He knelt at the grave. The dirt clung to the sides of his trousers, the grass beneath was wet. He repressed the urge to shiver.
Seth had felt this presence so many times before, when he had taken his routine walks out to this part of town, through the cemetery. Others like this ghost had spoken to him in the past. They would whisper stories and secrets, planting seeds in his mind.
Closure is what these souls wanted. He could give them that. Seth became their voice and their hands; he gave them a way to reconcile the things they have left unresolved, and he gained… well.
(He wished, more more than he wanted to admit, to be able to capture voice. Stories are small worlds governed by their own rules, and he envied it. He envied the way that for some people, the words came so easily, already fully formed.
All his tales were flat, shallow. But there were ways of getting around that. Sometimes, reality was stranger than fiction. Some of the best writing advice started with ‘Write what you know!’, and he knew this. Each life—and death—had narratives behind them, exposition and denouement. That was the payment they offered, and he collected them all attentively. )
His brother Micah had always looked at him with exasperation and confusion these days. His brother couldn’t tell where or how he’d spend his days. Would he leave in the evening, before dinner? Would he come back late at night, the only thing indicating his return being the cling, cling turning of the gas stove knob and the whirring of the microwave? But Seth knew that Micah tried not to dwell too much on it. Months have gone by since he had first crashed on his older brother’s couch, and it didn’t seem like he was going to be leaving anytime soon.
Every second Monday he slid an envelope of money across the dining table while they were having breakfast, and Micah left it at that.
“Your new book a success? The short story collection?”
“Yeah.” Seth leaned over his slightly burnt eggs, straightening the violets in the vase. They were his favorite. “People loved it.”
They didn’t talk about it, not really.
Seth wondered absentmindedly if Micah had guessed this is what he did instead.
(Transformation was not linear. People, primitive as they were, could tell when things were wrong. When the human body moved in ways too mechanical, when they blinked a bit too slowly. The supernatural, most of all, was a product of people’s fears, true, but it was based in reality.
Seth knew his brother felt it. He had never been the most observant, but when Micah turned his eyes onto him, he could see the way his brother would twitch, as if to run from something he could not quite see. It wasn’t fear, but something more insidious. Men back then knew that some things were beyond human comprehension. Some things weren’t meant to be messed with, and death was one of them.
There was a good reason for that. Exposure caused the lines to blur, and shapes started blending into backgrounds.
On the days where he lost his concentration, his tight leash loosening, he could feel it. Feel himself fading into the shadows, his flesh dissolving into the too-solid world. His arms would brush by other people’s when he walked home, but he couldn’t feel them. And he knew they couldn’t feel him.)
This grave was one he had walked by a few times, back when he couldn’t quite taste the rot in the air surrounding the headstone. Seth didn’t like comparing the dead—life came and went and this loss was irreversible—but it was only inevitable. An old man dying, content, choosing to give up in his final moments was greatly different from a child whose life was strangled out of her, each breath a battle and the last one—
“I was wondering when you would finally come.”
A girl’s hand landed on his shoulders, and he could feel the way her chin rested atop his head. Human touch, Seth recognised a long time ago, was easy to recognise because it was so warm. Not like Eden’s, the spirit that had been lurking in the edges of his vision for a long time, whenever he would come to this graveyard. At first, she was nothing more than a trick of the light, shapeless, but little by little she gained form. Now, if Seth concentrated, he could make out the hairs of her lashes, the slight discolouration of freckles.
A ghost’s touch was cold, first and foremost. For Seth, the idea was antithetical to everything touch was meant to be. A brush with a spirit did not bring comfort or warmth, but rather a weight of guilt. He pushed that feeling down though—he was not doing this out of pity, both because Eden would recoil at it, and because that wasn’t the kind of man he was. The only thing that he believed in was the Cycle of Life. Karma, who knew when man had done a wrong and what punishment was needed to appease it, the path needed towards their repentance.
Seth kept his body stiff, his head held high. “I know.”
“Did you find what you were looking for, Mr. Seth?” She had a habit—not a habit, more like a coping mechanism, a by-product of her old life, like somehow that can protect her from the inexplicable and unchartable violence of others but it can’t, it never could—of addressing people formally, never mind she was likely older than he was, but Seth stopped trying to correct her after the third time.
“I have no idea what you mean.”
She giggled, and the gust of wind that brushed by his neck felt like the huffs of a child. “Sure you do! You’re working very, very hard, but not even you can deny the truth. The sad reality is that every author runs out of steam eventually.”
Seth’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “If you’re trying to insinuate something, Eden—just say it already.”
Earlier, Seth couldn’t see the girl with the way she was hiding behind him, the only part of her visible the edges of fingertips on his shirt, but then it shifted. There was then a force, pushing his eyes down down down, and the hands on his shoulders were no longer there. Eden knelt beside him.
Spirits didn’t like to be seen and while Eden was one of the more willingly visible ones, oftentimes the fabric of space itself is distorted to conform to their wants and whims. Like it was doing now, a weight suddenly appeared, forcing his eyes down and directing them towards the words on the tombstone.
