Sixteen years have passed now and II am out of time now. I am going to sit down and write down this story and implore you to read it and heed my warning. Always be respectful of the dead.
The summer of fourteen always has a vague sense of magic to it. For many, it’s the first time they ever truly felt the rebellion and longing for independence that entering puberty brings. Fourteen brings with a feeling of something like immortality, one can’t help but feel that that they are beyond consequence and that they alone are privy to some secret understanding of the world that everyone else especially the grown-ups lack. You also can’t help but feel like the entire world seems to be trying to strip you of your newfound freedom and independence.
Thatcher and I had been friends first. He and his family lived in the house across the street. Eventually, we befriended the sisters who lived in the house down the street. And for years it was just us Thatcher, Sophia, Ana and myself. And we grew up together playing in the streets, and running around the woods at the back of the estate.
Our fourteenth summer had been a rainy one and so the four of us had spent much of it indoors and very swiftly grew bored of books and board games and it was on one of those rainy days that we came up with our plan. Thatcher, Sophia, Ana and I we’d been friends practically since we could walk. We’d gone through so much together, we spent every single day together and somewhere over the years, our friendship began to turn into something darker. Something more like an obsession. And so when my parents informed me that they would be sending me to boarding school, we knew we couldn’t let that happen. I begged my parents not to send me away but they had already made up my mind and only offered the usual cliches of “it’s for the best, son.” To our adolescent minds, the prospect of being apart even for the short months of the term was cruelty and injustice of the highest order. We began to brainstorm ways to get out of the situation. We briefly flirted with the idea of killing my parents; ways that ranged from butchering them as they slept and putting the blame on one of the hobos who slept in the trailer park to messing with the gas mains and making it look like an accident. We dismissed that idea, not for any moral reason but because we realised that I would most likely be sent to live with my grandparents in Edinburgh and so we would be ripped apart anyway.
I won’t tell you the name of our little town but I will tell you it’s not a very pretty name. But believe me when I say that it’s the most beautiful place on earth; a quaint friendly little town in northern England. A deep forest sits in the north and it was in these woods that we spent most of our time. Every day Thatcher would toss a stone at my window and I would run down to join them. We were desperate never to leave our little town but we realised that if we wanted to stay together we wold have to abandon it. And after we toyed with the idea of perhaps just killing one of my parents or even maiming myself, both were shut down and so we came up with another idea. We decided we would run away together perhaps to London, anywhere where we could live our own lives and no one would be able to tell us what to do. But what we needed to make this plan work was money. My parents while generous with my allowance hardly gave me enough to start a new life in a different part of the country. And that’s when Sophia came up with the plan. Looking back now, I curse myself for not taking them out of it, I know that If I had things would have been different.
We’d all heard the story growing up, everyone in the town knew it. The story goes that a hundred years ago a small wedding party was celebrating in the fields and there was much sound revelry and fiddle playing when they were fell upon by armed highwaymen who demanded to be given all of the wedding gifts and when they were refused the slew every member of that wedding party. However, that night as they revealed in the spoils they heard the distant sounds of a wedding procession being lead by a fiddle player. Only one of the highwaymen escaped and he was never the same man again and spent the rest of his life a babbling mess. The story goes that once every thirteen years, thirteen for the thirteen guest, the murdered wedding party walks the earth again looking for that one who escaped them all those years ago and if they catch you, you will be forced to wander the earth with them for all eternity. The only way to escape their wrath was to keep your doors unlocked and leave a set table for them, the dead would come in and feast while you would be up in bed all safe and sound.
In our adolescent arrogance, we thought our plan ingenious. We laughed at the superstitious townsfolk, we thought they were foolish for giving up their belongings for an old wives tale, and we thought them childish for believing in ghosts. Our plan was to dress up as a wedding party and led by Thatcher who was quite skilled with the fiddle would have our own ghost parade and we would go into people’s houses what we could find and use it to fund at least the start of our new lives together. I see now that it was a cruel, foolish and vain plan, we’d have been better if we’d just stayed indoors like good little children. Hell, we’d have been better of if we’d gone with the original plan of axe murdering my parents. But hindsight’s a bitch, eh?
