Dreaming With The Dead

I wake suddenly, with a crushing weight on top of me. Before I understand what’s happening, my hands are already, instinctively reaching for my neck, clawing at the hand around my throat.

“Stay still you fucking bitch!”

I still in shock, my breath coming in wheezes.

“That’s right, you do what I say, and you get to live.”

Like hell.

I begin to flail, clawing at whatever I can reach. He roars in pain and strikes out at my face. I feel my head hit the bedpost, and then nothing.

____________________________________________________

When I come to, I’m being dragged along face down through dirt. My own backyard. My head is aching, my shoulders feel as if they are about the be snapped out of their sockets. I can feel the bruising on my throat as I try to scream only to discover I’ve been gagged. Waves and waves of horror wash over me. My tears flow freely. A sticky wetness coats my thighs.

We reach the garden, which had been tilled for the spring planting.

This is where I will die. I am going to die.

The ground opens beneath me and I see he’s already dug a grave, the dirt pliant and willing, having already been worked over. He tosses me in like so much garbage. I can’t get control of my arms in time to prevent my face from hitting the dirt.

How is it possible that it ends like this?

He must not realize that I’m awake. Perhaps he already thought I was dead. I hear him step away and sigh, the sound of someone relaxing.

I begin to turn myself over. I can’t die facedown in the dirt. I just want to see the stars one more time. The effort to shift my body is monstrous.

“What the fuck?” he mutters. “You don’t give up easy, do you?”

He can tell I’m weak, so he doesn’t rush as he kneels down next to my grave and hops in, not bothering to avoid me with his feet. One foot lands solidly on my elbow and my tears stream out fiery hot in the place of my scream of agony.

He’s almost gentle and very lazy as his hands once again reach for my neck. He’s going to take his time and finish the job.

I can’t let him end it like this.

I throw everything I have left at him. I will not go meekly. I will not make it easy for him. He will take everything from me and I will make him remember with scars.

He doesn’t speak again, just grunts with effort. The starlight behind him becomes fuzzy, merging and then growing dim. Only once can I make him recoil as I drag my nails down his arm. I grasp at anything I can reach; I think I hear a faint pop. Then it finally ends.

____________________________________________________

I gasp violently awake clutching at my throat, tears streaming down my face. It had only been a dream. But I still hold my breath, certain he is in the dark, waiting for me. I sit up in my bed until dawn, the blanket clutched around me, crying.

____________________________________________________

As sunlight slips its way into my room, I shift my leaden body to the edge of the bed and off to the bathroom to start my day. All around me is warmth and light, but all I can feel are a stranger’s sweaty hands on me, his semen on my legs, scrapes and bruises that aren’t there. So much evidence of a violated body. I scrub my skin raw that morning.

Dripping wet, I stare at myself in the mirror, turning this way and that, assuring myself there are no wounds. The fingernails I clawed him with are clean and whole, no blood underneath. No bruises on my throat, no ache in my jaw where he had struck me, no pounding pain where my head had then struck the bedpost. Perhaps the most obvious, I’m not in the ground.

I step back into my bedroom and look around. It’s clean and bright. I had loved this house from the first moment I saw it. Just a one bedroom guest house, but a whole house for me just the same! How lucky! I still don’t have much furniture, but there are shelves built into nearly every wall. Plenty of space for my books and art. When I was touring it, I could picture everything perfectly. Lighting a fire in the winter and writing by the flickering light, my glass of wine going down so easy. The house was begging to be lived in, and it would make me feel alive.

I had joyously been moving my things in for a week, one car load at a time. Last night, however, had been the first night I had slept in my new home.

I had been so ecstatic at my find that I had blissfully dismissed my landlady’s story about why they hadn’t had a renter in so long. It was filed away in the “you’re about to have it so good, don’t open your mouth now” part of my brain. The memory came screaming to the surface now.

“Surprised you responded to my ad…. I feel that we must tell you… She disappeared one night, never seen again… you see, no one here ever locked their doors… signs of a struggle…”

I tried to look somber as I thanked her for the information. I would just be smarter and lock my door.

Heartless. I am absolutely heartless. I deserved that nightmare. If I had been kinder to her, she wouldn’t have sent me that dream.

Sent me the dream…

I hurriedly pull on some jeans and a tank top, jam on my tennis shoes, and stumble outside. The breeze is cool, but the morning sun already promises a scorching day. I gaze across the yard to the garden covered in years of neglect.

No, it couldn’t be. Someone would have looked there. They must have looked there. She can’t still be here.

The tilled earth from that night flashes in my mind.

But maybe they didn’t look? In a neighborhood where no one locked their doors, the whole street would have known that the garden had been tilled. Disturbed earth would not be suspicious.

I grasp the handle of the shed beside the house and yank. The old wood shrieks in protest. I grab a shovel more rust than metal and slowly walk to the garden.

Where to start?

Not there. Her face is there. After everything, her face should at least remain sacred.

I start to dig, first prying roots from the earth. Flinging weeds aside taller than myself, I start to sweat. Shovel full after shovel full, until suddenly, there is a glimmer of white. My body stills and my heart shudders.

As if from far away, the thought of gloves comes to me. I need gloves. The trip back into the house to rummage through my winter clothes is agonizing. I had left her there alone again. How could I? I finally find some gloves and jam my hands in, all the fingers not quite finding their proper homes. I run back out and kneel beside her.

