The Dead House

Find God. Find hope. Company… I don’t even know what. I’m so alone. Oh God, I wish Carly was here.

They switched the outside lights on tonight, so all the white-barked trees stand starkly orange under the new moon like lepers bent and twisted. The light is only the imitation of warmth, but I’ll take what I can get.

When I was five, I asked Carly what the sun felt like, and she wrote, “Warm, Kaitie, so warm. Like a hot bath.”

Even the stone walls of the chapel are illuminated, and I feel less alone somehow. But warm? No. Cold as ice, like everything else.

There’s a profound stillness here, especially in the nooks where the walls cast the darkest shadows. They look like spilled ink, impenetrable. Void. Even the scratching of my pen as I write is raw and harsh in the silence, as loud to my ears as a scream. I flinch—I tear—with every stroke.

Can they hear me, the corpses beneath the little gravestones in what I call my Forgotten Garden? There are only about thirty, from a long, long time ago. Nothing but dust now, not even memories. Most of the headstones are illegible, sentiment that even stone wasn’t strong enough to hold. I told you. Forgotten Garden, full of skeletons, like depressing seeds that will never flower.

I’m reading “The Fall of the House of Usher” from my Poe collection. It’s so suitable.

It’s been exactly 101 days since I was last here. Carly once wrote, “Naida says she understands why you go to the chapel. It’s holy, she says.” If ever I thought Naida was right about this being a magical place, I do tonight. It feels holy… synthetically warm. The closest I’ve ever come to God. Is this what Carly feels every single day of her life, bathing in sunlight she takes for granted? Is the sun what the hand of God is? And if so, are these uplighters the crumbs he allows me?


Dee, I don’t feel warm. I feel cold and abandoned. I stand painfully alone, and, selfish as I am, I wish that some other soul stood trapped here beside me in the profound stillness.

There’s nothing so terrible as the utter silence of a soul like mine. Like those souls out there. Though if I’m honest, I don’t think they’ve lingered here. That Forgotten Garden is the absence of souls, which is even more pathetic. I’m alone, even among the dead. Can you begin to understand how that feels?

Except Carly is here with me… somewhere. That gives me comfort. Gives me hope. She’ll never know the strength she gives me, simply by my knowing she’s here.

The whole world feels like a vast, empty space, with me the only living thing in it.

Or am I dead too?



6:00 am

Dee, my hand is shaking as I write this, but I must get it all down before Carly comes. I can’t risk losing any of it in the crossover. The almanac says sunrise in fifty-two minutes, but I don’t trust it to be accurate. Yesternight I lost three minutes.

Onwards!

I was in the confessional, as usual. Talking to the night. Talking to silence. Talking to God knows what, to be honest. Safe in that little space. How long had I been talking?

I’m mortified by what I might have said—Oh, great. I’m having a panic attack right now.

Okay, slow and steady. Breathe.

What. Happened?

I walked into the confessional. Slid the door shut. Sighed, rested my head against the back of the booth.

“I don’t think there’s a God, but here’s hoping.” I remember I said that. “I miss Carly. I wish she were here. I wonder what she talked about with Naida today. I hate all that time they get together, especially when I’m so… Oh, God, I’m so lonely. Thank God I have you, Dee.”

I kept going on and on, and then I dropped my head onto the bar separating the two sides and just let myself fill up with this horrible self-pity that made me want to tear out my eyes.

“Who’s Carly?”

I gasped this breathless scream and fell out of the booth—like, literally toppled out of it and onto the floor—bashing my shoulder on the wood. The priest’s side slid open, and this figure stepped out towards me. I scrambled back on my hands, gasping like a fish out of water. Like a beached octopus or something.

He followed after me. “Hey, whoa, whoa—” And then he crouched, and the vomit-orange light fell onto his face and onto the bowler hat on his head. “You’re kind of skittish, aren’t you?”

“Who”—gasp—“the”—gasp—“hell—”

“Are you?” he finished.

“I’m—I’m—”

“Surprised, probably. I didn’t expect anyone else to be up here.” He helped me to my feet. “Not the most graceful fall on an arse I’ve ever seen, but I’ll give you points for breathlessness. Too many girls are all—” He broke off, gesturing vaguely. “Screamy.”

It took a minute for the deep-boned surprise of having another living-human-person-being-thing right there to wear off.

I brushed my hands on my jeans and noticed I’d cut my hand. Carly’s hand.

Damn.

“Do you always sit in confession booths and listen to private conversations?” I snapped.

“Sometimes. Do you?”