Ghosts Don’t Cry

Chapter 1

Chapter One

RONAN

The bus jerks as it slows, brakes grinding out in a low, rusted hiss that vibrates through my body. The nausea churning in my stomach has nothing to do with the bus’s motion, and everything to do with where I am.

This town chewed me up and spat me out. It left me to rot on the side of the road. It didn’t kill me, but it sure as fuck tried.

And now, like a ghost returning to haunt its own grave, I’m back.

My fingers tighten around the strap of my duffel bag, nails digging into the worn fabric until the seams threaten to split. I’m hanging on to it like it will anchor me against the tide of memories threatening to drag me under.

Rain streaks the window, turning the outside world into a twisted visual nightmare of neon and shadow. The flickering station sign bleeds red into the wet sidewalk, its glow feeble and dying. Half the letters are burned out, faded like a pulse that’s long since stopped beating.

I knew it would be like this. I tried to convince myself it wouldn’t, but I knew it in my bones, and in the hollow space beneath my ribs where dread has made its home.

But I still hate seeing it.

The town looks exactly as I remember it. A hellhole where dreams go to die, and hope is just another four-letter word. It’s a place that watches people fall and turns away, pretending not to hear the sound of breaking.

And I did fall. Hard. The impact of it still echoes in my bones, and wakes me up in a cold sweat at night.

The bus wheezes to a stop, the doors groaning open like they’re protesting the effort.

An old man rubs his hands together, muttering under his breath to someone who isn’t there.

A woman shifts in her seat, adjusting the sleeping kid slumped against her shoulder.

Across the aisle, a teenager with a hoodie pulled up leans against the window, his fingers tapping out a mindless beat on his knee.

The driver exhales sharply, impatiently waiting for people to get up and leave. I push to my feet, duffel slung over one shoulder, and step into the aisle. No one looks at me.

Good. I’ve had enough of being watched in this town to last several lifetimes.

My legs are stiff, muscles tight from too many hours of being cramped into a small space. Every instinct screams at me to sit back down, and carry on to the next town. But I don’t. I force myself to walk to the front of the bus.

Then, for half a second, I catch my reflection in the window. And for half a breath, I see him.

Hollow-eyed. Skin stretched too tight over his ribs.

Wearing clothes he found dumpster-diving, and drowning in sleeves too long for his arms. His expression.

Christ, that expression. It still haunts me.

It’s the look of someone who has no idea what’s waiting for him, but knows, deep in his gut, that it won’t be good.

Everything about him gives off the message that he’s a kid who doesn’t know how to fight back.

And then he’s gone. Swallowed by dark glass and replaced by someone else entirely.

A man covered in ink, muscles carved from necessity, face unreadable. A body that doesn’t look starved anymore. A man who learned how to hit back or die, and who carries his scars like armor.

I step down onto the ground, and the bus’s door hisses shut behind me. The engine rumbles, then the bus is gone, swallowed by the dark stretch of highway beyond the station, and leaving me standing here in the wreckage of my past.

Maybe coming here is a mistake. No. It’s definitely a mistake.

I’m already turning toward the ticket machine before my brain catches up with what my body is doing.

I stop myself, reaching out to grasp the back of a bench and hold myself in place.

The contact with the metal is cold, sending an icy shock through my arm, but it stops the flight response from taking over.

I take a deep breath in through my nose, release it through my mouth, then repeat the action. Each exhale comes out in a small white cloud in front of me. Proof that I’m really here, really breathing the poisoned air of this town again.

The worn fabric of my hoodie might as well be tissue paper against the cold that burrows straight to my marrow, awakening ghosts of old pains I thought I’d buried.

My shoulder throbs where it was dislocated.

My ribs ache where they’d been broken. Bile rises in my throat.

I swallow it down, adjust the bag onto my other shoulder, and look around.

There are no cars on the road, no voices drifting through the air. All I can hear is the hum of the streetlights, the dying buzz of the neon sign above my head, and the whisper of my pulse in my ears. The air smells of wet asphalt, gasoline, and rust.

