Andy
Exhumed.
Crawling from Hell, fallen from grace. And then there’s nothing left to take. Leaving the past to the grave, so we can reincarnate.”
Reincarnate - Motionless In White
It was a little after five-thirty when Elizabeth excused herself to work on homework. She crafted a brilliant lie on how we had a big test coming up, and wanted nothing more than to focus completely on preparing ourselves. Once we knew her parents would not be checking in on us, we threw open her bedroom window, took a deep breath of the cool evening air and climbed down on the wire trellis.
Things feel heavy and weird now. Elizabeth stood three feet away at the edge of her driveway, her shovel propped under her elbow while she zipped up her navy blue leather jacket and pulled her matching slouchy beanie over her bun of tangled blonde locks.
She steals the occasional glance, her hazel eyes sniping shots of me and Andy. There’s concealed judgement lingering in her eyes, but I think she is mostly just trying to get a better grip on our relationship and what part I play in it.
“The cemetery is seven blocks north. Let’s haul ass.” Ashley says, taking it upon himself to take point and lead the group. But if I’ve learned anything about him over these two weeks, it’s that he’s doing it soley to get some time to himself and walk alone for a bit.
We fall a few feet behind him and walk in silence for a bit, then Elizabeth launches boldly into a fresh conversation with Andy.
“So, tell me about yourself.”
He peers down at her out of the corner of his eye, confusion in his expression. “...What do you want to know?”
“Anything I can’t find in a Google search.”
He hesitates a bit, then sighs reluctantly. “I’m from Ohio, my birthday is December 26th, I’m a-”
“That’s really basic stuff.” Elizabeth snaps in annoyance, “I want the stuff that’s a little further under that thick skin of yours.”
“No.” He responds shortly, grimacing at her. “It’s none of your damn business.”
“Fine.” Elizabeth responds, wearing this prided smile. “Guilty people never spout too much in fear of slipping up.”
“Elizabeth,” I snap, glaring at her. She scoffs, “I’m not trying to be a dick, Ash. I just want to be sure that I know everything I need to.”
Her sarcastic grin slips away into a worried frown, and she stops walking. “Honestly, I’m not trying to pry you apart. I worry.”
We’ve stopped moving, and Elizabeth is crossing her arms across her chest, looking anything but comfortable right then.
“I don’t mean to make you worry,” Andy says in a calm, polite tone. “I don’t mean to be anything that makes you uncomfortable, but if I happen to on accident, know that it was not my intent, alright? On that note, I don’t mind you asking questions, but no interrogating, alright?”
After some hestitation, Elizabeth agrees with a nod. “Yeah... Okay.”
Andy claps a hand on her shoulder, making her visibly wince from being touched by the magical creature.
“I hope we can be on good terms now.” Andy talks to her as though he’s explaning to a toddler why they can’t stick their finger in a rotating fan.
Elizabeth nods slowly, her eyes never leaving his as a thousand shades of judgement flash through her hazel irises.
“Come the fuck on before my bones turn to dust!” Ashley snaps at us from ahead, pausing his broad steps to glare back at us. “I’ll leave behind whichever one of you is causing all the halts and stops.”
“We’re fine, Ash.” Andy snaps back at him with a hint of brotherly annoyance. “You just keep on hauling ass; we’ll get there eventually.”
The sun disappeared pretty quick during the walk up the hill to the cemetery. The road is lined with progressively more and more decrepit houses, and before we know it, we’re treading very lightly to make our way past vacant homes with broken windows like black eyes in the dark.
Andy caught up with Ashley after a bit, and Elizabeth fell back to talk to me. “Ash, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I have a bad habit of making things really hard for you.” She says while swinging her shovel, a distant look on her face.
“Don’t apologize, I know you mean well.” I murmur, “And besides, you’re the only person I can count on to ground me through all of this. I appreciate your honesty.”
“Well that’s all fine and dandy, but I can’t imagine that you enjoy me constantly threatening to tell on you...” She wears a guilty expression.
“Threats are one thing, it’s acting upon those impulses that causes problems.”
There’s a lengthly pause, which prompts me to look over at her for an answer or to at lease make sure she’d heard me.
“I cannot lie... I did consider telling Reece everything once...” She frowns in disappointment, “Not because I thought it’d further our power-couple revolution or anything, but because I figured that it’d be a great chance to spite you and get in my last stab of betrayal. I don’t need that.”
“I would hope not.” I frown. “I may have to sic the ghosts on you.” I crack a smile, which in turn pulls a relieved grin across her face. I wrap an arm around her shoulders without breaking pace and half hug her. “Eliza, I’ve been a poor friend, as well. Friendship is never an easy thing, and it is often messy. But I’m glad we have each other now.”
She smiles at me in the darkness in response.
The cautious part of my mind still feels very timid about sharing certain details of my life, for fear that she’d change her mind and sell me out anyways. I keep mentally kicking myself in the backside, reminding myself that it’s not as black and white as that, and I need to re-establish trust if I wish to get anywhere in life.
“So, off the topic of paranormal love stories and apologies, are you planning on going to prom?” She asks with a more hopeful, optimistic tone.
She gets a giddy smile and raises her fists into the air, her tone turning more hopeful and optimistic. “Hell yeah! I’ve been looking forward to this for years! I already bought my dress a few weeks back on a spring clearance sale. It’s a strapless pale purple gown with a beaded sweetheart neckline.”
“That sounds gorgeous.”
“Are you planning on going?... Do you have a dress?” She sounds like she’s trying to tread lightly and ask the right questions.
“You can be more outright with your questions than that.” I snicker, shoving her arm playfully.
She sighs in relief, “Whew, what I mean to say is, are you going with him? And if so, how?” She is more weary with this question, but it's obvious that she's trying to come off as inviting and friendly towards the topic.
“Yes, I am... I’m working out a plan to slither out of the house with a prop date to appease my parents. And as for the whole identity crisis at the school, that’s easily mended. It’s masquerade night.”
“Easy disguise... I like it.”
“And as for the dress, at the moment, no... But I think my Mom may have a project I can borrow. She does sew a lot of dresses just for fun.”
“That’ll be cool! How weird is that? You look forward to prom night all of your young life, and before you know it, it’s here, and you’re dress hunting and having mini panic attacks over it.”
“It’s certainly bizarre... You know something will happen eventually, but when it does, it still catches you off guard. I don’t know if I actually know how to act normal in a group of people, anymore... When the people you surround yourself with for weeks are all ghosts, you fall out of practic quick. I don’t know how to have normal conversations or act engaged... More often than not, I’m told that I come off as dismissive.” I shrug, “Nonetheless, I’m going to give it a try. And if all else fails, I can simply go invisible.”
She laughs, and I give her a look. “I’m not joking. It’s possible.”
“Okay, weirdo, prove it!” She shoves me forward, and I walk backwards, grinning at her. “Sure.” I wink at her and jog to catch up with Andy. I get right up behind him, and turn my head to watch her reaction.
“Go invisible,” I tell him, and he looks back at me with a brow arched in confusion, but he complies. I can only tell that he has done so when Elizabeth’s steps stutter and she comes to a complete stop with a blissful look of shock and disbelief on her face.
“What else can you do?!” She wails after us, picking up the pace again, her eyes wide with child-like joy and enthusiasm. “Control the weather? Read minds? Can you see the future?”
“None of the above.” Ashley responds, shocking us all a bit. He’s been pretty silent and timid this entire adventure thusfar. “We’re not mythical creatures; we don’t shoot glitter out of our asses. We are given a set skill set that we can use to our advantage to either help or plunder those around us.”
He leaves it hanging there like that and speeds up his pace again. The way he left it sounded ominious and threatning as though he were lowkey saying ‘be nice to ghosts or they won’t be too kind to you.’
It didn’t thwart Elizabeth at all, though... She launched into more questions with patient curiosity, seeming careful not to step on any toes or say anything offensive.
“How does it feel? Is it any different from having a living body?”
Andy shrugs and thinks about his answer a bit. “It feels most the same, I suppose. The only difference now is I can’t feel pain from temperature, and I’m not affected by it. For example, I could walk into a walk-in freezer and sit there for an hour, and then go climb inside an oven, and all I’d feel is the warmth or the cold... No mind-numbing feelings of overwhelming discomfort, just temperature as it is.”
“Can you be visible to a large group of people?”
“Sure... But like you or any other living person, we get tired more quickly when we’re around more people. In front of a crowd with full visibility?... I’d guess I’d have around an hour before I’d need to rest.”
“How do you rest?”
“Sleep,” he replies simply. “we find a calm place and sleep off our exhaustion. Some things never changed after I died. Though, if I never used the invisibility aspect of my ghostliness, I’d never be tired. It’s one of the few things that can actually burn you out.”
“I’d guess it’s so there’s no ghosts resuming their life after death. It makes it a hell of a lot harder to pull it off when you always have to sleep.” Ashley butts in, putting in his two cents on the matter.
“One of the many unspoken rules of death: you cannot return to your old life as though nothing has happened.”
I think about that for a moment, “Are there any other general rules?”
“You cannot spoil the secrets of the undead... I mean, you can tell a person here and there, but if I were to run into Times Sqaure and shout at everyone there every lurid detail about being dead, it’d be physically impossible. Your senses are overcome with this sickening wave of nausating guilt... It feels like the worst flu of your life, and that alone keeps you from spouting too much. Another is that when you are assigned as a guardian of someone living, you have to fullfill your duties to that person and no one else. You can’t be Superman to every person, bug and thing...”
“And you’re Ash’s guardian?” Elizabeth asks, and Andy nods, walking with his hands buried in the pockets of his Prophet jacket cutoff.
Elizabeth’s eyes linger as she mentally assesses the pair of us, looking like she’s really trying to see a match in us. “What do you do as a guardian?”
“Pretty much the sole job is to keep them out of trouble,” he chuckles “that’s easier said than done.”
“Are all guardianships romantic?” There’s an underlying tone to her voice that I automatically detect as the tone she used earlier when scrutinizing our age gap.
His brow furrows and he shakes his head, looking awkward and confused. “...No. This was a choice of ours.”
“Choice,” she echoes, then scoffs and smiles sadly to herself. “we hardly ever have a choice in who we fall in love with.”
“Y’all are depressing as hell to listen to,” Ashley pipes up, falling into one of his many alter-egos where he’s actually a nice, tolerable guy. I bury my hands in my jacket pockets and cast my gaze downwards.
“There’s always a gloomy air around the three of ya...”
Andy narrows his eyes at his friend judgingly. “You’ve been the grumpy, somber one all evening...”
Ashley snorts dismissively, “Do you want me to do a backflip? Pretend everything is hunky-dory and that it’s a common activity for a group of individuals to root around in a cemetery at midnight? No? I feel like my emotions are perfectly equipped for the evening ahead of us... You three, on the other hand, need to sort yourselves. You don’t need to be all pissy at each other over this or that. Kiss and makeup and lets move on.”
A silence follows Ashley’s rant, and then Elizabeth breaks it. “I feel like it should be pretty obvious why I don’t condone your relationship... There’s enough reasons to fill a small chapter book with.”
“How many of them are actually authentic concerns and not something you conjured up out of spite?” Andy asks curiously, looking over at her briefly.
She doesn’t respond.
Ahead, at the end of the suburb street, a well-kept gravel road breaks off from the pavement at the upcoming curve in the street. It disappears into the bleak, dark shadows of the massive trees hanging over it.
