Since he’d died, George had done any number of things he’d never imagined doing. He’d killed the creature that killed him. He’d come face-to-face with a bona fide serial killer. Hell, he’d even freed a town from an undead killer that targeted its children. But none of that had been as hard, or as nerve-wracking, as sneaking into his old home town. Or figuring how to get into his old high school without being seen.
Everyone in either of those locations knew he was dead. He couldn’t just hop off the bus and stroll down the street. Nor could he walk through the front door of his old high school and not have people notice.
But Anne Coulett was dead.
George had wondered about the wisdom of trying to keep track of his old friends after he’d died and come back, but the temptation had been far too great. An anonymous email account in a fake name and his pay-as-you-go smartphone were all it took to access all the social media sites he’d been on. After that, most of his old friends had accepted his ‘Friend’ request without asking who he was, or how he knew them.
Knowing his friends were still in the world was nice, but keeping in touch with Anne was different. For all his father’s strictness, George’s family had been close, even loving in its own way. Anne’s was another matter. She’d never known her father, and her mother had been a walking disaster. Anne came to school hiding bruises more times than George could remember. His earliest memory of her was of her limping into the kindergarten classroom. She had a limp because her mother taking a belt to soles of Anne’s feet. Foster care hadn’t been any kinder, and Anne’s mother always got her act together enough to return and drag her daughter back into hell with her.
But for all the ugliness she endured, Anne had a kind soul. She had been George’s first real friend, and from the posts she’d made after his death, one of the few to really mourn his passing. Over the past month, her posts had become increasingly despondent, as if losing him had cut her last tie to happiness. Then her profile had changed from ‘Active’ to ‘Memorial’ status, and from another friend’s posts, George learned that Anne had taken her life. She’d hung herself in the girl’s locker room at the high school. George had felt rage, disgust and even fear since he’d died and returned, but never the profound sense of sadness he felt when he learned his best friend had committed suicide.
Then the rumors sprouted up. Stories of a cold presence, like a dead hand placed on a shoulder. Then more menacing things began to occur. An unexplained shove at the top of the stairs, a slip in a shower that sent a girl sprawling painfully on the floor. George, worried that Anne might have come back. Coming to school in ragged old clothing, having everyone regard her mother as the town slut, made her a prime target for bullying by other girls. George had seen and heard it a few times, but knew Anne had endured far worse. Could her desire for vengeance have caused her to remain on the mortal plane? The fear she had led him to go home.
Getting there was both easy and hard. He’d had a good run panhandling in Baton Rouge, so money wasn’t a problem. George caught a bus that took him to Ottumwa, and managed to catch a ride to the next town over from his. But from there, it had been a series of long, slow night time walks through the Iowa countryside His phones GPS kept him on track as he navigated the gravel back roads. But doing everything he could to avoid bumping into the living meant he was off the road well before the sky began to lighten with approaching dawn. Most days, he hunkered down corn fields, surrounded by the sound of the wind stirring the foliage. The days he could find an isolated barn, or better, a derelict farm house, were a blessing.
George had plotted his walk to bring him around his old home town, allowing him to approach the high school for a direction that left only a short walk through the town streets. The gap in the chain link fencing that had existed since he’d entered high school still hadn’t been repaired. It gave him access to the grounds, and with that, a way to get to the grounds keepers storage shed. Like the gap in the fence, every kid in school knew the latch on the storage shed could be ‘jiggered’ with just the right combination of shaking and pressure. Smokers, dopers and the occasional lucky stiff getting laid by his girl friend had used the trick to get some privacy for longer than anyone could remember,
There was a spot, up in the rafters, that none of those privacy seekers knew of. George had noticed it by accident one late spring afternoon when he’d been disgusted with running track in PE. George had ducked into the shade offered by the buildings open door and looking up, had noted a darker shadow under the roof. A series of odd length 2X4’s had been nailed to the blank wall studs to form a rough ladder. He climbed it and found some past ground keeper, perhaps planning to convert the space above the rafters into more storage, had scrounged up a couple of sheets of plywood and started building a floor. All of it was crusted with untold ages of dust and accumulated crud. George had taken a first, tentative step onto the wood, and finding it unmoving, had ventured to explore this new space. A broom borrowed from below cleaned the improvised floor enough that George could sit on it without getting filthy. It had become his private retreat, a place to go when things went as badly as they usually did for a skinny half-Asian kid in small-town Iowa.
