Mary

  The first time I visited Mary’s house, was when we both attended kindergarten. She was six years old and I was five.
She showed me her room, and I remember the plethora of toys she possessed; not just Barbie, but small miniature cars,
space crafts, Lego and all sorts of weird toys I had never seen before.
  She told me her father worked at a toy factory and that he was some sort of tester. It really was a room where
dreams would come true for any five year old. We’d play all day until Mary’s mother would call from downstairs.
Then we’d go down to eat lunch. I remember Mary was always reluctant to leave the room, and it would often
happen I was left walking down the old, spirally stair by myself. It creaked on every step and I always remembered
it as eerie. Not seldom, her mother had to go upstairs and carry her down, and sometimes Mary would start a fit,
start screaming like mad and her body would convulse as if she were on fire. On those occasions I would quietly take
my leave and walk the mile that separated our houses.

  The house were Mary lived was really old, “almost two hundred years” she had once whispered to me. That
was one of the weird things about Mary; she would always start whispering when we got inside the house. Outside
she was like any other girl, loudmouthed and giggly.
  Then she started school and I was not due until the following year. We lost contact during this time and I had
almost forgotten about her when I got a nudge in the back, two days into my first school year.

  “Hi, Pete! You're also in school! That’s so cool! Come, I’ll show you around.” She’d grabbed my arm and started
talking to me as if we had seen each other every day for the past year. We started playing again, but she was
reluctant to bring me home to her house. She said it was “being renovated… or whatever that means… ”. At
the time, I had NO idea what that meant, but it sounded important, and so we played at my house or in the
surrounding woods.
  One day we had decided to meet in the woods by the old tree house to play. I was a bit early and so I decided to
play a small prank on Mary. I would hide behind a large tree, close to where I knew Mary would come walking, and
when she did I would leap out in front of her and scream.
  I saw her coming and prepared myself, this would be fun. I took a deep breath and when she was just about
to pass me by, I jumped out, screaming at her from the top of my lungs.
  The reaction I got from her was unexpected. I had expected her to scream, fall backwards, shut her eyes or
even faint; what I didn’t expect was for her to freeze up like a stick. I will never forget those eyes; those vitreous
eyes, staring at me in pure horror, her face pale. Then she asked me in a whisper, and when I think about it today,
it still chills me, “Are you dead too?”.
  I was so surprised, I had stupidly told her that I wasn’t, and sourly that, “dead you can be yourself!”.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the meaning of her words, as they made no sense at all.

  Time went by and Junior High went like a breeze. I became of an age where girls were more than just an annoyance.
My father got a job in another part of the country and my family moved away. I started high school and Mary, she just
faded from my memory like a yellowing page in a book. I started college, began dating, had my first car, my first drink
and was half a year from graduation when I happened upon Mary. I was waiting for my parents and my kid sister to
come pick me up. My bags were all packed and I was really looking forward to spending the next week in sunny
Gran Canaria. Standing outside campus, purifying my breath as best I could from cigarette smoke – my parents would
have killed me if they knew -, waiting for the ride to the airport, I thought I saw a familiar face walking by on the other
side of the street. It was Mary. I gave a shout, and she looked up from her books, all surprised.

  “Pete! How nice to see you again! How long has it been? fifteen, sixteen years?” she smiled at me.
I laughed and told her she might be exaggerating a bit, but time really flew by, she was right about that.
"One morning you’re in kindergarten and the next you’re about to start your career." I joked. We talked on for a while
and laughed about old times. Then I started to notice how Mary would sometimes lose focus. Her gaze traveled beyond
me and she would lose track of the conversation. The third time that she lost focus I got worried for her and asked her
if she was alright. She looked at me, and I got that eerie feeling that I had gotten once before when I was a kid and she
had frozen up.
  “I’m sorry they’re all dead, Pete. It must be hard for you?” she seemed sad.
I felt uncomfortable under her gaze and her strange eruption of words, “Who’s dead?” I asked, confused.

  She jumped, and blinked as if caught off guard. I repeated, “Who’s dead?”. She looked at me, and then she looked as
if behind me. She did this twice before her focus stayed on me. For a while she just stared at me, then her eyes
became moist and tears were rolling down her cheeks. She put her hands over her eyes and turned away, her cries
becoming louder and louder. Then she ran.
  I was confused and couldn’t think of anything to do but to repeat my question to her running back, “Who’s dead!?”

“They’re all dead!” she screamed behind her tears, running out of sight.

I was confused. I went back to waiting for my ride. My bags were packed, and sometimes I get this odd feeling, they have
been packed for a very long time.

Morning News          , August 21, 2007
A tragic car accident claimed the life of four people when the vehicle they were traveling in was hit by a tractor-trailer
truck. The truck driver, a 48-year-old man, supposedly under the influence of alcohol, came over on the wrong side
of the road.
“They didn’t stand a chance. It all went so fast they didn’t even have time to break. They were dead on impact, whole family
wiped out just like that” says Officer William Parker. “We found airplane tickets; supposedly they were on their way to Gran
Canaria on holidays.”


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