The Ghost Girl Chronicles

The Evil Hearts of Trees

The dead do not exist in the same world we do. Though their remains are tied to the earth, there is a different time and place that exists alongside ours, a place that few can ever see, never know.

When Crazy Girl fell victim to the monster, she was too frightened at first to do anything but lie in her body in the earth. In her mind her heart still beat, she still breathed, even after her body had long grown cold. As her mind quieted, these illusions disappeared and she began to ponder her situation.

In between periods of quiet and awareness, she would remember the last horrible moments that occurred before she took her last breath. What followed was a nothingness that confused her. She must be alive but what was she doing in his cold, dark place?

One day she suddenly rose from the earth and saw her surroundings. She gazed through a small window at a world that was no longer hers.

"How could I be here?" she thought, "One minute that white man was picking me up, and now I'm here--I'm dead," she realized, the horror of it overcoming her, "I don't know how, but I'm dead."

Every so often a paunchy man with stringy hair would come downstairs and look at the mound of earth that held her remains and smile. She did not know who he was, or if she did, she did not remember.

One day she'd had it with his gloating."Go away, I don't want you here. You're evil." A jar flew off a shelf and hit him in the head. She did not know what she had done, but tried again and found she could move objects with her mind.

She resigned herself to being alone when he brought another girl dangling limply in his arms to the basement. Crazy Girl closed her eyes until he'd finished with her, then watched as he dug another grave and dumped in the girl's body as if she were no more than a bag of garbage.

Crazy Girl knelt by her, waiting. Days passed, but the girl finally found her way out of the earth, gasping as if she were breathing, and looked at Crazy Girl with fear in her eyes.

"Don't be afraid," she told her, but it had been so long since she had spoken that her words did not make sense. Eventually, though, she could make herself understood, and found that looking after the new girl gave her purpose, and she no longer felt so desperately alone. She could even ignore the white light glowing in the corner, enticing her, trying to lure her into surrendering herself, giving up the earthly existence that had become her life

Someone was calling her name. Mariah paused for a moment, listening. The voice was familiar, as if out of a dream. She heard it again, then found herself in the basement.

"I heard something," she told Crazy Girl, "My name being called, something was calling my name.

"I know," Crazy Girl replied,  " She came here looking for you." And if you tell me you don't know who it is, you know you're lying.

"She can't be here, she can't. We weren't told when we had to leave. We were sent here for the girls, that's all."

"Girl, if I could die, I'd swear you were gonna be the death of me. You think that maybe we've stayed here too long when we're supposed to be leaving? We weren't supposed to stay after the girls were gone."

"I'm not ready to leave, we haven't finished what we're supposed to do, not yet. We were supposed to get justice for them, that hasn't happened,"

"I think we have, you're just too stubborn to let go of that boy. You haven't been listening and she's trying to get you to pay attention. You've got to listen, and soon, or she'll go after that boy, and if he gets hurt you got no one but yourself to blame."