May 16th
This one happened just recently, earlier this year. It's about a young man named Victor who was 18 years old. Back then he went to Maraheim High, it was his last week before graduation to be precise. He didn't know what he wanted to do after high school and he took each day for what it was. He was quite popular at school but he could never really appreciate it. In fact he had a hard time finding joy in anything and usually just did things because they were expected of him. This led him to have angry outbursts every now and then, when he felt too much pressure. This story begins on Monday, May 16th this year.
“Hey Victor! Are you coming to the party this weekend?”. Benjamin asked. “By the lake, was it?” Victor replied, without making any eye contact. “Yeah, down by the shoreline”. Benjamin confirmed, wondering about why Victor’s being so distraught. “I’ll be there.”, Victor said, still apathetically staring at the wall in front of him.
“Alright!” Benjamin said with a final glance at Victor before leaving class. Class had been dismissed but Benjamin was still deeply lost in thought. The source of his torment was that he had been in a fight with Jessie, a sophomore girl two years younger than him. A few months earlier she had told him that she was pregnant and that she was planning on keeping the baby. This took Victor off-guard and throughout the semester he avoided contact with her, hoping that the ‘problem’, as he saw it, would disappear by itself. Well, it didn’t, and last night they had a verbal fallout when he had decided to visit her and force her to abort the baby. No matter how much he yelled at her, even threatening her with physical violence, she didn’t budge on her decision to keep the child. Before leaving he told her that he would not have anything to do with the baby and that he would deny parentage and that he wouldn’t accept any paternity tests being made. Needless to say he was furious when he left and Jessie was devastated.
On his way home from Jessie’s, Victor took through Gaiman park on his bike, with moonlight illuminating the crawling mist around him on this surprisingly gloomy night. He thought to himself that this was because of the emotional cataclysm that he’s experiencing now, since the whole situation with Jessie seems frustratingly out of his control. Another thing he reacted to was that there weren’t any people in the park at this hour. It’s not unusual to see people walking their dogs, young people making out, homeless people looking for food in the bins and the local drunks affirming each other’s misery by blaming an unfair society while devouring can after can of the cheapest beer they could find. Not a single person could be seen, except for a woman in a white dress that seemed to be walking aimlessly along the river bank. Was she crying?
“Nevermind.”, Victor thought and couldn’t care less because he had his own severely conflicted mind to deal with. As he got out of the park and into the suburban area of Toyama street he found that pretty much every house had gone dark but one, where he could see a middleage woman gazing at the ocean waves at the end of the horizon, bathing in the dim light of a candle, as she’s been doing every night for about a year as he can recall. She often keeps to herself and people are prone to talk about her reluctance to accept that her late husband Mr. Lewis is not coming back. He was expected to return from the sea around this time last year, but still no sign of him or his crew aboard the trawler named Maria Celeste. Victor used to feel sorry for her but now he can’t help but think that she should get over it and move on.
When he got home he parked his bike on the driveway next to the car, leaning it against the house. He snuck into his home, certain that everyone’s fast asleep by this hour. The lamp in the corner of the hall was the only active source of light inside the house. He took off his shoes and quickly went upstairs to his room to make himself ready for bed. He wanted nothing more than to sleep and get this day over with. After all, the next day would be the first day of the last week in high school and he wanted to be rested enough to make the best of it. As he was nearly ready for bed he heard a chilling, yet familiar, sound from outside his window; a woman crying. He went over to the window to take a look and saw a woman in a white dress walking along the sideway past his house, crying. Was it the same woman as from the park? It sure seemed like it, but only this time he’s feeling a discomfort building up inside of him. He’s pretty sure he’s never seen her around here before. “Why is she here? Why is she crying?” he thought to himself. He wanted to call out for her and ask why she’s crying but as he tried, his lungs seemed to close up enough to not provide the required amount of air to make a sound. There was a creeping sensation of dread filling him up from the inside and he had no idea why. He backed away from the window and went to bed without turning the lights off. For once in his life he actually felt afraid of the dark.
