When I picture you now, I envision you like how we imagined ghosts as children. White sheets draped over a body with two holes cut for the eyes to see. Maybe it’s Halloween night and you had to create a costume on a budget, or maybe you’re stalking the house, waiting for your opportunity to scare me. It feels childish and innocent and easy to imagine you so simply. It’s easier to picture that than the alternative, your withered figure wracked with cancer glowing ethereally like the ghost of Christmas past.

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I can hardly recall what you were like before the sickness. There are pictures on the walls that show us together, smiling and happy. I can see you with your cheeks full and bright, your eyes twinkling like lustrous stars. You were so full of life, but I can’t remember what that version of you was like. It’s all clouded and obscured by the storm of pain and anger as you were broken and lashed out.

I know you didn’t mean the things you said, I know it was the disease. But even in knowing that, my sorrow still fades from my memory. I want to push past that last year we had, I want to only bask in the time before we learned of your cancer, before we tried to fight it. I want the time back that was taken from us, all the decades we were meant to have. I think I know how to get them back too, which is why I’m here now.

It’s been three years since I’ve been back here, and the driveway to the place is looking a little worse for the wear. A new owner took over the property and it’s quite obvious that they don’t put as much love into the place as the last. The gravel driveway leading down to the cabin is slowly being overtaken by foliage. The branches of trees, heavy with late spring growth converge and turn the driveway into a natural tunnel. I can hear the branches scratching at the sides of the car and feel it in my teeth, that almost squealing metallic sound. This used to always be trimmed back and maintained.

I still drive our same car, well, I suppose it was always more yours than mine. After all, you were the one with the job that required you to travel and meet with people all over the state. The car still runs well, I make sure to keep up on the maintenance, because we both know I wouldn’t know the first thing to do if it ever broke down on me. There’s still a can of diet soda in the console, the one you left in there the last time I drove you to the hospital.

You’re sitting in the passenger seat even now. The bright white sheet covering you isn’t secured by a seatbelt, because what would a ghost do with a seatbelt? The can of diet soda remains, I keep it there in case you want to drink it, to taste the mortal world again. But you haven’t yet, you just sit there, the black holes cut for your eyes staring straight ahead. I’ve tried speaking to you, but I don’t think you can hear me. There’s a veil shrouding the worlds between us and I haven’t been able to pierce it yet.

Finally, the claustrophobic strangle of trees and shrubbery recedes as the gravel driveway opens up. I look over to see if your ghost recognizes where we are and if there’s some hint of excitement or surprise. The passenger seat is empty once more and I feel a little deflated until I return my attention to driving and see you. You’re standing at the base of the cabin’s porch steps, you’re staring up at the cabin through the holes cut in the sheet draped over you.

As I pull up near the steps and park, you turn your gaze from the cabin to me. The oblivion sockets in the sheet are aimed directly at me, but I cannot see the eyes within. Would they be your green eyes, or would they be different? Does death take your eye color along with the light of life? Would there just be pale, cloudy irises looking at me? I shudder at the thought and feel grateful that the ghost shroud hides the truth from me.

I open the driver's side door and step out onto the gravel. The lake breeze washes over me and I inhale it deeply. It smells a bit stagnant, but it’s cool and cleansing as it passes through my lungs. The birds chirp and I can hear the skittering of squirrels as they climb and scurry through the trees. The forest is alive all around us and I briefly consider what it means that I’ve brought death with me.

This was our place, where we came for our honeymoon, where we vacationed most years. We joked that it would be the place we’d come for you to give birth. We could’ve had a woodland baby like a new-age hippie couple, but alas that never came to pass. It was another one of the many things we were robbed of, wasn’t it? The chance to start a family, to watch our children grow. I slam the car door closed and then go around to the back and pop the trunk. You’re gone again, vanished from your place at the steps.

