The ghost who dared to dream. Part 3.

THE GHOST WHO DARED TO DREAM

Part 3: Hell

It was the same place I had marvelled at nine years ago. It took me a minute to call back the memories and be certain that I wasn't imagining it.

And Melin was there, sitting in a chair playing with a flower of black sand. She was no longer a child, but a very beautiful girl, and I couldn't help noticing that she resembled the figure and face of Griselda and Ginevra.

She raised his empty eyes of sand to look at me and lowered them again, with no smiling.

"You've decided to return. You're already a man," she spoke in her beautiful crystal voice. I wanted to be kind, aware of her anger.

"How can you say that I've decided to return if I cannot do it when I will it?" I smiled coming closer. She looked at me again, this time yearningly, as if she was begging something vital of me.

"Will you stay this time?" she questioned ignoring my words and jumping to my arms. Her hands of sand were unconceivably soft to the touch and although I could see the grains of sand, I couldn't feel them. I embraced her and stared into her black, eyeless face, yet so expressive.

"What are you, Melin?" I inquired with a frown. "Where did you come from? Are you real?"

Angry, she pushed me away.

"I am as real as this world, that you created to inhabit, but abandoned."

I approached her again.

"I'm not a child anymore, Melino now I have a world outside. They won't let me come," I joked, smiling at her resent.

"I know, I always knew and I was so stupid to believe that there was no way to save you." She sighed, "that's why I decided to throw you out before you hurt could me, and still I couldn't escape you, because I'm locked in your mind. I see everything you see and I know everything about you, maybe if I hadn't... " she shook her head, "none of this would be happening and you'd be with me, but I couldn't control myself!"

I was most bewildered, I couldn't understand anything, and I was genuinely concerned about how much she reminded me of myself, when I was thirteen.

"Don't you say you know everything about me? You should have known how much I missed you!"

She continued as if she hadn't heard me.

"I wanted to allow you back in here, but then they appeared."

"Nobody can replace you for me. You are more me than myself."

"I do not believe you, you've said that to Marie and Rena too," she replied glaring at me.

Her hand stretched out between us and moved and like it was caressing something. I watched the circus camp materialize before our eyes, my home. Everyone was on their tasks, enjoying the little delights that abounded in the place, even fighting --releasing fury must certainly be a way to be happy--. It was nice see reality in a dream for the first time. But amidst the joy, sudden long spears of sand made their way piercing my friends and mates.

I was startled and had to remain myself it was a dream. "Enough," I scolded, "stop, this is atrocious."

"They hurt you. And me."

I rolled my eyes at her unpleasant sense of humour. I saw everyone run for their lives screaming and crying. They were dying one by one, wondering what was happening. Julien looked at me and wanted to run in my direction. He said something I couldn't hear, but I knew it was referring to Rena. Among all, I saw her, her red hair flowing behind he as she ran to her father crying --she must've been with a client, because she her dress was unbuttoned and she was barefoot. Behind her came Marie, Gin and Gris. The four of them saw me and rushed towards, me screaming and asking for help, but the twins couldn't run very fast due to their condition, so they were quickly caught up in Melin's the sharp sands.

Even for a dream, for a disgusting joke from Melin, I didn't want to keep hearing her screams, so I drew them both to me and embraced Rena with all my strength, trying to make her disappear with my mind, while Marie yelled at me for answers. Rena asked me to let her go, she said I was hurting her. I realized that something was wrong, I couldn't even silence them. I turned to Melin and questioned her with my sight. She smiled with cold satisfaction at the horror widening my eyes.

It was not a dream.

Not entirely. I tried to put all my concentration into stopping her and close whatever sort of portal she had opened. In the end, I managed, but it was too late, only Rena and Marie remained, with me, inside.

"What have you done?!" I bellowed facing Melino

"They both will hurt you! They don't love you!"

More spears of sand reached Rena, Marie and me. I couldn't let anything happen to them because of me, I couldn't bear it. I took their hands and hand and ran between the gusts of sand coming for us. I had to manage to hold them, think of a safe place to run to and focus on restraining her attacks with my mind.

