Page 38 of A Ballad of Phantoms and Hope
It would be a lie to say I haven’t considered checking on her. The yearning to do so only grows. It’s unbearable at times; I want to see her and demand answers for leading me on. I want to be cruel for once in my fucking life. But that’s not me.
I fist my hands as I aimlessly walk back from the fields where Crosby shot me. The town decided to sell off the land and build apartments over the course of spring; the foundations are already set and somehow, it feels like another piece of me has been stolen away. Forgotten.
This is how the warm evening nights go, played out with melancholic songs of the cicadas and flocks of birds that take to the sky. Ghosts walk beside the world we once knew. My feet are heavy tonight and I stop more than once to rest. I glance down at my hand, where I wish her fingers were intertwined and her thumb would brush over the back of my hand in slow circles.
I close my eyes, trying to will away the thoughts of her. The craving to have her beside me on long walks where we don’t say anything. Or ones where we have more to say than we do time to walk.
The asphalt and the quiet road leading to Harlow are at least the same. Today, like most days, I felt like going for a long walkin solitude—something to take up the entire day because I have all the time in the world, don’t I? This is who I’ve become. A seeker of silence and solitude.
My eyes linger over my feet as I trudge down the long driveway. The sun set hours ago. The stars and moon have offered me guidance home and I don’t mind their dull light. I think about the alcohol in my room and whether or not it’s sadder for a phantom to be a drunk or that it can’t kill him.
“Darkness, take me,” I whisper to the stars. I smile then because it was Ophelia who made me think to admit things to them. Like she does in her forest where no one else can hear.Is she speaking to the stars right now too?I wonder.
Another set of shoes enters my line of vision, black-laced boots.
I halt. A scent falls over me…roses.I’m reluctant to look up at her, but I do anyway. More eagerly and tragically than I expected to.
Her face is impassive; I school mine to reflect her lack of emotions. A sharp pulse threads through my veins as my traitorous body responds to seeing her here. My heart aches, throbs, twists, and my stomach flutters with a mix of dread and excitement.
I thought I was angry with her all these months. But I suppose I was wrong.
I missed her terribly.
“What are you doing here?” I ask coldly.
Her head tilts a bit as a loose grin forms on her lips, though her eyes are remarkably sad. “I came to see you.”
My brows raise in surprise before I quickly smooth my features. “Why?”
Ophelia nods in understanding at my callous tone; she knows what she did was low.
She shrugs and says, “I wanted to see if you were still here.” And then, as casually as she stood there waiting for me, she walks straight by, heading back toward the highway. “See you later, Lanston.”
Her voice lingers in the air, drawing that ache in my chest lower.
The muscle in my jaw flexes and I force myself to stay put. I won’t turn and watch her leave. I don’t know what game she’s playing, but I want no part of it.
Ophelia. Cruel and cold, just as the stories of her go.
And yet I lie awake all night, staring at the ceiling and clenching my hand over my chest. Seeing her made the yearning worse—a fresh cut along an old wound that never even began to heal.
Fall always brings me deep nostalgia and pain. It’s the season I met Liam. Then, two years later met Wynn. It’s the season I died. And now, it’s the season when my friends get to visit my grave.
Even though I know they’ll arrive near the middle of October, I consistently linger in the graveyard, waiting and eager to see them. Sometimes I fall asleep out here, especially on the days around the festival.
It’s October 2nd, and I haven’t seen Ophelia since she paid me that nighttime visit months ago. I linger in the music room, finding that I think more of her now than I do of Liam and Wynn. Her determination to help Charlie was cathartic and drew so much happiness around Harlow. Even though morephantoms leave each day, the overall dread around here is fading. We are finding our peace—well, everyone except me.
But still, I enjoy the silent afternoons of enjoying the sunlight. Yelina and Poppie don’t come to this room anymore now that Charlie is gone. I’ve taught myself how to play a few songs on the piano and even wrote a song, though I don’t plan on letting anyone else in the world hear it. But the lyrics are there. It’s a good place to thumb through a book and lose time, but as the days drone on, and I continue to glance to the open spot on the couch, I know my missing her will not end.
She haunts me—a phantom haunting another phantom. I’ve even watched movies about ghosts in my spare time to try and get some insight into the torment I endure with the thoughts of her but, of course, they're all farfetched in comparison to my reality.
So I turn to my romance books and find a bit of solace there. From what I gather, I can either proclaim my love for her like in those sappy movies or pay her a visit to see how she likes it like a petty asshole.
I choose the latter.
My hands are cold and clenched tightly inside my coat pockets as I stroll down the bridge outside the abandoned opera house. I never understood the appeal of stalking, but now I get it. It’s fun and entertaining to watch someone. Creepy, I know, but I’m a fucking ghost, so I can have this one thing.
Ophelia hasn’t stepped foot outside of her building all day. The longer I pace and stare at other things from the bridge, I begin to wonder if she is even home, and further, how long she had waited to see me the night I ran into her at Harlow. She was clearly leaving when we ran into each other. Did she stay all day? Did she stand until her feet hurt? I think about that for a long time.