No one says anything else as we approach the road... Surprisingly, there’s not even a moment’s hesitation at the base of the road when we get to it. Dry gravel crunches under our soles as we venture into the darkness where not even the fading orange rays of the sunset behind us could penetrate.
The feeling of that road leading up to the wrought iron gate deeper in the trees leaves my body tingling with the same feeling as the Dead Zone. The air feels heavy and thin at the same time, and everything gets so quiet. The birds that had been singing just minutes earlier have fallen silent and it feels like everything is just holding its breath, careful not to make a sound.
It shouldn’t shock me as much as it is now as I realize why it all feels like this... With the atmosphere feeling so heavy and cold... It’s literally a clone of the place I compared it to.
This place, much like the Dead Zone, is a space crowded with sorrowful spirits searching for their final end. They’ve been here so long they’ve lost track of everything rational and real, and as a result, they’ve forgotten that they’ve died.
I can’t physically see them, but I can feel them all around me. Their leering stares and gaunt eyes following us as we make our way through the long courtyard before the gates.
We move forward in silence down the dimly lit road. There’s no sign of anyone else around, not even any cars parked in the small adjacent lot we pass by. I give it a sideways glance, noticing how the splotches of sunlight shining down between the thick branches and leaves above dance on the ground like silver and gold orbs.
The way everything feels is bizarre... Like my surroundings wish to invite me and make me feel comfortable; all while rejecting my presence with an ominous aura that screams at me to turn back.
I’m hopeful that the spirits here can at least remember that they were good people and haven’t completely lost themselves to the oppressive darkness of the town cemetery.
The courtyard opens up wider around a wide stone fountain in the center. The cracking marble figures featured in the center is a grieving woman crouching at a cross with a tall, winged angel looking over her shoulder with wise eyes. The statue is surely meant to invoke feelings of hope and faith, but for me, it strikes a chord of depression and signifies a bleak end.
The statue also catches the attention of the others and they slow up a bit to admire it. Elizabeth stops completely to look up at the two figures with wide, earnest eyes.
Ashley pushes back a lock of thick, frizzy black hair and tucks it behind his left ear, his brown usually-brooding eyes are locked onto the eyes of the wise angel standing over the woman. There’s a million emotions flashing through his eyes in those three seconds he looked up, and soon enough, he tore his eyes away and shook his head regretfully, becoming spiteful once more. “We need to wrap this up before sun down... Otherwise they’ll have us pinned up here like damn pinatas by morning.”
With shovels clattering on the gravel, we pick up again and keep moving towards the big, grand gate. It’s padlocked shut with a chain and sign hanging above it with the open hours.
“Do you actually think that there’s someone who comes out here every morning and night to unlock and lock this gate?” Ashley asks doubtfully, taking a step back from the hunk of ornate brooding black metal.
“Well, you two aren’t climbing over, look,” Andy nods towards the top of the tall fence topped with sharp speared ends. “Are you good with weird shit?” He asks, turning towards Elizabeth and putting her on the spot.
“Uh... I guess so?” She hedges sheepishly, unsure of what is about to happen. “Ashley, you grab her, I’ll get Ash. All you’ve gotta do is stay extra close to him when he walks through and you’ll go through, too.”
“I can walk through walls?!” Elizabeth exclaims, her voice a mixture of panic and excitement.
Ashley nods dismissively, in no mood to deal with her ‘newbie’ questions. “Yeah, yeah... Come on and let’s get this over with.”
Elizabeth steps closer to him, looking a bit annoyed herself because of their history. I don’t know too much about what happened to Vienna after she moved out, but it couldn’t have been good. Elizabeth has her right to her anger.
“Are you guys sure about this?”
“Positive.” Andy responds.
“Watch us.” I tell her reassuringly, looping my elbow with Andy’s and pressing against his ribs as he took his first step forward, and I did too. My ankle slips right between the iron bars easily. By our second step, the bars are to our chest.
Like a surge of an icy cold chill, I could feel the bars passing through my ribcage as we slinked through. It’s an unnatural cold that freezes you through every layer of fabric, skin, and muscle.
“Just like that.” I say, suppressing a shiver when we come out on the other side. I turn to face them both on the otherside and she still looks doubtful.
“What would happen if you were to get seperated going through the bars?...” She wonders fearfully.
Andy looks around the clearing near the gate. “Ah ha!” He leaves my side and jogs to the right into the trees. He kneels down, and after a bit of wrestling, he produces a small, awkwardly shaped wild gourd that had survived the brisk winter under a bed of leaves. It’s skin a burnt orange color with flecks of yellow and pale green.
He brings it over, cradling it to his chest like a newborn baby, and he passes through the gate again, holding the gourd so that one of the bars is stuck through it. In an instant, he lets go and runs from the scene in the opposite direction, causing the ghostly barrier to break.
We all look from him to the gourd in sickened amazement. One iron bar has perfectly pierced through the skin, coming out on the otherside without incident... At least until the thing started to drip at the bottom, indicating that it wasn’t a harmonious union between the two.
“Well... Now we know.” he grimaces.
“Imagine what that would do to a person!” Elizabeth shrieks, backing up with uncertainty in her eyes. Her gaze flickers to Ashley and it’s evident that there’s not a shred of trust between them.
Andy assesses the situation, looking from Ashley to Elizabeth, then nodding towards Ashley and reaching for her to bring her across himself.
This confuses me... I can’t quite tell if it is because Andy doesn’t trust Ashley to do it right... Or if it’s just the quickest way to get her through.
He guides her through the bars like he did me, and once we’re all on the same side with all our equiptment, we continue on our merry way deeper into the cemetery with Elizabeth rattling about how crazy it all was.
Her enthusiasm and slightly shaking anxious voice reminds me of those first few days. I was fearful and hesitant to believe he was real, and not just a manifestation of my mind. When you’ve lived a normal life for so long, adjusting to something so unusual can be extremely difficult.
“Which do you want to do first?” Andy asks Ashley, which results in the two of the shaking their fists at each other in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
“Shit...” Ashley mutters, looking down at his fist, bearing the shape of paper, and across from him, Andy’s fingers split like scissors.
“Well, that settles that,” he says cheerfully, obviously grateful that he is not first. “to your grave it is.”
Ashley led us through the rolling hills of headstones in the fading light. A few different markers caught my eye with their flashy obsidian colored marble with delicately etched flower designs residing on the surface.
We were almost to the center of the massive field when Ashley came to a stop and drove his shovel into the ground with a harsh slam of his wrist. He stares down at the grassy patch that houses his former body.
It’s evident that he’s battling with his own mental demons just being here, and there’s a good chance that he has not been back since his funeral so long ago. A deep frown is etched into the corners of his mouth and for a moment he looks much older. The creases in his skin revealing too many years of too much life and bad decisions.
Andy goes to him and puts an arm over the shoulders of his friend and after a few seconds of murmuring, he casts a look at me and waves at us to go for a walk while they talk through things.
I nod quickly, and as I and Elizabeth are backing away to leave, Ashley raises his hands and glares at us all bittery. “I’m not looking for sympathy, let’s get this shit over with.”
He plunges the spade into the ground at his feet, splitting the clumps of dark green grass with the shattering sound of rock shifting out of the way. He doesn’t look at any of us again as he begins to dig in and toss shovel-fulls of dirt over his shoulder.
I hang back a bit, resting my elbows on the handle of my shovel, looking down into the growing pit beneath Ashley’s shovel. The last rays of daylight reflect an eerie glow into the darkness below.
As I’m scanning the vast graveyard, my eyes catching on obelisks of varying heights and colors, I’m struck with a familiar wave of familiarity... All too recently I was here in this cemetary, accompanying Andy’s family and friends to a plot that was bought and dug much too soon...
Today is May 12th... Tomorrow marks the one month anniversary of his death. Shit... It’s only been a month? It feels like in these past few weeks that we’d lived an entire lifetime together. It really hits you hard when you realize that the reality of it is that you’ve only known each other for roughly thirty days, which in the grand scheme of things is hardly anything at all.
Andy drives his shovel into the ground beside Ashley and helps him expand the length of the pit. They work together in silence, tossing clumps of dirt and grass over their shoulders.
“Just another day in the park for you, huh?” Elizabeth asks, propping her wrists on the handle of her shovel, eyes sharply scanning the two digging furiously at the grave.
I shrug and take a deep breath. “There is no feeling of consistancy in my life these days... It’s by no means boring or repetitive, I can say that much.”
She nods slowly, and I can see the gears turning in her head... Her thoughts rotating around the bizarre day we’d already had and what many secrets she'd been let in on.
“I’m sorry about Reece...” I say after a couple quiet moments, keeping my eyes forward on Andy. The fading sunlight catches in his brown hair, bleaching it a bright orange. “Although he did deserve it, things never should have escalated to that point. Eliza, I just need you to know that I worry for you.” I peer over at her briefly, “I know he’s not good to you. You become quiet and meek everytime he’s around. I don’t like what he does to you.”
She presses her lips into a thin, pale line as she thinks of a response. “I know you’re worried. I’m worried for you, too... I’m not the only one with an ill-fated relationship.”
Her eyes meet mine and remained locked. She’s not being smug or degrading. Her tone is gentle and wise as though she has seen the future and knows what it holds... I wring my hands uncomfortably and am the first to tear my eyes away, quickly training them on Andy again.
“I’m not trying to be a dick, Ash. We both know that from where we stand, nothing good can come of it.” She tucks a strand of dirty blonde hair behind her ear, the sunlight glistening in her irises making them glow with inhuman beauty. “Where we are? The love we give?...” She looks at me again, “It’ll have us in a grave. It’s not good for us, but what kind of love is? It’s all degrading and draining, isn’t it? We’re both playing a dangerous game with death.”
I remain quiet, and she goes silent for around a minute and a half before she speaks again. “I honestly can’t see myself getting away in one piece at this point.”
“What do you mean?” I ask in confusion, furrowing my brow.
A small, loveless smile crosses her lip-glossed lips, and it doesn’t touch her eyes. It’s only there to soften the blow of her following words. “If I left Reece, it’d be one thing or another that would get me... I don’t see myself making it to the end of this year.” She purses her lips and shakes her head.
I keep studying her face in confusion.
“Where am I to go? Who am I to be? I’d be lost at sea without someone to lean against after graduation. My parents have arranged my college life for me as a private college in Vancouver and have put in a good word for me at a lawfirm as a secretary. Ash, beyond highschool is an endless, bleak darkness that I won’t survive. I’m not trying to sound like I’m fishing for attention or being melodramatic; it’s just how it is...”
“But you’d be alive.” I say back slowly, trying to sort through the information she has given me to find the right words that make it feel okay. There aren’t any.
“Would I really be, though? Would you enjoy living a quiet, small, pre-planned life that you play no part in, but have to do all the work?”
“Then you could quit... Fight back, run away from it and do what you choose - Eliza, no one controls you.” I look at her with concern in my eyes, I reach out to grab her upper arm to turn her halfway towards me. Her eyes reflect the feeling of pain, fear, and hopelessness that she feels inside.
“I was never made to be a fighter.”
I am left speechless... Not a word comes to mind to give to her as consolation. One of my dearest friend is standing beside me in the town cemetery telling me she won’t make it to New Years and there’s not a thing I can say... Come on, you coward! Say something! Quit being a self-centered bitch and see whats going on around you.
