by Adam Down
Two parents, two gravestones. Together again. Paul tried to tell himself it was for the best. His mother had declined so quickly after Father died.
He remained at the graveside long after the other mourners left—there hadn’t been many. There was no wake, and nowhere else he wanted to go.
“Good riddance.” The voice came from behind him, raspy and muffled.
Paul turned, an admonishment on his lips, but the figure beneath the elm trees stopped him dead. A woman in mourning dress stood in the shadows, a wide-brimmed hat and black veil obscuring her face. Slender hands, so pale they were almost blue, twitched and shifted continuously as she wove something between her fingers—Paul couldn’t quite make out what.
She hadn’t been at the funeral.
“What do you mean?” he asked, in little above a whisper. He’d always been the quietest, the one most likely to hold his counsel, despite being the eldest. Alan would have shouted, Christopher would have sworn and chased her off, but they hadn’t stayed. It was just him. “They were my parents.”
“I know.” The woman was tall and painfully thin, just as his mother had been.
“They weren’t who you thought they were. Either of them.” That cracked, choked voice. Something was very wrong.
Anger blinked inside him, a long-forgotten feeling blinking itself awake. Who was this woman? Who did she think she was to speak ill of his parents at their graveside?
“How dare you? I don’t know who you are, but you have no right—”
“I have every right.” Quiet or not, her voice cut through the air between them like a knife, demanding his silence.
She didn’t walk towards him; she glided, as silent as death.
Paul took a step back, the hairs on the nape of his neck rising. As she whispered from the shadows of the trees and out into the watery sunlight, he had to fight the urge to run.
“Every right in the world.”
Rope. What she was weaving between her long fingers was rope. Coarse and yellow, like old twine. The kind he remembered his father using in their garden to encourage the rose bushes to spread.
Her veil slipped as she floated closer, melting into nothingness and drifting away on the breeze. Paul stared, disbelieving. Translucent, almost fishy skin, and a thin, blue-lipped slash of a mouth. Bloodshot eyes bulging out of their sockets. A horrible bruise, ragged and purple, all the way around her neck, with an ugly red line through its centre.
No wonder she sounded so choked.
“They were monsters.”
Paul’s breath caught in his throat. His vision greyed as he realised who the spectre reminded him of. He’d seen her face in the bathroom mirror that morning, as he adjusted the knot of his tie. Not the same, of course, but a strong resemblance all the same. Unmistakable.
A family resemblance.
“You were never the eldest. But they didn’t want a girl…”
ADAM DOWN writes stories about bad people doing bad things, often to one another. His work has appeared across the darkest corners of the internet, including Coffin Bell Journal and Friday Flash Fiction. He resides in the UK, where funerals are often invaded by vengeful spectres. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamDownFiction.