“You’re late,” the ghost spoke with folded arms.

“Sorry.”

The ghost sat on his own gravestone, one leg on top of the other. Half of his face was covered in white bandage, and the other half nearly veiled by dark hair. His yellow goat eye glowed dimly. Stitch marks and scars were clearly visible on his face. The thin lips crooked up into a smile.

“It took me a long time preparing this,” I said apologetically and handed him a bouquet of wildflowers, which the ghost happily accepted.

“How do you still remember I like daffodils after all these years?” He said as his pale hands traced the veins of the flower tenderly. The yellow eye showed profound joy.

Under the bare branches we stood facing each other. The graveyard was quiet. The church bell was ringing silently in the wind. The crows rested on the trees, not daring to break the taciturnity. He stood up from the gravestone and started planting the flowers around it. The daffodils were still blooming in their full liveliness.

“My body had fully decomposed, I reckon. All the contents of the dead fully mingled into the soil, made into something to foster new life. Letting my favorite flowers grow from my flesh is romantic, isn’t it?” he mumbled while continuing to plant the flowers on his grave. I stood near him, watching the ghost move around. “I hope they can bloom again when next year’s spring sweep through the land. The winter is killing me.”

Years ago, he died when he jumped off the cliff near the graveyard. He refused to go to heaven, hell, or anything the religions we crafted said would come next. He chose to linger in this world without rest, in the limbo between life and death, just for me. I didn’t comprehend his intentions back then and blamed myself for keeping him in pain; but after a certain afternoon I thought I finally understood him.

The graveyard was on a small hill behind the church. Different shapes and sizes of gravestones decorated the field. This bench was on a sheer cliff, the one he jumped off, and faced the vast ocean beyond. On the other side of the hill where our back was a small town. Ironically, you would probably find more liveliness here than anywhere in that town. That was why unlike most people, I didn’t live there, but rather in a small cabin near the graveyard with the ghost. We often sat there in each other’s company.

It was a cloudy afternoon. I sat on the wooden bench in the graveyard beside him, his head resting on my shoulder. Seldomly did patches of blue sky came unveiled from the thick, grey clouds. I was reading something, probably Camus, and he was staring at the everchanging sky. His eyelashes shuddered in the gentle, cool wind, and his eyes flickered slightly. We had been sitting there for hours, and both of us were getting sleepy.

Then, something appeared on the blue horizon. It was first a small black dot, then it grew larger and larger. I could see it, a huge, dark pillar hovering several meters above the ground. It was immense, at least thirty meters high, and completely black. The ghost covered his mouth with his hand in shock, but I still managed to spot his sharp, almost shark-like teeth between his fingers. The mysterious object moved closer and closer to us, and I made out what it was—a clock tower. I could see the metal gears inside through the dial face. It finally stopped at the foot of the cliff, above the storming ocean. The height difference of the cliff made it possible for the clock on the tip of the dark pilar to be leveled with our bench. The clock was as large as a small house. The ghost was still in shock, slightly shaking at the monstrosity in front of us. I held him in my embrace. He moved his gaze from the clock tower to me. The yellow iris was filled with trouble and confusion.

“What?” the ghost gasped. “Did you see that? Or am I hallucinating?”

I assured him that I saw it too.

“I’ve never seen something like this before! The tower of Babel?” He exclaimed as he stood up from the bench. I followed him and walked cautiously toward the clock tower.

The clock was an intricate structure of metallic components. Some were folded into shapes of spiral, some into blossoming flowers, some into animal heads, and some into human figures, luxurious and complex. The second hand was longer than the height of the church’s bell tower. Every time it moved, a distant echo of time coming out of the heart of the tower could be heard.

“Look, there is someone inside the clock!” whispered the ghost into my ear while holding my hand.

Indeed, between the huge hands lay a girl in white garments. Her curly black hair revealed her seaside origins.

