Life is like a big book. A book of happy stories and sad stories, and you have to live through both to figure out what it all means. If you’re lucky, you’ll get more happy ones than sad ones, but more often than not, you don’t. I really don’t care if you believe me or just simply pass what I’m about to tell you off as a nightmarish lie. You wouldn’t be the first.
I was 13. We lived in a small quiet town in Maine. My Dad always joked that it looked like something out of a Stephen King book. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, but I guess he wasn’t too far off. It was one of those sleepy towns that are kind of stuck in the 60’s forever. Rock fences lined dirt lanes that wound through orchard speckled fields. In autumn the scent of apple cider and cinnamon would waft through the air, and kids would spend the days getting chased out of the apple trees by farmers. There was a family that lived near us called the Finches. They were farmers too, but they only grew pumpkins, squash and sometimes Indian Corn. That autumn something bad happened to the Finches. That’s why it was so sad. Everybody said they were nice people, always jovial and kind. They had two kids: Chrissie and John. I never really knew Chrissie. She was older than me, 16 I think. One evening, Chrissie was helping her father harvest, when she got caught up in the equipment and was killed. Apparently, at least what the kids said, she was chopped to bits. Her Dad, Mr. Finch, couldn’t even recognize her afterwards.
I was too young to go to the funeral; that’s what my parents told me. So I stayed home when it happened. But, it didn’t matter. Everywhere you went in town people talked about it. Word spread like wildfire. Chrissie’s brother, John, was the only one I really ever saw afterwards. He always looked broken, like something deep inside had just snapped. All the parents told their kids not to talk about Chrissie, but we would still pass whispers to each other biking home at nightfall. It was then that the problems started.
I remember my dad coming home really late one evening. He looked tired and concerned. When my mom asked him what was wrong he just brushed it off. That night I woke up around 2:00 in the morning, the witching hour. A warm glow spilled out from under my bedroom door. I guessed, correctly, that my parents were having an “adult talk.” I got out of bed and listened carefully. My dad was talking about how the Finches were not tending the farm at all, and what a bad state it was in. This was strange because it was the beginning of the fall harvest. Before the accident, I would see them out there from dawn to nightfall, picking and weeding the fields. My dad said that Chrissie wasn’t letting them leave the house. You see, our town was very superstitious. It was the old kind of superstition; ghosts, bad luck, that kind of thing. The rest of the kids and I would spend cold winter nights just listening to the stories of the various spirits that haunted our valley. So, pretty much everybody took ghosts seriously. My dad said that whenever the surviving Finches would try to leave or go outside, Chrissie would prevent them from doing so. She would hurt them, even injure them if they tried. Dad said it was because it was Mr. Finch that accidentally caused the machine to malfunction, killing Chrissie. You heard talk like that if you listened to adults. That was also the first time I heard the word negligence. Everybody knew that Mr. Finch was a nice man. He had just messed up at the wrong time, and than couldn’t save the person in which it effected. That terrified me.
October blew through the valley like a ragged, frosty breath. It rattled through the maple leaves and sent skeletal fractures of ice through the streams. The days shortened, nights became longer. We were shadows among shadows. The devil’s month. That’s what Reverend Berry called it. I noticed in church the next week that there was a little sign-up sheet hung in the corner, a kind of help list I guess. People were signing up to bring food and supplies to the Finches because Chrissie wouldn’t let them leave. Chrissie’s ghost wouldn’t let them leave. I remember my mom putting her name on the list.
It was late one night, the 3rd of October I think, when I first saw her. Me and some friends were doing what kids do, causing a little bit of trouble. We had been hanging around the general store downtown, trying to convince the clerk that we were old enough to buy cigarettes. We were quickly told to move on. Not wanting to go home yet, we decided to ride our bikes around the surrounding fields. It wasn’t long until we had reached the lane that led to the Finches house. I remember one of my friends daring me to go up there. I refused. We began to get on our bikes again when we heard something. It was a cry. A sound more like that of a dying animal than one of a human. My blood went cold. It seemed as if the shadows around us had deepened a little and suddenly we realized how far we were from town. We took off into a nearby orchard. You see, there used to be this short cut through the Finches fields and you could shave off sometime by going that way to my house. I remember using it all the time after school. That would change after that night.
