Contents

Contents

1. Title Page

2. Copyright

3. Ghost Writer

4. About the Author

Copyright © Jen Bair 2022. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used, edited, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), or reproduced in any manner without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s permission. Permission can be obtained through www.jenbair.com.

Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Death is a tidal wave, inexorable in its progress.

In the movies, tsunamis are thirty feet high and crash into buildings with the force of a vengeful god. In reality, the water creeps uphill, lulling bystanders into thinking it doesn’t have the power to sweep cars in its wake and swallow the life force of any living thing in its path.

Vincent had thought about death a lot lately, sitting in an unremarkable hospital room, watching his daughter waste away by degrees. The ever-present smell of ammonia seemed to engrave the days into his mind, overwriting the good memories they shared.

He squeezed Scarlet’s hand, stroked her auburn hair, listened to the beeping hospital monitors, a constant reminder that she was a slowly drying husk.

He closed his eyes, trying to imagine her vital and healthy again. “I’m here,” he whispered. “Always. I’m not going anywhere.”

“No,” she said, her voice soft and scratchy. “It’ll be me who’s leaving.”

The illness had ravaged her body, taken so much of her strength that even talking was an effort. Her spindly arms force her hands to give a weak return squeeze.

Vincent held back the tears. The constant effort weighed on him. He knew it showed, but it was the best he could give her. That, and his company.

Scarlet was a teenager, but she was wise beyond her years. Dying did that to a person, no matter their age.

Why did this child have to die?

The thought shamed him. Would he prefer if Hunter were the one lying there? Of his two children, one was like the second half of his soul and the other was like a stranger to him. Hunter was his mother’s child.

He forced a smile for Scarlet. She always said the hospital was dreary enough. She didn’t need him moping around, too.

“I’m getting old,” he said, keeping his tone light, “so you won’t have long to wait for me.”

Every day, the nurses said she was worse. She would always be worse. Never better. It would only stop when she was dead.

“It’s not like I’ll be sitting around waiting for you, Dad,” she said, rolling her eyes like teenagers did. “It’s heaven. I’m sure there are more interesting things to do there.” Her voice was creaky and, though she joked, he knew she was worried.

Worried for him.

How did he get lucky enough to have a child more worried about him than herself, even on her death bed?

Too bad his luck had run out. As had hers.

Her cancer was aggressive. Moreso than the doctors originally thought. Had it only been a few weeks ago? It felt like years. They had made plans for treatment, thinking there was a chance it might help, but a week passed, then another. The doctors realized soon enough there was no stopping it.

She didn’t have long now. A few days. Perhaps a week or two. His heart bled as her health failed. How was he supposed to just watch as she died by degrees?

Scar squeezed his hand again, her paper-thin skin buttery soft against his, and he realized his mask had slipped. He lifted his smile back into place, straining to hold it there. He hadn’t been a large man, but her illness ate at him as it ate at her. His clothes had begun to hang on him.

“Tell me what you found yesterday,” she demanded, her voice gaining a bit of life.

He let out a huff of laughter. Count on his antiquing adventures to cheer her up. She’d insisted he find something interesting, and so he had scoured their favorite stores.

“I found a desk,” he said, and his smile became genuine at the sparkle of interest in her eyes. For the past decade, she had been his constant companion to every antique store in the area. Sometimes they would take road trips to distant cities to see what they could find. Vin had always enjoyed it, but the level of enthusiasm Scar brought to it breathed new life into his old obsession.

“What era?” she asked. Scar had studied historical time periods, learning random, lesser-known facts about how things were made in various time periods, right down to the alloys available for hinges.

“Let’s see if you can guess.” He closed his eyes, picturing it. “It’s made of black walnut and the lines are beautiful. Elegant curves…intricate clawed feet with tiny bits of rosewood inlay.”

“Victorian,” she said confidently. He hadn’t even gotten to the brass fittings yet. “Does it have drawers?” She looked so hopeful.

His smile grew. “It does. There are three.”

“Did you check—"

He cut her off. “I looked for hidden compartments before I even bought it. No luck.” Those were rare finds. “It was likely built before those were popular. The workmanship puts it around the mid 1800’s.”

She stuck out her lower lip.

He remembered the first time she had found a hidden compartment in an old secretary they had acquired. A sheet of paper was the only thing inside. It read, ‘Alas, I have been sought…and found’ in a flowing script, a bit of humor from the previous owner. That find had sparked her interest and started her delving into the history of furniture making.

“Are you sure you checked everywhere?” she demanded.

He bit back a laugh. “Yes, mother.”

She scowled.

“But I can check again if you want.”

She beamed and it broke his heart. He was grateful for the interruption when a knock sounded at the door.

“Hello Vincent,” his ex-wife, Savannah, said as she breezed through the door in a cloud of floral perfume, resting a hand briefly on his shoulder as she passed.

Her white pantsuit was almost blindingly bright against the silky black waves of her hair. Savannah was never a slouch when it came to fashion. She was the sort to wear makeup to get a drink of water from the kitchen in the middle of the night.

“Scarlet,” she said in soft greeting, leaning over to give her daughter a hug. “How are you today, sweetie?”

Scarlet shrugged. She accepted her condition, as well as the fact that her life was rapidly coming to an end, hurtling like a train right off a cliff. She had taken to hiding her pain, never complaining in front of them, trying not to add to their misery as they watched her health crumble.

“Well, I’ve got just the thing to cheer you up.” Savannah dug in her oversized purse and pulled out a handful of glossy magazines.

Vincent caught Scar’s eye and gave her an exaggerated look skyward. Savannah was convinced Scar enjoyed hearing about celebrity gossip. Vin knew she feigned interest as a way of spending quality time with her mother, who was flighty and restless.

