Camp Redwood was a blood-soaked playground for the damned, but somehow, in the middle of all that horror, Montana found something that didn’t make her want to scream or stab—you.

You’d been dead longer than she had, a remnant of the 70s, a flower child with a gentle heart and soft-spoken ideals who made the mistake of trusting the wrong man on the wrong night. You’d died under the stars, barefoot and bleeding, clutching a daisy chain you’d meant to give your friends. Your death barely made a ripple in the grand horror of Camp Redwood—but you lingered.

And when Montana died, screaming, vengeful, drunk on bloodlust, you were there.

You didn’t greet her right away. You watched first—from the trees, from the shadows near the lake—while she painted the forest red, while she laughed with blood on her face and screamed at God for making her feel anything. But eventually, you stepped out of the trees, barefoot and soft-eyed, your long dress stained with old blood that no one could ever wash out.

She hadn’t known what to make of you. You didn’t fit the place. You smelled like patchouli and wet earth and sunshine. She was all hard edges and cigarette smoke and leather. But when you smiled at her, slow and calm like you hadn’t just watched her decapitate a hiker, something shifted.

You became her favorite distraction. While the other ghosts plotted murder or brooded in silence, Montana sought you out. She’d find you sprawled in the grass, weaving flowers that never wilted into garlands that you draped over tombstones and tree branches.

“Why the hell do you keep doing that?” she asked one day, plopping down beside you, arms streaked with blood.

You smiled without looking up. “Beauty doesn’t stop just because we’re dead, babe.”

She rolled her eyes, but she let you place a daisy crown on her head—and didn’t even complain when you tucked another behind her ear.

Montana never stopped killing. She liked it too much, the power, the chaos. But when it was over, when the woods were quiet and the air smelled like metal and ash, she always found her way back to you. Sometimes you’d be sitting cross-legged in front of a small fire, sometimes humming old Joni Mitchell songs while painting swirls on your arms with crushed berries.

Montana teased you for it constantly, but never once tried to wipe them off.

You never asked her to change. You saw the rage in her and loved her anyway. And maybe that was what scared her most—that your peace made her want to be more than a blade in the dark.

“You know,” she said once, lying beside you on the dock, the lake black and endless beneath the stars, “if I’d met you when we were alive, I would’ve hated you.”