by Unknown
My father and the police saw it lying there too. Hidden under the leaves, covered in dirt and barely recognizable. But it was definitely mine. And it was definitely dead.
My mother got there not long before they found the body, around 11:00.
She was crying now, my father's arm around her shoulder. Daisy wasn't there. It didn't seem like her to hide from her grief. That had always been what I did. Then again, I had to remind myself that Daisy was most likely traumatized. She was only twelve, after all.
"It's her," my mother's eyes looked longingly at the object being covered up and taken away by the policemen. She was longing for me to be alive, to pull away the plastic and run into her arms. Longing for it all to be nothing but a horrible nightmare.
"She's gone, Lorrie. She's not coming back. They will find whoever killed her- whoever robbed her of her life like this."
"She can't really be dead. Death doesn't just happen-"
My father cut her off."Yes. Yes it does. No matter how cruel or unfair..." he was trying so hard to keep his composure, to be strong for my mother, and he sounded ridiculous. My father didn’t really believe anything he was saying, and eventually he would have to admit it."Unfair. So... unreal.. But we have to be strong for Jack, and Daisy"-
Now my mother cut him off.
"You don't have to be strong right now. You shouldn't be. Our daughter was killed! She's gone! They found her body. She's gone forever. We don't know who did it to her... What if we never do?!? I don't want to be strong. Being strong won't bring her back!"
Storm clouds were gathering in the sky. If you listened close enough, you could hear two people's tears mixing with the rain as it fell softly to the earth below. A little ways off, you might have been able to hear the tears of someone else. Someone who was not crying for the girl that was lost, but for those the girl had left behind.
***
I don't know how much time has passed since I've been dead in this living world. One day blurs into the next when you don't need the sun to see, or the night to sleep. During the day I seem to wander aimlessly, my mind filled with questions. What am I still doing here? Shouldn't I be in heaven or hell or something?
Every night I find myself back at my house, crawling through the living room window. I'll tiptoe up the stairs to my bedroom and lie on my bed as I did every night. My parents haven't set foot in my room since that night, but Daisy has. Every night, before she goes to her room for bed, she'll come into mine.
There was a knock on my door.
"Come in," I said, and she did.
She knocks on the door every time she comes to my room.
"Someday I'm going to come in without knocking and you'll have to come back and yell at me," she whispered.
If only she could know how sorry I am. That the last thing I'd ever do is yell at her. The worst part is, my last words to her were not words at all, but screams of anger.
"Do you know what day it is, Dahlia? It's November 5th. Your Birthday. Happy 'Big Seventeen', sis." Her eyes filled with tears as she ran her hands over the quilt on my bed, smoothing out every wrinkle and crease.
Daisy and I had joked that what with sixteenth and eighteenth birthdays being such a big deal, seventeen probably felt a little left out. We had crazy plans for my seventeenth birthday. Plans that were never going to happen now.
If I could create just one more great memory, I would go through a thousand embarrassing, awful ones. It would be worth it. I would do anything just to be able to say one word to my family, to my friends, to change what happened that night. To change my last words to my little sister.
The night it all ended. My optimism stops there. Wouldn't yours?
{Five}
Jack came back from college for the funeral. Sitting in a tree that hung low over the weathered gravestones, I watched it all. There were many people there, ones that were close to me and ones that I barely knew. In the face of tragedy, people will come together, and they'll look past other people's failings. It's kind of amazing.
One day, Tina and I had been lying outside under an old willow tree. The summer sun beat down, giving a lazy calm to the afternoon. She turned to me suddenly and asked,
"Do you ever fantasize about what it would be like if you died? Who would care, and who would cry hardest? Would everyone who had ever done you wrong feel sorry for the way they had treated you?"
"Maybe a couple of times, when I was especially angry with the world and was feeling very sorry for myself."
"It feels good, doesn't it?"
"Yeah."
"I can't wait to see if they're sorry or not."
Well, I can tell you that I didn't sit there with amusement as they lowered my coffin, laughing because "now they were sorry." The people that had been cruel to me, the ones who had hurt me and made me feel small, they certainly felt sorry. I forgave them, if there was anything to forgive them for at all.
Because if it had been another girl that had been cruelly murdered that night, I would've cried at her funeral. I would've been sorry too.
When you're an outsider looking in, people are just sad, mistaken creatures. How could you be angry with them, when they never really had evil intentions in the first place? The martyr act never helped anyone.
***
Three months have passed. It is now mid February, and snow is still on the ground. Nothing has changed much. I still wander aimlessly, wondering why. Why everything.
