At the Bottom of the Pond

Johnny swam all the way to the other side of the pond to find a rock big enough. It’s not that there weren’t suitable rocks on the beach, buried in the sand that was trucked in every spring. But that’s where his parents were, and he knew that they would ask him what he was doing and that he wouldn’t be able to lie well enough to convince them to let him. So, he traveled to the far bank to search. It really wasn’t that far away, especially when he could stop and rest, floating on his red foam body-board, whenever he got tired.  

An acceptable rock was located. Picked for its size, as large as Johnny’s head, and its lack of gross slippery algae, it was perfect for his mission. He put the rock on the body-board carefully, knowing that if it slipped off when he was in the deep water it would sink too fast for him to catch. Johnny hauled the rock out to, as near as he could tell, the center of the small pond. He looked around, trying not to seem suspicious, and, satisfied no one was paying him too much attention, started taking slow, deep breaths.

Bored and annoyed by the yelling and splashing of all the kids in the shallower water, Johnny had set off on his own, paddling around the pond in search of something interesting and new. The pond was roughly circular, with an artificial beach on one side and a muddy area where a small stream fed into it on the other. It was a kettle pond, a huge hole in the ground left over from when glaciers ruled the land. Johnny didn’t know this, but he could tell that something had scooped a hole out of the ground, and he had used that intuition to guess correctly that the center of the pond would be deceptively deep. So, having grown bored chasing the shy turtles that lived around the edges of the water, Johnny had swum to the center of the pond and begun an exploratory mission, a grand undertaking to find out just how deep the pond really was.

Due to the murky condition of the water, this was a mission that could not be conducted visually, and Johnny had started diving deeper and deeper, both thrilled and terrified on each expedition that this might be the time he actually hit the bottom. The diving was a serious business, the water quickly became both very dark and very cold as the distance from the surface increased, and Johnny could feel it pressing in on him the deeper he got.

But no matter how hard he swam or how long he took to fill his lungs with air, Johnny never found the bottom. He would swim down until the urge to breath was burning all through his chest, then turn around and shoot back up to the surface, gasping for oxygen the second his head broke from the water. It was during one of these moments, grasping his board for support and greedily gobbling air, that Johnny had the stroke of genius that led to the side-expedition of rock acquisition. He realized that he always came back to the surface much faster than he swam down, and that that meant he was wasting most of his precious time underwater struggling to swim down, when he could just be sinking. So now he had the rock, and he could simply hold onto it to sink down, wait until he hit the bottom, which couldn’t be that far away, and then release the rock and shoot back to the surface. Then he could finally return to the beach victorious.

Once his face was buzzing with oxygen and he could think of no more reasons to delay, Johnny pushed down on his side of the body-board and caught the rock as it slid towards him. He held it in both hands and let them drop, sure to keep a firm grip as his arms went straight and the falling rock yanked them down. He held his breath and was sucked under the water, much faster than he had anticipated. For a second he considered abandoning the mission and letting go of the rock. But he knew that if he didn’t reach the bottom now, he probably never would. So, he held on, and the rock pulled his body into the depths.

For the first second or two, Johnny could still see. The light from the bright sun shone through the brown water in shifting beams, pointing the way down to the bottom. But very quickly Johnny was too deep for the sunlight to reach. The water became dark and frigid. He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed inside of his goggles, and his skin felt like it was burning as the water became unbearably cold. It pressed in on him, flowing past his body like a dense wind as he sank, pulling his hair up over his head and pushing into his ears, making them sear with pain. His lungs started to burn and he knew that he had only seconds left until his willpower gave out and he would release the rock. Johnny forced himself to count to two, slowly, before he let go. Silently, trying to ignore the cold and the pressure of the darkness, he counted.

One.

Tw-

Everything stopped. Johnny’s feet were surrounded by impossibly cold mud and the water was still. He had barely registered that he had actually hit the bottom before he released the rock and started clawing his way through the water to the surface. Two extra seconds had been too long, his panicked brain was screaming. He didn’t have enough air to reach the surface, and he was so far away that even looking straight up he could see nothing but pure black. He swam up as fast as he could, scooping great handfuls of dense water down at his frantically kicking feet. His lungs were on fire, the urge to push all the used gas out of them, to gulp down new, fresh, air was overwhelming, and he needed to focus as hard as he could to keep his mouth shut.

He pushed, two seconds, three seconds, yet the surface remained invisible. He screamed. It was an animal scream, an articulation of inexpressible terror and frustration, completely bypassing his conscious mind as it burst out of his body. Johnny felt the bubbles float up his face in horror. They were silent and invisible in the darkness, taking the last of his air to the surface. The darkness had taken on a static quality now, an absence of vision as well as light, and Johnny realized he didn’t know which way was up. His thoughts were being eaten by the darkness from the outside in, and he concentrated only on swimming, blindly hoping that he was still moving towards the surface. Johnny’s thoughts lost their words, and then his mind was stripped of self-hood, reduced to a few emotions sinking through the water. Then, only fear was left, the desperate plea not too die, to hold on for even a moment longer, that every living thing shares. The fear faded from a burning fire to a single flame and then to an ember and then…

The fire roared back to life, but it was warm now, and pleasant, a welcome addition to the cold at the bottom of the pond. The rest of the emotions came back too, popping back into existence and resuming their endless game of tug of war as if nothing had ever happened. Johnny’s mind spun back into existence, like a whirlpool in reverse. His consciousness reformed like a trap being sprung, snapping into place with a violent suddenness.

Johnny gasped and opened his eyes. The gasp pulled a gallon of ice cold water into his lungs. He started coughing, pushing and pulling water out of his body uncontrollably. Then, the light that he hadn’t fully registered yet flared. He felt a calmness wash over him and went still.

A silver woman floated in the water in front of Johnny. She was glowing dimly, surrounding herself in a faint halo of illuminated water. Her hair was long and floated around her head. It moved almost too slowly to see, shifting in the micro-currents. She was reaching out to touch Johnny, holding his hand in hers. She was holding her upper arm close to her chest and, looking more closely, Johnny realized that it was chained to her body. A rope of thick metal links, that same glowing silver color, was wrapped several times around her torso, with one end of the chain extending back into the darkness behind her.

Johnny's surprise at not having drowned was fading, and the absurdity of his situation began to dawn on him. He opened his mouth to ask the glowing woman a question but he was unable to speak with only water in his lungs. He tried to gesture his questions, pointing at her and then at himself, furrowing his eyebrows to emphasize his confusion.

She seemed to understand because she raised her other hand, as much as she could, being constrained by the chains, and motioned for Johnny to hold it. He reached out and took it.

A handsome man, half his face obscured by the fabric of a pillow, smiling softly, a feeling of joy.

The same man, dressed in dull colored clothing, sitting on a horse and riding away down a dirt road. Bitter sweet.

Another woman. She learns over a small wooden table, her face lit by an oil lamp in the center. She talks about the man, whispering about rumors.

Cold, standing in the snow outside of a large house. Looking through a window and recognizing the man through the warped glass. He lifts a woman into the air, hugging her close to him and kissing her as they spin together. The picture dissolves in tears. Feelings of sadness and rage, betrayal.

A blast of sound. A plate shatters. A tearful final plea is made, hands grip a rough dress, pulling it tight around a slightly distended stomach, emphasizing the bulge. Now the man is yelling, angry and scared. He offers money, then more money, then possessions, horses, land, then, suddenly, he attacks.

The sound of small waves lapping against the side of a boat mixed with the thud of wood on wood and heavy, regular breathing. A blinding headache and a strange pressure, the squeeze of encircling chains. The thud of the oars stop and strong hands grab the chains. The owner of the hands ignores the screaming.

The feeling of cold water rushing past. The burning desire for fresh air, the despair of perfect darkness. The dissolving of a mind, leaving only terror at the end.

Johnny gasped, though again he breathed in only water. The impressions and memories had been pushed into his head, and they became his own memories, discernible only by their strange flavor and their age, lifetimes ago. The woman looked at him, her eyes searching his for emotion, checking to see that he understood.

He looked back, unsure what to do, only horrified by what he had seen, what he remembered. This horror must have been what the woman was looking for. She nodded once and then turned around, pulling very lightly on Johnny's hand, a clear invitation to start moving. Johnny had almost forgotten about his body, and was mildly surprised to find that he had been standing lightly on the bottom this entire time. His toes were buried in soft silty mud and, when he lifted his foot, the sediment swirled through the dark water in clouds.

They let the length of loose chain lead the way. The woman floated and led Johnny, who performed a slow pantomime of walking, behind her. Soon, she stopped and pointed to a something half buried in the mud. Johnny looked closely, following the line of the glowing chain, and saw a piece of rotted fabric flapping in slow motion as the water his movement had disturbed reached it. He approached the fabric carefully and saw that it was part of a much larger piece, a dress.

The dress disappeared in places into the muddy bottom but it was clear that that's what it was. It floated loose at one end and was drawn into a bunch where it ran under a mass of heavily rusted chains. Where the chains were separated and the dress was absent, the gentle white curve of rib bones could be seen erupting from the settled silt at the bottom of the pond. And above the dress, above the chains, was another white shape, smooth but for a few sharp angles, with two large holes. A skull.

Johnny had a feeling that he should be frightened, or at least disturbed, finding a dead woman’s body at the bottom of a pond. But he had already met the dead woman herself, and that somehow took most of the shock out of the moment.

He didn’t have to ask what he was supposed to do. The emotion radiating off of the ghost was strong enough to seep into Johnny’s thoughts, and he could feel her need for freedom as if it was his own. He bent down slowly and took hold of the chains, the woman stayed close to him as he moved, maintaining the effect that was keeping him alive. Johnny lifted the chains, and his feet sunk into the mud as the weight of the metal was transferred into his body. He moved the loops with extreme care, digging out patches of mud where the links or the bones had become buried. He moved a piece of the chain away from where the neck would be, and he felt the woman’s aura shift sharply, spiking with fear. He stopped and looked, peering through the fog of silt suspended in the water. He saw that he had shifted a small necklace, whose chain disappeared into the mud. He held the necklace delicately, and moved it to lie away from the chain, safe from further disturbance. The feeling of fear coming from the woman abated.

Johnny finished moving the loops down the spine, then past the pelvis and the legs, making sure not to disturb the bones as he freed them. Finally, he moved the heavy chains past the skeletal feet and pushed the offending metal away from the body, watching it fall unceremoniously back into the mud a couple feet away.

As soon as the chain was off the body, the woman started to glow brighter and brighter. Her ghostly dress now floated around her in the water, free of the chains which had weighed it down. She smiled with victory and Johnny could feel emotions flowing off her in waves. A sense of triumph was mixed with something darker, pain, betrayal, and isolation. These feelings flowed out of her in turbulent streams, getting more intense with every passing moment. The point where his hand was touching hers started to get hotter and hotter, and she became difficult to look at, almost painfully bright. Suddenly, there was a flare in the brightness and Johnny’s hand felt like it had been thrust into boiling water. Without thinking, he pulled his arm back, breaking the contact.

“Johnny! Johnny! Oh my God please be okay! Oh God, somebody do something!”

Johnny opened his eyes, and his mother’s cries turned to cries of joy, and she was hugging him and yelling and sobbing all at once. He felt too tired to move and his throat hurt too much to do anything but cough. He smelled vomit, and realized, as his mother shifted to stop kneeling in it, that it was his own. He rolled onto his back, so he wouldn’t have to look at it, and saw that he was surrounded by people, his parents and a girl wearing a red lifeguard bathing suit being the closest of the crowd.

His father bent down and picked him off up the sand, using his forearms like a forklift to raise Johnny into the air. The action triggered something in Johnny’s memory, of being lifted into the air while wrapped in chains. But, those weren’t his memories, they were…

It came flooding back, the ghost, the chains, the flare of light and heat. He tried to tell his parents, pausing between every few words to cough.

“Mom, Dad, I… I saw something, down… down in the pond. There was this woman… and… and she saved me, and I…”

“Shh.” Johnny’s mother cut him off, “Try not to talk right now, your poor lungs, you could have drowned! And yes, that woman did save you, we’ll have to find some way to thank her.”

“No.” Johnny tried to yell, but couldn’t quite get his lungs to cooperate. “Not… not her. At the… bottom of the pond, there was… there was a ghost.”

“A ghost!” Johnny’s father repeated, his voice resonating in his chest and through Johnny’s body. “Was it small and white? Did it maybe say ‘Walmart’ on the side?” He smiled at his wife, checking if his attempt at an injection of humor had been successful. She didn’t smile back.   