Scar asked him how they ended up married when they were so different.

Vin was convinced it was his job. He’d been a crime scene cleaner.

The thought of standing in a room where someone was murdered, their guts on the floor or brains on the wall would have had most women retching in the bathroom. Not Savannah. She was always looking for the next captivating bit of gossip, the next big shocker. She wasn’t scared of anything.

From what Vin could tell, she wasn’t even scared of losing her daughter.

Granted, she took her turns bedside, along with Hunter, who was in between semesters at the local college, but it just didn’t seem to hit her the same way it did Vin. She never seemed to fight back tears. Life happened . She rode it like a wave.

Vin almost envied her that. Almost.

Only a few months after the divorce, Scarlet decided she would rather live with her father. She told her mother she didn’t want him to be lonely, but he knew better. She didn’t fit into her mother’s world.

Hunter did. He had stayed with Savannah through middle and high school, clear up until he started college.

Vincent picked up his hospital bag, a black backpack containing card games, a novel for when Scarlet was sleeping, and a change of clothes, which he learned early on to have on hand at all times once the vomiting started. Wet paper towels could get rid of visible evidence, but the smell tended to cling.

Not that he cared. He dealt with far worse in his job field.

He lingered, but Scar waved him off, picking up a magazine and reading the headlines. Savannah sat on the edge of the bed, leaning over to read along with her.

Vin’s chest clenched painfully as he backed out of the room, giving his daughter a farewell wave. Anxiety crushed him every time he left. Was this the last time he would see her?

He knew he had to sleep, shower, and eat. He couldn’t spend every second with her, but it terrified him that she might pass on without him there, holding her hand.

He turned and walked down the cold, sterile corridor with its generic watercolor paintings of blurry flowers, his footsteps echoing like a funeral dirge.

He drove home in a haze, trying to turn his thoughts away from the reality that consumed him during every waking moment. He tried to focus on his promise to double check the desk and realized he had been standing in front of the dark wood masterpiece for some time, staring, his mind blank.

He did that sometimes. In an effort to avoid thinking about his daughter, he would sometimes forget to think at all. He hated losing time.

He blinked, then bent to look under the desk, pressing along the bottom, feeling for any give in the wood. He ran his fingers down the carved legs, pressed on the base of the drawers, then finally removed them to test their length.

Sometimes, builders would create a small compartment with a hidden opening that stayed inside the desk, concealed by the drawer. Once the drawer was removed and set aside, the compartment could be accessed, if you could figure out how to open it.

The drawers of this desk were cut precisely, leaving no room for such a compartment.

Just to be sure, he placed his hand into the empty drawer hole, applying pressure with his hand as he slid his palm down the length of the rough inside, hoping he wouldn’t spend the rest of the evening picking splinters from under his skin.

The wood held firm. He replaced the drawer, trying again on the next.

The chance of finding a secret cubby were slim, but finding one would make Scarlet’s day. He smiled at the thought and said a little prayer: Let me find something to bring her joy.

And just like that, the tears came, like a wretched beast waiting to pounce, to shred his insides, to squeeze on his heart until the pain overflowed and leaked from his eyes, a physical manifestation of the torment inside.

Later, when he could breathe again, he curled up on the floor, his forehead resting against one of the clawed feet of the desk and the faint smell of ageless wood in his nostrils.

Pull yourself together. You can break down when…later. You’ll have plenty of ‘later’ to wallow in self-pity.

He took a shuddering breath and pushed himself up to his knees. The middle drawer was still clutched in his arms, the edges leaving deep furrows in his skin. He stood, replaced the drawer, and turned to the kitchen. He would busy himself making another dinner he wouldn’t eat.

He had only gone a few steps when he remembered the third drawer. Obligation weighed on him and he returned to the desk, removing the drawer to slide his hand inside.

He felt nothing but a jagged little hole where a whorl in the wood had weakened it, chipping out a chunk when it was processed for lumber. Like the hole in his heart. His daughter’s cancer had torn out a chunk of him.

The hole was small, twice as long as it was wide and irregularly shaped, so he knew no drill had made it. Still, he felt along it just thoroughly enough to feel a sharp prick on one finger.

He pulled his hand out and looked sullenly down at the splinter of wood that had dug into his finger pad, close to the first knuckle. He shook his head in disgust and pulled it out before replacing the drawer.

It caught on something halfway in. He pulled it forward and tried to shove it closed. It stopped in the same place. Grumbling, he pulled it out and set it aside.

Using his phone as a flashlight, he inspected the length of wood again, unmarred but for the jagged hole, just large enough to fit the tip of his pinkie finger. There were swirls of darker wood surrounding it and tiny cracks spreading from it. It was definitely a natural part of the board.

Out of curiosity, he reached in. lodging his pinkie into the hole, and pulled. He felt movement and withdrew his hand to see a small strip of wood had shifted out of place. Reaching in again with his pinkie, he pulled again, but the board was stuck. It took awkwardly reaching in with both hands to grip the sides of the board with his fingernails, working it back and forth until it finally came free.

The flashlight showed there was, indeed, a compartment. Long and skinny, it rested between the drawer opening and the outside of the desk.

Excited, Vin peered inside to see a stack of yellowed pages rolled up into a tight wand, wrapped with string, gray with age.

He carefully untied the string and unfurled the several dozen papers covered in scratchy handwriting. As he flipped through the pages, he was surprised to see that the final sheets contained typewritten lines. Words were crossed out here and there, replaced by handwritten ones, though the pen marks on earlier pages were neatly scribed, while the later, typewritten pages contained scribbles that steadily grew more aggressive, as if by an increasingly frustrated author.