“Come with us, then.” I say with more desperation in my voice than I’d like. This catches her by surprise, causing her to cock her head slightly. “Where? California?”
I laugh, but it’s not because of amusement. It’s a humourless gasp as I try to think of an answer. “No... After graduation. I don’t know where I am going, either. Come with me, Andy, and Ashley. We’ll go on great adventures, we’ll go see things unimaginable, and go places one could only read about. You could be free, Eliza.”
She thinks about it for a long moment before pressing her lips into a thin line and shaking her head slowly. “No offense, Ash, but I just wouldn’t fit into your crew.” She gestures towards the other two. “This is a three-piece private club, and it’s best to keep it that way. I don’t want to impose or push myself in where I don’t fit. If my life is destined for the path it’s going down, then I surrender myself to destiny. I have no reason to fight back against it.”
“But you’ll...” I trail off as the true meaning of her previous words settles in. I don’t see myself making it to the end of this year.
“You wouldn’t... Would you?” I hedge breathlessly, watching her expression closely as I allude towards something darker. She doesn’t deny nor confirm my suspicion, but the saddened look in her weary eyes tells me all I need.
“You can’t.” I say as though it’d change everything. I blink and look away, unable to cry, unable to feel anything but the bottomless sea of dispair. “You?...” I sigh, taking a deep breath that really does nothing to benefit me. “I can’t...” I stare off into the distance, where the headstones seem to go on forever, overlapping each other into the trees.
She casts her eyes downward, but says nothing. The guilt in her eyes is livid but even so her mind is set.
I don’t even know what to say to that... I don’t know how to approach the subject in a way that doesn’t make me look like a massive asshole trying to relate to her to change her mind.
“Why?” I breathe, digging my fingernails into the plastic handle of the shovel just to have something to hang on to, for fear I'd stumble or fall down. I lean over it like a crutch while struggling to form a cohesive sentence.
“There’s nothing for me out there. I look like I fit in and I play the part until it’s real... But there’s no getting out of this world alive and I’d rather go on my terms while I’m happy and know what I want before even that becomes distorted.”
“Your whole life awaits and you’re going to throw it away over a handful of mishaps?” I whisper. “Life isn’t perfect. Not yours. Not mine. We make do, we always have, right?”
“This is just different.” She says, following it up with a sigh to signal that this conversation is over. Her eyes avert and she scans the surrounding field, observing the results of life lost. Your body dropped in a cold hole, a rock on your head, and no one to visit you... All to leave a troubling world behind.
I grind my teeth and look over at the progress Andy and Ashley have made in the meantime. They’re now standing in the hole, tossing shovel-full after shovel-fulls of dirt over their shoulder in bleak silence wearing the morbid masks of reluctantcy.
“Well then, while you’re here,” I murmur in a blunt, cold tone. “at least enjoy the scenery.”
Somewhere deep in my heart, I don’t think she’d go through with it. Elizabeth has always been super squimish to pain and blood, it’d be incredibly difficult for her to carry out on her own. But then again it seems I don’t know her as well as I believe I do.
She picks up her shovel and heads for the hole, clambering down inside the pit alongside Ashley and Andy and begins to dig. I watch the trio working for a moment with a strange feeling forming in my stomach. Something just feels wrong. Nauseatingly wrong.
I grind my teeth nervously, watching the shadows for movements or signs I’m being watched. If any other human was out here, all they’d see would be me standing here draped over a shovel with Elizabeth working away at desicrating the grave of Ashley Purdy. I really hope I don’t ever have to explain that one to the cops.
I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong... I just keep feeling more and more unnerved the closer they get to the coffin far below the layers of packed soil. There’s something incredibly dark that feels like it’s wrapping itself around me in the fashion of a cold, comforting hug. I take a deep breath and blink, freeing myself from the haze. I shake my head and think hard. What the hell am I doing?
I look around myself, unable to figure out quite where I’d gone during that small piece of time, but I was apparently out of my mind longer than I thought when Andy calls to me that they’ve hit the coffin; something they couldn’t have achieved within a few minutes and the three of them.
Walking over with a confused look on my face, I ask “How long did this take you?”
Andy gestures up at the stars beginning to come through the darkening sky above with a confused look on his face. “About forty-five minutes... Why?” He squints up at me for a moment before casting a look behind me with a brief glance. “Didn’t you watch our progress from over there? I mean... You did stand there for almost a half hour.”
I look behind me to where I’d been just moments earlier and I realized that couldn’t explain to him why... Because I have no clue what he is talking about. “What? What do you mean?”
“You talked to Elizabeth for a bit, then when she walked away you just tuned out and stood there for the past half hour. Are you okay?”
He looks me dead in the eyes, searching for a sign that this place is starting to have an effect on me. I quickly shake my head, not certain enough of my diagnosis to say I had some weird possession thing going on... And that would only stress him and cause him to fail to carry out the deed we set out here to do. And I really don’t want another reason for Ashley to despise me because he seemed to be coming up with those on his own just fine as it is.
“I’m fine.” I lie and he is doubtful, but after a moment he nods and resumes his work, still keeping a watchful eye on me for anything weird of out of character.
... I lost a half hour, and during that time it felt like five minutes where I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach with nerves and fear. What the hell is happening?
I shake my head in an effort to clear it and walk closer to the grave to peek over the edge into the six-foot deep hole below. They’re clearing away the dirt and debris from the top of a metallic silver coffin which glints ominously in the dying light. I take my cue to fetch the flashlight from my bag to cast the bright beam across the pit. Andy and Ashley get down on their knees and begin brushing away the remaining dirt on top. The sweet smell of the deep, damp Earth mixed with the sinister stink of death rises from the hole to indicate something unsavory is just below.
Ashley glances up at me and for the brief moment our eyes meet, his gaze is unsettling. The beam from the flashlight catches in his eyes, causing them to almost glow as he glared up at me from the pit.
“Hey lazy, are you going to give us a hand?” He snaps, chucking up his shovel, narrowly missing me as I quickly step to the side to avoid the projectile with a frown on my face.
“There’s not exactly much room down there.” I reply, looking doubtfully at the cramped space. Even after a while Elizabeth holds out her arm towards me so I can help hoist her out of the damp darkness. We stand on the grassy bank above them, watching in silence as they continue to wipe away the dirt and debris from the top of the coffin.
I notice how Andy looks around from time to time, his fleeting glances struggling to look casual and calm. His gaze looks troubled when he does, brow pinching in concern as he scans the seemingly empty meadow around us. I can’t begin to imagine everything he sees right now... Actually, that is better rephrased as I can’t imaging everyone he sees right now.
My limited imagination can’t dream up the images he sees. Decades of the dead roam this field, each of them suffering vastly different endings covering everything from illness to murder. It feels suffocating to stand among the headstones knowing that they are all around you, watching you... Touching you... Trying to figure out why they aren’t like you anymore. Andy mentioned once that after someone has been dead for a long time, they begin to forget that they are and exist only in an air of confusion in a constricting environment.
I hand Elizabeth the flashlight and crouch to begin fishing the jars and other equiptment out of my backpack, setting them on the dew-dampened grass above the hole.
“Alright...” Andy sighs, straightening back up. Him and Ashley take a step back from the casket, admiring the fruits of their labor. Elizabeth allows the flashlight beam to fall across the lid, giving the smooth top an eerie, blinding glint.
“Everyone ready for this?”
No one is, and no one says anything. I stand there, grinding my teeth, dreading the inevitable image I am about to be treated to.
They clear the dirt away from the front latches and undo them carefully, battling the rust and erosion that has grown on the steel.
“Are you ready for this?” Andy asks Ashley, looking him in the eyes, his tattooed hands hovering on the last latch.
After a moment, Ashley nods in silent agreement, and the both of them work together to lift the lid. Elizabeth leans over the hole to look, and doubled back when she catches a glimpse of something unpleasant. I’m on the opposite side of the grave where the hinges of the casket would be, so I am blind to the disturbing imagery below.
I bite on my lip, risking peeks here and there, wary not to see too much. It’s a sickening feeling just sitting there above them, watching them push it open, and knowing eventually you have to handle the samples that they pick off the corpse.
“Ugh...” Andy groans, pushing the lid upwards to rest back on its hinges. Him and Ashley take a step back, stumbling into the crooked dirt walls around them. They stare down into the darkness of the coffin, the two of them seeming to freeze in place just looking down at the bleached bones lying inside.
“Oh God...” I murmur, burying my nose in my elbow to keep from breathing in the rancid dust rising up out of the hole.
In the bleached light from the flashlight in Elizabeth’s hands, lies the decaying remains of one Ashley Purdy. Years spent here in this padded cell had left his burial suit frayed and hanging stiffly over gold-tinted bones. Webs of dry tissue and muscle remain, their veiny silhouettes a stark contrast from the antique color of the bone itself.
Empty eye sockets and a crooked jaw are all that remain of his face. Even from where I am perched above the grave, I can see the bits of thick wire bound through the jaw, secured in the nasal cavity from where the mortician had wired his mouth shut.
Locks of brittle black hair are brushed smooth on either side of his head, although the roots seem to merely hover over the bone of the skull, nowhere left to call home. Considering all the years since the day he was put here, he is in surprisingly good condition.
Ashley stares down at himself, the empty sockets locked with his. A silence falls over the four of us as we mutually agree to give Ashley a moment.
After a moment, a shimmering tear rises to the brim of his eye. He sits there, crouched in the damp soil beside himself, staring at the calcified structure that carried him through life.
“I broke my leg in the fall.” he says in a muted, dead voice. His gaze never leaving the skull. My own gaze drifts downwards to the patch of missing fabric in his funeral slacks where the jagged sever of his femur is exposed.
“I didn’t even really decide that I wanted to die... I’d taken all the steps, sent all the messages, and it left me feeling empty and cold, standing on the bridge above the river. It was freezing.”
A breeze wisps over us, blowing my hair slightly, sending a chill up my spine.
“I was going to change my mind. I could feel myself resolving the problem and backing away... But damn it, that metal was shiny and new... And slick. I fell off the bridge, landing on the bank of stones and rubble below. I knew it was broken right away... But there was nothing I could do to help myself. The rain kept coming down, and everything was slick. I was blind in that storm, so as I drug myself forward, I couldn’t have seen what was ahead of me.”
My eyes are locked on Ashley’s blank face, my heart tightening at his words, my mind trying to imagine the awful things he witnessed and felt that night.
“I could only see when the lightning stiked... Which was not often enough. When I thought I was dragging myself further up the bank, it turns out I was only dragging myself further out towards the waterfall. I couldn’t hear the roar of the water over the downpour, only the sounds of my own distorted, pained breathing. I fell over that edge to the river below, hitting my head on the way down causing me to black out instantly. There is no happy ending to this story, no... I died freezing and in pain alone out there that night, only for my memory to dry up and die quickly with me and for my family and friends to have to live on with the heavy burden of my departure.”
His brown eyes soften sadly as something changes in his thoughts. Andy reaches towards him, patting his shoulder in reassurance as he gets out the ending of his grim tale.
“When I opened my eyes again, it was the coldest slap to the face that you could imagine. I woke up in my room, of all places... Cold sunlight pouring through the gaps in my blinds, the feeling of heavy, stagnant silence all around me and a missing patch of memory in my head that startled me enough to wake me right away with a start.