We had been running through the shadowy orchard for about 5 minutes when we heard the sound again. It was then that we saw her. A woman, lying, or rather writhing in the grass. It was Mrs Finch. She was scratching at her face, peeling at it. We could see chips of fingernails embedded in her cheeks. And then, there was the blood. So, so much blood. It looked like ink in the moonlight. Running over her face, coursing down her neck, bubbling out of her pores. And still she raked at her face, screaming. We stood over her, frozen. I vomited. I looked behind us, there was a figure standing there, about 20 feet away. Chrissie. We ran for help.
I remember days passing. I could never really bring myself to look at that field. The town doctor went to look at Mrs. Finch. He said that she had suffered a mental breakdown after the stress of the past few months. Doctors always said things like that. Everyone in town knew that it was Chrissie that had done it. People believed that Chrissie had been punishing Mrs Finch for trying to leave the house. The Finches never really came out anymore after that. John Finch didn’t even show up at school. All the adults in the town would mutter things like such a shame, its really too bad or I wonder what its like up there. I knew they didn’t care enough to go see.
Halloween came and went in a flurry of broomsticks and jack-o-lanterns. Winter set in with all its frozen glory, icing over the rivers and sending the first snowfall of the year. Something was seriously wrong with the Finches. Their crops rotted in the frosty fields, and their house stood like a phantom’s dark carcass. Still, they never came out. On dark nights I could see firelight coming from their windows over the hill. It was during those god forsaken hours that I thought most about them. Alone. Cold. Perpetually haunted by that girl. By Chrissie.
It was the 4th of November, an unusual cold day, even for Maine. It began to rain, which quickly turned into a heavy snow. The entire town gathered in the town hall to discuss the Finches. I knew most people there didn’t actually care what happened to them. They just came to display their “concern.”It kind of scared me. The town hall was a warm, wooden structure, lit by firelight. There was apple cider and somebody had baked a couple of pies. It didn’t seem like the right place to discuss a ghost, which was exactly, exactly, what they discussed. After they were finally done talking about Chrissie, they began to organize volunteers who were going to bring supplies to the Finches throughout the winter. This, like I said, freaked me out, because most of them were volunteering just because it made them feel good. Feel like they were doing something. I told my mom and dad that I needed fresh air, jumped on my bike and headed out in no particular direction.
As I rode along in the snow I thought about the meeting, the people, and the Finches. I realized that I was just as bad as the rest. I had never visited the Finches in their house, I had never comforted them or gone to Chrissie’s funeral. Sure, I thought about them a lot, maybe more than other people, but I had barely known them before the accident. Isn’t that how it is? It takes a tragedy for people to notice that you’re even there. I was suddenly disgusted with myself.
That’s when I made the decision. I rode along for about 10 more minutes until I arrived at the Finches house. It gets dark pretty early in Maine during the winter, so the sun was already beginning to set. The Finch house is up on a hill, so I could see the town about a mile or so below. It looked like a town in a snow globe, all covered in frost, the sun setting as smoke rose from the chimneys. Kinda comforting. I turned my back on it. The house was dark. No light came from the windows. I slowly walked up to the door. No one had opened it in a very, very long time. Dirt and snow crusted the handle and a bird had made some sort of a nest on top of the hinge. I knew I wouldn’t be able to open it.
I walked over to the side of the house where there was a window. It was the window that I could see from my bedroom, the one that I had stared at long into those autumn nights, wondering if they were doing the same. With some effort, I opened it and fell through. It was a bigger fall than I had expected, probably about five feet, and so I hit the ground hard. I realized it would be difficult to climb back out. Nevertheless, I got up and looked around. I was in a dining room of some kind but something was really, really wrong.
The table was cracked in half and parts of it were strewn around the room. The chairs were splintered and some were missing entirely. Despite this, there was a fire in the fireplace which cast an eerie glow over the entire scene. There was also food, tons of food, laid out on the parts of the table that were still standing. Candles were lit, but, as no one had watched them, wax had spilled out over the plates. This was obviously the last of their supplies, but why would they waste it like this? It looked like a feast, but one created for a dying king. That thought really, really scared me. I felt like I shouldn’t be there, shouldn’t be witnessing this. I ran back over to the window and began to climb out. I was almost out, when I heard a voice.