Intrigued, he focused on the first page of cramped script. He paused halfway through, wondering if the author had been insane. The writing rambled about a force settling upon the author, compelling him in some way, though it never stated what he was compelled to do.

By the end of the first page, he had committed to telling the reader a story, which was so circuitous that Vin had to backtrack and double check earlier paragraphs in order to follow along with the writer’s train of thought. The point of view shifted from first person to third throughout the story, though it seemed to be the same person’s viewpoint.

“I wandered down the street, aimlessly, looking for some semblance of help, though from whence it came as it finally appeared, I was unsure. He was pushed down into the street from behind, falling rather clumsily into a murky puddle of questionable content. I clambered to my feet, brushing water from my now rather untidy jacket, and turned to face my accoster.”

By the end of the first several pages, which were nearly double the length of a standard page, Vin blinked bleary eyes, stumbling over to the couch. It was only when he sat and felt the flood of relief from the pressure on his legs that he realized he had been standing by the desk for a long while as he read.

Glancing at his watch, he nearly gasped. He had been reading for over four hours. It was past midnight. Dinnertime was long past. He needed to rest before heading back to the hospital in the morning.

He rubbed at his tired eyes and resigned to mark his place in the story before putting it away for the night. As he scanned the lines, looking for where he had left off, a strange phrase caught his eye: “For it was then that I decided that death to the dead was the only remedy for the situation.”

Captivated, he read on.

Lost in a tale of despair mingled with a hope for redemption, of dark whisperings and failed murder attempts, a distant trilling slowly pulled Vin from his dreamlike trance.

Disoriented, he saw the darkened world of the story shift and melt, slowly dissolving until all that remained was the view of his living room. The trilling continued.

Slowly, he realized it was coming from his pants pocket. He fumbled for his phone, which looked strangely out of place and time. He had spent his night lost in a murky world not his own and the glaring quality of his current reality was vaguely disturbing to him. He couldn’t account for the lifelike images his mind had conjured during his readings, as if he were living the disjointed story being told.

He pushed the pulsing green icon on his too-vibrant screen. “Hello?” His voice came out hoarse and he cleared his throat before repeating himself.

“Vincent? Are you on your way?” Savannah had that false sweetness in her voice that said she was trying to keep from being waspish.

Vincent stared dumbly at the desk a few feet in front of him.

“You’re twenty minutes late and I need to get in to work. I don’t want to leave her alone, but my job isn’t as flexible as yours, so unless you want me to get fired…” she left the words hanging.

“Umm…no,” he mumbled. “I’ll be there. I just…” He glanced down at the papers in his lap. What time was it? He couldn’t even remember when he was supposed to be taking his shift with Scarlet.

“Overslept? Yeah, I can tell. You sound terrible,” she said without a trace of sympathy. “Look. I can stay for a few more minutes. Grab a cup of coffee, throw on some clothes, and come on down.”

Vin nodded his head slowly, still trying to make sense of reality’s intrusion. The pages in his hands contained a setting that seemed to cling like a layer of amber cellophane over his current existence. He could still see the stone buildings and the cobbled alleyways, a hallucination he couldn’t dispel.

He set the papers down and stood, physically shaking himself to rid his mind of the vision. His bladder was about to explode. How had he not noticed the stabbing pain?

Before he headed to the bathroom, the pages on the sofa caught his eye. He couldn’t just leave them lying around, though he wasn’t sure why. Quickly, since the pain in his gut increased by the second, he snatched up the pages, rolled them into a tight wad, and shoved them into his hospital bag. With that done, he seemed able to focus, as if putting away the pages had added a degree of separation between the real world and the story world.

Rushing through his actions in an attempt to make up lost time, he left his house without his coffee, cursing under his breath when he realized it, resigned to drinking the vending machine coffee, which tasted like ash and tree bark.

He hurried into Scarlet’s room, giving Savannah a quick hug and apologizing as she waggled her fingers in casual farewell before leaving.

Still asleep, his daughter looked so small. Thin and frail like a young child instead of the near-adult she was. It broke his heart, though for once the tears didn’t leap immediately to his eyes.

He kept his eyes off his bag, where the manuscript seemed to call to him. Despite his exhaustion, he couldn’t keep his thoughts from drifting back to the story. As he listened to the constant beeping of the machinery lulling him into meditation, he pondered it more fully.

“Daddy?” Scarlet had taken his hand and was squeezing it. How long had she been awake?

Blinking back to life, he gave her what he hoped was an easy smile. “Well, hello sleepyhead! I must have dozed off waiting on you.” It wasn’t the first time. She slept longer with each passing day, her body fighting a losing battle.

“You were sleeping with your eyes open?” she asked skeptically.

He tipped his head in thought. “Daydreaming, then,” he amended.

She pursed her lips. “Are you all right? You don’t look like you slept much.”

He forced out a chuckle. “I’m fine. You’re the one that needs the rest.”

“Then why give me a hard time about sleeping so long?” The tartness of her tone stretched his smile wider.

“Because I’m your father and it’s my job to give you a hard time.”

She frowned at that. “You’re wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday,” she pointed out.

“You must have heard me wrong,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “It’s my job to give you a hard time. Not the other way around.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said in that know-it-all way of hers. “Did you check the desk again like I said?”

He knew she would ask. If she had been home with him, she would have scoured every inch of that desk. She would have found the story. He knew it in his bones and the thought sent a jolt of fear through him strong enough to leave his toes tingling, though he couldn’t explain why.

“Dad?” she said, eyes narrowed.

Reluctantly, he nodded. “I did.”

Immediately, her expression changed to one of such joyful hope that the words of denial died on his tongue. “I…found one,” he finally admitted.

