Page 28 of Ghoul Me, Maybe

SIENNA

T he old house smells like salt, damp wood, and memory.

Every step I take kicks up dust and something else—something intangible.

Like grief woven into the wallpaper. Like voices in the grain of the floorboards.

I run my fingers along the doorframe where someone once marked my height with a pencil.

The notches are faint now, barely there.

Like they know they’re from another life.

“Watch your step,” Elias calls from inside. “There’s a murder hole right in the middle of the hallway.”

“It’s not a murder hole. It’s a sunken board.”

“It’s the kind of hole that eats ankles.”

I roll my eyes and step over it.

The place is wrecked—collapsed ceiling tiles in the living room, mold creeping along the bathroom tile, and half a raccoon’s nest in what used to be the pantry. But it’s still standing. And that counts for something in a world where everything I know has a tendency to wash away.

We spend the morning stripping out the rot. Elias handles the demolition with quiet focus, using strength that still surprises me. He swings the crowbar like he means it, every pull of muscle reminding me that this man—this miracle —is real now. Solid. Here.

He’s shirtless by noon, which is less helpful and more distracting.

“I swear to God,” I mutter, tossing a chunk of drywall into the dumpster outside, “if you keep flexing while swinging, I’m charging tourists.”

“You’d make a killing.”

“You’d make me trip over that murder hole.”

He smirks and winks, and I throw a paint stir stick at his head. He dodges, barely.

Later, I tackle the old study—Dad’s favorite room.

The wallpaper here is still vaguely yellow with age. The shelves are warped from water damage but still standing. In the corner, under a tarp and some mildewed books, I find it.

His journal.

It’s leather-bound, cracked at the spine, and tied shut with fraying twine like he thought someone might try to steal his secrets. And I guess someone did. Me.

I sit down cross-legged on the dusty floor and open it.

And then everything else disappears.

He wrote in loops and slashes, his scrawl impatient and brilliant, just like he was. Some entries are nothing but tide measurements and cryptic notes about ley lines and “energy responses” from the beach.

Others are about me.

March 12th:

The sea was calm today. Sienna laughed when she found a shell that looked like a tiny horn. She said it was for summoning sea dragons. God help anyone who ever tries to tell her she can’t command the ocean.

I press my fingers to the page, smudging the ink. My eyes sting.

There are dozens more—entries about the relic, yes, and the dangers he saw coming—but more often, it’s just him documenting a man trying to protect the one thing he could never keep safe enough.

Me.

I don’t cry pretty. I snort. I hiccup. My whole body shudders like it’s trying to let the grief crawl out through my bones. Elias finds me like that, curled in the corner of the study with the journal pressed to my chest.

He doesn’t say anything.

He kneels behind me and just wraps his arms around me from behind, pulling me into him. No demands. No questions. Just breath and quiet.

“He wanted to destroy it,” I whisper, voice cracking. “The relic. But he didn’t. Because he couldn’t bear to lose you. ”

Elias presses his lips to my hair. “And you brought me back anyway.”

I nod. “Because I finally understand.”

That night, we sleep on a mattress tossed on the floor in what will be our bedroom—no electricity yet, no paint, no hot water. Just us and a space that smells like hope and mildew.

The next morning, I hang the first photo on the wall. It’s not us. It’s not even Dad.

It’s the wreck.

Elias cocks his head at it. “Really?”

“It’s the beginning,” I say. “We wouldn’t be here without it.”

He steps closer, wraps an arm around my waist. “Then we’ll build something stronger than it ever was.”

And maybe that’s what this is.

Not just rebuilding a house.

But building a life.

I find him outside with his sleeves rolled up and sawdust in his hair.

There’s a nail between his teeth and sweat on his brow. He’s barefoot in the dirt, barefoot and absolutely at home, hammering planks into a frame that will eventually be a porch. Or a deck. Or maybe just a very determined platform—we haven’t decided yet.

He doesn’t notice me at first. He’s humming.

Not a ghost’s hum, not the eerie kind that echoes in dreams.

Just... a guy, building something.

Living.

I lean against the doorway and watch him for a while. The rhythm of his work is hypnotic. Thud. Tap. Tap. Breathe. His muscles move beneath his shirt like memory, like instinct. This body might be new, but he knows how to use it. How to work until the ache becomes a kind of music.

Eventually, he senses me and looks up, brushing a hand over his forehead.

“You’re staring,” he says.

“You’re glowing,” I reply, teasing. “Or possibly on fire.”

He grins and wipes his palms on his jeans. “I missed this. Not this exact thing,” he adds, gesturing vaguely at the porch. “But doing something that stays. Something I can see and touch and know I made happen.”

I step closer, dropping to sit beside the toolbox. “So, what? I’ve lost you to carpentry now?”

“Maybe,” he says, quiet. “I’ve been a ghost. I’ve been fury and tether and memory. This? Hammer, nail, wood—it doesn’t lie. Doesn’t vanish when the tide comes in. Doesn’t pull me back under.”

He pauses, glancing at his hands.

“There’s peace in this.”

He doesn’t have to say what this means. I know.

Peace in being . Peace in staying .

I look at his arms, his jaw, his back. He still carries the scars—emotional ones, invisible but ever-present. I carry mine, too. But they don’t ache like they used to. They don’t define us anymore.

They’re just part of the architecture.

“What are we building, exactly?” I ask, watching him fit another beam into place.

“A future,” he says without hesitation. “Brick by goddamn brick.”

I laugh, short and breathy. “That’s ambitious.”

He gives me a crooked smile. “So are you.”