A patina of filth had begun to build up again. At some point since he’d died, a bird had taken a liking to the top rung of the ladder. White streaks of bird shit formed fans down the ladder, and George found himself reluctant to touch them. Then the absurdity of it all hit him. “Hell, you’re dead! Nothing that bird might have is going to bother you.” It was a whisper to himself, but it echoed like a shout in the quiet building. George mounted the ladder and stretched out on the dusty wood to wait for his moment.
The light grew, and with it, the noise outside. The rumbling growl of the diesel engines in the school buses, someone driving a ‘muscle car’ gunned their pride and joy before turning it off, the muffled voices of kids entering the school. Then the silence began to return as the first bell of the day shrilled out over school grounds. A squeal of tires and the sound of running feet spoke of someone late for class. Then there was nothing but the occasional muffled announcement from the school’s PA system. Still, George waited. He knew when his time to slip into the school would come.
The phone vibrated, notifying him that his moment was close at hand. George had spent enough time in the shed to know that some things were universal. He silenced the phone, and as he slid it into his pocket, the sound of someone opening the main door filled the building.
“Fuckin’ kids have been at this place again. Damn little brats. I wish the school board would let me deal with’em. Gettin’ in here and messing my stuff up. After a bit of my ‘discipline’, they’d think twice about breaking into school property, that’s for sure!”
Old Mr. Schmidt had been head grounds keeper forever. George’s mother spoke of him having the same job when she had been a student at this same school, and he’d been a terror for kids through all that time. George knew that he was also a creature of habit. Every school day at precisely 9:30, he opened the storage shed, and he always complained about the students. George stayed as still as he could, having learned from experience that the floor he rested on creaked, and Mr. Schmidt, for all his faults, was not deaf. Today must be one of the days when Schmidt felt the lawns needed mowing, because there was with a growl that filled the building, the big gang mower started. George waited, listening to the way the sounds shifted, letting them paint the picture of what was going on below him. The mower backed out, then the roar of its engine dropped as the door slid shut. A final pause, probably so Schmidt could erect the umbrella he loved to have over him on sunny days, and then with a final rev, it drove off. Now, it was time to leave his hiding spot.
Back down the ladder, and a shove at the sliding door gave him a crack to spy through. A little more, and he could stick his head out. Nothing. George slipped through the opening and closed the door behind him. There were few windows in the school that faced this direction, and even if someone were watching from one of them, all they’d see was a student slipping out of the storage shed and back into school. It happened often enough in a school day that no one should even notice.
Also like usual, Mr. Schmidt had propped open the door to the boiler room. He was supposed to lock it after himself, a security policy that had been in place even when George was still alive. But Schmidt was also naturally lazy, and hated to take the time to let himself in and out of the main building. A hunk of 2X4, battered from years of use, blocked the door from closing.
George pressed his ear against the door, but heard nothing besides the roar of the boilers. He pulled the door open, took a quick peek inside, and seeing no one, entered. As a final nod to Mr. Schmidt, and all the trouble he’d gotten into when Schmidt had caught him hiding in the shed, George kicked the 2X4 outside and let the door close behind him.
Now that he was inside, the danger of someone seeing him jumped off the scale. George’s only hope was to find one of the many nooks and crannies that existed in the rabbit-warren of a building his school had become. Every freshman entering Carswell’s Corner High School had to learn their way around the confusing and often illogical layout of the building. The central building was a hulking brick object three stories high that had been built to replace an earlier, wood-framed building on the same site. That had been in 1897, a date proudly carved into the masonry arch over the former main entrance. The New Deal had brought a gymnasium, a blocky, cast-concrete monstrosity that also housed the school cafeteria in its basement. The Baby Boom brought a brick addition that wrapped around two sides of the original school, a place filled with classrooms so identical in appearance that students needed to keep count of which doors they’d passed, and from which entrance, to know which room they needed to enter. Sometime in the early 1960’s, in a final, fitful effort to keep the companies that had started to desert Carswell’s Corner from leaving, a new wing dedicated to teaching different trades like welding, metal-working and wood-working had gone up. They’d been built on the cheap, just metal frames with low brick walls at the base of walls made of sheet metal. Everyone hated the biting cold of shop class in the winter, but by then the school district didn’t have the money to retrofit better insulation to the addition. The confusion came from the fact that all these different additions were built to different scales, with floors in one addition several feet above or below the ones on the building next to it. Openings in walls, with stairs that suddenly rose or fell to lead to other parts of the building, were everywhere. At one spot, perhaps in an example of a lucky near-miss, the second floor of the ‘new’ addition (the one built post WWII) opened onto the same floor of the ‘old’ building, only to miss lining up by an awkward step-and-a-half gap. It was infamous as the ‘Tripping Point’ because anyone, even seniors, could miss their step if their attention was elsewhere.