“Yes!” she shouted, the loudest sound he had heard from her in weeks, strained though it was. “What was in it?”

Now the tears came and he closed his eyes, keeping the smile on his lips as he fought them back. Her enthusiasm reminded him that she was still so young. So very young.

When he had himself under control, he opened his eyes to see her gazing at him, patient, yet expectant. “It held a story,” he said simply.

She gasped. “Really? A whole story? Not just a note?”

He shook his head. “Dozens of pages.” He leaned forward, lending an air of suspense to the moment. “Type. Written.” He said the words slowly. Deliberately. “Well, some of them, anyway.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Cool,” she breathed. “Mid to late 1800’s desk with late 1800’s to early 1900’s writings. I wonder if the author was the one who made the desk,” she mused. “Did you bring it with you?”

Vin hadn’t wanted to tell her about the story and was reluctant to let her read it, unsettled by the effect it had on him, strangely enthralling as it was. Still, he was glad he had told her. There was nothing he wouldn’t give to see that twinkle in her eyes.

“I’m not telling,” he said, noting her crestfallen look before hurrying on, “But I read most of it last night. It’s a strange and muddled story, hard to understand. I was up most of the night trying to decipher it.”

Her eyebrows rose. “So that’s why you look like rumpled canvas.”

He scowled. “Be nice.”

“What? It’s true,” she insisted, raising one shoulder.

“Did you want to hear about the story or not?” he demanded.

She schooled her face into a contrite expression. He rolled his eyes. “Kids,” he muttered, working to hide his smirk.

“Tell me,” she pleaded.

He waited, letting her squirm before taking a deep, tired breath. “It’s confusing and not very well written, but from what I can tell, it’s a ghost story.” Checking to ensure she looked appropriately intrigued, he continued. “The ghost, no name mentioned, started out as a hermit. He wasn’t happy with the busy pace of society, so he chose to live in a small house out in the wilderness several miles from the nearest small town. One day, he was walking to town and injured his leg in some way, stumbled into town, and was mugged while he was looking for help. Someone chased off the robber, but not before the hermit was stabbed and died.”

Scarlet frowned. “So, now he’s a ghost?”

Vincent nodded. “He travelled the streets of his village as it grew over the years into a city, also not named. Eventually, he discovered another ghost. Apparently, they’re not all that common. It’s hard to tell which ghost is doing what at times, but it seems like the hermit-ghost follows the second ghost around and finds him doing really suspicious stuff.”

“Suspicious how?” Scar interrupted.

“Like whispering to people who end up hurting or killing others. Sometimes even members of their own family.”

Scar curled her lip in disgust.

“The hermit-ghost sounds like he didn’t have a high opinion of humanity when he was alive,” Vincent continued. “See, he always figured people were generally jerks, but now he’s starting to wonder if ghosts sometimes turn good people bad. At least some of them. Especially the really bad ones, because the people that come in contact with this evil ghost do some pretty bad things.”

Vincent recalled the gruesome description of a young man sitting on his sister’s chest as he gouged out her eyes with his fingers before slamming her head into the ground repeatedly. His mind substituted an image of Hunter sitting atop Scarlet and he cringed, deciding to keep those particular details to himself.

“Go on,” Scarlet prompted, pulling him from the far too vivid mental images. The barren hospital room only served to remind him of the sparsely furnished brick house where the fratricide had occurred.

With a shiver, he shook loose the grotesquely riveting visions, blinking rapidly to clear them from his view. Taking note of Scar’s look of suspicion, he hurried on.

“Well, the hermit-ghost was quite appalled by the evil ghost’s behavior. I’m not sure what he plans to do about it, though. I haven’t finished the story.”

“You’re going to finish it tonight, though, right? And you’ll bring it tomorrow? I want to read it,” she said.

The pulling sensation from his hospital bag almost overwhelmed him. “I’m hoping to finish it tonight, though it’s slow going.” He gave a theatrical yawn, hoping she wouldn’t catch the fact he never promised to bring the pages in. “Do you mind if I sneak out for a minute and grab some coffee from the machine?” he asked sheepishly.

He hated leaving her, even for a minute. He took heart at the color in her cheeks, no doubt from the excitement of his news.

She waved him off and he hurried down the hallway, digging change out of his pocket. When he returned, she was lying with her head back, staring at the ceiling, lost in thought. The slight flush of pink had already left her face and her eyelids drooped above her sunken cheeks.

The rest of the day felt longer than usual for Vin. He had to work hard to keep from digging the story out of his bag. He promised himself he would leave it at home next time. Still, the story invaded his consciousness. Twice, he found Scar calling to him, his trance-like state adding worry lines to her sickly face. He told her he was just tired and attempted to change the subject.

For the first time since her diagnosis, he was grateful when Hunter arrived to take his place, more eager to read than to sleep.

Vincent hurried home, digging the manuscript from his bag as he walked up the mosaic stone steps to his little red and white two-bedroom Cape Cod, his guilt at leaving Scarlet strangely absent. He used the restroom—lesson learned—telling himself he just needed to finish the story so its hold on him would dissipate. It wasn’t even that good of a story, and he couldn’t figure out why he was so entranced with it.

He sat on the couch, flipping to where he’d left off. His shoulders hunched as he realized he wasn’t as close to done as he’d thought.

It was going to be a long night.

He considered making a pot of coffee, but the story clenched him in its grip before the thought was fully formed.

Vincent followed the hermit-ghost as it followed the evil, whispering ghost, anguishing over what should be done. The hermit watched bloody, gruesome atrocities, one after another, hiding in the shadows, afraid to confront the evil instigator.

