CHAPTER SIX #2
My blacked-out SUV waits near the treeline, and I make my way toward it, my combat boots crunching in the frost. The back hatch lifts with a dull mechanical hum, and inside lie the bodies of the crooked bastards who helped bury the real blueprints to the underground facilities and tunnels beneath bureaucratic signatures and quiet approvals.
Tunnels that carried people beneath the city, slipping them out through the docks and the airports, before anyone in law enforcement could catch a scent.
Gatekeepers of forced silence.
Architects of forced escape.
Now they’re just dead weight in my car.
I grip the first one by the collar and haul him from the cargo space.
His body drops into the snow with a wet, graceless thud, the impact driving a dull sound into the frozen ground.
For a moment, he lies there, half buried in the white, dark red stains blooming slowly through the powder as I lift his body by the legs, and drag him across the yard, and further into the trees.
The snow resists at first, then gives, carving a slow furrow behind us.
Blood and frost grind together beneath my boots.
His head lolls uselessly to the side with every pull, leaving a bloodtrail everywhere.
By the time I drag him to the grave and remove the snow-covered tarp from the plot and the mound of dirt beside it, my heavy breath fogging the space in front of my face, a voice comes from behind me.
I don’t turn right away. The grave waits open at my feet, the body heavy in my grip, snow drifting quietly into the pit as if eager to help cover the evidence.
Only then do I glance back over my shoulder, knowing exactly who that voice belongs to.
My little ghost.
Standing there in a thin, threadbare cotton dress, much like the one she wore the last time she wandered into my woods, only now the hem drags through the snow, as if the winter itself had carried her here and laid her down before me.
Her eyes drift from my face to the corpse held tight in my grasp, the dark spill of his blood seeping from the bullet hole in his temple, and dripping onto the snow in a crude, obscene filigree.
Then, her gaze lifts, holding mine with a calm as still as water in an untouched lake, reflecting nothing, yet drawing me to it.
Her lips, faintly crimson against the ghostly pallor of her skin, part in a subtle, knowing smile, and I swear the chill in the air tightens around my ribs.
“Early morning for yard work,” she says, voice light and teasing.
I set the body down, snow crunching under my boots, and her eyes flick back to the corpse.
“You’re…precise,” she says, contemplatively, staring at the bullet hole that claimed his life.
Her lips twitch, but I say nothing, confused by her blank composure, watching me in quiet fascination, impervious to the scene before her.
The ground gives as I roll the body into the pit, the soil and snow crumbling at the edges as it falls awkwardly, landing with a heavy thump.
I don’t spare her a single glance while I work, unconvinced that she is even human as she follows me toward my SUV for the other body.
The cold bites into my gloves as I walk across the bloody path back through the snow, dragging the corpse with me.
Wordlessly, I round the second pit, and pull the tarp free.
It crackles beneath my hands, frozen hard from the night. Once the body is in, I straighten.
“What did they do?” she says, her voice a thread of sound caught in the wind as it begins to pick up. I pause, letting my eyes drift from her pale figure to the bodies before us, then back again, meeting her gaze. A slow smile curls at the edges of my lips.
“What makes you think they did anything at all?” I murmur, my voice low and raspy in the cold. “Maybe I just enjoy killing people.”
She tilts her head, curiosity flickering in her blue eyes, so unbelievably captivating I almost have to force myself not to stare too long before it seems weird.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispers and I raise a brow, walking over to the nearby tree for my shovel.
“Oh yeah, and why’s that?” I ask, before I begin filling the hole, the dirt falling back into the pit with each slice of metal.
“Because I don’t believe that you’re a monster,” she replies softly, as if it’s some sort of secret she keeps.
Or perhaps daring me to contradict her. Her words hang over me, and I pause mid-shovel, the clumps of frozen dirt suspended for a moment.
Her gaze lingers on me and I notice her hair has grown a little longer, falling over her shoulders and brushing the tops of her thighs.
“Aren’t you cold?” I finally ask, and her brows furrow slightly, a fragile crease that makes her look alive, and not the ghost I had thought she might be.
“Cold…? Oh. I’m always cold. I barely noticed.
” Her soft voice is almost a sigh, as if she’s hiding something beneath the frost in her bones.
I drive the shovel sharply into the mound of dirt, and step toward her.
I hold out a gloved hand for her to take, and she stares at it, suspended in the space between us.
“Come with me,” I say, and her eyes widen, uncertain, as if by simply taking my hand she’d be stepping into my world and vanishing into thin air.
She takes it anyway, her hand much smaller than mine, then looks up, her eyes searching my features for a moment.
What will she find there? Will she see the darkness I carry? Pierce through the mask I hide behind?
Will she stay anyway?
Her lips, a natural shade of scarlet, part slightly. She does not know me. I am a stranger to her. A man she should avoid. A man not fit for a woman like her.
“Where are we going?” she questions, her voice breathy and fragile.
I let my gaze linger on her for a heartbeat longer, drinking in the warmth of her ethereal presence.
The ice-cold wind tugs at the hem of her dress, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it.
Perhaps she is a ghost. Sent here to haunt my days, to unravel my nights, to consume the rot festering deep within my chest.
“Home,” I reply, watching as the decision ripples across her face. Danger. Intrigue. Acceptance.
But it’s her that is dangerous to me. She awakens something foreign in me. An ache. A hunger. A recklessness I do not recognize, and it feels like the ground beneath my feet will give way at any moment.
My gloved fingers curl around her cold ones, guiding her across the forest, passing the blood, passing the gravestones, the angel statues draped in snow-covered vines and debris dripping with ice.
The bodies I have still yet to finish burying will keep, hidden beneath a blanket of snow.
For right now, my little ghost needs to be warm.
She follows without hesitation, her presence almost weightless beside me, and I feel the pull of her gaze with every step.
We reach my house, and I open the door, dropping her hand and ascending the stairs first. A silent reassurance that there isn’t anything about to jump out at her when she crosses the threshold. Nothing but the warmth that awaits her.