In all that, this was the last place George wanted to try to hide. The boiler room, being out of the way, was a favorite place for those who wanted to skip class but not leave the building. So it was subject to frequent patrols by off-duty teachers and staff hoping to find someone hoping for a little free time.
He moved to the door into the main part of the building, but trying to listen for someone beyond the door would be impossible with the roaring boilers close behind him. A slow turn of the knob, followed by a moments pause, and George eased the door open to reveal a sliver of the hall beyond it. Nothing. Opening the door enough to stick his head out, George ventured a hurried glance around. No one in the sight, he checked his phone. Classes would end in ten minutes, and the halls would fill with students. No one should be in the halls this close to the end of class, but did he want to risk the chance of being seen? A roared curse behind him made up his mind. Schmidt had stopped mowing early for some reason, and he was not amused at George’s bit of vengeance.
“Who the fuck closed the door on me! I catch the bastard, and I’ll kick their fuckin’ ass up around their ears!”
George bolted into the hall, heedless of the noise he made. There was a spot he might use, one that shouldn’t be in use this early in the day, and he made for it as fast as he could walk. Up the Fish Hook, a stair that looped back on itself to join the first floor of the new and old buildings, then a sharp right brought him to a door set in a blank wall. George felt over the broad door jam and found the spare key where it always was. He unlocked the door, stepping in and flipping on the light with the surety of someone who’d done it many times before. Some people speculated that it had been intended as a janitor’s closet, others insisted it had once been a fire exit in the old building that had been walled off once the new building blocked it.
However it had come into being, it was a claustrophobic space barely six feet wide by less than twelve feet long. Like the rest of the old building, the floors here were hardwood, polished and worn down by generations of students. It was the home of the high school’s amateur radio club. A trio of mis-matched tables formed an improvised L-shaped counter covered with equipment that the club had acquired over seventy years of existence. Cable dangled from a hole in the back corner, connecting the different radios to antennas strung across the roof of the old building. Dominating the back wall was a huge tube receiver supposedly salvaged from a World War 2 cruiser. The transmitter that matched it had resided under the same table when George had first entered the room, a dead, archaic relic that had he’d helped two friends haul out for disposal. From that introduction, George’s interest had grown. He’d been thinking of taking the exam to get his license, but his death had put an end to that.
George engaged the inside lock, sure that with only three or four members in the radio club, he was unlikely to be disturbed. The club members didn’t have a fixed time or day when they used the radios, but George knew they rarely came here during classes. So the room should be safe, and with one of only two keys to the door in his pocket, he knew that anyone who did want to get in would have to walk to the principle’s office to get the spare. All he could hope was that anyone trying to get in would make enough noise to warn him it was time to vacate his hiding place.
George knew the most comfortable seat in the room was the old office chair in front of the ancient receiver. He drew it out, sat down, and out of habit, reached out to switch the old radio on. Touching the switch, George felt another presence in the room…no, it was a presence in the radio itself. He felt the other spirit, a man not much older than he’d been when he’d died. He too had sat before this radio, but he’d been sitting before it when he’d died. George heard the screaming noise of the incoming bomb, felt the blast wave tear through the other man’s body. That man had been on the radio, doing his duty, sending urgent calls for help when his life had ended. George witnessed the final moment of the other man’s life as he relived it again and again. The watched as the bulkhead in front of him bulged, twisted, and finally shattered like it had happened in slow motion. A shard of that twisted metal skimmed across the receiver to slam into the dead man’s chest, which explained the mysterious deep scratch that ran from front to back on the radios top. George felt no malevolence in the spirit, it held no regrets beyond the the regret of the life it would never experience. Perhaps that was why every person who’d ever entered this room was drawn to this old radio. They felt the welcome of that dead spirit, happy to know that he had died to keep generations to come safe.