I pull out my bags, one with my clothes and toiletries and the other with the things I’ll need to speak with you. I close the trunk and there you are again, standing on the roof of our car. I smile up at you and ask you if you’re happy to be here. You don’t say anything or even nod or shake your head.

It’s why I brought us here so that I can finally speak with you. They say that if you go to a place of special significance between you and the deceased, it helps thin the mortal veil and eases communication with the dead. Between that and the tools, I’ve brought, we should finally be able to speak to each other again. I’ve so much to say to you, so much to apologize for.

Like the driveway, the cabin itself is a little worse for the wear. The new owner has appeared to do the bare minimum upkeep on the place. The porch steps groan and creak in ways they never did before and the front door gets stuck a moment as I try to push it open. Once inside, the place smells of Pine Sol and cedar wood and is surprisingly warm despite the cool wind outside. I drop my bags by the door and start going through the cabin and opening windows. A nice cross breeze does a lot to alleviate the musty citrus air.

Despite a new owner, the cabin is the same as I remember it. The same sofa sits in front of the fireplace in the parlor with its crocheted blanket draped on the back. We’ve done a lot on that sofa with a fire burning in the stone hearth, and a blacklight would probably still show the aftermath. The wine stain soaked into the cedar floor of the kitchen remains after all these years. I can hear your yelp and laughter still echoing through the cabin when you dropped your glass as we drunkenly tried to make dinner. It looks like a blood stain.

The bathroom is presentably clean, but I think if we look closely we would find plenty of grime tucked away. The claw foot bathtub is still here, remember when you bet me that we both couldn’t fit into it? I climbed in with you and water overflowed all over the bathroom, we laughed and then fell into the throes of the most uncomfortable sex I’d ever had. Movies always make it look so much more fun than it ends up being. Nothing beats the cushion of a mattress…or a sofa.

I hesitate outside the bedroom. You’re standing at the end of the hall near the parlor and are watching me. I put my hand on the doorknob, I want to turn it, I want to open it, but I can’t, not yet. My hands begin to tremble, and the longer I hold the doorknob the more violently they shake. I swallow hard and look back down the hall, but you’re no longer there, are you disappointed in me for not opening it? Can we not do this somewhere else, anywhere else?

Suddenly, despite opening all the windows, the air in the cabin feels oppressive. It feels thick like an unseen mist has drifted in and is trying to suffocate me. I walk down the last bit of the hallway and go out the back door so that I can stand in the sun and breathe the stagnant lake air again. I’m breathing so heavily as I’ve just finished running a 5k. The shaking in my hands is slowly subsiding, I can feel control coming back to me. The hammering of my heart slows with my breathing and I’m finally able to take a deep breath and close my eyes.

Only the sound of ducks splashing in the water and quacking can be heard through the cacophony of birds, critters, and insects. I open my eyes and see a small family of water birds paddling along. One adult duck is being trailed by half a dozen ducklings. I walk down the stone steps and onto the boat dock to get a better look at them. It’s something to clear my mind, to stop thinking about the bedroom and second guess why I brought us back out here after all this time.

You’re standing in the small paddle boat that’s tethered to the dock and looking out over the vast lake and mountains in the distance. As I step onto the dock I can feel it shift slightly beneath me. The planks bow just a bit beneath my weight and cause me to hesitate. I gingerly take my next step and slowly continue to the edge of the dock. By the time I reach the water the duck family has moved further along the shore and I still can’t get a good look at them.

It’s amazing, isn’t it? I say as we both look out at the water and mountains. The lake is a blueish green, if it wasn’t for the algae it would probably be as clear as bottled spring water. Snow still paints the tips of the mountains in the distance, but the rest of them are flush with pines as dense as the fibers of a carpet. I look at you and smile, but you do not look at me.

It’s been years, it feels bittersweet…kind of haunting to be back here, I say.

