Chapter 5
Lanston
DidI just jump off a fucking bridge?
Ophelia”s hair is like a wave of soft purple, alluring and shimmering with the moonlight. My lips pull into a smile of their own volition. What just happened?
Then, slowly, my senses return to me and I realize I should be more stern with her for being so reckless. I firm my smile into a scowl and swim up to the water’s surface.
Our heads break into the night air and I take in a deep breath, wiping away the water from my eyes before glaring at Ophelia. “What were you thinking?” I grip her shoulders and she lets out a laugh.
My face instantly softens with the light sound of her breathy giggle.
“Have you forgotten that we’re phantoms? You just keep getting more and more curious,” she says sarcastically and pushes away from me, swimming toward the shoreline.
I follow, forcing my brows together again because she’s testing my patience. Somehow, I am both irritated by her and drawn in.
“Ophelia, that’s your name, right?” I wade onto the beach behind her and topple over on my back in the sand, my body already growing weary with the exertion. I let my head fall to the right and look at her. She sits close enough to me that I could reach out and touch her if I wanted.
God, I want to.
She holds up her smashed, waterlogged rose and frowns at it, tossing it on my chest before replying, “Ophelia Rosin, and who might you be?”
I grab the rose, ignoring the sharp thorns, and glower at her. “Lanston Nevers,” I mumble, and then silence falls around us. What am I supposed to say? At first, I was so taken with her that I just wanted to meet her, but now I can’t seem to find the words.
She’s mysterious, odd, prickly.
Ophelia pulls her knees to her chest and extends her hand to me. I sit up and look from her hand to her face.
“Nice to meet your ghost, Mr. Nevers. Still new to death?” She smiles like I’m fascinating, and I’m still not quite sure what it is about her that’s so filled with whimsy.
I take her hand and her eyes widen as mine do at our connection. Her hand is warm and welcoming, unlike other phantoms who have gone cold.
We say in unison, “You’re warm.”
An urge to pull her to my chest and soak in her warmth cradles my mind. Why is she so warm? Another lovely thing about her that will linger idly in my mind for days to come, I’m certain.
I pull my hand back hesitantly and clear my throat. “I’m not new to death. I’ve been dead for five years, and please call me Lanston.” I offer her a grin as I shake sand from my hair.
Ophelia laughs again. It sounds genuine enough, but I’m no stranger to pretending to be happy for people to like me. She laughs too much and smiles too widely, especially for someone like me who’s given her no reason to smile so brightly.
She stands and brushes off her dress. It dries in a moment and so do my clothes. A small reprieve for being a phantom.
“Five years and you’re still acting like you can’t do whatever it is you want?” She practically scoffs. I push myself to my feet and realize how tall I am compared to her. Her eyes barely reach my shoulders.
“And what could I possibly want to do besides move on to the next phase of death?” I say sadly. It sounds broken and pitiful, but the truth can’t be shrouded by pretty words. “I’ll never be able to have the things I wanted.”
By things, I mean the people I wanted.
Silence falls around us and I stare out across the river—the small waves are the only soft noise that grounds me in the moment.
I flinch as Ophelia brushes her hand across my cheek, the warmth and care very much present. My eyes find hers and I fight the urge to lean into her palm. She smiles weakly at me.
“Who says death is the end of us? We’re here for a reason, are we not? You are still as much alive in spirit as you ever were.” Her lips remain parted just enough to make my throat dry.
“What reasons? I can’t seem to find mine. Why am I still here?” I mutter as my gaze returns to the dark water behind her. It laps against the ground with fervor, starved for lost souls.
She shrugs. “We all have reasons, Lanston. Ones that we need to uncover ourselves.” Ophelia looks into the distance and starts walking toward the shadows of the bridge.
“Ophelia,” I say her name with such utter tenderness. She stops and looks over her shoulder at me, her cheeks rosy, waiting for me to speak. “How did you die?”