This part of town is still. Too still. It reminds me of the silence that falls just before an execution, where everyone holds their breath and counts down the seconds until the guillotine falls. I can’t help but wonder if it’s my execution I’m here for.

My fingers twitch. A habit I’ve never been able to shake. I flex them, trying to force the tension out of my knuckles, and attempt to convince myself that I don’t need to be ready for a fight.

But that’s the thing about old instincts. They don’t die. They wait, and watch, and then resurface when you don’t want them to.

The farther I walk away from the station, the more the silence feels like a noose. Years of cataloging exits and sleeping with one eye open, all flood back.

The streetlight overhead flickers, casting my shadow in stuttering shapes across the wet sidewalk. For a second, the shadow looks too thin, too small. Like the boy I used to be is trying to escape from the man I became.

I adjust the bag once more, and start walking. Seven years is long enough for everything to change … or for nothing to. From what I’m seeing, this town chose nothing.

There are storefronts I remember, and others I don’t. Sullivan’s Bar on First is gone, replaced by a place trying too hard to look new. The cracked glass on the door hasn’t changed, though, and it catches the neon lights from the diner across the road like a broken mirror.

The diner still has its flickering sign, and half the letters are missing, peeled away by time and neglect.

I used to press my face against that window, checking to see how busy it was, when I scraped enough change together for coffee.

The memory makes my jaw clench. I could walk in and buy a full meal now, if I wanted to.

My stomach twists at the thought. Money doesn’t erase hunger.

It just changes what you’re starving for.

Everywhere I look, I see signs of a town slowly rotting from the inside out.

Paint peels in long strips from doors. Gutters sag under the weight of years of neglect, and boarded up windows show how many businesses have given up.

This place is dying. It has been for decades, but the people who live here refuse to admit it.

And so, it just keeps on going, the same way zombies do in the movies.

A car rolls past, its tires hissing against the wet road. A second-story window glows faintly above a shop that wasn't there when I was last in town. A curtain twitches. Someone is up there, watching.

Every nerve ending fires to life. My shoulders tighten, and I lift my head, refusing to hunch into the shadows. Back then, the eyes belonged to people who saw an outsider, someone who made them uncomfortable. Someone dragging down their town. I wonder what they see now.

The kid who stole food and slept rough? The one who proved every terrible thing they whispered about me was true? Or something worse. The ghost who dared to come back.

I don’t stop or slow, and I don’t try to see who’s watching through that window.

I keep my pace even, my breath steady, and my hands loose at my sides instead of curled into fists.

I’ve learned that much, at least, in the years I’ve been away.

I know how to walk through a place without looking like prey.

When I reach the road where the old motel used to be, I’m relieved to find it’s there and still operating.

The sign matches the bus station’s, half-dead like everything else in this place.

The neon vacancy sign flickers between red and nothing, like it can’t decide if it wants customers or just wants to give up.

The parking lot is mostly empty except for a rusted pickup truck and a sedan that’s seen better years. Weeds push through cracks in the asphalt, and the whole place has an air of a business hanging on out of pure stubbornness rather than profit.

The tension in my shoulders eases slightly. This I can handle.

I push open the door and step through. Inside, the air is stale, smelling of old cigarette smoke and mildew that catches in my throat.

The carpet is worn down to the backing in places, threadbare paths marking where thousands of feet have walked before mine.

The wood paneling on the walls looks like it hasn’t been updated since the seventies.

A small TV behind the front desk plays some late-night talk show, the volume turned down so low it’s nothing more than shapes moving across the screen.

The woman on the desk doesn’t even look up when I ask for a room. She just points to the price list taped to the counter, yellow with age and curling at the edges. Her fingernails are bitten down to the quick, with chipped red nail polish on what remains of them.

I drop enough cash for one night. More than the room is worth, but I’ve learned the value of not asking questions or drawing attention.

