Those Who Remain (Ghost Town Series Book 3): Ghost Town, #3

By Krystal Doolittle

When it comes to death, there are always those who remain.

In the final installment of the ever-popular, "Ghost Town" series, Willow is about to go into her senior year of high school, and she is ready to just get it over with. After a big surprise months ago where she and her boyfriend Shane found that his past actions have altered other people's lives in worse ways than he initially thought, he became distant, leaving her to wonder what she did wrong.

But as her final year of high school starts, she begins to have plenty of distractions. One of which is that her old nemesis, Hayley, is back. Only now, she wants Willow's help. She's heard about Willow's ability to see the dead, along with rumors that her great, great grandmother's old abandoned home outside of town is haunted. She's concerned that a family member, however distant, might be stuck and in need of Willow's help.

But Willow has more on her plate than she would like, and as small-town gossip begins to spread as an elderly friend's health begins to decline, she has to decide what she wants for her own future and what she's willing to sacrifice to help others.

In this final chapter, Willow has to decide how far she's willing to go in order to help those who remain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Krystal Doolittle
• Release date: Mar 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224639564

Krystal Doolittle

Krystal has been creating stories most of her life, but only recently begun to brave the world of professional writing. She loves a great joke, peaceful mornings and a nice, cold glass of orange juice.

Book preview

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Iwas sitting on the couch with Gran, watching another one of the reality shows that she loved so much. My eyes were on the screen but I wasn’t really watching it. I was distracted by thoughts of Shane and how distant he had been over summer break. Since we had visited the curve where his accident had happened and I’d seen that spirit there, he’d kept our time together to a minimum. When we did see each other, he didn’t seem to want to look at me or have a real conversation. Talking about what happened was a surefire way to cause him to leave early.

The tv paused and I looked over to see Gran staring at me. What? Did I miss something? I blinked, bringing myself back.

Why haven’t I seen Shane around here this summer? she asked. I could hear everything she was asking in that one simple sentence. Is everything okay? Did he do something wrong? Did you? I didn’t want to answer any of that. Still, I needed to give her something.

He’s been working on a farm to help his mom with the bills and it’s been long hours, I explained. Parroting what he had written in his texts, I could feel the weakness of the words. He claimed that they were getting ready for harvest season but he’d been doing the same thing last summer too. He’d had plenty of time to hang out with me then. But that was before we made our discovery and his entire demeanor toward me had changed.

Gran nodded as if she heard everything I wasn’t saying. I hoped she wasn’t. Or I guess if she was, maybe she could explain it all to me because I still didn’t fully understand. Besides, I was hurt, even if I tried not to let on that I was. I understood his pain, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have my own, too.

Her eyes seemed to search my face as if looking for more. How are you feeling about your senior year? she asked, changing the subject.

Ready to get it over with, I sighed. I didn’t care about all the extra stuff that was supposed to be unique about your senior year of high school. I was too tired of trying to keep my secret that I could see earthbound spirits, a secret now that more people were starting to learn about it. The less I was around others, the less I had to pretend I couldn’t see the dead. With school being filled with people, it was a regular occurrence to see one, and that often meant having to deal with their issues so that they could move on. Which could be a pretty big distraction sometimes. I was still worried that my deeply religious grandfather would find out and kick me out or- well- who knew what? When she found out I had the ability, Gran told me he was devoutly against speaking to spirits and things of that nature. I was pretty sure what I did fell into the no category for him.

Gran patted me on the hand. Try not to rush through this year. I know it gets tiresome to hear, but you really will want to savor some of these moments. Not everything is going to go wonderfully all the time, but these are often years people look back on as being their best. She was trying to be encouraging, but it wasn’t helping. Not when I kept thinking about how things might be between Shane and me when he couldn’t hide from me anymore. How would I feel if we had classes together and he still didn’t want to look at me?

If these are my best years, I’m in trouble, I grumbled.

Gran shook her head, most likely frustrated by my negativity. Picking up the remote, she unpaused it and went back to her show. She knew there was no point in arguing with me when I was like this. Whenever I was in a dark mood, it took more than a few platitudes to pull me out of it.

I waited for a little while longer before I excused myself to my bedroom. I didn’t want Gran to think I was leaving because of her or her questions but I felt like being alone. It wasn’t her fault I was feeling like this and she didn’t deserve to have me moping around putting her in a bad mood too. Misery might love company, but I was going to do my best to keep it to myself.

