Chapter 15
Ophelia
We arrive backat Harlow with empty hands, but our spirits are high.
Hopefully Yelina and Poppie had better luck searching through the moonflower field, but my expectations are not high.
Poor Charlie. He’s been lingering around here for such a long time.
Lanston parks his bike in the driveway; not a single light is on in the manor, making the mist that seeps between the pines in the distance more eerie.
“I knew it was a long shot, but I’m still disappointed we didn’t find anything,” I say as we walk toward the front doors.
Lanston offers me his hand and a small smile spreads over my somber expression.
“You know, I think I have one more spot we can check. No expectations though.”
“Really? Where?”
“Come on, I’ll show you.” Lanston leads us along the side of Harlow and back toward the greenhouse. We walk by the tables of plants and straight toward the back.
I didn’t see the door in the back yesterday with all the leafy ferns covering the area around it. But there it is. The knob is brass and looks rusted and unused. Lanston twists it and has to jostle the handle a few times before it opens.
“Charming,” I say, scrunching my nose at the mildewy smell that seeps from the room.
“You have no idea.” Lanston’s voice is low with distaste as he leads us into the room. He turns on the single light bulb that swings from a cord above. The room is drab and covered with dust—a drain lined with rust at the center of the floor.
“Oh my God, this is disgusting.” I cover my mouth and look around warily at the shelves packed with things no one has touched in years—boxes and crates filled with an assortment of papers and random lawn-care equipment.
As my eyes skirt across the shelves, ceasing on a coat rack with jackets hanging by hooks, it looks like there might be something beneath them.
I squeeze Lanston’s hand and he looks at me, then follows my line of sight.
“No way,” he says, exasperated. He moves toward the coat rack and lifts the first jacket, careful not to get dust or grime on himself. The black coat falls to the floor and the next one is brown, then a woman’s small cardigan.
Beneath that is a worn satchel.
We both freeze. Lanston looks back at me with an incredulous expression.
“After all this time, it’s been here all along?” I say somberly.
Lanston nods grimly as he lifts the satchel. “The best hiding spots are in plain sight. Crosby came here often to punish Liam.”
My stomach sinks with that image. I don’t know them, or what the punishment entailed, but the swirls of red on the cement floor make it easy to imagine heinous things.
We hurry back to Harlow, eager to leave the storage room.
The corridor leading to the music room is vacant. All the other phantoms must be asleep at this hour. Though we’re much later than we said we’d return, Yelina and Poppie are waiting inside, lying on the floor, with Charlie across from them and playing a game of chess. The fireplace in the corner flickers a warm ambient light over them. Their calm and lovely nature, with half-drunken smiles and glasses of wine, make them paint-worthy. A scene that you’d find in a museum somewhere where only a few people stop to look.
The three of them lift their heads, and I watch as disbelief spreads across their expressions. Charlie pushes himself up onto his elbows.
Lanston crosses the room and lowers to his knee, handing the satchel over to its rightful owner. Charlie is hesitant at first, almost in denial that we actually found it. Or perhaps it’s fear of what awaits him should this photo let him pass on.
I sit next to Lanston and Poppie, excitement and uncertainty making my breath uneven and staggered as Charlie slowly opens his satchel.
His brown eyes soften as he seems to recognize the contents inside.
“This is it,” he whispers. The silence that follows is thick; none of us dare breathe as he pulls out a pair of glasses, an old book, and then a faded photograph. He holds it to the fireplace light, and tears fall from his cheeks.
“My darling.” His voice is weak, pressing the picture close to his chest as if he cannot stand to be apart from her a minute longer.
I admire his devotion and love for her. His love is tireless, even after so many years. My eyes drift to Lanston. His neck is exposed to me and I can only see the back side of his jaw from where I sit. Every bit of him is lovely. I picture what it might be like for him to love me as much as Charlie does his lost lover. Coveting and always yearning for my presence, would he draw circles on my skin with his fingertips? Press kisses along the delicate flesh of my neck?
Lanston must sense my eyes on him because he turns and meets my gaze. He stares right back into my soul, thousands of embers flickering through his hazel eyes. I could kiss him and never know anything else because right now, I’m not sure anything else would matter.
Only him.
Yelina gasps. “Charlie, what’s happening?”
The sound of her panic draws both our attention back to Charlie. My eyes widen.