Johnny did his best to ignore his dad’s joke. He knew what he had seen. He couldn’t imagine something like that, could he? The ghost, the chains, the memories she had put in his head, it all seemed so real.

Johnny’s dad carried him all the way back to the car and placed him in the back seat, with promises to stop for ice cream on the way home. Johnny was asleep before they left the parking lot.

The first disappearance happened two days later.

They finally closed the pond after three people went missing. It only took a month. Johnny’s parents tried to hide the news from him but he had become obsessed after his experience. He sought out information where ever he could, whether looking up glacial lakes in an encyclopedia, checking out books on the supernatural from the library, or sneaking onto the computer and looking up any information on the pond that he could think to type into the search bar. So, yes, he knew about the disappearances. The people, all kids, who had been at the pond with their families. It was those families who told the story. The kid would be there one moment, swimming or playing out in the water, and then, they were gone. No struggle, no yelling, they were there and then, the next time the parents looked, they had disappeared. Police had searched the shores of the pond each time, looking for the body of a drowned child, but they always came up with nothing. They ran their boat over every square inch of its surface, scanning the depths and dragging nets through the water. They never found anything.

The disappearances continued even after the pond was closed. A kid whose parents had rented one of the houses that had a small dock on the pond went missing the day after they arrived. He had gone on a backyard fishing expedition with the family dog, and when the parents went to look for him, the dog sat alone on the bank, next to a fishing rod and an opened box of slowly drying worms. Two weeks later a kid jumped into the pond on a dare and never resurfaced.

Johnny had tried to believe, for a while, that what his parents had tried to tell him was true. That there was obviously no such thing as ghosts, that he had been hallucinating, a result of his brain being starved of oxygen. But as the reports of missing children continued his memories only grew clearer, and his dreams were full of silver light and the silent screams of flooded lungs. He knew that they were wrong, that what his memories were real, that the ghost was real. Johnny’s guilt grew every time another person disappeared. Freeing the ghost had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, after all, hadn’t she saved him from drowning? She had been so sad, and so weak, and he had only tried to help. Now, he was much less certain. She was taking children from the pond, and doing, well, he didn’t know what, but it couldn’t be good. And it was all his fault.

Johnny’s parents did what they could to help him, trying to shield him from the news and reassure him, over and over, that ghosts aren’t real, and that the disappearances couldn’t possibly be his fault. They could tell he didn’t believe them. Johnny stopped hanging out with the few friends he had and started spending more and more time at the library, often leaving in the morning and returning home late, just before the sun set. His parents would wait at home, doing their best not to let their nervousness show as they went about their days, and they would each breath a silent sigh of relief as they heard Johnny’s bike tires rolling through the loose gravel in the driveway. That sound meant that Johnny was safe, that he hadn’t disappeared too. His parents passed most of the summer this way, trying to help a son who didn’t want it, and waiting for him to come home. Until, one day, he didn’t.

Preparations complete, note left for his parents, plan in action, Johnny rode his bike, not to the library, but back to the pond. He hadn’t actually seen the pond since his near-death experience, and it was strange to imagine the beach empty and quiet on such a nice day.

He knew there would be police near the regular entrances to the water, making sure that the mandates on the bright yellow caution tape they guarded were followed. Hoping to avoid an encounter with anyone, Johnny parked his bike in the woods off the edge of a road a little farther from the pond. He picked up the small backpack that he had stashed there a week before, and started walking away from the road. He knew that he could hike through the trees separating him from the water, and that most people wouldn’t expect someone to be coming from this direction.

The walk was a relatively short one, but the necessity of watching for spider webs and poison ivy meant that Johnny paid unusually close attention to the world around him. The sun, still warming up for the day, shone in soft beams through the layered leaves of the skinny oak trees. The spots of light, colored various shades of yellow and green, chased each other in great migrations across the moss-covered ground whenever the wind blew. Johnny felt the warm sun on his skin, and enjoyed the breeze that blew the nervous sweat from his forehead. He reached the edge of the water much too quickly, and stopped short of the bank, remaining hidden in the shifting shadows between the trees.

