To enjoy this story at the best, maybe you'd like to listen its little tracklist. You'll find it as an external link, but feel free to search each song on your own:

From Yesterday - 30 Seconds To Mars

Until We Go Down - Ruelle

Hurricane - 30 Seconds to Mars

***

"Will that be all, Mister Turner?" I said after signing the papers the lawyer showed me.

"Yes, yes, it is," he spoke looking at each of them, just to make sure everything was correct.

"Then I must think we are finally done with the papers." I stood, hoping this meant the end of our meetings and the beginning of my rest.

"Indeed, hope I did not bother you so much these days, Mister Allan."

"At all, you were doing your job, nothing more. Please, don't hesitate to contact me if you need something else, anything." I was being polite, obviously. The last thing I wanted was to see this man again.

"I will let you know if the time comes, but I don't see it soon by now."

"Hope you have a good trip, then."

"And you a good life, Mister Allan." We shook hands, I walked him to the entrance and said our final goodbyes. "Receive my heartfelt condolences," he said turning one more time to me," may your father rest in peace."

When I closed the doors, now completely alone in a big, old house that now seemed empty and sinister, I couldn't but let my tears fall down, burning my checks as they descended as my body, who met the floor in a few seconds, holding my hand between my hands and knees.

There was nothing I could have done, but something in my mind prevented me from accepting it, to face the new life I had in front. I wanted my past, I needed it, and somehow, days were passing by faster than before, as if making fun of me.

I went upstairs to the library, my jail and church, the only place I had slept in since it happened. Every night I felt her presence there, patiently waiting for me and the day she will cry again, announcing my death.

The smell of old books, my private havens, comforted me a little while I walked to the black armchair where I used to read, the one besides the window. The sky was cloudy, something I thanked inside. I wouldn't have tolerated the sun and its light.

Once there, with salted cheeks and irritated eyes, I let my gaze get lost in the landscape and my face bury itself between the memories, going back, one more time, to that night when legends and tales came to life.

It was eleven and a half during a quiet night. I couldn't sleep, some frightening nightmares had taken my sleep under their domain, which made me decide a little reading to clear my thoughts would be a better option than to insist on something useless.

I got up from the bed to go to our library. There were books I haven't even started, some of them with love stories so cheesy and girlish, simple and cliché, my father thought I was not his son when he discovered a hardcover copy of Pride and Prejudice in my night table.

I didn't blame him when he looked curiously at me the next morning, the stories I use to have around are those plagued with vampires, ghosts, undead creatures, witches, demons, treachery angels, and any other kind of dark being I could find in the local store or the library we had in the house.

My father had been like me in his teenage years: preferred to be reading than to attend meetings, discover new worlds in the pages than to be aware of the real world. In the course of his life, with the help of my mother, he ended with an enviable collection of stories, I guess that one thousand.

He claimed he read all of them and considering he was forty years old, I had no problem believing him. He had had a very long time to take care of every single book, which I saw as one of my goals, to read everything in that house and a little bit more, if possible.

However, the circumstances in which I was that night would prevent me from reading for some time, although I was not aware of it. I've always believed we are not alone in this world, that there are beings that hide their existence from our eyes, and that night, I would witness one of them.

The wooden floor cracked a little while I made my way to the written sanctuary I attended when the occasion presented, which was the case this time. I was more than used to it, the sound, the dead-like silence, and even the coldness my skin felt in the empty hallways.

Only my pajama pants covered me, but those sensations represented neither something new nor a bother to me, my body even welcomed them, as long friends greeting each other after a long time. That was my first night in my house, after months in college.

Some of the portraits hanging on the walls were replaced by new ones because of the lost friendships. My father always considered part of his any person he thought we could trust no matter what, but a recent discussion made him see there were some who didn't deserve that privilege.

My family have always been one of the healthiest in the city. Is not that there were plenty in there, but considering we lived in a town far from the sea, with a very few fertile zones and many animals that ruined the crops, we considered ourselves lucky, maybe even blessed.

The blessing, however, will have its price.

A couple of seconds before I entered the library, I heard something coming from inside. I couldn't identify it very well, but the first thing I thought was some people were talking, although I wasn't sure.

When I approached a little more, the sound was clearer than before. It was not someone talking, but crying. Soft sobs which sad soul I wasn't able to identify. It was a woman, it was for sure, but none of my knowledge. That was when I knew something was wrong.

I debated myself whether to open the door or not, but the decision would not be up to me. The cries, increasing, sounded nearer. I had no time to hide when a pale girl in a white dress came out through the wood. She was floating while red, black tears descended from both of her eyes.

My blood froze on its place and I felt my heart stopping for a second. She had no feet, yet, there she was, standing in the middle of the air, on her way through the hallways, whichever it may be.

Little time passed when her sobs were transformed into rending cries, as she kept floating and advancing. When the ghost headed to the west side, I identified her path. She was coming for my father. He was sleeping alone in that room while my mother was on the other side of the world.

I stood and started to run and left her behind so easily I wasn't convinced I had the advantage at all. I opened my parents' room like the devil was chasing me, and I believed it. He was having problems to breathe again.

"FATHER!" It was all I could say.

He wasn't aware I was there, and the cries coming from the corridor just get me to the nerves. I didn't know what to do, my hands were trembling more than ever and the air became as colder as it could, like there was crashed ice around us.

Sooner than what I thought, the girl was there, crying like it was the end of the world, paralyzing me as she came in. Her cheeks were filled with scars, made by the tears coming from her eyes, and her screams just desperate me even more than what I already was.

More than choking, he was trembling, or so I thought, looking with tears in my eyes. I saw when his hand pressed his chest, trying to reach his own heart. I understood what was happening right then. My hands began to press his chest several times, trying in vain to keep him among the living.

The girl just kept screaming at the top of her lungs, freezing me at times, while I tried to save his life. I knew her, I knew her kind, and I knew it was useless anything I did when they came to announce it, but my body didn't accept it, not while the man who gave me life was agonizing so helplessly in front of my eyes.

A single breath; that was all it took. A single, last breath, and his face with pain all over it. Now it was me who was screaming. Just a dream, just a damned nightmare, this is not happening, not happening. But the girl, that specter, was still there, losing her voice, standing over a little pool of black as coal.

The clock tower marked the midnight. I looked first at my father, then at the girl, who was in the window, and my father again. I couldn't feel neither his pulse nor his breathing. When I turned my gaze to the window again, she wasn't there, but the sobs returned.

I didn't sleep that, or the two following nights, when the papers were ready and I was waiting for my mom to arrive the next day. And I had strong doubts I would be able to do it that night as well.