Chapter 14
Elias's Peace
Amy helps Elias's spirit by revealing the truth of his death to a local historian. He vanishes with a grateful nod, leaving a cold breeze.
The cold breeze that followed Elias’s vanishing was more than a shift in the air. It was a sigh, a release of something that had been wound tight for nearly a century and a half. I stood there, alone in the dusty back room of the county historical society, my hand still hovering where his translucent form had been. The silence that settled was not empty; it was filled with a profound, aching peace.
I let my arm fall to my side. The historian, a young man named Caleb with spectacles perched on his nose and a passion for the forgotten dead, stared at the spot where Elias had stood. His face was pale, his mouth slightly agape. He had seen it. He had heard it. The truth I had just spoken, the truth I had pieced together from crumbling letters, misdated census records, and the whispered testimony of the Whispering Willow, had been given a final, spectral witness.
“I… I need to sit down,” Caleb murmured, fumbling for a chair.
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