Shadow of a Grave ✧ Sebastian Sallow

chapter one ✧ the night of

Flashlight by The Front Bottoms

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Trigger Warning: This chapter includes sensitive conduct - please see the comment for a full description of conduct.

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Amelia Blackwood hadn't expected death to knock on her door that evening. She had woken up a few weeks ago and knew something had changed. It was an irrational thought yet she couldn't shake the feeling of being haunted each time she moved. She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep that night since the presence of a ghost was keeping her awake.

Instead, she brewed some tea and sat in the den with her favorite book. Then she would wait to see if the ghost would finally come. She had barely been able to focus on the story as her mind drifted away from her. The memories of past regrets drove her silently mad as they always had at the end of each day. People whom she had never stopped mourning the loss of still lived on in her head each night, including the ghost.

Amelia must have traced the same page endlessly. There were many books that she had collected over the years. A personal library of the works that she had dreamed about owning sat just upstairs in her study. Many she would never have time to read although she hadn't known it when she purchased them. 

Some of those books had been expensive, others had been old and rare, and a few were gifts that she cherished dearly. But her favorite of the collection had been a book that was none of those things. It never sat on the self with the others of her collection. On nights that she didn't look at the book, it lived close by on her nightstand. No one was allowed to touch it, not her husband, the twins, and not even her daughter. If the house was on fire, burning down to ash and soot, and there was only time to save one book, it was the collection of Shakespeare's stories.

It wasn't rare, there were thousands of copies of that edition in the city of London alone. It hadn't been overly expensive since as a child Amelia had simply taken it from the library and decided she'd never return it. Shakespeare hadn't even been her favorite author.

But she had lent the book to him back when they were young and his handwriting was still scribbled in the margins. That had been irreplaceable to her. 

Amelia had normally been the one to disrespect her books by writing in them. Other classmates had been shocked at how much she took notes within the pages of the book itself. Even back then, he had teased her about it multiple times until he began asking to borrow her books. Reading the notes she left behind had become his favorite part.

He never left notes of his own, especially not in her books. Only this book.

Amelia had memorized the last page of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Each word, the font, the spacing, all of it was a perfect image in her mind. The way that his handwriting curled a little messy at the end of each word. It was her favorite page in her favorite book.

Her own handwriting from years ago had been the first note, blue ink at the bottom of the open page as if it had been her review. 𝑅𝑒𝓂𝒾𝓃𝒹𝓈 𝓂𝑒 𝑜𝒻 𝒮𝑒𝒷𝒶𝓈𝓉𝒾𝒶𝓃, she had written. When she first wrote it, she hadn't expected him to ever read it let alone leave his own note next to it. He had thought it was an insult when he first read it, but to her, it was more of an admiration.

𝐼'𝒹 𝒹𝑜 𝒶 𝓁𝑜𝓉 𝓌𝑜𝓇𝓈𝑒, 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝒶 𝓁𝑜𝓉 𝓁𝑒𝓈𝓈, 𝒾𝒻 𝒾𝓉 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒶𝓁𝓁 𝒻𝑜𝓇 𝓈𝑜𝓂𝑒𝑜𝓃𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝐼 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒 𝒶𝓈 𝓂𝓊𝒸𝒽 𝒶𝓈 𝓎𝑜𝓊.