Her green eyes are somber. The memory must be like a knife in her heart.
She turns her head before answering me—the warm light of the streetlamps above halo her head as she murmurs, “I was murdered.” She pauses and clenches her fists at her sides with anger for herself and her fate, I’m sure, just as I’m enraged on her behalf. “You?”
She was murdered.
My first thought is, why? Who?
Who could possibly touch a hair on this enthralling woman’s head? No wonder she’s guarded, a bit callous. Have I not become those things too? Warded within my own mind and heart… Because life was stolen from me. Friends. Love.
But it was never meant to be mine. That life, as short and lovely and sad as it was. It was never mine.
I was never going to have the things I craved most.
And somehow, I think that might be what’s truly keeping me here. The not knowing. I died, not even knowing what I truly wanted. Do any of us actually know? My desires and enjoyments change year to year. What I find fulfilling and meaningful alters after time. I yearn for the answer. What was I meant for?
“I was murdered too,” I whisper. It sounds so wrong sliding from between my lips. Is it really the first time I’ve spoken of how I died out loud? The cruelness of it is unfair. Both of us have been left behind while the world remains awake.
Ophelia turns to face me with a look of anguish.
“You?”
I give her a crooked smirk. “Me.”
She stares at me for a while, mournful. Many questions flicker across her expression. I have many of my own as well. But neither of us seem able to ask.
“I’m sorry, Lanston. You seem like a man who still had so much to give.” She starts to walk back toward the shadows of the bridge and my legs instinctively follow.
“You do too, I was hoping?—”
“Stop,” she cuts me off, continuing to walk steadily, but my steps falter. “I don’t do the afterlife with others. It was nice meeting you, but this is where our joining ends.”
That must be one of her walls. I’m surprised I even made it this far.
“Doesn’t that get lonely?” I call after her, shoving my hands into my coat pockets to keep myself in control.
She struts confidently ahead, fisting her small hands at her sides and I can’t help but smile at her resolve.
“Heartachingly so,” she admits on a pained half-laugh. “But I never get hurt this way.” There’s a sad truth to her words. To choose to be lonely rather than opening yourself up to others.
I know that pain.
I’m about to say that’s a tragic way to exist but in my next breath, all the lights around us are snuffed out and a chill unfurls in the air. Pitch black consumes everything except me and Ophelia. Terror slips inside my veins.
What is this?It’s freezing and dark. For the first time since entering the realm of phantoms, I’m afraid.
I stare blindly into the abyss before a hand wraps around my wrist and pulls me urgently. My eyes snap down and meet Ophelia’s. She looks terrified as she says in a low, haunting voice, “Don’t look back, no matter what you hear.”
The sand beneath my feet gives, practically vibrating, as the darkness becomes heavy and terror drives me forward. “What’s happening?” I gasp between breaths as she guides us ahead. I don’t think she can see any better than I can, but her footing is sure. Has she done this before?
She doesn’t respond; all I can see is her lovely purple-tinted hair swaying behind her.
Whispers creep up behind me and chills spread down my spine at the cold that lingers after each hushed word.
What are they saying?I can’t quite make it out. My head instinctively starts to turn, curious to find the source of the eerie whispers.
“Don’t,” Ophelia says sharply, and my neck locks.
“What is that?”
She waits a moment, then says, “I don’t know, but they whisper awful things. Phantoms that get caught in their shroud end up sleeping for long periods of time, and they aren’t the same when they wake.”
I open my mouth, but she cuts in again.
“Just trust me, you don’t want to find out.” Ophelia takes a sharp left and tows me behind her. We quickly step through a door frame and the moment my head passes beneath it, a room forms around us.
Ophelia slams the door shut on the approaching darkness. The eerie whispers press up against the wood, making the door creak and wail. A shudder rolls down my spine. They were mere footsteps behind us. At any point they could’ve grabbed us. The sounds stop and the cold that penetrated the air is sapped away like it was nothing more than the brisk air of the night.
