my leg, fur still puffed out, every instinct telling him this ghost was dangerous. He was right.
Miss Brennan’s expression shifted slightly into something that wasn’t quite a smile. Something colder. Something that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“I keep birds, you know,” she said, almost conversationally. “They need structure. Discipline. Without proper guidance, they become... unmanageable.”
She paused. Let the words hang in the air. Let them settle.
“I had one once. Quite troublesome. Thought it knew better than I did. Thought it could defy proper order.” Her voice stayed pleasant and conversational, which somehow made it worse. “I had to teach it better behavior, else it become a… just a undignified, irresponsible…”
Every alarm bell in my head started ringing—the way she said “teach,” like it was a kindness, like breaking something was the same as educating it. The way the other ghosts had gone very, very still. Not moving. Not breathing. Not even pretending to do the automatic things they’d been doing before. The way her smile didn’t reach her eyes, didn’t reach anywhere near her eyes.
I said nothing. Just watched her. Kept my face neutral. Gave her nothing.
“I trust,” she continued, “that you won’t cause disruption during your stay.”
It wasn’t a request. A warning and a threat rolled into one.
She drifted away, moving back toward the general store. The other ghosts parted for her automatically, like water around a stone. Like they’d done it a thousand times and would do it a thousand more. She disappeared around the corner, and the temperature went back to normal.
The frost melted and the air warmed, but the wrongness lingered.
Nobody spoke for a long moment.
Then Clayton cleared his throat. “Don’t mind her. She’s... particular.”
I repeated the word back to him. “Particular. Right.”
I looked down at Tibby. His fur was still puffed out, tail twice its normal size. I picked him up, felt him trembling slightly against my chest.
“That was her,” I said quietly, just for him. “THE her. From witch school.”
His ears twitched. “I’ve met her type before,” he said, voice low. “Across centuries. They always think control equals safety.”
“And they always leave bodies behind.”
Yes.
I held him tighter.
Whatever she’d done to that “troublesome bird,” it had been bad enough that even mentioning it decades later was a threat. Bad enough the other ghosts had frozen. Bad enough I could guess what I’d find if I went looking, or who.
Clayton shifted his weight. “You, uh... you need a place to stay? Boarding house is still standin’. Less collapsed than the others, anyway.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“The forest,” he said, quieter now. Glancing toward where Miss Brennan had disappeared. “Don’t go asking about it. Some things are better left buried.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
I started walking toward the boarding house, Tibby still in my arms. The ghosts watched me go but didn’t follow. Didn’t offer to help. Just watched, trapped in their loops, afraid of drawing attention.
As I passed the general store, I caught movement from the corner of my eye—someone small watching from behind the building. A child, eight or maybe ten, translucent like the others but different somehow. Softer, less stuck, less afraid.
I turned to look, made eye contact.
She ducked back behind the building and disappeared.
I filed that away for later.
The boarding house porch only sagged a little. I climbed the steps carefully, testing each one before putting my full weight on it. The door was unlocked—of course it was, there was no one here to lock it. I pushed it open.
Inside was dim and dusty but intact. A narrow staircase led up to the second floor. I climbed it and found a room at the end of the hall. It was small with one bed, one window, one candle on a crooked table.
I set Tibby on the bed. He immediately started grooming himself, like he could wash away the wrongness of this place.
I sat down next to him, staring at the candle without lighting it.
I thought aloud: “The Schoolmarm, here in this ghost town, controlling everything, and she’d mentioned birds. Troublesome birds she’d had to “teach.” Why? Why did she mention them? Whatever they were, whoever knew about the forest before it was cut down, she got to them first.”
I looked at Tibby. “This is going to be worse than I thought.”
He curled up next to me, tucking his head under his paws. “It usually is.”
Outside, the wind pushed through the gaps in the walls. It carried the smell of dust and dead wood and something older. Something that remembered when this place had been alive.
Somewhere out there was the bird the Schoolmarm had mentioned. I had to find it.
Chapter 4 drops soon!
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