THE BOY WHO NEVER LEFT

"Some ghosts don't haunt halls. They haunt people."

I saw him again
It was in a dream.

A low-lit room, damp and heavy with mildew. Shadows clung to the corners like cobwebs, and there he was-sitting on the floor, knees pulled to his chest like he used to do when he couldn't breathe. His eyes were darker now. Wider. Deeper. But it was the smile that woke me.

Not the kind that said, "I missed you."
The kind that said, "You thought I was gone, didn't you?"

I sat up in bed, throat dry, heart thundering. My bedroom was still. No sound but the tick of the old wall clock and the wind dragging its breath along the windows.

It had been years.
Three years since I helped him disappear.

I had met him when he was sixteen. A boy found in a police station-too quiet, too still, like a painting smudged at the edges. He had no one, and I... I was the last person his sister had trusted.

So I brought him home.

He was broken in ways I didn't fully understand, quiet in ways that made the house feel loud. But I told myself I was doing the right thing. That helping him meant healing him.

That I could keep the darkness away if I just stayed close enough.

I was twenty-three. A writer. Alone. Maybe a little broken myself.

They warned me not to get too involved, that he needed professionals. Structure. Boundaries.

But he clung to me like I was oxygen.

And maybe that was the first mistake.