We Were Ghosts--The Secret Life of a Survivor

by Tabitha Barret

  “You can do it, Edgar,” I said encouragingly as I patted the dash.

  “How much farther is it to your aunt’s house?” Zack asked, glancing once again at the rearview mirror.

  “She’s just off the highway. Maybe five minutes from here,” I shrugged since I didn’t have a better estimate.

  He nodded and pushed down harder on the accelerator.

  Phil pulled up alongside of us again. I was afraid that he was going to ram us. My nerves were frayed and I couldn’t take any more stress. I was endangering both Zack and me in this crazy game. Taking a deep breath, I made the hardest decision of my life.

  “Stop the car. He can do whatever he wants to me, but he’s going to kill us both if we keep going,” I said. I wanted to vomit when I thought about what would happen in the next few minutes, but I had to do something to keep Zack safe. “You can take off and leave me. I promise that it will be okay.” I lied in the most convincing way I could.

  “I’m not leaving you with him,” he said through his gritted teeth.

  “It’s okay. I’m more worried about you,” I said, not wanting to imagine what Phil would do to him.

  Zack didn’t reply, but I saw the determination on his face.

  Phil finally zoomed ahead and pulled in front of us going at least 70 mph. Zack was forced to slam on his brakes so that he didn’t plow into the back of the truck.

  I saw everything happen in slow motion. I watched Phil’s truck fishtail as Zack jerked the wheel and pull off the edge of the road onto the grass in front of one of the riding rings of the horse farm.

  Phil lost control of the truck on the slick pavement as Zack and I came to a jolting stop halfway up a small embankment. The front tire of the truck hit a rut along the side of the road and the truck bounced back onto the road, crossing into oncoming traffic. The two cars coming toward him slammed on their brakes before they hit Phil’s truck. The truck continued moving and flew off the road before flipping over. It landed upside down in a drainage ditch that was deep enough to hide the truck from my view.

  I was out of the car and running toward the truck before I heard Zack yelling for me to stop. I saw the other drivers getting out of their cars to lend their assistance. I felt Zack pulling on my arm when I finally figured out why he was yelling. Smoke was coming from the truck. The two drivers stopped and looked at one another, unsure of what to do. No one wanted to get close to the truck in case it ignited.

  I pulled my arm away from Zack and walked as close to the edge of the road as I could. I stared down at the ditch, searching for signs of life. I stood holding my breath, picturing what might happen. Thousands of different scenarios flew through my mind, each of them worse than the last. By the time my brain registered the blue and red flashing lights, my hair was soaked and I was shivering from the chilly rain. Zack tried to pull me away, but I refused to move until I knew Phil’s condition. He stood silently next to me and held my hand.

  The police carefully looked at the truck and determined that it was safe to go near. They lowered themselves down the steep incline and began to inspect the scene. One of the officers spoke to the other drivers, who were watching with concern. I heard the female driver tell the officer that she saw the truck lose control and fly off the road.

  My stomach rolled when I heard a verbal confirmation of what I had witnessed. It made the accident feel less like a dream.

  I finally saw one of the officer’s next to the truck shake his head and turn around to search what looked like a cornfield on the other side of the ditch. He ducked under a wooden fence and used his flashlight to search the area. Other officers joined the search and shouted to the officer questioning the witnesses. He said something like, “move those people back so that we can get the medic in here.”

  I still didn’t have confirmation of what happened to Phil, but I assumed he had been thrown from the truck.

  Zack and I were forced to move to the other side of the street by a new officer that arrived a few minutes after the crash. He started asking Zack all kinds of questions, but I was the one who answered. I intentionally kept my answers brief. “I came home from a football game and my mother’s boyfriend was mad that I had gotten a ride home with a friend. I was afraid that he would hurt me, so I asked my friend to take me to my aunt’s house in the next town over. Phil chased us and was driving erratically. He tried to force us off the road, but he lost control of the truck,” I said numbly.

