12 Days Before Christmas || ✔

1 2 d e c e m b e r

Hunter West.

Winter has always been my favorite.

From the snow to the faintly warm sunlight to the carnivals to the family gatherings, I love them all. And Christmas? That's the sugar to the icing.

A vague image of a brown haired girl flashes across my mind as I'm trudging through the ankle deep snow. I frown, trying to remember where I've seen her before, a weird tingling feeling sprouting in my chest and I stop dead just before walking right through Marco's pale body.

"S'up," he smiles sadly, a cigarette loosely hanging on his bruising lips. "Where are you heading?"

I shrug. "Nowhere in particular. Just enjoying the fresh wintry air."

Marco scrunches his nose in distaste, which just makes him look worse than he already is. You see, Marco isn't exactly a normal human being, like the rest of us. Well, he was, up until last Christmas, when he died, physically. His poor soul, however, was stuck here in between, unable to move on up to heaven or down below until he finds what is needed for him to rest eternally.

And if you have not put two and two together, I'm the unlucky human being "gifted" with the ability to see these restless souls, tasked with the responsibility to help them see the light.

Frankly, I'm still new to all this. I just turned eighteen a few months back and Marco is but my first "client", as dad calls it. We're shamans of some sort, our family, the ability being passed down generation to generation, regardless of gender. If you're a West, you'll see ghosts.

There's much I need to learn, but from what I already know, the ghosts would find us instead of us having to find them. According to Marco, I was like a beacon of light after his soul departed from his body. He thought I was the light, at first, and was very disappointed that it was only plain old me. Anyway, that's how he ended up stuck with me, for now.

The brown haired girl flashes across my mind again, her features more distinct this time, and my chest prickles. I turn to look at my ghostly friend, wondering what had just happened, only to see him wearing the saddest expression I have seen on him yet.

As if sensing my stare, Marco meets my gaze, and the sadness I see in the depths of his eyes are enough to make me want to cry. I don't know if it's because of the bond that connects the both of us, but somehow I know that Marco is missing a very special someone.

Not even realizing it, my feet have taken me to a graveyard a few miles away from my house. I've never been in here, barely passing it a few times on the way to school, but Marco seems to be familiar. His stormy gray eyes are trailing around, remembering, reliving, wishing he was still alive.

"She's here," he whispers so quietly into the distant that I don't think I heard correctly.

"I was buried here," he says, louder this time, melancholy seeping through his voice.

It's a surprise that Marco would bring this up, because the subject of how he died and his life before was never mentioned. I know how much it pains him, so I don't ask either. The only things I know about Marco is that his last name is Payne; his family owns a large estate not too far away; and that he went to a private boarding school in the next town before he died.

"There." He points a long, thin finger in a direction. Curious that he's opening up to me now, I follow his lead, through various tombstones remembering the names of passed loved ones, and my feet stop on their own accord a few meters in front of one engraved with Marco's name.

Except we're not alone. There kneeling on the snow in front of Marco's tombstone is a girl with light brown hair - the exact same girl I've been seeing in my head today, that much I can tell from her back. She has a few streaks of purple and red in her hair, a red leather jacket draped across her shoulder. I'm a hundred percent sure that I've never met this girl before, yet oddly, I know that her favorite color is purple and that she loves small animals with all her heart. My chest erupts in a fit of sudden pain, and it is then that I know - it's not my memory that I'm remembering, it's Marco's.