You only stand there on the boat, covered in your white shroud, unwavering and unmoving. I can see the contours of your face, almost like a winter landscape all its own. Your brow and nose are like tiny peaks shielding the lake valley of your black eyeholes. Your lips are like small hills that give way to the drop off of your chin. The sheet does not move with your breathing, the landscape of your face remains as still as marble.

I want to reach out and pull the sheet from you, free you from its shroud, but I know all that waits for me is a chilling air where you stand. I can’t touch you, I can’t hear you, I can’t smell you, I can only see you. But even then, I can’t see you, just the silhouette of you that is visible beneath the pale shroud. This doesn’t stop me from trying, maybe things will be different because we’re here. This lakeside cabin has always been our most special place.

I reach out and my hand passes through you like it has every time before. Your visage fades away like a passing morning mist and feels as cool as one too. I’m left alone on the dock, staring at the empty paddle boat as it sways on the calm lake water. The sun will be setting soon, and once the dark takes its claim on the land and we’re only bathed in moonlight, my work can begin.

When I return to the cabin I head straight to the kitchen. I haven’t eaten since early this afternoon when I stopped at a gas station. Even then, it was only a big piece of jerky and a bag of Sun Chips, so I don’t think it qualified as a meal. To my relief, the kitchen is stocked with the list of items I requested from the renter. I gather the stuff together to make a turkey sandwich and then sit at the small bar on a stool that was probably crafted before I was born.

I eat slowly and silently as you watch me from the middle of the kitchen. Are you doing this on purpose because you know how uncomfortable I always get when people watch me eat? Is this playful torture, or do you not see me? I have so many questions to ask you, and so many things to atone for. What will you remember? Did you feel it, when you died? I finish my sandwich, the last few bites are hard to swallow as my mind continues down its spiral of questions.

The orange light of the sunset burns through the western windows and for the first time since arriving at the cabin, I feel anxious. What if this doesn’t work? If it does, what will I say? Will you forgive me? Will you remember? My guts knot and I can feel the remnants of the turkey sandwich being squeezed back up my gullet. I begin pacing through the cabin to keep myself occupied, to try and loosen my tightening entrails.

The cabin groans like a tired elder as I move, annoyed at the rowdy children. It’s getting a little chilly in the cabin and it won’t be long before I need to go through and close all the windows, besides, a draft will only be a distraction for what I need to do. That’s something to do, I decide, and so I turn my pacing into the deliberate action of closing the windows. Some come down easier than others, in fact, some I have to fight with while trying to avoid getting splinters embedded in my palms.

The last window I come to is the western one at the back of the cabin that faces the lake. The entire body of water is aflame in the orange and purple hue of the sunset. It’s so alluring that I find myself wanting nothing more than to go back down to the dock, climb into the boat, and paddle out into the middle of it. Maybe if I went now I could be swallowed in it like an astronaut floating into the heart of the sun.

The window I’m standing at suddenly slams shut and I barely move my hands out of the way before they’re smashed. The glass rattles in the frame of the window and I step back in fear of it shattering in my face. As I turn around I find you standing in the middle of the hall.

That was close! I say, trying to laugh it off, shaking my hands like they had been smashed. My smile fades as I look into the carved eyeholes of your white ghost sheet. I begin to wonder if maybe you’d done that somehow, slammed the window. Could you affect the physical world? I suppose it’s possible if you subscribe to the belief of poltergeists. If you did, does that mean you want to hurt me?

The hallway darkens between us as the sun continues its slow descent behind the mountains. You don’t move from where you block the hall, the only thing between us are the doors to the bathroom and the bedroom. I look away and back again, hoping that it’ll trigger you to move or disappear, but when I look back you almost look like you’re standing a few feet closer. Are you intentionally blocking my way? Do you want me to walk through you? The thought makes my spine tingle slightly.

I wish I could see your eyes, I wish their emerald gleamed out from those black cavities cut into the white shroud. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, you can know everything about someone if you peer long enough. I can’t read you, there are no expressions that can be seen. You could be smiling with eyes alight, or frothing at the mouth while glaring with hatred. I take a couple of steps forward but you don’t move.

