A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope: Emotional Paranormal Romance Spin-off to the Fabric of our Souls

Chapter 1

Lanston

“Do not cry,”my father would say, calloused and hollow. “I’ll hit you harder if you fucking cry. Until you bleed, if I must.”

I was being punished for drawing again. My father despised art, said it created foolish minds and derisory souls. He hated me with every fiber of his being—I knew it since I was six. He’d spit at me, glare, and say things and words I didn’t yet understand.

But I understood the emotion behind it—the loathing that spilled from his shoulders, the way he carried himself like he could strike me at any moment. I knew the dog was more cherished than me.

The dog received compliments, pets, and delights, while I received bruises and welts from clothes hangers and shower heads. That didn’t start until I was eight, when I became more outspoken about the injustice of his treatment. It only made him angrier, my awareness of his cruelty.

Though I knew he didn’t like me, God, did I try my best to change his mind. I wish I had known then that nothing would’ve worked.

I tightened my jaw the best I could and hid away in my mind, thinking of baseball and quiet places I could sneak off to once this was done. It was the only thing that worked so I didn’t break down mentally like I had last time. There was no fighting this fate.

Whack.

The back of my skull was racked with pain. I bit my lower lip, keeping the tears safely tucked away with my sheer will alone. I knew if I cried, it would be so much worse.

Whack. Whack. Whack. Whack. Whack.

I sat slouched in the tub, arms wrapped securely around my knees, waiting patiently for the pain to subside. But he seemed particularly enraged that day, and I had lost count of the blows from the shower head.

His breath was heavy when he finished, and he didn”t utter a word as he left.

I remained still for a while, letting my mind come back to itself. The urgency to flee was intense, and I desired to be gone completely.

If Father wants me gone so desperately, why don’t I just go away? I pondered the thought while I washed the blood from the back of my head and continued to think about it as I walked to the baseball field. I thought about it for a long time.

If my existence only brings him misery, then I should go.

But only eight years old, I did not know how to flee. How to go.

As I grew, I came to understand that there are many ways to leave.

When I was sixteen, I tried to kill myself for the first time. People shamed me and said I was selfish and wanted attention. That, if I truly wanted to die, I’d put a bullet in my head. They said I was a coward.

What a nasty, distasteful thing to say to another. Giving me options and ideas? I didn’t want to put a bullet through my head. I wouldn’t destroy the only part of me I actually liked… my mind. Dark and beautiful, as my grandmother once told me.

I was scared. I wanted to leave—to be a memory. To give my father that peace he so desperately needed from my existence.

It wasn’t until much later that I actually got help. In my second year of college, a few people mentioned I should see a therapist. At first, I was offended because there was nothing wrong with me, I told myself.

However, the care and gentle ease with which they explained that therapy helps you understand yourself better opened the door for me. It’s there that someone told me for the first time in my life: “It’s not your fault, Lanston.”

“Which part?” I had asked.

“It’s not your fault your father abused and disliked you. Nor is it your fault that you have a mental illness.”

I cried for the rest of the session. I wept like a child because, for the first time, I felt safe to do so. The therapist wouldn’t strike me; she wouldn’t hurt me. This I knew.

When she asked me why I was crying, attempting to help me process the emotions, I couldn’t speak. I could not even think. All I could manage was to shake my head.

It wasn’t my fault?

Then, years later, I changed that thought from a question to a statement, and those words became my daily mantra.

It was never my fault.

So why do I still want to die?

I’m a hopeless romantic. Always have been.

I believe in, well, love. In its purest form—in the most intimate and selfless light it’s meant to be in. And dying young, protecting the two people I cherish more than my aching soul can bear, is an act of love I would do over for eternity if I had to.

I always thought that ghosts were scary or unnecessarily angry at the world. Now I understand that they are just people—hurting in the same ways as we had in life.

Ghosts are sadness and regret. Our hearts bleed as much as the living.

I don’t enjoy thinking about the things that hurt. The words that bruise and fester. I’ve thought long and hard about why I’ve yet to pass into the great beyond, or heaven, or whatever waits for us after.

And I’ve come up with only one reason: The dreaded, lousy, unfinished business.

Every horror movie I was forced to watch (thanks, Liam and Wynn) taught me that ghosts are hellbent on either getting revenge, because they were wronged in some unimaginable way, or delivering a message to someone they desperately need to reach.

