Endless Departure
Esther Thorne used to take delight in her routine. Every Tuesday, like clockwork, she would visit her local park, armed with a sandwich, a book, and a thermos of herbal tea. The sun would spill through the branches, and she would sit on her favourite bench, the wood warm beneath her fingers, as she lost herself in the pages.
But one Tuesday, routine shattered. When she arrived, the weather had turned sinister, dark clouds hung low in the sky, and a biting chill laced the air. She settled onto her bench, pulling the collar of her coat tightly around her neck, but something felt off. The wind seemed to carry a murmur, an unresolved thought brushing against her mind, urging her to look beyond the trees lining the park.
There, a figure stood just beyond the path, clad in an elongated coat and a wide-brimmed hat. Time passed, but the figure didn’t move; merely stared blankly at the horizon, or perhaps at her. It felt as though each heart-pang in her chest mingled with the afternoon breeze. Balancing her sandwich on her lap, she paused, heart racing, thinking to leave. But instead, she remained—mesmerised.
Abruptly, the figure was gone, vanishing like mist, leaving her breath caught in her throat. It was then she noticed the temperature swing at her back, a draught sweeping through the trees. Abandoning her lunch, she sat up, scanning the park, and as she did, the sky darkened further, growing heavy with looming expectation.
From that moment, Esther’s life spiralled. She dreamt of the figure—its eyes, voids without depth; its presence, invasive and suffocating. When she awoke, bitterly cold, she found that oddities clung to her life like wet leaves. Doors creaked open on their own, whispers trickled through the cracks of her mind, and forgotten aspects of her acquaintances emerged unbidden, distorted.
Lost in the cycle of sleepless nights and drifting days, she began hearing a strange percussion whenever she ventured near her park. The sound of footsteps behind her. The flutter of her name on the wind. “Esther…”
At first, she dismissed it as the air playing tricks, common in a city rife with human noise. But as days bled into weeks, the anxiety pooled, thick and choking. Her work began to suffer—errors stacked like a tower of regret. Friends grew wary, their conversations fading to fragmented murmurings, as though they stood just outside of her reach. Social invitations dwindled, slipping away like sand through her fingers.
By now, she was plagued by a profound sensation—a tugging, an emotion she could not name, entwined with feelings of longing, loss, and an inexplicable desire to chase after that figure once more. The park grew darker, alive with something intangible. Under the sinking sun, where the light once glimmered, shadows coalesced into a thick fog; it knotted around her legs, pulled at her thoughts, demanded she return.
Haunted, she wandered into the park after sunset on a whim, drawn back to the bench where it had first appeared, pulled by an almost tactile need to confront the presence. It had become her obsession, the only whisper of companionship she had. As she fought against the chill that gripped her bones, a stifling quiet embraced her.
Then, she saw it—near the edge of the trees, the figure stood once again. This time, however, the wind carried clarity. Every movement, every sharp corner of its coat, the details solidified in the gaze it fixed on her. Beneath the brim of the hat, ghostly white skin fell over a bony visage, and she could possess the faintest hint of its lips curving into an unsettling smile.
Curiosity surged, almost thrilling in the terror it concocted. She willed her feet to take a hesitant step forward. “Who are you?” The word grasped desperately in the frigid air.
The figure stood motionless, but as she neared, a deep voice flooded her thoughts: “I cannot leave without you.”
Esther staggered back, overwhelmed with a sickening dread; her breath clawed at her throat. The shoreline of reality twisted, colliding with her mind’s eye. Images flashed—cities swelling at night, mournful sirens, faces she did not know, yet felt she had loved—each passing memory seeped through the ghost’s presence. She dropped to her knees, clutching her head as waves of pressure pounded against her temples, like memories wanting to erupt.
The next morning, she spoke to her only friend, Aaron, who visited her flat, noticing the faint tremor in her word and the flickering shadows under her eyes. “You need help, Esther. This… this is not you.”
But she couldn’t explain the inexplicable bond she shared with the figure now burning in her mind. In an unguarded moment, she divulged everything; his face shifted into something distressed, poured out worry that converged in ripples of rage. “Stop messing with your head, you need to let it go!”
For days, she tried to sever the invisible ties. But the more she fought, the stronger the relentless pull became. A desperate voice echoed within, “You don’t know loneliness,” it whispered. At the edge of sanity, she plunged back into the park, seeking in that darkness something she had long lost.
Each time she visited, the figure persisted—insistent and perfect in its incompleteness. It no longer elicited fear but an unshakeable call. She had started counting the moments they shared beneath the weighty trees, as if leaving her existence hinged on obeying the invite to join. Shadows intermingled, flickering like candle flames; she dared to murmur what her heart yearned: “What do you want from me?”
“Find me, Esther,” echoed with haunting clarity. “Find where it began.”
For weeks, it consumed her; sleepless nights and lost days led her to research every unremarkable cemetery, forgotten grave, every lost soul’s story, poring over ancient records. Then she stumbled upon a name, pressing the air from her lungs. Samuel Aldridge—it spoke of a boy who’d vanished in the park decades ago, never found, his essence lost in time, swallowed by the very trees she now roamed.
She had broached a darker truth. Samuel’s final departure now entwined with her own, meant to barter her presence for his freedom. Esther returned to the park, heart racing with a vulnerable mix of pity and fatal attraction. Willing to confront the revelation, she stood under the bare branches and called out, “Samuel!”
The air shifted, darkened as shadows spiralled around her, but it was the figure—the painful familiarity of its eroded features that loomed larger than ever. She stepped forward, lips parted, “I can help you.”
“Help…?” it echoed, a flicker of hope resonating.
But she felt it in the marrow of her bones—the danger that loomed.
In that instant, she turned and fled, breath clawing at her throat like a panicked beast. Turning, she tried to shake the relentless chill demanding she linger, but the figure surged close, a sudden stab of sorrow engulfing her. The air crackled, and the world shifted. The distance stretched perilously between them.
“Come, be my answer. Deliver me!”
But Esther didn’t know what that meant, didn’t possess the right fragment of Samuel’s journey to offer him. Even as she ran, dread twisted in her gut—a consequence weaving its way in. It pressed down, choking every ounce of resolution from her body. If she failed…
When she reached her flat, collapse met her exhaustion. Eyes shut tight, she hoped dawn would come with clarity, yet she awoke to darkness—the absence of light embraced her, and panic flared. Gritting her teeth, she sensed it there, waiting.
As she turned, a single decisive blow-to her sense of self, to everything she was. The figure emerged, smooth, equal, and in that moment, it burrowed within, a cold cruellty taking root. Yearning, celebration, all ensnared in bitterness; she felt herself dividing, something implicated—ordinary existence shrouded forever beneath Samuel’s implacable need.
And within her heart, as her identity dissolved, a new thought grew long and cold: to linger in eternal departure. Now, she never left that park, nor did she belong anywhere, tethered in a damned longing for solace, the figure’s smile pressed against her core—haunting, potent, unbearable, the memory of her bright life flickered like a lost echo.
