Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Time moves strangely when you’re dead.
At first it crawled—minutes stretching into hours, hours into days—as Alaric kept silent watch over the town he helped build. A town he once believed would give him peace.
Instead, he was executed and cursed.
Then, days became years became decades. He’d blinked, and he didn’t recognize the citizens of Pumpkin Hollow anymore. He thought this meant the curse would end—because Pumpkin Hollow prospered despite what the reverend wished.
Then, ten years ago, time slowed once more.
A woman stood at the base of his grave, black trails of tears running down her pale skin.
She smeared them with the back of her hand and sniffled.
The corner of her mouth turned up in a cautious smile.
“Good thing you’re dead and don’t know what a failure I am,” she told the statue.
“I don’t think I could handle another look of disappointment. I bet yours are wicked.”
And so Alaric watched Rosalin Graves, a distant descendant of the necromancers that tried to raise Alaric from the few bits of ashes they’d collected. Then they tried to commune with him, to let him know they were okay, that they’d escaped.
Little did they know.
“This shouldn’t shock you,” she told his statue one day, “but I did not get the scholarship. I know, I know—my straight Cs should have been an instant in. But they weren’t, so I’m stuck here. At least I’ve got you,” she added, bumping the base of his statue like an old friend.
“His name is Alopecia, it’s a condition where you don’t have hair,” she said another time, raising the hairless creature up to his statue.
He was small enough to fit in her hands, which were lifted to him.
“NAHHH SYMBENYAAA!” she shouted, then laughed and brought him to her chest. “I’ll call him Albie.
You know, in their culture, they help lead souls to the afterlife.
Takes four years. He’ll do my job better than I ever could,” she added quietly.
So many times, he wanted to comfort her, the lonely woman that haunted the cemetery. Often he just stood with her, glad for the companionship after so many centuries alone. Every few decades the necromancers tried to reach him—but never like this. Never like a friend.
She stood before him now, twirling in a circle to try to find where his voice came from. She trapped her bottom lip between her teeth, gnawing it like she always did when she was thinking.
“Set you free?” she asked. The vessel in her pale neck throbbed with her rising heart rate, and he wanted to press his finger against it to feel her life. Perhaps that is what drew him to her, the way she celebrated life in a field meant for the dead.
“Yes,” he said, though it came out a sigh.
Yes. What a release it would be, to rest at last. To know deep in his soul that Pumpkin Hollow was safe, that the witches prospered for centuries.
Their numbers grew as they recruited others, spreading the boundary, creating something he could have never imagined.
Now his watch could end, and he could rest at last.
“I think you’ve got the wrong witch,” she said.
He reached out to grab her hand. It was meant to be a comforting gesture, but he didn’t realize how unnerving it must feel until she jumped.
A jolt traveled from his palm up his arm, the same jolt he felt when her blood touched his statue and landed on him.
He’d expected a trickle of power from it, not this flood.
Rosalin’s eyes widened as she looked from her hand, to his arm, to his face. They rested on it then, her gaze a mix of wonder and fear. Her lips parted, and Alaric couldn’t stop himself from staring at them.
“Holy fucking shit, it is you,” she breathed.
“You can see me?” He failed to keep his excitement at bay. Her gaze darted across his face, taking in every surface of it. They lingered on his nose, his chin, then dipped down to frown at his clothing.
Ah, yes—the robe. Garish even in his own time, and hopelessly out of place now. Rosalin often wore black, flowy dresses that accentuated her wide hips and full chest when the wind blew. He would stand out even if the robe weren’t bloodstained and tattered.
“Kind of. You’re…transparent,” she said.
He was transparent. He could see Rosalin’s hand through his where he still held it, the blood of her palm pressed against his. He lifted her hand up to examine it, pressing his thumb into her palm as he investigated. She shivered and he glanced up.
“You’re, uhm….cold,” she said, a rush of red coloring her pale cheeks.
“I feel nothing,” he admitted. That wasn’t entirely true, he was ecstatic.
“I hear that’s common with the dead,” she said.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. Her eyebrows climbed up her face.
“You don’t…see any other spirits?” she asked.
“I’ve not met another,” he admitted. “Is that unusual?”
