Roses & Heather

A blinding glare from a cloudless summer sky reflects on Amelia’s freshly placed tombstone. As her casket descends into the earth, I realize that she is taking all that made me happy with her. I reach out, fresh cut flowers in my grasp. Calluna, the Scottish heather that decorates our family’s estate. I tell myself to let them go. To let her go. Just like the friends and family that circle her resting place will all let go. I stand and stare, bouquet in hand, waiting for my fingers to uncurl.

It is only when the hand resting helplessly at my side is held by another that I have the strength to release my grip on the flowers. My dear Olivia stands there holding my hand in hers. Only she can feel the way I do. I can see it in her eyes just as plainly as she can see it in mine, the pain. The loss of her mother, my wife. The knowledge that their last spoken words were so hurtful. The regret that will haunt her. I squeeze her hand. The hot sun burns above.

We gather at the pub down the road from the cemetery. The sound of friends and family telling stories and laughing are distant to my ears. I stand with my daughter, the only person I have left, and I can feel all the eyes in the pub flicker to us and away again. Their stares pierce through us while our backs are turned. They are searching for something, or someone, to blame. They must know how their judgment is agony to us. Its torture on top of the guilt we already place on ourselves.

From the crowd a woman emerges. I prepare myself for her anger. The mother of my dead wife approaches with a small thing in her clutches. My imagination runs wild. A knife? A gun? My eyes override my mind and tell me that the little black thing she holds is only a book. A small dark thing camouflaged in folds of her dress.

“My husband and now my only daughter have been taken from me.” She murmurs. “You two are all I have left.” She holds out her arms to invite us into an embrace. Olivia stands immediately. I struggle to join them; guilt holds me back, but her eyes are full of warmth. “It’s not your fault.”

After we release one another, she holds my gaze. She presses the leather-bound book into my hands. “It belonged to her.” She says in a mournful tone. “Before her, her father. It goes back in our family over a hundred years. I imagine that she would want you to have it, along with the family’s wealth.”

“Not you?” I ask.

“I know the pain of losing a spouse. You will need everything that can help in the time to come. I am hurting of course, but I’ll manage.”

“and the money?”

“Its yours. I never liked how our family earned its fortune. It always made me uncomfortable.”

I look to my daughter. She nods.

“Its yours dad, I would just give it away. Pay the world back for the damage our family has done.” she looks away, angrily.

Later that night I find myself alone, in the massive house I once shared with my wife and daughter. “What do I do now.” I say aloud to the empty house. I enter our bedroom for the first time since that horrible night. The sheets are still on the floor from where I threw them when I awoke in a panic. The sound of a single gunshot echoes in my head like a ghost, and I recall the sound of my own heavy footsteps running down the hall to my study.

I throw the small book onto the dresser beside my bed and lay down. The heaviness of the day pulling my eyelids closed. Down, I fall. Down like the bouquets of calluna. Down like the casket that took my soul with it. Down into a deep dreamless sleep.

I wake in a cold sweat. The silence only broken by the ticking of the grandfather clock down the hall in the study. Each tick sounding more and more like a gunshot until I sit up and turn on the bedside light. The first thing I see, as my eyes adjust, is the little black book.

When I reach out and touch its leather binding, I feel a warmth. A familiar sensation that brings my mind to the touch of my Amelia’s skin. The feeling of my hand on her naked shoulder as she slumbers. The emotion of that touch, the trust she felt in me, brings me to tears again. My noise is filled with her sent, faint honeysuckle and fresh herbs. I open the book; its fragile pages soak my eyes with a pale light. The first page of the book in blank except for one line. A simple phrase. ‘I am here.’ The only remarkable thing about these three words is that they are written in her handwriting.

I quickly turn the page to search for more. Disappointed to see that the next one is blank, I turn to another and then another. I flip through the entire book. The stress filled sound of pages slapping against each other joins the ticking from the room down the hall.

Frustrated, I turn back to the first page, to read her words again. I am met with nothing. A blank page, no different from the others. “What?” I say aloud. I flip though book again, then stand, not knowing what else to do. The room is dark and cold. I am painfully alone, grieving and imaging things. “I am here. That’s what it said.” I begin to pace. Too full of anxiety to even try to sleep now. “Why would a blank book be passed on down for generations?”

A thought enters my mind. “No. That’s crazy.” I say to the empty book in my hand.

