By Ava Kevitt
TW: death, mention of violence
They had appeared at the edges of her vision when she was still just a baby, crawling on the floor.
Buzzing around her head like flies, her childmind would simply call them ugly monsters. She didn’t know that most people weren’t able to see them. Not until one tried to touch her.
That one had been particularly ugly, with skin waxy like paper, slowly sliding off his face. He had followed her home from school one day, materializing on the other side of the street. Ophélie had picked up her pace once she saw his skin land in a puddle at his feet, but every time she turned around, he would be closer to her.
It wasn’t until she was almost to her house that he lunged for her, a gummy smile taking over what was left of his face. She had bolted for the door, screaming bloody murder until the neighbors came to check on her. They had assured her there was no one there, but she could still hear him, scratching at the windows and calling her name. Even after her father came home, the man was still out in the yard, smiling at her.
Her grandmother had seen them too. Les fantômes, she called them. She had lived intimately with death, and still, she would hold younger Ophélie’s hand and tell her, “There is no evil worse than what you will find in the living.”
That wasn’t always true, but she understood what her grandmother had meant. And everything sounded better with her hair being gently brushed and her grandmother whispering in her ear about the power of her whited-out pupils.
But that was when they still lived on the island, and her grandmother had been alive to tell her the secrets of the world.
Now, Ophélie had no one but the dead.
***
“You’re late, again.”
Ophélie ignored the stone building looming over her, choosing to focus on the two men at its steps. She wasn’t a fan of what awaited her inside King’s Library.
“I’m sorry, Papa, but these streets still confuse me,” she answered. He didn’t need to know she still dreaded walking this city that was not her home. She was too old for that now.
Her father shook his head at her. “Ma chérie, that excuse has grown old.” Pulling her aside, he whispered, “The dead waits for no one. You should know better.”
She bit back a retort. They wait for me. They have to.
“Young lady.” That was Mr. Richards, the janitor of the library. He was the sorry soul tasked with letting her in after the library closed. She could tell he was uncomfortable with this whole ordeal, but that didn’t stop him from doing his job. As long as his boss, the owner of this forsaken place, got his money’s worth. “How much longer will this take?” he asked, never looking her in the eyes.
“Could be days, could be weeks. Your library is drowning in them.”
Both the men shuddered at her response, something that always confused Ophélie. They acted as if this was something that was happening to them.
Her father clapped his hands, startling Mr. Richards. “Well, let’s not waste any more moonlight. We’ll come back for you at sunrise, yeah?”
She looked out to the city beyond these steps, the city that never slept. Even now, jazz and blues seeped out of every window, as though music was enough to keep what lurked on the streets at bay. Maybe it was. Maybe the children were being gently tucked into bed tonight, with nothing creeping into their minds but sweet dreams, and their parents could pretend that the living was all they knew.
Everyone this far south had heard the stories growing up, folk tales about a vengeful woman in white, or creatures with glowing eyes out on the water. According to her father, their superstition was the only thing financing their stay in the city. But when nightfall came, everyone else got to put their fears to bed.
Ophélie had never gotten that luxury. Leaving her father on the steps, she entered King’s Library.
***
Louis was the first one tonight.
He had seen her as soon as she walked through the doors, trailing behind her as she weaved through the aisles of books, looking for a chair. She would at least like to be sitting for this.
“Are you ready?” she asked him.
He startled as if he was the one seeing a ghost. “You can see me?”
Ophélie merely held out her hands in answer. Louis had well been on his way to the other side before he passed, his voice straining at the edges even now. When she took his wrinkled hands, she was glad to find that it hadn’t hurt. She simply drifted off, as if she was falling into a dreamless sleep. When she awoke, Louis was gone.
The other ones weren’t as peaceful.
There was Jeannette, who had fallen off a balcony and hit her head. Ophélie had seen stars for a while after that. There was Paulie, who had only been five when he drowned in his sister’s pool. He was still crying when he touched her. She didn’t like to remember their names, but she still died with them all the same.
King’s Library had Creepers too. She didn’t know their actual name, and she had never gotten the chance to ask her grandmother about them before she passed.
