AllFreeNovel
Share Us
1
Tea parties with ghosts are my favorite.
ARADIA
The ghosts follow me.
Like icy claws, the wind breathes through the trees and claims pieces of their stories 1.through the falling leaves.
The dark shift in the air is familiar for a ghost hunter like me.
Well…a hunter makes me sound more like Dean Winchester, and I’m nowhere near as cool as him. He’s a badass warrior who carries a colt with a morbid sense of humor and off-the-charts loyalty. I’m just a quirky travel blogger who carries—um sexy crystals—with an awkward sense of humor, eccentricities to spare, and well…I guess we have the loyalty thing in common.
“Oh, hello there,” I chirp and wave at the ghost passing me as I approach the old, forsaken cathedral. Earthy brown for his aura. When he says nothing and progresses to another wing, I simply shrug.
Sometimes, they talk to me. Sometimes, they don’t. It’s fine. I cherish every encounter, no matter how small or fleeting.
Tea parties with ghosts are my favorite. I get all warm and tingly just thinking about it!
Hmm…ghost chaser doesn’t work either, considering I don’t need to pursue them. I smile as I slip my hands into the pockets of my pink wool jacket that matches my loose curls wisping around my lower neck.
Thumbing the black tourmaline stone in my pocket, I adjust my worn canvas bag, where I keep my camera. My infinity scarf, as dark a blue as the night sky above the forest canopy, muffles my shivering breath.
I love the cold. And the night. Especially nights like these with the moonlight splintering through the spindly branches to shed a milky glow upon the ruins.
Hmm…ghost enthusiast also doesn’t apply. While some of our discussions have been quite lovely, the nature of conversing with the spirit realm brings a labyrinth of emotions.
Slipping down a path between two stone walls, I ignore the vines and brambles stowing away on my stockings. Instead, I follow the cold drifts of air through the intricate ruins of cracked stone like mournful echoes of the past. I’m getting closer.
I saved up all year to come to this abandoned cathedral the locals say is haunted. Once I heard the city was going to demolish it due to one too many dangerous incidents with teenagers, I moved my trip up.
Thankfully, the tours are all done. Ghosts are ever-so sensitive, and while some enjoy crowds, most do not. After all, how would you feel if someone was constantly stomping all over what used to be your home or favorite place to frequent?
Ghost follower? Why am I agonizing over a title?
I cannot let this struggle over a name interfere with my sense of whimsy. Not even my ankle boots seem to leave prints in the frost with how light I feel. I hope it will keep.
Sometimes I’ve returned home after an encounter and curled up in the fetal position, weeping without eating for days. Other times, I’ve had such a spring in my step, it seemed as if I was floating for a full week.
In my teen years, they diagnosed me with bipolar disorder. Of course, I shared nothing about my clairvoyance with psychiatrists. During those years, I avoided ghosts as much as I could. Quite the challenge when you volunteer in a hospital.
I’m but a silent dancer in these realms of the unseen, where the veil between worlds is thinned.
Well, not so silent, given my incessant need to hum.
A burst of warm color flutters to my left, and I lift my brows in surprise. “Oh, hello there,” I chirp to the monarch butterfly stirring from a hollow in the stone. I smile, pausing to study the butterfly, wondering how it’s here when they should have migrated south well over three months ago. “You must be lost, little one.” My smile falls because the fluttering insect is doomed to become a brittle butterfly corpse. It’s too cold, and butterfly muscles must be warm to fly.
Hmm…I’ve never spoken to a butterfly ghost yet. But there’s a first time for everything. Squirrels, rabbits, foxes, deer, horses, even a stag once. Never a butterfly. Not that any of them can talk to me, unlike the human ghosts who speak in sighs and murmurs and whispers.
Faded murmurs echo from beyond the ruin walls. I touch my delicate fingers to them, delicate as my fairy-like body—well…fairy with tits and hips. My older sister used to criticize my full curves and my “spritely” mentality. Or how my unnatural teal eyes don’t complement my natural pale pink hair. Yes, pink.
No matter how many times my mother tried to dye it, the pink would always return. She finally gave up, especially after I cut my hair above my shoulders. Now, I don’t look like I’m wearing chunky strings of bubble gum. My curls are more like loose, light pink bubbles falling around my mid-neck, which suits me and my knit caps just fine.
“You look like cotton candy, Aradia,” I drone, mimicking my sister’s hoity-toity voice. After I hit puberty and entered high school, she wanted me to fit in more.
But I never want to “fit in”. I shiver at the thought of normality.
Ghosts don’t expect me to be normal.
