Page 4 of Ghost With the Most
“I got the memo,” I said, not even bothering to hide the weariness in my voice. I’d heard this same broken record more times than I could count. But there was something different in his tone… something that wasn’t just fear or unfinished business.
He didn’t walk. Couldn’t, because he faded clear away at the ankles. But the space between us shrank, the air shifting as he drifted closer. Not cold, not exactly, but there was a strange sort of pressure, like his presence pressed against the edges of the world and made it warp just slightly. He didn’t occupy the room. He unfolded into it. “You’re not like the other one,” he said, voice low.
“Zelda?”
“Mmm.” He made a noncommittal sound, his eyes dragging over me again, slower this time. “She’s all fire and noise. You’re quieter. Careful. Sad, too.”
That last word snagged in my chest like a burr. I blinked. “I’m not sad.”
One of his eyebrows lifted in a slow, skeptical arc.
“I’m not,” I repeated, but it came out softer. Smaller, without the bite.
He didn’t push. He just smiled again, this time gentler, like he was humoring me. Or maybe he knew from experience how long people could lie to themselves before they broke.
I pulled in a breath that tasted like beeswax and old secrets. “So?” I asked, schooling my face into something professional. “What’s the big deal? What’s keeping you here?”
His expression shifted, the teasing draining away like color from an old photograph. “The truth,” he said simply.
I huffed. “That’s annoyingly vague of you.”
He tilted his head again, that strange owl-like grace that came from not being limited by a spine. “When you know, you’ll understand. But we’re not done here, sweetheart.”
That last word landed like a thumb pressed to a fading bruise. Not cruel. Not flirty, either. At least, not only that. It was intimate, in a way that made me feel seen and vulnerable all at once. Like he was already memorizing the shape of me. And then, just like that, he began to fade.
He didn’t vanish so much as evaporate, the way a dream slips out of reach the second your alarm clock rings. One moment he was there, and then only the remnant of his smile lingered. The softly fading organ music stopped mid-note, like someone had yanked its batteries out. The silence that followed was loud.
I was left standing in the flickering light with my arms crossed and the hair on the back of my neck standing on end like something had just walked over my grave. Except this wasn’t fear… it was anticipation. I knew it wasn’t over. He didn’t want to move on. He wanted something else. And that made him dangerous in a way the usual spirits I dealt with weren’t. The faint aroma of scorched lavender wafted in from somewhere deeper in the building.
“So?” Zelda called. “Did he vamoose?”
I stared at the empty space where he’d stood, the word he’d left behind still echoing in my mind like the burn after a shot of bourbon. Sweetheart. The nerve!
“No,” I called back, voice steady but laced with something I didn’t have a name for yet. “He’s not going anywhere, apparently.”
And neither, it seemed, was I.
2
The sun had just dipped below the ragged ridge of woods outside when I re-entered the funeral parlour hours later, the building creaked around me like it was settling in for the night. The air outside had taken on that almost-wet Appalachian chill, thick with cicada drone and the smell of damp leaves. Inside, the gloom pressed against the windows like it wanted to be let out. The oppressive grief that soaked the walls breathed like it had lungs, exhaling through the eaves, and shivering across the floorboards beneath my boots.
I set my bag down gently, taking care not to disturb the thin layer of salt I’d already cast around the edge of the viewing parlour. Earlier in the day, I’d laid the groundwork. A quiet cleansing of the energy, a whispered blessing in the thresholds, the usual preventative herbs tucked behind sconce brackets and under chair legs. Angelica root, dried rue, a pinch of hyssop… my grandmother’s staples, passed down like heirlooms. Not that it’d done much. The ghost here wasn’t just stubborn, he was anchored to something heavy and unresolved. And that kind of spirit never budged without a damn good reason.
The parlour had now been cleared of its usual clutter. Zelda had at least tried to make the space less haunted-mansion chic and more ‘spiritually neutral’. The result was an odd blend of funeral home austerity and lingering eccentricity. A velvet sofa too red to be respectable sat beneath a portrait of a woman whose eyes definitely followed you no matter where you stood. The chandelier above us creaked with a wind that didn’t exist. Someone, probably Zelda, had tossed a shawl embroidered with moons over the back of the only armchair like it would make the space feel more homey. It didn’t.
I lit a candle. Then another. And another.
There was something ceremonial about the way fire bloomed in a room like this. It didn’t chase away the darkness, but it reminded me that I still held the match. That I was the one with hands steady enough to strike flint. That maybe control was a performance, but it was mine to give. After all my deep, inner worries about the darkness that lay curled in the pit of my stomach, it was always a reminder for me to rise.
I knelt in the centre of the salt circle, adjusting the obsidian pendant that rested just above my collarbone. My fingers moved automatically, grounding me in the ritual. Candle. Stone. Salt. Breath. Again. It wasn’t fancy magic; in fact it wasn’t even really magic at all. No charms. No glitter. Just old whispers passed down from the women of my line who had gone before me. My work was quiet, deliberate. Intimate.
I whispered the invitation softly, not in Latin or anything dramatic. “If you’re here,” I said, “and you want to speak, now’s the time.”
A beat of silence. The kind that stretched, thick and watchful. The candles flickered in unison, like they were holding their breath. And then the scent of sweet tobacco and old cologne hit me. Warm, spicy, with a lingering trace of smoke and something older beneath it. Amber maybe, or vetiver. It wasn’t unpleasant. Just... nostalgic. Like stepping into a room you swore you’d never enter again and finding it exactly as you left it.
I didn’t look up right away. I felt the shift in the air first, the subtle pressure change that always came when a spirit was close enough to touch but hadn’t yet decided if they should. The temperature dropped slowly this time, almost politely, like the ghost didn’t want to interrupt but also wasn’t going to wait all night.
When I finally opened my eyes he was standing in the corner, half-shadowed, half-luminous, his form flickering faintly at the edges like the flame of a candle caught in a breeze. His expression was softer than before, tinged with something more respectful, like he wanted this exact moment and didn’t want to disturb it by speaking first.