The Creepers tended to lurk in the shadows, sometimes coming up behind her just to give her a good scare before they passed. Sometimes they didn’t touch her at all, but just watched. She hated those ones the most. She wasn’t sure if they were fully human or not. Some would look human until you reached their eyes, and then there’d be nothing there. Some were too warped in black shadow to tell.
Ophélie knew there was one hovering behind her now, just watching from atop a bookshelf.
“Excuse me, miss?”
She damn near jumped out of her seat. With thoughts preoccupied by the Creeper, she hadn’t even noticed that someone had approached her. Not just someone, but a Lifer. She peered closer at the girl in front of her, who had cropped tawny hair, but more importantly, whose abdomen was entirely covered in blood.
“Merde,” Ophélie cursed. “What happened to you? We should take you to a hospital right?” With that much blood, she was surprised the girl was still standing.
The girl only laughed. “I doubt they’ll be of much help to me now.”
Only after closer inspection did she realize her mistake. Despite appearing so vibrant, full of color and looking close to solid, she could feel the death radiating off of this girl. Whatever thread that had tied her to life had been cut. Recently, too.
“You need to touch me,” Ophélie prompted.
“Excuse me?”
“In order to pass on,” she clarified. This conversation was already going on too long; she never talked to them this much.
But the girl took a step backward instead. “That doesn’t make any sense. And besides, I don’t want to move on.”
She furrowed her brows at this. The dead didn’t usually put up this much of a fight. They were already dead; wasn’t that the most inescapable thing?
“Why not?” Her mouth found the words before she could think better of it.
The girl motioned to the sticky substance covering her. Her own blood. “I’m not moving on until I find my killer.”
***
If it were up to her, Ophélie would leave this entire building and city behind, and be on the first boat back home. But that wasn’t the deal her and her father made, and it’s not like her home would take her back anyway.
So instead, she got to deal with talkative ghosts who refused to pass on.
“My name’s Theodora, in case you wanted to know.”
“I didn’t.”
For nights on end, their conversations went like that. She didn’t answer her questions, but Theodora asked them anyway. She didn’t respond to her, hoping she would leave and stop scaring off the rest of the dead, but she kept talking anyway.
“And they turned my favorite tea room into a hair salon? I’ve only been dead for a week.”
Ophélie sighed. “Look, I can’t be of any help to you, not until you decide to move on. And besides, I’m trying to do a job here.”
She expected resistance to this, like last time, but instead Theodora eyed her curiously. “You know, this whole gimmick of yours doesn’t make sense to me. What are you, a medium? A psychic? We got hundreds of those crawling around this city, most of them full of it.”
“I’m not anything but a middleman.” It was her turn to get defensive. “And, I can see you just fine, can’t I?”
Unfortunately, the ghost seemed utterly delighted at this response. Ophélie felt blood rushing to her cheeks, and she regretted saying anything at all.
“Touché,” Theodora admitted. “So what, I just touch you and miraculously go to heaven?”
“I don’t know where you go, it’s not like I get to follow.” She couldn’t help the bitter edge cutting into her voice. There was no power in her gift, not when all she had was unanswered questions and a father who lorded it over her head.
“But you’ve never wondered?” Theodora pushed. “I mean, how many have touched you, how many are wherever they are now because of you? And what about the dead that don’t find you?”
She swallowed the bile rising in her throat. Her grandmother had promised to come back to her, but it had been years since she died and they were chased off the island. She still looked for her grandmother in every ghost she touched. Her father had promised her answers in exchange for time and work. But she had yet to find her and he had yet to provide any.
Maybe there was none to give.
“If I promise to help you find your killer, will you stop asking so many damn questions?”
Ophélie finally got a smile out of the girl.
***
She had forgotten what the burn of the sun had felt like on her skin. Her father had been confused when she didn’t immediately go to bed when he picked her up at sunrise, but he still let her go. She was off the clock anyway.
Ophélie and Theodora had figured out pretty quickly that they weren’t going to solve any murder in the library. They were able to find her birth records in the archives, but no death records and nothing in the newspapers about her disappearance. There were missing persons reports for runaway teens dating back almost a decade, but none of the girls were Theodora. Still, someone had to know she was missing.
“You really don’t remember who killed you?” Ophélie had asked her.
Theodora only shrugged. “It was dark. I couldn’t see his face.”