At first, the hermit tried to convince himself the people were already evil, but he managed to sneak close enough to hear what was whispered into an old woman’s ear.

“The sound was unearthly, the words sliding like silk, yet grating to the soul. Obscene and cruel, they seemed to cling to the air, never quite fading into silence. The result was insanity for the living. It was very nearly the result for myself.”

At some point, Vin heard a distant noise that didn’t belong in the story world. He vaguely remembered, through his fog, the phone call that had pulled from the story previously and the words seemed to tighten their grip on his mind, keeping him from investigating the sound. It wasn’t until the pages were ripped from his grasp that the real world came crashing back to him, painfully invading his senses. He sucked in a breath at the sensation, as if he had been thrown head-first into an ice-cold lake.

“Dad!” Hunter stood glaring at him in consternation. “What is wrong with you?”

“What? Nothing,” he muttered, still trying to figure out which world he was in as the dreamlike sensations lingered. He cast his eyes around, frantically looking for where the pages had gone.

He wasn’t finished with the story. He had to finish the story.

“I called you,” Hunter said impatiently. “And I knocked.”

Vin, still reeling, didn’t respond.

“When you didn’t answer, I came in. Dad, it’s your turn to sit with Scarlet.”

“I’m…I’m…” he tried to force his brain to keep up with the conversation, but it was so distracting. He needed to be back in the story. “I can’t,” he mumbled. “I don’t…feel well.” He swallowed hard. “I need you to stay with her. Tell her I’ll come visit her later. I’m almost done.”

“Almost done?” Hunter glared at him. “With what, exactly? This?” He held up the pages that had been behind his back and it was all Vin could do to keep from snatching them out of his hands.

“No,” he said, and the word came out almost as a moan. “You…I just need…some sleep.”

“Then why don’t you go get some?”

He sounded angry. Vin didn’t care. He just wanted him gone.

“Yes. I’m going to get a bit more sleep right now. Thank you for coming over, Hunter. And for staying with your sister.” He stood and began ushering his son to the door. “I’ll be there later today, I promise.”

Hunter grumbled something under his breath that likely would have had Vin using his stern-dad voice under other circumstances.

Just before he closed the door on him, Vin snatched the papers from his hand. “I’ll just put these someplace safe and go lay down.”

Door closed, he rushed back to the couch, frantically flipping pages, trying to find where he had been, but the story was so jumbled and confusing he ended up absorbed in a portion of the story he had already read, seeing it as if for the first time. It was over an hour before he finally reached new material.

After hearing the evil ghost’s whisperings, the hermit kept his distance. He termed the unfortunate victims Whisperlings, watching as they devolved into monsters. When one Whisperling was killed by a mob seeking vengeance for what was done to a beloved young girl, the hermit was appalled at the state of the thing’s soul.

Normally, a soul was visible to other ghosts as a pale, grey mist for a short time upon leaving the body before it dissipated and was absorbed by a glowing light that manifested around them in a bright flash, like an imploding star.

The soul of the Whisperling was not uniformly grey. Instead, it was translucent in some areas, as if parts of it had decayed. Just as it began to dissipate, the evil ghost arrived, its form morphing into a hideous shape with sharp teeth and a mouth far too wide for its face.

To the hermit’s alarm, the creature consumed the ragged, shadowy figure before the light could take it. Though it struggled violently, the soul of the Whisperling was overcome. The sounds of its torment haunted the hermit day and night.

He termed the creature Soul Eater, a unique entity whose ghastly utterings resulted in a decaying of the soul, a sort of premature breakdown, which made it easier to digest. Having hid from the creature for an indeterminate amount of time, the hermit eventually came to realize it was better to know as much as possible about the creature in order to keep from becoming a victim.

It wasn’t until the story’s conclusion that he grew bold enough to act as a counter-force to its evil, engaging it in a game of cat and mouse to keep it busy, depriving it of the opportunity to further madden the community. Unfortunately, the writing dissolved into mutterings about destroying the creature’s essence and nonsensical commentary on the contagious nature of evil.

Vin read back through it, trying to decipher the note of warning at the end, but the words melded into chaotic ramblings. When he lifted his eyes from the last page, a weight settled on him.

Into him.

A tingling sensation brushed across his skin, concrete despite its lack of substance, making the hairs on his arms stand up. Like the buildup of air pressure or static electricity, he could feel it, but with no sense of its source.

It pushed at him, squirmed into his pores, light and viscous as water, yet weighty like blood-soaked rags. He sat, aghast, as the story picked up again in his head, the details and events repeating, made clearer by a new presence in his mind that made him privy to more of the story, details beyond what was put into words.

The hermit was a man, thin faced, white-haired, and bow-backed, his skin tanned and wrinkled, wiry muscles clinging to bone. Signs of a hard life. Vin was privy to the hermit’s memories as he watched a reel playing inside his own mind.

After growing disgusted with the townspeople, bickering and nitpicking at small things, if they weren’t beating their wives after drinking too much, the hermit had moved to the little shack far from town to begin a book on the nature of man.

He pondered the content to put in the book for decades before finally putting pen to parchment. Absently, Vin noted the man’s furniture was from the late 1700’s, with intricate Rococo-style engravings along the legs of tables and chairs, though the furniture was simple enough and worn from careless use.

Once the hermit began writing, he wrote for weeks, often so absorbed he didn’t stop to eat or sleep. Blisters formed on his fingers. Eventually, they split, oozing pink-tinged pus. Still, he kept writing, obsessively compelled to finish.

He developed a cough that grew increasingly worse as the days passed, forcing him into fits that lasted minutes before he regained enough composure to swipe at the spittle on the page and resume his writing. He would occasionally dab at the bloody blisters, then continue writing in a feverish frenzy, as if to make up the lost time.

