Beloved Hattie, Home in Heaven
“Poor thing,” you say, scrubbing the moss from the 7 as gently as you were able. You’d finished the rest of her family’s headstones yesterday, her father Ernest (d. 1900, age 60) and mother Betsy (d. 1913, age 64), her brothers Ernest Jr. (1888, age 13) and Joseph (1934, age 66). You’d managed to find something for each of them online—Amity Park’s records of their deceased went back centuries, even if you had to spend hours scanning microfiche at the library until your eyes crossed. Ernest Sr. had a stroke, Betsy tuberculosis and Joseph died of old age. Ernest Jr. was the most vague, a short sentence announcing him passing from “fever.” But nothing for poor Hattie.
Cleaning headstones didn’t pay, you did it as a hobby, mostly after ghost activity became real in the past few years. Maybe it was a need to show kindness or maybe it was self-preservation (“that cherub figure had a lot of crevices—I spent hours on it! Don’t kill me!”), but it fulfilled something in you nonetheless. You’d always liked researching, too (mostly other people’s business), so it scratching that itch was a bonus.
But your dedication sometimes didn’t work in your favor. Sometimes, no matter how diligent the era’s reporting, there was nothing. Maybe stories were lost or never written in the first place. Placing a notice in the paper could’ve cost money some people didn’t always have back then. Maybe the loss simply hurt too much to acknowledge. Maybe they were just forgotten.
But Hattie was beloved, gone at age four. She’d barely had a life, you admit—but god you’re curious.
A chill suddenly surrounded you, causing you to stiffen, your hand centimeters from your spray bottle. A ghost—it may be time to cash in whatever good karma you’d earned.
“I wondered if I’d catch you,” a voice said. It was young and familiar, but lacked the volume and the bite you usually heard when you saw him. He was usually fighting or being slammed into the ground, so he always sounded a little terse. It was his right.
You looked up at Phantom, who was floating just above you, looking at you and your cleaning tools curiously, his expression unreadable but not hostile.
“Uh, I was just—“ you began, but he raises a hand.
“Cleaning them,” he finished, “I, uh—sometimes I forget I scare people, sorry. I just…wanted to tell you that…they appreciate it.”
He nodded to the headstone you were working on and shifted his gaze to the ones around you.
“They’re not ghosts, per se,” he explained, “well—they’re at peace, so they don’t really hang around here. Or if they’re not, they’re usually haunting somewhere else.”
“No ghosts in the cemetery,” you conclude, “huh.”
“Weird, right? The more you know,” he said. “But I…I do run into some of them sometimes. If they wanna say something in this plane I’m the guy they go to. And they’ve mentioned you.”
“Older ones, who don’t get visitors or aren’t tended to. They appreciate it, what you do. Headstones are mostly symbolic but it’s the principle of the thing.”
The chill fell away, or maybe there was just something warming you from the inside. You chuckle quietly, you don’t know what else to do. You look up at him again.
“Do you know what happened to Hattie Dinsmoore?”
He blinked, and seemed to genuinely think about it for a minute. He examined the surrounding headstones, her family, and frowned as thought a realization overcame him.
“Betsy I think I remember. You did hers recently? She asked if her daughter’s was done,” his gaze fell to Hattie’s headstone, “she…said she had a little girl who wandered off into the woods and ate some holly berries. She just…” his frown deepened, somehow, “she just kept saying ‘I only turned my back for a second.’”
Your heart breaks for this woman you’ve never met. That you never will meet. Something somber washes over you, the chill returning.
“They’re together,” he said. He seemed to sense the distress you felt. “Sometimes a spirit at peace can still obsess over something.”
“I would,” you said. You don’t have kids but you can sense you’d never truly get over something like that. “Thank you for telling me.”
“You’re doing a good service, depressing you is the least I can do to repay you.”
You sit (well, he floats) in silence for a moment. The pause between you was heavy. You decided to ask.
“A guy named Stanley Seabury’s grave just says ‘moose incident.’ Any details on that?”
The ghost boy’s eyes widen, “no, but I’m gonna need them. I’ll see what I can do.”
“I try to come here Tuesdays and Thursdays,” you tell him.
“Got it. Moose incident. See you Thursday.”