I wished I was dreaming, I wished Rena and Marie could find themselves safe, out of and away of my head, I wished that they weren't witnessing the violence of my mind. How did the world spiral into madness in a single second? I shook my head and fabricated with my thoughts a safe place around us: the freak's purple tent of the circus.

Suddenly finding herself safe and surrounded by a familiar environment, Rena's eyes gleamed with relief, while those of the shadow remained suspicious.

"We're back!" Rena cried.

"No," I replied, looking away and trying to think of some way to stop Melin.

"Can she come in here?" She asked with a shrug of fear, looking down letting tears smudge the makeup on her face.

"Not right now, but she will sooner or later". Marie turned to me angrily.

"What will we do, Ghost? What's going on? Who is she? What is this place?"

She was trying to avoid the tears, but she looked terrified.

I sighed and sat on the floor so I could tell the story without neglecting our protection.

"You know the story. When I was a child, my life was very difficult, I was forced to imagine a world for myself, where I could do whatever I wanted. This world," I clarified as I materialized some figurines in black sand. "I was very lonely, I wanted a friend, someone who loved me. So Melin was born, only I didn't make here, she was... like a gift from my unconscious, so to speak. The only thing I know about her is that she is capable of everything I'm not, and she loves and wants me to love her."

Rena looked at me terrified.

"Why do you want to kill me?" She screeched.

"And me."

I let my head down, I could feel Melinoapproaching my defences.

"She thinks you will hurt me, she knows..." I doubted. Was it prudent to reveal my infidelities right then?

"What?"

"How much I care about you both."

Marie threw me a broken glance. She knew I chose Rena, she knew that even if we made it back alive, I was no longer hers.

"Isn't she part of you? Shouldn't she love us too?"

The shadow rolled her violet eyes at what Rena said.

"How idiotic can you be."

Rena turned around ready to reply, so I stepped in.

"We don't have time for this, we have to focus on surviving."

I closed my eyes and created a tunnel in the ground.

"What is that? You did it?" They asked alarmed.

"Yes," I nodded, "and if you want to try it, you can make something too."

I watched Rena stare at a corner of the tent and slowly rise between swirls of sand a natural size statue there, of her father. She began to cry once more.

"If you wanted, you could also give it life," I said as if they were words of comfort.

We entered the tunnel and I immediately sealed it.

"We'll suffocate!" exclaimed the shadow.

"You don't have to breathe in this world."

Realizing her stupidity, she fell silent and followed me.

I didn't really know where we were going, I only conjured a path to safety, but since I didn't even know which one that would be, all I could do was to trust that some part of my mind hadn't yet betrayed me. We walked in the most absolute and dense silence, while I kept wondering how I could convince Melin to let them go without having to stay forever in exchange. Deep down, I knew that it was not possible, that I'd have to decide between their lives and my freedom.

Sometimes I still wonder if it wasn't Melin herself who put that thought in my head.

Suddenly, white light flooded the obscure tunnel, so I turned to cover them with my body. Melin, so soon, found us.

She emerged furiously from the light, her cheeks muddy and tearful, and pain for betrayal contorting her harmonious features.

"Melino I beg you, let us go," I begged.

"You belong here! With me! They don't have anything to do here! Why do you rejoice in the love of two whores, when you could've come to me?" she screeched shedding tears of rage.

"You think I didn't try to come back to you? Every night I expected to meet you, but you never saw me again!"

"I thought you didn't love me," her face lit up, "but now you can stay and love me!"

Before I could stop her, Marie abandoned the protection of my back and jumped in front of Melino

"You killed them all!" She shouted, coming between me and her. Haughty, Melin advanced towards her.

"As I will kill you too."

"Melin, no!"

My demoness raised whirls of sand all around us.

"They hurt you!"

"How? They were the only family I ever knew!" I yelled, already vaguely feeling the loss I'd have a whole existence to mourn.

"You wanted to come and they stopped you."

"You're the one who did that!"

