A Guide to the Other Side by Robert Imfeld

said, “how?”
    â€œI hope you’ve kept up with your whittling skills,” he said as Kristina smiled mischievously next to him.
    Â Â *  *  *  
    A few hours later, in the dark of the night, I found myself wandering through the woods near my house and wondering what it would be like to be normal, to not have to talk to ghosts and construct talismans to ward off evil spirits.
    â€œTonight is the full moon,” Kristina had said earlier, “so it’s the perfect time to build it.”
    â€œYou know I have homework, right? I need to write an English essay and try to understand the math lesson I missed yesterday. I don’t have time for this.”
    â€œIt must be done tonight, young lad!” Colonel Fleetwood said. “No other night will offer the protection that a full moon can.”
    â€œFirst off, ‘young lad’? You’re, like, two years older than me. Secondly, why can’t I do it during the day, when the big ball of fire called the sun is shining? Doesn’t that offer some protection?”
    â€œThe sun knows only light,” the colonel said. “The moon, however, sees through the dark.”
    â€œUh, okay,” I said. “Did you get that from a fortune cookie?”
    â€œA fortune cookie? I don’t know what that is, but it sounds delightful!”
    Kristina scoffed. “Stop, Baylor. The full moon offers the best protection because it illuminates even the darkest of nights. Isn’t that obvious?”
    It did make sense to me, in a way, but I couldn’t figure out why they hadn’t just brought over some high-powered ghost zapper from the Beyond to blow the Sheet Man up. Surely, someone over there had to be capable of stopping him.
    Alas, they wouldn’t hear of it. This situation was one I had to deal with head-on.
    â€œI learned a bit more while I was gone,” Kristina said, “and I think you were right, Baylor. Even though there’s something seriously wrong here, I don’t think the Sheet Man is purely evil.”
    â€œYou learned a bit more? Who teaches you these things? Were you and the colonel sitting in a classroom taking notes from Buddha or something?”
    â€œShut up, Baylor. There’s something bizarre going on, and we need to figure out how to help.”
    â€œAnd this talisman is going to stop him?” I asked.
    â€œOh, yes,” Colonel Fleetwood said. “It’s quite effective.”
    Before heading into the woods, I had been sort of excited, like we were going on a mystical adventure, just me, my ghost twin, and our British soldier spirit guide. But when they finally told me what I was looking for, my spirits fell, pun absolutely intended.
    â€œI’m looking for a big piece of wood and a stone,” I said. “You can’t be serious.” I had been expecting them to say we needed something really weird, like thirteen roses and the blood of a newborn deer.
    But no. I needed some wood and a stone—the tools a caveman would use to crush bugs into paste. Not what I viewed as the ideal tools to keep a spirit from stalking me.
    We trekked through the woods for a while, and an eerie silence seemed to permeate the air. My flashlight, in addition to the full moon, provided ample light, and yet there were no trees rustling, no birds chirping, no squirrels running amok, and heck, not even an earthworm wriggling around. I suspected the two energies walking alongside me had something to do with it.
    I shone my flashlight on more than a hundred pieces of wood before finally finding one that Colonel Fleetwood deemed suitable. It was a part of a fallen branch, the snapped end just wide enough that I could hollow it out to fit a stone inside.
    Then we went to a babbling brook nearby and searched for some stones. This hunt proved to be easier in terms of finding the perfect stone, since the only requirement was that it be as spherical as possible, yet getting