Page 27 of All the Things We Buried

TWENTY FIVE (SPLIT)

DORIAN

“Soul Tied”- Ashley Singh

I ran faster than I ever had before, feet pounding the stairs, throat burning with her name.

But I was too late. Too damn late.

She was already gone.

The rope still swung gently from the chandelier. So did she.

I stared, frozen. The signs had been there. She had been slipping. But I was too selfish. Too wrapped in my own world to stop her from falling out of hers.

I reached up, grabbed the rope, and began pulling her down. I didn’t even try to cut it. My hands moved on their own, shaking, slow, desperate. When I finally got her low enough, I wrapped my arms around her and collapsed to the floor with her in my lap.

I held her hand. I pressed it to my lips. I tried to fix her like she was something that could still be fixed.

“Hey,” I whispered, tapping her cheeks. “Wake up. Come on, trouble... wake up.”

She didn’t move.

At the door, her ghost stood watching me. Her eyes were empty.

“Sorry,” she said through tears. Her voice cracked. “I didn’t know how.” She stepped forward, sobbing. “I didn’t know how to stay.”

“No,” I whispered.

I shook my head.

“No.”

I couldn’t accept it. Not like this. Not her. I took her face in my hands, felt how still she was, pressed my ear to her chest. Nothing.

No heartbeat.

“You fucking promised!” I screamed into the room. “You promised you’d never leave me!”

I shook her. “How am I supposed to trust you now, Lenore? How am I supposed to trust anyone ever again?”

I broke.

My voice tore itself out of me. Screaming, shaking. My fists curled against her arms. She was gone. This time, the house had taken all of her.

I closed my eyes, and I felt her again, just beside me. Her touch brushed against my shoulder. Cold. Barely there.

“Burn it all,” she whispered. “Let me be the last thing you bury.”

My jaw locked. My vision blurred. I looked down at her. Her skin was losing its warmth. Her lips had already lost their color.

I removed the rope from her neck and picked her up. I carried her, step by step, down the stairs, into the bathroom. I laid her gently in the bathtub and turned on the water. It filled slowly, rippling around her limbs like it was trying to comfort her. She didn’t move.

I walked to the closet upstairs, hands trembling, and found the white dress. The one she always said she would wear for something special. This was the closest thing we had left to it.

Back in the bathroom, I washed her body. Every inch. I dried her off and dressed her in the white dress. Her wet, dark hair fell in strands across her face.

I lifted her once more.

Outside, in the garden, the roses were blooming. I laid her beside them like she was meant to be there all along. Against the wall, I kept a shovel for work I never liked doing. I grabbed it and began digging.

This was the place I buried everything that hurt.

And now I was digging it again.

My arms ached. My hands turned raw. The world blurred at the edges, but I kept going. I dug deeper than I ever had before. She was the last thing I had to bury.

When the hole was ready, I climbed out and lifted her in. I laid her gently in the grave, smoothing her dress, brushing the hair from her eyes.

I took off my necklace. The one with the little iron cross. I wrapped it around her hand. I had no coins for her eyes, nothing to offer the dead for safe passage. So I gave her two black buttons, tucked gently over her lids.

I climbed out.

I picked up the shovel again.

I scooped two piles of dirt and poured them over her, but I couldn’t go further. I dropped to my knees, the shovel slipping from my hand, and I broke apart right there.

The garden held my scream.

And the house stayed silent.

Of all the things I ever had to bury, she was my favorite.

Of all the things I had lost, she was the most loving.

Of all the people walking this cursed earth, she was the one I loved most.

And out of all the lives that could have been taken, why did it have to be hers?

But that’s life. It doesn’t choose fair. It doesn’t care. It takes the best things from you so someone else can keep going. It tears out your favorite page so another story can begin. That’s the circle, the cruel, hollow circle we call life.

She was sick, her mind fractured like shattered glass. But her heart? That was fire. Wild and full of love. She burned so brightly, and I had promised her that when it was time, I would bury her myself. I promised her she would rest in Gloomsbury and never have to run again.

She stayed this time, so I could go.

I understand that now.

The house always takes. It never gives. And she gave herself to it, so it would let me leave.

I poured the last atoms of my strength into the grave. My muscles screamed. My vision blurred. But I kept going until the last shovel of dirt settled over her body. When it was done, I collapsed beside the mound, dust clinging to my skin like grief.

“I never got to say I love you,” I whispered, my voice breaking. “But words mean nothing without you here to hear them.”

“I never got to say goodbye,” I cried, choking. “But goodbyes are for people who won’t meet again.”

“You were my life, Trouble. And how the hell am I supposed to live without my life?”

I wiped the tears from my face with dirt-caked hands and stood.

She made me promise.

Burn it all. Let no one else be trapped here. Let the ghosts sleep.

I walked to the barn and rolled out the Harley. Set the helmet on the front step. Found the fuel I had hidden long ago, just in case. Then I walked the perimeter, poured a trail from the yard to the kitchen, up the stairs, into every room. I soaked the walls and the floorboards.

The house watched me, creaking, breathing, almost alive. It knew what was coming.

I stood at the porch with a match between my fingers. One strike. The flame hissed to life.

I lit the trail.

And I watched the house go up in fire.

Before the roof caught, I grabbed the helmet and slid it on. In the visor’s reflection, all I saw was the burning house and smoke curling into the sky.

I sat on the Harley and turned the key. The engine roared to life. A single tear slipped down my cheek inside the helmet.

She told me once to be safe.

“You told me to come back safe. Baby, I’ve never been safe a day in my life.”

The only place I ever felt safe was in her arms.

I drove away.

At the front steps of the burning manor, I saw her. She stood hand in hand with her mother. Her father was beside them. Mine too. Even Shadow stood there.

And this time, I saw it clearly.

Shadow wore my face.

But I had chosen a different fate.

I chose to leave.

The Harley screamed down the road. I didn’t look back.

On my wrist, the clock buzzed.

11:11

They say that the number means new beginnings.

Maybe that was always the truth about us. Maybe I was her number one, and maybe she was never really mine. I chose others. Again and again. Until I had nothing left to choose but her memory.

They say you only understand what love is once you’ve lost it.

And I lost everything.

Now, in Gloomsbury Manor, where the dark things bloom, everything else is buried.

THE END