Page 88 of Haunt Me

Eden, please, pick up the phone, baby. Please.

‘The number you are trying to reach does not exist.’

Nothing makes any sense.

I stay awake all night; my brother’s muffled sobs echo from the next room. In the morning, I go to wake up Grandpa. The minute I walk into his room, I know. I somehow know.

There is this strange stillness in the room, and it’s not the stillness of sleep; Grandpa is no longer here. He is in his bed, but he’s gone.

He’s died quietly in his sleep.

…

I sit there, by his bed, absolutely still, watching him. I won’t tell anyone just yet. I need it to be him and me one last time.

I just sit by him, pretending that he is still asleep. But I can tell he isn’t. He doesn’t look peaceful. He looks tormented and sad. Full of questions. He looks like he’s aged ten years since last Tuesday.

As I sit there next to his body, just staring blankly at the face of my grandpa, something happens to me.

Quietly, without even noticing it, I become a different person.

Any fragment of goodness I had left in me, dies with Grandpa on that bed.

I don’t shed a single tear. I just sit there, in the absolute stillness, look at him, and change inside.

When I finally get up an hour later, I have decided to start living again. I will make a plan. I’ll get a job, I’ll find a place to live. I won’t stay in this house and keep my mom and my brother away from their own lives any more. I won’t kill them too.

I won’t drag anyone else down the hole that has become my existence.

I will figure it out, I will do what I have to, but I won’t stay still like my grandpa’s silhouette under the blanket.

I did that for these past few days, and look at what it led to: More death. No, I’m done with that. I will live whatever life I can. I have no idea how, but I’m not going to wallow anymore. This ends now.

I take one last look at the figure on the bed behind me, and say goodbye with no words. Then I walk to the door and grab the handle, closing the door on the dead:

My grandfather and myself.

Book Margin

The book:Anne of Green GablesbyL.M. Montgomery

They’ve taken everything. The books, all of my personal items, my phone. It’s all entered into evidence now. All I have kept is this book, and that’s only because an officer felt bad for me and let me sneak it out under my shirt.

All of them have been very careful with me. They look at me as if I’m about to shatter any minute now. What they don’t know is that I am no longer here.

I died when Father did.

They left me behind, on the floor, in that wet puddle of blood under his body.

This girl, sitting here, writing this in a hospital room?

That’s not me.

I am gone.

The girl writing these lines is another girl.

Why is she writing?

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