Bonnie Smithapple came to Scary Applesville to make its ghosts weep, and instead one ghost was drowning her out. She stood on the corner outside a cracked recording studio, reading a poem aloud. Her plan was simple. Say her lines where strangers passed, until one stopped and heard a poet they'd never known. That poem was for her book, the one she swore would make the town's restless dead cry at last and finally move on. But every word she spoke, the ghost wailed louder. It was a thin woman made of grey mist, hanging above the studio roof. The moment Bonnie's verse began, the ghost opened her mouth and screamed over it. No stranger heard a single line. People covered their ears and hurried off. Bonnie clenched her teeth and kept reading. The wailing swallowed her like a tide over a whisper. A woman in a green silk nightgown and red platform heels watched from a bench nearby. She did not cover her ears. Bonnie knew her by reputation. Holly Harvey Apple, the singer who had stopped speaking in public for a full year. She rarely offered anyone a word. "You're fighting it," Holly said. Then nothing. Bonnie turned. "What else do I do?" Holly nodded at a second figure crossing the lot. Charlotte Bushapple, a musician with wild dark hair, carried a small shimmering journal and a pencil carved with glowing runes. Bonnie had heard labels called her sound a film score having a breakdown. Charlotte stopped and listened to the ghost scream, head tilted, like it was music. "She's not angry," Charlotte said. "She's trying to sing. You two want the same note." "She's burying me," Bonnie said. "So stop pushing against her." Charlotte held out the pencil. The runes pulsed warm gold. "Write her a line under hers. Not louder. Beneath." Bonnie took the pencil and the journal. She listened to the ghost's wail, really listened, and found its shape. A long rising cry that broke and fell. She wrote a verse that sat below it, soft and slow, a floor for the scream to rest on. Then she read it quietly, almost under her breath. The ghost faltered. Her scream cracked, then dropped into Bonnie's rhythm. The two voices braided together. The wail turned to weeping. Across the lot, a stranger stopped walking and turned to look. The ghost wept once more, folded into the mist, and was gone. Silence fell. The stranger stared at Bonnie, eyes wet, and said, "Who wrote that?" Bonnie's chest went tight. Her first stranger. Her first recognition. But the enchanted pencil had done more than record the ghost. On the page, her soft verse glowed, and beneath it new lines were writing themselves in a hand that was not hers. The dead woman's own words, bleeding into Bonnie's book. The journal was filling. And Bonnie had no idea what the ghosts would make her write next.