The presence faded. George powered the radio up, and as it’s tubes went from dark shadows to shapes glowing in varied shades of orange, he plugged in the headphones that always lay on the table before it. One ear covered, the other bare to hear his surroundings, George leaned forward and began to tune across the airwaves. A few loud stations stood out, mostly the ones who’s sole purpose seemed to be reciting endless strings of enigmatic numbers. A change in frequencies brought more signals. The BBC’s “World Service” coming in strong, George leaned back and listened to the world news from the English perspective.
The ringing of the hourly bells, the muted sounds of kids flooding through in the hall outside, offered a counter-point to the stream of news from the other side of the world. No longer needing food or a bathroom, George found, was a blessing. But in time, boredom set in. The longer ring that signaled lunch caught him by surprise, and he turned down the radio before moving to switch off the room lights. In their rush to get from one class to another, he’d been confident that no one would notice the light shining under the door. Now, with students wandering around, looking for something to do during their lunch, having the lights on almost invited someone to investigate who was in the room.
The hour passed quietly. No one tried the door, and outside of a couple debating whether or not they should ‘do it’ later on or not, no one came close to the door. The second long bell sounded the end of lunch, and with a final rush of feet, the halls emptied. George waited a few minutes, heard a final, hurried set of footsteps sprinting past the door, and turned the lights back on. Changing time brought changing propagation. The BBC signal had faded, so George tuned around. The sharp, fast-paced sound of a Morse code signal rattled out of the headphone, tempting George to try his rudimentary code skills. Whoever was sending set a pace far beyond his meager skills, so he tuned on. He kept looking until the next period bell rang before giving up. He felt the dead sailor again as he turned the radio off. “Thank you for serving. Rest in peace.” he whispered to that long-dead soul, and hoped it heard him.
The bells rang, the periods passed, and the hour grew close for school to be dismissed. George moved to the door, flipped off the lights, and opened ever so slightly. No one was in sight. Wider, and he heard footsteps climbing the Fish Hook. He’d thrown the lock already, so a quick shove presented whomever it was with a locked door. He heard the footsteps stop outside, then the sound of someone fumbling for the key before a familiar voice struck his heart.
“Damn it, who the hell didn’t remember to put the key back where it belongs?”
John Landdeker had been George’s friend for years. He’d been one of the guys who’d talked him into lugging that heavy old transmitter out of this very room. And no matter how much George would like to see his old friend one more time, he was the last person who should see George. John’s hands scrabbled along the top of the jamb, perhaps hoping someone had just put the key in a different spot. Then, with a final, mute “Fuck it!”, he heard his friend walk away. His phone said it would only be ten more minutes before classes ended, and George knew that his friend would be back with the spare room key. With no more time to waste, George let himself out. John was near the end of the hall, headed down the stair at that end that led directly to the principle’s office. George took the chance he wouldn’t look back, closed the door behind him, and put the key where it should be. John might be confused, even embarrassed to find it was where it should be, but George couldn’t let it go missing. He sprinted down the Fish Hook, nearly falling when his feet hit the floor below, and ran with everything he had to the boiler room door. Kids usually hid there during classes, so he hoped no one would search the room in the few minutes before classes were dismissed. Inside, he made for a space between one of the boilers and the outside wall. Kids tended to avoid it because there was no way into or out of the narrow space without getting smeared with dirt. It would do for a hiding place until the school emptied.
The muted roar of the boilers couldn’t mask the ringing of the final bell of the day. George remembered the chaos that ruled the halls at the end of classes. Meeting friends, seeing enemies eye him, teachers far too busy with their own concerns to care if words were exchanged, or even the odd shove administered. As long as the students got out of the building without a knock-down, drag-out fight breaking out, they could care less. All that and more he knew was happening throughout the school, an ever-repeating cycle as predictable as the Sun rising. Twice he heard the doors open, but whomever entered, whether to check something or simply to pass through, neither came to his hiding spot. George checked his phone again, saw it was almost a quarter after five, and heard the door open one more time. Another long period of relative silence followed, then with a loud “Clank” the overhead lights went out. A final time the door opened, letting a flood of light into the room, then it closed, leaving the faint glow of the emergency exit signs to illuminate the entire space.
Hand on the wall, George made his way out of hiding. It was still too early to chance the halls, but he thought it safe enough to be out of the stiflingly warm space where he’d been. But how long should he wait? He’d never heard of any club or sports team staying beyond seven, but how far beyond that should he remain in hiding? George no longer needed to eat and drink to stay alive, but there were some things even the undead could not escape. Boredom, he had long ago learned, was the most irksome things that did not end with death. He played tetris, solitaire, and every other game his phone held that interested him until his battery red-lined. It only took him until 9:30, and he’d planned to wait at least until 10 before beginning his search. “Time to get on with it.” he muttered as he stood up and headed out the door.
