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Sarah didn’t believe in ghosts; that’s what she told anyone when the subject came up. Her reasons were many, but ultimately came down to faith. “After death, the judgment,” as the book of Hebrews says. She was engaged to a man of faith, yet he differed on this point: “I grew up in a haunted house,” he would insist, “I can’t deny the experiences I’ve had.”
The disagreement came up in pre-marital counseling, but it was never a hill to die on for either of them. They were in love, and ghosts had very little place in that ever modernizing world. His haunted house and the woods surrounding it had been leveled a decade prior to make room for the city’s expansion northward. Its ghosts, if ever there were any, went along with it.
He used to be a goth, obsessed with metal and horror films and all things macabre. She was a church girl: kind, sweet, and too feeling for her own good. Her friends knew that hers was a shoulder to cry on no matter what. In that way, as he awakened to the pleasantness of life, she was awakening to its shadows. Despite it all, however, still she was sweet; still she was kind.
A few months before they were to be wed, she got the call: her best friend’s sister had taken her own life.
No one saw it coming.
“She was always so happy!”
“She had such a wonderful life!”
“She took the coward’s way out,” the sister’s opinion.
They had grown up together, gone to church together, laughed together, and cried together. Yet in that moment, Sarah had no words of comfort for her friend. Any talk of “mysterious ways” and “the good plans of God” seemed shallow and false in the face of such tragedy.
And so it was that many nights were spent in tearful waiting, hearing out her friend’s grievances against the world and God. And really, what was there to say? Where the words of the ancient scriptures had failed to soothe, was there really any hope that she might do better?
All she could do was be the shoulder and let the tears fall, even as her friend descended deeper into despair.
“You need a vacation.” Her fiancé.
The wedding was but a month away, and there was so much more work to be done, but yes, yes she most certainly needed a vacation.
He picked a place far away, distant and beautiful, and so well removed that the city’s problems were guaranteed to melt away. And so they did.
For the first time in months, Sarah laughed and ran and let her mind run free as they explored the far reaches of an untouched wilderness. They two were together, and the other was all that each of them knew.
The day grew old and the sun blazed the sky. Magic hour. They stumbled from the woods into a forgotten cemetery.
“Oh ho! Perfect! Let’s get your picture and see what sort of strangeness comes out when we get it developed!”
Sarah was not amused.
“Stop! You’re walking on someone’s grave.”
“I’m sure they won’t mind!” But he knew his efforts would be fruitless. “I just want to look around a bit, ok?”
“Just tread lightly. I think it’s disrespectful to come and gawk at them like this…”
They strolled among the stones— here a child, there a husband and wife joined in death after 20 years apart… she had gone first.
“I wouldn’t want to live 20 years without you,” he said.
Sarah agreed, but something caught her eye. “What’s that?”
He looked: a tall figure in the trees. He approached it with caution, and saw: “looks like an old refrigerator! I guess this area had houses around more recently than the last century, huh?”
He turned back to Sarah, and her gaze seemed a thousand miles away.
He reached for his camera. She spoke.
“He’s right. I don’t want to go down this road.”
The crickets began to chirp again, and the wind rattled the trees.
She looked at him: “let’s go, ok?”
He was quiet for a moment, but nodded. They departed the graveyard in reverence.
“Asked God what to think of ghosts, huh?”
She nodded.
“Any word from the Man Himself?
“I already said it, ‘you don’t want to go down that road.’”
He considered.
“You saw something, didn’t you?”
Sarah walked ahead. She would never be sure except for on the darkest of nights when the soul holds no secrets from itself, but it did not matter.
Sarah could never help the girl in the graveyard. That book was open and shut; that story was told.
The living, they’re the ones who need saving.