Page 10 of Gone for the Ghost
I fumble for the emergency candles I’d optimistically purchased during my first grocery run, striking matches that flare like tiny suns before settling into steady golden flames.The warm light transforms the apartment into something timelessly intimate—exactly the kind of space where stories are born from shadow and whispered confession.
“Don’t tell me you prefer electric lighting,” I say, arranging candles around my laptop in a circle that looks either mystical or fire-hazardous, depending on your perspective.“This seems right up your alley: vintage romance, flickering flames, the perfect excuse to brood dramatically in corners.”
“I neither brood nor lurk,” Julian protests, though his translucent form moves closer, drawn by the candlelight that seems to make him more solid, more present.“I simply appreciate ambiance that doesn’t assault the senses with harsh artificial illumination.”
The storm’s violence provides the perfect soundtrack for Ava’s emotional breakthrough, her decision to risk everything for the possibility of genuine connection.My fingers find their rhythm on the keyboard, the story flowing with an ease that makes me think atmospheric pressure might actually influence creative inspiration.Thunder punctuates dramatic moments while lightning illuminates the page like nature’s own reading lamp.
“Your heroine’s courage is particularly well-rendered tonight,” Julian observes, reading over my shoulder with the familiarity our partnership has developed.“The candlelight seems to suit your writing process.Less harsh illumination allows for more nuanced emotional exploration.”
There’s something different in his tone, less academic critique and more personal investment.Working beside him in this intimate lighting, surrounded by the storm’s primal energy, I’m hyper-aware of Julian’s presence in ways that daylight somehow diminishes.The space between us feels charged with possibility, as if the darkness has dissolved barriers that conventional illumination reinforces.
I’m crafting Ava’s moment of truth—the scene where she finally admits what she really wants instead of what she thinks she should want—when the sound of breaking glass cuts through both my concentration and the storm’s natural symphony.
The crash comes from the kitchen, deliberate and wrong in a way that sends ice-cold alarm through my nervous system.This isn’t wind-blown debris or a tree branch striking glass.No, this is the purposeful destruction of someone forcing entry into my sanctuary.
My blood crystallizes into something that barely resembles circulation as primitive terror floods every nerve ending.Rational thought evaporates, leaving only the animal understanding that I’m trapped, isolated, with no way to call for help and nowhere to run.The candles that seemed so romantic moments ago now feel like beacons advertising my presence to whoever has decided to violate the safety of my home.
Footsteps move through the kitchen with careful precision—not the stumbling exploration of accidental intrusion, but the methodical progress of someone who knows exactly what they’re doing.They’re trying to be quiet, which somehow makes everything infinitely more terrifying than obvious noise would be.
I can’t move.Can’t breathe.Can’t think beyond the paralyzing realization that someone with unknown intentions is moving through my apartment, and I’m frozen like prey in the candlelight, every muscle locked in terror that feels like drowning in slow motion.
The footsteps pause at the kitchen threshold, and I know with horrible certainty that in moments, whoever is navigating my space will round the corner and find me helpless in the living room, trapped by my own fear and the storm’s isolation.
That’s when Julian’s presence explodes through my consciousness like lightning finding the perfect conductor.
It’s not gradual—not the slow merger I might expect from supernatural fiction—but instantaneous and overwhelming, like stepping from empty space into a river of pure energy.One moment, I’m drowning in my own terror, and the next his essence floods through me with the force of a dam breaking, filling every corner of my awareness with his strength, his protective fury, his absolute refusal to let anything harm me.
But instead of invasion, I experience completion.Instead of losing myself, I become more myself than I’ve ever been, expanded beyond the limitations of single consciousness into something vast and powerful and utterly connected.
My fear doesn’t disappear.It transforms, alchemizing into fierce protective anger that carries the weight of Julian’s century of territorial instincts merged with my own stubborn independence.These are my rooms, my sanctuary, my peace being violated.The rage that rises in response feels both ancient and immediate, drawing from depths I didn’t know I possessed.
When the intruder finally appears in the doorway—a figure in dark clothing whose face remains shadowed—the voice that emerges from my throat carries harmonics that definitely don’t belong to me alone.
“Get.Out.”
The words resonate with authority that reaches far beyond my usual register, carrying undertones of command that seem to vibrate through the floorboards themselves.Power flows through my vocal cords, Julian’s protective instincts channeling through my living voice to create something that transcends ordinary human communication.
My body moves without conscious direction, rising from the couch with fluid grace that feels borrowed from someone who understood presence as both art and weapon.The intruder takes an involuntary step backward, his confidence visibly wavering as he faces something his criminal calculations never prepared him to encounter.
Whatever he came here seeking clearly isn’t worth confronting the force that’s just announced itself through my transformed presence.He flees as quickly as he entered, the sound of his retreat through the broken window somehow satisfying in ways that speak to Julian’s protective satisfaction merged with my own relief.
But the immediate danger passing doesn’t end our connection.If anything, Julian’s presence settles more deeply into my consciousness, creating intimacy that transcends every boundary I thought existed between separate beings.For these suspended moments outside ordinary time, there is no distinction between his thoughts and mine, his emotions and mine, his essence and mine.
I feel his heartbeat as if it were my own—or perhaps the memory of his heartbeat, the phantom rhythm of life he carried before death claimed his physical form.His breath moves through my lungs, his courage flows through my veins, his protective love surrounding me like an embrace that encompasses not just body but soul.
The sensation overwhelms every assumption I’ve held about the boundaries between self and other.This is a connection beyond anything I’ve imagined possible—not just understanding another person but temporarily becoming them while somehow remaining completely myself.Julian’s ninety-eight years of loneliness, his fierce intelligence, his capacity for love that transcends mortality—all of it moves through me with the intimacy of sharing blood.
Through our merged consciousness, I experience his response to me with startling clarity—his wonder at my relentless optimism, the way I approach each day like it holds infinite possibility despite evidence to the contrary.I don’t even recognize his admiration for courage in me—the simple act of moving to a new place, of pursuing dreams that might fail, of treating a supernatural roommate like a person worth knowing instead of a problem to solve.
But underneath all of that, flowing like an underground river through every other emotion, I feel his love for me.Not the careful affection of friendship or the intellectual appreciation of creative partnership but something deeper and more dangerous—the kind of love that rewrites your understanding of what happiness means, that makes every other connection feel like a pale approximation of what’s possible between two souls who truly see each other.
He loves me.Not despite my flaws but including them.Not as a replacement for what he lost with Victoria but as something entirely new, built on the foundation her memory provided.He loves my terrible singing and my enthusiastic comma abuse and the way I argue with fictional characters when they’re being stubborn.He loves that I moved across the state to chase a dream, that I talk to ghosts like they’re people, that I somehow make even typing look like a celebration.
The knowledge should terrify me—falling in love with a dead man represents the height of romantic impracticality.Instead, it feels like the missing piece of a puzzle I didn’t know I was solving, the answer to questions I didn’t know how to ask.
Because through our merged consciousness, I understand with perfect clarity that I love him too.Not just care about him or appreciate his help with my writing but love him with the kind of depth that makes every other romantic possibility feel like settling for shadows when I could have sunlight.
I love his sarcastic commentary and his protective instincts and the way he sees straight through my defenses to whatever truth I’m trying to hide.I love that he challenges me to be better while accepting exactly who I am.I love that he makes me feel like my dreams are worth pursuing and my stories are worth telling.