I sat up in my bed, breathing heavily in a panic, looking around me. Nothing had been moved nor touched, but I still felt like I was not alone, and in danger. I got out bed and jogged downstairs, where I would discover the killing blow on the kitchen counter... The newspaper from Monday morning, the day before, with the headline Pendant boy drowns in river near Talia Lake.
Further examination would prove it was about me... I stared at that page, so confused and fearful. I ran to my parents’ room to discover it empty with signs of a recent departure. On the bed, two discarded black dresses of my Mother’s...
When I wandered into the living room, I was overwhelmed with the stink of lillies and roses. The entire living room had become a miniature botanical garden in my absence. I felt fear as I reached for the card dangling on one vase, terrified that it would say my name, proving this all to be reality and not a horrific dream brought on by too many narcotics and alcohol mixed with horror movies I binged before passing out.
No, I couldn’t be so lucky. I wouldn’t. Sure as shit, my name was in those cards... Each of them remorseful, each of them an apology, each sickeningly kind with their promises to be there whenever needed or that things would get better. Some promised justice for me, others ventured outside of what is morally allowed inside of condolence cards, branching out to say I was not a suicide, and my death should be explored more extensively.
At the end of that day all I knew about myself was five things: My name is Ashley Purdy. I am twenty-two years old. I lived with my parents in Pendant, Utah. I have accidentally committed suicide, and I am dead.”
He pauses for a moment, his gaze becoming thoughtful. At this point, night has settled all around us, a ceiling of stars above our heads. He bites his lip for a moment before blinking and allowing his gaze to rise to meet mine. For once, they are not spiteful nor angry. He is not bitter... Possibly at peace or merely working to get there, I do not know. All I know is that in this moment, he seems changed by sharing his experiences.
“When my folks came home from my funeral that night, I saw first-hand the pain I had caused.”
His gaze moved from mine to lock with Elizabeth’s. “My pain had become theirs, and it killed me to see it. Suicide... It’s bullshit.” He shakes his head regretfully. “I know you think it’s the only way for you to escape and make a decision for yourself, but it’s not. It’s you ending any chance of you finding something better. Listen to me, kid, when I say you have no clue what you’ll be leaving behind when you go.”
With a deep breath, Ashley gets up and dusts off his jeans, reaching towards me, I place an empty jar in his hand. He crouches down near the head and Andy steps out of the way so he can work.
“Hand me the wire cutters.”
I pull the small pair out and hand them down. He carefully cuts the exposed wires binding his jaw shut and cracks it open. The snapping of dry cartilage accompanies the swift movement. Using the ends of the pliers, he reaches up into the mouth and selects one of the front teeth as his specimen of choice. Securing it in the teeth, it rips it free with a jerk of his arm and drops the piece into the jar, wasting no time going for another.
“If you’re all good here, I’m going to get started on mine.”
“Go for it. We’ve still got a long night ahead.” Ashley responds absently, concentrating hard on his work.
I grab onto Andy’s hand and pull him out. He combs his fingers through his hair and sighs, accepting the shovel I hand him.
“Do you want to help me? Elizabeth and Ashley can handle this.”
I look back down at Ashley and then across at Elizabeth. She meets my eyes and nods at me to go. I look back up into his eyes and offer him a small smile of agreement.
He grabs my hand, weaving his fingers between mine. He hoists the backpack onto his other shoulder, and off into the darkness we go. With night all around us now, nothing looks familiar. I look up and can see the webbed branches stretching across the starry sky, but everything else is muted in the blackness of the forest.
“So...” I murmur, swinging my hand, admiring how his is clasped around mine. “I don’t really know what to say.”
“It’s a lot.” He admits. “But we’ll be okay.”
“How many of them are out here?”
He knows what I mean right away. His gaze, what I can see of it, flickers around the clearing as we make our way down the gravel path to his grave. “Too many to count.” He replies after a moment, “But it’s okay. They enjoy the visitors.”
“Do they understand why we’re here?”
“I don’t know...” He admits, “Some of them do, some of them can’t remember what it is like to be alive, so they’re almost brain dead in that sense.”
I look around, half expecting to actually see one of them myself.
“Do you think we’ll have any more possession problems after this?”
He laughs quietly, it’s a magical, muted sound that I welcome despite its odd place during this depressing time. “Ash, let’s talk about something normal.”
“What do you mean? Like what?”
“Whatever you want. What’s a basic, human thing to talk about?”
I think about it for a moment, curious to see what he has in store. “I don’t know... The weather?”
“The weather is quite nice.” He agrees, then shakes his head. “I am just trying to provide as normal of a relationship as I can. We can’t deny how bizarre this paring is. If Elizabeth freaked out the way she did, I can’t imaging what anyone else would think.”
“She’s just... Scared for me. Understandably so, I haven’t exactly brought home the polo-wearing, church-on-Sunday, Marine-in-training guy to be my significant other. You’re pretty scary at first glance.”
“I’m not scary.” He scoffs.
“You were when I first saw you... Not because you were a ghost or because you’d suddenly appeared in my room, but because there was just something sad and broken about you that gave you the aura of a Phantom of the Opera type character. I was scared to death of you.”
“And now?” He challenges with a wistful smile.
“Well now... You’re quite alright.” I smile at him, unsure if he can see it in the dim light. “I am grateful that I have you.”
He is quiet for a little bit and I assume it is because of some reminicent thinking, but when he speaks again his deep voice is unsettled. “Though maybe it is wrong. Maybe our relationship is fated and the only way it ends is in death.”
I scoff, annoyed that he would allow his thoughts to wander into that dark, unforgiveable space. “That’s not how this ends, you know that. We’re going to fix everything and once things calm down again, we will have a chance at something genuine. You and me.”
“Asheen, I can’t give you everything you want.”
I open my mouth to reply, but then things pop into my head and I realize what he means. “I don’t need all that stuff to be happy.” I finally reply stubbornly when nothing else works.
“You deserve to be loved by someone you can share with your world, and by someone who can share you in theirs, not keep as a shameful secret. I’ve seen how you light up when I take down my walls and play pretend with your friends and family so you can have just a taste of a normal life. It’s not right for me to rob you of that.”
“I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t feel like that.” I shrug indifferently. “This way I have you to myself, no one else demanding your time or attention. We can be recluses together and no one would notice.”
“But what about longterm? Have you thought about that yet?”
It had crossed my mind briefly on several occasions before I banned those thoughts. The truth is that I don’t know how to deal with them properly, and in my heart I know that things can never be that way.
“I can’t marry you in front of your family or give you kids. We can’t grow old together, because I am stuck like this.”
He gestures towards himself with the hand that grips the shovel. I have to admit to myself that even I get caught up in things sometimes and forget that he’s not human.
This takes me back for a moment and I stop walking to look at him. This is the first time he has really come off as resentful about his condition. Most of the time he covers it up with jokes of self-loathing jokes and pretends that it is okay because that part of his life is over, but truthfully he is still hung up on it, as one should be.
None of this is getting any easier on him. Time won’t heal the wounds, because as time goes on we will get closer and he will want more, but be limited by his own existance. There’s nothing to be done - wealth, time, nor patience can fix or restore him.
He meets my gaze for the briefest moment before tugging me along beside him. We keep walking in silence for a few minutes while I stumble along blindly, hoping he knows where he is going. We should have brought more flashlights.
“I don’t mean to be a downer, but it’s just how it is.” He sighs, scanning the treeline for the familiar headstone that had been claimed as his own. “If things were any different, I promise you with every fiber of my being I would have loved you unconditionally and would have married you.”
My heart performs little back flips and somersaults in my chest at his words. Despite the grim truth behind them, it brings a smile to my face.
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“So if you were standing here, living and breathing, you would still be with me?”
“Yes... Why?”
My smile falters a bit and I am brought back to reality. If this were all so, life for us might be more difficult than it is now.
“No one else would like it... Or support it. The cold honesty of it is that you’re quite a bit older than I, with a blackened past that would have you torched straight away by my parents for even standing next to me... I- I don’t know how it could’ve been.”
He thinks about it for a moment and then shrugs. “You’re right - but to be fair, I’m not that much older than you. Twenty-three is hardly anything worth getting anyone’s britches in a bunch over.”
I laugh, “But you know how it would be reacted to. It’d be a full on shit storm. If I were eighteen and we were having this conversation, the world would be spinning in union. But because I’m a few months short of that milestone, we’ll have to settle for the fact that it’s ultimately unsupported - hell it’s one of the reasons Elizabeth isn’t too fond of our relationship. 17 to 23 sounds creepy.”
“There are far scarier things than a six-year age gap.”
The wind begins to pick up, reminding me again that it is still blustery early spring.
“Do you think we actually would have met if you’d lived that day?” I wonder out loud, peeking over at him to see his reaction.
“I don’t know,” he admits with a shrug. “I’d like to say yes, but honestly with no life or death scenario to bond us together, I feel like any interaction we might have had would have been fleeting.”
As much as his words sting, I have to agree. I can’t imagine any scenario that could’ve taken place that would have provided enough time for us to be in the same space to even speak to each other. And anyway, we did live only two blocks apart my entire life and I can’t remember I single time that I actually saw him, interacted with him in any capacity, or found him remarkable whatsoever.
“Maybe being a ghost is your only charming quality.” I joke, jabbing him the ribs with my elbow. He cracks a smile. “Well that would explain my lack of lasting relationships... I was just missing the the pièce de résistance.”
Once our laughter had faded, he pointed ahead to wear the moonlight had made some effort to actually light the clearing. There in the center stood the squatty obsidian block.
“It’s this one.”
“How do you know?” I wonder, we’re too far away for it to be read and it wasn’t even here when he was buried.
“I’ve been back here a few times since that day.” He murmurs, tone quiet and thoughtful. “It keeps me grounded, I guess... I need to remember what happened so I don’t forget.”
“What would happen if you forgot?” I ask in confusion.
“I’d end up like them.” He gestures loosely around us and I am suddenly reminded of the hundreds of eyes piercing through me from every direction. It takes a lot to fight the urge to peek around me once more.
“They forgot, and now they are trapped. I can’t let that happen to me.”
Reincarnate - Motionless In White
It was a little after five-thirty when Elizabeth excused herself to work on homework. She crafted a brilliant lie on how we had a big test coming up, and wanted nothing more than to focus completely on preparing ourselves. Once we knew her parents would not be checking in on us, we threw open her bedroom window, took a deep breath of the cool evening air and climbed down on the wire trellis.
Things feel heavy and weird now. Elizabeth stood three feet away at the edge of her driveway, her shovel propped under her elbow while she zipped up her navy blue leather jacket and pulled her matching slouchy beanie over her bun of tangled blonde locks.
She steals the occasional glance, her hazel eyes sniping shots of me and Andy. There’s concealed judgement lingering in her eyes, but I think she is mostly just trying to get a better grip on our relationship and what part I play in it.
“The cemetery is seven blocks north. Let’s haul ass.” Ashley says, taking it upon himself to take point and lead the group. But if I’ve learned anything about him over these two weeks, it’s that he’s doing it soley to get some time to himself and walk alone for a bit.
We fall a few feet behind him and walk in silence for a bit, then Elizabeth launches boldly into a fresh conversation with Andy.
“So, tell me about yourself.”
