Chapter 11: How Deep Is a Six-Foot Hole?

We were conflicted with how to do it. Would it have been better to tell Aunt Carol and Uncle Chuck about our plans or to just sneak out without their knowing? My mischievous side convinced me to sneak out.

The sneaking out part was not the challenge, oddly enough. The challenge was making preparation and knowing what to take with us. Seriously, how can one prepare to visit a cemetery where his deceased mother was buried?

"By taking Tylenol," Faith answered the question that I was asking in my mind.

"You can be very scary when you want to be," I whispered to her.

"I know. It is just another of my innumerable talents," she bragged.

"Right. Anything else that you recommend for the trip?"

"Flashlights wouldn't hurt."

"Good thinking."

We checked our watches for the time. We decided to actually keep up with it this time because our guests would not be asleep forever. It was 3:00 a.m.

"Are you ready?" I asked Faith.

She responded by turning on her flashlight, shining the light on herself from under her chin. It reflected off of her in a creepy way.

"It is a good thing that we aren't vampires as well as spiritualists; isn't it?" she joked.

"Spiritualists? You gave it a name?"

"Mom called it that in the diary. It sounded catchy to me."

Catchy. Right.

"Perfect." I rolled my eyes, but it was too dark for her to see me do it.

We tiptoed down the stairs, trying our best not to wake the folks. Luckily, they were sound asleep. Unluckily, to preserve our flashlight batteries, we did not use the flashlights.

I was doing fine until I hit my side at the bottom of the stairwell. Faith mocked my collision with a giggle.

We finally made it outside. We stopped to take a breath but quickly realized that we were not completely out of the line of fire. The faithful family pet Jack was our final obstacle. We must have accidentally woken him up upon getting out of the front door. Jack's dog house was at the corner of the porch, and he had excellent hearing so I would not have put it past him.

Jack stood eyes wide and tail wagging at my feet. I gave Faith an awkward look, and she answered it ever so helpfully with a shrug.

"You can handle this one, big brother," she winked and walked towards the car.

She would not have been so smug if it had been her who Jack had approached first.

Jack paid her no attention. Instead, he stood on his hind legs and balanced himself against my torso. I was willing to do whatever he wanted as long as he did not start barking.

I tried petting his head, but that only made him more eager to play. I thought for a moment and devised the solution of shifting my weight on him. I was successful in getting him back on all fours by doing this. He somehow understood my urgency and let me leave.

"Thanks, buddy," I scratched Jack behind the ear as I whispered my approval of his actions.

I made my way to the car and Faith "praised" my timing.

"Not too bad," she smirked as I cranked it.

All of our hindrances aside, we were able to leave home at 3:14 a.m.

I took a Tylenol on the way to the cemetery. I knew it would not help, but I tried it anyway. Faith chose not to take one because she claimed to have some mild phobia of medicine. That sounded exactly like something she would claim to have.

We activated our flashlights at the gate. The light of the moon proved helpful, but I was not feeling lucky enough to rely on it alone. I was quivering as I aimed it at the murky corners of the gravesite.

To be honest, I was not sure what to expect. Our powers had not proven as influential as mom had warned us that they would. Still, I was careful as I walked along the path, passing tombstones as I went. I checked my side regularly to make sure Faith was still beside me. Having her next to me made me feel better because I knew that she could stop angry spirits from attacking us…somehow.

I stopped dead in my tracks a few yards in upon noticing something. The Tylenol was working. I could tell because I had not had a headache since we arrived. Faith paused right behind me.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Is your head hurting?" I asked without answering her question.

"No, why?"

"Neither is mine. I haven't had a headache since we got here. Have you?"

"Come to think of it, no, I haven't," she answered. She did not sound very satisfied.

I continued on the path, still being very apprehensive with my flashlight. I began to notice the other sounds of night as I walked. I heard owls, raccoons, and other creatures but no people. I was happy to an extent, but the entire point of coming back was to hear things out of the ordinary.

Out of nowhere, as if an answer to my complaint, I heard a moaning sound. I stopped once again, but Faith did not as she had before. She instead went toward the sound. I did not try to stop her.

Whoever or whatever it was, it was covered by the dark of night. I was being patient and aiming my light at where I assumed the voice was coming from, but I was unable to locate it. As time passed, the moaning grew higher in pitch until it became like the voice of a little girl. She was not moaning; she was screaming.

Faith and I continued, moving slowly in an attempt to locate her. Our attempts were futile because the girl's voice was coming from all directions. A cemetery was not the best place for a search mission, but I was determined.

I was finally able to put a lock down on her location while we stood under a tree. The canopy of the tree blocked the sound of her voice in so we could hear it more easily. I told Faith to walk ahead of me because she would be able to see her when I could not. She went ahead of me, but she did so tentatively. I had never seen her that careful.

Faith stopped about five feet from a tombstone and held her hand out as a motion for me to stop moving. I did as she signaled, and she beamed the light of her flashlight at the backside of the tombstone. I heard the girl's voice for what it was, and I noticed that she was crying.

