Chapter 4: Ghosts Don't Whisper
1407 Words
The wind howled through the trees the next morning like it had something to say.
Clara stood on the porch of the old house with Ethan’s notebook in her hands. The spine was cracked, the edges smudged with fingerprints too small to be hers. The pages inside trembled slightly in the breeze as if they remembered being held by a boy who trusted they’d outlive him.
Last night hadn’t brought sleep — just more questions.
Her mother had gone quiet after the attic. She’d made tea they didn’t drink and retreated to her room like she always did when the past pushed too hard.
Clara hadn’t followed.
She couldn’t.
There was too much noise in her head now. Too many images — Ethan drawing by flashlight, clutching his pirate chest, whispering into a tape recorder, thinking he was solving a mystery while a bigger one swallowed him whole.
And her father — always absent, always shadowed, always... removed.
She flipped through the notebook again. One page stopped her.
A drawing of the lighthouse — but this time, it was cracked down the middle, its light snuffed out. At the base stood two figures: Ethan, small and hunched. And beside him, the man again. But this time the face wasn’t smoke. It was their father.
Or... something that looked like him.
Clara’s breath caught.
Below, Ethan had written:
> He said if I told, no one would believe me. But Clara would. Clara always believes me.
Tears blurred the words.
She sat down on the porch step, notebook resting in her lap, and finally let herself cry.
---
That afternoon, Clara drove into town.
Fairhaven hadn’t changed much.
Same rusted signs. Same leaning lampposts. Same empty café with faded umbrellas that once looked so colorful when she and Ethan begged for ice cream.
She parked across from the library — a squat brick building with ivy clawing its way up the side.
Inside, it smelled like must and old paper. Comforting in a strange, decaying way.
The librarian was new — a younger woman with thick glasses and cautious eyes. Clara explained who she was, what she was looking for.
“Old newspaper archives?” the librarian asked. “We keep most of those on microfilm.”
Clara nodded. “I’m looking for anything around... 1997. May through July.”
The woman hesitated. “That’s the year of the lighthouse accident, right?”
Clara stilled. “You remember that?”
The librarian shrugged. “My dad told me about it. Said a kid died out there. Fell or something.”
Or something.
Clara followed her to the back of the building, where an old microfilm reader sat like a forgotten relic. The librarian showed her how to thread the reels and left her alone.
The screen flickered to life. Clara adjusted the focus.
May 13, 1997 – LOCAL BOY DIES IN LIGHTHOUSE FALL
She stopped scrolling.
The article was brief. Cold. One column. A small photo of Ethan — his school portrait, hair uneven and eyes too bright. It made her ache.
> Ethan Thompson, age 10, was found dead at the base of the Fairhaven lighthouse late Saturday evening. Authorities ruled the death accidental, citing a likely fall from the surrounding cliff area. No foul play is suspected.
No foul play.
Just like that.
There was no mention of the tape recorder. Or the drawings. Or anything he might’ve said.
Her father wasn’t quoted.
Her mother was listed as “unavailable for comment.”
Clara scrolled further.
The same week, another article caught her eye.
May 10 – UNKNOWN VEHICLE FOUND ABANDONED NEAR CLIFFS
Her stomach turned.
> A black sedan with unregistered plates was found abandoned near the Fairhaven lighthouse. Authorities are investigating. No connection to any known missing persons.
She sat back, pulse racing.
She hadn’t known about that. No one had ever said.
Two days before Ethan died.
What if he had seen something?
What if he’d followed someone out there?
---
That night, Clara returned to the cliffs.
She parked near the lighthouse — the road grown narrow, barely passable. No other cars. No lights.
She stood beneath the tower, its silhouette sharp against the starless sky.
The wind was stronger here. Wailing through the grasses. Screaming across the rocks.
She walked the path Ethan used to take. Her flashlight beam flickered with each step, casting strange shadows in the fog.
The ground was uneven, eroded by years of storms. She stepped carefully, gravel crunching beneath her.
At the edge, she found the spot.
She knew it was the spot.
There, near a flat stone, she saw something wedged between two rocks.
She knelt, pulled it free.
A rusted compass.
Its glass was cracked, but the needle still twitched.
She turned it in her hands.
E + C etched on the back.
Ethan’s.
He must’ve dropped it that day.
She held it tightly, like it might still be warm from his palm.
The wind screamed again.
But this time, it almost sounded like a voice.
She spun around — flashlight raised.
Nothing.
Just the dark, and the lighthouse towering silently behind her.
But the sense of being watched crawled down her spine.
She left quickly.
Didn’t run.
But didn’t look back, either.
---
Back home, Clara sat with the notebook again.
She drew.
Without thinking, without planning — her hand moving fast across the page.
When she stopped, she stared.
It was the cliffs.
But the figure on the edge wasn’t Ethan.
It was her.
Facing the sea.
And behind her, a shadow.
Not their father. Not the man.
Something else.
Something she couldn’t name.
She shut the sketchbook, heart pounding.
Her mother was standing in the doorway.
“I used to hear him talk to himself at night,” Anna said quietly. “But I don’t think he was alone.”
Clara’s breath caught.
Anna stepped inside.
“There was something out there, Clara. And we all ignored it.”
“Why?” Clara whispered.
“Because we were afraid if we said its name… it would come for us too.”
Clara didn’t respond right away. She looked down at her hands — still smudged with graphite, still shaking slightly. The house around her felt too small, like the walls were leaning in. “Then maybe it’s time someone stopped being afraid,” she said quietly, her voice more steady than she felt. “Because whatever took Ethan — truth or shadow — it never really left. And I’m not letting it take what’s left of me.”
Anna looked at her daughter with something between fear and pride, her lips parting as if to speak, then closing again. “You don’t understand,” she finally whispered. “There were things your father got involved in… things I never asked about because I knew the answers would ruin us. Ethan was curious. Too curious. And you—” her voice broke, “—you were supposed to be the one I could still protect.”
Clara felt the weight of that truth settle into her chest like a stone. “Protecting me by keeping me in the dark didn’t save me,” she said, her voice tight. “It just made me blind. I lost him, and then I lost you. And now I’m standing in the middle of a story no one wants to finish, holding pieces of a boy no one was brave enough to remember out loud.”
Anna sank into the edge of the couch, eyes glassy but dry. “I used to hear him whisper at night,” she said softly, almost to herself. “He’d talk to someone who wasn’t there… or maybe was. I told myself it was just his imagination. I told myself a lot of things.” She looked up. “Your father—he’d come home late, sometimes muddy, sometimes shaking. And when I asked, he said it was work. But it wasn’t.”
Clara sat across from her, heart thudding. “Then what was it?”
Anna hesitated. “There’s a part of the cliffs—just past the old lighthouse keeper’s hut. No one ever goes there anymore. It’s overgrown, swallowed by trees. Your father used to take Ethan out that way sometimes. Said they were collecting stones. But after Ethan died… he never set foot near there again.” Her voice dropped. “And neither did I.”
- Writer