He never got to finish. His sickness forced him to walk into town for medicine. Coughing hard enough to make his ribs creak, he stumbled, spraining his ankle in the process. By the time he reached town, his ankle had doubled in size.

He leaned against a building to rest when he felt a knife at his throat. He was told to empty his pockets. His lungs seized up and he began coughing. The assailant, taken off guard, didn’t move his knife in time, and the hermit managed to open his own throat on the knife. Someone shouted in the distance and the man ran off, leaving the hermit to die on the side of the road.

His ghost returned home to the unfinished pages, yearning for his lost body.

Years passed before anybody found his house. Two kids came in, boys about ten years old, whispering to each other. The hermit watched them as they scoured the house, looking for anything worth taking, but the hermit had lived a simple life and they found nothing of value.

One of the boys, Todwell, noticed the pages of scrawl and gingerly folded them up. The hermit followed him home. The pages were stashed in a box under his bed.

Decades passed before Todwell read them. Several times, Todwell sorted through his belongings, and several times he came across the papers, considered throwing them out, then thought better of it. He couldn’t feel the lurking presence of the hermit, but he was there, muttering about the story he had never finished.

When Todwell’s wife died in the mid-1800’s, he decided to distract himself from his grief by cleaning out the attic of his home. He knew it wouldn’t be long before he followed her to the grave. Better to do the job himself rather than leave it to his children to sort out.

Todwell ran across the old, yellowing pages and remembered the old home he had rummaged through in his youth. It only took a few words to give the hermit a foothold, allowing him to force just enough of his will on Todwell to keep him reading. Together, they devoured the pages, enthralled, unable to put them down. At the end of the unfinished sentence that marked his death, the hermit entered Todwell’s mind, so in sync were their thoughts.

The hermit refused to rest until he finished his book. Todwell found he couldn’t eat or sleep, his mind overwhelmed by the visceral need to conclude the hermit’s observations on why people behaved as they did.

It took three days to finish the book, longer than it was originally intended to be, as the hermit had learned much in his ghostly observations of people who thought they were alone. With its completion, Todwell was left gasping and trembling, amazed to be alive.

He never recovered from the strain. His children buried him a week later.

The hermit wandered the town, his task fulfilled. As he wandered, he learned of another ghost and kept his distance, wary of the unsavory essence of it. The ghost came and went over the years. The hermit avoided it.

Brief scenes passed through Vincent’s vision.

Todwell’s son, Geoffrey, grew up to be a skilled cabinet maker. Vincent knew this because the hermit, from time to time, would return to the house where the manuscript resided. Geoffrey began experimenting with putting secret compartments in his furniture pieces. One of his most distinguished pieces was a desk made of black mahogany. Vincent recognized it. Geoffrey kept it in his office.

The visions of living history slowed near the end of the 19th century, when the hermit had an experience that shook him. He wandered aimlessly through an old lady’s home and heard an unnatural sound. Following it, he spotted the evil ghost and witnessed its power.

The hermit was shaken. He returned to Todwell’s house, now belonging to Geoffrey, and tried everything he could think of to get Geoffrey to pick up the manuscript. If he could get him to read it, he might be able to merge with him, as he had with Todwell.

When nothing worked, the hermit waited, brooding, until one day, Geoffrey cleaned out an old desk, finding the pages of handwritten script Todwell had stuffed in the back of a drawer days before his death.

The hermit stood, waiting with eager anticipation as Geoffrey read, allowing the hermit to take control. The writing began with a new story, this time starting with the hermit’s death and progressing to his findings on the evil ghost and its wretched whisperings.

Geoffrey’s wife worried about his sanity when he stopped cabinetmaking to write what she thought was a fictional story about a dead man.

Luckily, Geoffrey was in a healthier state than his father had been. He survived the ordeal, though the dark impressions of the wandering shade with otherworldly mutterings left him shivering in his bed at night.

He carved a special compartment in his black mahogany desk, unable to destroy the writing, yet unwilling to allow the hermit to possess another human. Through his experience reliving the hermit’s memories, he learned the true cause of his father’s death and didn’t think twice about a backyard burial for the old, original manuscript his father had been forced to write.

Once the new story was hidden away in its secret compartment, Geoffrey refused to speak of the incident. Stories began circulating around their little town about a strange family illness. Temporary Madness, they called it.

Geoffrey’s daughter, Hannah, was often reminded of her family’s madness by the townsfolk. She ignored the comment until her teen years when her father was taken to the hospital with cholera. While her mother kept him company, Hannah cleaned the house.

A bit of snooping in her father’s favorite desk revealed the source of the Temporary Madness.

The hermit added even darker tidings to the story written through her, for he had come to understand more about the Soul Eater. He knew that one day it would come for him. He observed it in secret, hoping to find a weakness.

Only two days into the writing, Hannah fainted, unable to continue. The hermit relented, grudgingly forcing the girl to revive enough to eat, drink, and rest briefly. She wrote by hand from her bed, too dizzy to sit at the desk.

Progress was slow. She had never been good at writing and, when her father finally came home, he found her scribbling away madly. He recognized the pages instantly.

Having gone through the same possession himself, he thought speeding the writing along would speed the madness along. He sent his wife to buy a typewriter, a fairly new machine that seemed well worth the money to him in his current predicament.

He spoke to the hermit within his daughter, asking it to take him over again and spare his daughter. The words hardly even registered, so engrossed was the ghost in the telling of his story. When Geoffrey’s wife returned with typewriter in hand, he told her he didn’t want to be disturbed. He closed and locked the bedroom door, lay on the bed, and waited as his daughter typed.

