I followed the river. The path was familiar, not from dreams but from old muscle memory, the kind that lived in my bones. I skirted a dead cow, bloated and picked over by birds. I stepped through a gap in the wall, boots silent on the moss. The hill rose, and at the top, a field opened out—fresh plowed, rimmed with thistle, and at the far edge, a squat stone cottage with smoke rising from the chimney.
My heart jerked. I kept moving.
As I got closer, every step brought up more memories—her singing to herself, her hands on my back as I fixed the roof, her face buried in my neck, breathing me in after the world had tried to take me away.
I crouched in the hedgerow. The window glowed yellow from firelight inside. I could just make out movement—a woman, bent over the hearth, stirring a pot. Her hair was dark, loose. She straightened, wiped her hands, and for a moment looked straight at the window. I froze.
She was older than I remembered. More tired around the eyes. But it was her.
Catherine.
She ladled something into a bowl, then sat at the table and put her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. She didn’t eat.
I wanted to run to the door, pound it open, but I knew how I must look: a monster in black jeans and a dead man’s jacket, spattered in blood, face set for violence.
I stayed outside, head pressed to the cold stone, fighting the urge to collapse. I’d killed three men tonight, and it wasn’t enough. I’d kill a hundred more if it meant getting inside that house. Getting to her.
I slid down and sat in the dirt. My fingers shook. The blood on my hands started to clot, tacky and dark.
I wondered how much of the old me was left. I wondered if she’d see it in my eyes.
I watched her until the fire burned low. Until she went to the door, looked out at the empty night, and shut it behind her. Even after, I stayed put, watching the smoke until it curled away to nothing.
***
I woke after an hour and skirted the cottage, finding the old back door. The latch was the same, a bent nail hammered into the frame, the handle polished by a hundred years of nervous hands. I touched it, felt the tremor in my own fingers.
I waited, listening.
Inside, Catherine hummed, low and rough. A song I’d never heard before. Maybe one she made up, or maybe something from her mother. It was beautiful, and it broke me all over again.
I counted to ten, then opened the door.
The kitchen was smaller than I remembered, walls sweating with heat from the hearth. Catherine stood at the table, back to the door, shoulders stiff. She heard the creak, spun, and her face went white.
I froze in the doorway.
She looked me up and down, eyes wide. Took in the jacket, the jeans, the boots caked in blood and dirt. She looked at my face last, like she couldn’t bear it, and when she did, she stumbled back a step, hand to her chest.
We stared at each other, neither of us breathing.
She spoke first, voice barely above a whisper. “What are you?”
I tried to answer, but my mouth was full of ash. “Catherine,” I managed.
She shook her head. “You’re dead.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She let the silence eat at us. Her hands dropped to her sides. “Are you a ghost?”
I laughed, and it came out all wrong. “Maybe.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them again, angry now. “If you’re here to torment me, go on and do it. I’ve got nothing left.”
I took a step inside. The floor creaked. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
She stared at me, searching for the lie. “Why do you look like this?”