Young Writers Society

A/N: This is part two of Wilting, a little shorter than the rest. 

 It had been three months since the day I met Luke Erstill. Every day, I would wait for her and when she came, she let me learn so much about her. It felt wonderful to be able to get to know someone again, to listen to their experiences and somehow imagine being there yourself. She told me her best and worst moments, making me think about the world I couldn’t see. No, letting me live the world beyond the graveyard.

Luke Erstill was an only child. Her name was not a mistake made by her parents upon the signing of her birth certificate. She was named after the couple’s favorite biblical evangelist, St. Luke and it was the name given supposedly to her older brother who died at child birth. What was her personality you ask? When she was younger, she was so shy that she would rather hide behind her mother’s skirt than say hello to a long lost aunt of a third cousin of some sort. She was bullied too, because of her name and this; she had to spend quite some time to understand why. Later, she owned her bullies’ respect by showing them just how talented she was, though she bore the name of a boy. She knew how to dance ballet and play the piano. For caution, she also knew how to fight, martial arts she called it. She was funny and smart. Imaginative, charming and mysterious.

Her parents were divorced when Luke turned six, leaving her to the custody of her mother and regular visitations from her father. Like what she said when we first met, her earliest memories were set in the graveyard. It was in the graveyard where her father taught her Latin and Medieval stories. The two of them would usually have adventures there as well, collecting charcoal engravings that mostly held Latin quotes. Those happy afternoons ended when her father died of a heart attack just a week before we met. This old town by the sea was her father’s home town and this was where Luke’s mother decided to rest his remains. They came here to bury the corpse and stay until February.

And what did I tell her in return? I told her the twisted version of my tale. I said I was from a wealthy family but when I discovered a different calling for being the guardian of the dead, I was disowned.

I told her I had a normal education but when I turned fifteen, (the same time I wanted a job involved with undertaking and gravedigging) I started juggling my responsibilities at law school and learning more of undertaking. Later, I knew I could no longer do it when my health started faltering. This led to my family’s discovery of my morbidity and sadly, my disownment. I began living in this graveyard as its caretaker for three years now, knowing all the graves.

Did I forget to mention that I was a flawless liar and actor? Now you know.

But as the weeks turned to months, all my lies had begun to take its toll on my soul. I started feeling sheer guilt and later, sorrow because I could see that Luke slowly trusts me.

I sat here on the concrete bench in the mausoleum where we always meet, as I contemplated on those things. She just left today, saying she’ll be back tomorrow with a new story for sure.

“I see that you haven’t lost your acting abilities, Malcolm Churchill,” I hear a familiar voice behind me say. I turned around to face him.

“What do you want, Edward?” I asked him.

“It’s not about what we want, Malcolm,” another voice said, this time to my right. I turned to see another friend of mine, Charles.

“Then what?”

“It’s what you’re doing to the girl, Malcolm,” Elliot said, emerging in front of me.

My three best friends surrounded me that moment in my mausoleum. They were of different ages for they all died at different times. Edward being the oldest and I, being the youngest who died. And yes, I noticed they kept on saying my name as if to ridicule me because I barely hear it now.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

These three were my closest colleagues: Edward Castellan, Charles Smith and Elliot Roberts. We were classmates at Law school, and by some ironic trick of fate, we all ended up buried in the same graveyard. Perhaps this is what the current generation would call best friends forever, in a literal sense.

“Malcolm, we’re dead. Not stupid,” Elliot said, crossing his arms over his chest. “We know that you wake up as early as three in the afternoon just to see your lady love.”

“She is not my lady love,” I said. Realizing my submission, I just went on with it. “Alright, yes I have a friend, but I don’t see what’s wrong with that.”

“Are you seriously asking us that?” Charles said with his usual condescending tone. “It’s like you haven’t been dead long enough to see that what you’re doing is wrong!”

“What is so wrong?!”

“You’re making her fall in love with you, simpleton!”

I was surprised at this. “I am not—“

“That’s not the only problem, you’re going to break her heart when she finds out she’s been longing for a dead man,” Edward interjected.

Hearing this from Edward made me think twice. He had a successful relationship with his wife and children to say a few things about women and their feelings. I understood my friends’ concern for the girl. I wasn’t a devoted lover during my lifetime to know what true loyalty or sacrifice was. Thus, I broke too many hearts with this vice.

“How long have you known?” I calmly asked them.

“Since the second day,” Elliot said. “We didn’t stop you from becoming friends with her because we thought that you still loved Victoria, until now.”

I did know a little about loyalty and sacrifice when Victoria came into my life and loved me. And I had truly loved her in return. She was the last woman I was with before she watched me die of a high fever. At least I could say that the last year of my life was worthwhile. Unfortunately, the last I heard from her was that she married a business man, then later, died by his hand.

There were rumors that she, all the while, blamed my death for her misfortunes. She blamed me for leaving her; she cursed my soul for leaving her. I wanted to forget her, but doing so would mean throwing away every last happy memory I still had of the life I wasted. So I pretended I didn’t know of her anger. I just spent the last two hundred years acting as if I still treasured those sweet afternoons instead of regretting them. This is why, I believe, my friends think I still love her to this day.

“That and it was adorable how you two courted each other,” Edward said, breaking my morose contemplation. I silently thanked him with a smile for that. “It was like watching Much Ado About Nothing.”

Elliot rolled his eyes at him and nodded. “Yes, it was entertaining to watch but later we noticed that the playfulness of the moment would often end in a sweet silence that you two would fill by looking at each other. Obviously, your eyes tried to say something no word could satisfy…”

They fell silent, waiting for my reply. I gave them none. They didn’t need one.

“You must find out,” Charles said as he patted my shoulder gently. “Then later, do what you think is best.”

I nodded sullenly. I knew what they meant and what they expected me to do, if worse comes to worst.