Ethan Greywater's Arc

Chapter 7 of 10

Ethan held the wedding band in his fist. He knew it led to his wife. But he had no name to call through the glowing door, no face he could hold. Silas had buried her deepest of all. The ring was a thread with no end. So Ethan left the grave and walked toward the one place the haunt kept sealed. His childhood home stood at the edge of the yard, its windows dark, rough boards nailed across the front. He had passed it a hundred times without stopping. Now he pressed his hand against a board. It did not stop him. He stepped through the wood into the dark inside. Dust lay thick over everything. But one corner was clean, as if someone still kept it. A small table held a folded cloth, a yellowed letter, and nothing else. Ethan knelt. The cloth was a handkerchief, white, stitched with tiny flowers along the edge. His fingers remembered the feel of it before his mind did. She had carried it. She had pressed it into his hand the morning he left for the yard. The memory cracked open. He saw her at the door of this house, worried, folding the cloth into his palm. "Come back to me," she had said. He had promised he would. He never did. He set the handkerchief down and picked up the letter. The ink had faded, but her hand was steady and clear. He read the last line. Forever yours. Below it, she had signed her name. Ethan said it aloud. The name filled his mouth like something he had always known. The whole of her rushed back. Her laugh. The gray in her eyes. The sound of her voice saying his name across a room. She was not a stranger waiting behind a door. She was his wife, and he had loved her, and he had forgotten even that. The house shifted around him. The dust lifted. Through the dark walls he saw the far shape of the great haunted house on the hill, its crooked windows glowing yellow. The door waited inside it. Now he had something to carry there. Ethan folded the letter and the handkerchief together. He stood. For the first time since he woke in the yard, he was not reaching for a thing he had lost. He was holding it. But the name alone was only breath. He understood that now. He had called Sammy's name and reached him. He had to call his wife the same way, across the door that led out of the haunt. He did not know if she could still hear him. He did not know if a dead man's voice could cross that far. He only knew the thread ran straight now, from his hand to her. He stepped out of the boarded house and turned toward the glowing door.