Will you let me pass? I ask.

Of course, you don’t answer. I don’t even know if you hear me, or if you can read my lips. I take three more steps and now I’m standing right in front of you, if you were alive I would feel your breath on my neck. You don’t tilt your head to look at me, you just continue to stare straight ahead, straight through me.

I need to get to my bags and get ready. It will be dark soon and it can finally begin, we can finally communicate. With a deep sigh, I continue down the hall and through you. It feels like passing through a winter draft, so shocking that it hitches my breath for a moment. When I turn around you’ve vanished again, but I can still feel the cold remnants of you.

I return to my bags, still sitting beside the front door. I leave the bag with my clothing and toiletries for now, and instead, open the other. Inside are the items I’d gathered after my desperate research online. An Ouija board, candles, a few pictures of you, and a digital recorder. I know what you may be thinking, an Ouija board? Seriously? I thought the same thing, but every bit of research I could scrape through and the few professionals I spoke with swore by them.

I suppose this all goes to show my desperation to be able to speak to you again, doesn’t it? I’m like a kid in the opening of a bad horror movie who gets more than they bargained for when playing with an Ouija board. Is it reckless? Sure, but I don’t have many other options. I can’t keep seeing this shrouded form of you and do nothing. This veil between us can be dissolved somehow, so I will follow whatever kooky advice I must to make it happen.

I pull the items from the bag and begin placing them on the coffee table in the parlor. I open the yellowed Ouija board box and free the board, it’s dusty and smells like a used bookstore as it creaks open. All that remains inside the box now is the scuffed-up wooden planchette, it’s shaped like an arrowhead and the small glass lens in it is still crystal clear. I place the planchette in the lower right corner beside where the word GOODBYE is written. I run my fingers over the rows of letters, numbers, and YES and NO. I can feel little divots all along its surface, the tracks the planchette has left behind through decades of use.

I look up and you are standing beside the fireplace, and for the first time, I feel like you are looking at me, observing what I’m trying to do. I briefly consider lighting the fireplace, but decide that the candles will be better on their own. I read that the ambiance is essential when trying to contact the other side and I feel the light of the fireplace would be too much.

I set out five candles equal distance apart starting on the left side of the board so that when I’m done the shape is like that of a setting sun on an ocean’s horizon. As I light them their small casts of illumination make me realize how dark the room has become. I lay the few photos of you in between the candles around the board. One from when we first met, one from our wedding day, and one from just before we learned of your cancer.

Even with the pictures right in front of me, I struggle to remember you this way. When I close my eyes I can only see pale flesh, sunken cheeks, a balding head, and the nearly hollow sockets of your eyes. I can only see the struggling rise and fall of your chest as you fought to breathe and the IVs and the tubes that snaked from your skeletal form. I can only hear you cry and wheeze, pleading with me for it all to be over. You started so confident and strong, but as the chemo and cancer wreaked havoc on you, that confidence slipped more and more. Eventually, there was no fight left in you, you were diminished and small and there was nothing I could do.

You’re gone again, no longer standing beside the cold fireplace. I look down at the old Ouija board, the light of the candle flames dancing on its surface. With a deep breath, I place my fingers on the planchette and slide it to the center of the board.

Are you there?

The planchette doesn’t move. I feel nothing in the room but the warmth of the candlelight and the emptiness of the darkness that it’s trying to fight back. I look up and you are nowhere in sight.

Are you there? I ask again. Can you hear me?

I glance around the darkness of the cabin, looking for any sign of the white sheet that covers your ghost. It should be pale against the black of night, easy to spot despite the poor illumination of the candles.

C’mon, I know you’re there! I call out.

I look back down to the planchette and wait for something to come over me, to flow through my fingertips and cause the glass eye to begin spelling something. I speak again, trying to conjure you by name, but still, the planchette remains dead in my hands.

