M0R1BUND

iii.

Somehow, even the hallways are the same.

Heath bats some rainwater off of his paw. ‘They are the same,’ he decides—give or take a few feet of floodwater. But wading in this life is not much different than walking on eggshells in the last. In those days, Heath could hardly take a step without the echo announcing his arrival. There’s no vaulted ceiling for the sound to bounce off of, out here, but he still has to tread lightly on the water. Walking through walls, becoming weightless… These things don’t come as naturally to ghosts as he once thought.

It’s easy to lose the wind to the bones of the cathedral. He has to listen closely to remind himself where he is.

His ears prick. The wind takes a turn. He follows it, more with his heart than with his senses, now. It tumbles above his head and takes a spill over the walls. Heath lowers his eyes to his reflection in the water, and—

It’s him.

iv.

Heath is falling.

A memory opens up beneath him like blood on the water. It’s early autumn, the world colored red with the stubborn heat of a lingering summer. There is an unsigned, undated letter on Heath’s desk addressed to one “I.” Nobody is around.

Heath bolts down the hallway. He’s dressed in a hurry, his saturno nearly flying off his head as the echo of his footfalls thunders all around him. He swings a hard left and disappears into his office. When he emerges, the letter is crumpled in his cassock pocket. It’s all he has time to grab.

“What have you done?” The deacon calls his name. Heath runs.

“Reverend, what have you done?”

v.

There is a dim sense, in the back of Heath’s mind, that something has changed. The lights spin out above him, dancing stars beckoning him back up for air.

‘No,’ he thinks spitefully. ‘You’ve gone to all the trouble of bringing me back here. This must be where I belong.’

So he sinks.