While he was listening to the cries of the woman, he expected them to die out slowly as she continued further down the street. But they didn’t. Instead they went completely silent from one second to the next and an almost suffocating silence filled the room. He tried to listen for sounds from outside, like footsteps, voices, the wind or anything else, but none could be heard. The void of noise amplified his curiosity and he got up from the bed and walked towards the window to look for the white dressed woman. The whole situation seemed very ominous and with a growing sense of foreboding he got to the window. As he gazed towards the street and the sidewalks the woman was nowhere to be seen. He reached his head out of the window to get a better look in both directions but not a person could be seen, neither to the right or to the left.
He decided to try and let it go and just as he was about to pull his head back inside he saw her, the woman in white, standing right below his window, about ninety degrees beneath him, staring up at him with her piercing dead eyes. Her face showed no emotions whatsoever and the feelings of fear and dread that had been building up inside of him before were so strong now that they put him in a petrified state, rendering him unable to move. She kept staring expressionlessly at him without making a single sound. As he recovered from his frozen state he quickly closed the window and buried himself beneath his cover. Suddenly he hears the cries from the woman again, but this time they come from inside his room. Unable to look outside from beneath his blanket, he lies in a fetal position, shaking. The crying didn’t end until his alarm rang and it was time to wake up. He realized that this had been going on for the whole night long and he didn’t even get a second to sleep.
This brings us back to today and as class has ended it’s time for Victor to go. Yesterday he promised his mother, Anita, to get his little brother at kindergarten on his way home because she had to work double shifts and Victor’s stepfather was working out of town and wasn’t expected to come home until thursday. Victor didn’t know his biological father since he’d run off when Victor was just two years old. His father had tried to make contact with Victor as he’d grown older but Victor wasn’t interested and neglected each attempt made by him. “Why waste time on someone who never gave me any?” was a standardized reply from Victor whenever his mother told him that his father had tried to contact him. Marcus, Victor’s stepfather, had been there for at least half of Victor’s life and is the one who Victor calls his real father. Marcus and Anita have two children together, Victor’s younger siblings Ylva and Fredrik, who are 8 and 6 years old.
It’s nearly seven in the evening when Anita calls home to tell Victor that she’ll be late. Ylva and Fredrik are watching some TV as Victor is trying to do his homework. He’s having a hard time focusing because he’s tired and the other night keeps replaying itself as if it’s on repeat in his head. Did that really happen? Can it be that he just imagined it? Nothing about it makes sense and the more he thinks about it, the more unreal and unlikely it gets. It’s like he’s finally coming to a point where he’s starting to accept that it never actually happened and that it’s just his anger and guilt playing mind games on him. After all his emotions were all over the place last night when he was on his way home from Jessie’s. He’s finally getting a sense of relief and lets go of a sigh.
“Victor.”, Fredrik says from the couch, still facing the TV.
“Yes Fred, what is it? You hungry?”, Victor replies.
“Who’s that crying outside the window?” Fredrik asks calmly, in a restrained and yet curious tone.
The dread Victor felt last night is back on full and in a panicked state Victor starts looking around, checking every window to see if he can see the woman in the white dress. His younger siblings are affected by Victor’s seemingly irrational behavior. Now they’re scared too. Victor keeps searching every part of the house and even goes outside to see if he can see her. What’s even worse is that he hasn’t heard the crying at all. Why would Fred be able to hear it and not him? As he’s made sure that no one - or nothing - is there he tries to calm himself down and sits by Fredrik and Ylva on the couch. He explains that he had a terrible nightmare last night about a crying woman, but they needn’t worry because it wasn’t real. Fredrik and Ylva, pointed out that they both heard the crying woman and that it came from the living room window facing the front of the house, which is right below the window to Victor’s room. Still trying to convince his siblings that what they heard wasn’t real, and that they should let it go, he’s not convinced himself that what he’s saying is true. They just heard what he heard last night and the fact that he didn’t hear her this time freaks him out. What is happening?
