"It feels like a credit card."

"What?"

"She gave us a credit card."

"Look at it...."  Tammy obliged and fumbled with the stiff trump, letting its paper envelope fall to the ground.  John's eyes followed the slip and watched it flop onto a dirty pile of petrified water.  "Don't litter, and anyway she wrote something on here.  Tsk tsk tsk...."  John unfolded the dripping page fully, reading:

To the two children,

I apologize for the misery I was tasked to give you.  Please accept my deepest regards.

"She knew we were coming?  Tammy that woman was...Tammy?"  The girl's apathetic countenance had shattered.  She was immobile, seemingly stunned.  "Hey Tam...hello?"

"John," her whisper was dry and curt.  "Who are those people?"  Her brother turned only to find an empty park, trees looming.

"What people?"

"How can you not...John the woman's hurt."

"Tammy I don't...."

"Oh my god, it looks like she was hit by a truck.  John we need to help her!"

"What?  No there's really not anyone.  Tammy?"  Tammy was already across the walkway, approaching a vacant patch of frost.  "Come back!  Wait!"  The dutiful brother trundled after his sibling, only to be halted by a terrifying shriek.

"She's dead!  They're all dead!"  Tammy had collapsed, huddled tightly in the snow.

"Stop it, there's no one else here!"

"Go away.  Make them go away."

"No one else is here!"

"Make them shut up!"  

"Tammy please stop."  Tammy sobbed in rebuttal.

Neither of them noticed the transparent card, discarded in the snow.  Its intricate pentacle glowed a pleasant red, and the snow around the plastic sizzled warmly.

Then the Clock tick-tocked.  Its hands wound round and round and round, its longer hand traversed the face approxiametly 131,400 times.  Its stunted companion followed at about 10,950 times.  For you lazy peepers that's short for:

Fifteen Years Later

Tammy stared at the city below through the bars.  Her fingers tiptoed through a few sable skeins.  She wasn't really looking down at the whirring passerbys or insipid masses of rock.  Her attention was somewhere else, as was the case with bored people.  Bored people locked in rooms.  Bored people dubbed insane by the State and claimed unfit to function in society.  Bored people who could see Dead people.