The Breath Of A Ghost

The world was no longer light and sound, it was weight.

Valentina felt the viscous, poisoned water of the bathtub pressing against her eardrums, a heavy, silent shroud. She was suspended in a terrifying limbo where her mind screamed for air, but her lungs were filled with lead. 

Through the distorted shimmer of the water, she saw them, Kennedy and Lilith, their figures blurred like smudged ink. 

They were laughing. The man who had just shared her bed was watching her life extinguish with the casual boredom of someone watching a candle flicker out.

My baby, her soul wailed. Not like this.

Then came the hands. Rough, callous, and devoid of the love Kennedy had mimicked an hour ago. She felt herself being hauled out, her limp body hitting the cold marble floor with a sickening, wet thud. 

She wanted to gasp, to vomit the floral-scented poison from her throat, but the paralytic held her tongue captive. She was a passenger in a corpse.

“Hurry up,” Kennedy’s voice drifted from miles away, cold and sharp. “The ground is soft from the rain. Get her to the gardener’s shed. Martha will handle the cleanup here.”

She felt the coarse friction of a heavy burlap garden sack being pulled over her head. The fabric smelled of bone meal, dried blood, and old earth. It scratched her cheeks, catching on her eyelashes. 

Then, the world tilted. She was being dragged. Her spine barked in pain as it hit the edges of the stairs, each step a rhythmic jolting of her brain against her skull.

I’m here. I’m still here, she tried to cry out, but only a silent, pathetic bubble of spit escaped her lips inside the dark sack she was put into.

The dragging stopped. The air grew colder, smelling of damp mulch and the coming storm.

“Is it done?”

That was Martha. The old maid’s voice was trembling, brittle as dry leaves.

“Aye,” a man grunted, the gardener. “The boss said to put her under the hydrangeas. Deep. He doesn't want the dogs catching a scent.”

Valentina felt herself being hoisted up. For a moment, she was weightless, then, impact.

She hit the bottom of a shallow trench. The earth was freezing, sucking the remaining heat from her skin. She heard the rhythmic thud-shink of a shovel biting into the dirt.

A heavy spray of soil landed on her legs. Then her stomach. The baby. The weight of the earth began to compress her chest, forcing out the last microscopic pocket of oxygen. 

She was being buried alive in her own garden, a few yards away from the room where she had once dreamed of a nursery.

“Wait!” Martha’s voice shrilled. “Garrick, the master is calling for you. He’s at the back porch. He looks… impatient.”

The shoveling stopped. “Dammit,” the gardener muttered. “Stay here. Don’t let anyone near the hole. I’ll be back to finish the job.”

The moment his heavy footsteps faded, the dirt over Valentina’s face was frantically brushed away. The burlap was ripped back. Martha’s face, etched with a mask of pure horror, hovered above her.

“Oh, my sweet girl,” the old woman whispered, her tears falling like hot needles onto Valentina’s cold skin. She pressed her fingers to Valentina’s neck.

A flutter. A tiny, desperate spark of life.

“You’re alive,” Martha breathed, her eyes darting toward the house. “God forgive me, but I can’t let him kill a child too.”

Martha didn't have time for a rescue. She didn't have a car or a key. She grabbed a pile of heavy rocks and old logs from the garden edge, shoving them into the burlap sack to mimic the weight of a body. 

She rolled the dummy into the grave and kicked a thin layer of dirt over it.

Then, she turned to Valentina.

With a strength born of pure adrenaline, Martha hauled Valentina’s limp form onto a rusted wheelbarrow. 

She covered her with a filthy, oil-stained tarp and a pile of discarded weeds.

The journey was a nightmare of agonizing slowness. Squeak. Squeak. Squeak. The wheel of the barrow groaned under the weight.

“Martha!”

The maid froze. Valentina felt her heart stop. Through a small tear in the tarp, she saw the silhouette of Kennedy standing on the veranda, a glass of scotch in his hand.

“Where are you going with that trash?” he called out, his voice lazily cruel.

“The…the alley bin, sir,” Martha stammered, her voice shaking. “The gardener left a mess. I’m clearing it before the rain ruins the path.”

Kennedy looked at the pile of weeds for a heartbeat that lasted an eternity. Then, he shrugged. “Fine. Make it quick. I want this house purged of her memory by morning.”

Martha didn't wait. She pushed the barrow toward the rusted servant’s gate at the far end of the estate. Every pebble they hit sent a spike of agony through Valentina’s bruised neck.

Finally, they reached the narrow, rain-slicked alleyway behind the mansion. Martha tipped the barrow.

Valentina tumbled out, landing in a pile of damp cardboard and trash. The tarp was thrown over her like a shroud.

“Run, Valentina,” Martha sobbed, kneeling for one last second to tuck a small, tattered shawl around her. “If you stay, he will finish it. If you go to the police, he will buy them. You have to disappear. You have to be a ghost now.”

The gate clicked shut. The heavy iron bolt slid into place.

The silence of the alley was deafening, broken only by the distant rumble of thunder. Valentina lay there, her fingers twitching in the mud. 

The paralytic was finally wearing off, replaced by a searing, white-hot pain in her throat and a terrifying emptiness in her heart.

She was twenty-eight years old. She was penniless. She was a walking corpse.

And as a sharp, protective cramp bloomed in her abdomen, she realized the most terrifying truth of all: she was no longer one person. 

She was two. And she had no idea how to keep either of them alive.

But in the dead of that night, she just did one thing, the only thing she could do at that moment.

Run!