Careful to keep his breathing under control as his nervousness grew, Johnny pulled the contents of the backpack out and laid them on the ground. He checked the device he had made, making sure that the wire was properly spooled and stored. It was, and he put it back in the bag. Next, he pulled out the chain and wound it carefully around his torso, putting a loop over his shoulder so it wouldn’t fall off. After checking that it was secure, he took the padlock and locked the ends of the chain together, trapping himself in a cage of iron links. Finally, he took the key and put it back in the bag, zipped it closed, and worked his arms through the straps. He was ready. Before he could overthink it, and realize what a terrible idea this was and run away, Johnny turned and ran towards the water.

He burst out of the cover of the trees, the chain clanking as it bounced against the pale skin of his chest, and stumbled through the long grass to which the woods had given way. He reached the edge of the land and jumped, hurtling off the short embankment and crashing into the water. He sank instantly, dragged down by the weight of the chains. He held his breath and struggled forward, pushing off the muddy bottom like a linebacker, attacking the water in front of him until it gave way and he moved forward. He fought the resistance as hard as he could, not because he truly wanted to go deeper into the pond, but because he knew panic would overcome him the second he stopped fighting and let himself realize the reality of the situation. So, he pushed, churning up clouds of mud and running slowly down into the water, and just as his lungs began to burn and his vision was going dark, she was there.

She was holding out her hand to him, and relief flowed into him as her aura took affect. It soothed the burning in his lungs and cleared the fog from his mind. Her face looked happy, for a second, and then she saw the chain wrapped around his chest and a spike of rage burst out of her like a shockwave, surprising Johnny with its sudden ferocity. It was followed by the same mix of emotions Johnny had felt last time, anger, betrayal, and fear. She reached towards the chain, stopping short of actually touching it, and made a pained expression. The question was clear.

Johnny tried to push his own thoughts back at her, attempting to offer a deal. He held the faces of the disappeared children, found in newspapers and online searches, in his mind’s eye. Take me to them. He tried to say, without ever moving his lips.

She seemed to understand, and her powerful stream of emotions relaxed slightly as she turned and guided Johnny deeper into the pond. They moved down into the water, and it grew darker around them until the only light came from the woman, a bright silver glow that rippled along with the water they moved through. Johnny lost track of time as they went and was surprised when he realized that they had stopped moving. He looked around and recognized the half-buried skeleton embedded in the muddy ground, but the chain which had been wrapped around it no longer sat in an awkward heap. It lay in a long, lazily curving line in the mud. The chain was looped at points, tied in basic loose knots, and inside each loop was a child’s ankle.

The five children floated peacefully in the still water, held down by a single entrapped leg each, their hair and clothing floating weightless in the water around them. They seemed as though they were asleep, with eyes closed and mouths just barely open. If Johnny looked long enough he could see that their chests moved ever so slightly as they floated, their lungs breathing in and out the cold water mindlessly. Johnny had been preparing himself for the worst, and the fact that the kids all seemed to be alive was a relief, despite the other difficulties of their shared situation.

Johnny turned back to the ghost, who was still holding his hand, and organized his thoughts, preparing a mix of emotions he could use to communicate. To offer her a trade.

Johnny had done a lot of research on ghosts and the supernatural. Most of it had been non-sense, how to distill ectoplasm or communicate using crystals, and a lot of it had been useless, given this situation, making circles with salt or burning remains. But some of the theories and stories had resonated with him, and the brief experience he had had. The information he had found most useful were the theories on how ghosts were created, and what motivated them.

At first, he had assumed that a ghost was simply a soul, whatever that is exactly, that had somehow remained behind after a person’s body had died. But that hadn’t seemed quite right. When the woman had given him her memories, there were so many missing that you would expect from a person’s full life. Nothing about her parents or her childhood, no dreams or aspirations, and no friends save one. No, all the memories had been directly related to the one person, the man who killed her.

The ghost wasn’t a person, not a full one at least. She was an impression, an set of emotions so powerful that they lingered on after the rest of her had died. Johnny had tried to imagine what it would be like, to die alone and terrified, and to have that be the only part of you that survived. She was acting out a script, a basic concept, strong emotions converted to a living impulse. She had been betrayed, killed by someone who had promised to love her. Johnny had freed her from her chains and now she was taking children, keeping them captive at the very sight of her imprisonment. Once Johnny had realized all this his task had been obvious. He would free the woman completely, as well as the children.

