To Love A Ghost || ONC 2023 Shortlist

Chapter Seven

There was something wrapped tightly around my head, squeezing it like it was in a vise. Although my eyes were closed, I sensed darkness beyond them, and there was a strange sort of chill that felt as though it was in constant motion over me. I cracked open my eyelids.

I was in my bedroom, the ceiling above me visible due to the moonlight pouring in from the nearby window. My fingers curled into the sheet under my body. My entire body hurt, especially my head and left shoulder. What the hell had happened? I tried to remember, but the pain in my head made it hard to think.

"What—" I croaked to the empty room. I lifted my hand to my head and encountered what felt like a gauze bandage. A memory came to me then. Falling, a flash of white light and excruciating pain, then nothing more. I cleared my throat and tried to speak again. "What—"

"Easy, darling," came a soothing voice from out of the gloom, followed by a tingle shaped like a hand caressing my cheek. There was nobody else in the room, yet I could feel a presence all around me. "You fell from the ladder, you clumsy, foolish man."

Oh. Oh. Yeah, it was coming back to me now. Well, I guessed Cindy had certainly been right about my lack of handyman skills, hadn't she? "Shit," I groaned. "Did the chalkboard break? Oh, Christ. Did I wreck the coffee bar?"

"No, nothing was broken, except you, very nearly so. You should've asked me to help, Jace."

My eyes flitted to the apparition of Daniel as he began to appear in the dimness of the room. He stared reproachfully at me. "I never thought of it," I confessed. "And anyway, you were gone. You've been gone for days. I thought—" I shook my head. "I thought you maybe, like, you know, moved on, or whatever ghosts are supposed to do." I tried to sit up, but Daniel pressed me back into the pillow, his hands gentle, the reproachful look still on his face. He was barely visible, but I read his strained expression clearly.

"No, I didn't move on." His lips pursed. "I just...had to attend to some things. I also wished to give you time to get your establishment ready to open. I didn't want to be a...distraction."

I wondered what things Daniel could possibly need to attend to. What could a ghost actually need to do besides haunt? I suspected he was lying, that the weird moment between us before he disappeared was the real reason he'd stayed away, but I was too sore and miserable to call him out on it.

"Great," I muttered, wincing around the pain in my head. "This'll delay my opening. Goddamn it, I have so much work to do!"

"It's all right," Daniel soothed. "For the time being, you'll do nothing. You took quite a blow to your head, Jace. You were knocked unconscious. I'm doing all I can to help you, but you need to lie still and not move."

I wondered if I had a concussion, or even a fractured skull. Should I call 911 and have them take me to the hospital for x-rays? Hard blows to the head sometimes caused blood clots and stuff that could break loose and kill you, right? But strangely, I knew I didn't need medical attention. In fact, the longer I lay there with Daniel close to me, his icy fingers continuously brushing my hair above the bandage back, the more the pain receded, becoming nothing but a faraway drone. Was he doing something to me?

"I'm all right," I protested, but I did as he asked and lay still under his touch. Besides the initial cold tingling from Daniel's touch, something else was happening, something I'd never felt before, something warm—almost uncomfortably hot—settling deep under my skin. It was almost like...like something inside me was knitting back into place. But that was crazy, wasn't it? It was just Daniel's comforting touch and nearness, letting me know that I was being taken care of. Which, when I thought about it, also seemed insane. A ghost nursing a living person back to health. Yep, I'd officially lost my mind.