I am walking down the hall towards the study before I even realize my intentions. I stop in front of the closed door breathing heavily, the ticking inside louder than ever. The expensive oak door stands as a barrier; separating me from my fear made physical. The room where I found her. A voice in my head repeats “I am here.” It calms me enough to let me turn the doorknob. The study has been cleaned since the last time I was here, and others have visited to fill the room with roses and heather. My hands start to shake as I move towards the desk. I sit and pick up a black pen.

‘Amelia, are you there?’ I write slowly, holding my breath.

‘yes.’ Her handwriting answers below mine. ‘I love you.’

“Amelia.” I whisper aloud as I write. “You left me.”

The response comes immediately ‘I know, and I’m sorry.’

‘I know you were suffering.’ my hand is shaking ‘I know I wasn’t there for you. Not the way you needed me to be.’ Tears blend on the page with the ink as I write.

‘No, it's not your fault. You were there, but I couldn’t let you in. I am so sorry.’

‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Why did you kill yourself.’

‘I can’t say.’

“Why not?!”

‘My love, I can’t.’

I push her repeatedly, desperate for an answer. My writing and hers becoming increasingly difficult to read. I pause in my frustration just long enough to realize how I must be hurting her. She must not be able to tell me for some reason. Due to whatever magic holds her in this book, or simply from the pain that comes with the truth.

‘I’m sorry’ I write. ‘You can tell me when you are able.’

‘Thank you.’ she writes ‘I love you.’ She reminds me.

‘What is this book? How am I talking to you?’

‘I’m not sure what it is.’ she admits ‘I found it after my father died. It was in his study. I discovered how it worked much the way I imagine you did just now, and I was overjoyed to be able to speak to him again, but’ She hesitates in her writing. ‘he was trapped.’

“trapped?!”

‘Yes.’ She continues ‘He told me that he had spoken to his dead mother through the book, only now do I remember him carrying it with him wherever he went, and that he became trapped inside it after he died.’ another pause ‘I believe that I may be trapped here as well.’

My head starts to swim. I feel like I am losing my mind. My unsteady hand drops the book on the floor, and I hear the scratching sound of Amelia’s frantic writing inside. I look down at it, small and leather bound, so innocent. Seconds tick by and the scratching continues. I squeeze my eye closed. The sound of scratching intensifies. I take a deep breath and retrieve the book. On every page the words are written in a different hand. ‘Help me.’

I slam the book closed and take a second for myself to breath. Once I regain control, I open it again. The pages are blank. “What is this.” I say aloud. I turn the pages, remembering what I saw before. All the writing of the different people, gone.

‘Hello?’ I write. nothing.

‘Amelia?’

‘No, she’s gone’ responds another hand.

‘Richard, is that you?’ The writing seems familiar.

‘Yes’

‘Amelia is gone?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

‘No! Is she still...?’

‘Trapped in the book? Yes, but I cannot reach her either’ he pauses ‘I must ask, how did Amelia die?’

‘You don’t want to know.’ I write back

‘She killed herself then.’

I’m stunned ‘How did you know that?’

‘There is a long history of suicide in our family, I believe now that it is tied to this book.’ his writing becomes cramped and urgent. ‘You must destroy it.’

‘But…’ I hesitate. I cannot do something that might harm her.

‘It's the only thing that can release her.’ He finishes.

I close the book with a snap and shut my eyes, resolute. I have to destroy it, but how? I look to the fire pit, hot coals that need only a little tending before I stand in front of a blazing fire with the book in hand. I open it and, with trembling hand, I write. ‘I am going to set you free.’

‘Thank you.’ She writes back.

“I Love you.” I whisper as I toss the book into the fire.

As I watch, the book rejects the flames. It spits them back, throwing fire from the pit and catching the carpet ablaze. I want to run in fear, but something roots me in place. I watch, horrified, as the room begins to burn around me. The smoke becomes so thick I start to choke on the air. My burning, streaming eyes lock onto the book. With all my might I try to look away, but find myself helpless and unable to move a muscle, until the brightness of the flames turn to darkness.

The next thing I’m aware of is the sensation of scratching. It grates in my ears and digs into my skin. I open my eyes to find that I am seated at an ornate wooden desk, all around me is darkness, and in the center of the table is a small black leather-bound book. When I open it, I see that the first page contains three words written in my own familiar script ‘I am here’

The response has already been written in Olivia’s hand ‘Dad? Is that you’

I search frantically for a pen and call out “Olivia! Do not write in this book! It’s cursed.”

but the scratching has already started under my skin, it’s all around me, and I see my own handwriting respond simply “yes, I love you”