Page 57 of How I Met Your Murderer

Show Me

Eric

There was one thing I left off the list that Raff and I made later that night in the parlor. One thing I couldn’t bring myself to write, even as a vague, numbered hint, though I had longed for it in life and that meant it was needed if our spell was going to work: fall in love.

All I had ever really wanted—more than success or acclaim for my games, more than being understood—was to be accepted by the people who were supposed to know me and love me best. And now there was Raff: this accomplished, grounded, maddeningly sincere athlete who didn’t care that I didn’t like sports unless it was seeing him in his old jersey. Who looked at me like everything I did and everything I am was worth admiring. I still craved approval, but Raff gave it to me freely, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

It did something to me, being needed by him. Being seen by him. All the parts of me that my family dismissed—the nerdy hobbies, the softness, the passions they dismissed as quirks—they were the exact things he seemed to gravitate toward, the way meteors share the same patch of sky. Separate streaks arcing in the same bright movement. I might be half-invisible these days, but somehow Raff saw me more clearly than anyone ever had.

I was never enough for the people I had spent my whole life trying to impress. But with Raff? I was more than enough, and I didn’t even have to try.

Just being near him felt like gravity had finally found me, a slow, steady pull I couldn’t fight, even if I’d wanted to.

But I couldn’t tell him. Because I was going to love him and leave him standing in the wreckage, and I didn’t want to make this any harder on him than it was already going to be. I had no idea what it would be like where I was going, but he still had so much time to spend in this world without me. Years and years, I hoped, before I would someday see him again.

Good years, like he deserved. And that’s what love was, at its finest: something that grew quietly over long stretches of time, that shone its clearest in times of sickness and stress and in little unexpected moments on ordinary days. I knew I could be that for him, could see us choosing each other for a long time, but I wasn’t going to be given the chance.

And I was selfish enough to want to pry every stone from the dungeon walls and smash it into dust when I realized his best years would be spent with someone who wasn’t me. Who would get to show up for him in every way I wanted to.

The thought lodged in my chest like a splinter I couldn’t dig out: someone who wasn’t me. Someone solid and warm and alive, who could effortlessly take Raff’s hand without it passing through. Someone who could stand beside him in the sun without worrying about fading if they didn’t have enough energy for a full manifestation.

I hated that hypothetical man with a ferocity that startled me.

When I thought about it too much while Raff was taking a much-needed hot shower, I accidentally shattered every bare bulb lighting the dungeon.

That’s when I decided that I needed to focus all my energy on here and now. On appreciating every moment I still had with Raff, on keeping us both safe, and staying out of the clutches of a spirit strong enough to rend living flesh.

On sharing my best moments with him, and making memories that would outlive me for as long as he was willing to carry them.

We got to work right away, even though Raff needed sleep he wasn’t getting. There was only so much I could do to convince him to rest. We started on my list, because some of it was going to take a lot of arranging—like that stupid sheep-selfie I had wanted so badly when I was alive. Raff was going to have to haul one over from the nearest farm, and as it turned out, most farmers wanted to be paid for a random sheep rental.

Some things sure hadn’t changed. Like capitalism.

We also started talking to the other spirits more as we made our nightly rounds over the next week. Or at least, we tried to. Some of them were on edge since Chef Máirtín disappeared and didn’t feel much like a friendly chat, as if they blamed Raff or suspected him of something. Still, he had his checklist of every light that needed to be on, every door that needed to be left ajar, all the steps to take to ensure the castle was just how the lodgers preferred it when the living weren’t around. And he performed his job with care like always, doing right by the spirits even if they weren’t happy to see him.

That man.

Did he know that I orbited him? That his light was as rare and strong as a sun?

As far as we could tell, no one knew where the chef had gone. And as the days slipped through our fingers, as Ardruin became busier than I could ever remember it, he didn’t reappear. Nor did we come across further signs of Gary—probably because Raff had mortally offended the cosmic entity by giving it a dad name.

Caoimhe and her team were decorating to the nines for the grand Halloween opening, fully funded and dangerous thanks to new donors and new confidence after the trial banquet’s success. There were line cooks and waitstaff to train, tour guides to bring up to speed on the history—Jordy was having the time of his life—and a marketing specialist consulting so that tickets would be booked into next year before opening night. Caoimhe was even moving forward with turning some of the upstairs bedrooms into guest lodgings despite Raff’s (and Síofra’s) misgivings. She seemed to think being noticeably tired was making him paranoid when he hinted that the castle was harboring a powerful entity, and suggested that he take a night off to go on a date with his cute friend from the banquet—far from her worst idea, even if we couldn’t actually go anywhere but the castle grounds.

From the outside, I could understand her perspective: things had been calm since before Chef Máirtín vanished, thanks to Raff, and they were even quieter now with the dead so uneasy. Caoimhe hadn’t linked the torn-up deer with any kind of haunting, deciding it had been an unfortunate hit-and-run—as if that could explain most of its face being missing, and the half of a fox found nearby. Still, once the groundskeeper hauled away the carcasses and the carrion birds departed, she sent her team right back to work restoring the stables.

There was talk of a miniature pony to greet guests.

Halloween mania was really taking hold, as much as I wanted to pretend the damn holiday didn’t even exist and wasn’t looming ever-closer.

I knew Raff felt it, too. That was why he was so tired, stubbornly staying awake with me until four or five in the morning without fail just so we could talk a little longer. Eventually, he would fall asleep with his arm around me or his head in my lap, warm and trusting me enough to just . . . let go. I would press a kiss into his hair and stroke his back while he slept, wanting him to feel what I couldn’t say. Wanting him to dream about something that was, despite my being dead, very much real.

It was October 10th, around ten in the evening, when Raff appeared in the foyer wearing his black overalls and leather jacket, a familiar notebook in his hand and familiar weapons at his side—singing what had somehow become our song even if it started as a dumb joke.

His rich Kerry brogue echoed through the room, dipping and rising like waves hitting a breakwater, bouncing off garlands of fake cobwebs and strings of orange lights. I indulged in staying hidden for a moment so I could just listen and be fully swept up in it, even though manifesting was getting easier every night. There was so much energy to draw from lately—the air was thick with it, like those charged moments before a storm.

By the time Raff hit the final chorus, I had fully materialized in front of him. Solid enough that, when he reached out, his fingers brushed my arm.

He grinned, lopsided and tired but no less lovely. “There you are. I was startin’ to think you’d leave me hanging.” The shadow that flitted across his face just after said something else, too: he was starting to worry that I had disappeared like Máirtín.