  “Did you have a fight?” the officer asked.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. I ran before the fight had started, but the officer didn’t need to know that.

  “Were you forbidden to leave the house?” he asked, confused as to why I was afraid of Phil.

  “I was allowed to go to the football game at the high school,” I explained, though I refused to take my eyes off the ditch. I fully expected Phil to climb up the hill and start yelling at me.

  There was another question, but I ignored it.

  “Is he dead?” I asked coldly.

  The officer squirmed and looked back over his shoulder. “We’re waiting for the medical examiner,” he said pleasantly, though I could hear the strain in his voice.

  I nodded and turned to Zack. I put my arms around him and hid my face. The officer seemed to get the hint and left us alone for a few minutes.

  I wasn’t sure how to feel about the whole thing. As much as I hated Phil, I would have never tried to kill him. I didn’t have the stomach to hurt him. I never wanted him to die; I just wanted to be free.

  The police called our parents after they finished asking Zack questions. My mom was the first to arrive and was furious, scared, and every emotion in between. Unfortunately, I couldn’t feel anything. She yelled at me and kept asking me what happened. I could only shrug, unable to formulate an explanation. One of the officers finally pulled her aside and told her what they had learned from our statements.

  She burst into tears. That’s when I finally figured out that Phil was dead. The strange part was that she seemed more angry than sad. I wasn’t sure what was going through her mind, I just knew that things would be bad for a really long time.

  Zack’s father showed up and I was forced to leave Zack alone with his father. I could only imagine what his father would say. Thankfully, Zack wasn’t charged with anything since the witnesses had only seen Phil acting like a maniac. Zack was allowed to follow his father home as I got into my mom’s car. I was so detached from everything that I wasn’t able to cry.

  We drove home in silence, neither one of us knowing what to say. It wasn’t the right time to tell my mother the truth. She was too stunned to listen. All I wanted to do was go to sleep and pretend that this had never happened.

  The next few days blurred together until I didn’t know which day of the week it was. My mother, though visibly upset, wasn’t as heartbroken as one would expect. Once the initial craziness died down, she would cry on and off, and was lost in thought, but she never once said that she missed him or wished that he would come back. Watching my mother mourn was a strange experience. My own anger and fear made me quiet, so I sat and watched her move around the house trying to decide what she should do. The house wasn’t ours and they weren’t married, so she had no rights to it. She made a few phone calls to realtors and apartment rental offices, though she didn’t say much to anyone about her plans to move.

  She asked me once more what had happened and I told her the same thing I told the police. She was obviously mad at me, but she didn’t yell, nor did she accuse me of anything. Oddly enough, she never questioned why I had been in the car with Zack. She didn’t even ask who he was. Once I told her that I was going to Sarah’s house to avoid Phil’s wrath, she didn’t question me again.

  The funeral arrangements were made and I was standing in the cemetery before I could process everything. I was stuck somewhere between disbelief and fear. I couldn’t accept the fact that he was gone. I feared that this was somehow another one of his sick, twisted games. If I
allowed myself to believe that he was dead, I was afraid that I would turn around and see him standing behind me. It was possible that I was having a nervous breakdown, but I didn’t want to relax or let my guard down. I couldn’t find a way to accept that I was free. To have that freedom snatched away again would be a cruel joke, so I expected him to jump out of the bushes at any second.

  I saw my aunts and uncles standing in their dark suits, though they didn’t have puffy eyes or running noses. Only Phil’s sister and the people Phil worked with seemed truly upset. My mother had on a cold mask of indifference that she had been wearing for the last two days. It felt like she was standing on a different continent from everyone else. She went through the motions, but expressed no emotions. She had even dismissed my family’s attempts at consoling her.

  I listened to the priest talk about Phil in the past tense, but still couldn’t accept it. He talked about what a great man he was and how much he would be missed. I wanted to scream at the priest and everyone there and tell them exactly who Phil was, but I didn’t. I held myself together with small breaths and clenched fists.