He peers down at her out of the corner of his eye, confusion in his expression. “...What do you want to know?”
“Anything I can’t find in a Google search.”
He hesitates a bit, then sighs reluctantly. “I’m from Ohio, my birthday is December 26th, I’m a-”
“That’s really basic stuff.” Elizabeth snaps in annoyance, “I want the stuff that’s a little further under that thick skin of yours.”
“No.” He responds shortly, grimacing at her. “It’s none of your damn business.”
“Fine.” Elizabeth responds, wearing this prided smile. “Guilty people never spout too much in fear of slipping up.”
“Elizabeth,” I snap, glaring at her. She scoffs, “I’m not trying to be a dick, Ash. I just want to be sure that I know everything I need to.”
Her sarcastic grin slips away into a worried frown, and she stops walking. “Honestly, I’m not trying to pry you apart. I worry.”
We’ve stopped moving, and Elizabeth is crossing her arms across her chest, looking anything but comfortable right then.
“I don’t mean to make you worry,” Andy says in a calm, polite tone. “I don’t mean to be anything that makes you uncomfortable, but if I happen to on accident, know that it was not my intent, alright? On that note, I don’t mind you asking questions, but no interrogating, alright?”
After some hestitation, Elizabeth agrees with a nod. “Yeah... Okay.”
Andy claps a hand on her shoulder, making her visibly wince from being touched by the magical creature.
“I hope we can be on good terms now.” Andy talks to her as though he’s explaning to a toddler why they can’t stick their finger in a rotating fan.
Elizabeth nods slowly, her eyes never leaving his as a thousand shades of judgement flash through her hazel irises.
“Come the fuck on before my bones turn to dust!” Ashley snaps at us from ahead, pausing his broad steps to glare back at us. “I’ll leave behind whichever one of you is causing all the halts and stops.”
“We’re fine, Ash.” Andy snaps back at him with a hint of brotherly annoyance. “You just keep on hauling ass; we’ll get there eventually.”
The sun disappeared pretty quick during the walk up the hill to the cemetery. The road is lined with progressively more and more decrepit houses, and before we know it, we’re treading very lightly to make our way past vacant homes with broken windows like black eyes in the dark.
Andy caught up with Ashley after a bit, and Elizabeth fell back to talk to me. “Ash, I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I have a bad habit of making things really hard for you.” She says while swinging her shovel, a distant look on her face.
“Don’t apologize, I know you mean well.” I murmur, “And besides, you’re the only person I can count on to ground me through all of this. I appreciate your honesty.”
“Well that’s all fine and dandy, but I can’t imagine that you enjoy me constantly threatening to tell on you...” She wears a guilty expression.
“Threats are one thing, it’s acting upon those impulses that causes problems.”
There’s a lengthly pause, which prompts me to look over at her for an answer or to at lease make sure she’d heard me.
“I cannot lie... I did consider telling Reece everything once...” She frowns in disappointment, “Not because I thought it’d further our power-couple revolution or anything, but because I figured that it’d be a great chance to spite you and get in my last stab of betrayal. I don’t need that.”
“I would hope not.” I frown. “I may have to sic the ghosts on you.” I crack a smile, which in turn pulls a relieved grin across her face. I wrap an arm around her shoulders without breaking pace and half hug her. “Eliza, I’ve been a poor friend, as well. Friendship is never an easy thing, and it is often messy. But I’m glad we have each other now.”
She smiles at me in the darkness in response.
The cautious part of my mind still feels very timid about sharing certain details of my life, for fear that she’d change her mind and sell me out anyways. I keep mentally kicking myself in the backside, reminding myself that it’s not as black and white as that, and I need to re-establish trust if I wish to get anywhere in life.
“So, off the topic of paranormal love stories and apologies, are you planning on going to prom?” She asks with a more hopeful, optimistic tone.
She gets a giddy smile and raises her fists into the air, her tone turning more hopeful and optimistic. “Hell yeah! I’ve been looking forward to this for years! I already bought my dress a few weeks back on a spring clearance sale. It’s a strapless pale purple gown with a beaded sweetheart neckline.”
“That sounds gorgeous.”
“Are you planning on going?... Do you have a dress?” She sounds like she’s trying to tread lightly and ask the right questions.
“You can be more outright with your questions than that.” I snicker, shoving her arm playfully.
She sighs in relief, “Whew, what I mean to say is, are you going with him? And if so, how?” She is more weary with this question, but it's obvious that she's trying to come off as inviting and friendly towards the topic.
“Yes, I am... I’m working out a plan to slither out of the house with a prop date to appease my parents. And as for the whole identity crisis at the school, that’s easily mended. It’s masquerade night.”
“Easy disguise... I like it.”
“And as for the dress, at the moment, no... But I think my Mom may have a project I can borrow. She does sew a lot of dresses just for fun.”
“That’ll be cool! How weird is that? You look forward to prom night all of your young life, and before you know it, it’s here, and you’re dress hunting and having mini panic attacks over it.”
“It’s certainly bizarre... You know something will happen eventually, but when it does, it still catches you off guard. I don’t know if I actually know how to act normal in a group of people, anymore... When the people you surround yourself with for weeks are all ghosts, you fall out of practic quick. I don’t know how to have normal conversations or act engaged... More often than not, I’m told that I come off as dismissive.” I shrug, “Nonetheless, I’m going to give it a try. And if all else fails, I can simply go invisible.”
She laughs, and I give her a look. “I’m not joking. It’s possible.”
“Okay, weirdo, prove it!” She shoves me forward, and I walk backwards, grinning at her. “Sure.” I wink at her and jog to catch up with Andy. I get right up behind him, and turn my head to watch her reaction.
“Go invisible,” I tell him, and he looks back at me with a brow arched in confusion, but he complies. I can only tell that he has done so when Elizabeth’s steps stutter and she comes to a complete stop with a blissful look of shock and disbelief on her face.
“What else can you do?!” She wails after us, picking up the pace again, her eyes wide with child-like joy and enthusiasm. “Control the weather? Read minds? Can you see the future?”
“None of the above.” Ashley responds, shocking us all a bit. He’s been pretty silent and timid this entire adventure thusfar. “We’re not mythical creatures; we don’t shoot glitter out of our asses. We are given a set skill set that we can use to our advantage to either help or plunder those around us.”
He leaves it hanging there like that and speeds up his pace again. The way he left it sounded ominious and threatning as though he were lowkey saying ‘be nice to ghosts or they won’t be too kind to you.’
It didn’t thwart Elizabeth at all, though... She launched into more questions with patient curiosity, seeming careful not to step on any toes or say anything offensive.
“How does it feel? Is it any different from having a living body?”
Andy shrugs and thinks about his answer a bit. “It feels most the same, I suppose. The only difference now is I can’t feel pain from temperature, and I’m not affected by it. For example, I could walk into a walk-in freezer and sit there for an hour, and then go climb inside an oven, and all I’d feel is the warmth or the cold... No mind-numbing feelings of overwhelming discomfort, just temperature as it is.”
“Can you be visible to a large group of people?”
“Sure... But like you or any other living person, we get tired more quickly when we’re around more people. In front of a crowd with full visibility?... I’d guess I’d have around an hour before I’d need to rest.”
“How do you rest?”
“Sleep,” he replies simply. “we find a calm place and sleep off our exhaustion. Some things never changed after I died. Though, if I never used the invisibility aspect of my ghostliness, I’d never be tired. It’s one of the few things that can actually burn you out.”
“I’d guess it’s so there’s no ghosts resuming their life after death. It makes it a hell of a lot harder to pull it off when you always have to sleep.” Ashley butts in, putting in his two cents on the matter.
“One of the many unspoken rules of death: you cannot return to your old life as though nothing has happened.”
I think about that for a moment, “Are there any other general rules?”
“You cannot spoil the secrets of the undead... I mean, you can tell a person here and there, but if I were to run into Times Sqaure and shout at everyone there every lurid detail about being dead, it’d be physically impossible. Your senses are overcome with this sickening wave of nausating guilt... It feels like the worst flu of your life, and that alone keeps you from spouting too much. Another is that when you are assigned as a guardian of someone living, you have to fullfill your duties to that person and no one else. You can’t be Superman to every person, bug and thing...”
“And you’re Ash’s guardian?” Elizabeth asks, and Andy nods, walking with his hands buried in the pockets of his Prophet jacket cutoff.
Elizabeth’s eyes linger as she mentally assesses the pair of us, looking like she’s really trying to see a match in us. “What do you do as a guardian?”
“Pretty much the sole job is to keep them out of trouble,” he chuckles “that’s easier said than done.”
“Are all guardianships romantic?” There’s an underlying tone to her voice that I automatically detect as the tone she used earlier when scrutinizing our age gap.
His brow furrows and he shakes his head, looking awkward and confused. “...No. This was a choice of ours.”
“Choice,” she echoes, then scoffs and smiles sadly to herself. “we hardly ever have a choice in who we fall in love with.”
“Y’all are depressing as hell to listen to,” Ashley pipes up, falling into one of his many alter-egos where he’s actually a nice, tolerable guy. I bury my hands in my jacket pockets and cast my gaze downwards.
“There’s always a gloomy air around the three of ya...”
Andy narrows his eyes at his friend judgingly. “You’ve been the grumpy, somber one all evening...”
Ashley snorts dismissively, “Do you want me to do a backflip? Pretend everything is hunky-dory and that it’s a common activity for a group of individuals to root around in a cemetery at midnight? No? I feel like my emotions are perfectly equipped for the evening ahead of us... You three, on the other hand, need to sort yourselves. You don’t need to be all pissy at each other over this or that. Kiss and makeup and lets move on.”
A silence follows Ashley’s rant, and then Elizabeth breaks it. “I feel like it should be pretty obvious why I don’t condone your relationship... There’s enough reasons to fill a small chapter book with.”
“How many of them are actually authentic concerns and not something you conjured up out of spite?” Andy asks curiously, looking over at her briefly.
She doesn’t respond.
Ahead, at the end of the suburb street, a well-kept gravel road breaks off from the pavement at the upcoming curve in the street. It disappears into the bleak, dark shadows of the massive trees hanging over it.
No one says anything else as we approach the road... Surprisingly, there’s not even a moment’s hesitation at the base of the road when we get to it. Dry gravel crunches under our soles as we venture into the darkness where not even the fading orange rays of the sunset behind us could penetrate.
The feeling of that road leading up to the wrought iron gate deeper in the trees leaves my body tingling with the same feeling as the Dead Zone. The air feels heavy and thin at the same time, and everything gets so quiet. The birds that had been singing just minutes earlier have fallen silent and it feels like everything is just holding its breath, careful not to make a sound.
It shouldn’t shock me as much as it is now as I realize why it all feels like this... With the atmosphere feeling so heavy and cold... It’s literally a clone of the place I compared it to.
This place, much like the Dead Zone, is a space crowded with sorrowful spirits searching for their final end. They’ve been here so long they’ve lost track of everything rational and real, and as a result, they’ve forgotten that they’ve died.
I can’t physically see them, but I can feel them all around me. Their leering stares and gaunt eyes following us as we make our way through the long courtyard before the gates.
We move forward in silence down the dimly lit road. There’s no sign of anyone else around, not even any cars parked in the small adjacent lot we pass by. I give it a sideways glance, noticing how the splotches of sunlight shining down between the thick branches and leaves above dance on the ground like silver and gold orbs.
