Letters With a Ghost

Chapter Thirteen

The group met at Sawmill Creek the next day as promised. They talked all afternoon, mainly about school and the outside activities they participated in throughout the community.

Camryn kept quiet. Her mind was in other places. She would fake a smile, force a laugh, or throw in an absent minded comment whenever she felt the need to.

She felt alone and indifferent, despite how comfortable she felt around Danielle and Jonathan.

Danielle knew what it was like to experience great losses, but she also knew what it was like to move on. She would give Camryn advice, but the words refused to penetrate. Camryn only heard the faded echo of yet another person who was trying to disguise the fact that they were saying three words that one should never say to a person in grieving:

Get over it.

Words like those are easy to say, but impossible to act upon. Some may be able to "get over it" sooner or later, but others will be drawn into a void of inky blackness, where direction is a mere fragment of the imagination and happiness never even existed.

Camryn fought, struggling to keep her head above the murky water, but found herself slipping deeper and deeper into the abyss with every passing day, hour, minute, second, despite the small support group that had somewhat assembled around her.

By 3:00 that afternoon, the gray clouds had rolled in, blocking out the sun and making the air heavy with the promise of rain.

Jonathan looked up at the sky as the first drops of rain hit his skin. "Looks like we should get going," he said.

"Yeah," Danielle agreed, wrapping up the sandwich she brought. "Are you coming back with me, Camryn?"

Camryn looked at her, eyes blank. After a long pause, she shook her head.

"I need to get home," she said. "My mom will be wondering where I am."

"Okay," Danielle said. "Are you sure you'll be all right?"

Camryn nodded, unable to clear the empty gaze.

Danielle and Jonathan exchanged worried glances but said nothing.

"Don't hesitate to call us if you need us," Jonathan said. "Remember we're going to sign up for the activities fair first thing tomorrow morning."

"I know." Camryn forced a smile, attempting to push more emotion into her tone. "I'll be okay," she promised quickly. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Danielle and Jonathan said their goodbyes and started off. Once they were out of sight, Camryn swung her backpack over one shoulder and started walking in the opposite direction.

Her mother would be livid at her for two reasons; one for skipping the principal conference and the other for not coming home from school for two days.

With these thoughts on her mind, Camryn skirted her house and kept walking, squinting as the rain started coming down at a steady, fast pace.

She continued her trek through the cold rain for five miles until she reached Hawkin's Cemetery, a place she hadn't been to in almost two months.

Despite her only being there once, she weaved through the headstones to the most recent burial plot, now covered in neatly trimmed grass.

Ayden Jaxon

May 18, 1999 - December 28, 2013

May he rest in peace

Cold pain gripped at Camryn's heart as she looked at the small gray stone. Under her feet lay the remains of the only person who mattered to her.

For the first time since his funeral, Camryn felt her shoulders heave as the sobs racked her whole body. She sank to her knees, crying, screaming, begging that he come back, even though she knew that wasn't possible.

She sat in the rain, clinging to his headstone, tracing the letters of his name with her index finger as thunder rumbled off in the distance.

She cried until her ribs hurt, until she had nothing left inside but a dull throbbing where her heart should be.

"Please come back, Ayden," she whispered to the engraved marble. "Please come back."

She pulled her notebook out of her backpack. She sat cross legged on the wet ground, facing the headstone, and started to write.

Dear Ayden,

With any luck, I'll die out here tonight.

I can't take it anymore. I need to be with you again, but I'm too much of a coward to take my own life.

I need to sit in the middle of the road and wait for a car to come, but I'll move as soon as I hear the engine approach.

I need to end my life somehow, because I can't take not having you here anymore.

I'm hoping that if I fall asleep out here, the cold will set in and I'll go in my sleep, peacefully, like you did.

Either way, it feels good to see you again.

Beneath me are your remains. I don't know what's left of you, if anything at all. Bodies decay pretty fast.

Life decays pretty damn fast.

It's funny how death works, when you think about it. One moment you're here. You're alive, your heart is beating and your lungs are expanding.

Then literally one second later, you're dead. You stop breathing and your heart stops beating all at once.

Who knows? We could all be one second away from our death, but we have no idea.

One consolation for me is that with every passing second, I am one second closer to being with you again.

I wonder what that last second feels like.

I wonder what your last second felt like.

I hope you know that I'm not insane enough to not know how crazy I sound. Wanting to die, being fascinated by death. I know it's not normal. But imagine this...

You loved one person and one person only. Every time you pictured the rest of your life, that one person showed up in every scene.

Everything seemed perfect between the two of you. You were both happy and carefree.

Or so it seemed.

That one person who you loved dies. It wasn't because of a car accident or an illness out of both your and their control.

They took their own life. They caused their own death on purpose.

And the last person they saw before they ended it was you.

That's when the demons of my mind came out to play. That's when the evil voices came out every night to read me a bedtime story.

"Join him," the voices said. "Join him... After all, Camryn..."

"...it's all your fault."

--Camryn