I clear my throat and say, I’ve come here, to this place that’s meant so much to us, I’ve followed every rule that every kook has written. Please talk to me! I see you all the time, can you see me? Are you speaking and I can’t hear you? Do you not want to speak to me? I’m sorry for all that I’ve done, that I couldn’t do more for you! Just please…please talk to me…

I can feel tears stinging at the back of my eyes and I lean back, allowing my fingers to leave the planchette. I settle back into the sofa, feeling your eyes in all three photos staring at me from their place around the Ouija board. It’s the first time that the photos feel more vicious than cheerful. There’s venom hiding in the teeth of your shining smile, betrayal in your welcoming eyes. This was a waste of time, I think, wishful thinking instead of practicality.

Suddenly an idea comes to me and I want to kick myself for not thinking of it sooner. I reach back into the bag and pull out the digital recorder. Maybe you are speaking to me and I just can’t hear you, but EVP is something, isn’t it? I press the record button and set the recorder down on the coffee table, near the board.

I wipe my mouth, clear my throat, and then place my fingers on the planchette once again. I straighten up and take a breath then say, Let’s try this again, are you there? I need to speak to you, to apologize, to just hear from you one last time. I see you everywhere and I can’t remember much from before the sickness, but please, I don’t want to live with it anymore…this guilt. I mutter those last words as I wait for the planchette to move.

Nothing happens again, everything is silent and still, only the melting wax of the candles trickle. Can you hear me? I ask again. A sudden coldness settles over the room as if a draft has blown in through an open window. But I know they’re all closed, as I closed them all myself. I don’t feel anything move through my arms or fingers, but the planchette does begin to move. Slowly it slides, crawls really, to the word in the upper right corner. YES.

A shudder comes over me as I smile so wide the corners of my mouth sting. It’s really you! I almost shout as I look up and see you standing on the opposite side of the coffee table from me. The black eyeholes of your pale shroud are looking down at the Ouija board. Are you still in pain? I ask.

The planchette moves again, it feels so strange, this paranormal remote control. NO.

Are you happy?

The planchette slides. YES.

Are you able to feel anything?

YES.

I feel a tear seep from my right eye as my quivering lips smile in a rush of relief I didn’t know I could feel. It’s all I ever wanted for you, I say. To feel no more pain, to know happiness again. I want to wipe this escaping stream of tears, but I’m afraid to remove my hands from the planchette. I can’t risk breaking the connection.

Do you remember it happening? Dying, I mean.

The planchette slides slightly, then returns to where it was. YES.

Oh God, I mumble, nearly choking on the words. I’m so sorry, I only ever tried to give you what you wanted, I didn’t know what else to do. Was it what you wanted?

The planchette slides, so violently this time that it nearly tears from my fingers. NO.

You were in so much pain! You begged me to help you, you cried out, you were so…so vicious about it! I’m so sorry, I am, can you forgive me?

NO.

The tears are flowing freely now, a torrent as everything I’ve ever feared comes washing over me. I never meant to hurt you! I loved you with every fiber of my being, please believe me!

NO.

What can I do? There must be something I can do! I’d do anything!

The planchette rips from my fingers and careens into the cold ashes of the fireplace. I flinch back into the sofa and find that you’re no longer standing opposite the coffee table. The candles are all extinguished only small strings of smoke drifting from their wicks. A cloud of ash is still drifting and settling from when it was disturbed by the planchette. My breaking heart pounds in my chest and I frantically wipe the tears from my cheeks.

Before silence can settle in the room there’s a clicking sound from the digital recorder. I glance down at it just as a crackling, subdued white noise emanates from the small speaker on the device. For many long seconds, there is only this droning noise. I reach to turn it off, my mind running through every probability for why it turned on without me touching it. But before my finger can so much as graze the STOP button, a voice breaks through the crackling.

