Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
But when you were talking about choices that affected your whole life, didn’t compromise result in everyone getting something that no one really wanted?
What kind of life is that?
A wasted one.
“Okay,” Carys said. “This is one of my favorite spots.”
They stood in front of a cemetery with high stone walls and an iron gate thrown open to the sidewalk lined with live oaks.
There was a small cemetery on Owl Island, but it didn’t look anything like this. It was crooked and sea-blasted, stones worn almost blank by salt and time. This was laid out like a small city, with sidewalks in rows and crypts that stood above the ground. Each was grand and some even had wrought-iron fencing around them like a house. The wall they entered through looked like safety-deposit boxes. Carys explained that they held remains.
“The aboveground tombs are expensive, so this is a cheaper option. Also, the tombs can’t be opened for a year after a body is interred. So if it’s a family tomb and someone else in the family dies, say, eight months later, they can’t reopen their family crypt, so lots of families have a secondary spot in the wall to put a body in until the crypt can be opened again and the body permanently interred.”
“Why can’t they be opened?” Greta asked, visions of ghosts and vampires swimming deliciously in her head.
“I think it was probably a health thing to prevent diseases back in the day? A lot of people here died from yellow fever.”
“Oh,” Greta said, slightly disappointed it wasn’t more supernatural. “That makes sense.”
“I see. You wanted some spooky shit, huh?”
Greta grinned. “Kinda.”
Carys took her hand and they walked through the narrow pathways, weaving between tombs and around gravestones until they came to a tomb near another gated entrance to the cemetery.
This was an aboveground tomb, but where most had a flat slab of marble or stone affixed to the front with decorative fastenings, this tomb’s was missing. She could see directly into the open crypt. It looked like an oven, with a slab in the middle and space above and below it.
Carys crouched down, and Greta followed suit.
“If you look closely, you can see some bones still in there,” Carys said, pointing to the back corner of the tomb.
Something white gleamed in the dimness of the dirt, and Greta squinted to make it out. It could’ve been bone. It could also have been plastic or stone, but for the sake of the spooky vibes she wanted, she chose to believe Carys’ story.
“I’m kinda surprised no one’s taken the bones,” she said.
“Oh, babe, if you steal bones from a grave in New Orleans, on your own head be it.” Carys shivered.
“I didn’t know you believed in the ghost tour stories you tell.”
“What I like about ghost stories is that even if things didn’t happen precisely the way the story has come to be told, they still point to the fears and taboos that are real.” She shrugged. “Do I believe stealing a bone from the cemetery would immediately bring the ghost of that person down on me and spell my imminent death? Not really. But I think that the kind of person who would disturb the remains of someone who’s died—of someone’s beloved family member—is also the kind of person who would make other choices in their life that would lead to chaos, discourtesy, and negative consequences. So I guess it’s a shorthand?”
“Like a math formula,” Greta said.
“Yeah, kind of. Not that it’s guaranteed every time, but it’s suggestive anyway.”
“That was a very practical answer. But do you believe in ghosts? Or vampires or any of that stuff?”
After a minute, Carys said, “I believe there are things I don’t know or understand. I believe there’s stuff that happens that can’t be explained by the materialism that quote unquote ‘realists’ insist on. I guess I believe there’s stuff now that was unthinkable five hundred years ago, because we didn’t know about it, so why wouldn’t the same be true of five hundred years from now?”
Greta nodded.
“What about you?”
As a child, Greta had wandered along the rocky shoreline of Owl Island with Adelaide. They had stared out at the bay until their eyes crossed, trying to see mermaids emerge from the prickling foam. For a year or so, Greta refused to turn her back on the water, convinced that one of the creatures that lurked within it would scramble onto land and fell her with a single strike of its fangs to her vulnerable throat.
It had been a story as real to her as Tillie’s fear of the dark or Maggie’s brief but intense conviction that their house would catch on fire.
With time, she grew out of it—or perhaps grew into the…what had Carys called it? The materialism that realists insisted on?
But she’d never stopped hoping they were real.