Chapter 33 – Names of the Dead

September 1966

The cellar had grown quieter since the rain stopped. Outside, the vineyard lay soaked and silvered under the pale September sun, vines trembling gently in the aftermath of the storm. I hadn't left my underground refuge in three days.

The book from my dream—the one with the apple on the cover—had vanished as dreams do, but not the weight of it. That remained in my hands. A phantom texture, a memory out of place.

My journal from Earth sat on the desk before me, open to a blank page. The ink in my fountain pen had begun to dry. Still, I hadn't moved, not yet.

Instead, I sat still with one question: What was the point of remembering the dead if I could no longer believe they had ever lived?

But then—if I didn't remember them, who would?

I wrote the first name.

Camille B.

Patient. Fifteen years old. Severe depression. Suicide attempt. I remembered her voice first—high and mechanical, as though even her vocal cords had given up. Then her eyes—green, wide, always braced for disappointment. I'd walked her through imagery therapy, and once—just once—she smiled.

She died in December of 1984.

I wrote the second.

Arnaud J.

Forty-seven. Alcohol dependency. Anger issues. He brought me old coins once, saying they were for luck. Then he told me to go to hell in the same breath.

He disappeared halfway through treatment.

I kept writing, line after line.

By the time the candle burned halfway down its length, I had filled three pages with names and short remembrances. I wasn't trying to catalogue them, it wasn't a diagnostic list or a clinical record. It was a eulogy—fragmented, messy, unresolved.

Names

Dates

A sentence or two

But with each line, something sharpened inside me. Not grief, not guilt—though both were present. It was something quieter. A kind of gravity, a rooting.

Every name I wrote made this world feel more real.

Not because they were here, but because I was. Because I remembered. And that memory anchored me in ways that the vineyard, the winepress, the cellar, never could.

These were mine.

I looked up at the far wall, where my earlier notes were pinned like a madman's mosaic. Volturi. Twilight. Demetri. Fiction and fact dissolving into each other. And now, beside the names of the dead, another line had begun to form—one I hadn't meant to write:

You are creating them.

I didn't remember writing it. But there it was, in my handwriting. Faint, as though the ink had been watered down or written by a different version of myself.

I stared at the phrase for a long time.

Creating

For months, I had attributed the visions to stress and trauma. A brain so desperate for meaning it conjured ghosts. But lately… the dreams had become tactile. The illusions responsive.

Once, in August, I thought I saw Camille in the vineyard, standing beside the ruined archway. She had looked up at me and smiled. I blinked—and she was gone.

No. Not gone, but faded.

Like a painting vanishing beneath water.

Was I hallucinating? Or… projecting?

I thought of Alice Cullen. Her face floated back to me from the book I had once refused to read. The vampire who saw the future—or at least, a future.

What if… my mind wasn't broken?

What if it was—reaching?

Not madness, not delusion.

A gift

The thought terrified me. And yet, it wouldn't leave.

I closed the journal, but the names echoed behind my eyes.

I stood slowly, candle in hand, and turned to the old mirror propped in the corner. Its frame was rusted, warped from years of dampness and neglect. My reflection stood still—but behind me, the wall began to ripple, subtly, like heat rising from pavement.

Not physical, not light. But something else.

I focused.

The air twisted, the shape of Camille formed. Not clearly—just her outline, her eyes, the rough impression of her hair tied back the way she used to wear it on anxious days.

I blinked.

She stayed.

I took a step closer. She flickered, but remained.

Then I whispered her name.

She vanished.

I pressed my hand to the cold glass. The cellar returned to stillness.

No voices, no visions, no ghosts.

But my hand still tingled, as if I'd touched something not meant for this world.

My illusions weren't dreams. They weren't random hallucinations, they responded to me. They grew stronger when I wrote, when I remembered, when I gave form to the past.

Alice saw the future.

Was I seeing memory? Or making it visible?

Creating

Not passively

Not as symptom

As choice.

Even if I didn't understand the rules yet, the shape was there.

I crossed back to the desk, picked up the pen again, and wrote two more names.

Then another line beneath them, deliberate and clean:

They are not forgotten. They are reflected.

The wind outside the cellar shifted, just slightly. Like breath held and released.

There was still so much I didn't know. About this world, about myself, and about what lay ahead.

But for now, I would begin with what I could do.

Remember, write, and shape.

Even if the line between memory and illusion continued to blur, I would anchor myself in the truth of names.

The dead deserved that much.

And perhaps, through them, I could begin to understand the gift I never asked for—but could no longer deny.