━━━ ꧁ད ✶ ཌ꧂ ━━━

CHAPTER 06

━━━ ꧁ད ✶ ཌ꧂ ━━━

I dropped my backpack on the floor. He was a ghost who came to stay, but for obvious reasons, not to sleep.

The air escaped from my lungs, and suddenly I felt a little dizzy.

I didn't need a ghost, nor did I need all the circus that came along with him. My life was fine as it was.

"Are you feeling well?" he asked cheerfully. He seemed concerned about my expression, but in the darkness, he couldn't discern any anomalies, or could he?

"No," I admitted in a broken whisper. Of course, I didn't feel well. He was talking to me after everything that happened.

"Do you want a glass of water? I could..."

"No," I repeated as I walked past him, moving a little better than before, though mechanically.

After reaching the second door in my room, I turned around to find that he had followed me. In fact, he had almost bumped into me and stopped so close that I could feel his breath against my nose.

"Can I have a moment alone?" I mustered the courage to ask, and he, as if performing an elegant dance, stepped back with his hands behind his back.

I entered the bathroom as quickly as I could, closed the door behind me, and turned on the light. I was trembling from head to toe.

In front of the mirror, I discovered a red mark on my neck, which brought back chilling memories of what had happened moments ago.

I almost died of suffocation, and I still couldn't understand anything.

"Zara," he pronounced from the other side, and I hugged myself tightly. "How many lights are there in your house? I counted some, but I'm not entirely sure."

Ashton was real. He had died, yet there he was, waiting for me in my room.

"I suppose I have to wait," he said, sounding confused most of the time. I still hadn't moved, and I began to suspect that his intention was not to scare me more than I already was.

My hand started patting my chest in an attempt to calm the main tenant, who had been jumping out of his skin all day.

I had to control myself, otherwise...

Was it possible to have a heart attack at sixteen?

I took several deep breaths, gathered my courage, and opened the door, but I froze upon seeing him.

He was still standing where I last saw him. Motionless. As if he had seen a ghost, and indeed, maybe he had. He was too pale, and my height. He wore a black tailcoat, pants, a red vest with white stars, a white shirt, and a red bow tie. His tall, red top hat was quite impressive. He appeared young and undeniably handsome. Finally, I could see him more clearly, along with his eyes of an astonishing yellow-green color, far from natural. And what did I expect from a circus of death?

His gaze shifted to the floor, towards the line separating darkness from the direct light of the bathroom. The glow of the light helped me see more of him, but it also made him swallow, as if he had just seen his whole life flash before his eyes.

Another detail that stood out was the coppery waves on his forehead, slanting diagonally and swaying when he took a step back and found balance on the black wooden cane he didn't know he had.

If I wasn't mistaken, he seemed to fear the light.

But I used to be afraid of the dark.

"You're a ghost." It sounded like a question. Discovering the truth about his situation made me feel a little safer under the illuminated spotlight.

"Zara..." he choked on his vowels.

"How do you know my name?" I interrupted, and he seemed offended.

"Within a week, that was enough. Now I know several things about you; otherwise, I guess... Wouldn't have chosen you," he admitted, looking at the medallion on my chest. I had barely noticed it. When did it stop shining? It happened before I came back home.

Anyway, I hadn't been hallucinating on those nights when I suddenly turned off the light and felt like I was being watched.

"You were watching me," I accused him.

He looked at me innocently.

"It's not as bad as it sounds, really."

Ah, really?

"Why were you doing it?"

"To find out why it chose you."

My brain started to stumble a bit. I had to take a few seconds to process what he had just said.

"Do you mean that the medallion chose me and not you?" I asked, and he confirmed it with a nod. "Furthermore, you're the owner of a cursed circus," I stated with certainty instead of questioning.

"Something like that..."

"Your name is Ashton, right?"

"Yes, but now I'm not sure which one you're referring to."

"Is there another one?" I asked in a thin voice.

"If we're talking about my family tree, yes." He smiled with amusement, though his lips trembled a little.

"Great," of course not. It frightened me if his goal was to be funny. And he must have noticed because he immediately looked remorseful.

"I'm sorry. In my family tree, I'm the third. I'm supposed to be the owner or maybe my successor, but..." He rubbed his neck. "Things got out of control before it was definitive."

And boy, did they ever.

"Zara?" I jumped when Mom poked her head through the door. She must have arrived home, and I didn't even hear her come in. "What are you doing? Why is everything so dark in here? Turn on the lights..."

"No!" I said that before she could flip the switch. "The bathroom light is enough," I added, realizing too late that I shouldn't have yelled at her. Her nose wrinkled, and I could almost see the vein in her neck pulsating with anger.

"Come down for dinner," she ordered, annoyed. "But take a shower first. You stink," she said, brushing her slender fingers against the tip of her nose before leaving.