“Very,” she affirmed. “Aunt Franny said you all exist on the same plane, so you can see each other. You must have been somewhere else.”
“I was cursed,” he said.
“Yes, you mentioned that, but I’ve never heard that before,” Roz said.
“It happened just before I was hanged. The reverend, he said…” He trailed off, recalling that night in the church. The smell of blood and sweat, the way his ribs ached.
“You may die, but your soul will remain to watch. You will watch as we find your witches, as we hold them all accountable for their crimes. Your body may burn upon the pyre, but your soul will remain. And you will spend eternity staring at the ashes of the very people you tried—and failed—to protect.”
Rosalin blinked several times, her eyes glassy. “Oh,” she said.
It was his pain, yet he wanted to bring her close, to tell her it was fine. Three hundred years was plenty of time to move beyond a few words. Especially when those three hundred years were spent watching the opposite happen.
“So I have remained, and I have watched,” he said, settling for keeping her hand in his. Her blood pulsed across his palm, her magic rubbing against him.
“So you’ve…” she started, her gaze flickering away. His gaze was drawn to her throat as she swallowed, at the vessel that pulsed with her heartbeat. “...been listening?”
“You’re the only person who tried to keep me company,” he said, his other hand moving to her jaw to guide her face back to him. “All these years, I’ve been alone, until ten years ago you stood before my statue and spoke to me. Perhaps this is why you succeeded where all others failed.”
“All I did was trip and fall,” Rosalin said, but she did not look away. She stared into his face, into his eyes.
“Imagine what you could do with intention,” he said.
She stepped back and away, her hand falling from his.
It left a hollow in its place, a ravenous void where magic once sat.
Her blood sang to him. “I think you’re just a little overwhelmed, social anxiety.
Or maybe the whiplash, or something. I have no magic, especially not necromancy.
I…” She trailed off, her mouth open as she fought for the right words.
He wanted to move toward her, to bring her closer again. But he was a gentleman, and he’d give her all the distance she needed. “Yet look what you’ve done.”
She crossed her arms over her chest, her teeth working her bottom lip. After several moments she shook her head, looking to him once more. “All I did was bleed.”
“Then that is where we’ll start,” Alaric said.
“We? Start? Hold on, buddy,” Rosalin said, lifting her hands up. “This is a lot. I can just…go get one of my aunts, or my mom or dad. They’ll know what to do. Once they see you, they can take over from here.”
She turned to stomp out of the cemetery. Coldness seeped into Alaric the further she moved, that liminal space tugging at him once more. He couldn’t go back there, he wouldn’t go back there.
He followed her, leaving enough of a gap for propriety.
She glanced over her shoulder, frowning at the threshold of the cemetery. “You’re transparenter. Uh, more transparent? Whatever, you’re harder to see,” she said. He moved closer to her and her eyes widened. “Until you get close to me.”
"Proximity and blood," Alaric considered. "The blood tethers me to you—but something else keeps me solid when you're near. Something in you."
“Oh no, I am so sorry,” she said.
“It is a price I am willing to pay to be seen and heard,” he told her.
“No, but this is awful for you. You’re stuck to me, against your will, until we figure this all out. Nonconsensual!” She pressed her palms against her temples, her eyes wide. “The fucking beloved founder of the town. Oh goddess, what have I done?”
Alaric placed a hand on her shoulder, and for a moment there was warmth.
It was fleeting, perhaps a memory from when he was alive.
“Please, hear me as I say this. I will keep my distance, so as not to intrude upon your life. Given a choice, I would have happily picked this—as long as you agreed, as well.”
She stared at him with those wide eyes, her hand still pressed against her temples. “You’re just being nice.”
“That runs counter to my reputation,” he said. She raised an eyebrow.
“You died so the town might succeed,” she argued.
“It would have succeeded with or without me. I was a martyr, nothing more.”
Rosalin continued to stare at him for several long moments before lowering her hands. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. But first to my parents, they should know what to do.”
“First,” Alaric said, stepping toward her. Her head tilted back to look up at him. He raised his hand to her temple, sliding his thumb across it. It came away with her sticky blood. “You might want to clean up.”