Page 26 of The Nightmare King

Mare leaned against his gravestone and regarded me with all of his bad-boy charm. “Pretty creepy falling asleep in a cemetery.”

I chuckled, as I wiped my face. “Creepier haunting one, nerd.”

He smirked, helping me to stand, and cupping my jaw. “I’m not haunting the cemetery, I’m haunting you. They keep coming for me, trying to get me to go to the other side, but I keep evading them.”

“You have to move on, Mare.”

“Not until you do.”

Sorrow pierced my soul. I couldn’t believe what I was saying. I didn’t want him to move on, I wanted him to stay with me, wanted him to be alive again forever. But he couldn’t keep playing Phantom in my nightmares— if heaven existed, it was made for Mare, and it’s where he deserved to go.

“I can’t move on,” I buried my face into his very real, hard, chest and cried.

His fingers tangled in my hair as he held me close. “You have to. We have to.”

“How do I live without you? With this aching hole in my heart every day?”

Mare’s gaze softened, and a cool October breeze swirled around us. “You live in the knowing that you’ll see me again… and I want so many stories about your life when you do. Someday, baby, when you’re old and gray… fall asleep and wait for me, and I’ll come get you.”

Tears mixed into my mouth like saltwater as he kissed me. He kissed me slow and deep, and I tasted every bit of the man I loved, the man I’d lost, the man who’d saved my life, saved my dad’s life, forfeiting his own, and then came to find me in the afterlife. Mare had avoided eternal bliss just to chase me through my nightmares. How could I live without him?

Or rather, I supposed… how could I not live for him?

He cocked his head and tucked my hair behind my ears before tugging at my wrist for inspection. “I’m keeping this,” he smiled, pulling off my paperclip bracelet and latching it onto his wrist. “Make more of them for when I see you next.”

“Don’t be late. Promise?” I asked, my chest aching from his touch.

He kissed my forehead. “Don’t be early. Promise?”

I nodded as he pulled away. The orange light behind a trail of pumpkins illuminated behind him. He hesitated, eyeing me, one final look of wondering if I were okay.

“I’m going to bring you so many stories, Mare.”

He smiled, and his shoulders relaxed. “I’m going to hold you to that, Lilac.”

I watched as he walked the path of pumpkins, following the light, until it all went hazy, and I sat up— awake. Alone next to his grave. I pulled up my wrist— my bracelet gone.

Mare was gone.

The paranormal was a comfort— the slamming back into normal was decidedly not. I crumpled onto my dead boyfriend’s grave and rested my head on my knees and sobbed. I sobbed until the tears dried out, and only my chest heaved in anguish.

Mare was gone.

Mare had stayed to haunt my nights.

And instead of holding onto his ankles and weeping, I’d let him go, I’d let him move on. He deserved to move on. But how could I?

This pain, this loss, was worse than death, and I’d wished I hadn’t left my headphones in the car when a hand gripped my shoulder.

Startled, I looked up to see Sam, clutching two glass bottles of pop. “Don’t be mad,” she said. “I saw your location on my phone and thought… well… I thought you might want an orange soda.”

I wiped my nose on my sleeve and gurgled out something like a laugh, or a sob, I wasn’t sure, as I took the drink and my sister sat next to me. “Cheers,” I said morbidly as I popped the bottle cap on the edge of Mare’s gravestone, and the drink fizzed.

Sam gave a weak smile and did the same with her purple soda. “To Mare.”

“He was the best boyfriend,” I whispered, taking a sip and wishing the bubbles could burn away my pain.

My sister wrapped an arm around me. “He’s still looking after you, Lucy. He would want you to be happy, he would want you to move forward.”

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