Ophelia takes a few deep breaths before flipping the lock and sighing as she presses her forehead against the black door.
My first thought is to ask her again what that was about, but the way her shoulders tremble stalls me. So I take in the space instead.
“Where are we?”
I look up and around the place she’s brought us into. It’s dim, but enough ambient light filters in through boarded-up windows to see most of the room. The ceilings are tall and the space is filled with only tables and plants. Hundreds and hundreds of leafy, viny plants.
As my eyes adjust more, it becomes clear that this is no house or apartment; it’s an old opera house. A big room, walls black like a gothic church. The seats have been long torn out and replaced with vintage tables and pews. Broken pots and forgotten things fill this place, and it’s charming in its own way. The only things filled with life here are the plants, green and soft, making me think of the greenhouse at Harlow that should have been brimming as this place is.
“It’s an abandoned opera house,” she says in a low tone, timid. Does she think I’d judge her?
“Did you collect all these?” My eyes find hers and she looks away, a blush growing across her cheeks. “I like them,” I add carefully.
Ophelia lifts her head and looks at me. Her eyes are half-lidded and filled with dreariness from the day.
It’s a silly thing, that ghosts can get tired, but we do. More so than when we were alive. I think it’s because of the energy required to exist here in the plane in-between. The more we exert, the wearier we become, sometimes drifting off for days to charge back up.
She eyes me carefully and steps around where I stand, nearing the first worn table crowded with terracotta pots. English ivy, Boston ferns, pothos, roses. Her hand lowers and she caresses the leaves of a pothos with care.
“Yeah, I did,” she says in a cold, closed-off manner.
She did say she didn’t like being around other phantoms… I shift on my feet and reach for the doorknob. I hate feeling unwanted and like I’m annoying people.
“I can leave?—”
“No,” she says meekly, and I pause.
Our eyes linger timidly on one another. I’m trying to figure her out and she’s doing the same with me. Then she deflates, worrying her lower lip in a way that draws my eyes and makes me want to brush my thumb over it to quell her woes. “You should wait until morning. Those Who Whisper tend to linger for a while.”
My body stiffens at that. I’d almost completely forgotten about them already.
I approach her slowly and stand at her side. When she lifts her chin to look into my eyes, my lungs cease at her intoxicating scent of roses. “Those Who Whisper?” I ask, and she nods.
“They bring the darkness with them when they come. I’m not sure who or what they are, but they’re bad… of that I am certain.” Her voice is small and trembles as she speaks. Chills crawl up my spine at the mere thought of those things. Not knowing what something looks like is often more frightening, because you imagine exactly what you don’t want it to be.
“I’ve never encountered them before.” My voice is implying.
Ophelia blinks slowly, looking at the door that separates us from the darkness outside. “They only follow me.” A mere whisper.
I quirk a brow. “Why?”
Her jaw muscle feathers and she shakes her head. “I don’t know.” She lifts her shoulder and drops it. “One day they just showed up and they’ve been trailing me since. Sometimes I go days or even weeks without running into them, but one thing is true, they’re always near. Waiting patiently for me to forget and become aloof like I was tonight.” She looks at me pointedly. “They almost got me tonight.”
The hairs on the back of my neck raise, but I swallow the discomfort.
“Are you scared here? I couldn’t imagine being alone.” My voice is coarse. The image of her being here alone for days, months, years, a decade, breaks me. I can see her tending to her garden of forgotten plants. This abandoned building keeping a ghost the world has blinked away all this time.
She spreads her arms to the room, smiling and casting away the grim conversation. “I’m not alone. I have all the greenery and knick-knacks a person could ever hope for.”
I nod and force a weary grin, glancing back at her door once more. “So you’re okay with me staying here for the night? You won’t feed me to the dark?” I tease and her guarded exterior lowers; replaced with a lovely smile.
“Tea?” she offers, and I chuckle.
“Coffee, please, and no cream.”