“Yeah. I see her now. She is probably from somewhere near the ocean, I guess. What do you think?” I replied with a whisper, afraid that my voice might wake her up.

“Probably.” I could feel his breath on my face. “Should we wake her up? Or—”

The girl sat up from the curved metal surface and rubbed her eyes. The black hair was swaying gently by her face. She seemed to have taken some time to realize where she was. The ghost was beside me, one hand clenching my sleeve, the other one by his mouth, his teeth nibbling on the nails nervously. I hugged him lightly to calm him down.

She stood up. The huge metallic hands were slowly rotating above her. She walked out of the clock tower with light steps onto the grassy cliff, the white garments flapped like wings of an albatross. Her eyes were as blue as the ocean; I could see the waves in those irises.

“Are you alone?”

I nodded. Her voice was like splashes of ocean waves, the ones you would hear when you put a shell near your ear.

“Then who were you talking to earlier?”

“A ghost of my beloved one. You won’t see him…only I can see him.”

“Oh.” She smiled. “Say hello to him for me, will you?”

The girl sat on the edge of the cliff. I sat beside her, still holding onto the ghost’s hand. We stared at the immense ocean.

“I am Calypso. What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Oh.” She sighed. “Just like the people the village I came from.”

“Where is your village?”

“On the shores of Crete.”

“That’s a long way from Scotland.” I said absent-mindedly but was encountered by her confused stare. “Do you know where you are? You are at Scotland right now. To get to here, you must cross the entire European continent…you really traveled a long way.”

“European continent?”

“Yeah.” The girl seemed confused about my remarks. She didn’t seem to understand any geography. “A huge piece of land north of Crete.”

“Oh. I always thought there was only Crete in a vast, infinite ocean. I was a little surprised to see other lands.”

The thick clouds were slowly dissipating. More and more patches of blue sky were revealed. The clock tower was still beside us, echoing with the distant sounds of time. The grass was growing over my hand.

“What happened to him?” She asked. The blue eyes still resonating the ocean waves.

“Who?” I was bewildered.

“The ghost of your beloved, whom I can’t see.”

“Oh. Him.” I turned to look at the ghost. He seemed to have relaxed a bit. Probably because of the sky. “Can I tell her what happened to you?” The ghost nodded.

“He jumped off a cliff. This cliff we are sitting on right now. That gravestone right there—” I turned and pointed at a stone behind the bench, “—That’s where he is lying right now. I collected his body and buried it in the graveyard before it could be washed away by the ocean.”

“Why?”

“You mean why he jumped off? Because he was persecuted by people from the royalties. He grew tired of being hunted down, living a life no different from being in hell. He escaped from London to a town just down the hill. I met him there. But people found him. To avoid being captured or dragging me down the whole thing, he killed himself. After that, he refused to go to next life, instead wander in this world to be with me.” I finished and turned to look at the ghost. He smiled a little.

“He must have loved you.”

The clock tower erupted with a series of clanging metallic rings. The hour hand showed 4 in the afternoon. The girl stood up and faced us.

“I must go. It’s time. The clock tower calls me. Goodbye. Goodbye.”

She climbed onto the metallic rim of the clock and waved toward us. I waved back, so did the ghost, although he knew she couldn’t see him. The clock tower slowly and silently hovered away, just like how it approached us hours earlier. It disappeared into the blue horizon.

The ghost finished planting the daffodils around his grave, the yellow eye staring into mine. I forced a smile. He walked towards me, slightly glimmering under the sunlight. The broken branches above us were occupied by several silent black crows. Only the distant clashing of waves on the cliff could be heard. I did miss the albatross girl and the clock tower. But I missed the ghost more.

Months ago, on that day when the clock tower approached us from the horizon, when the albatross girl—what was her name? Calypso? —remarked after I told our story, I finally comprehended why the ghost chose to stay. Even though in the infinite spectrum of time he would fade with the world, lingering alone on the barren lands, he chose to stay for a greater feeling that could battle any tortures or great pains on this world.