After I shut my bedroom door behind me, I reached for the sketchbook I’d started drawing in over the summer. I’d had an overabundance of free time since Shane was avoiding me and my friends all had jobs. I, the past 7 weeks, I had tried to get a part-time job but I quickly learned that working with the public was out of the question for me. When you could see the dead just as well as the living sometimes, it really freaked people out when you started talking to the air. Like when I asked the older man in a booth at the local diner if he’d like a refill of his coffee. He was just as surprised that I’d asked as everyone else in the diner was. Only they all thought I was talking to an empty booth and losing my mind.

So, I started doing odd jobs online instead. I found out about freelance work and that people would pay you to manage their social media accounts for their businesses. So I worked a couple of hours a week and was paid decently enough. It also had the perk of not having to interact with people in person that I didn’t know. Any ghosts that might be following them around wouldn’t bother me through the computer screen.

I had thrown myself at work and allowed it to eat up my free time. I didn’t want to think too much about school or what I was going to do with my life. But that meant I had started making quite a bit of money. So much so that just last week I had managed to buy a car with the money I’d saved. It wasn’t anything fancy, a ten-year-old Toyota, but it got me where I needed to go without costing a bunch in gas. That was the most important thing to me, anyway.

My pencil began to glide over the paper as I worked on the portrait I’d slowly tried to create. I’d practiced a lot on pictures of people and now this was the first one I was trying to do from memory. As I tried to work on the eyes, I found that they just didn’t seem right. I pulled it away to look at it better.

I’d been trying to draw a picture of Jack, the ghost that I had helped free from the abandoned school nearby when I first moved to Neosho Falls, Kansas to live with my grandparents. It had been a struggle to help him let go of his anger over being accidentally killed, but eventually, he’d managed to cross over. It had been an emotional time for all involved, including Mary, the woman he had fallen in love with in life and had planned to run away with before his death. Thanks to my Gran’s gift, she’d been able to see him for a moment before he crossed into the light and onto wherever spirits go when they don’t have things holding them back.

I looked at the portrait wistfully and sighed. I’m sorry I’m doing a terrible job, Jack, I muttered quietly before tossing it to the side. My ear rang again like it had when Shane was dropping me off all those weeks ago and I started to wonder if something was wrong with me. Maybe I was getting sick? I shook my head, sure it was just my imagination. It was probably just allergies or something.

The problem was, I was bored. I wanted to talk to Shane or go spend time with him like we used to do. Sometimes just existing in the same space. It had been nice, and I missed it terribly. I reached for my phone and opened our message thread, my fingers hovering over the screen. I looked up and saw my three unanswered messages from yesterday and closed my phone again. 

I couldn’t bring myself to send another message. It was clear that Shane didn’t want to talk to me, and I didn’t want to come across as desperate. But the silence between us was driving me insane.

Sighing, I turned back to my sketchbook, hoping it might put me in a better mood.

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Gran and I were driving toward town on the two-lane highway a couple of days later. It was the day for school registration, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I was staring out the window at the passing fields, my mind nowhere near the car we were riding in, either. Instead, I was distracted with thoughts of what I would do about Shane and his distance, the ghost that his accident had left behind, and what I should do about all of it. The image of the man I saw only briefly still burned into my mind’s eye. If he was stuck out there, I felt obligated to help him. But I loved and respected Shane. I knew he wasn’t a bad person, but something within me felt he needed to face what had happened. I really wanted him to go back there, but was I asking too much? Maybe I should just help the ghost move on and be done with it?

Is there anything else you need to do while we’re in town? Gran asked as we rumbled down the road in the old pickup my grandparents owned. Gran used to have her own vehicle but it quit early in the summer and had been too expensive to fix. So now, she drove Grandpa’s truck until they found her something else. I’d offered to drive her in my car, but I had a feeling she wanted to drive me to school registration one more time. I’d seen it in the wistfulness that had been in her eyes when we were getting ready to leave and I relented.

No, I don’t think so, I replied. Then, because I knew Gran needed to hear it, I added. I’m just happy spending the afternoon with you. I looked over and gave her a small smile. It wasn’t a lie but I did feel a pang of guilt because I knew my mind had been elsewhere. She deserved better. I told myself that while I was with her, I would put my worries about Shane out of my mind. There was plenty of time to stress myself out about it later.

She smiled back. Me too, girlie. Seeing the way her eyes