Ethan Greywater's Arc

Chapter 14 of 17

Ethan stepped through the door. The glow swallowed his hand, his arm, his chest. For one breath he felt free. Then something tightened around his ankle and dragged. He looked down. A chain wrapped his leg. It ran back into the haunt, out of the light. He followed it with his eyes and saw her at the other end. She was a woman bound in iron, her chains looping her wrists and her waist. He had seen her before at the edge of the yard, never close. She hauled on the chain now, bare heels dug into the cold ground, pulling him back from the door. "Stay," she said. Her voice cracked like dry wood. "The dead do not leave here. I have tried. The chain always wins." Ethan gripped the doorframe. The light pulled one way. The chain pulled the other. His body stretched between them. "Let go," he said. "I can't." She wept without stopping her pull. "If you go, I am alone. I have been alone so long." He understood then. She did not hate him. She was afraid. The haunt had held her so long she thought the door was a lie. His foot slipped back across the threshold. The glow dimmed around him. He felt the cold of the haunt close over his skin again. If he fought her, they would both fall back. He stopped pulling. He turned toward her instead. "The door is real," he said. "My wife opened it. My brother let me go. It can open for you too." "No one will read my name," she said. "No one carries my grief." Ethan reached down. His fingers found something caught in the chain's links. A broken piece of gravestone, jagged, worn smooth at the edges. Faint letters crossed its face. It had snagged on him when he first crossed the yard, long ago, and ridden with him ever since. He pried it loose and held it out to her. "This is yours," he said. "I carried it without knowing. Someone marked you. Someone wanted you remembered." She stared at the stone. Her pull slackened. For the first time she looked past him, into the light. "Keep looking for your door," he said. "I found mine. Yours is somewhere in there." Her hands opened. The chain uncoiled from his ankle and slid to the ground. She clutched the gravestone shard to her chest and sank to her knees, but she did not weep now. She studied the letters. Ethan turned back to the door. No chain held him. No cold tugged his chest. The light was warm and it reached for him. He stepped through. This time nothing dragged. The glow closed around him like water, gentle and whole. On the far side, Margaret stood waiting. Her hand found his, solid at last. The door sealed behind him with a sound like a held breath let go. He was across. He was free.