My family is not much better. My mother hasn't been to work all this time, and she sits, staring all day, except for when my father drags her out of the house.
"Come on. Let's go shovel the snow," he'll say.
"I have errands to run, and I need both of you to help me."
"Let's go for a jog."
Always a jog. Never a walk, because walking involves talking. And my father definitely doesn't want to talk to anyone about anything. My father was never one to show much emotion. It doesn't mean he doesn't have emotions, he just puts his feelings into doing. He works overtime, gets my family out of the house as much as possible, and stays busy day in and day out. Sometimes, when he isn't able to stay busy, he'll sit and stare like my mother does.
Jack went back to college the day after the funeral. I don't think he said one word to my family. He was angry at them, angry that they hadn't kept me from being murdered. After the burial, he sat by the freshly shoveled dirt, trying to hold back the sobs. I wanted to comfort him, but there was nothing I could do.
I'm right here. I'm not gone at all.
Sometimes, I wish I was.
Daisy seems to be recovering well, other than the nightmares she has every night. I can hear her screaming, I don't know what exactly, but screaming something. During the day, she slaps on a smile and you'd never know anything was wrong.
She still comes to my room every night before bed, and talks to me. Tells me everything about herself. Tells me how much she misses me. I wish I could tell her that I miss her too.
The other day, when my family was out, I went in and just stood there. Stood in the middle of the floor, looking up at the huge mirror on the wall and wishing my reflection was looking back at me. Wishing anything was looking back at me.
No one has any idea what it is to feel so terribly, hopelessly alone. Alone, and frightened. I have no one to turn to, no one to question. The abyss is surrounding me bit by bit until I am a part of it.
One question that I keep going back to is, why haven't I run into any other people like me? Any other dead people? Are they in a different dimension? Only visible to themselves?
I got my answer a few weeks later.
As I left the house one night, I was magnetically drawn back to the woods. A part of me was lost there, and I could never stay away for long.
"Hello."
I spun around. No one was in sight, but there were people out here, in the dark. They couldn't see me, though, so why was I worrying?
"Hello? I'm talking to you?"
I spun around ag
ain in the opposite direction, coming face to face with a thin, redheaded girl.
I had been wrong. There was only one person here in the woods other than myself, and she definitely saw me.
"Me?" I asked incredulously.
"Yes."
"How-"
"You're dead, aren't you," She cut me off.
"Yes. It's been about four months now," I said, confused.
"You were wondering how I could see you. I'm dead too, so that's why."
This girl was very blunt and to the point. No reason not to be when your life was over. What good is tact when you can't use it for real end?
"There are other people like me? I mean, I guess there would have to be, but I haven't run into anyone yet… until now." I was overflowing with unspoken and unanswered questions.
"Of course there are."
She smiled faintly. The way my mother had whenever I asked a stupid question.
"My name is Emma. Emma Blackwell."
I gasped. I had heard of her before- the girl with a story as creepy and surreal as her last name.
It had been in the newspapers for weeks. Her father, Steven Blackwell, had been rated "number one CEO in the world in 2001" according to the Harvard Business Review. Her millionaire family owned an island in Maine with its own lighthouse. Everyone knew who they were, and everyone knew about the disappearance of their nineteen year old daughter.
"Emma Blackwell, daughter of Steven and Alice Blackwell, has been reported missing."
"Emma Blackwell is missing after a fishing trip to Flathead Lake in Montana."
"DNA of Emma Blackwell, who was reported missing five years ago today, has been found on an unidentifiable object in Flathead Lake, Montana"
Every so often, newspaper articles would still pop up about Emma. Theories about her death, clues and traces, confessions from her friends.
To this day, all anyone really knew was that Emma had gone on a camping trip to Montana with her friends. They had all got on a speedboat. One second, Emma was there- the next, she was gone. They dragged the lake, but nothing was ever found.
"You've probably heard of me,"
she muttered.
I snapped back to my senses. Can ghosts be scared of other ghosts?
"I'll tell you what really happened that night. It wasn't that mysterious at all really, but something about lakes, drowning, the unknown- freaks people out beyond belief. It's so real. It could happen to anyone. Accidents are much more uncanny than demonic possession, because there's nothing you can do about them. And even if you do, it's too late."
"It would feel very surreal."
"My friends are beyond screwed up now because of it. Benji- you've probably heard of him in the news- they locked him up because of his hallucinations and nightmares. Completely lost his mind. He's writing it all down, everything that happened- because then he says the nightmares will stop."