He’s disappearing, but he seems entirely at peace with it and wears a comforting smile.
“I’m finally ready,” he says. I’ve never heard a voice so calm. He looks at each of us and shuts his eyes. “Thank you for helping me pass on. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”
Poppie bursts into tears and takes Charlie’s hands. “Oh, Charlie, we will! I’ll find you and we can play chess and tell stories like we always did.” She drags her sleeve over her eyes. Yelina wraps her arms around her friend and sniffles back her own tears.
Charlie leans forward and grins sadly at them both. “Perhaps, one day. Farewell.”
His ghost fades until nothing remains of him, and the four of us are left staring at the empty place where he was a moment ago. It was beautiful and peaceful, so why do I have a pit growing in my throat? Fear slips between my ribs and tangles in my veins like a snake.
How do we know we all get to go like that? What if we are bad? Where do the bad people go? I swallow and try not to let my nerves get the best of me.
The only sound is Poppie’s soft cries.
“That’s the first time I’ve actually witnessed someone pass to the other side.” I break the silence. The three of them look at me, but no one says a word.
Surely, we must all be thinking the same thing.
What lies after?
Drifting.
That’s what I call the strange dissociation we seem to experience here—drawn into our thoughts like the depths of a deep lake. Sometimes, it feels as though weights are pulling down on our legs, making it harder to hear the surface. It is as if we are drowning—slowly and without awareness of it.
It’s terrifying to feel as though you’re losing yourself bit by bit.
Lanston has been standing by his window for hours now; the sun soon to rise. I watch him with curiosity. His baseball cap is set on the edge of his bed. He’s more handsome without it, like a lovely statue that stares into the unknown. The planes of his skin are smooth and hard, and the features of his face are sharp and angular.
He’s been somber since we returned to his room. Charlie’s passing was heavy for Poppie and Yelina to process too. I wonder how Jericho will take it. Maybe he’ll implement new ideas to help phantoms pass on. He’s got quite the job here. Unpaid, I might add. But you can tell his heart is in it fully. The way he nostalgically walks the halls in, what I assume are, the same patterns and routines he did when he was alive.
We grow tired of this world here where no one can find us.
We wish to go.
I can see it in Lanston’s slouched shoulders. He wants to fade into whatever lies after. A cold and weary thought braces me. We can never be together. I want to stay. If there’s one thing I know without a shadow of a doubt, it is that I cannot go. Those Who Whisper have told me where people like me go. I won’t.
Dreariness thickens inside me and hollows out my heart. Why did I come here… why do I find him so inebriating that I can’t step away? No. I must return home.
It’s better this way. No matter how much I desire to be near him.
I lie back on my bed and let my head fall to the right side. His nightstand is bare, but seeing it reminds me that he slipped his drawing pad inside. I glance his way quickly to make sure he’s not going to come out of his drifting anytime soon. His drawer opens without a sound and I pull out the bundle of papers quietly.
The binding is old, the kind that makes you feel like you’re in another place in time, scribbling away by candlelight.
I eagerly flip it open and raise my brows at the black, chalky smears across the pages. They are drawings of creatures, forlorn and morbid. The first one looks like an elk with long, entangled horns that curl high above the creature’s head. The body is lithe, as if the skin is merely draped over the bones like a thin sheet, with no muscles or flesh to mediate the spaces in between.
A fleshless creature with hollowed, sleepless eyes.
As terrifying as it is, I find a wealth of beauty in it—a sad story left untold.
I hear you. I smooth my fingertips gently over the surface of the page, careful not to smear the black charcoal.
A shadow moves over the pages and I glance up to meet Lanston’s weary eyes. There’s not a flicker of anger, just understanding of my curiosity and perhaps some vulnerability too.
“What do you see?” he asks, his voice sounding broken and weary.
Our eyes don’t break the connection as I say, “I see a tired man. He’s barely holding onto himself and he’s wearing false skin to hide what’s beneath. A facade.”
He doesn’t respond, but his eyes weaken and he blinks as his jaw clenches.
“But he doesn’t need to hide anymore. His feet are already visible; he only needs to take a step out into the world he fears most,” I say softly, and something shifts inside me as I watch hope return to his eyes.
Maybe if I’d met him sooner, Those Who Whisper wouldn’t have found me.
MaybeI would’ve asked to make a bucket list with him.
“Ophelia,” he says in a deep, smooth voice.