After tucking them into bed an hour later Victor gets into his chair by the computer to play some games and get his mind off of things. He joins up with some friends online with voice chat and finds himself able to relax a little. It sure helps having friends to keep him occupied, he caught himself thinking. After playing an online shooter for a while his friends want to switch over to a game of ghost hunting simulation. Victor usually loves these kinds of games but this time something about it makes him feel uneasy. He knows that it has to do with his recent experiences and decides to join them in it anyway. When he starts the next game the screen turns black for a second while booting up. During that time Victor can see the silhouette of a woman standing in the corner of his room, next to his bed. He turns his head around quickly, just to see that there’s no one there. As the game starts up he’s engaging in the chatter with his friends but as they keep on playing the game he’s unable to fully enjoy it because of the creeping feeling of being watched by someone - by something. But he tries his best to not seem off while gaming.
In the game Victor and his friends are supposed to find out what kind of ghost that is lurking around in the house they’ve just entered. By finding different kinds of clues they use the exclusion method to narrow down the potential ghost types progressively until there’s only one possible ghost type left. But they have to beware because the ghost can start hunting them and if it gets to them they’ll die (the characters in the game, that is).
The four of them are scanning the location for various pieces of evidence with their desired equipment. Benjamin sets up the surveillance cameras; Peter walks around with the K2-meter to see if there are any indications of intense electromagnetic fields; Emilia tries to find freezing temperatures with a thermometer and Victor walks around with a radio apparatus to see if he can communicate with the ghost in the game and find evidence of EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomenon). The game has a function that enables the players to interact with the in-game ghost through voice recognition, using the microphones in their headsets. The game also hosts a feature where the player’s voices are affected by proximity. The further away they are from each other in the game, the further away are their voices as well and vice versa.
“Where are you? Can you give us a sign?” Victor repeatedly asks while walking around the haunted location, but to no avail. No responses are heard through the radio in the game but he keeps walking around, repeating the same phrases just in case the ghost lies dormant this early into the game.
“Are you guys hearing that?” Emilia asked.
“Yeah. What the fuck, is that a new one? Has there been a new update recently?” Benjamin replied.
Victor tries to focus his hearing but doesn’t hear anything out of the ordinary.
“I’m coming down!” Victor, who was on the second floor alone, says and walks down the stairs to get back to his friends.
“It’s getting louder! Is it a hunt?” Benjamin exclaims.
“I dunno, but I sure haven’t heard it before” Peter said.
“What are you guys talking about?” Victor asked, still hearing nothing but the hauntingly atmospheric background sounds of the game.
“Creepy. It sounds like crying. Does anyone else hear crying? I haven’t heard this one before.” Emilia says with an expression of confusion mixed with excitement.
“Yeah, and it sounds like it’s real close too! Everyone hide!” Benjamin shouts out, and runs towards a room further down the hall and closes the door. Peter and Emilia do the same and hide at different locations in the building.
Victor’s avatar doesn’t move, he’s just standing there in the middle of the hallway. Victor came to realize what his friends had heard which made him so terrified that he just froze, staring at the screen. Slowly he lifts the right speaker of his headset and as he does he can hear the crying of a woman - the woman - from behind him. He didn’t notice how his friends were yelling at him to hide and that his character in the game had suddenly been caught by the ghost. When the screen goes black because of his avatar’s death he can see the reflection of the crying woman’s distorted face just behind his shoulder. He closes his eyes, thinking
“this is it. I’m dying now”. But life isn’t always like in games. After a while he opened his eyes yet again. She was gone. the crying woman in a white dress was gone. In a moment of disbelief he looks around his room to see if she’s hiding somewhere, but she’s nowhere to be seen. He removes his headset from his head and the crying can no longer be heard.