The sliver becomes a finger, then a hand. A hand clutched around something silver. A chain. A chain with dog tags.

____________________________________________________

“Please state your name for the record.”

“Rachel Pepperwood.”

“Rachel, please walk us through the events of this morning.”

And so I do. Instead of a nightmare inspiring me, however, I simply state that I wanted to clear the patch of dirt. Get it ready for some gardening. The paper cup of water they had given me is about to fall apart in my hands. I don’t like being here.

“Do you know the identity of the person you found?”

“No.”

“Do you have any other details that you would like to add at this time?”

“No, sir.”

“Ok. I will ask that you do not leave town until we tell you otherwise.”

“Ok.”

The detective reaches over and clicks off the tape recorder. The whole thing probably only took a few minutes. I feel as if I’ve aged decades.

I start to stand, but then the detective speaks again.

“Rachel, before you go, I’d like to tell you a story that I think you deserve to hear.”

He looks at me, an unspoken question in his eyes. A little reluctantly, I nod and lower myself back into my chair.

“I made detective many years ago now. I was so hopeful that I could actually make a difference, catch the bad guys, and fight for justice.”

His face twists with a wry smile.

“Then women began to disappear. They were always single, always lived alone, abducted, raped, beaten, and their bodies left along hiking trails.”

His voice had grown hoarse.

“The person responsible was incredibly careful. No matter what we did, how hard we tried, we never got enough evidence to put them away. There was a suspect I was certain was responsible, but there was nothing I could do.”

His hands clench.

“His name was Harold Grimes, a veteran and a family man. Of all the times we brought him in, he never cracked. Even when we didn’t need her, Harold’s wife would also come to the station, supportive and unwavering.”

“In the middle of this nightmare, we were called out to your rental. The woman who had been living there at the time had disappeared. Her name was Philippa Brown.

Philippa.

A ghostly whisper that only I can hear echoes around the room. I’m surprised to realize that I’ve been crying.

“We found the usual signs of a struggle, and drag marks leading through the backyard to the path behind the house where we found tire tracks. I was so sure she had been put in Harold’s truck and we would find her off the trails soon. I was so used to this horrific routine I never even considered the garden. Now I think he was betting on that. Now I think Philippa never made it to that truck, and he only made it look like she did. If only I had stopped to look…”

This last was said in a whisper. A shuddering breath.

“Women continued to be murdered for a time, but then one day, Harold suffered an injury at one of his construction sites and another body was never found. Harold had been left with a severe limp and couldn’t get around those hiking trails anymore. This was all the evidence I needed, and I still couldn’t touch him. He went on to live a full life. He has grandchildren now."

This all seems so hopeless. Why is he telling me this?

“Harold was known to wear the dog tags of his close friend from the army who had never made it home. Sergeant William Coleman.”

“Harold was devastated when he claimed to have simply lost them during one of my interviews with him. Today, Philippa was holding the dog tags of Sergeant William Coleman. She must have fought like hell and managed to pull them off. In his rush to set the scene and leave, he must have not noticed.”

I remember the faint pop from my dream. It echoes in my mind like a cannon now.

“We’ve got people heading over to arrest Harold now. I thought you should know.”

He looks at me with an expression on his face that I hope to never see again on anyone, pure anguish finally finding release.

With the force of all the lost lives filling his voice, he tells me thank you.

____________________________________________________

A few days later, the police tape is removed from my door and I am allowed to return home. I don't really want to leave my hotel room. There are no deadly memories there.

I stop quickly in the kitchen to set down my mail and pull a newspaper from the pile.

“Arrest Made in Cold Case”

Mercifully, they had kept me anonymous, simply stating that another victim had been found with a key piece of evidence. Pictures of Harold were on the front, then and now.

I walk to the fireplace that I had so loved upon first seeing it, drop the newspaper on the grate, and kneel to light it. I watch Harold burn as the sun slides below the horizon outside. He has no right to look upon this home ever again.

I walk to the bedroom, undressing as I go and letting the clothes fall where they may. Not much seems to matter now, certainly not clothes on the floor. I look at the bed and pause when I see the sheets, still tangled from the rude awakening three days ago. I grab the comforter and walk back to the living room. My bones aching, I collapse on the couch.

Had Philippa been tired when she went to bed that last night? What had her plans been for the following day? No one would ever know. Those plans had been stolen.

Despite the exhaustion, I try to fight sleep. I do not welcome the crushing breathlessness, the invasion of my body, the snuffing out of a beautiful life. She had not welcomed it either.

Sleep comes anyway.

____________________________________________________

I am lying on something slightly damp, soft and prickly all at once. Grass. Above me is the night sky, the stars twinkling beautifully. God, I love that sky. The wind blows softly, rustling the nearby trees, and I feel so alive.

“Philippa, it’s late! Come inside!”

“Five more minutes!”

“You said that half an hour ago! Come on now, those stars of yours will still be there tomorrow!”

I sigh and roll to get up. My limbs are shorter now, slighter. The memory shimmers as I walk toward Philippa’s childhood home, a guest in another dream. I reach the door, put my palm on it, and turn for one last look at the sky. The stars wink as if to say, “Go on, go to sleep. One day you will soar among us, and until then, we will wait for you.”

I smile, and I go.