Page 89 of Vesuvius

Head swimming, he watched the boy launch into the arms of a second figure, face murky but with the same head of curls. A parent, maybe. The two spun, then dissolved.

Another spirit formed, one Loren recognised, gangly limbs and skinny knees: himself, sitting cross-legged, eyes closed. Smiling. From the mist emerged a disconnected hand, and Loren’s ghost-self allowed himself to be pulled up with a silent laugh. And vanished.

His heart skipped, and the crater filled. Pompeii’s Forum on its busiest occasion might have been transferred to the peak of Vesuvius, except these figures were as real as his ghost-self. Gods, they looked happy.

And – oh, there he was again. Ghost-Loren. Older now, shoulders a bit broader, but his hair still hung long, cascading unbraided down his back. He wore the toga of a lawyer or senator. He was happy, too, face split in a wild grin, arm looped through that of a faceless figure. A man’s figure. Loren drank himself in, a Loren in a future with no vineyards, nomarriage, just him and his lover in a crowded city. He tracked their path as they moved between playing children and stray dogs until they were lost. But he hadn’t seen his fill.

His sandals slipped on loose gravel as he skidded down. His pulse quickened. A bit closer. He passed through other ghosts, invisible. His ghost-self’s hair swung with his stride, beckoning him forward. A burning trail. A promise.

He stumbled to the top of the mound of the crater’s centre and stopped short. On the other side sprawled a dense field of poppies, sheer white but for their bright red caps waving him on. The people had vanished, except – there. At the far end of the field. Loren squinted. A boy, curls tousled, stood with his back to Loren, but he’d recognise his form even here, at the edge of the earth.

‘Felix,’ Loren breathed, then broke into a sprint. Sharp grass stung his legs, and his lungs burned with sour vapor. Poppies erupted into bloody showers of petals when he batted them aside. Felix took a step forward, away. Loren panted. ‘No!’

The word shattered the spell. He blinked, and the visions vanished. Gasping, Loren slowed, whole body shivering. An illusion, but his stomach ached for—

Felix spoke from behind. ‘Stronger men than you have lost their minds chasing ghosts.’

Loren spun, daring to hope.

His hopes were dashed. The boy staring from the mound, translucent and frayed, face twisted bitter, wasn’t his Felix at all. This was a phantom. Something cruel and haphazard, pulled apart and stitched together wrong. Fumes flooded the space between them, shifting and blurring the ghost into a haze.

‘Bring him back. I want to see . . .’ Loren stopped in a ragged choke. The Felix at the far end of the field. He wanted – needed – to see if . . .

‘If it was me,’ Ghost-Felix finished.

Loren’s fists clenched. ‘Not you. Him. Mine.’

‘Yours?’

‘You’re a murderer. I’ve seen you. Dreamt you.’

‘You think your Felix wouldn’t do the same?’ Ghost-Felix’s lip curled. ‘Sweet. Loyal. You’ve known us for, what, three days? We must have won you over somehow.’

‘Stop.’ Steam seared his face.

But the ghost only began a slow descent of the slope, carving a path to where Loren stood frozen, then paced an unhurried circle. The lazy spiral of a hawk before it dived. ‘Tell me what we did. How we listened. Said what you wanted to hear. Pretty words in the dark. Did we make you feel like we could be your home?’

He paused behind Loren’s shoulder. Loren didn’t dare glance back. The ghost said, ‘Tell me how we kissed you. Touched you. Made you beg for more, always more—’

‘Stop.’

‘Always hands on our skin, never clean. Years and years of it.’ His voice slipped into an earworm of a mutter, creeping into the gaps in Loren’s body to wriggle him apart. ‘How desperate were you for a friend?’

The words were to him, but the inflection had turned inwards, leaving Loren wondering who, exactly, was being accused. Slowly, Loren turned to find Ghost-Felix cradling the abandoned helmet, tender despite the acid dripping from his mouth.

‘It always comes down to this,’ the ghost said to empty sockets. ‘Us. My helmet. The mountain. She understands me. She knows how it feels to hold something in.’

‘What are you?’ Loren whispered, skin crawling.

‘I am the Felix who didn’t forget.’

The image rang too familiar: Felix gazing at the helmet like it held answers he couldn’t grasp alone. Felix, vulnerable but guarded. Achingto be known but fearing anyone who dared tread too close. An impossible puzzle.My helmet.

The mountain, the one constant.

‘He said he had trouble remembering,’ Loren said cautiously. ‘That his memories come and go.’

Only that made it sound like the casual ebb of the tide, not most of a life lost to time.

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