The way everything feels is bizarre... Like my surroundings wish to invite me and make me feel comfortable; all while rejecting my presence with an ominous aura that screams at me to turn back.
I’m hopeful that the spirits here can at least remember that they were good people and haven’t completely lost themselves to the oppressive darkness of the town cemetery.
The courtyard opens up wider around a wide stone fountain in the center. The cracking marble figures featured in the center is a grieving woman crouching at a cross with a tall, winged angel looking over her shoulder with wise eyes. The statue is surely meant to invoke feelings of hope and faith, but for me, it strikes a chord of depression and signifies a bleak end.
The statue also catches the attention of the others and they slow up a bit to admire it. Elizabeth stops completely to look up at the two figures with wide, earnest eyes.
Ashley pushes back a lock of thick, frizzy black hair and tucks it behind his left ear, his brown usually-brooding eyes are locked onto the eyes of the wise angel standing over the woman. There’s a million emotions flashing through his eyes in those three seconds he looked up, and soon enough, he tore his eyes away and shook his head regretfully, becoming spiteful once more. “We need to wrap this up before sun down... Otherwise they’ll have us pinned up here like damn pinatas by morning.”
With shovels clattering on the gravel, we pick up again and keep moving towards the big, grand gate. It’s padlocked shut with a chain and sign hanging above it with the open hours.
“Do you actually think that there’s someone who comes out here every morning and night to unlock and lock this gate?” Ashley asks doubtfully, taking a step back from the hunk of ornate brooding black metal.
“Well, you two aren’t climbing over, look,” Andy nods towards the top of the tall fence topped with sharp speared ends. “Are you good with weird shit?” He asks, turning towards Elizabeth and putting her on the spot.
“Uh... I guess so?” She hedges sheepishly, unsure of what is about to happen. “Ashley, you grab her, I’ll get Ash. All you’ve gotta do is stay extra close to him when he walks through and you’ll go through, too.”
“I can walk through walls?!” Elizabeth exclaims, her voice a mixture of panic and excitement.
Ashley nods dismissively, in no mood to deal with her ‘newbie’ questions. “Yeah, yeah... Come on and let’s get this over with.”
Elizabeth steps closer to him, looking a bit annoyed herself because of their history. I don’t know too much about what happened to Vienna after she moved out, but it couldn’t have been good. Elizabeth has her right to her anger.
“Are you guys sure about this?”
“Positive.” Andy responds.
“Watch us.” I tell her reassuringly, looping my elbow with Andy’s and pressing against his ribs as he took his first step forward, and I did too. My ankle slips right between the iron bars easily. By our second step, the bars are to our chest.
Like a surge of an icy cold chill, I could feel the bars passing through my ribcage as we slinked through. It’s an unnatural cold that freezes you through every layer of fabric, skin, and muscle.
“Just like that.” I say, suppressing a shiver when we come out on the other side. I turn to face them both on the otherside and she still looks doubtful.
“What would happen if you were to get seperated going through the bars?...” She wonders fearfully.
Andy looks around the clearing near the gate. “Ah ha!” He leaves my side and jogs to the right into the trees. He kneels down, and after a bit of wrestling, he produces a small, awkwardly shaped wild gourd that had survived the brisk winter under a bed of leaves. It’s skin a burnt orange color with flecks of yellow and pale green.
He brings it over, cradling it to his chest like a newborn baby, and he passes through the gate again, holding the gourd so that one of the bars is stuck through it. In an instant, he lets go and runs from the scene in the opposite direction, causing the ghostly barrier to break.
We all look from him to the gourd in sickened amazement. One iron bar has perfectly pierced through the skin, coming out on the otherside without incident... At least until the thing started to drip at the bottom, indicating that it wasn’t a harmonious union between the two.
“Well... Now we know.” he grimaces.
“Imagine what that would do to a person!” Elizabeth shrieks, backing up with uncertainty in her eyes. Her gaze flickers to Ashley and it’s evident that there’s not a shred of trust between them.
Andy assesses the situation, looking from Ashley to Elizabeth, then nodding towards Ashley and reaching for her to bring her across himself.
This confuses me... I can’t quite tell if it is because Andy doesn’t trust Ashley to do it right... Or if it’s just the quickest way to get her through.
He guides her through the bars like he did me, and once we’re all on the same side with all our equiptment, we continue on our merry way deeper into the cemetery with Elizabeth rattling about how crazy it all was.
Her enthusiasm and slightly shaking anxious voice reminds me of those first few days. I was fearful and hesitant to believe he was real, and not just a manifestation of my mind. When you’ve lived a normal life for so long, adjusting to something so unusual can be extremely difficult.
“Which do you want to do first?” Andy asks Ashley, which results in the two of the shaking their fists at each other in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
“Shit...” Ashley mutters, looking down at his fist, bearing the shape of paper, and across from him, Andy’s fingers split like scissors.
“Well, that settles that,” he says cheerfully, obviously grateful that he is not first. “to your grave it is.”
Ashley led us through the rolling hills of headstones in the fading light. A few different markers caught my eye with their flashy obsidian colored marble with delicately etched flower designs residing on the surface.
We were almost to the center of the massive field when Ashley came to a stop and drove his shovel into the ground with a harsh slam of his wrist. He stares down at the grassy patch that houses his former body.
It’s evident that he’s battling with his own mental demons just being here, and there’s a good chance that he has not been back since his funeral so long ago. A deep frown is etched into the corners of his mouth and for a moment he looks much older. The creases in his skin revealing too many years of too much life and bad decisions.
Andy goes to him and puts an arm over the shoulders of his friend and after a few seconds of murmuring, he casts a look at me and waves at us to go for a walk while they talk through things.
I nod quickly, and as I and Elizabeth are backing away to leave, Ashley raises his hands and glares at us all bittery. “I’m not looking for sympathy, let’s get this shit over with.”
He plunges the spade into the ground at his feet, splitting the clumps of dark green grass with the shattering sound of rock shifting out of the way. He doesn’t look at any of us again as he begins to dig in and toss shovel-fulls of dirt over his shoulder.
I hang back a bit, resting my elbows on the handle of my shovel, looking down into the growing pit beneath Ashley’s shovel. The last rays of daylight reflect an eerie glow into the darkness below.
As I’m scanning the vast graveyard, my eyes catching on obelisks of varying heights and colors, I’m struck with a familiar wave of familiarity... All too recently I was here in this cemetary, accompanying Andy’s family and friends to a plot that was bought and dug much too soon...
Today is May 12th... Tomorrow marks the one month anniversary of his death. Shit... It’s only been a month? It feels like in these past few weeks that we’d lived an entire lifetime together. It really hits you hard when you realize that the reality of it is that you’ve only known each other for roughly thirty days, which in the grand scheme of things is hardly anything at all.
Andy drives his shovel into the ground beside Ashley and helps him expand the length of the pit. They work together in silence, tossing clumps of dirt and grass over their shoulders.
“Just another day in the park for you, huh?” Elizabeth asks, propping her wrists on the handle of her shovel, eyes sharply scanning the two digging furiously at the grave.
I shrug and take a deep breath. “There is no feeling of consistancy in my life these days... It’s by no means boring or repetitive, I can say that much.”
She nods slowly, and I can see the gears turning in her head... Her thoughts rotating around the bizarre day we’d already had and what many secrets she'd been let in on.
“I’m sorry about Reece...” I say after a couple quiet moments, keeping my eyes forward on Andy. The fading sunlight catches in his brown hair, bleaching it a bright orange. “Although he did deserve it, things never should have escalated to that point. Eliza, I just need you to know that I worry for you.” I peer over at her briefly, “I know he’s not good to you. You become quiet and meek everytime he’s around. I don’t like what he does to you.”
She presses her lips into a thin, pale line as she thinks of a response. “I know you’re worried. I’m worried for you, too... I’m not the only one with an ill-fated relationship.”
Her eyes meet mine and remained locked. She’s not being smug or degrading. Her tone is gentle and wise as though she has seen the future and knows what it holds... I wring my hands uncomfortably and am the first to tear my eyes away, quickly training them on Andy again.
“I’m not trying to be a dick, Ash. We both know that from where we stand, nothing good can come of it.” She tucks a strand of dirty blonde hair behind her ear, the sunlight glistening in her irises making them glow with inhuman beauty. “Where we are? The love we give?...” She looks at me again, “It’ll have us in a grave. It’s not good for us, but what kind of love is? It’s all degrading and draining, isn’t it? We’re both playing a dangerous game with death.”
I remain quiet, and she goes silent for around a minute and a half before she speaks again. “I honestly can’t see myself getting away in one piece at this point.”
“What do you mean?” I ask in confusion, furrowing my brow.
A small, loveless smile crosses her lip-glossed lips, and it doesn’t touch her eyes. It’s only there to soften the blow of her following words. “If I left Reece, it’d be one thing or another that would get me... I don’t see myself making it to the end of this year.” She purses her lips and shakes her head.
I keep studying her face in confusion.
“Where am I to go? Who am I to be? I’d be lost at sea without someone to lean against after graduation. My parents have arranged my college life for me as a private college in Vancouver and have put in a good word for me at a lawfirm as a secretary. Ash, beyond highschool is an endless, bleak darkness that I won’t survive. I’m not trying to sound like I’m fishing for attention or being melodramatic; it’s just how it is...”
“But you’d be alive.” I say back slowly, trying to sort through the information she has given me to find the right words that make it feel okay. There aren’t any.
“Would I really be, though? Would you enjoy living a quiet, small, pre-planned life that you play no part in, but have to do all the work?”
“Then you could quit... Fight back, run away from it and do what you choose - Eliza, no one controls you.” I look at her with concern in my eyes, I reach out to grab her upper arm to turn her halfway towards me. Her eyes reflect the feeling of pain, fear, and hopelessness that she feels inside.
“I was never made to be a fighter.”
I am left speechless... Not a word comes to mind to give to her as consolation. One of my dearest friend is standing beside me in the town cemetery telling me she won’t make it to New Years and there’s not a thing I can say... Come on, you coward! Say something! Quit being a self-centered bitch and see whats going on around you.
“Come with us, then.” I say with more desperation in my voice than I’d like. This catches her by surprise, causing her to cock her head slightly. “Where? California?”
I laugh, but it’s not because of amusement. It’s a humourless gasp as I try to think of an answer. “No... After graduation. I don’t know where I am going, either. Come with me, Andy, and Ashley. We’ll go on great adventures, we’ll go see things unimaginable, and go places one could only read about. You could be free, Eliza.”
She thinks about it for a long moment before pressing her lips into a thin line and shaking her head slowly. “No offense, Ash, but I just wouldn’t fit into your crew.” She gestures towards the other two. “This is a three-piece private club, and it’s best to keep it that way. I don’t want to impose or push myself in where I don’t fit. If my life is destined for the path it’s going down, then I surrender myself to destiny. I have no reason to fight back against it.”
“But you’ll...” I trail off as the true meaning of her previous words settles in. I don’t see myself making it to the end of this year.
“You wouldn’t... Would you?” I hedge breathlessly, watching her expression closely as I allude towards something darker. She doesn’t deny nor confirm my suspicion, but the saddened look in her weary eyes tells me all I need.
