I walked slowly. Every step felt like it pulled me deeper into something I would never escape. When I reached the pillows, I hesitated.
Ezekiel placed his hand on my shoulder and forced me to kneel. I lowered myself onto the cold floor. And before I could even close my eyes, something dropped over my head.
A rough sack.
Then the rope came, yanked tight around my neck.
My hands flew to my throat. I gasped for breath. My mouth opened wide, but the air wouldn’t come. But I was helpless. His grip was too strong.
And through the rough sack over my head, I heard his voice cutting straight through the metal mask on his face.
“Forgive him, Lord. He has sinned. But he will serve. And he will repay his sins.”
Then the faint light filtering through the burlap disappeared, and everything turned to darkness.
And I fell. Fell hard.
But in the dark, I saw them. All of them. The ghosts of Gloomsbury Manor.
And it was never just seven. They always came in pairs. One to haunt. One to take.
I saw Ian.
I saw the twins.
I saw Shadow.
I saw the wet lady with the broken neck.
I saw my father.
And I saw myself.
It felt like I was watching time slip past me. Past and future, tangled together like a thread pulled loose from my memory. I was slipping between it all, floating in a place where memories weren’t memories anymore.
And time just passed through me, like I wasn’t there at all.
Somehow, I found myself sitting on the porch. I looked up at the moon and wished I could remember how I got here. But I couldn’t.
Still, what happened stuck with me. Every detail that Ezekiel did stuck with me.
When you get that close to death, when you can feel it breathing down your neck, you start to see them. All of them. And you begin to understand. You understand why one moment you’re here and then suddenly, you’re not. You see everything until you don’t. You believe, until belief slips through your fingers. And the rest... the rest just happens. Whatever has to, will.
I heard her footsteps behind me. My favorite ghost, in human form. The one who would haunt everything I touched for the rest of my life.
I lit a cigarette, letting the smoke burn through my lungs. She sat beside me, and without turning, I said, “You’re up late, Trouble.”
“I could say the same about you,” she said.
I smiled to myself. “I’m always up late.”
We sat in silence. Just the two of us.
You know how with some people, silence feels like enough? Like the quiet between you says everything that words never could. She was that for me,my favorite silence.
But when she spoke… God, when she spoke, I wanted to hear her voice every hour of every day. She was becoming my favoriteeverything. And I hated it. But favorite things break, and I didn’t want to cut myself on the sharp edges.
“I hate this house,” she said at last.
