Don't Call Me Dead

8. The Swamps

I lie on my bed of moss and watch the starry sky through the leaves. The constellations move slowly above me. I can stare at them for hours. No need to blink. No need to think. I have nothing to do. Nowhere to go.

The swamps?

No, thank you, I'm fine right here.

The stars are especially bright tonight. A light breeze ruffles the leaves. A falling star cuts through the sky. I make a wish.

I wish to go home.

It pops up from deep inside my mind, like those disconnected memories and images I experience sometimes. Some of them are so strange they don't even feel like they belong to me. But this wish feels like mine. I really do want to go home. Only I don't know where home is.

I sit up and look around. I live in this forest, but it's not my home. I drift in and out of being here. When I'm not here, where am I? Do I go home then?

Or do I go to the hill with a door?

The very thought of it chills me.

Could Jack be right? Am I a ghost?

I look in the direction of the swamps. It strikes me that I always know where they are. I can point in their direction like a compass.

Jack has a point. The key to what I am must be there. And what do I have to lose, exactly? I have nothing. No memory, no home, no life.

I get up.

Every journey must begin with a step, but, come to think of that, there's no need for me to walk.

Both my feet leave the ground, and I glide slowly above the forest floor. My outstretched hands pass through the trees' trunks and branches. I will myself to go faster, and the trees begin to run backwards at a higher pace.

I'm invisible again, just a whiff of air rushing through the forest to my destination. I avoid thinking about what that could be. What if Jack was right? What if I will find my own skeleton lying in the swamps? What if I'm dead, and once I'm buried, I will be no more?

I won't think about it now. I will go to the swamps, and there, I'll know. I can always turn back.

I cover a few days' walking distance in an hour. I'm going way too fast, but if I slow down, I may lose my resolve.

Soon, I begin to notice the changes. The straight, tall trees are gradually replaced by lower, stinted ones. The farther I go, the more moss hangs off their branches. Black puddles of water glint here and there from between the tussocks of grass and moss.

My progression slows to a crawl as I levitate among the ghostly veils of moss. It must have been somewhere around here that I and Gia have stopped. The place where she saw something. Where she  died because of her black hair.

What?

I try to catch the memory, but it's already gone. What's left is the confidence that Gia is dead, and the reason she's dead is her black hair. Which doesn't make any sense. I  try hard to coax some kind of an explanation out of my memory, but it's useless.

I look around. Patches of shadows alternate with moonlit areas, and everything is still and quiet. I should go on and see if any new memories surface...

Then I notice something strange in one of the puddles.

* If you liked this story, please vote or comment! Thank you! *