Prophecy Girl

How much time has to pass for a crime to become less significant? A decade? More? How to you decide when murder, rape, assault, theft, is no longer worth investigating? Some people seem to be able to leave the past where they have buried it. I was never someone who could do that. The past is what makes us who we are both the good of it and the bad. Is it not the responsibility of those of us here on this earth now, to weed out the crimes of the past and hold those who committed them accountable, even if they too are gone? Of course, I suppose it could be argued that it's harder for a person like me to let go, when they are surrounded by the noise of other people’s pasts and by their secrets.

I don't remember exactly when it began. It has been a part of my life for so long now that it is in essence a core part of who I am. I have accepted it, this gift and sometimes curse as best I can, and I have tried to use it for good whenever I can.

A friend of mine who shares some of my gifts likes to say that 'The Gods are generous with clues and extremely guarded when it comes to specifics.' Nothing could have been truer when that dream first came to me.

Sleep was not my friend that night. The wind was howling outside of my window and I lay awake for hours and the sun was beginning to rear it's head just as I finally began to drift off. The first thing I can remember feeling as sleep took me is joy, a girlish joy that comes with the first flushes of teenage love. The kind that she believes will last forever as she buttons the blouse of her school uniform and then, oh and then, the overwhelming pain of heartbreak. I felt as though I could have drowned in it. Images swirled of a man at a desk and a girl unbuttoning the blouse of her school uniform. His smile, self-assured and strong, hers innocent and sweet. A voice then, hers, as she stood in front of a calendar as she enclosed the 25th of February in a red love heart. Then his, as he circled the same date in a little black book, a teacher's diary. I saw myself watching them both at the same time as if I were the narrator in a play standing in the middle of a stage and the sorrow, I felt then was my own. After that an overwhelming nothingness, I stood in darkness until like Alice I was pulled down the rabbit hole and surrounded with the images of this girl and this man always with the date swirling in between them, her heart and his endless circle, her grief and his righteousness.

I awoke on the floor of my bedroom in a cold sweat. Finally, having reached the bottom of the rabbit hole.

"Claire are you alright?" asked my husband Sam, jumping out of bed and rushing to help me up.

"The date. What's the date?" I snapped at him, gasping for air as if I had really fallen all that way.

He looked at the watch I had bought him our first Christmas together, "The 25th of February," he said.

"I have to go out," I told him as he helped me to my feet.

He stared deeply into my unfocused, teary eyes and his resolve settled.

"I'm coming with you," he said kissing my head.

We packed the dog up into the car and he drove in the direction I told him to while the story came together in my mind. It took such focus to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and yet, without ever knowing how, I knew exactly where I was going and why.

After a couple of hours we came to a house in the countryside with the most beautiful Ivy running all along it. It was idyllic. I could feel her like I was breathing the air she would never again for her.

Sam was the better actor; he went to the door to ask for directions as I slipped out of the car with the dog and followed the same dirt path she once had to the honeysuckle gate that lead into their secret spot in his garden.

I walked where she had and as I came closer to her final resting place, she walked with me. I passed through the honeysuckle gate made up of it's twining vines and into their place, closed off from the rest of the garden by a concrete wall with flowers trained to grow along the side that had been meant only for them. It would never cease to amaze me what the loved ones of those who did terrible things seemed unable or unwilling to find. It wasn't a large space, guarded by concrete walls, thorny rose bushes and an old oak tree, it would appear I suppose if one failed to look to simple be an overgrown part of the property that he had never quite managed to get to.

I got down on my hands and knees and ran my fingertips over the grass.

"I feel you," I whispered. "Show me where you are."

Even after so many years, it still startled me when her hands clasped mine, finger nails covered in sparkly blue nail polish dug into the back of my hands and pulled. I looked up into her face and even marked by death, the beauty she held in her youth was there, but that innocence was replaced by such a burning sadness and undiluted rage I had to fight to keep it from consuming me. She dragged my hands with hers and laid them on a patch of grass that seemed to me just a little darker than the others and then, she was gone.

"Chaucer," I said as firmly as I could to my Boarder Collie. "Dig."

It did not take long to find her. Her grave was shallow. I could hear Sam shouting for me along with another male voice I knew to be Mr Noel Winston, high school history teacher and murderer.

"I'm really sorry about this," I heard Sam say and it truly sounded sincere. "The dog must have got out of the car and she's gone looking for it."

"Oh it's alright, happy to help," said Noel, who could barely hide his dissatisfaction at being disturbed like this.

I got up and ran through the honeysuckle gate screaming with Chaucer following dutifully after me.

"Sam, call the police! Chaucer ran off and he dug up something. I think it's a body."

Noel's entire being crumbled and I heard her laugh.

By the time the police came it was raining. Sam and I stood by our car as he held an umbrella over my head.

"Is she still here?" he asked me.

"Yes," I said, turning my head slightly to look at her. "Her name is Shelley. She was fifteen years old when she was murdered on the 25th February 2016 right on the spot where I found her. She met him there all the time and they had sex. She was in love. His wife got pregnant and was becoming suspicious that he was having an affair, he couldn't afford to lose her trust fund and the beautiful life it had built, including this house. Before Shelley he just used that secret little spot to shoot up or snort cocaine or whatever his particular brand was at the time," Shelley took my left hand as Sam took my right. She nodded to me, wanting to witness the first time her story would be told. "He told her to meet him here and she did. He gave her a cheque for $20'000 to keep her mouth shut about the affair. She ripped it up and threw it in his face and began screaming for Eleanor his wife to come outside. He put his hand over her mouth, and he broke her neck. It's not easy to break someone's neck Sam. You have to really want them to die. He buried her in that spot along with a little black book that I think was a diary that would have had dates in it when they met up circled. He killed her to shut her up," I began to cry.

Shelley squeezed my hand once and then she was gone, and I could not feel her anymore. She was at peace.

"I wish I could carry some of this for you," Sam said, taking me in his arms.

"You do," I told him. "You carry me."

Noel Winston was arrested and charged with the murder of Shelley Harp who disappeared on the 25th of February 2016. Her family buried her body in their plot. I still visit there sometimes.