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Song (a short story by Dramaelf)
Darren found himself walking through the graveyard. Didn’t know how he got there, he was just walking from the house, with the smoky rooms and the indifferent uncle, and he looked up and found himself there.
The sun was gone, but light still filtered above the horizon to cast shadows on the dark purple clouds. The sky had turned orange and grey, with some blue desperately peeking through to make itself known before it died with the light. Mosquitoes buzzed in Darren’s ear and landed in the sweat on his cheek. He slapped them away impatiently and examined the place he was in.
It wasn’t a large cemetery, not by any means. It was faded, ancient, forgotten, tucked away behind some old trees. And silent. It was a heavy silence, waiting to be shattered by something or another. And someone did.
“La la la, la la la la…” Darren jumped and spun around, not expecting to find someone else there.
She was a small woman, barely more than 18. She had long sheets of blue- blonde hair across her pale cheek. He couldn’t explain it, but just the sight of her sent chills down his spine. She seemed in another world, singing a tuneless song and walking aimlessly. But when she drew close, he could see tears running down her cheeks.
He felt a stir of uneasiness, but suppressed it and spoke.
“Miss? Miss, are you all right?”
She didn’t hear him. She kept walking, singing a haunting song that stirred his memory. He followed her, still wondering what scared him so much. If he had been paying attention, he would have noticed the temperature had dropped considerably.
“Um, excuse me… miss.”
She stopped and stared at him suddenly. And something in her eyes turned his blood icy cold. Despair, fear, grief, but the part that struck terror in his heart- hate. Ice cold hate.
He stumbled, backing into a gravestone. She walked toward him, still singing and crying, her moonwashed face anguished. He screamed and tripped over the stone, landing hard. He got up and ran, didn’t care where, just kept running. The song rang in his ears.
He stopped at an old backroad, breathing hard. Darren looked for headlights, saw nothing. Then he saw an old car at the end of the road. He walked over, hoping to get a ride, he just wanted to get away from that woman.
The car was dark. He approached, more slowly this time, with a growing feeling of dread in his stomach. He looked cautiously in the window, then screamed in terror.
The driver was dead, a bloody knife in his chest. He saw the woman standing over him. There was no hate in her transparent eyes now, just a look of eternal sorrow. Darren let out a half-animal wail as he looked at the man still in death. The man that he had killed.
The police said it was a robbery gone wrong. The boy, Darren, had held him at knifepoint when the victim pulled over for directions, and he had fought. They found the blue-blonde haired woman’s body in the backseat of the car, stabbed like her husband.
They were buried together in a family plot behind the old trees.
And far off, they could hear a song.
La la la, la la la la…
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