That, too, was slow, but improved as her familiarity with the machine grew.

Geoffrey had his wife bring food three times a day, though he took the food from her at the door, refusing to let her in, sparing her from the vision of her daughter hunched over the keyboard in a pose she would recognize from watching her husband years earlier.

He would remind the hermit that living things needed to eat. After much persuasion, the ghost would relent and allow Hannah a break, during which she would shovel in as much food as she could over a short period of time, sometimes only seconds, before turning back to the typewriter.

When the story was finished, Hannah sobbed in relief.

Geoffrey held her tightly until her tears were gone. “Is it done?” he asked.

She nodded and he silently gathered up the pages, rolled them, tied them, and placed them in his secret compartment.

Vin’s shoulders slumped as the vision concluded. He shook his head, wondering at the predicament he had gotten himself into. A heartbeat passed and the hermit applied his will, nearly wresting control of Vin’s body from him.

With a gasp, the compulsion settled into his bones. He stumbled up the stairs to his bedroom. Vibrating with tension, he waited the long seconds for the computer to come to life.

He began typing.

At some point, Hunter tried to get him to stop long enough to get a message across. “She’s wasting away, dad. She needs you.”

Vincent hadn’t responded, unable to focus on the nattering boy.

“The doctors say she’s deteriorating. I don’t know how much longer she’s got.”

The words were quiet and dreadful, but Vincent’s existence had narrowed to the words on the screen. The only part of his brain still functioning simply didn’t care, but as he wrote, the words focused his mind more and more on his desire to be with Scarlet.

The Soul Eater, monstrous as he was, had found a new source of sustenance and could frequently be found at places of sickness. Slow declines, particularly painful ones, causes a natural wearying of the soul. Death was common enough in such places and there was no shortage of souls weary from an already exhausting fight. Easy pickings for such a powerful creature, though still the thing lusted for more. It had grown insatiable.

The hermit trembled inside Vincent’s head. He attributed it to the memory, but fear pulled the hermit’s thoughts from the story.

It comes.

In that moment, Vincent and the hermit were no longer in the past. They were together in the present. The Soul Eater was near.

Vincent forced his own will upon the hermit, though it was a struggle to keep control of his mind and body. Into the silence, he said, “I will finish your story, but you have to help me protect my daughter first.” He could feel the hermit’s frustration. “I won’t let the Soul Eater have her. You’ve been stalking it for decades. Who knows more about it than you?”

There is a substance it avoids, the hermit reluctantly admitted. It may do you no good, for silver is hard to come by.

Vincent’s grin was savage. “Not for an antiques collector.”

He ran to the closet and drew out a wooden case, unsnapped the buckles, and checked to ensure his silver, eight place setting of flatware was still intact. It had cost him over two hundred dollars. He’d bought it for Scarlet on her sixteenth birthday. She was going to get more use out of it than they had thought.

Ho ho! the hermit crowed. You’re a rich man!

Vincent arrived at the hospital to see Scarlet fast asleep in her bed. Hunter was right, she was fading fast, so still and gaunt. Only the beeping of the monitors told him she was still alive.

It comes! The hermit was frantic. It searches these very halls. Your daughter does not look well.

Vincent wasn’t sure if it was his tether to the hermit that allowed him to sense the creature, but he felt a dark, pulsing presence growing steadily closer. He locked the door, afraid a nurse might come in and interrupt him, then opened the snaps on the box of flatware and dumped it unceremoniously out on the floor.

The loud clattering of silver tines on polished tile startled Scar into opening her eyes. “Dad?” she asked. “Where have you been?”

Frantically, he began laying the silverware end to end, making sure each one touched the next. “Like this? Will this work?” he asked the hermit.

That would be my best guess, he replied. I cannot guarantee silver will repel the beast, though. I’ve never tested the theory.

“Well, that’s not terribly helpful, is it? You better hope it works or your book is going to remain unfinished right up until I burn the pages of it,” Vin snarled.

“Who on earth are you talking to?” Scar said, her voice weak and breathy. “And what are you doing with my silverware?”

Still working, half his focus remained on the approaching pulse of evil coming from the Soul Eater. He began speaking, telling her the rest of the story, along with the visions he had received from the hermit’s ghost, all the while laying the silverware carefully in a large circle. He finished his story and she said nothing until he finished laying the last piece and looked up at her, head tilted on the pillow to face him, eyes glazed and distant. “Honey?” he asked, terrified he was too late.

She blinked. “I can see him,” she said. “The hermit. I can see him inside you.” Her words were gentle, mere breaths.

The pulsing grew stronger, the approach gaining speed. The creature must sense death is near the hermit said.

Vincent leapt to his feet, reaching for Scarlet, pulling off cables and cuffs, lifting her gently in his arms. She was limp, all her efforts on the simple act of breathing. The pulsing was painful, like a concussive wave and the air felt oily as black tendrils wafted through the neighboring wall. Vin stepped into the ring of silver just as the creature emerged from the white painted surface.

Where the hermit, in the visions shown to Vin, was grey smoke, the Soul Eater was black as pitch and far more solid-looking, its teeth like onyx in its mouth, eyes like black holes that sucked in light. It locked eyes with Scar, who stiffened in Vin’s arms, terror giving her strength. She clutched at him and turned her face into his chest, trembling.

“You can’t have her,” Vin said, though the monster terrified him, as well.

It circled the line of silver, reaching out, its hand stopping just short of passing over it. I know you. I have sensed you lurking, watching. It seems you have learned a few things, the Soul Eater said to the hermit that dwelt within Vin.

I wasn’t sure it would work, but I’m glad to see it does.