***
Being around someone else in the same situation as I was in made me feel even more keenly the sensation of being alive, and dead, at the same time. Alive because this girl was someone who could see me, who could talk to me, and I could answer her back. Dead because she had been killed like me, disastrously and suddenly.
Everyone had known about the tragedy of Emma Blackwell, and it had been on the forefront of my mind for a while after it happened. Being able to talk to this dead girl brought reality down on my head like a hammer, because the only way it was possible for me to talk to her was if I was dead too.
"What does your friend have nightmares about?" I asked her.
"He believes that I'm coming for him. That it's his fault I died, and if he tells the truth to everyone, I won't be able to hurt him," she sighed, and her face looked tired and sad.
"Of course I'm not coming for him. But how can he know that?"
"I don't know. I don't even know who murdered me."
"I'm guessing from your expression that you want to know more about what happened to me that day."
"If you don't mind telling me."
So she did.
~June 28th, 2001~
"It was just a lazy summer day like any other, but it would lead up to a day no one would ever forget. I had graduated that May, and it was the first Summer that I didn't have to dread the coming of school that Fall.
My friend, Katy Evans, called me on the phone around 6:30 that evening.
"Hey girl!"
"You sound excited! What's up?"
"Well, I booked our flights, and Emma, I'm so excited because-"
"Wait. Stop right there. Booked our flights? To where? When?"
"Oh, sorry. I'm so excited right now that I can't think straight! Okay, so- you know how our group always wanted to go on a camping trip? In Montana, by a big, gorgeous lake?"
Yes I did. We'd been trying for years, but something always prohibited us from going. High school had come and gone, and the trip was still on our bucket list.
"Well, the flights are booked for the day after tomorrow! Cheaper that way. We're headed to Flathead Lake for the weekend, and we have our flights back booked for July 6th. That way, we can celebrate the Fourth there!"
"Okay, okay," I laughed, "luckily for you, I'm free to go. I'm going to hang up now so that I can pack. Oh, get some fireworks, okay?"
"Of course! See you Saturday around 8:40.
Ted will be picking everyone up."
Saturday came, and we were on our way to Montana. Besides Katy, my friends Benji, Isabella, Ted, and Morgan were coming along. We were so excited, so thrilled that our plan had came together so easily and so quickly.
This was bound to be the time of our lives.
It certainly did turn out to be the time of our lives, but not in a good way.
~July 4th, 2001~
We spent a few adventure-filled days by the lake, in which we camped under the stars, hiked, and Benji attempted to teach us all how to fish. Away from the rest of the world, we formed a bond that was stronger than ever.
We were game for anything. When Ted suggested climbing the tallest, widest tree we could find, we did. It failed miserably, but the adventure and laughs we got out of it were worth it.
"Tell your friends," Isabella had joked.
So naturally when Morgan suggested heading out to the middle of the lake in a speedboat, in the middle of the night to shoot off fireworks, we were all for it.
"Come on, guys! It's 11:30, and we need to shoot these off by midnight!" Benji yelled.
"Coming!" We shouted back.
Laughing and screaming, we ran down the beach and hopped into the speedboat waiting for us.
As we got out into the middle of the lake, I said jokingly,
"Benji, find your chill. We wouldn't want you and your hot temper accidentally falling overboard like tea in the Boston Harbor."
"Don't worry. I'm calm now," he laughed. " But I'm still in party mode!"
It was midnight, and Ted shot off a mortar.
"Seriously though," I yelled to Benji over the noise, "if I fall in, make sure you pull me out."
"Don't worry. I will. The same goes for you," he winked.
We all laughed. It was so funny then.
After the last mortar had been shot by Ted, and after Katy ruined half the bottle-rockets, we set off the Roman candle and started up the boat. It was about half past midnight, and we were exhausted.
As the boat whirred loudly, we faced front. Towards the beach, and our warm campfire. The noise was deafening as I sat in the back of the boat, watching the Roman candle go off.
Just one more shot.
Then the boat lurched.
The shot came out of the Roman candle held in Benji's clenched hand.
But it didn't go towards the sky.
The boat lurched again, and a fiery form fell into the deep, clear waters.
I screamed, but no one heard me.
The Roman candle had been the gun.
The propeller of the boat the machete.
And the deafening n
oise of the night the silent murderer.
I sunk to the bottom of the lake like a pebble.
By the time Benji turned around, to ask how I'd liked the fireworks, there was not a single trace left.
I was gone. I had fallen into the lake, burning alive from the last Roman candle shot, and he hadn't saved me.
Benji and the rest got back to the beach, and called 911. When the police and ambulances got there, they couldn't find a trace of what was left of me.