Page 89 of Grave Possession (Grave #2)

Bellamy

Easy - Son Lux

Fourteen years prior

For two weeks, I’ve been secretly coming to the Corpsewood Hospital, visiting a young woman who’s in a coma.

Another adolescent life Archer Bennett is responsible for destroying.

I overheard him on the phone in his office the night of the accident.

Which of his lackeys he was talking to, I couldn’t try to guess.

He has the entire town and surrounding area in his back pocket, including the local police.

However, the tone in his voice suggested his plan didn't play out the way he wanted it to. Naturally, anything that rattles my father has my full attention. I snuck in after he’d left, easily spotting the manila envelope on the mahogany desk, containing the full police report.

Jessie Prescott was meant to die alongside her family that night.

After seeing pictures of the grotesque scene, it’s a miracle she didn’t.

The burgundy SUV had been hit by a much larger vehicle, pushing it over the bluff off the highway.

It was found suspended on its side in a crop of trees along the partially frozen river.

Her mother and father were declared dead at the scene, their bodies bent at inhuman angles.

Her younger brother, suspected of not wearing a seat belt, was reported missing.

A trail of blood across the snow and ice lead to where the water was still open and raging, an immediate cause for concern.

Search parties were organized and quickly dispatched.

Severely injured, possibly delirious, and acting on instinct, the teenage boy could have opened the door to exit the vehicle, causing him to fall the many remaining feet to the river bed.

Jessie was found unconscious but with a heartbeat, her small frame suspended by the seat belt she had been wearing above the wide open rear passenger door.

I don't know why the urge to go to her was there, it was like an immediate and forceful tug on a tether. I’d never met her, and until that night, I knew nothing of her family.

Halfway to the hospital, I realized I couldn’t just walk in and demand to see her.

Archer would surely find out his son was barking orders at hospital staff over a girl he wanted dead.

Her family and friends would undoubtedly be suspicious of a twenty-one year old man they didn’t know showing up to see her, with nothing to say… because what could I possibly say?

After arriving that night, I just sat. Lingering in that desolate waiting room outside her door, allowing my thoughts to wander.

I watched as her loved ones came and went, uncomfortable emotions stirring inside me.

They get to see her face, while I remain in this intolerable chair, jealousy antagonizing me over a girl I’d never heard of before.

I remained vigilant, both content and on the edge of my seat simultaneously. Momentarily graced with the sight of her in the small cluster of seconds when the door would swing open.

I’m no one to them, or the poor girl laying in that hospital bed.

I’m just a stranger they walk past during visiting hours on their way in and out.

If they’ve noticed me sitting in the waiting room everyday, they don’t spare a second glance.

Too clouded by their own grief and despair to focus on anything or anyone around them.

They likely assume I’m here to visit someone else, possibly hoping for another patient in the ICU to get some good news.

With the hood of my black-washed sweater pulled partially over my face, I look like a young man trying to hide his visible emotions from the world… and some days I am.

To avoid being caught, I spent the first three days after finding that envelope learning and making a mental schedule of when Jessie’s friends and family would come to visit. How in the hell could I, in any way, explain who I am and why I’m here? What a shit show that would be.

Her grandparents, the only living family she has left, sit by her side every morning.

They rarely speak to her, some days they say nothing at all.

Maybe they believe she can’t hear them, or maybe they don’t know what to say.

Their lives have also been changed forever.

Burying their daughter and son-in-law would be enough to debilitate anyone.

But with a severely injured and missing grandson, and their only granddaughter in a coma, I’m surprised they even have the mental capability to get out of bed.

I’ve never fully seen their faces, but through the small openings in the dull white blinds, I can see the shake in their hands as they reach to hold hers, the occasional trembling of their shoulders telling me all I need to know about the couple’s emotional state.

From where I sit, the faint shuffling and mumbles of hushed words make their way to me through the closed door.

Luckily, during their evening rounds, the doctors and nurses speak freely with the door wide open.

Uncaring of the statue that’s taken up residence in this heinous chair for the past fourteen days.

Which means… I don't have to wait for the middle-aged receptionist to take her smoke break before sneaking behind her desk to see Jessie’s status report.

A young man about her age shows up in the late afternoon, never closing the door behind him.

I’ve started to wonder if he’s scared to be alone with her, or possibly worried someone won’t hear her if she wakes.

He didn’t speak to her for the first few days, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pissed at him for it.

At first, he entered as though he was nervous about what he may find inside.

Now, he strolls in as though it’s any other ordinary day, carelessly tossing his coat at the foot of her hospital bed and dropping his scrawny ass into the chair beside her.

He talks non-stop about everything she’s missed out on: school, hockey games and practices, all the latest high school drama and gossip.

Having just passed his driver’s test the same day of the accident, the young man vows to take Jessie anywhere she wishes, as long as it’s far away from Corpsewood.

They can escape this damned city and all the darkness that looms over its citizens, all she has to do is wake up.

He begs whoever’s listening for his best friend back, promising to protect her at all costs, going as far as offering his own soul up for exchange.

His pleading cries echo through the hollow hallway I sit in.

Lingering like ghosts, they ring in my ears long after he leaves.

Her delicate hand lies in mine as I listen to the machines attached to her beep and whirl, the sound tightening that newly awakened place in my chest. Landon was her age when I held his lifeless body against mine.

Bullet holes littered his chest, leaking his blood into a pool beneath us that’s quickly carried away by the heavy rain.

Our father turned his back on us both as he slid into the Escalade.

I made a silent promise to our estranged sister that night; she would never suffer the same fate, nor know the immoral wrath of our father.

Is my heart aching because Jessie reminds me of my dead brother?

Could it be that she reminds me of Mallory?

At the end of day the answer to that question doesn’t matter.

I keep telling myself that I won’t be coming back…

that there’s no reason for me to be here.

I don’t know this damn girl, and it’s better if it stays that way.

The farther away I get from her, the safer she’ll be.

Best-case scenario is she wakes up and that boy takes her to the furthest reaches of this country.

With a slight smile on my lips, I wonder what she would look like happy, laughing with her friends, in a loving home with two living parents.

What would she look like with her long copper hair down and free, the sun kissing the freckles on her cheeks, her full lips curved in a grin, a spark of life in her eyes?

… whatever colour they may be. The warmth I had been feeling vanishes, realization barreling into me because she doesn’t have a family to go home to.

I’ll never see the colour of her eyes, and those moments of pure happiness are ones she will have to work hard for.

She doesn’t know it yet; how much stronger she will need to become in order to survive, just to have some semblance of a normal life.

I don't know if she can hear me, but I pray that somewhere deep in her subconscious every word I’ve said is received and remembered.

I’ve pleaded to any god that will listen that she wakes up, and when that day comes she takes that boy’s offer, running as far away as possible.

She can’t return to these horrors, they’ll incapacitate a beautiful girl like her, ripping her apart from the inside.

She doesn’t deserve to lose any more pieces of herself as punishment for whatever involvement her parent’s had with Archer Industries.

Her wings may have small tears now, but they could still carry her away. A life here will rip them off, leaving her to starve and succumb to the predators.