Page 41 of Specters & Spotlights

“You’ll miss me,” she said, glancing back.

“I always do,” he said, already half-gone.

Elise reached for the closet door and pulled it shut. The googly eyes someone had stuck to the inside panels bobbled as it closed—lopsided, absurd, watching her go. She locked it with a small click.

Then she climbed the sloping ramp to stage right and paused. Right beneath the fly system, the shoes she’d left were waiting. They hadn’t been moved far, just rearranged. The laces were tied—neat, careful, deliberate. She left them where they were.

She crossed the stage one last time, shadows trailing behind her as the ghost light hummed its soft benediction. The velvet house seats stared back like sleeping faces.

She waved to the man in the front row, more out of habit than hope.

He lifted a hand in return. A small wave. Barely there.

Elise froze, her heart skipping a beat. Then she smiled. And moved toward the red EXIT sign.

She stepped out into the alleyway, the theatre door closing behind her with a soft clunk that echoed a little more than usual. The air had that in-between quality—cool but restless, like the weather was deciding what to become. In a space like this, at a time like this, the presence in the alley felt slightly more pronounced than it had on that first day in the city.

Elise changed course.

She walked to the spot by the dumpster, able to pick out the barest glimmer only because her senses told her it was there. Up close, the spirit still didn’t read as a person so much as a leftover impression—a whisper of what it had once been. It wasn’t trying to hide. It wasn’t trying to do anything at all. Just the faintest echo, worn down by time until almost nothing remained except the last remnants of its dying panic.

Elise exhaled slowly.

She didn’t have any special talent for ushering wisps like this into whatever came next. Some spirits needed… more. More power, more certainty, more ritual than she could offer in a damp alley behind a theatre. But she didn’t want to leave without trying.

From her pocket, she pulled the ragged remains of the sage bundle she’d used in the green room. She lit it, shielding the flame with her hands until it caught. Smoke curled up and drifted toward the shimmer, thin and searching.

“Hi,” she murmured, feeling a little ridiculous and not caring anyway. “I don’t know if you can hear me.”

The alley didn’t answer. The city didn’t shift. The ever-present puddles just sat there, dull and dark.

Elise swallowed and tried again, softer. “I don’t know if this will make a difference, but… I wanted to tell you that you don’t have to stay here. Not if you don’t want to.” She paused, careful with her words, as if they were something fragile. “You can let go. Move on. It’s alright.”

She waited, biting her lower lip, trying to discern any change—anything visible, any shift in the air, any tremor in the prickling along her hands.

At first, nothing.

Then, so faint she almost missed it, the edge of panic in that corner of the alley seemed to loosen. Like a clenched fist uncurled. Like a held breath, finally let go. The shimmer didn’t brighten or speak or become a person again. It simply… thinned, as if whatever had been caught there had finally heard someone answer back.

Or maybe nothing had changed at all, and Elise was letting hope play tricks on her. Hard to say, really.

She lowered the sage bundle and let it fall to the wet pavement. When the embers flared, she ground them out under her boot until the smoke died.

Elise pulled her coat a little tighter. Then, with one last glance toward the space where the shimmer had been, she started toward the main road.

As she emerged from the alley, her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Cici.

She answered before the second ring. “Hey! You caught me just in time—I’m walking to the cast party. You wouldn’t believe how many bobby pins I had to hunt down.”

Silence.

Then, Cici spoke—slower than usual. “Elise… something’s wrong.”

Elise’s steps faltered.

“What do you mean?”