She reached out for his hand, still visibly disturbed by the sight of the chain around his chest. He felt what was left of the poor woman’s mind making contact with his and he pushed his thoughts, one by one, at it. He pictured the children, floating in the water, and imagined them floating up and away, imagined them being reunited with their families, the joy their parents would all feel. The positive light of that joy reflected off her like a mirror, finding no purchase in a landscape so dominated by pain. But she seemed to understand the concept regardless.

Next, he imagined himself, watching the children float away, but remaining behind. He pictured himself removing his chains and staying at the bottom of the pond, trapped here with the ghost woman. He tried to push in the abstract notions of fairness along with the thoughts. The concept of balance, of trade.

The ghost’s thoughts churned for a second, the in-human amalgamation of emotion and drive digesting Johnny’s proposal. The psychic swirling solidified quickly, and she floated towards the children suspended in the water and, one by one, released them. Their bodies floated up through the pitch-black water, disappearing the instant the ghost’s light ceased to illuminate them. Once all five kids were gone she turned back to Johnny, radiating an expectancy that would brook no disappointment. Johnny conceded quickly and openly. Falling to his knees in the ice-cod mud, he very slowly removed his backpack, struggling against his chains and the resistance of the water.

Once he had removed it from his back he placed the bag in the mud in-front of him and unzipped the top slowly. He was very careful to try to hold the image of the key in his mind, to pretend that was the only reason he needed to open the bag. He unzipped it just enough to get both of his hands inside then, very carefully, he felt through the contents until he found the small crinkly shape, with a bubble of plastic sealed inside it. He made sure he was holding it securely then, pressing as hard and as suddenly as he possibly could, he crushed the plastic bubble, releasing the vinegar that had been sealed inside. Once released, it mingled with the baking soda that was inside the deflated Mylar balloon and the two chemicals reacted rapidly, forming carbon dioxide gas. He kept the balloon inside the bag as it inflated, hiding it in the fabric and under his hands until he could feel it pushing up against his weight, trying to escape to the surface. Johnny waited for a second longer, then let it.

The balloon pulled out of the bag soundlessly, shooting up through the cold water with surprising speed, trailing a thin line of stainless-steel wire behind it. The ghost reacted quickly, though not before the balloon was already out of sight. She reached for the wire that connected it to the dumbbell still sitting at the bottom of Johnny’s bag, but pulled away at the last second, unable or unwilling to touch it. Johnny smiled despite the seriousness of the situation and the renewed anger he could already feel coming from the ghost. Another piece of research that had actually been useful were the reoccurring accounts of ghosts’ hatred of iron. The iron in the stainless-steel wire was enough to keep her from interfering with it, and, by extension, with the balloon.  The same principle protected him as long as he wore his chains.

The rage radiating off of the woman filled the space around Johnny, and he could feel the anger taking over her mind. He had tricked her, betraying her trust when he released the balloon, instead of unlocking his chains. It was, he realized too late, the one thing that was sure to upset her more than anything else. She screamed at Johnny, a psychic scream that he felt in his heart as much as his ears, a scream that contorted her face into a hideous shape, her mouth stretching beyond the normal bounds of human anatomy. She cut the scream short and then, seemingly without a second thought, moved away from him, withdrawing her light and her protection.

The chains protected him from the ghost, but not from the water.

Johnny felt the lack of her supernatural light as a profound coldness, and a crushing pressure on his ears, eyes, and chest. Almost instantly his lungs started to burning with the need for oxygen, and Johnny knew that he had only seconds until he stopped being able to think.

Still kneeling in the mud, Johnny reached back into his bag, and found the key that he had dropped into the bottom back on the shore. He pulled it out in one hand and used the other to find and hold the padlock that secured the chain around his chest. His hands were already half-numb, and he fumbled as he tried to over and over to fit the key into the lock, navigating the connection by feel in the darkness. Finally, he succeeded, and the click of the padlock being opened went unheard by Johnny’s ears, which were rapidly being filled by the deaf-static of oxygen deprivation. As he struggled to unwrap the chain his thoughts went quiet and died one by one, with the same horrifying inevitability that he barely remembered from the last time he had entered the water.

