Ryan Avery is a young skeptic tired of living in the peculiar town of Wrenoakey, where ghost stories are as common as the wind. Residing at the renowned Bramble Farm with his ghost-enthusiast Aunt Hattie, Ryan is convinced her ghost tours are just e...
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It was a painfully sunny morning. The summer sky of Wrenoakey was blue and cloudless. Birds chirped in the nearby trees, and Aunt Hattie's body lay in a closed casket next to a freshly dug grave. Ryan stood next to the casket in a borrowed suit that fit a little too large on the shoulders. His hair was clean and smoothed back in a low ponytail. His shoes were polished and his nails clipped. He was just as Aunt Hattie would want him to be if they were attending something important, and that left him feeling numb and guilt-ridden. Somehow, he knew he was to blame for this.
His back was to an old pine forest and he surveyed the overgrown grasses and decaying headstones in front of him. He did not want to look at the deep grave to his left where his aunt would soon rest. None of this made sense. Aunt Hattie was not young, but she was not really old either. She had only turned sixty-two this March. A picture of her propped on a stand near the casket showed her cheerful round face smiling behind large glasses. In this picture, she wore a black fedora over her short, curly graying-blond hair that bore the 'B.O.O. Ghost Tours' logo in bright green and purple. B.O.O stood for Bramble's Otherworldly Operation. She had run that ghost-touring business for as long as Ryan could remember, even before the town of Wrenoaky had become a paranormal tourist spot.
Aunt Hattie had been in perfect health, Ryan thought. She'd met with her B.O.O Crew only two weeks earlier, so they could begin planning the Fall tours. She seemed happily lost in her plans as she often did, and had not even noticed that Ryan had been sleepwalking again. That thought made him feel like he was choking, and he tugged at the knot in his tie until it hung loosely around his neck.
The doctors told him her death was from "natural causes", but Ryan did not believe that. While Ryan rejected all the paranormal fraud that permeated his life, he knew there was something not quite normal about him, something his aunt never wanted to talk about. Whatever it was, Ryan felt certain that it caused the people who cared for him to die. What else could explain the untimely deaths of three mothers, two fathers, and now his legal guardian Aunt Hattie?
Ryan did not know any of his dead parents, what had happened to them, or where they were buried. His aunt had told him she would not discuss such things until he turned seventeen. These other parents were faceless names. He had no memories of them, but he desperately wanted to know about them so he could know about himself. All those answers were lost now as he stood by Aunt Hattie's casket, and he suddenly wished he believed in ghosts and secret messages from the beyond.
Ryan pushed these uncomfortable thoughts down as he watched the funeral director Mr. Oliver and his assistant attempting to arrange the folding chairs for the mourners under a small white tarp.
Deerhill Cemetary was not a proper end to Aunt Hattie's story. It was at the dead end of Ramsley Road. It was a forgotten place of the forgotten dead. No one tended to this cemetery. The grasses and weeds had overtaken it leaving no clear footpaths to the graves. Many headstones had been toppled over by vandals, trash and broken beer bottles collected along a decaying stone wall surrounded by a tall, rusted chainlink fence. The fence sagged in places and the gate was missing entirely, and only fifty yards away a long-abandoned, gutted car's rusted rooftop showed above the tall weeds.