  At the end of the service, I followed my mother to her car that sat along the dirt path of the cemetery. I found it strange that Sarah and Joe were standing by her car, waiting for us. When my aunt cut off my mother’s path to the car door, I stopped dead in my tracks and gawked at her.

  “How dare you mourn him! You have no idea what that monster did to your daughter! My niece!” Sarah yelled, though my uncle held out his hand to keep her from raising her voice again.

  Every emotion that I had been holding inside of me collided until my vision went dark and I felt my head hit the ground. My body twitched and shook, but I couldn’t stop it from moving. I remember seeing a pair of black shoes running toward me, but couldn’t stay awake long enough to see who was wearing them.

  I woke up to the sound of machines beeping and the smell of cleaning products. When I was able to open my eyes and keep them open, I saw my aunt sitting in a chair facing me to my left, and my mother in a chair to my right. Between them was the hospital bed I was laying on.

  It took me a minute to figure out why I was here. Everything was jumbled and my mother and aunt started talking at the same time when they saw me wake up.

  “Are you okay?” my mom asked, leaning on the edge of her chair.

  “We were so worried,” my aunt said, practically falling out of her chair.

  “I don’t know,” I replied, unsure of what to say.

  My aunt stood up and sat next to me, though my mom moved around in her chair as if she wasn’t sure what she should do.

  Sarah took my hand and smiled sympathetically at me. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry. I thought it was safe to return the box to you. I know it was probably bad timing, but I wanted to cheer you up. When I picked up the box, I accidently dropped it on the floor. I heard something rattle inside of it. You said that they were notes from your boyfriend, but I could tell there was something else in the box. I opened it, afraid that there was something bad inside, something you didn’t want anyone to find. Regrettably, I thought it was a tape of you and Zack. I had no idea that I would find Phil on the tape,” she said, her voice trailing off as she choked up.

  Tears started streaming down my face. I cried and cried, unable to stop. Reality no longer existed and I felt hollow. The anxiety and stress of everything crashed through me and I couldn’t breathe. I felt another panic attack coming on.

  My mother yelled for a nurse as my jaw locked up again.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay,” my mother said, trying to calm me.

  By the time the nurse arrived, I was in the middle of a full-blown episode. Mom and Sarah were fussing over me, trying to get me to calm down. The doctor was checking my eyes and a nurse was giving me a shot of something. I suddenly felt warm and woozy. Everything melted away and my eyelids became incredibly heavy. My brain stopped functioning and all I could do was put my head down on the pillow. I was awake, but I couldn’t do much but lay on my side. My mom and aunt left the room to talk to someone and I was alone.

  I drifted in and out of sleep. Sarah sometimes talked to me and sometimes I saw Joe. I wondered how all of this had happened. How had things gotten so screwed up?

  When I was able to sit up and speak again, Sarah told me that she and Joe had seen Zack’s tape. She was horrified by what was happening to him and offered to help me go to the police to report the abuse.

  She explained how she had confronted my mother once they arrived at the hospital about what Phil was doing to me. My mother had refused to accept the truth until my uncle stepped in to verify that he had seen the tapes too. He yelled at her about ignoring the signs.

  According to Sarah, my mom broken down into tears, but hardly spoke or tried to defend herself. She just sat in a kind of dissociative state. She hadn’t uttered a word until after I woke up.

  “I want you to come live me with for a while, until we sort things out. Your mom needs time to figure things out and you need a stable environment. I want you to speak to someone about what happened to you. You need to deal with what he did to you,” Sarah said as her voice cracked. She had to look away to control her tears.

  I was back to feeling nothing. The fear of Phil coming back from the dead was still there, but now I was afraid of talking about things. I feared what my mother would think of me. I liked the idea of staying with Sarah, though it felt like I was running away.

  “I’m not sure what to do. I can’t even feel my hands right now and my brain is fuzzy,” I shrugged, trying to put together a cohesive answer.

