Page 11 of A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope
I stare blindly into the abyss before a hand wraps around my wrist and pulls me urgently. My eyes snap down and meet Ophelia’s. She looks terrified as she says in a low, haunting voice, “Don’t look back, no matter what you hear.”
The sand beneath my feet gives, practically vibrating, as the darkness becomes heavy and terror drives me forward. “What’s happening?” I gasp between breaths as she guides us ahead. I don’t think she can see any better than I can, but her footing is sure. Has she done this before?
She doesn’t respond; all I can see is her lovely purple-tinted hair swaying behind her.
Whispers creep up behind me and chills spread down my spine at the cold that lingers after each hushed word.
What are they saying?I can’t quite make it out. My head instinctively starts to turn, curious to find the source of the eerie whispers.
“Don’t,” Ophelia says sharply, and my neck locks.
“Whatisthat?”
She waits a moment, then says, “I don’t know, but they whisper awful things. Phantoms that get caught in their shroud end up sleeping for long periods of time, and they aren’t the same when they wake.”
I open my mouth, but she cuts in again.
“Just trust me, you don’t want to find out.” Ophelia takes a sharp left and tows me behind her. We quickly step through a door frame and the moment my head passes beneath it, a room forms around us.
Ophelia slams the door shut on the approaching darkness. The eerie whispers press up against the wood, making the door creak and wail. A shudder rolls down my spine. They were mere footsteps behind us. At any point they could’ve grabbed us. The sounds stop and the cold that penetrated the air is sapped away like it was nothing more than the brisk air of the night.
Ophelia takes a few deep breaths before flipping the lock and sighing as she presses her forehead against the black door.
My first thought is to ask her again what that was about, but the way her shoulders tremble stalls me. So I take in the space instead.
“Where are we?”
I look up and around the place she’s brought us into. It’s dim, but enough ambient light filters in through boarded-up windows to see most of the room. The ceilings are tall and the space isfilled with only tables and plants. Hundreds and hundreds of leafy, vinyplants.
As my eyes adjust more, it becomes clear that this is no house or apartment; it’s an old opera house. A big room, walls black like a gothic church. The seats have been long torn out and replaced with vintage tables and pews. Broken pots and forgotten things fill this place, and it’s charming in its own way. The only things filled with life here are the plants, green and soft, making me think of the greenhouse at Harlow that should have been brimming as this place is.
“It’s an abandoned opera house,” she says in a low tone, timid. Does she think I’d judge her?
“Did you collect all these?” My eyes find hers and she looks away, a blush growing across her cheeks. “I like them,” I add carefully.
Ophelia lifts her head and looks at me. Her eyes are half-lidded and filled with dreariness from the day.
It’s a silly thing, that ghosts can get tired, but we do. More so than when we were alive. I think it’s because of the energy required to exist here in the planein-between. The more we exert, the wearier we become, sometimes drifting off for days to charge back up.
She eyes me carefully and steps around where I stand, nearing the first worn table crowded with terracotta pots. English ivy, Boston ferns, pothos, roses. Her hand lowers and she caresses the leaves of a pothos with care.
“Yeah, I did,” she says in a cold, closed-off manner.
She did say she didn’t like being around other phantoms… I shift on my feet and reach for the doorknob. I hate feeling unwanted and like I’m annoying people.
“I can leave?—”
“No,” she says meekly, and I pause.
Our eyes linger timidly on one another. I’m trying to figure her out and she’s doing the same with me. Then she deflates, worrying her lower lip in a way that draws my eyes and makes me want to brush my thumb over it to quell her woes. “You should wait until morning. Those Who Whisper tend to linger for a while.”
My body stiffens at that. I’d almost completely forgotten about them already.
I approach her slowly and stand at her side. When she lifts her chin to look into my eyes, my lungs cease at her intoxicating scent of roses. “Those Who Whisper?” I ask, and she nods.
“They bring the darkness with them when they come. I’m not sure who or what they are, but they’re bad… of that I am certain.” Her voice is small and trembles as she speaks. Chills crawl up my spine at the mere thought of those things. Not knowing what something looks like is often more frightening, because you imagine exactly what youdon’twant it to be.
“I’ve never encountered them before.” My voice is implying.
