...Ghosts?

Who: Charlotte (and her mom)
When: Around 9
Where: Home/phone

Everyone at the party was mostly finished with their third and final slasher flick when Charlotte's cellphone rang. Seeing it was her mom, she quietly excused herself to the kitchen - which was now full of gutted pumpkins and innards, and would probably smell like a pumpkin patch until about late July. "Hello?"

"Hi, sweetie! Is the party still on?"

"Yeah, we're watching movies." Charlotte answered, a little clueless as to why her mom would be calling. She had made a big deal about not wanting to bother Charlotte during her first ever hosting duties.

"Oh, great. I hope you kids are having fun. Listen, I'm still out with Sylvie - we've had dinner and now we're going to go down to the church. You know, just in case it's Armageddon. Would you like me to pick you up on the way, or do you feel you've made your peace with God?"

She said this in the same way she would have if she had been asking if they needed milk. Charlotte blinked, and tried to figure out which brand of crazy this was. "Um. No. That's okay. We're good. I just talked to Him this morning." It seemed like the thing to say, anyway - even if she was mildly sure that God probably wasn't too pleased with her right now.

"Excellent! That's my girl. Well, I love you very much, and-"

"Um, mom?" Charlotte interupted, unable to let that go on any longer. "What brought this on?"

"Hm? ...Oh. Oh, you don't know." Isadora replied, as she seemed to make sense of the situation. "There are ghosts, sweetie. Materializing everywhere. They don't know what's going on eitherr."

"Ghosts?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so. And what I've heard is it's not just here, it's everywhere. If you try you might find something on the news, I don't know if stations are covering it yet though. It must be awfully hard for most people to accept for what it is."

Right. And in Isadora terms, what it is was possibly Armageddon. Of course. Charlotte was sure that she hadn't even begun to make sense of what her mother had just said, but she'd always had the idea that the end of the world would have a lot more of fiery doom. The night was still young, though. "Ghosts." she said again, trying desperately to wrap her brain around this. Ghosts? Ghosts? She was not prepared for ghosts. Werewolves, vampires, demons... that was the kind of badness that was supposed to happen in Marquette. She'd never studied ghosts!

She headed over to a small TV they kept on the island counter and turned it on to start flipping channels.

"Ghosts." Isadora said again. "Are you alright, honey? Do you want me to come home?"

"No." Charlotte answered. "It's okay. I'll just... we'll be fine."

"Alright. Goodbye, sweetie. I love you." Charlotte echoed her mother's sentiments and hung up her phone, still flicking channels with the other hand. For once, Charlotte was really struggling with believing what she was hearing.