  She nodded vigorously. “It’s okay. You don’t have to decide right now, though the doctors want to examine you and make sure that you’re physically okay,” she said vaguely.

  “I have bruises,” I said without thinking.

  Her lower lip quivered and she had to take a second to get her voice back. “Okay, I’ll tell them about the bruises. I really want you to talk to someone. You need to work through this. I’ll be here and I’ll help you with whatever you need,” she smiled, though it was the saddest smile I had ever seen.

  I nodded. Looking around, I realized that I was in the Emergency Room as opposed to a private room. “When do I get to leave?” I asked, not wanting to stay for long.

  She took a deep breath and looked over toward an area beyond the curtain that I couldn’t see. “They will probably release you tonight, though a few of the doctors want to speak with you. I had to tell them what happened since I wasn’t sure when Phil had last...” she finally lost control and started to sob.

  I patted her hand to comfort her. “It’s okay. I understand. They probably want to make sure that I’m mentally sound, especially after my episode. It’s happened before, the panic attack or whatever it was. It’s scary, but I’m starting to figure out when it’s coming on,” I said matter-of-factly.

  Sarah’s expression worsened. Her eyes nearly popped out of her head and her lips thinned until they were practically gone. “That’s happened before?” she croaked.

  I nodded and shrugged. “A few times. Phil threatened to kick me out of the house. Then he said he would take away my friends, and my after school activities. He even told me that he didn’t want me leaving for college,” I replied emotionlessly.

  Anger flashed across her face and she was off the bed and racing out of the room in a heartbeat. I heard yelling, though it drifted off down the hallway.

  Later, my mother came to sit with me. Her eyes were red and puffy. All she could bring herself to say over and over again was, “I’m sorry.” We didn’t talk beyond that. I wasn’t sure what to say. I felt like we were miles apart. I still didn’t know what she was thinking and I wasn’t ready to find out yet.

  I sat in bed and wondered how Zack was doing and if he was fairing any better. I wondered if he knew where I was. I leaned back and listened to the beeping get faster and then slower. I had no idea what would happened to me in the next few days, but I had to fight
my way through the numbness if I ever wanted to feel alive again. I had been numb for so many years that I wasn’t sure how to combat it. I closed my eyes and thought about Zack, the only bright spot in my world. He was the only one who could pull me out of my stupor so that I could feel happy again.

  Throughout the day, different doctors and psychiatrists came to speak to me. They were mostly interested in figuring out if I was suicidal. I told them that I had thought about it many times, but I had never attempted it. Now that my secret was out, I felt less likely to hurt myself, though the stress of talking about what happened to me was overwhelming. Every time I thought about shutting down, I thought about Zack. I stayed strong because of him.

  The next week was a haze of sitting on my aunt’s couch, assessing my situation. I hadn’t been back to school and I actually missed it. My mother and I had spoken a few times, but my aunt was acting as a buffer so that we wouldn’t upset each other.

  My mom was still in shock and though she wasn’t exactly mad at me, she accidentally took her frustration out on me. She tried to console me and apologize for what had happened. She asked me why I hadn’t told her about Phil, but unfortunately, my unchecked anger would answer for me and I had a hard time holding back after years of suffering in silence. It was decided that she and I should talk in a safe environment with a counselor present.

  By the end of the week, I was seeing a shrink and attending group meetings with other survivors. I didn’t care much about the healing process since I was still expecting Phil to walk through the door. I found that there were others who felt the same way even though it had been a year or two since their abusers had been locked up or had left for other reasons. I wasn’t optimistic about my recovery.

  After much begging, my aunt finally agreed to let me see Zack. She took me to the mall and sat nearby in the food court. She was afraid that seeing him would bring back the night of accident and didn’t want me freaking out. I just needed to see him again, even if it did remind me of the accident and trigger one of the flashbacks that had started happening a few days after the accident.