That midsummer night I lay in bed feigning sleep. It had to be tonight, after all the original wedding party was murdered on 24th June all those years ago. My father came in for a moment, he always worked late and most days we’d only really catch these fleeting glimpses of each other. He paused for a moment studying my apparently sleeping former before stepping outside and closing the door. I sit in bed realising that if all went off as planned that would be the last time he’d ever see me. I almost felt guilty, I almost wanted to run to my parents and confess everything. But I knew I couldn’t. I couldn’t allow myself to be sent away.
I lay in bed and waited for my cue. I waited so long I was half asleep when it came and I almost missed it. A sharp rap sounded against the window pane that made me start violently. I stumbled out of bed and went to my window and looked out. The moon was almost painfully that bright and everything was awash in silver light, I saw Thatcher standing on the street. He saw me too and in greeting tossed another pebble up at my window.
There was no grandiose escape, I never tied my bedsheets today and used them to shimmy out the window. I simply got out of bed, walked down the stairs and out the kitchen door. The night air was warm and almost sickeningly sweet with all the smells of summer. I didn’t look back at the dark house as I walked away for what I thought would be the last time. Thatcher grinned at me looking almost ghoulish in the moonlight as silently we made our way through the dark empty streets until we came to the town line.
The moonlight meant we had no trouble making our way through the woods. But even if it had been a moonless night, it would have made no difference we have spent so much time in these woods we could make our way through it blindfolded. Still, in silence, we made our way through the clearing where the others waited.
We went mad we laughed and laughed and laughed drunk on our youth, and our brilliance. We went about our plan running through the streets serenaded by Thatcher and his fiddle, we laughed and jeered, knocking at windows. The houses, of course, were unlocked and easily enough we went into them one by one.
We were far too excited to even consider the delectable meals spread out on the tables. Instead, we nicked the silverware and rifled through drawers. And just for just the simple cruel fun smashed chairs and windows and overturned tables.
Mad with our success we stumbled back to our little clearing in the woods. We laughed and drank and danced and ran around the clearing. Before finally collapsing on the soft grass. We talked of all the fun we would have once we escaped and all the great things we would do. At one point I leapt up startling the others.
A feeling that I realised was dread was beginning to set in, and I couldn’t shake it. No matter what I tried I couldn’t shake it. I remained painfully alert as though waiting for something horrible to happen. Everything around me even the familiar shapes of trees seemed sinister and threatening. Their huge forking shadows seemed to reach out to grope us.
The others had fallen silent until Thatcher broke the silence. He rose from the grass, “Do you hear that?” For a moment I heard nothing but then it came to me, the sounds of laughter carried on the breeze accompanied by the jovial sounds of a fiddle. I felt as though the child of the Styx was making its way through my veins. The laughing echoed in my ears, it wasn’t kind or joyful. It was a sort of laughter that was somewhere between sobbing and sadistic joy and it was getting closer.
We all froze looking at each other. Somewhere above us the moon went out smothered by dark clouds and in the darkness, I heard Thatcher’s voice, “Run.” We did. I tripped over tree roots and had my felt branches rip at the flesh of my face until at last, I broke the tree line, I came to my house and collapsed a hysterical sobbing mess at my front door. My parents heard me and came. They comforted me and washed away the blood and they asked what happened but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get the words out.
The next morning the news broke- that Thatcher, Ana and Sophia had gone missing. Of course, I was questioned and though at first, I held out I would eventually confess everything, our plan, what we had done everything. The police came to the conclusion that they had ditched me and made their way to London without me. I knew this wasn’t true and that they would never abandon me unless they had no choice. Even when the London police gave up searching they came up with other explanations, perhaps the three of them had gone else where perhaps even to France? But I knew that they were no longer on this earth. I withdrew into myself, and in time I was almost happy to go to boarding school.
I never gave up hope that we’d be together again. Even when the police and their parents gave up searching, I knew that someday I would be with them again. My only regret is that I let us get separated all those years ago. Perhaps if I had tried to find them instead of running away blindly we would never have been separated even for these past few years. And when another thirteen years went past I waited in the middle of the clearing for them but they didn’t show I walked home alone and almost mad with heartbreak. I felt betrayed and abandoned till later I almost slapped myself at my stupidity.
Of course, now it would be longer than thirteen years before they returned. Of course, because now there were no longer just thirteen in that wedding party, now there were sixteen and it would be sixteen years before they returned to earth.
That day has come and now my waiting is over. Outside my window, I hear the laughter and the fiddle. A stone bounces off my window and I hear Thatcher calling. I am happy now because in away we’re going to get what we wanted. We get to be together for all eternity.