The Graveyard, Continued...
Her parents weren't sure about attending the funeral after the ordeal the child went through only a few days ago but the little girl wanted to come. She told her parents that she wanted to say goodbye the way normal people did and she wanted so much to be normal. But there was more to it than that and she had no real way of explaining it to her parents.
The link she had shared with the deceased couple had faded, all the distinct memories were gone and only the emotions remained. She looked around at the people here that she shouldn't know but they all seemed so familiar to her and she knew it was because they were people that knew them. She didn't know their names or recognize their faces but when she closed her eyes and let down her internal walls just a little bit she could almost remember the emotions they stirred in the memories the girl shared with the dead couple.
After the horror of their deaths and the threat of their killer was over the little girl tried to sort through what she had experienced and only one thing remained unfinished. The little girl did not want to tell her parent the real reason why she had to be here today. She didn't really have the words to make them understand that being here was as important to herself as it was to the two people that they came here to mourn.
The limo took his silent family to the graveyard. The numbness he had felt when his mother told him what to expect this afternoon still lingered and he didn't think anything, not even his secret joy could snap him out of it. His pets, his nanny, his uncle, his mother, they were all connected, each a segment in the continuing story that was this boy's life. The numbness in his mind dampened the turmoil he knew he should be feeling and he was able to think with a clarity he had never felt before.
With that new-found clarity the boy began to work things out… She feared him, Mrs. Tully, his nanny, the woman they would bury today. She knew his secret and now she was dead along with her husband. His Uncle Luther, his mother's brother and the only person in the world the boy truly respected was accused of killing them. Deep inside the boy began to believe that his Uncle Luther did indeed kill his former nanny and if he did the boy wondered… did he do it for me?
His mother still refused to believe her own brother was capable of such terrible things but the boy understood his uncle, better than his mother did, apparently. He recalled the last time his uncle spoke to him: He said they were the same, that they saw the world differently than other people, that they were special. His uncle knew his secret but what's more his uncle knew him because they were the same, they were special. The more the boy thought about that last conversation the more he believed it was his uncle's way of saying goodbye. He had mentioned that he had made a mistake and that his world was shrinking. His Uncle Luther knew something was going to happen, and that he was never going to come back.
The boy looked down at his arm, at the scratches. He did that, his tall, strong uncle had done that to him when he grabbed the boy's arm in that terrible place, that asylum. Something horrible had happened to his uncle that robbed him of who he was. The boy didn't care that his uncle killed two innocent people, if they were truly innocent. The boy didn't mourn them, he was incapable of mourning them. His uncle was different though, he was special and he was the only person in the world who understood the boy and now he was a wasted drooling shadow of the man he was… Now the boy could feel the numbness fade, it gave way to something new, something he had never really experienced before; anger.