I will kill you for this. The Soul Eater’s words were flat and hollow, the sound of a bass drum speaking. You will not escape me. I will wait here for an eternity to feast on your soul.

Vin could feel the hermit’s fear and they cowered before the monster. What would happen when Scarlet died? Would her soul be able to go wherever souls go, stuck within the ring of silver? Would he have to watch his little girl waste away, day after day, just to see her soul be eaten by this creature? He wouldn’t let the only peace she had be at the end of monstrous teeth.

“Please,” he said to the hermit. “Tell me there’s something we can do.”

The hermit was quiet, his attention locked on the fragile, trembling limbs locked around Vin’s neck. I never had children, he said. But I’ve seen enough of them get eaten by that thing. His eyes closed and an expression of exquisite pain crossed his features. The screaming of the children has haunted me for far too long. It’s time I’ve done something about it.

You can do nothing, the Soul Eater chuckled, but cease her suffering. Bring her to me and I will make a quick end to her.

A nurse appeared in the glass frame of the door, surprised when it wouldn’t open. She tapped on the glass with a knuckle, her expression confused as she looked at Vin, holding his daughter in a ring of silverware. “They’re going to get a key and open that door. They won’t let us stay in this ring forever. Do something,” Vincent pleaded. The nurse knocked a little harder, pointing a finger at her watch to indicate she had a schedule to keep.

If I help her, you have to finish my story, the hermit said.

“I’ll write anything you want,” he promised. “Just help her.”

Vin felt a slithering sensation as the weighty liquid feeling squelched back out of him, slowly materializing into the grey, smoky figure of the hermit. With a last, steadying breath, the hermit contorted himself, screaming in anguish as he folded in upon himself, slowly slinking down into a puddle of grey, sludgy mist at Vin’s feet. The scream faded to a gurgling sound as the puddle gathered, lengthened, congealed into a semi-solid spear just longer than Vin’s arm, its point wickedly sharp.

Vin looked up in time to see the Soul Eater’s morbid fascination turn to wariness. “I hear you have quite an appetite,” Vin said, hefting the spear. “Why don’t you chew on this.” He lunged forward, awkwardly with Scarlet in his arms. He twisted to keep her within the circle while his attacking arm reached beyond it, striking out at the Soul Eater, who had spent centuries stalking its victims, but never once running from anything. It had no predators.

Until now.

The Soul Eater tried to dodge, but its movements were slow and awkward. The spear caught in its throat, sinking in as if it were made of water. Darkness leaked from the wound and a howling filled the room, loud enough to make Vin release the spear and do his best to cover his and Scarlet’s ears as they cowered on the ground.

The spear slowly slid down, through the Soul Eater, until it rested on the floor at its feet. Plumes of roiling darkness lurched from the cut that had nearly split the monster in two and, with one final howl, it imploded with a single, concussive blast that rattled the generic pictures on the wall.

Scarlet lifted a tear-stained face to her father, surveying the room, which looked not at all like a spectral force of nature had just been vanquished in it. Besides the ring of silverware and the soul-spear, everything looked completely normal. Scarlet let out a huff of disbelief. “Count on you,” she said in her weak, breathy voice, “to have the most epic antiquing adventure ever.”

He smiled. “Like I always say, you never know what you’ll find.”

She gave him a wan smile. “Thanks for including me. It’ll make a great story on the other side.”

He tightened his arms around her. The hermit never had a clue what happened to those that moved on. They simply disappeared in a flash of light and were never seen again. Wherever she went, Vin was happy to know she wouldn’t have to face the Soul Eater.

“Dad,” she whispered. “I’m so tired.”

He was tired, too, though he still had a story to finish. “I know honey,” he said. He didn’t bother to fight the tears. “I want to thank you for holding on so long.” He squeezed her hard enough to make her groan. “I know you worry about me and Hunter and your mother.” He stood, stepping over the line of silver, and placed her gently in her bed, stroking her hair. She closed her eyes. “We’re going to be okay. You don’t have to fight it anymore.”

She smiled and her body relaxed. He continued stroking her hair, one hand holding hers, as her labored breathing eased, slowing as she passed into sleep. The monitors no longer beeped out her heart rate, the detached cables hanging near the floor.

He watched over her as her dreams took her to happier places, with less pain and worry, where she didn’t have to struggle for each breath. He sat long after her last breath came and went and she passed from her dreams to somewhere beyond.

He gasped in surprise when he saw the white tendrils lift from her wilted body. Flowing and shapeless, his daughter’s soul drifted across the room, hovering over the hermit’s spear, lifting it. His daughter drifted back over to him, brushing through his hair, leaving a cool tingling sensation in its wake, before hovering before him. “I love you,” he said softly.

The mist grew lighter, brighter, until it became a pure white light that nearly blinded him. He squinted, shielding his eyes. In a flash, the light was gone, and his daughter with it. He sat until the nurse returned, tapping once more on the glass.

He wasn’t sure what she’d seen, but when he unlocked the door, she simply said, “What’s with all the silverware?”

He gathered it up, placing it carefully back in the box. “I was having one last adventure with my daughter,” he said. One final ending to the story.

Jen Bair is an Air Force brat, Army veteran, and military wife. She and her husband met in Basic Training and are still happily married two decades later, shamelessly dragging their four kids all over the world. Jen has lived in 12 U.S. States, the Philippines, Guam, Korea, and Germany…so far. She fully believes in world exploration as a lifestyle.

Much of her time is spent homeschooling her kids, teaching her energetic Malinois new tricks, or planning the next family vacation. She loves traveling to foreign places, real or imaginary. Her family is her life. Her writing is her passion.

Her published works can be found on her author website at www.JenBair.com or you can write to her at author@JenBair.com. She’d love to hear from you.