Chapter 12: A Place for Ghosts
Some days, I pretend I'm just another man.
Not immortal. Not cursed. Not a figure whispered about in the shadows.
Just a man with too much time and too many memories.
---
It was raining in Vienna when I arrived. Grey skies, soft drizzle, that kind of weather that feels like a long sigh. I hadn't been back in over a century. Not since Elise.
I didn't come for a favor. Or for business. I came because something inside me ached. Something wordless.
The city had changed, but the scent of the streets hadn't — stone, rain, pastry, wet bark. Music still floated from windows. The past lingered here, softer than most places.
I walked to an address I hadn't written down, yet my feet remembered.
There was nothing left.
The house was gone. Replaced by a sleek apartment complex. No trace of the wooden garden gate. No roses climbing the brick wall. No laughter echoing from the windows.
Just glass and concrete.
And ghosts.
---
Her name was Elise. She taught violin to neighborhood children. I met her after a debt collection that ended in blood and silence. I had needed music, and she had opened her door.
She never asked about my past. She never asked why I flinched at thunder or refused to sleep more than four hours.
We shared soup. We shared silence.
She smiled like the world wasn't broken.
I almost stayed. For her.
But when the fever came, and the streets turned to mourning, I couldn't save her.
I buried her in the garden behind the house.
I planted roses because they were her favorite.
When I left, I told myself I wouldn't return.
And yet, here I was. Standing in the rain. Listening to the faint echo of a life that almost changed mine.
---
I found a small café nearby, the kind with scratched wooden tables and the smell of burnt sugar. I sat by the window and ordered tea I wouldn't finish.
A child laughed behind me.
A couple argued quietly in the corner.
And I felt something heavy settle in my chest.
I live among people, but I don't belong to them.
I offer miracles, but I cannot ask for them.
And as long as I carry this curse, I will never be held without cost.
---
I left the café just before dusk. The clouds broke open briefly, casting golden light across the rooftops.
I stood there, soaking it in.
Then I took a photograph out of my coat pocket.
Elise. Smiling. Holding her violin like it was part of her body.
I slipped it into the soil by the tree where the garden used to be.
Then I walked away, not looking back.
Not because I didn't care.
But because I did.
And that's the hardest part of living forever.
You remember everything.
Even when there's no one left to remember with you.