“His? So it was a man?”
“Yes.” The conviction with which she had said it sent a chill down her spine. If they did solve this and Theodora finally agreed to move on, Ophélie would have to experience that kind of death herself.
Sometimes, she wondered if it would be easier to just let Theodora go, unleashed onto the city. She wouldn’t be working overtime playing detective, and she wouldn’t have to experience that kind of death once the ghost agreed to pass over. But, if she was being honest with herself, that’s what her father would have done. And he was the biggest coward she knew.
The girls had travelled to the outskirts of the city now, where a blue run down house sat just before the bayous started. Confirming with the ghost trailing behind her, she knocked on the door. An older woman with tired eyes answered.
“Who sent you?” she asked, looking past her.
“She told me you were her mother. Theodora, I mean.” Ophélie cringed even as she said it. She didn’t talk to the living much.
“What?” the woman’s eyes crinkled with confusion. “You’re one of Danielle’s girls, aren’t you? Well, you can tell her I don’t need any more parenting advice. Especially not from her.”
“I don’t know any Danielle. But I do know Theodora. She’s your daughter, right?”
The woman, this ghost’s mother, lost some of the rigidity in her shoulders. “How about I pour us some sweet tea.”
They stayed on the front porch, with Louisa, that was her name, still being weary of Ophélie and the sunglasses that hid her strange eyes.
“So, you know Theodora?” Louisa asked, something burning in her eyes. “Can you tell me where she is?”
“Sorry?” The word just fell out, breathless and unsure.
“My girl, you know her, she’s just a little troubled. That’s all. She does this sometimes, but she always comes back.” She didn’t know if she was reassuring Ophélie or herself. “I don’t care what the other parents say. My girl will be back. And you know where she is staying, don’t you?”
Silence descended upon them like a swarm of heat, stifling and unbearable. Theodora’s presence was so tangible she was surprised Louisa couldn’t feel it.
Sometimes, her condition felt more like a curse than anything else. Ophélie tried to ask the sky once, right after her grandmother died and the neighbors came crawling with their witch accusations. Her father had found her, and pursing his lips, told her she was praying to a deaf god.
“I don’t know where Theodora is staying,” she finally answered. “But I had met her at King’s Library awhile ago. Do you know if she went there often?”
“The library?” Louisa echoed. Her eyes had glassed over once Ophélie had fractured her hope. But, she still had a murder to solve. “Yes, she always did love that place. She’s a big reader, that one.”
Theodora’s mother wasn’t even looking at her anymore. She was looking past her, as if Theodora was going to walk down the street any minute now. As if the ghost of her dead daughter wasn’t standing on this very porch. She could feel it then, the despair radiating from the girl next to her. The girl whose hourglass had been shattered into a million broken pieces.
They always believed that death was supposed to be fair. That it was supposed to be like returning home, a place of rest, where your soul could release into hundreds of butterflies, shimmering in the light. A place where the better things are.
Ophélie supposed she had wanted to believe it too. But looking into Louisa’s sad eyes and feeling Theodora slip away from the porch, she wasn’t sure how she could.
***
When she returned to King’s Library at dusk, it was only Mr. Richards who waited for her.
“Finally on time, girl,” he offered by way of greeting.
She merely frowned at him. By what Ophélie learned today, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with the janitor. “Where’s my father?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Mr. Richards grunted. “He’s not my boss.”
It wasn’t entirely unusual for her father to disappear like this. Thinking about the man who had brought her to this wretched city, she recalled the nice clothes he wore now, nicer than anything they had ever owned back home. That was thanks to her. He might’ve blamed her for them getting exiled from the island, but some part of him had always wanted to move here. Perhaps he enjoyed its wretchedness.
She moved to enter the library, but Mr. Richards grabbed her arm, hard enough to get her to stop. Ophélie leveled a glare at him.
“You know, the strangest thing happened today,” he began, ignoring her protests. “A woman showed up, just as I was taking my break. Said she was looking for her daughter. What was her name?”
The old man pretended to think, but she had no doubt he remembered the name just fine.
“Ah! Theodora. That’s right. Looking for a girl named Theodora,” Mr. Richards gave her a toothy grin, like this was the most amusing conversation he had all day.
