Chapter Sixteen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Friday, Oct. 21, 2022, 8 p.m.

I've been looking out the window at the moon from my bed. I have a desk where I do my homework, but when I'm writing I like to sit in bed leaning up against the headboard with my laptop, looking out. My room is at the back of the house, so it's quiet out there. If you look out the front, onto the street, you can tell you're in a small town, but when you look out the back, it's like you're already in the country. Just the darkness and the trees and the moon.

I'm trying to process everything, but it feels impossible. Last night at this time, Diana was alive. Now she's dead and I miss her so much it physically hurts. Writing is the only thing that makes me feel better, somehow, when things are bad. I'm good at it; it's my best subject.

Staring out the window at the darkness and the moon makes me think of how we used to hang out in the graveyard at night. We'd go there sometimes after the movies because we're too young to get into bars. Too old to go right home after the movie let out. The last time was a couple of weeks ago. We'd been to see Bullet Train – the four of us. We stood around outside in the autumn chill wondering what to do next. It was a Friday night. Nobody was having a party, and we were at loose ends. And there was always that little bit of tension among us – that Cameron and Diana might want to go off on their own. But Diana was too nice to leave me and Riley in the lurch on a Friday night. She would include us until it got late, then she'd go off with Cameron after.

Cameron opened his jacket and showed us a small bottle of whiskey. Diana smiled up at him like he was some kind of hero. I had something too. I'd managed to steal something from my parents' liquor cabinet. I wasn't as lucky as Cameron, who had older friends to buy for him. I didn't have a pint of Jack Daniel's, but I had a water bottle full of stolen vodka that my parents wouldn't notice. So I told them I had some vodka on me and Diana suggested we go to the graveyard.

She was the leader, and we all just automatically followed her. No one minded. She always had the best ideas. If anyone objected, she would have been completely flexible, but no one ever did. That night, we walked away from the bright lights of the movie theatre, the only one in town, along the sidewalk into the deepening darkness. Diana and Cameron were in front of me, and I saw how he kept his arm around her, how his hand would sometimes trail down to touch her bum.

The Fairhill United Church was at the end of the long main street on a corner, away from the stores and lights. It's a very old, historic, wooden church, painted white, with an impressive steeple in the front and large double doors. There are trees all around and the cemetery is on the right-hand side and sweeps around to the back. It's where we all went to Sunday school until we were old enough that our parents stopped making us go. None of us have parents who are particularly devout, but we'd go to church for the big occasions. Christmas, Easter. Weddings and funerals.

The church and graveyard are very old. The church was built in the late 1700s. The gravestones are interesting, some going back to that time. We used to play among them after Sunday school sometimes. And once in grade school we'd gone on a class visit for social studies when we were learning about the early settlers. I remember the teacher pointing out all the graves of very young children. The class was boisterous, a few of the kids fooling around, not listening, but I was one of the ones who was interested in what she had to say. I remember watching her, observing her mounting frustration.

The graveyard is different at night. It's shrouded in mystery, and it seems to go on for ever. The trees – tall old maples, beeches, oaks – rustle in the dark. There was never anyone there at night, so it was our favourite place to drink.

That night two weeks ago was our last time there all together. It's almost as if we had some feeling about what was going to happen. We weren't as high spirited as usual. Normally when we drank, we'd get silly and goofy, but that night Diana seemed quiet as she and Cameron shared the Jack Daniel's. Cameron seemed to be watching her. I shared my vodka with Riley. Somehow we started telling ghost stories.

There's no end of ghost stories in Vermont. We're known for them. Mrs Acosta just did a unit on them in English. We did ‘The Signal-Man' by Charles Dickens, and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. We had a spirited discussion that night in the graveyard about whether it was ghosts that were torturing little Miles and Flora or whether the nanny was nuts.

‘Personally, I think the nanny was imagining it all,' I said. That was the explanation I liked best. I didn't believe in ghosts. I believed in psychology, and people, and motivations. I found the story fascinating.

