The Graveyard Girl

Chapter 21: 323

The pain that once burned like a fire had faded away to an icy numbness. Black filled the edges of Vermon's vision and the only thing she could hear was her own heartbeat. Her breath came in ragged, shallow gasps. Seconds passed as she laid there, then, she heard voices. People swarmed all over her, trying to help her, she realized. They wanted to save her. Surely they could tell that it was far too late for her to be saved, yet they were like children, naive to the darkness of the real world. The despair and suffering of the world that took everyone she loved away from her. She closed my eyes waiting curiously for what would come next. She took her last breath.

***

Vermon's funeral was private. The funeral service was slower than a country bus, taking just as many detours. Everyone had a memory to share, a favorite hymn to sing. Whoever arranged it must have agreed to every request. By half way through some of the old dears were swaying on their feet and were it not for the keen spring wind pushing through the open church doors there might have been more to bury than just Vermon.

"I'm sorry for your lost, Jacqueline," the priest said. He sat next to her and sighed. "She is with her grandmother."

Jacqueline shook her head. "No, she's not," she said, then stood up and walked over to Vermon's coffin. She leaned her head over Vermon's dead and burned body. "Vermon? Can you hear me?" she asked.

Jacqueline didn't get an answer, but yet, Vermon did hear her. She stood next to her mother, looking at her own body. Watching as the people gathered to bury her. So this was death? She thought. Wherever the coffin went, she went. She hoped not to be trapped under the ground forever, in the darkness.

Was this it? Would she never know the answer to everything? Why her mother used her? Why her mother had those books and pictures? Why her eyes turned black and that creature was after her?

As the people lowered Vermon's body into the ground, Vermon glared at her mother. No tears had been in Jacqueline's eyes, no sadness, no emotion. In fact, she smiled as she watched her daughter go into the ground. People began throwing dirt onto the coffin. Jacqueline threw something onto the coffin, but it wasn't dirt. It was a picture of Vermon, and at the top, it read: 323 with a line over it.