Page 7 of All Ghosts Aren’t Dead (The Forgotten #1)

SAMUEL

“ F ilthy. Filthy. Filthy.”

The words were a whisper, a barely audible puff of breath filtered through a half-cracked door, but fuck, they touched me like a brick to the chest.

“The letters run because you’re filthy.”

A noise tore from his chest—low and broken, like pain trying to be polite.

Simon stood beside me, shoulders tense and thumb tearing at the skin of his bottom lip. His eyes were fixed on Blue.

My Blue.

It pissed me off.

“It was the contract,” he whispered, and I nearly fucking throttled him.

My fingers flexed, neck tightening. My pulse point throbbed in time with my heartbeat, just harsh enough to remind myself I had one.

“You should’ve called me.”

Simon’s jaw clicked, and while he offered me his attention, he didn’t look me in the eye.

It wasn’t often I raised my voice or spoke in cutting tones. I rarely had to. Over the years, my authority had become the kind you felt—the kind that lingered in the air, choking and cold.

“I could’ve handled it.” Simon exhaled slowly, his shoulders rolling in the way they did when he wanted to push back.

He wouldn’t.

He knew better.

“Blue’s not the first boy to panic, Sam.”

He wasn’t fucking wrong.

Panic tore through these boys like fire, potent enough to leave claw marks in their skin and breathless sobs in the air. Rage was constant, bone-deep and ever-present, humming beneath their skin like a second pulse.

Some of them suffered in silence, but most of them screamed until their throats were raw, until their voices splintered into something that wasn’t human. A guttural, shaking thing that echoed down the halls like grief with teeth.

The sound of survival.

Simon had walked through hell with nearly all of them. Not as a savior—none of us were saviors—but as something quieter. Steadier.

He’d crouch in doorways with soft eyes and call them back from the edge, whispering until their bodies stopped trembling and they remembered where they were.

Safe.

Simon held them through tremors, sat cross-legged on cold tile floors, and listened as they gasped through memories that’d been warped and carved by pain.

Dozens of boys.

Dozens of breakdowns.

Not an inch of hesitation.

Simon listened as though he was unfeeling, but I knew him well enough to know he felt everything. Hell . The kid buried himself in pain like it were penance… like if he carried enough of theirs, he wouldn’t be forced to face his own.

I recognized that weight.

It settled differently in the bones when it was borrowed, but it crushed you all the same.

“I followed protocol,” Simon said.

Fuck protocol.

Rage curled low in my stomach, and my jaw began to twitch in time with the pounding in my ears.

It wasn’t because Blue was panicking. No. It was because someone else had seen it first.

His knees were folded beneath him, and his body curved forward like he was trying to fold himself in half.

Tips of blond hair brushed the lines in his forehead as he rocked back and forth, his sweater wound tight in his fists.

Words spilled from his lips through the raw split of his voice, one after another, and I felt something twist in me—something wild and instinctive.

Blue was breaking … and I didn’t want to delegate that pain to anyone else.

Not this time.

Not this boy.

Simon shifted beside me, subtle and uncertain. The sides of his throat moved with his swallow, and I watched his shoulders roll back as he waited for orders.

“Go,” I said.

He nodded, the gesture so small and tight it barely moved his neck. His retreat was cautious, each step soft and measured, but this house was old as fuck. The floorboards groaned—an ugly, splintering sound that echoed down the hall and sliced through Blue’s panic like a hot knife.

His head snapped upward, and I could see how damp his eyes were, red-rimmed and swollen, like he’d been clawing at them.

One after the other, his hands reached for his ears, tugging in time with the shallow bursts of breath that slipped past his lips. His chin touched his chest, but his eyes never left mine.

“Samuel.”

A million times my name had been spoken, but never had a boy choked on the syllables like they were glass in his throat.

“I want to stay,” he whispered, and then blinked so hard a tear slid down his cheek.

Jesus Christ.

It ruined me, one goddamn tear split me open like a fault line and shoved something sharp inside.

My lungs seized for a moment, caught somewhere between the echo of his voice and the way his fingers trembled at his ears.

My body shifted forward, like it had made the decision before I had—like his pain had reached out and curled a hand around my spine, pulling.

Blue didn’t look away from me, not once.

The click of my shoes touched the walls, but unlike the rest of the house, there was no echo. Dark-green walls absorbed the sound and held it hostage, like there was no room for anything but this boy’s pain.

Behind me, the door remained open, wide enough to offer him an escape but not so wide it invited anything in.

A glimmer of water ran along his lower lashes, and fuck me , I wanted to catch each drop on the tip of my finger.

One knee and then the other, I lowered myself, slow and deliberate, until the floor met me halfway and we were eye to eye.

Silence stretched between us, and I watched his throat move with his swallow. Lips parting, he made a choked sound before he whispered, “Hello.”

So damn polite .

I smiled. “Hey, sweetheart.”

“You… you came to check on me.”

“I told you I would.”

A noise escaped his throat. “Simon said I could lock the door, but I didn’t want to. I wanted…” He tugged on his ears again. “I wanted you to find me.”

