For the notion of a ghost, people trudged up and down the steps of The Crescent, oblivious to Will, the real thing. He positioned himself under the overhang so that the light struck only the tips of his boots, a sheen that sank deep into the leather. But the sunlight came and went, and Will remained, starkly invisible. Unchanged.
He'd ruined his chance with Zacari. He hadn't exploited Gloria on her deathbed, but he may as well have, her death a knife visceral and twisting and true. Lodged it in between Zacari's ribs, and as far as he knew it was still there. There was more to Gloria than that. He quietly apologized to her, as if she might be a shadow to him as he was to everyone else.
He'd always suspected the world would crumble around him before he ceased to be, but now it was chiseled in stone.
Baker had his camera.
He knew the moment it happened. Without realizing the fullness of interacting with Zacari, he'd slipped back to square one, no further than where he'd started. The camera was the only way for Zacari to see either him or Baker, and without it, he may never speak to anyone again.
He cursed himself and looked down at his boots. His mother had insisted he wear them the night he died. In the recent decades, his eyes wouldn't cry properly, as if the act was another thing about him becoming frozen. But he wept now. Fingertips raking across his boyish composition, his curls, his cupped, too-big ears poking through, he wondered how long it would be before he forgot who was.
On the nights when the moon was a thin sliver of silver, the stars shone the brightest and Will was less lonely with his four stars. But come daylight, they were gone, and he was alone. Charlie. Winston. Mom. Dad.
Gloria.
Face dry of tears, as if they'd never been there, he pulled his hands from his face.
No. There had to be another way.
He rose and faced the doors of the hospital, a last shred of determination putting vigor in his step. Try one more time. Just one more time.
"I'm a journalist, I'm a journalist, I'm a journalist," he whispered.
YOU ARE READING
The Crescent
ParanormalIn 1939, young journalist Will Drachman is murdered during a visit to Dr. Norman Baker's alleged Cancer Curing Hospital. To move on, Will needs his body properly buried. But there's one problem - he has no idea where it is. Fast forward seventy-eigh...
