Photo by Dennis Evans, courtesy of Unsplash
The moment I met Helen, I knew she was marked for life.
It was at a sleepover birthday party, just before the start of junior high. After the adults went to sleep, we lit up the dark of Stephie's basement with our flashlights and told ghost stories. Helen sat, her face the picture of calm, but when it was time to change into PJs, she refused.
"What's wrong, nerd" asked Stephie.
"It's dark in here," Helen said.
Our shoulders shook as we stuffed our fists into our mouths, hoping against hope to keep our hysterics at bay.
"So? Go get changed, you stupid weirdo."
"No. How do you know they can't see us?"
"Who?"
"The dead. Aren't they always with us? We can't see them, but they can see us, right? So I don't want them to see me get changed, okay?"
We couldn't hold it back any longer. Laughter bounced and echoed off of the cement cellar walls. And as soon as Helen fell asleep, we played "Jump the Brook" over her sleeping body, and then smudged her sneakers with lipstick and stuck cat poo inside of them. Next morning, after Stephie's mother helped Helen clean out her sneakers, Helen left. Once the door shut behind her, we all sat around, making fun of the spidery inscription she wrote in Stephie's birthday card.
Freshmen year of high school. Since Helen and Stephie's moms are old friends, Stephie's mother forced her to take Helen clothes shopping with us. Stephie never talked to her at school. None of us did, but her presence didn't bother us. If Helen was around to laugh at and ravage with words, it kept the rest of us from being the hapless targets of Stephie's relentlessly acid tongue. You never knew when it was your turn, so if Helen was around to be the punching bag, you were safe.
She tagged along next to me. I didn't tell her to leave, but I wanted to. Badly. As I stood at the mirror, deciding whether or not to take the Landlubber jeans or the Levi's, she tapped me on the shoulder. Everyone froze and stared at us.
"Lindy, do you ever wonder what color a mirror is?"
We were all older. No more "Jump the Brook" or cat poo in shoes. Now, it was all about ignoring. As if the object of our scorn didn't exist at all.
So later that day, we all sat clumped in the booth of the local McDonald's, munching, talking. Shunning Helen, erasing her as she sucked loudly on her vanilla shake.
Helen was out of our lives by high school. If she was ever mentioned, it was always as a figure of fun. College, job, marriage, kids. Everyone slipped away, except Stephie. Sometimes I'd get the occasional text, or the impersonal Christmas family photo, talking about her husband's promotion, her daughter's scholarship to Yale, being elected president of the country club.
Stephie went missing last week.
She was last seen out jogging at the edge of the woods, just outside of town. They found her yesterday, her body cold and pale.
There was the note, carefully attached to the pink tee shirt covered in violent red streaks. Why the paper felt the need to show a photo of the note attached to her, I'll never know. More clicks for them, I guess. But since I can't turn away from train wrecks, I looked. It only took a second for me to recognize the wispy lettering. The writer made no attempt at all to disguise it.
"If a body falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
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