Page 77 of Ghoul Me, Maybe
For a long moment, we just sit.
No one speaks.
“I was wrong about you.”
I blink.
She doesn’t look at me when she says it, but I hear the truth in her voice.
“I thought you were reckless. Thought you’d destroy everything trying to save something broken.” She turns, finally meeting my eyes. “But you didn’t just save him. Yourebuilthim. You made a new path.”
My throat goes tight.
Before I can answer, Elias walks up behind me and drops a kiss to the crown of my head.
“Yeah,” he says, voice low. “She does that.”
Mira stands. “Well. I’m not crying. You’re crying.”
“You’re crying on theinside,” Elias says.
“Shut up, newly alive man.”
Lyle, meanwhile, has gone full carnival barker.
He’s converted Elias’ old cabin into a supernatural museum.
Yes, really.
Wrecker’s Bay Ghost Hunter Historical Archive and Paranormal Education Center.
He says it like it fits on a t-shirt.
Elias stares at the driftwood model of himself—complete with tiny wire chains and faux-glowing eyes.
“I look like a rejected Halloween prop.”
“It’sinterpretive,” Lyle says. “You’re folklore now.”
I nod, biting my lip. “Folklore with abs.”
Elias groans. “I liked it better when I was dead.”
The town doesn’t stop whispering.
But it changes.
From fear to curiosity.
From curiosity to legend.
People start leaving little tokens at the wreck—shells, ribbons, handwritten letters to “the sea.” Kids draw chalk runes on the docks. An older man tells me his son slept through thenight for the first time in months after “whatever that storm was.”
They’re not afraid anymore.
Not of what it means to believe in impossible things.
At night, when it’s just us, I curl into Elias and listen to his heartbeat.