‘Why are you so sure?' Diana countered.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?' Cameron asked her, as if he were teasing her.

‘I just mean,' she said to Cameron, ‘that maybe the writer intended it to be a ghost, in the story. Of course I don't believe in ghosts.' She gave him a playful shove.

I caught a glance between Riley and Diana that I didn't understand. Maybe it was the vodka, but I was annoyed with Cameron. ‘You aren't even in that class.'

He said, ‘So what? I'm still entitled to an opinion.'

‘But how do you explain it,' Diana mused, ‘all the stories about ghosts? I don't mean the literary ones, I mean the local ones, the things people say.'

‘Tell us a story, Diana,' Riley urged. ‘You're the best one at telling ghost stories.' And she reached out to me for another swig from my vodka-filled water bottle.

Diana told us the story of Emily and the bridge. We'd all heard it before, but we always enjoyed listening to Diana's stories, and her little embellishments.

‘You all know this one, it's famous,' Diana said. ‘There was a girl, a long time ago, called Emily.' She paused. ‘She was very beautiful.'

‘How do you know that?' Cameron interjected.

‘Just shut up and listen,' Diana said. ‘She was very beautiful, and she was in love with a handsome young man. They were supposed to run off and be married. Perhaps their parents didn't approve of them getting married, I don't know. Maybe they thought she was too young. This was in Stowe. They arranged to meet one night at the covered bridge and run away together.'

‘I've never heard that before, that they were going to meet at the bridge and run away together,' Riley interjected. ‘You're making that up. I thought he jilted her and that she just killed herself at that bridge.'

‘Just work with me here,' Diana said. ‘He didn't show up. And she thought he'd jilted her, and she killed herself. We don't even know how she killed herself, but she did. Maybe she jumped.'

‘Have you been to that bridge?' Cameron said. ‘I have. It's not very high. I don't think a jump from that would kill you. It might hurt her bad, though.'

‘Wait a minute,' I said. ‘It's a covered bridge. How do you jump off a covered bridge?'

‘It doesn't matter,' Diana said. ‘Maybe she poisoned herself. Maybe she stabbed herself with a dagger or shot herself. The point is, she died at that bridge and she haunts it to this day. People who cross it hear all sorts of unexplained noises – thumping and banging and wailing and so on. And their cars get scratched if they drive over it.'

‘Emily sounds pretty angry,' Cameron observed. ‘And I've been to that bridge,' he said again, ‘and I didn't hear anything.'

‘Yeah, me neither,' Diana conceded. Then she paused, took another drink, and said, ‘But seriously, there's something I've never told you guys before.' We all looked at her expectantly. ‘A friend of my mother's – Mrs Whalen – swears she heard screaming there. This was a few years ago. She and her husband were driving across the bridge. There was this horrible sound of a woman screaming and shrieking and sobbing. She said it completely terrified them. When they got through to the other side of the bridge, her husband pulled the car over and got out to look around, thinking someone was there. She did too. It wasn't quite dark yet, and they couldn't see anyone. And before you say it was just the wind, my mom already suggested that and Mrs Whalen said it definitely wasn't, and her husband agreed with her.'

‘They imagined it,' Cameron said.

‘But you know Mrs Whalen,' Diana protested. ‘She's not very imaginative. And her husband said the same thing, and he's as sober as a judge.' She paused thoughtfully and added, ‘My mom was really affected by it.'

When she said that, the moon slipped behind a cloud, and I felt the slightest shiver up my spine. She and Riley shared another private, meaningful glance I couldn't quite decipher, and then Diana looked across at me and grinned.

I have to stop writing for a minute, I'm so sick at heart. We'll all be going to that church for her funeral. Diana will be buried there, in our graveyard. It makes me feel sick to think of it.

My cell phone pings, and I pick it up to look at it. I've got a text from Riley.

Are you there?

Yes.

We should talk.