It was a voice that I recognized. One that I had heard ring out over the dawn landscape in the harvest time. Out of surprise, I fell back into the room. I looked up. The voice was coming from the shadowy side of the table, where even the firelight struggled to reach. There was a man, just sitting there. More like rotting there. He looked starved, despite sitting in front of all the food. A king that couldn’t join in his own feast.
“Don’t go yet,” it said. “You’ve barely arrived.” It was Mr Finch. He was still recognizable even in the shadows. I ran over to him, grabbed him by his shoulders and propt him up into a more comfortable sitting position. “Where are they?” I asked. “Where’s who?” the voice that was Mr. Finch answered. “Your wife and your son.” I felt like I needed to get them out of there. Out of that terrible house. “They’re at the feast,” he laughed. He coughed and as he did a little bit of blood came out. “It’s rude of you not to say hello to them,” he said. I looked down and saw Mrs Finch lying on the ground, her face half decomposed and her skin alive and boiling with a sea of maggots. Her guts lie on the ground beside her where some starving animal had burrowed into her. Near her, lay John. His neck was impaled by one of the turned over chair legs, obviously in some effort to escape from something. I looked back at Mr Finch. He had been attacked too. I now saw scratches all over him. They were dead or dying. All of them! But what had killed them? The ghost, Chrissie. She had done it. How could I have forgotten!
I shook Mr. Finches shoulders, tears of shock streaming down my face. “Where is she?!” I begged. “Where’s the ghost?” I struggled to breath. “We need to leave. We have to leave! We–” I looked back up at Mr Finch. He sat calm. Pensive. I thought for a minute that he had died too. Maybe he had. “Don’t you know, boy?” he answered. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” I didn’t understand. I began to stutter a reply but again he spoke, louder this time. “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS GHOSTS!” He began to laugh. A dry, hacking sound. It was painful to listen to. “THERE’S NO SUCH THINGS AS GHOSTS!” I noticed now, in the flickering light, that he was wet, covered in something. Oil? No…gasoline. He spoke softer this time. Almost kindly. “I’m sorry you have to see this.” I backed away. “I’m so very sorry.” He picked up something, a match. I ran to the window. “I’m SORRY!” he screamed. He lit it. “Tell them I’m sorry.” With that, he dropped the match.
Flame. Hot, searing flame. It ate him. His flesh began to burn. It melted off his bone. The fire was loud. So, so, loud. I choked as I inhaled the black smoke. Dizzy, I frantically scratched my way up through the window, falling out onto the dark snow. The world looked funny, spiraling out of my control as the fire consumed the house. Through the window, I made out his silhouette against the roaring flames. At his feet lay the dead. Angry tears streamed down my face. He was right. There was no such thing as ghosts. There never was one. Chrissie was rotting in her grave. It was always her father. He had been keeping them in that house, starving them, imprisoning them. He was the one in the orchard that night, and it was he out of grief, or guilt, or madness that murdered his wife and son. It was always him. Always.
I must have passed out because when I awoke, I was lying in a bed. I won’t trouble you with the conversation that would commence. But, the result was disbelief. No one believed me. No one. Not my parents, not the reverend, not anyone from the town. The truth is that people see what they want to see, they believe what they want to believe and in the end they don’t care who gets hurt because of it. They wanted to think that it was Chrissie’s ghost doing those things, imprisoning the Finches, killing them and burning the house. They didn’t want it on their conscience that they could have stopped a guilt riddled man from murdering his family. What killed Chrissie was nobody’s fault; what killed the rest of the family, that was everybody’s fault. Back then, it seemed like a simpler time, and the problems faced by the people in our small town seemed simpler too… or maybe it was just our dreadful blindness that just made it appear that way.
Because of that November I grew up too quickly. As soon as I could, I left that town. That God forsaken town with those God forsaken people.
So, take what you will from this. Believe me, don’t believe me, I really don’t care. You know what? I hope that you think I’m lying. I hope that you believe that I’m some sick and twisted guy that just wanted a good kick out of telling this. But, I’m not.