Page 4 of Ghoul Me, Maybe

ELIAS

I should’ve stayed on the shore.

That’s the thought rolling around my skull as I stalk the cobbled path behind her, a shadow too stubborn to fade.

She walks fast, shoulders tight, muttering to herself with the kind of anger only fear can dress up as bravado. I stay a dozen paces back, close enough to feel the thread tying us together—thin, brittle, but humming like a live wire.

I can’t explain it. Don’t want to.

But when she bolted from Wrecker’s Bay, the part of me that’s still man rose up and followed. The sea didn’t pull me back. The wreck didn’t groan. The tide let me go—for now.

Lowtide Bluffs isn’t how I remember it. Not really.

The town’s grown and shrunk in strange ways. Brick where there used to be stone. Neon signs flickering above windows. Sounds I don’t recognize—buzzing, beeping, a metallic rhythm like a heartbeat that’s forgotten how to sleep.

People pass by her without seeing me. It used to be a curse. Now it’s a mercy.

Because I’m not ready for anyone but her.

She ducks into a shop with a little bell that chimes above the door. I drift close and pause outside, fingertips brushing the glass. It feels real . That’s new. I grip the doorframe, testing it. My fingers leave a faint frost behind, but I can hold it.

The bell doesn’t ring when I step inside.

The place smells like burnt sugar and old books. There’s a line of jars on the counter—things floating in them. Probably decorative. Hopefully.

“Large dark roast,” she says to the woman behind the counter, who’s wearing a half-shaved head and an apron that reads: ESPRESSO YOURSELF .

“You look like you saw a ghost,” the barista says, snorting.

Sienna gives a laugh so dry it could cut glass. “If I start crying, it’s just because I had to come back to this cursed toilet bowl of a town.”

“I’ll add extra espresso.”

They chat like people who used to be friends and aren’t anymore but can still fake it. I keep to the shadows near the shelves, watching Sienna tuck her hair behind her ear like it doesn’t matter that her hands are shaking.

I see her.

Not just with ghost eyes.

With real ones.

She looks older than the last time I saw her, though I don’t remember that either—just the echo of something familiar. Like when a ship’s bell rings in fog and you know it’s close but can’t find the shape of it.

Her voice pulls me forward. She’s talking about keys and maps and old wrecks like she’s trying to make them sound ridiculous. But the weight in her words says she knows damn well this isn’t just legend.

She grabs her coffee and heads out, muttering a thanks. I follow. Again.

She cuts through a narrow alley between the bookstore and the fish market, and I see things that make me stop cold.

A poster flapping in the wind—colorful, bold, stupidly cheerful: GHOST TOURS, NIGHTLY!

A man in a headset shouting into a glowing rectangle that flashes like lightning in his hand.

A sign spinning above a shop that smells like burnt meat and grease— “Big Bite Burger” .

“What the hell happened to the world?” I mutter.

A couple kids on scooters zoom past me, shouting into the air at no one. One clips through my shoulder and lets out a shiver.

“Did you feel that?” the girl says, pulling over.

“Just wind,” her friend shrugs. “Come on.”

They vanish.

I keep walking. Slowly. I can feel the tug, the connection. Every time Sienna turns a corner, it yanks me with her like the tide pulling driftwood.

She stops outside a narrow brick building and pulls a set of keys from her coat. Not the relic key—the mundane ones. She fumbles with the lock, muttering, “Piece of shit town, piece of shit lock, piece of shit ghosts.”

“You should oil it,” I say.

Her back goes ramrod straight.

I freeze.

She doesn’t turn.

Just breathes. Slow and sharp.

“I know I’m not crazy,” she says, eyes fixed on the door. “I know I saw you.”

“You did.”

My voice is raw. Like it had to claw its way through my throat to reach her.

She turns slowly, eyes scanning the alley. “Where are you?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

A beat.

Then she laughs—short, bitter. “Of course you don’t. Why would this be simple?”

I step forward into the dim light. My boots scrape the gravel. I’m not fully solid, but I’m not mist either.

Her breath catches.

She doesn’t run this time.

But she doesn’t move toward me either.

“I don’t hurt people,” I say.

She narrows her eyes. “You’re a ghost.”

“Something like that.”

“You knew my name.”

“I… remembered it. Not clearly. Just enough.”

“Who are you?”

“Elias Thorn.”

Her lips part, just barely.

“The Captain ?” she whispers.

The word tastes like memory.

She’s heard stories.

Everyone in Lowtide Bluffs has.

But now the story’s looking her dead in the eye.

Without another word, I step back into the night, dissipating from sight. Tonight, I’ll visit her again. Gift her a small token of my past. But for now, she can make her way back home.

And wonder just what she’s gotten herself into.