Ophélie forced a noncommittal hum. “And what’d you tell her?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” He tightened his hold on her arm. “But I’ll tell you this, girl. I don’t know what those things,” he spit the word, “do to your mind, if they talk to you, if you listen. But down here, we know better than to bother the dead. Now, my boss might think a cleansing of the spirits will be good for business, but I know better than to trust little women like yourself. All you folk do is stir up trouble for the living.”
He might’ve held onto her arm until it popped off if it weren’t for the strong wind that blew open the library doors.
Relinquishing her, Mr. Richards dipped his head. “Go on, then. Your friends are waiting.”
***
Ophélie had never been so glad to be in King’s Library. Theodora had been waiting in the entrance, and both girls heaved a sigh of relief when the doors closed on the janitor’s face. Even the sound of the lock turning couldn’t dispel her respite.
“I thought he would never let you go,” Theodora finally broke the silence.
“You heard that?”
The girl laughed, a warm sound in the otherwise cold room. “Where do you think that wind came from? I was proud of myself with that one.”
Ophélie allowed herself a smile. She had never met a ghost who could open doors like that, or who would use that ability to help her. But recalling Mr. Richards’ words forced the smile from her lips. She had always wondered why Theodora had returned to the library instead of anywhere else in the city. There wasn’t a rule book for where the dead end up. Some tend to return to places that held fond memories for them. Some aimlessly follow their loved ones around. Some ghosts are never found, such as her own grandmother.
But those who experience particularly violent deaths, they are often drawn to the place they died or to their killers. It wasn’t until she talked to Louisa that Ophélie had been sure.
“You think it was him, don’t you?”
Theodora had been studying her, and perhaps her thoughts had been written all over her face. Still, she didn’t understand the question.
“Did that not sound like a confession?” she asked instead of answering.
The ghost took a long time to respond. “It sounded like a superstitious man who was afraid of what would happen if the dead could talk. But that’s most people in this city.”
“Your mother,” Ophélie softened her words. “Louisa said you came here often. To this library. When you ran away, maybe you came here again. And, maybe, that’s where he found you. He’s the janitor here, you know. He works late. Maybe he found you, and—”
She trailed off, unwilling to say the next part. Theodora had gone completely still, but Ophélie could feel her own heart beating like a hummingbird against her chest.
Finally the dam broke. “I don’t know! I thought I would remember once we started digging, but I don’t. How can I not remember the last face I saw? The face that took me from this life?”
Ophélie moved to hug Theodora, a natural instinct to comfort someone who was hurting. An instinct that would have been perfectly reasonable had they been normal people. But Theodora was not flesh and bones. And Ophélie could not touch her. The ghost watched helplessly as she forced herself to step backwards, both of them realizing there was nothing here for the two of them.
“What do I do?” Theodora asked.
“We can keep looking,” she reasoned. “There’s a lot we haven’t found yet. School records, his work records. Maybe we could talk to someone else who works here, maybe they saw something-”
“No,” Theodora interrupted. “I mean, what do I do? I thought having answers would bring me peace, but,” she faltered. “I’m dead. Whatever life I had, it’s gone. So,” she motioned between them, “Should I stay or should I go?”
Ophélie had failed, utterly and horribly. She didn’t know how to comfort the dead, and she wished more than anything that her grandmother was here, right now, to show her how. She wished her grandmother could show her a sign that she had found peace, wherever she was. A sign that there was something more for them.
A loud crashing sound from downstairs saved her from answering.
***
They followed the noises all the way to the archives, where the newspapers and records they had found the previous night had been scattered across the room. Briefly, she wondered if the Creeper was down here, causing this chaos. But that was before she saw the shadow of a man in the corner.
“Papa?”
He finally turned around. “Mon trésor.”
Ophélie could feel Theodora at her back, getting antsy, but her father was her problem and hers alone. “Is something wrong? Was I not supposed to come in tonight?”
“Of course,” he cocked his head at her, smiling. “We never leave a job unfinished.”
We. Like this was something they both did. As far as she was aware, it was only ever her and her grandmother who possessed this ability. Her father had never seen a thing. Still, she tried to reason with him.