She mutters something about checkout times, and slides a key toward me. An actual key, not a card. Then she goes back to her book.

Fine by me. I’m not one for pointless conversation either.

My room is on the second floor. The metal stairs outside are slick with rain, and the handrail wobbles under my hand, rust flaking off against my palm.

The lock sticks before it turns, and when I step inside, the scent of cheap detergent and water damage hits me.

I dump my bag on the floor, kick the door shut, and look around.

The furniture is scratched and dented. There’s a cigarette burn on the nightstand, despite the no-smoking sign. None of it matters. I’ve stayed in far worse places than this.

Moving deeper into the room, I sit on the edge of the bed.

The bedspread is stiff and rough, but I don’t care.

Sleep isn’t something I’ve ever been good at anyway.

The springs squeak under my weight as I lay back.

There’s a brown stain on the ceiling that looks like it’s been there for years, spreading slowly like a bruise that won’t heal.

The silence crawls under my skin. For years I’ve been used to noise.

Conversations through walls, footsteps, the hum of fluorescent lights.

The constant background noise of people living on top of each other.

This quiet is different. The weight of this town is pressing down on me.

It’s in the walls, in the floor, in the chipped paint and the buzzing motel sign leaking red light through the thin curtains. It’s in every breath I take.

I drag a hand down my face, and release a heavy sigh. It doesn’t help. The exhale just fills the room, then disappears, leaving me alone again.

The quiet makes room for thoughts I don’t want to have, and space for memories that should stay buried. It forces me to remember the last time I was in this town. The desperation that clawed at my throat then is different now, but it’s still there.

Still waiting for me to fall again.

But this town doesn’t catch anyone. It just watches them hit the bottom, then sweeps away the debris. I’ve seen it happen. Hell, I lived it. I still carry the reminder of what happens when you let yourself believe someone might reach out and break your fall.

I roll onto my side. The mattress is too firm, the blankets too thin.

The old heater rattles to life in the corner, each whirr sounding like it’s gasping for breath, but it’s better than the silence.

The sound reminds me of another night. Another place.

A different version of me. One trying to stay a step ahead of the past before it swallowed me whole.

I survived it then. I'll survive it now. It's the one thing I've always been good at. But surviving and living aren't the same thing. One is breathing. The other is having a reason to.

I press a hand to my chest, trying to hold back the anxiety that threatens to rise. My heartbeat drums against my palm in the kind of rhythm that used to wake me in the middle of the night, and send me pacing until dawn because staying still felt like drowning.

“He left something for you.” The lawyer’s words echo in my head. Like it’s supposed to mean something. Like it’s supposed to be enough to bring me back.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to find here. Past experience tells me that I won’t like whatever it is. But I’m here. Even if it’s through no desire of my own. I’m here because some ghosts refuse to stay buried, and some debts demand to be paid.

Outside, the rain picks up again, drumming against the window.

The sound should be soothing, white noise to ease me toward sleep, but instead it makes me think of all the nights I spent listening to rain on the factory roof, trying to convince myself that tomorrow would be better.

That somehow, somewhere, there was a place for me that didn’t involve running, or hiding, or pretending I wasn’t slowly fading away.

I squeeze my eyes closed, and force my breathing to slow. In through my nose, out through my mouth. The technique they taught me in therapy. The one that’s supposed to calm the nervous system, and trick your body into thinking you’re safe when every instinct says otherwise.

When that doesn’t work, I try to let exhaustion drag me under. The kind of bone-deep tiredness that comes from carrying too many memories for too long.

Tomorrow.

I’ll deal with it tomorrow. Even though I know I should never have come back. I’ll tell myself this place doesn’t have any hold over me. I’ll go out there and face all the things I never thought I’d see again.

Lies have always been easier than the truth.

But the truth is waiting. It always is. Patient the way predators are. Crouched in the dark, watching as you stumble closer until it’s too late.

The difference is that this time, I’m not the same kid who used to run from it. This time I know how to hit back.