It’s not just any voice, it’s a voice I haven’t heard in three unbearable years, it’s your voice. I don’t know how it’s possible, but I’m too entranced to question it. My entire body locks up and only my ears are prickling, anticipating what you will say and desperate to hear it.

…the bed…the…

Your voice is faint and still somewhat lost in the static as it tries to break through the veil between our realms of existence.

…the bedroom…the lake…

I can hear those four words consistently now, there’s no mistaking them.

…the bedroom…the lake…the bedroom…the lake…the bedroom…the lake…the bedroom…the lake…the bedroom…the lake…the bedroom…the lake…the bedroom…the lake…

It repeats over and over. Your voice sounds hollow and monotone, almost like a ventriloquist is using you to speak. They’re four words I dread because I know why you keep repeating them. I don’t know what you want from me, but I know where you want me, and why.

I could turn on a light in the cabin, and reignite one of the candles, but I choose not to. Let this work be done in the darkness where it belongs. I start down the hall toward the one room in this cabin that I dread the most. It’s the one place in all the world I’d never want to revisit, so of course, it’s where you’d want me to go. There you are too, standing at the end of the hall, the moonlight from the window piercing through you as you wait beside the bedroom door.

My heart is not beating quickly, but with each step I take it pounds in unison with my footfalls. It feels like it’s trying to seize, but then the pressure builds until the blood is forced out. I can feel it pulsing through my veins as they constrict like roots desperate to absorb water. My mouth is dry and as I draw closer to you I can see my breath clouding from my lips. Those black holes that you watch me from seem infinite in their cold darkness.

I stop at the door and swallow hard as I force myself with all my will to raise my hand and grasp the door knob. Its chill washes over me like I’m reaching for a stone at the bottom of a lake in winter. My breath hitches and doesn’t release until I turn the knob enough to hear it click and release the door from the latch.

Don’t make me do this, I say to you. Please, what happened here…I’m so sorry…

You remain unmoving and I know that if I flee now and go back to the parlor the digital recorder will come back on. Even if I throw it out into the forest the four words will never stop spilling into my thoughts. The bedroom, the lake. There’s no more running, I wanted this, I wanted you to haunt me.

I push open the door and I’m met with that same citrus scent of Pine Sol and the crispness of clean linen. In my mind this place is covered in cobwebs and dust, a tomb locked away for centuries and touched only by time. But in reality, it’s just a bedroom that dozens of people have shared over the years since we’ve been here. I turn back to look at you one last time before I step in, but you’re gone.

The room is just as I remember it. A queen-size bed, an oak nightstand on each side with small reading lamps, and an alarm clock that looks like it was made in the 80s. Matching oak dressers sit on either side of the closet where vacant wire hangers dangle. The moonlight coming through the two windows in the room illuminates the generic landscape paintings on the walls.

Any fond memory I have in this room is blotted out. I know we shared intimacy here, we lay in bed and laughed at the awful wall art, and we spoke of our dreams for the future. I know these things happened here, I know they were some of the most treasured moments of my life, but I can’t recall them. All I see is you lying there, sickly and gaunt, barely able to get out of bed.

The doctors told me not to bring you here, but you insisted. You wanted one final chance to be here with me, for us to bask in this place that we loved. I did my best to make it nice, something worth remembering, but by then you were too far gone. I can hear you shuffling around the cabin, I can hear your retching echoing from the bathroom, and I can hear your moans of agony from the bedroom.

I walk over to the bed and stand at your side. I run my hand over the blue and white floral pattern on the comforter. It’s not the same bedding thankfully, and I hope it’s not the same pillows. The only thing I’m confident is the same is the bed frame itself. The maple posts and headboard with stars and the moon carved into it are unmistakable.

I close my eyes as my hand continues running over the comforter. It’s hard to breathe in here, the air feels thicker and heavier like I’m standing amid dense fog. I’m fighting back tears while I struggle to breathe and maintain some sense of composure. I never wanted to be in this room again.