"Is she there?" I asked Faith.

"Yes, and she is pitiful," she answered, "she is only a kid."

Faith turned her attention to the spirit. As she curved around to the other side of the tombstone, I was able to see the strange "energy" emanating from the girl. I knew that it was not energy, but I had not come up with a new name for it.

The girl's figure was small. She must have been no more than five or six years old. I wondered why I could hear her cries but not her voice. I added it to the list of unsolved mysteries that I had been collecting since we left the hospital.

"Are you here alone?" Faith spoke to the girl.

She continued a back and forth conversation with her briefly before turning back to me to tell me what she had learned.

"She is six years old, and her mother left her for dead," she began, "she died because she took pills that she found on their kitchen table."

"Why is she telling you all of this?" I asked, "she doesn't even know you."

"Because she has been waiting for help for a long time. She died in 1946."

I stopped asking questions. Pretty much nothing made sense to me at the time so there would be no point in trying to figure everything out.

"Well, ask her for her name," I began again, "if we are going to help her, we need to know something about her."

She focused her attention on the girl again and was quiet for a moment. I began to get anxious while I waited on her.

When Faith turned back towards me, she did not speak. Her eyes dropped to the ground, and she had a look of helplessness on her face.

"Spit it out, Faith," I enticed.

She still did not answer so I moved closer to her and put my hands on her shoulders.

"What did she tell you?" I asked more gently that time.

"She is a Sharp, Christian. She is related to us."

I was officially freaked out. A Sharp? Did that make her a cousin or something? I let go of Faith and walked around to the front of the tombstone. Sure enough, the name on the tombstone was Katie Sharp, deceased December 23, 1946.

"Mom never mentioned a Katie," I spoke to Faith.

"She didn't mention anyone from our family tree, but that doesn't mean that they didn't exist." Her voice was cold as if she had come to a startling revelation.

Faith began talking with the girl again. She kept her voice quiet. She did not want to scare her. She told me their conversation when she was finished talking to her.

"She wants to make a deal," she said.

"What kind of deal?" I asked reluctantly.

"It's one of those you help me, I help you things."

"Sounds like it would be better than nothing at all. What does she want from us?"

"She says that if we can help her pass on a message to her family, then she can help us find the answers that we came here for."

That was the best news that I had heard all day. To me, it sounded as if Katie was getting the short end of the stick in the deal, but it would be the last thing that she needed to pass on. If she would be satisfied with that, then so would we.

"It's a deal," I said.

Faith told Katie that we had accepted her deal, and she started walking again.

"How do we pass on the message?" I asked when she was at my side.

"We don't. She does. She is coming with us."

Great. At least this guest would not take up space and be easy to hide.

Faith turned to me with a look of surprise, "She heard that. She was a mind reader. Keep your thoughts to yourself."

"Sorry," I replied.

There was one more thing to take care of while we were there - saying a proper goodbye to our mother. It could have been just as satisfying to do it while we were with Aunt Carol and Uncle Chuck, but it did not feel right. Of that, Faith and I were in agreement.

Faith played with Katie while we walked. Mom's tombstone was at the foot of a hill in the center of the cemetery so we had a bit of a walk to go before we reached it. Faith seemed to be getting along with her; and in a way, I was jealous of them. She could see and talk to spirits, but I was unable to communicate with them at all.

Faith spoke again a few yards after leaving Katie's grave, "It is really enlightening; you know. Talking to a spirit makes learning about them easier than reading a book does."

"Good. Try to take in as much as you can because we will need to know as much about them as possible."

"She says that she has family in town. Her brother had children who had children and so on. The people are related to her in some way, and she wants them to know how she died."

"That's it? It doesn't seem like much to ask for a trapped soul."

"She is five, Christian. What else could she ask for?"

It was a good point, but we had a lot more to gain than Katie did. By finding her relatives, we could learn more about our family because her family was our family.

We arrived at mom's grave more quickly than I had expected. The walk was not as bad as I thought it would be. Three was better than two. We were more solid as a group, even though I could not see one of our members.

I would forever remember that day. We did not cry like we had the first time. Instead, we stood silently, in reverence of our mom. We would be missing her guidance.

"We will have to come back every year on this day," I told Faith.

"Agreed. She deserves at least that."

I looked at Faith, and she looked content. I felt the same way. We could rest easily knowing that we did the right thing and paid mom our respects. We did it together, and she would be proud of us for that.

"Check the time," Faith said, "how did we do?"

"Not bad, actually. It is only 4:30." I smiled at her. "We got a lot accomplished and made a new friend in the process."

"By the way, Katie said that she likes you."

I was starting to take a liking to the little kid, whatever she looked like.

"I guess it is about time that we got going then," I said after taking a deep breath.

"Back home?" Faith asked.

"Back home," I answered.

We made our way back to the car, little spirit in tact, and drove home.