A few seconds and an eternity of drowning later, Johnny was blind, deaf, and running on a decaying mixture of animal instinct and fear, but he was free. The chains dropped to the mud at Johnny’s knees and his body tried to move forward, crawling with no coordination away from the pile of metal. The final twitching trust of movement occurred a moment before Johnny’s mind became only a shrinking mass of fear, and it got him clear of the chain, so that his skin touched only soft mud and ice cold water. That writhing mass of terror shrunk, insensate in an all-consuming panic, and it couldn’t see as the water brightened again, as the woman reached for Johnny, and again saved him from her fate.

Johnny got off his bike, forgoing the kick stand in favor of simply leaning the frame against the fence that bordered the cemetery. He walked slowly into the space, doing his best to fulfill his intuitive sense that he should act respectfully. He made his steps deliberate and measured, and his thoughts wandered as he drifted towards his destination.

They had found him, eventually. His note had been specific, detailed, and had probably been largely ignored by his parents and the authorities. But it was hard to ignore five children, some missing for weeks, suddenly swimming out of the very pond into which they had disappeared. That, combined with Johnny’s note, and a buoy in the form of a novelty insta-inflate birthday balloon, was enough to get the authorities to send some divers down the line of wire to the bottom of the pond.

The divers who saved Johnny were amazed that he was still alive when they brought him to the surface, and were more than a little creeped out by his proximity to the remains of a body that had been dead for more than a century. They didn’t mention seeing anything else down there.

Johnny had been able to leverage his short-lived fame to get a single piece of the remains that had been removed from the depths of the pond, playing off the public’s perception of him as an unlikely and inexplicable hero.

He reached his first destination and stopped, standing in-front of a worn and unassuming headstone. On it was inscribed only a name and a set of dates.

Malcolm Willard Burke, 1865-1894

Johnny started talking, revealing another part of what he had learned in the course of his research.

“He died just two years after you.” He began, “Fell off a horse and died of some kind of infection, though the records weren’t super clear, so I’m not totally sure.” Johnny had searched archives of old newspapers for weeks, looking for mysterious disappearances and deaths in the area, until finally he found the faces he recognized, Malcolm’s had been one of them.

He continued, “He never had any kids. I don’t know why, maybe he was just unlucky, maybe his wife was.” Johnny paused, drawing a deep breath. “But whatever the reason, he destroyed his only chance at having children. He’s gone, completely.”

Johnny stood in-front of the grave for a little longer, letting the fall air blow past his face, bringing the smell of salt from miles away, and cooling his skin where the evening sun shone onto it. Then, he turned around, and walked away from the murder’s grave.

He walked in silence until he came to an empty patch at the edge of the cemetery, an area that had been forsaken as too small for a proper grave long ago. Kneeling in the sandy dirt, Johnny used the garden trowel he had brought to dig a hole.

It took almost an hour, and the sun was setting by the time the hole was deep enough that Johnny was confident it wouldn’t be undone by a hard rain or inquisitive animals. He tried, for the hundredth time, to think of something to say, to solidify the moment, to somehow make it better or at least more official. It wasn’t a fair thing to ask, for a child to write an epitaph for a woman he never knew, who had died more than a hundred and twenty years ago. The responsibility was not what he deserved, but it was what he had, and so he decided, for the hundredth time, to keep it as simple as possible. For that at least, he was prepared.

He took the necklace, a simple heart on a gold chain, and laid it carefully into the hole, letting the chain coil in the dirt before placing the heart on the pile of metal. Gently, he put dirt back into the hole, until the earth was once again level. Finally, he opened his bag and removed the piece of flat stone he had found in the woods near his house.

He had taken an entire afternoon, using a screwdriver as a chisel, to carve the letters and numbers into the face of the stone, making sure that they were as deep and as permanent as any other marker in the cemetery.  This stone too had only a name and a pair of dates.

Sarah Abby Mason, 1863-1892

Johnny hadn’t carved anything else because he knew all that he didn’t know. The ghost woman had been a shadow of a person, and it felt wrong to try to add anything extra that he had learned from her to the stone. He had included only what he knew for sure. Sarah Abby Burke had been a real person, with the things every person had, hopes, fears, and loves. She had lived, and she had died.

Johnny placed the stone in the dirt over the grave, pressing it into the earth so that it would stay put. He waited, kneeling in-front of the grave, over the buried necklace, for a moment longer. Then he stood up and slowly, carefully, walked away.