[HEADSTONE:]
In loving memory of Eden Fletcher,
Our dear daughter and doting sister
She will be remembered.
“You want my story, don’t you, sir?”
Seth’s throat was dry, like his voice itself was fighting his dishonesty. Still, he managed to breathe a few words out into the cold, chilly night air: “I… you’ve suffered in ways I could never understand. I want to help you, Eden. Please.”
Helping her meant letting her pass onto the other side. But both of them knew that no one acted without expecting something in return.
She smiled cheekily, but there was an undercurrent of cynicism. “Well, I suppose ‘please’ always helps.”
Seth craned his neck to the side so that he could gauge the girl’s expression from the corner of his eyes. “I know you ghosts talk,” Seth pointedly ignored Eden’s comically raised eyebrows, which seemed to say, can you believe this guy?, and instead continued, “And I’m sure they’ve told you all the ways I’ve helped them. All the ways that I can help you be finally free.”
“You and I fundamentally misunderstand each other, Mr. Seth.” Eden shook her head, “I don’t want to move on. This is my life, it’s been my life for longer than breath was in my lungs. My life after my ‘life’. No matter what’s in beyond—afterlife or resurrection or purgatory—I don’t want it.”
“But there’s got to be something that you do want.”
Eden hummed, “Maybe. Is there something you want?” Her white gown simmered in the moonlight, and Seth’s eyes burned.
“I—”
“Of course, I already know your answer.” She cut off the lukewarm response on his tongue, “I’ve seen you, sir, followed your steps. Stealer of stories, maker of false promises. We, the dead, come to you in hopes that you might be able to help us. Hope you can act as the bridge to the world that is no longer ours, yet you use us for your own selfish purposes.”
“Believe what you want.” Seth had discarded guilt a long time ago. “I’ve never lied. Everything has a cost, and nothing in this world or the next is free.”
Eden fell quiet. He continued, “And clearly… it seems you’re desperate enough to come to me for help.”
There was a beat of silence, before Eden’s shoulders started to shake with something that Seth first thought was pain.
“I…” Eden used her hands to cover her mouth but it wasn’t enough, and she laughed, “Seth… pff… humility isn’t something you suffer from, is it? You have no idea. You aren’t the first, and when you pass you will not be the last. See, people like you come along, every few decades, kneeling on the same earth where you are, and I’m sure they’ll offer the same thing as you.”
Seth remained silent. His goals were always greater than that, but what did that matter? Seth wanted to become one of the storytellers of great, and he knew with a certainty that to some might look like narcissism but to him was only inherent human that no other person would be willing to offer what Eden wanted. He was the only one. Her story was his.
They stood together in that moment of quiet. He almost lulled into a light daze, before Eden started speaking again.
“If you promise me one thing, I’ll give you what you want.”
Anything, was Seth’s instinctive answer. But that was a grand thing to promise, and he knew better than to be that careless.
“Well, what do you want then, Eden?”
But he couldn’t deny it anymore. More than the thought of money and fame was the immortality that came with it. Souls died physical deaths, but more permanent than that were the metaphysical ones, the death of mind. The death that came when no one remembered you anymore.
Eden smiled, and said, “I want you to let go of it, after this. After you get what you want. To finally go to the place where you belong.”
It wasn’t a grand thing to ask, not really. He noticed the way the souls that surrounded this burial ground came by fewer and further between, the foundation underneath not strong enough to anchor them. Maybe they resolved their hangups on their own, and faded away before they even became firm enough for him to sense them.
Seth turned around to face her. She told him everything. A story of intersecting lines and anger and sadness. Happiness existed in small pockets before they didn’t anymore, and things happened without reason. No, no, Eden corrected, not without reason, but how could she have known at the time? If there existed people that were spectators in their own lives, then reason said that it was only natural that the opposite was also true. That there were people whose position amongst the fabric of life strained against everyone else’s, whether that be because of destiny or power, and every single one of their actions rippled on and on.
Eden was not what he thought she was. Seth knew that all the times he had recognised her presence before, but he didn’t quite realise just how much he was missing. She needed an anchor to stay here, grounded, when she really should have been in the skies above, and she had one.
Come morning his head was spinning. Eden looked at him, content, like a child would. Like the veil of loneliness finally lifted.
The sun was peeking over the horizon but he knew none of that mattered. He was a bundle of thoughts held together by a vision. Even the cold wind from earlier didn’t matter anymore, barely registered. His knees, which would normally ache with a vengeance after sitting on them for so long, didn’t hurt. Eden had disappeared, like she usually did after dawn came, but not before she thanked him, for staying with her.
Seth didn’t understand her words but he had no chance to process them before the shuffle of footsteps came. He tensed, but it was just someone walking by. Seth saw them kneel along a row of tombstones, the ones behind him. He turned around, to see the man now on the earth.
Micah?
And in his hand were violets. The inscription opposite him read, ‘Beloved Brother’.
Seth reached out, only to grab nothing.
Writer – Areeba Zabrina
Editor – Asees Waraich
Artist – Charlotte Zhao
–July 2026–
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