“Victor! Victor! Come on man, what are you doing?” he can hear Benjamin’s voice shout from within the speakers of his headset. He puts it back on and readies himself by his computer again.
“Sorry about that”, he said. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I just drifted away for a few seconds there”.
“Drifted away?” Emilia, blurted out. “More like ‘taking the Enterprise to Andromeda’. But glad to have you back with us on earth now”.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m up for a final round and then I’m off to bed”. Victor still has a hard time immersing himself into the game as he keeps looking back over his shoulder every now and then. The rest of the night is uneventful and right before midnight he falls asleep.
The days go by and for each day it gets easier for him to focus on other things, like enjoying his last week in high school. The big party by the lake on friday evening is closing in and he’s really starting to look forward to it. After graduating on friday Victor arrives back home to attend his own graduation party, where he’s celebrated by friends and family. He tries his best to put a smile on his face and mingle so that every guest is greeted personally by him. The crying woman in a white dress still haunts his mind but he tries to shut her out of there. He’s realized that it’s all in his mind and that he has no reason to actually be afraid of her. For each time he smiles it gets easier and the beginning of this week seems more and more absurd for every smile he puts on. All the guests seem to be enjoying themselves, digging in on the food, drinking the champagne and mingling around. Everyone except for Ylva and Fredrik, his younger siblings, who are sitting on the couch watching TV like there’s no party going on around them.
“Hey, what are you watching? Are you enjoying yourselves? You know there are a few people here that would like to talk to you two.” Victor gets no response from the two kids who keep staring at the screen before them.
“Are you guys okay?” he asks worryingly.
“Why won’t the woman stop crying?” Fredrik suddenly asks him, without looking at him.
“Yeah, she’s been doing that every night since monday and now she won’t stop. Now she’s even crying when the sun is up. Can you ask her to stop?” Ylva ask Victor. Victor takes a step back.
"This can’t be happening", he’s thinking.
He looks around, panicked and tries to see if he can find her, hear her, just get a glimpse of her but she’s nowhere to be found. He turns to his siblings again and asks them where she is.
“She’s behind us, right next to you, dummy”, Ylva answers. “We don’t want to look at her because she looks scary.”.
Victor is at first terrified, and then he understands that they are messing with him. He starts laughing, even if it’s not an honest laughter. It’s the kind of laughter you let out when you really wish someone is joking with you but you’re not sure if they do.
“Ha ha ha, good one. I’ll get you for that” he said and then moved away to continue engaging his guests.
At that same time Anita, their mother, call the two young kids to the kitchen. “You guys have to eat or else you’ll starve”. “Yes mom!” They both reply, get up from the couch and move into the kitchen where their mother is. After a few hours the party ends and Victor hurries to get ready for another party, the one down by the lake with his friends.
“Mom! Dad! I’m off now! Don’t wait up!” He yells from the hallway. His parents, both in the kitchen, cleaning up after the party, washing the dishes and packaging the leftovers for later use.
“Take care and enjoy yourself! Just don’t get drunk and stay away from the water!” he heard his mother shout from there.
“What your mother said! Stay out of trouble!” His father interjects.
“Don’t worry, I'll be fine!” he says and leaves to catch a ride with his friends who are waiting outside in Peter’s car.
Almost a hundred participants are at the party down by Sam's lake, most of them today's graduates from Maraheim High. Some of the others are friends or older siblings of some graduates, while a few are students who won't be graduating until next year. Lots of beer packages, boxed wine and drinks based on soda mixed with cheap vodka can be found in abundance. Victor mostly hangs out with his closest friends, drinking and talking, but every now and then someone comes up to talk to him about anything and nothing. Even Jessie is there. Right, Jessie. He thought. He had almost forgotten about her and the baby growing inside of her to whom he's the unintentional father to. At first she doesn't see him but when she does her eyes widen and Victor can see how she quickly tries to get further away from him. Victor wants to say that he's sorry for yelling at her last time and starts moving after her. She's disappeared into the crowd and he can't seem to find her. He keeps searching and as he gets out of the dense crowd he finds himself standing right next to the lake, water almost touching his shoes. Suddenly his phone is ringing. He takes it up from his pocket to see who it is.