“I know, but it’s bad in here. The dead, I think,” she paused. Her father never liked to hear the details. “I know someone was murdered here.”
Several beats passed, and Ophélie waited. Waited for some semblance of surprise or realization to overtake his face. It never came.
“My dear, really?” he said, drawing out the words. “How do you think we have stayed in business? Where there’s death, there’s money to be made.”
It felt like someone had thrown a stone down her gut. She kept waiting for it to hit the bottom, but it never did. Theodora was close to her now, whispering something urgently in her ear, but Ophélie’s ears were ringing too loudly to hear anything. The puzzle pieces were all there, they had all fallen into place, and yet she couldn’t make sense of the picture.
“I didn’t realize you were such the detective,” her father continued, picking up the newspapers one by one. “So, who told you? Was it Samantha? Or was it that damn Leslie?”
He was creeping closer to her, something worse than hatred burning in his eyes. Where had she seen those names before?
“No, don’t tell me,” he said laughing. “It was Theodora, wasn’t it? That girl sure was a fighter. I bet she’s here right now, huh?”
“It was you,” the words came out slowly, like they burned her tongue to say it. Ophélie finally heard what Theodora was now screaming in her ear. She was telling her to run.
But where would she even go?
“I made the best out of what I got,” he seethed, grabbing her arm just like Mr. Richards had. What was it with men being so careless with their touch? “The women in my life, my home, were all crazy in the head. What was I supposed to do? They ran me off the island because of you! I needed something. And I got it. Oh, if our neighbors back home could see me now. They would have never thought to mess with me. Never!”
He was yelling now, and shaking her angrily. She thought back to when these things first began to plague her. No one else had been able to see them, but she had. The gory, the tired, the young, the old. Some missing limbs, some missing memories. Some kind, some vengeful. Every facet of humanity, she had seen and let them bleed her dry.
But, right now, she would have preferred to look at any of them instead of her own father.
“You’re a dangerous thing,” he said calmly. “I’ve just realized that now. And we can’t have you spilling the secrets of the dead.”
She wasn’t sure how he knew. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he had just meant to give her a good scare. But he pushed her roughly then, forcing her to stumble back several steps. Right into Theodora.
The girls locked eyes as flesh collided with soft air. She looked at where their hands met, one solid and one transparent, with horror. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. But Theodora was already slipping away, and Ophélie felt it, low in her abdomen. A pain so deep that she couldn’t help screaming out. There was nothing to hold onto, no ghost, no chair, so she fell to the ground. Another one, so visceral that it could have been her own blood dripping onto the floor. But there was nothing there.
She tried to find Theodora from where she lay on the floor, but her ghost was gone. Darkness was creeping in at the edges, and in her peripheral she saw flashes of memory. Memories that did not belong to her.
An old man laying in a hospital bed, holding hands with a woman. Both were crying. A woman in her kitchen, singing softly to her cat. A child running in the grass, giggling as his mother chased him around. And there was Theodora, reading a book in her favorite tea room, appearing beautifully and wonderfully alive. Finally, she saw her grandmother, watching a younger Ophélie light the fires in their home on the island. They had done that every night, as if that could fend off the darkness in her eyes.
“The better things are right here,” she gasped through the pain, not caring who was listening. “We’ve already found them. We just have to learn how to hold onto them.”
It slithered into view then, the Creeper she knew had been watching this entire time. Perhaps this was the sign she had been looking for all along. She forced herself to do something she had never tried before. Ophélie locked eyes with it. At least, where she thought the Creeper’s eyes should have been.
An understanding seemed to pass between them then, two creatures who were alive and dead and everything in between. She pointed slowly to her father, whose eyes lit up in alarm. He should be scared.
Ophélie didn’t let herself black out until she heard her father scream.
That would have to be enough.
Author Bio
Ava Kevitt is a third year undergraduate student at Emerson College in Boston, studying Writing, Literature, and Publishing with a minor in History. She keeps herself busy with student-run literary magazines and working at the library. Apart from writing, Ava enjoys all things books, travel, nature, animals, and of course, brunch with friends.
Instagram/TikTok: @avathefriendlywriterPortfolio: I don’t currently have a writing portfolio but more of my work can be found at this link: https://linktr.ee/avakevitt