“You can’t.” I say as though it’d change everything. I blink and look away, unable to cry, unable to feel anything but the bottomless sea of dispair. “You?...” I sigh, taking a deep breath that really does nothing to benefit me. “I can’t...” I stare off into the distance, where the headstones seem to go on forever, overlapping each other into the trees.
She casts her eyes downward, but says nothing. The guilt in her eyes is livid but even so her mind is set.
I don’t even know what to say to that... I don’t know how to approach the subject in a way that doesn’t make me look like a massive asshole trying to relate to her to change her mind.
“Why?” I breathe, digging my fingernails into the plastic handle of the shovel just to have something to hang on to, for fear I'd stumble or fall down. I lean over it like a crutch while struggling to form a cohesive sentence.
“There’s nothing for me out there. I look like I fit in and I play the part until it’s real... But there’s no getting out of this world alive and I’d rather go on my terms while I’m happy and know what I want before even that becomes distorted.”
“Your whole life awaits and you’re going to throw it away over a handful of mishaps?” I whisper. “Life isn’t perfect. Not yours. Not mine. We make do, we always have, right?”
“This is just different.” She says, following it up with a sigh to signal that this conversation is over. Her eyes avert and she scans the surrounding field, observing the results of life lost. Your body dropped in a cold hole, a rock on your head, and no one to visit you... All to leave a troubling world behind.
I grind my teeth and look over at the progress Andy and Ashley have made in the meantime. They’re now standing in the hole, tossing shovel-full after shovel-fulls of dirt over their shoulder in bleak silence wearing the morbid masks of reluctantcy.
“Well then, while you’re here,” I murmur in a blunt, cold tone. “at least enjoy the scenery.”
Somewhere deep in my heart, I don’t think she’d go through with it. Elizabeth has always been super squimish to pain and blood, it’d be incredibly difficult for her to carry out on her own. But then again it seems I don’t know her as well as I believe I do.
She picks up her shovel and heads for the hole, clambering down inside the pit alongside Ashley and Andy and begins to dig. I watch the trio working for a moment with a strange feeling forming in my stomach. Something just feels wrong. Nauseatingly wrong.
I grind my teeth nervously, watching the shadows for movements or signs I’m being watched. If any other human was out here, all they’d see would be me standing here draped over a shovel with Elizabeth working away at desicrating the grave of Ashley Purdy. I really hope I don’t ever have to explain that one to the cops.
I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong... I just keep feeling more and more unnerved the closer they get to the coffin far below the layers of packed soil. There’s something incredibly dark that feels like it’s wrapping itself around me in the fashion of a cold, comforting hug. I take a deep breath and blink, freeing myself from the haze. I shake my head and think hard. What the hell am I doing?
I look around myself, unable to figure out quite where I’d gone during that small piece of time, but I was apparently out of my mind longer than I thought when Andy calls to me that they’ve hit the coffin; something they couldn’t have achieved within a few minutes and the three of them.
Walking over with a confused look on my face, I ask “How long did this take you?”
Andy gestures up at the stars beginning to come through the darkening sky above with a confused look on his face. “About forty-five minutes... Why?” He squints up at me for a moment before casting a look behind me with a brief glance. “Didn’t you watch our progress from over there? I mean... You did stand there for almost a half hour.”
I look behind me to where I’d been just moments earlier and I realized that couldn’t explain to him why... Because I have no clue what he is talking about. “What? What do you mean?”
“You talked to Elizabeth for a bit, then when she walked away you just tuned out and stood there for the past half hour. Are you okay?”
He looks me dead in the eyes, searching for a sign that this place is starting to have an effect on me. I quickly shake my head, not certain enough of my diagnosis to say I had some weird possession thing going on... And that would only stress him and cause him to fail to carry out the deed we set out here to do. And I really don’t want another reason for Ashley to despise me because he seemed to be coming up with those on his own just fine as it is.
“I’m fine.” I lie and he is doubtful, but after a moment he nods and resumes his work, still keeping a watchful eye on me for anything weird of out of character.
... I lost a half hour, and during that time it felt like five minutes where I felt dizzy and sick to my stomach with nerves and fear. What the hell is happening?
I shake my head in an effort to clear it and walk closer to the grave to peek over the edge into the six-foot deep hole below. They’re clearing away the dirt and debris from the top of a metallic silver coffin which glints ominously in the dying light. I take my cue to fetch the flashlight from my bag to cast the bright beam across the pit. Andy and Ashley get down on their knees and begin brushing away the remaining dirt on top. The sweet smell of the deep, damp Earth mixed with the sinister stink of death rises from the hole to indicate something unsavory is just below.
Ashley glances up at me and for the brief moment our eyes meet, his gaze is unsettling. The beam from the flashlight catches in his eyes, causing them to almost glow as he glared up at me from the pit.
“Hey lazy, are you going to give us a hand?” He snaps, chucking up his shovel, narrowly missing me as I quickly step to the side to avoid the projectile with a frown on my face.
“There’s not exactly much room down there.” I reply, looking doubtfully at the cramped space. Even after a while Elizabeth holds out her arm towards me so I can help hoist her out of the damp darkness. We stand on the grassy bank above them, watching in silence as they continue to wipe away the dirt and debris from the top of the coffin.
I notice how Andy looks around from time to time, his fleeting glances struggling to look casual and calm. His gaze looks troubled when he does, brow pinching in concern as he scans the seemingly empty meadow around us. I can’t begin to imagine everything he sees right now... Actually, that is better rephrased as I can’t imaging everyone he sees right now.
My limited imagination can’t dream up the images he sees. Decades of the dead roam this field, each of them suffering vastly different endings covering everything from illness to murder. It feels suffocating to stand among the headstones knowing that they are all around you, watching you... Touching you... Trying to figure out why they aren’t like you anymore. Andy mentioned once that after someone has been dead for a long time, they begin to forget that they are and exist only in an air of confusion in a constricting environment.
I hand Elizabeth the flashlight and crouch to begin fishing the jars and other equiptment out of my backpack, setting them on the dew-dampened grass above the hole.
“Alright...” Andy sighs, straightening back up. Him and Ashley take a step back from the casket, admiring the fruits of their labor. Elizabeth allows the flashlight beam to fall across the lid, giving the smooth top an eerie, blinding glint.
“Everyone ready for this?”
No one is, and no one says anything. I stand there, grinding my teeth, dreading the inevitable image I am about to be treated to.
They clear the dirt away from the front latches and undo them carefully, battling the rust and erosion that has grown on the steel.
“Are you ready for this?” Andy asks Ashley, looking him in the eyes, his tattooed hands hovering on the last latch.
After a moment, Ashley nods in silent agreement, and the both of them work together to lift the lid. Elizabeth leans over the hole to look, and doubled back when she catches a glimpse of something unpleasant. I’m on the opposite side of the grave where the hinges of the casket would be, so I am blind to the disturbing imagery below.
I bite on my lip, risking peeks here and there, wary not to see too much. It’s a sickening feeling just sitting there above them, watching them push it open, and knowing eventually you have to handle the samples that they pick off the corpse.
“Ugh...” Andy groans, pushing the lid upwards to rest back on its hinges. Him and Ashley take a step back, stumbling into the crooked dirt walls around them. They stare down into the darkness of the coffin, the two of them seeming to freeze in place just looking down at the bleached bones lying inside.
“Oh God...” I murmur, burying my nose in my elbow to keep from breathing in the rancid dust rising up out of the hole.
In the bleached light from the flashlight in Elizabeth’s hands, lies the decaying remains of one Ashley Purdy. Years spent here in this padded cell had left his burial suit frayed and hanging stiffly over gold-tinted bones. Webs of dry tissue and muscle remain, their veiny silhouettes a stark contrast from the antique color of the bone itself.
Empty eye sockets and a crooked jaw are all that remain of his face. Even from where I am perched above the grave, I can see the bits of thick wire bound through the jaw, secured in the nasal cavity from where the mortician had wired his mouth shut.
Locks of brittle black hair are brushed smooth on either side of his head, although the roots seem to merely hover over the bone of the skull, nowhere left to call home. Considering all the years since the day he was put here, he is in surprisingly good condition.
Ashley stares down at himself, the empty sockets locked with his. A silence falls over the four of us as we mutually agree to give Ashley a moment.
After a moment, a shimmering tear rises to the brim of his eye. He sits there, crouched in the damp soil beside himself, staring at the calcified structure that carried him through life.
“I broke my leg in the fall.” he says in a muted, dead voice. His gaze never leaving the skull. My own gaze drifts downwards to the patch of missing fabric in his funeral slacks where the jagged sever of his femur is exposed.
“I didn’t even really decide that I wanted to die... I’d taken all the steps, sent all the messages, and it left me feeling empty and cold, standing on the bridge above the river. It was freezing.”
A breeze wisps over us, blowing my hair slightly, sending a chill up my spine.
“I was going to change my mind. I could feel myself resolving the problem and backing away... But damn it, that metal was shiny and new... And slick. I fell off the bridge, landing on the bank of stones and rubble below. I knew it was broken right away... But there was nothing I could do to help myself. The rain kept coming down, and everything was slick. I was blind in that storm, so as I drug myself forward, I couldn’t have seen what was ahead of me.”
My eyes are locked on Ashley’s blank face, my heart tightening at his words, my mind trying to imagine the awful things he witnessed and felt that night.
“I could only see when the lightning stiked... Which was not often enough. When I thought I was dragging myself further up the bank, it turns out I was only dragging myself further out towards the waterfall. I couldn’t hear the roar of the water over the downpour, only the sounds of my own distorted, pained breathing. I fell over that edge to the river below, hitting my head on the way down causing me to black out instantly. There is no happy ending to this story, no... I died freezing and in pain alone out there that night, only for my memory to dry up and die quickly with me and for my family and friends to have to live on with the heavy burden of my departure.”
His brown eyes soften sadly as something changes in his thoughts. Andy reaches towards him, patting his shoulder in reassurance as he gets out the ending of his grim tale.
“When I opened my eyes again, it was the coldest slap to the face that you could imagine. I woke up in my room, of all places... Cold sunlight pouring through the gaps in my blinds, the feeling of heavy, stagnant silence all around me and a missing patch of memory in my head that startled me enough to wake me right away with a start.
I sat up in my bed, breathing heavily in a panic, looking around me. Nothing had been moved nor touched, but I still felt like I was not alone, and in danger. I got out bed and jogged downstairs, where I would discover the killing blow on the kitchen counter... The newspaper from Monday morning, the day before, with the headline Pendant boy drowns in river near Talia Lake.
Further examination would prove it was about me... I stared at that page, so confused and fearful. I ran to my parents’ room to discover it empty with signs of a recent departure. On the bed, two discarded black dresses of my Mother’s...
When I wandered into the living room, I was overwhelmed with the stink of lillies and roses. The entire living room had become a miniature botanical garden in my absence. I felt fear as I reached for the card dangling on one vase, terrified that it would say my name, proving this all to be reality and not a horrific dream brought on by too many narcotics and alcohol mixed with horror movies I binged before passing out.
No, I couldn’t be so lucky. I wouldn’t. Sure as shit, my name was in those cards... Each of them remorseful, each of them an apology, each sickeningly kind with their promises to be there whenever needed or that things would get better. Some promised justice for me, others ventured outside of what is morally allowed inside of condolence cards, branching out to say I was not a suicide, and my death should be explored more extensively.
