Lake Side View #4 (story)

You can read the first part here, second part here and third part here.

And with Will’s words, my old ghosts suddenly came rushing back to me. The dark of the murky lake, Russell’s dirty face as he yanked my hair and pushed me down into the water forever. My father, as I saw him once, weeks later, wandering the park. I liked to think it was desolation I saw in his eyes that day, regret for not keeping me a little closer, because maybe then, I wouldn’t have ran quite so far.

But I don’t know if that’s what I saw or if it was just fanciful thinking. The truth is, my father might’ve well been lost inside his own thoughts. It made sense that by then, he would have come to terms with the reality that they would never find me. They looked for me, for a while, I suppose. But by then, there was little anyone could do. And to be honest, I think he’d come to terms with the fact that I was dead also. I was not coming back to the family shop and frankly, that was alright by him.

And they were all there, standing behind Will as he spoke his excuses and his awkward words of goodbye. Beckoning me closer. And I really, really didn’t want to go closer. Please Lord, don’t make me go to them again.

‘When I was small, I would sit with my sister late, late at night, when my mother and father had gone to bed and we would talk and we’d whisper. Gossip, you know, about our father. About the people who lived on our street. And about you.’
‘Me?’
He looked up surprised and more than a little ashamed. It was clear now to see that talking to me was killing him, but not enough.

‘Yes, about you. See, Angie used to say, with all the authority older sisters possess when it comes to matters of the heart, and I believed my sister knew about everything. Like there wasn’t a single soul on the face of the earth that loved that she didn’t know about. And she used to say that it only happens once and when it happens, you know. You feel it inside you, like a locket of truth you’ve always carried with you somehow. Secretly. And that you have to be really careful, because once the locket becomes broken, it can’t ever be fixed again. She didn’t love the boy she married. He wasn’t the one she carried the locket for. And I don’t know if she ever found him. But you are, for me. And you can’t just leave. That’s not what happens in the stories. He doesn’t just leave.’

‘But this is not a story, is it?’

Just then, his eyes were not his own, but they shared the same dull gray in the eyes of the ghosts behind him. And he was right, they don’t leave in the stories, but this was not a story. So, decisions must be made.
I let him leave with the promise he would return to me, for the three weeks he had left in this town, in this old life. Before his heartless mother took him away from me forever. And that night, late, when all the birds had gone to sleep, when there was no one around to hear, I sat on the edge of my lake, conferring with the others on what must be done.

‘He can’t go, leave us all just like that.’
That was a tall, gaunt man with a black, scraggy beard who’d died suddenly. Gone out for a walk in the park and had not come back. Long ago now.
And he was right, I could tell by the look in the others’ eyes. This wasn’t just my story, anymore, and in truth, it had never been. Hidden inside our little forest, maybe the people could not see us, but the ghosts sure could and they’d watched our love blossom, as a plump lady who’d loved the bottle more than she’d loved her two equally plump children pointed out to me.
‘If he leaves, then what happens to us? What happens to you, love?’

For the first time, I caught myself thinking there are things more painful than death and one such thing was happening to me. And I could not let that happen. I asked for forgiveness, under my breath, though from whom, I’m not sure. If there was anyone watching, or indeed listening to my desperate words, their heart was as cold as stone. And there was no forgiveness to be found there.

So, I turned my prayers to one that I knew would hear them. I asked, in silence, for my beloved to come back to me, I asked that I be allowed to feel the touch of his fingers on my cheek as I’d felt them so many times, sitting with him on our secret wooden bench. And I asked that through some miracle, he would never have to leave me again.

And the park listened, just like it did with all our prayers. It promised it would be done, in that secret language that slithered through the grass and up the bark of the trees.

The following day, I was not to wait by our bench, when Will came to see me. I must not be there, I was told time and again all through the fretful morning, so when the time came, I stayed well away. I held myself tight against a tree on the other side of the park and I waited alone and away, for fear that I might lose heart at the last second and warn him off. That I might change my mind and while that wouldn’t change the outcome itself – prayers to the woods once offered can’t ever be taken back – it might make for some strange happenings. Ill-spilt blood seeping into the earth.

It was there, digging my nails into the tree bark, that I heard my beloved’s step slip, so close to the place that had brought us both such happiness. And it was there that I heard his head hit that ill-fated rock, sharp and piercing against his soft skin. And then, I ran. I ran like I’d never run before, through the air, across the park and all the people around me seemed invisible, suddenly unimportant.
I rushed into our woods, that had suddenly grown dense, trees hiding from sight the last beats of Will’s heart.
‘She never loved you like I do,’ I wept. Into his soft-smelling hair, I wept and I caressed him. ‘No one would’ve ever loves you like I do.’

There have been a total of one hundred sixty eight deaths inside our secret forest, inside our ever watchful park. And while the park does not wish harm upon any of its visitors, now and again, it may be swayed by sensible arguments.
For a good while, Will would not speak to me. He would not even see me, becoming invisible and impossibly out of my reach. But after a while, he came around. He sat beside me, where I waited for him on our bench and told me one of his stories. One of his made-up ones about the people walking just outside our secret forest. Safe, for now.

The End

Cheers for reading,