I swallowed and looked at him. Ashton pressed his lips together, trying not to laugh. Now, even he was mocking me.

"Why couldn't she see you?"

He shrugged.

"You were the one who called me through the medallion." For some reason, most of the time, he sounded confused. "Besides, as you mentioned a moment ago, I'm a ghost. The living cannot see me."

"Except me."

He nodded.

"Thanks for stopping her from turning on the lights."

"Yeah. I don't want you to disappear." I suddenly felt uncomfortable with the gleam in his eyes, and I cleared my throat. "Not without answering my questions first."

"I won't go anywhere." He seemed pretty sure of that, but also happy. He's a strange and chilling ghost.

"You're afraid of light," I pointed out.

"Not without reason," he hastened to say. "It doesn't feel pleasant when it pierces through your body like thousands of needles until you become a shadow. I haven't experienced it myself, but you could see it."

And I don't think I can forget it.

"That shadow... was it someone from the circus?" I asked, plagued by a terrifying suspicion that, minutes ago, I had almost turned Ashton into one by mistake.

Cautious and keeping my distance from where he stood, I walked to the closet. I clumsily searched for my pajamas inside. My hands were trembling from so many emotions, but if I didn't hurry, Mom would start yelling at me from the first floor.

I almost laughed hysterically at the thought. I was more afraid of my own mother than of a being that no longer belonged to this world, or at least not naturally.

"That shadow was also human once," he paused. He still hadn't moved, and I began to suspect that his intention wasn't to scare me more than I already was. "Upon death, they became what I am now. Later on, the light eventually transformed them into that."

"I think I understand now," I said as I walked back to the bathroom. Just before entering, I stopped. "If you're exposed to the light, will you also become one of them?"

"I'm not immune, although, thanks to you, I've discovered that only direct light would be capable of that."

"Okay. Now I'm going to..." I sighed. "Don't come in, please."

I took refuge in the bathroom for the second time, locking the door just in case. Then I turned on the shower, and while waiting for the water to warm up, I contemplated the light, feeling safe.

I undressed. I didn't want to think anymore, and I needed to calm down. Maybe I should tell my family, but they were always complicated.

I placed the medallion on the sink and stood under the warm stream, feeling how thoughts gradually flowed down the drain, just like the water over my body.

He said he wouldn't leave. Nevertheless, I was troubled by the thought that he could disappear.

With my eyes closed, I took the bottle of hair product. I poured some into the palm of my hand, and a creepy tingling sensation ran up my arm, making me open my eyes again.

As I saw the eight hairy, thick legs, so typical of a tarantula, climbing up my limb, I let out the scream of my life.

I shook vigorously and ended up throwing the bottle somewhere in the bathroom. Then a faint glow came from the sink, and the light above it burst. I managed to avoid falling until I found myself outside the shower, trembling, naked, and with wide-open eyes in the darkness.

"What's happening?"

I screamed again and slipped due to the shock, but the smooth and icy body managed to keep me upright.

"Kill it!" I started jumping around with him, as if the floor had turned into boiling lava.

I hated those things. I truly despised them.

"What?" he asked.

"Kill the spider!"

"I can't touch any object except the medallion. I can only move them, throw them, or suspend them in the air." He uttered a terrible idea. The last thing I wanted was a flying spider in a dark room. "Do you forget who I am? Besides, it hasn't done anything wrong to deserve death, Zara."

Something clicked in my head, and I stood still, appreciating how each of my muscles turned to ice. It was then that the chills invaded me.

"Dead, but you're touching me... You're touching me! Stop touching me!" I croaked like a tone-deaf rooster. I barely started to feel his icy hands on my waist, as well as the cold emanating from his chest against my back.

He quickly stepped back, and in the dark, I hurried to find the towel.

Naked and wet, adding to the equation the perverted owner of a ghost circus.

Perfect.

Nothing could be better.

My face was burning enough to heat an Olympic pool.

"What's wrong?" Dad's worried voice came from the other side of the door. For a moment, I hesitated to answer him.

"Yes, just... The light bulb exploded. And there's a horrifying thing circling around me." I still felt those legs crawling somewhere on my body. A creepy tingling sensation that, just by remembering it, made me shudder.

"The horrifying thing you're talking about, is it me?" Ashton joked in a low voice, as if my dad could hear him.

I didn't know if I trembled when I finished feeling his breath on my neck, if it was due to the coldness of my wet skin, or if it was the effect of having him so close. Perhaps it was a combination of everything. But there was something else that had started to bother me.

Could he see me naked?

The idea overwhelmed me, weighing me down.

"You," I muttered through gritted teeth and with a face hotter than the sun. "You're lucky to be dead."

I was on the verge of losing my mind.

I also didn't understand why I had warned him. I wasn't thinking clearly.

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