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When William Wisp stumbled out of that forest, confused and hurting, he hadn’t expected to be greeted with a parade or fireworks or celebration. Even if he would be one of the very few people to return after going missing in the Whispering Woods. But he still expected something. His friends to be relieved that he was alive and asking too many questions he wouldn’t be able to answer. His parents there to crush him to death with the tightest hug and forbidding him from ever going anywhere ever again. A few more missing posters littering the streets among the hundred others. Maybe someone calling an ambulance to treat his still painful wounds.
He’d expected something. Was that too much to ask for? Maybe not for anyone else, but most of the time the only attention Will got came from the otherworldly creatures that plagued Deadwood.
Even though his ankles were stiff and his neck felt as if it were about to break off, he trudged into town. To go a little further and get the help he desperately needed.
He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious after the fall or how long he’d spent finding his way home. His throat felt drier than it ever had in his life and his insides felt like they’d been hollowed out in an attempt to get any last energy he had stored.
The first person he saw was familiar, but he couldn’t grasp what their name was. They jogged down the street across from him in a bright pink tracksuit.
“Hey,” Will tried to say, but it came out as a raspy whisper. He hobbled across the road to get closer before they could pass him and tried again. “Hey, I need-“ he was cut off by a honk and a rush of wind. Will turned in time to see the mint green car an inch from him. It barreled into - or rather, through him - as he stiffened. It kept driving like normal and he turned to see the jogger give a quick smile and wave to the driver and continue jogging.
He felt his hands begin to shake a little. He felt his chest stop moving, his breathing stop but his lungs ached no more than the rest of his body. He pulled a hand over his eyes but the sight remained the same. When he stood still the pain remained and when he moved away he stumbled. What just happened?
In the corner of his eye something stuck out. A missing poster on the telephone pole closest to him. When he hobbled closer he saw his own face reflected back at him. It wasn’t recent. He never used a camera for anything other than evidence or to blackmail one of his friends. They used to joke that he was a cryptid because of how hard it was to get him in a picture. When he reached out to grab it - whether to tear it down or just feel it was real, he didn’t know - he couldn’t. His trembling hand simply phased through it like smoke.
But- but how? What was happening to him? He wasn’t- he couldn’t be a ghost. Why would he still feel this pain so vividly? The few that returned from a hike gone wrong only ever came back alive. The ghosts that died in the Whispering Woods never came out of it. That was part of what made it so mysterious. Everyone who saw knew that.
But how could he be alive? He’d fallen off a cliff and landed headfirst, hadn’t he? He went right through the car and the pole and neither people he’d seen had seen him. But Will didn’t want to be dead. He was only sixteen! There was so much he’d never seen. So much he’d never be able to experience if he were dead. What would the Unwitness Protection Program think? Their detective, the smartest and most reasonable (and the most cowardly), dead after following a suspicious light through the trees. Would they… would they even miss him?
His memory was fuzzy now but he knew the other members were strong enough to go on without him, even if he couldn’t recall the names. They were detailed, and organised and arguabley knew more about the supernatural than he did. Just because Will had been there from the start didn’t mean he couldn’t be replaced. It didn’t mean he was useful, or that they cared about him. Only that he had one quality that all of them shared and didn’t need him for.
(Wasn’t that why he’d decided to go out alone?
To prove he was capable on his own?)
William fell onto the pavement, looking down at himself. He thought he looked normal. Maybe that’s what everyone thinks when…
His face was wet now. His tears were cold. He was too, if he cared enough to focus on that. He sobbed quietly, as if afraid of being heard. But who could possibly hear him? No one that cared, if his current loneliness meant anything at all.
It was noon when he could focus on anything but himself again. It didn’t feel like it had been that long. The world had ignored his presence and pain and gone through the motions. The bird still sang in that signature melancholy way they did in Deadwood, more cars had gone up and down the street and someone was mowing their front lawn as the unseen watcher stood up.
His ankles felt better than before but he walked the same pace he had earlier, less intent on finding help because only the UPP would be able to see him and they couldn’t do a thing to help if they decided he was worth it.
(He couldn’t even remember what they looked like.
When had his memory begun to fail him?)
When he stopped, it was outside the gates of Deadwood Cemetary. The ever-expanding cemetery, always too crammed with gravestones and ghosts to walk through before. When he looked up, though, the ghosts moved out of his way, forming a path that led to a corner of the graveyard. Some spirits looked sombre, others looked upset, angry, or just tired. William thought he could relate to the latter the most.
In the corner wasn’t a small headstone. It looked bigger than most even. It was unfitting for the name engraved on it.
‘In loving memory of
William Wisp
Beloved Son, Brother and Friend’
His birthday and the date of the hike were written beneath that.
A bit bland, but that was only fitting for Will. No quote to sum up his life would make it any more meaningful. He could feel, somehow, that his body was stuffed into the coffin buried there. His cold, dead body. How long had it taken them to find it?
Sobbing came from somewhere in the ghostly crowd. Mutters and growls filled up the otherwise empty air. They were all stuck there. Bound by something they didn’t remember, cursed to roam the world until they found that something that would set them free.
William felt different. He was dead. He knew that. He couldn’t say goodbye to his parents. He wouldn’t tell his friends what happened. He had nothing left strong enough to tie him to this plane. In a sea of despair and unrest, William only felt confused and alone. Nothing kept him here, no connection he could feel in the depths of his soul tethering him and stopping him from leaving, unlike the many others he was surrounded by.
He wasn’t meant to be there, in the crowd of the dead. But he was. And he couldn’t help but feel alone.