Ah, hell.

“I want to stay, but I… I don’t think I’m allowed to.”

“Who told you that?” I demanded.

“Simon.”

I’ll kill him.

“Simon said I have to sign the contract to stay, and I want to, but I…”

“Blue.”

He stilled, lips parted and fingers frozen on his ears.

“It doesn’t matter if you sign it.”

He blinked. “But…”

“I mean it,” I said, softer this time, swaying a little closer, just enough that my voice could slide past whatever thoughts were strangling him.

“The contract is… symbolic. For you. For us.” I hesitated, jaw working as I searched for the right words. “It’s the closest thing we can offer to a ceremony—something that says you belong here.”

Gray eyes widened, darting over every surface of my body, like he was searching for the lie in my promise, like he expected my kindness to blend into cruelty at any second.

Hell, if that didn’t make me want to kill every man who had ever punished him.

“It’s not about ink or paper. It’s just about giving you something official. A way to feel like this place is yours too. A promise, of sorts.”

Blue’s throat worked around a sound that didn’t quite make it out.

“A promise?” he echoed, barely above a whisper. “Even if I don’t earn it?”

“You don’t earn promises, Blue. You accept them. That’s the difference between this place and the one you came from.”

He blinked hard, another tear slipping down the bridge of his nose.

“Nobody is going to make you leave.”

His breath caught, as though words snagged somewhere deep in his chest and were struggling to climb out. Fingers twitched at his ear, and then they moved from his body and brushed against my knee.

My eyes slammed shut. I zeroed in on the place we were connected. It was almost nothing—just a faint, barely-there flutter from a fingertip or two—but it was enough.

Enough to knock the air from my lungs and send my pulse into a riot.

Jaw clenched and nostrils flaring, I fought the urge to flinch, but oh, I wanted to. My body lit up like a live wire pressed to an open flame, every nerve trembling from a contact I never allowed.

Even so, I didn’t pull away, because he wasn’t trying to touch me. Not really. He was trying not to drown, and fuck if I’d let him.

Blue fell quiet, his breathing ragged, and I thought maybe that tiny thread of contact was enough to steady him. No . A mere blink and his fingers curled back in, retreating into his own body before they wrapped around his throat as though he could keep everything from spilling out.

“Impurity is contagious,” he whispered, voice raw and shredded. “It’s a rot. It’s just… inside me. It’s why the letters don’t make any sense. God made them for the pure, and I’m not pure, Samuel. I’m not. I wanted?—”

“Blue.”

“I can’t stay.” He shook his head violently, tearing at his neck and swiping at his tears like they burned the soft skin of his cheeks.

“I thought I could pretend, but lying is wrong. I… I don’t want God to turn his face from you, Samuel.

I don’t want my evil to touch you. I don’t want to ruin you. ”

Sweetheart.

“I’m already ruined, Blue baby.”

“You don’t understand!” His chest hitched, breath stuttering like it didn’t know where to go, like it was trying to flee the body that held it. “Corruption spreads. It infects good men. If you’re not careful, the filth inside me will crawl into you.”

I swore under my breath and closed the last inch between us, settling when I felt his uneven breaths against my jaw.

“The letters run. I… I try to catch them, but they slip. They always slip.” His fingers moved again, erratic, clawing at his skin like he could tear away the guilt. “It’s because I’m filthy. I cleanse, I swear I do, but it never helps.”

It hit me then—not like lightning, but a slow, bitter ache that spread down the divots of my spine and rooted itself in my gut.

The letters run…

Christ.

It was common enough that I’d seen it before—in files, classrooms, and boys who mistook confusion for failure. Boys who called themselves broken, not because they were, but because someone convinced them they should be.

Blue didn’t even know what it was, just that it made him unclean.

Was that why he killed his father? Because some sick fuck twisted scripture into shame, used letters like weapons, and called it salvation?

Goddamn it.

The bloodied hammer and fucked-up skulls made more sense now, but it wasn’t enough.

John Bensen taught his son the letters ran because they were afraid, instead of showing him how to slow them the fuck down.

“There is nothing wrong with the way your brain works, sweetheart. You’re not evil. You’re just… different.”

His lips parted, but no words came out.

“There are a lot of people in the world whose brains work like yours. People who read and think differently, and not a single fucking one of them are impure.”

His whole frame wavered, like maybe the words hit something soft inside of him. “But Father said…”

“I don’t give a fuck what your father said.”

His breath hitched, eyes darting to the ceiling like he was waiting for me to be struck down.

“He lied to you, Blue. He lied for so long and so hard that you started to mistake pain with salvation. That doesn’t make you filthy.”

Shining like wet glass, his eyes touched mine, shoulders curling inward like he didn’t know how to feel relief. “I’m clean now? I can stay?”

The question wrapped around my ribs and pulled.

“You can stay, sweetheart.”

“And… there are no punishments?”

“No punishments,” I promised.

No punishments…

No prophets…

No fucking God but the one I’d become if anyone tried to hurt him again.