Free The Ghosting of Gods by Cricket Baker

losing my determination not to scare him.
    “I trust George,” he calls back. “Come on, faster, we’re losing them.”
    “You
trust
George?” Anger flares inside me. I’m furious that he let Bethany push him into the hole. Furious that he trusts George. That he’s so naïve. We’re essentially buried, lost with deranged guides. But because Poe is the way he is, I’m responsible for him.
    God can’t be trusted. I can’t let anything happen to Poe.
    I think of Leesel. Ava. What if Poe had been pressed to the outside of the chapel too?
    I think of the thick lashes on Ava’s eyes, how smooth the skin is in the hollow of her neck where she’s tattooed with a flower. A lily. Is she alive?
    Little Leesel with her wild hair and comprehension of advanced physics. Have I lost her?
    This is why I need forbidden knowledge of the spirit world. To end the separation that death brings. To connect the worlds. To make us all mediums. And so I keep secrets.
    Slopping after Poe, I try not to slip, try not to think of my girls dead.
    At first the tunnel runs level and straight, but after George chooses which side of a fork to take, the new tunnel angles upward and to the right, then to the left and back, leading usdeeper again. We come to a den like the one we first landed in, and George once again chooses from four tunnels. He mutters. Bethany is silent, and I sense rage despite her bland face when she turns back, candle held by her face, to shush Poe.
    We need to be quiet?
    “Onward!” George hisses at intervals frequent enough to keep me awake. It’s good the walls are so close—they hold me up as I slosh along.
    Unless our guide is a human compass, we’re doomed. There’s nothing distinguishing about the tunnels we ferret our way through. If there wasn’t standing water, we could at least see our footprints and know if we were retracing our steps. As it is, we can’t. It’s a maze of underground sewage tunnels.
    Poe is complaining, telling me I have to go faster, that Bethany is really fast, he can barely keep her in sight.
    Guilt makes me weak. I prayed for knowledge of the spirit world. For good reason. I begged for it. If this world is where my knowledge is hidden, if the burning bush was a sign God was sending me to the knowledge I seek, who does that make me that I prayed for this, that I endangered my friends and left Emmy behind?
    I shouldn’t be here. I need to save Emmy. Frustration propels me through the tunnel. I have to get out. I have to get home, to save Emmy.
    A cry echoes down through the tunnel. George. Bethany calls out his name in alarm.
    We find them at an intersection of tunnels. Splintered wood, a dumping ground of it, packs one of the tunnels like a dam. George is laid out. Bethany kneels behind him, helping him to sit up. His forehead is gashed. Delicately touching his fingers above his eyes, he looks ready to faint when he sees his own blood. Bethany coos at him, pulls out a large lacy handkerchief from someplace in her robe, and holds it to his wound. George grits his teeth.
    “Did you trip?” Poe asks.
    “I hit my head on the ceiling. There must be a rock jutting down.”
    The three of us look up while George closes his eyes, whimpering in pain. Bethany instructs Poe to hold his candle high.
    A board juts from the ceiling. I step closer, getting under it to see if it’s the invisible tunnel reinforcements I couldn’t detect earlier. It’s not just a board—it’s a box, or the corner of one, chipped black. Not what I was looking for.
    “Oh, my,” George says, eyes clamped shut. “I do feel faint. Nasty, naughty rock.” Pressing the reddening handkerchief to his forehead, he tries to curb the flow of blood. Bethany tells us to move back so George can get air.
    A side tunnel is stuffed with fragments of wood, but pieces of crumpled paper too. Picking a wad from the rubble, I flatten it against my palm. It’s parchment, rough and thick. Letters in black ink have gotten wet so that