He holds his hand out to me and I stare at his beautiful fingers, calloused like an artist’s should be.
“Come with me to explore the world.”
Everything stops and my heart breaks. I can’t go with him. I’m scared of what awaits me. My eyes lift to his and I find a million wishes in them—my hand moves of its own accord, tracing over his cheek.
“Why me?” I ask breathlessly.
Lanston laughs. “What do you mean why? I like you… and we have fun together. I can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed as much as I do with you,” he admits.
I shake my head. “I don’t know… I’m not much the traveling type.” The corner of his lip kicks up and he pulls my hand, making me stand.
“Well, what if we write out a bucket list? Maybe if you see it on paper, you’ll have a change of heart?” His voice is filled with hope, and the dread of letting him down sinks further into me. Like steel bars piercing through organs. He lets go of my hand and reaches for his notebook, flipping to the next blank page before sitting on his bed. He pats the center of the mattress for me to join him. I smile weakly and concede.
We sit in the darkness, with moonlight streaming in and lowered lamps lighting the page. We sip coffee as we make a shitty list of things we wanted to do in life:
Lanston Ophelia’s Bucket List
Go to Paris
Sail a yacht
Ballroom dance
Drink on the beach at night/camp out
Ride a train somewhere new
Visit Ireland’s Trinity College Library
Save a stray plant
Seeing our agendas blended like this makes my heart still. It looks like lovers’ plans for their honeymoon or dreams scrawled over a napkin quickly in a diner. I think of how much this list must mean to him. To find his peace.
I smirk at the last one. Lanston shrugs as he says easily, “You’ve inspired me.”
My lips curl at the corners and I raise my pinky. “Promise you’ll save one?”
His smile is slow and thoughtful, then his pinky meets mine and warmth blooms between us. “Already planning on stealing a watering tin.”
Lanston’s eyes are etched with red, weariness pulling at him like an intruding storm. I smile through the anguish that drowns me.
I can’t tell him that I’m leaving.
His eyes flick down to my lips, remaining there, and finally, he whispers, “Will you stay with me?”
Will I stay?
He falls back against his pillows and then I understand. I grin and nod, pulling the sheets back, cozying in beside him and turning off the bedside lamp. We face each other, foreheads almost touching.
“I meant what I said, you know,” he says in a low, hushed tone.
“What?”
“That I like you.” His eyes are half-lidded and he has a drowsy grin that’s enough to stop my heart.
I shouldn’t have come here with him.
“You know I like you too, Lanston,” I say quietly, sounding guilty.
He just chuckles a few times and pulls me in closer, wrapping his arms around me and pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
“Promise?”
I swallow.
“Yeah.”
It’s quiet. His breaths have grown heavy.
I lean back slowly and look up, seeing his lashes flutter with dreams. I inch my way out from beneath his arms and shift until I’m sitting on the edge of the bed. I look back at him, keenly aware that I’m doing exactly what he did a few nights ago that I got mad at him over. His beauty demands attention. The sadness that etches his slumbering features calls to be observed and studied.
“I hope you find everything you deserve in this world,” I whisper, my lips so close to his that I fear he might wake. My hushed voice falls upon his dreaming mind, and I tell him, “I’m sorry.”
His face is unbothered; he heard nothing, but it still feels better that I said it. “You’re such a lovely creature, Lanston. Even though you see yourself as a wolf wearing tattered, thin skin; I see the warm, white coat beneath it. You’re only afraid for others to see your beauty. Hush that fear, darling. Let yourself be free.”
I press a kiss to his forehead and let my fingers glide through his soft, light brown hair.
“Ophelia,” Lanston murmurs softly, dreamily.
My smile fades and I brush his cheek one last time before standing and leaving his room. I walk out Harlow Sanctum’s doors and down the long stretch of driveway leading away from it. My feet carry me past towns and bridges until I’m standing inside my dark opera house once more.
I can never leave. I am a phantom made to remain, to haunt the abandoned, lonely places of the universe. There will be no dark corner where I am not. For here, I stay.
“I hope he does the stupid bucket list and finds his peace,” I whisper to one of my pothos plants. My iPod is a first gen and hardly works, but I turn on my favorite self-loathing song: “Ava” by Famy. Then I step foot on the worn stage and I dance alone.
Alone, as I’ve always been, as I despise myself for being.
But it’s better this way.