The walls of the closet caved inwards and then pulled back out into an arch, as if they themselves had come alive and were taking breath for the first time in years. The parasites swarming around the girl picked up their pace, pulsating in a deeper shade of maroon as the atmosphere itself became darker.

They lifted her hair into a halo around her narrowed face, wriggled inside her clothes and burrowed under her paper translucent skin. The wooden floorboards beneath them contracted tightly until they began to snap under pressure. Veins began to become more prominent on her skin, decorating her skin in a series of prussian blue webs. The door began to rattle alarmingly on its hinges when she tilted her head back and opened , wide enough to see the silver fillings embedded in her molars.

Jungkook cursed and yanked Yoona out of the closet and the both of them tumbled gracelessly onto the floor. “Go!” he yelled at her as he all but pushed her back onto her feet and pointed maniacally to the exit.

“Not without you!” She grabbed a fistful of his sleeve and with power fuelled by pure adrenaline, she pulled him to his feet with ease and raced out of the room.

Jungkook only had time to glance over his shoulder to check whether the ghost was still there.

She was not.

His grip on Yoona’s wrist was tight enough to leave marks, but he couldn’t care less as he followed her down the stairs, dodging cracked floorboards in their mad dash to freedom. Just when Yoona surpassed him and had reached the set of broken pews, a sick crunching echoed thunderously from the bowels of the church. Jungkook didn’t even have time to process what was happening when Yoona flew backwards, as if slamming into an invisible wall.

Every cell, every nerve, every fibre of his being felt like it was being electrocuted. It spread with the rapidity of a wildfire, and it terrified him to the point his limbs just froze and flat out refused to cooperate.

If it were possible, Jungkook would have gladly jumped out of his own skin to make the pain stop.

“Jungkook!” Yoona screamed. “I can’t see them! Where are they?” She was collapsed on her knees, eyes wide and positively frantic as she looked wildly around her for any signs of ghosts. One side of her forehead was bright red from the force of the impact against the wall, and Jungkook was sure that there would be an ugly bruise in its place by tonight.

They’d find out if they got out in one peace.

Yoona’s terror was palpable, and it was having its own dire effect on Jungkook’s own emotions. He heaved over, clutching his own stomach as he tried to drown out her short hurried breaths. He clutched on to the twisting banister to regain his balance. They were everywhere, yet nowhere at the same time. He had never felt so many ghosts in one place at the same time before.

“Jungkook? What do we do?” Yoona looked up at him with wide and hopeful eyes, and Jungkook had the gall to look ashamed, because he didn’t know how to answer that question.

Just when he was about to reach out and help her off the floor, Yoona’s left leg shot out, making her fall hard on her side. Just as her face crumpled in pain at the brutal impact, an invisible force yanked her with full force back down the aisle. Yoona screamed, nails stabbing down on the carpet in hope of slowing down until she finally latched onto the leg of a pew.

“Jungkook! Get out of here!” She tightened her grip on the wood until her arms began to tremble in exhaustion. “Get out—.”

The force wrenched her free from her grip, pulling her fast until she rounded the corner and Jungkook couldn’t see her anymore. He was paralysed. This didn’t make sense. His thoughts ran rampant inside his head, trying in vain to rationalise what he had just seen. This was supposed to be impossible. Literally unthinkable. There was one rule, one truth, revolving ghosts that had been there for so long that it had just become a fact: Ghosts could not touch the living.

And then she was there.

A woman, aged with time and misery, at the end of the row, staring at the floor where Yoona would have been.

Yoona’s scream was cut short when the woman bent down and brought her palm down. A sharp smack of skin against skin echoed sickeningly across the room, and she raised her hand back to blink at her limb in wonder.

Jungkook’s entire body began to tremble. He felt so cold, so in pain, so helpless as he asked himself how this was happened. How? Ghosts can’t touch human beings!

The woman stepped back in one fluid motion. Yoona’s soft whimpers of pain ripped a hole in Jungkook’s chest with the ferocity of a jagged knife.

And then Yoona was in the air, being slammed against the wall and held in place by a man on all fours above her head. He held her shoulders down and smiled wickedly as the woma