X. Ghost stories. Part 3
1011 Words
"What?" Vuk, Francesca, and I said in unison. "I thought you were dead," I replied.
"But you helped me. Or well, you will help me in the future" he confessed.
"Why would I help you? And why are you identical to Nicolete?"
"Just because of him you'll help me." He raised his right hand with all fingers together as he pointed. "That was done by my father. He thought Nicolete'd help him save me, so he killed him in cold blood and hung him here a couple of weeks ago."
"How would a student help save you?" I raised my voice a little. "And I repeat, how is it that you are identical to him?"
"Oh, it's true." He pursed his lips. "I'd forgotten."
His face faded into whitish smoke, showing his true features. Wavy brown blond hair, of great mass and volume, especially at the nape, where it rose and gave the appearance of flaming flames. A straight nose, with large crystal blue eyes, bushy eyebrows the same color as the hair. Square chin, under a thin but outlined mouth. Round cheekbones, well-fed. At least eighty tall and over thirty years old. Obviously his father's son.
"I'm an Aries..." he said. His voice was thick and raspy, every word that came out of his mouth sounded like a threat. "That's why I can change faces." I wrinkled my face, not understanding his point. "I can copy gifts... and I know a couple of Geminis," he added, realizing my ignorance.
"Really?" I looked at Vuk.
"I didn't know you could do that," the wolf said, shrugging his shoulders.
"Neither did I that invisibility existed," Bastian intervened. "So you are also a Gemini." he deduced.
"What gave us away?"
"Delyth," he replied.
"And who the hell is that?" Vuk growled.
"I am..." A mellifluous guttural rattle broke our nerves.
"Who the hell said that?" Vuk snapped. A kind of thick purple mist materialized in a corner of the room, it had passed us without any difficulty and had sat down on one of the three extra thin midnight blue mattresses that still had blankets and clothes on top.
"Delyth is a banshee," Bastian explained.
"A spirit?"
"Something like that," Bastian confirmed. "She is my Vormund, just as the lycanthrope is yours. Being an interplanar spectrum, nothing is invisible to her. She can feel the presence of any being that is near me and warn me of any danger."
"Who pushed us?" I frowned.
"I'm sorry," Delyth apologized grimly. "You got scared… I didn't know how to get you to stay." Her voice was a handful of barely audible sighs.
"I asked her to let you in. I apologize." He bowed. "But I didn't tell her how."
"Did your father do this?" I pointed to Nicolete, who was hanging from the ceiling with us. "Why exactly?"
"He thought Nicolete was you. A confusion of his nymph."
"Nymphs are never wrong, boy," Vuk warned him.
"I wasn't there. My father only asked me to bring him with you, or rather, with him. He killed him in front of me, hanging him. It was unbearable to watch." Bastian stared down at the ground, in utter agony.
"If he already has you, why does he want me dead?"
"To keep you from changing your mind." He grinned in disgust. "You will help him bring me back, and he will try to kill you to close the loop."
"But if he kills me in the future..."
"It will kill you in your present, as long as your Geist continues to travel, your body continues to sleep, hibernating. If he manages to find you, and kill you, you will be trapped in a single era, you will lose your gifts and you will cease to exist in any possible future... or is what he believes."
"Who has told you such nonsense?" Vuk snorted.
"Don't trust him," Francesca said, returning to my consciousness so that only I could hear her.
"It calls itself the twilight of winter. He is a sibylline, a charlatan in my opinion, who claims to possess certain gifts similar to those of Pavlov."
"Why shouldn't I?" I replied to Francesca.
"Well, you're right. That's bullshit," Vuk snorted. "If you kill an astral Geist after a vision so that he doesn't supposedly change his mind, you create a f*****g paradox. Do you know how difficult it is to solve a paradox?" Vuk said, pointing his index finger at Bastian several times as if giving him an important life lesson.
"I don't know... it's a feeling." Francesca said to me still inside of my mind.
"I have no idea, sir. I've never dealt with something like that before," Bastian explained, totally composed.
"And what do you need help with?" I asked Bastian. "Don't worry, I just want to know what his intentions are," I replied to Francesca in my thoughts.
"In catching him before this happens. That's why I brought him here. If at any point you found out that he murdered him because he was actually looking for you, I thought you would come and carry out your inquiries on your own."
"We came because there's a guy in a wolf mask who's chasing me, and creating cracks in my memories. He dropped something important and we tracked it down here."
"Yeah, wolf fellow," he laughed. "I know who is."
"Really?" Vuk challenged him. "Because I think we already found him." He showed him her sharp teeth, threatening him.
"It's not me." He shook his head, as he held a defensive posture, his arms crossed at chest level. "You still don't realize it, do you?"
"What should I be aware of?"
"Oh no boy, I think I know what you mean," Vuk chimed in.
"Don't believe any words until you check each fact," Francesca advised me.
"The wolf fellow... it's you."
The two people, and the two astral entities in the room, turned their gazes on me. And I just stood there, standing in the middle of the room, not saying anything, jumping to conclusions.
- Writer