You barely fought me. You were too sick, but I’ve always told myself it’s because you wanted me to release you from the pain. You’d asked me before to make it stop, you would even swear at me and belittle me for not helping. So, when I found the moment, when I knew what I could do to help you, I did. I’ve only ever wanted to speak with you again, to apologize and to know if I hurt you. I swear I never meant to.

I never researched humane ways to end a life, to be honest, I never thought about doing it all. It was an epiphany that came to me as I helped you into the bed. I remember standing there, holding a pillow, waiting for you to situate yourself, and then suddenly the urge to do it came over me so violently that it startled me to action.

As I held the pillow over your face you barely fought. I pushed it hard enough to smother you, but I hope it wasn’t hard enough to hurt. I just wanted you to fall asleep and not wake again, let your spirit drift off, and leave behind your sickly and decimated flesh. No more pain from the chemo or cancer, no more feebleness, no more rage and sadness. At that moment I knew for a certainty that it was my duty to put a stop to it all because of how much I love you.

I collapse to my knees and bury my face in the bedding. But now that we’re here again after these few years, it feels different. I’ve been so lost without you and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. I feel this overwhelming guilt, that I did the wrong thing, that it wasn’t my place to make that choice for you. I just want to know how you feel and if you’re at peace. Do I need to beg your forgiveness? Will you hate me for eternity now? Are you waiting for me to join you?

I need you to tell me. I need you to give me some sign. Is bringing me back here some way to haunt me? Is that what you want, to haunt me? I would accept that, I want you to. Hell, I brought an Ouija board and candles and pictures out here to conduct some sort of makeshift seance. It worked, but you only spoke those four words. But if you haunting me means we get some of the time back that we lost, I would want nothing more.

The bedroom the lake.

I pull myself up from the bed. I need to leave this room, this vicious place. Only suffering and guilt are here for me now, is that why you told me to come here? To relive what I did, to face the truth of what little life I took from you?

You’re standing in the doorway of the bedroom now.

I’m sorry! I cry out. I didn’t know what else to do! I was trying to help!

Of course, you don’t respond, you’re fucking dead and I’m shouting at the childlike imagery of a ghost shrouded in a sheet. What am I doing here? How desperate have I become? Why can’t I stop?

You turn your head toward the back of the cabin, toward the door that leads out to the lake.

The bedroom the lake, I mutter to myself. It makes sense because it’s where I went after I was through with my dark task. I went out there to sit among the waves and convince myself that what I’d done to you was the right thing. I had to convince myself that it wasn’t selfish to release myself from your anger and disease, that life would be easier without you clinging on in agony. I did it all for you, that was some truth that I carried deep in a cavity of my chest.

You’re gone now, no longer in the doorway, but I know where you’re going. I exit the room and feel an immediate sense of relief as I step into the hallway, it feels like the gravity has suddenly lightened. I go down the hall and out the back door into the crisp coolness of night. It’s bright with moonlight out here, shimmering on the lake while frogs and crickets play a song. The mountains are black, jagged spires against the star-flecked sky and there you are, waiting on the small dock beside the boat.

I descend the steps and the path to the dock. I ignore its groans as I walk across it. Breaking through and falling into the water wouldn’t be such a terrible thing now. I stop before you and I look into the boat as it wavers on the water. The last time I’d been in it was after I left you alone in that bedroom. I’d smothered you and then I left your body alone. I thought of taking it with me and letting it sink into the depths of the lake, but I knew your family would need the closure that comes from burying the corpse of a loved one.

I told them all that I came back from a row on the lake to find you dead in the bed. That’s the greatest lie I’ve told and I don’t know how much of our family bought it. Most of them don’t speak to me anymore. You were always the glue that kept us all together.

I climb into the boat and as I reach out to untie the docking tether, I see that you’ve vanished again. Once the knot is undone and the oars are in my hands, I paddle. The water is calm and the oars slice through it quietly as I settle into the rhythmic motion. Are you waiting for me out here? I wonder. Have you brought me out here to cast myself into the water? Should I have filled my pockets with stones before rowing out?