At the end of that day all I knew about myself was five things: My name is Ashley Purdy. I am twenty-two years old. I lived with my parents in Pendant, Utah. I have accidentally committed suicide, and I am dead.”
He pauses for a moment, his gaze becoming thoughtful. At this point, night has settled all around us, a ceiling of stars above our heads. He bites his lip for a moment before blinking and allowing his gaze to rise to meet mine. For once, they are not spiteful nor angry. He is not bitter... Possibly at peace or merely working to get there, I do not know. All I know is that in this moment, he seems changed by sharing his experiences.
“When my folks came home from my funeral that night, I saw first-hand the pain I had caused.”
His gaze moved from mine to lock with Elizabeth’s. “My pain had become theirs, and it killed me to see it. Suicide... It’s bullshit.” He shakes his head regretfully. “I know you think it’s the only way for you to escape and make a decision for yourself, but it’s not. It’s you ending any chance of you finding something better. Listen to me, kid, when I say you have no clue what you’ll be leaving behind when you go.”
With a deep breath, Ashley gets up and dusts off his jeans, reaching towards me, I place an empty jar in his hand. He crouches down near the head and Andy steps out of the way so he can work.
“Hand me the wire cutters.”
I pull the small pair out and hand them down. He carefully cuts the exposed wires binding his jaw shut and cracks it open. The snapping of dry cartilage accompanies the swift movement. Using the ends of the pliers, he reaches up into the mouth and selects one of the front teeth as his specimen of choice. Securing it in the teeth, it rips it free with a jerk of his arm and drops the piece into the jar, wasting no time going for another.
“If you’re all good here, I’m going to get started on mine.”
“Go for it. We’ve still got a long night ahead.” Ashley responds absently, concentrating hard on his work.
I grab onto Andy’s hand and pull him out. He combs his fingers through his hair and sighs, accepting the shovel I hand him.
“Do you want to help me? Elizabeth and Ashley can handle this.”
I look back down at Ashley and then across at Elizabeth. She meets my eyes and nods at me to go. I look back up into his eyes and offer him a small smile of agreement.
He grabs my hand, weaving his fingers between mine. He hoists the backpack onto his other shoulder, and off into the darkness we go. With night all around us now, nothing looks familiar. I look up and can see the webbed branches stretching across the starry sky, but everything else is muted in the blackness of the forest.
“So...” I murmur, swinging my hand, admiring how his is clasped around mine. “I don’t really know what to say.”
“It’s a lot.” He admits. “But we’ll be okay.”
“How many of them are out here?”
He knows what I mean right away. His gaze, what I can see of it, flickers around the clearing as we make our way down the gravel path to his grave. “Too many to count.” He replies after a moment, “But it’s okay. They enjoy the visitors.”
“Do they understand why we’re here?”
“I don’t know...” He admits, “Some of them do, some of them can’t remember what it is like to be alive, so they’re almost brain dead in that sense.”
I look around, half expecting to actually see one of them myself.
“Do you think we’ll have any more possession problems after this?”
He laughs quietly, it’s a magical, muted sound that I welcome despite its odd place during this depressing time. “Ash, let’s talk about something normal.”
“What do you mean? Like what?”
“Whatever you want. What’s a basic, human thing to talk about?”
I think about it for a moment, curious to see what he has in store. “I don’t know... The weather?”
“The weather is quite nice.” He agrees, then shakes his head. “I am just trying to provide as normal of a relationship as I can. We can’t deny how bizarre this paring is. If Elizabeth freaked out the way she did, I can’t imaging what anyone else would think.”
“She’s just... Scared for me. Understandably so, I haven’t exactly brought home the polo-wearing, church-on-Sunday, Marine-in-training guy to be my significant other. You’re pretty scary at first glance.”
“I’m not scary.” He scoffs.
“You were when I first saw you... Not because you were a ghost or because you’d suddenly appeared in my room, but because there was just something sad and broken about you that gave you the aura of a Phantom of the Opera type character. I was scared to death of you.”
“And now?” He challenges with a wistful smile.
“Well now... You’re quite alright.” I smile at him, unsure if he can see it in the dim light. “I am grateful that I have you.”
He is quiet for a little bit and I assume it is because of some reminicent thinking, but when he speaks again his deep voice is unsettled. “Though maybe it is wrong. Maybe our relationship is fated and the only way it ends is in death.”
I scoff, annoyed that he would allow his thoughts to wander into that dark, unforgiveable space. “That’s not how this ends, you know that. We’re going to fix everything and once things calm down again, we will have a chance at something genuine. You and me.”
“Asheen, I can’t give you everything you want.”
I open my mouth to reply, but then things pop into my head and I realize what he means. “I don’t need all that stuff to be happy.” I finally reply stubbornly when nothing else works.
“You deserve to be loved by someone you can share with your world, and by someone who can share you in theirs, not keep as a shameful secret. I’ve seen how you light up when I take down my walls and play pretend with your friends and family so you can have just a taste of a normal life. It’s not right for me to rob you of that.”
“I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t feel like that.” I shrug indifferently. “This way I have you to myself, no one else demanding your time or attention. We can be recluses together and no one would notice.”
“But what about longterm? Have you thought about that yet?”
It had crossed my mind briefly on several occasions before I banned those thoughts. The truth is that I don’t know how to deal with them properly, and in my heart I know that things can never be that way.
“I can’t marry you in front of your family or give you kids. We can’t grow old together, because I am stuck like this.”
He gestures towards himself with the hand that grips the shovel. I have to admit to myself that even I get caught up in things sometimes and forget that he’s not human.
This takes me back for a moment and I stop walking to look at him. This is the first time he has really come off as resentful about his condition. Most of the time he covers it up with jokes of self-loathing jokes and pretends that it is okay because that part of his life is over, but truthfully he is still hung up on it, as one should be.
None of this is getting any easier on him. Time won’t heal the wounds, because as time goes on we will get closer and he will want more, but be limited by his own existance. There’s nothing to be done - wealth, time, nor patience can fix or restore him.
He meets my gaze for the briefest moment before tugging me along beside him. We keep walking in silence for a few minutes while I stumble along blindly, hoping he knows where he is going. We should have brought more flashlights.
“I don’t mean to be a downer, but it’s just how it is.” He sighs, scanning the treeline for the familiar headstone that had been claimed as his own. “If things were any different, I promise you with every fiber of my being I would have loved you unconditionally and would have married you.”
My heart performs little back flips and somersaults in my chest at his words. Despite the grim truth behind them, it brings a smile to my face.
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“So if you were standing here, living and breathing, you would still be with me?”
“Yes... Why?”
My smile falters a bit and I am brought back to reality. If this were all so, life for us might be more difficult than it is now.
“No one else would like it... Or support it. The cold honesty of it is that you’re quite a bit older than I, with a blackened past that would have you torched straight away by my parents for even standing next to me... I- I don’t know how it could’ve been.”
He thinks about it for a moment and then shrugs. “You’re right - but to be fair, I’m not that much older than you. Twenty-three is hardly anything worth getting anyone’s britches in a bunch over.”
I laugh, “But you know how it would be reacted to. It’d be a full on shit storm. If I were eighteen and we were having this conversation, the world would be spinning in union. But because I’m a few months short of that milestone, we’ll have to settle for the fact that it’s ultimately unsupported - hell it’s one of the reasons Elizabeth isn’t too fond of our relationship. 17 to 23 sounds creepy.”
“There are far scarier things than a six-year age gap.”
The wind begins to pick up, reminding me again that it is still blustery early spring.
“Do you think we actually would have met if you’d lived that day?” I wonder out loud, peeking over at him to see his reaction.
“I don’t know,” he admits with a shrug. “I’d like to say yes, but honestly with no life or death scenario to bond us together, I feel like any interaction we might have had would have been fleeting.”
As much as his words sting, I have to agree. I can’t imagine any scenario that could’ve taken place that would have provided enough time for us to be in the same space to even speak to each other. And anyway, we did live only two blocks apart my entire life and I can’t remember I single time that I actually saw him, interacted with him in any capacity, or found him remarkable whatsoever.
“Maybe being a ghost is your only charming quality.” I joke, jabbing him the ribs with my elbow. He cracks a smile. “Well that would explain my lack of lasting relationships... I was just missing the the pièce de résistance.”
Once our laughter had faded, he pointed ahead to wear the moonlight had made some effort to actually light the clearing. There in the center stood the squatty obsidian block.
“It’s this one.”
“How do you know?” I wonder, we’re too far away for it to be read and it wasn’t even here when he was buried.
“I’ve been back here a few times since that day.” He murmurs, tone quiet and thoughtful. “It keeps me grounded, I guess... I need to remember what happened so I don’t forget.”
“What would happen if you forgot?” I ask in confusion.
“I’d end up like them.” He gestures loosely around us and I am suddenly reminded of the hundreds of eyes piercing through me from every direction. It takes a lot to fight the urge to peek around me once more.
“They forgot, and now they are trapped. I can’t let that happen to me.”
Notes
This is the longest chapter I have written on any story ever! over 10,000 words.
Okay so it's been almost a year since I updated last, and for that I apologize. The last time I worked on this story was April 15th on the way to my High School Art Symposium. The weeks that followed presented a variety of problems and then summer hit and between being too busy to write, I also had zero motivation to work on this as I've kinda lost interest in Black Veil Brides at the moment. I tried forcing it out a couple times but the chapter never felt genuine to the story, for that reason I have three different versions of his chapter saved on my computer right now including one where the dead girl Andy met in a previous chapter showed up.
That's the downside to my spontaneous writing - I was going to introduce her character with no plan of her story arc or how she'd impact things. For that reason, her inclusion has been scrapped for the time being.
Nonetheless, one of my resolutions this year is to finish this story, and since it turns three years old in February it seems like as good of a time as any to get back into things. Plus the dreary early spring weather is what inspired this story in the first place. :)
Some exciting things: Over the summer I graduated High School, and I got to go to Washington DC with forty kids from mine and a neighboring state. While we were out there we did so much cool stuff that just thinking about the experience blows my mind. We met our state senators, went to the library of Congress, toured the Capital Building, went to Arlington Cemetary, Lincoln Memorial, WWII memorial, and the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, plus so much other cool stuff!
Despite all of this, my fondest memory is from our second day in DC, we took a bus to Baltimore and went to Fort McHenry (where Star Spangled Banner was written) and spent the afternoon at the aquarium and that night went to Toby's Dinner Theater where we saw Newsies performed live. Now THAT I can't even begin to talk about how cool it was, because just moments earlier those talented dancers and singers were our waiters. After it was over I snatched a program off one of the tables and me and my friend got to meet some of the actors on our way out. I was damn determined to meet the lead Matt Hirsh lol (not gonna lie, I did manage to develop a tiny crush on him throughout the evening. Dude was beautiful! lol) I got to talk to him for a bit and got a picture, plus I got to meet two of the other actors. They were so incredibly kind and sweet. We gave them all pins from our state as well.
Okay! That wraps up all the big stuff! I've missed talking to you all and writing for you, so I am excited to get back into things. I'm not sure how often I'll be updating but I'm hoping it'll be a few times a month.
All the same, I want to wish you all a wonderful New Year and hopefully your January has been better than mind lol. I'm sorting out a potential computer hack at the moment.
Love you all, and as always, peace out girl scouts!
I just want to say, I am here to support you no matter what you do <3
4/12/20