Friend Of The Dead

Rules Be Broken

Unedited

In all my years of seeing ghosts, I had two rules, two rules that were set in stone.

1. Never fall for one of the dead.

2. Never go to the cemetery at night.

I'm already starting to break one of them. It's bound that I break both of them. The cemetery or graveyard was not scary to me at daylight, but at nighttime...well that was a different situation. I wasn't afraid of the dark or the creepy sounds, more of the souls that like to hang around at night. The scary ones liked the dark, and to torment teenagers who were dared to go there. But the teenagers couldn't see them, and I could.

And so, after one scary adventure at night through the Fork's graveyard when I was 13, I set out rules for myself and stood by them through the years. I never set foot in a cemetery after that night in which I encountered a particular ghost with a hunger for children.

I swore to myself that I would never try again, yet here I am, driving at nine p.m to the place that I haven't visited for almost a month with a ghost sitting in the passenger seat. The situation was too weird and fucked up for me to even begin with.
I stared straight ahead, clearing all emotions from my face. Dorian sat next to me, staring out the window, though mostly glancing at me with a nervous look in his eyes whilst mine stared dead-ahead.

It was an uncomfortable silence, I wanted to do a U-turn and turn right back around, go to the safety of my room and have some food now that I feel hungry again. Though hungry wasn't the only thing I was feeling. I was internally clawing at myself, my stomach in twists and turns partly for hunger and mostly because I was anxious and scared. I don't know what can happen, I may see memories and ghosts but I don't predict the future. That's for the other abnormal people in the world to do. Maybe nothing will happen, maybe it will be just like Edward Mason's false grave and no soul will come back. But that was only a possibility; the other possibilities were that they would come back, and unfriendly.

At long last, he spoke to break up the silence that was slowly choking us up.

"This is a good plan Sophie..." he spoke calmly in an accented voice that was becoming clearer and clearer. I did not answer, I kept the uncomfortable silence. He continued on.

"Maybe you'll be happier when you see your friends, I've seen some of the ghosts you've conversed with and trust me, they miss you." I frowned at his words as I did not understand them. He saw me with them? Was he watching me?

"You were watching me," I said, not asking, but making a statement. I looked at him and he avoided my gaze, nervously staring out the window as he started to tap his finger against his leg.

"I have..."

"Why?" I blurted out as I did the last turn to get to the cemetery.

"Because even when I didn't know you...I knew you were special. You didn't see me, you never did until I made you able to see me...but I saw it. I always saw how you stared longer than necessary at the spots where stray ghosts were scattered, and i—was intrigued..." I must admit, I felt warm when he said I was special.

All my life I've known I was special, and not in the way every kid they think they are, I actually was special in every sense. I saw things no one saw...and I thought that the bad kind of special. And I've always thought that I was the wrong special, but he...he made it seem like I was a different kind of special, one that I never thought myself to be.

And then his words settled in my mind, and I felt immense guilt. Who was I to think of my friends dangerous? They could do nothing to me, they were already gone. I was all they had.