A thin mist is beginning to settle over the middle of the lake. It’s like rowing into a dream as the stars swirl overhead and the moon illuminates the mist. I think about the last time I rowed out here and the numbness I felt as the realization that you were truly gone settled over me. I don’t even know why I’d rowed out here afterward, it felt like the most natural thing to do at the time. To distance me from your body, to find solitude amid a body of water. I’d be lying to you if I said I didn’t think of casting myself into its depths, never to surface. Is that what you want me to do now?

Through the moonlit mist, I see you now. You’re hovering just above the water line. The white of your death shroud blends with the paleness of the mist, but those black eyeholes are undeniable. I pull the oars from the water and allow the boat to drift the rest of the way to you. I rest them on the bottom of the boat and sit with my hands clasped.

You’ve brought me out here, now what? I ask.

The bow of the boat is drifting just below you and it’s getting so cold. I know you’re gazing at me through the veil, it’s the first time I feel certain that you can see me.

Say something! Say anything! I shout. I’d do anything you asked of me, you know I would!

You’re so close that I could reach out and touch you now. If only there weren’t two different realms separating us. I stand on wobbling legs as the boat rocks slightly from my movement and I do what I think must be impossible. I reach out and grab the sheet that covers you. I can feel its icy fabric in my hands and without thinking, I tear it away from you.

Now there is only you. The version of you that I fear. You’re like a floating skeleton, you’re so frail with cancer still. There are only the thinnest strings of your hair left and your pale skin is stretched so tightly against your skeletal frame that I fear the slightest touch would tear it like crepe paper. At least your eyes aren’t those black voids anymore. They’re the emerald of the forest that covers the mountains.

The shroud I’d pulled from you is no longer in my hands. I don’t know where it’s gone, vapor in the ether now I suppose. My hands are still chilled from their grasp of it and the chill spreads through me as I begin to weep. It’s not enough that memories torment me with these last vestiges of you, but now your ghost does too. Is there no glory in death? Are you truly condemned to take the form of your passing for all of eternity? What cruelty of God is that? Is He even there at all?

If you hold those answers you do not tell me. Why would you? I can see the spite in your gaze as you glare down at me. I came seeking forgiveness, but I’m not sure you’ll ever be ready to give it to me. I understand. I know what I did and took from you without your blessing. Even through all that pain and sickness, it was never my choice.

I only ask now that you please haunt me. I want that, I deserve that. Even if there is some eternal plane of splendor, please remain and put upon me your every resentment. Through sickness and health, I swore, and even though death separates us now, please don’t take your leave of me. I reach out and grasp your hand, it’s all bone and ice.

I look up with bleary eyes and I plead, but that does not stop you from tearing your hand from my grasp. I fall forward onto my knees and nearly topple out of the boat. As I steady myself and look up I catch your last bit of scorn as your form fades into the night mist.

Please don’t go.

Please haunt me.

Please don’t leave me alone.

Yet I fear my words are lost to the lake, the mist, the moon, and the night. They cannot pass through the veil.

About Contributing author: Channing Cornwall

Channing Cornwall is the author of over ten novels including, ANATHEMA, HELL CAME WITH HER, THE WORLD CARRIED ON, BREATHED OUT BY GOD, and DEVILS IN THE CONFESSIONAL. He's also produced a short story collection, WOLVES, a poetry collection, THE FAMILY GHOST, and a play, APARTMENT OF THE FEIGN. He's been an avid writer and reader since childhood when he was stapling pieces of notebook paper together in order to write his own comic books. When his head isn't in the clouds, piecing together his next story, he spends his time with his wife, Vanessa, and their two pups, Dizzy and Reese.

Something Horrible Came With the Rain - A Short Story by Channing Cornwall

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