"Mom?", he says for himself and answers the phone. As soon as he pressed the green button the panicked half screaming, half crying voice of his mother pierces his hearing.
"ARE THEY WITH YOU? ARE THEY THERE?"
Victor, who has no idea who she's talking about, and who's confused by his otherwise calm and patient mother's sudden panicked state, asks her: "What? Who? Who are you talking about? Who's here with me?".
As soon as he utters the last words he comes to think about what his little brother and sister told him earlier, about the woman that wouldn't stop crying. Once again he feels the dread and panic building up inside of him that has haunted him this entire week. This time with a growing hint of sorrow as well.
"YLVA AND FREDRICK, OF COURSE! We've been looking through the entire house, and the yard, but can't find them anywhere! They've been gone for over an hour. Even the neighbours are out looking for them!"
Now his mother has stopped yelling and instead she's full on crying. Hopelessness washes over him but still he tries to calm his mother down over the phone:
"Calm down, mom! I'm sure they are fine. They're probably just pranking you". Then he see them, standing on the opposite side of the lake together with the woman in white, who's no longer crying. The three of them are staring right at him.
"HEY!" He shouts out towards them, drops his phone onto the ground and runs into the water to try and swim over to them.
"STAY THERE! I'M COMING FOR YOU!" he yells between the strokes and keeps swimming towards them.
It's tough, his strength is failing him. His stamina is burning out. It's like his body is punishing him for drinking too much alcohol. This is not the time, he need to get to them before she harms them, or worse. And worse it gets. As he's swimming closer he see her arms on the shoulders of Ylva and Fredrik as brings them out into the water.
"NO! No.. no.". A second later they are nowhere to be seen, just ripples on the water where they were a moment ago. He keeps staring at the ripples in the water with a sliver of hope, but as always ripples fade, and with them fades the little hope that remains. In a moment of complete despair he let himself go into the water, but before he disappears below the surface someone starts dragging him towards the shore.
"Are you stupid?", "What the hell were you thinking?" and "you're too drunk to swim, you idiot!" are some things the people around him are yelling when he's crawling back up from the water. He was saved by a guy named Trent, who's an aspiring swimmer. But Victor doesn't feel like he's saved. How could this ever count as being saved when he just witnessed both his younger siblings taken away from him. And worst of all is the fact that no one seems to have seen anything but him swimming out there all alone in his drunken state.
It took three days before they found the bodies. People from around town had come together in the search for the missing children. They were found by the lake early Monday morning by a group from the search party that had planned an early search in Gaiman park. Now, a week later, they're all gathered at the ceremonial burial of the two children. The theme of the day is that life is unpredictable and short, and that we should be grateful for the time we get. But Victor's having a hard time feeling grateful because he's just suffered a loss he could never imagine. He's lost two persons who can never be replaced, who've taken up a big chunk of his heart.
At the funeral his friends and others from school came over to him to say their condolences. One of them was Jessie. When she turned around to leave, after saying that she's sorry for his loss, he asks her to stay a moment longer.
"Jessie, I have to ask you something." She doesn't say anything but waits for him to continue. "Are you really keeping the baby?".
She nods reluctantly, afraid that he's going to start a fight. The last thing any of they need is becoming the talk of the town because of a public altercation about this baby at his siblings funeral.
"If that's the case I want to be in the baby's life. I want to be it's father.". Shocked by what he said she nodded again and then moved out of there. After all he just said the last thing she expected of him and wanted to get out of there before he changed his mind. He does not really know why he's had such a change of heart but one thing is for certain; he has never before reflected so much on how precious life is until this very day. It's just a shame that it had to take a funeral for him to embrace life.
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