What George wasn’t sure of was where he should look first. Just wandering the maze of halls would take hours, time he didn’t have. Some of the incidents had occurred in the girl’s locker room, and while he was tempting to see the holy-of-hollies of his now-gone youth, he also knew that security cameras had been installed at both entrances to keep peeping toms at bay. One of his old friends had been ‘busted’ trying to sneak a peek, a fact he’d complained about on social media. George wasn’t invisible, so if Anne inhabited the place she’d died, he’d have to come back another day with some sort of disguise to keep his identity as one of the undead secret. But where else could she be? The memory came to him, the only other place an attack had taken place, and George knew where he’d look first. “So it’s off to Newgrange I go.”
Who had named the upper of two huge arched window on the East end of the ‘old’ building ‘Newgrange’ nobody knew. It was one of two pair that illuminated the stairs rising from floor to floor. The brick rectangle ran East-West, the long sides facing North and South. The later additions had been tacked onto the North and West faces, the latter covering over the matching pair of windows. Whether by plan or some freak coincidence, on the Winter Solstice, the Sun rose dead-center in the bottom of the upper window, something far too many kids had seen due to Iowa’s short Winter days. George hadn’t known the connection between that event and a similar occurrence at the ancient tomb in Ireland until Mrs. O’Sullivan, his world history teacher, had told him and every other student in his class about it.
Easing out of the boiler room, cautious of any remaining staff, George made his way through the echoing halls. This part, the newest portion of the school, presented nothing but quiet spaces George’s memory filled with scenes of swirling massive of students rushing from class to class. But as he entered the old building, there were several spots where he felt a presence. None of these manifested as ghosts, and as long as they didn’t try to impede George, he had no argument with whatever spirits resided in the dark recesses of the school. Ahead, the stairs rose, a marble-paved switchback climbing from floor to floor. The full Moon shone through both windows, a cold beacon in the dark and deserted space. George’s first step upon those stairs woke an echo in the towering space that was far louder than he’d expected. It woke something else.
“Who’s there?”
Those two simple words froze George in his tracks. It was Anne’s voice, a voice as memorable to him as his father’s or mother’s. He raised his head to scan the railings of the floors directly above him. Nothing. Would she appear if he called her?
“Anne, it’s me, George, George Ishkowa.”
A long moment’s silence, then, “You can’t be George. I went to his funeral, I stood by his grave when they lowered the casket into it. You can’t be George.”
Anne didn’t appear, but even with the sound reflecting around the stairwell, he could tell she was far above him, at the very top of the stairs. George climbed to the first landing, then turned himself full to the space above him.
“If you don’t believe it’s me, Anne, just take a look. I’m right here.”
Another silent moment, and she appeared. Anne didn’t walk to the railing, she just appeared. Her form took shape in the moonlight air. George saw her simple pony tail, the ratty Iowa State sweatshirt she always favored even though it was too big for her. If he hadn’t been able to see the railing through her hands, he might have believed Anne was there in the flesh. Her face turned down towards him, and he saw her frown.
“How are you here, George? I saw your parents at your funeral, I watched your Dad cry. That man never cries. He couldn’t have been faking it, so you must be dead George.” The frown faded, became a smile, but no smile George had ever seen in Anne’s face. It was the smile he’d seen on the face of far too many bullies who’d decided a skinny Asian kid would be a convenient target. “Are you like me, George? Did you come back to make the people who tormented you pay? We can do it together! We’ll make them sorry for all the hell they put us through, won’t we?”
He couldn’t see how he could tell her the truth, but George knew he couldn’t lie to his dearest friend. Straight out, that’s how you tell her. George felt his throat try to constrict, and forced himself to speak past it. “No, Anne, I didn’t come back to make the assholes here suffer. I came back to kill the…thing that killed me. It was the spirit of someone trapped in this world by their regrets, by the anger they felt at the world for how they died. I killed it, but doing that didn’t set me free. So I decided to save others from terrible deaths like I’d suffered.” George started climbing the stairs again, doing his best to keep his eyes fixed on Anne’s ghostly form. “I’ve stopped a lot of spirits from harming the living. I try to talk them into letting go of the things that keep them tethered to this world, and sometimes they listen…but when they won’t, I kill them.” George had reached the bottom of the final flight of stairs, but when he put his foot on the first, Anne’s form began to fade. “Anne, don’t go! I don’t want to kill you, you were my best friend. But you have to let go of your hate, your anger. You have to be willing to move on.”