Marie put her arms around my body, like it was some kind of protection.

"You're not going to push us away," and she motioned for Rena to do as she.

I realized that arguing was useless and maybe fighting too: Melin had been created with a purpose, to be just what my thirteen-years-old self wanted in Saint Agnese, but now that I was grown up, she couldn't understand it. I felt somewhat pitiful for her, she was like me as a child, so afraid to be consumed by loneliness.

"Melin, you know I love you," she shed more tears of sand.

"Then why do you want to leave me?"

"Now I have a life out there, but I will come to you every night, like I did when we were children."

"What a life? Your circus friends are dead!"

When I saw the gradual change in her expressive face, I realized my mistake, but it was too late.

"It's them!" she screeched.

Every now and then, I wonder whether it truly was Rena and Marie, or maybe it was the very desire to had my own family and live like normal person. And if it would've been of any use to explain it to Melin.

Nevertheless, when tons of black sand buried and killed Rena, she offered no resistance with no knowledge of the power that her imagination alone could've conferred her. Something inside of me broke. When the sands uncovered her, I admired her beauty for the last time, witnessing how her once warm colours blackened into ashes. I conjured a gust of wind to carry them away, destroying the fragile sculpture. I sighed.

But I couldn't give up yet: Marie was still with me and she was more than willing to fight: she stopped Melin's spears with her own mind and lifted a wall around us.

"To be your world, you are very incompetent in it."

"Rena is dead."

"So what? I'm still here."

"I have no strength to fight," I replied weakly.

"Have you ever had it, Ghost?"

"I don't think so."

She glared at me in silence for a few seconds.

"I know you wanted to marry her, to have a family with her," she accused.

My lips parted to defend myself, maybe apologize but she didn't let me.

"People talk, everybody knows you want a family. And I..."

The wall broke and Melin shrieked furiously lifting Marie up into the air with the sand.

"Enough!" I shouted. Marie kicked the air making Melin laugh.

"He is not yours! Let him go! Let him be happy!"

"He is mine! I was made for him! This world is ours, you shouldn't be here!"

Black sand enveloped her. I was willing to allow them to fight each other, but I didn't want to lose Marie too.

"Melin, no! If you kill her, I will leave, I won't ever return and you'll disappear too!"

Melinofixed her empty eyes on me for a second. Her eyebrows knitted, her eyelids fell and her lips pressed together in sorrow.

She obeyed and released the shadow.

"If you are not going to love me, then I have nothing to live for," she replied. "Take your black doll and let me die here."

I kneeled beside Marie and embraced her, closing my eyes to focus on waking up. I could feel the fuzzy lethargy of sleep leave my body in another world and my consciousness slowly abandoning my spirit here to wake up somewhere else. I made it, I thought, I saved Marie and I'm free... but then I opened my eyes and caught the sight of Melin lying on the sand, disintegrating little by little.

I couldn't.

I couldn't murder Melin, my Melin, my creation, she was a part of me, she was my legitimate wife. I allowed seven tears to flow before I briefly released Marie.

"Ghost? What happened? We must go!"

I kissed her and embraced her again, ran my hands down her back, so very well known, and placed them around her slim and long neck. And squeezes it. I didn't open my eyes, I didn't dare to see her face, to contemplate death taking her soul away. I didn't let go until I felt her muscles relax, then I finally looked at her deformed features in bewilderment and utter horror.

And pain, for my betrayal.

I felt to my knees again, to cry over the corpse that slowly crumbled into ashes. I felt Melin's soft and lean arms surrounding me.

"It was necessary," she whispered in a shaky voice.

"I know," I replied between sobs, taking her hand in mine. I wiped away the tears of my face and turned my body to her.

"You won," I murmured, broken and with no strength to find a grudge to hold against her.

"You will be happy here. I promise. You will have everything you want," she smiled sweetly caressing my face.

I let a long silence pass between us, staring into the emptiness, trying to accept eternity within me.

"I know," I replied at last, creating a small sculpture of Rena dancing on the top of my hand.