So why am I still here? I have no vengeance in my heart or secret message that needs to be spoken. I’ve said my goodbyes. Isn’t this the part where I just… I don’t know, get beamed into the light or something?

Why is my chest filled with so much torment and grief?Why am I still so fucking depressed?

That’s the million-dollar question.

I stare out across the empty wheat field where Crosby shot us as I ponder the awful thought. Sometimes, I lose track of time here; you have plenty of time when you’re dead to think about things and watch as life goes on without you. I’ve found that this place is sentimental to me, even though heinous acts unfolded here and two people lost their lives that night.

The breeze is cold—yet early spring flower buds are blossoming on the trees already. I breathe in the smell of the muddy field and think of Perry. Surely, if he can find his peace, I should be able to as well. I wish I could tell Liam that Neil was waiting for him like he’d hoped he would be.

It was cathartic to watch Neil and Perry disappear into what’s after, smiling at one another with so much relief, the weight of pain being released from their shoulders. I started keeping a box of notes on things I need to tell the two of them when we meet again.

Liam and Wynn left for Boston five years ago. They visit my grave a few times a year to bring me baseball hats and one-sided conversations that I very much enjoy.

I let out a laugh—fucking ridiculous, really, because who brings hats for a dead man? But I love it when they leave me things. My fingers graze the rim of my new baseball cap they left a few months ago.

It certainly doesn’t feel like it’s been that long already.

I finally stand and brush off my pants, deciding to head back to Harlow Sanctum early tonight.

You’d think I’d be some big shot here. I mean, for God’s sake, the place was named after me, but no, Jericho still runs the show around here. Ever the arrogant asshole who taps on his clipboard like someone who needs their fifth cigarette of the morning.

A new building was built over Harlow, named Never Haven by my darling Wynn and Liam, but for us ghosts, Harlow has followed us into the world in-between. Everything is as it was, comforting and nostalgic. There are many memories that keep this place alive and many ghosts who have kept me company over the past five years.

However, it is rather somber that none of us could properly move on.

Nothing was fair in life—why would it be different in death?

Come on, that’s just expecting too much. But at least we suffer together until the bitter end. It’s better than being alone. We are together in the dark.

The only thing that has changed is my burdened mind. No longer do I suffer with long nights of staring at a blank ceiling and wishing I were dead. Now, I stare at the same ceiling and wish I didn’t exist at all. I think of the misery it would’ve saved me.

Nothing is fair.

Jericho pokes his head into my room and knocks twice on the frame. “You’re back early,” he says as he adjusts his glasses and grins at me. His green eyes aren’t as weary as they were when we first found ourselves in purgatory. Now they are comfortably filled with hope and purpose once more. I let out a long sigh and stretch my arms over my head, taking my hat off and scratching my hair.

“Yeah, I guess I didn’t have as much to think about today.” Somehow, that sounds more unfortunate than it should. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Wouldn”t that be considered progress because I’ve sorted at least a few things out? But I keep coming back to why.

Why are any of us still here?

Jericho walks in and sits on the edge of my table instead of the chair. I sit up and give him a mildly annoyed look. He looks at my recent drawings scattered atop the surface and blinks a few times at the morbidity of them. The pages are old and tan, with smears of black demons and despairing people on them. But, as usual, he doesn’t say anything about the creations I let out of my mind. Sometimes, I think I leave them out so he can see, hoping he’ll say something about the darkness he finds within the charcoal sketches.

I don’t just show anyone them. But Jericho is like a big brother to me, a fatherly figure I’d been robbed of.

“Really? I’m shocked. You always have depressing things to ponder.” He laughs and looks down at his hands thoughtfully before raising his gaze to mine.

He was way too fucking young to die. We all were. I have a suspicion that his unfinished business is being with that woman he was secretly seeing at the Fall Festival years ago. I think he was in love.

Jericho smiles and says, “You know, Yelina and Poppie are going to come with me and a few of the others to the Spring Performance this weekend in the city. You should come too.”

My shoulders drop, and I let my body flop back into the bed with a groan. I’ve become one of those groaning ghosts where all they do is wail and complain. Maybe even scare the shit out of people if they can hear me on the other side.

“It won’t be so bad. I go every year and it always manages to be better than the last.” Jericho hops off the table and stands above me. “You have to try to find what’s keeping you here, Lanston. How sad will it be if you’re the last ghost here in the next century after all of us have moved on?”

I scowl at him and he smiles.

“Fine—I’ll go.”