There was little more of Anne’s form than a shadow, almost an outline of her form. But her voice filled the space. “How can I let go, George? Do you know what it was like for me?” She became solid again, even more solid then shed’ been before. “They were always on me, from the first day at school. Freak. Whore’s daughter. Stupid slut. It never let up, but when you were here, at least I had someone to talk to. Then you left! And they had something new to hound me about. ‘Oh, poor Anne, lost the only guy hard up enough to talk to her.’ ‘Did George get killed, Anne, or did he kill himself to get away from you?’ And that became ‘Maybe you should kill yourself so you can be with him, stupid bitch.’ So I did, just to be free of them.”
Her voice rose as she spoke, ending in a shout that rolled through the empty halls. George climbed the stairs as she spoke, his foot touching the top of the final flight as she ended. Now, at the were same level as Anne, George could see tears streaming down Anne’s face to disappear into nothingness as they dropped away. “Anne, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to leave you, I didn’t choose to leave you. If I’d been smarter, if I’d been less worried about what everyone thought of me, I wouldn’t have gone into the old Parson’s mansion. I wouldn’t have died, and you wouldn’t have had to face all that shit. I truly am sorry.” George took a step, reached out and put a hand on Anne’s shoulder. It felt as solid as when he’d done it while they were both alive. “If you need someone to hate, Anne, hate me. Those girls were just being the small-minded assholes they’ve always been, and probably always will be. I’m the one who deserted you. So hate me if you need someone to hate…but please, please don’t let your hate hold you down. Don’t let them keep you prisoner here.”
Anne stared at him while he spoke, her face blank, giving away no hint what she felt or thought of his words. It wasn’t until she spoke that he knew what effect he’d had. “George, if I let go, do you know what’s next?”
“No, Anne, I don’t. Remember, I didn’t leave this world. I don’t know what’s next. All I know is that it can’t be worse than staying here, tormenting the children of your tormentors. Is that what you want, to become a bully like them?”
For the first time since he’d laid eyes on her that night, Anne smiled, and even that wry smile was better than watching her cry. “Hell no, I don’t want to be a bully. I just wanted them to feel a little of what I felt from them.” The smile changed, some of the fierceness that had carried her through life showed through. “And I think I gave them a taste of what I went through. It’s enough. I think you’re right, George, I should leave.” The smile faded as her eyes locked on his. “But what about you? Will you ever be able to leave all this behind?”
George shrugged. “I really don’t know. Maybe this is what I was meant to do. Dad always wanted me to be like him and join the Marines, but I think even he knew I’d never pass the physical. So maybe if I can’t be ‘First to fight’, at least I can defend people from the things even Marines can’t stop.”
Anne did the one thing George hadn’t expect, she threw her arms around him. “You were always my hero, George. Thanks for being my friend, for caring when nobody else did.” George had been hugged by Anne before. She’d cried on his shoulder while telling him the latest horror her mother had invoked on her. But this was different, and rather than just hold Anne to let to let her know she wasn’t alone, George held her tight. He knew it would be the last time he held her, and even if it were just a phantom after-image of her, George wanted to remember everything about the moment.
Even as he thought that, the moment was over. Anne was gone, gone like she’d never been in his arms. He stood with his arms out, still poised like he was embracing her, then let them fall. He raised his eyes, took in the sight of the Moon in the star-filled sky, and wondered what had happened to Anne. Family lore said the first Ishkowa had fled Japan because he’d been a ‘lay preacher’ bent on converting all Japanese to Christianity, an attitude that hadn’t made him popular. George had hated going to church, and his first act of rebellion against his father had been to refuse to go. Now, looking up at the dark emptiness, George didn’t feel the least bit hypocritical as he closed his eye and spoke.
“I don’t know if you’re listening or not, but if you are, please take care of my friend Anne Coulett. She was the best person I ever knew, someone who lived through hell here on Earth and never stopped caring for others. So if there really is a heaven, I hope you’ll let her in.” Though he felt nothing in response to it, George hoped that one pray would be answered. He opened his eyes, and let the tears run down his face. Anne was gone, and he had no hope he’d ever see her again. But he knew he’d never forget her.
