Gilligan's File

Chapter Six

All throuhe nhe night I was haunted by visions of my mother and father. There are so many, some fragmented, some impossibly detailed, yet they are all so vivid that I am certain they are not mere dreams. They are memories.
Swinging in the park when the air is barely cold and orange leaves litter the ground, bathed in the kitchen sink by my mother's gentle hand, bumping my head on the coffee table and being quickly scooped into the protective arms of my father, who expertly wipes away the tears with kisses and his soothing voice, it feels as though I have found what I have always sought; the locked corridor that holds my identity, my soul. And now I wander its dust ridden halls and peek through the doors framed in cobwebs at my own accord. No limits. I can remember the warmth of my mother's womb, if I choose.
When the sun infiltrates the Venetian blinds that obscure the only window in my room, I rise. Though sleep never really came to me, I am wide awake, still brimming with the memories. But as I groom and dress myself the visions fade and fatigue sets in. Baggy eyed I board the bus to school, already beginning to doubt everything.
By noon I am sure that it was all a delusion. A sad fantasy concocted by a desperate mind. Logically, the very notion of the whole thing was absurd. “What did you do last night, Abigail?” “Oh, nothing much, just bumped into my father on the street. Incidentally he’s been dead for fifteen years, of course.”
I contemplate seeing the guidance counselor, but decide to confirm my suspicions first by going to the cemetery where my parent's graves lay, after school. Seeing the undisturbed memorial will prove that I imagined the whole thing.
The cemetery itself is abandoned. No one ever goes there anymore. It's like low budget housing for the dead. Only the poor who died with nothing are buried there.
I approach the entrance and am slightly daunted by the gate swaying wide open with the wind. Normally it is kept tightly locked, and I have to climb it just to get in. I step over the fragments of metal, most likely from the shattered lock, and enter. As I walk the gravel path that I know so well, I find myself wondering how such loving, good people could have ended up in a place like this. The only decorative thing about it was my parent's tombstones. May paid extra to have them personalized, beautiful black marble engraved in dainty script and framed in rose vines. They stood out like sore thumbs amongst the chiseled blocks that simply stated the last name of the occupant.
Of course I knew why it was this way, why my parents were ostracized from both sides of our family. From what May had told me, my mother was the black sheep, so to speak. She began dating my father when she was a freshman in high school and he a senior. They continued to date, even after he graduated, and she became pregnant with me when she was a senior. My father was in a dead end job as a warehouse assistant, and needless to say, my grandparents weren’t too excited at the prospect of having him as a son-in-law. But my parents loved each other, so they basically told everyone to fuck-off, and they went on to live their own lives. May was the only person from my mom’s side who stood by them.
My heart and my stride freeze as I approach my parent’s graves. The air stinks like the school science lab, acrid like formaldehyde. There is a gaping hole in the earth where my father’s grave use to be. The mangled remains of his coffin are strewn in all directions. It looks as though a tornado touched down in that one place, leaving everything else unscathed. Including my mother’s grave, accept for one muddy handprint in the center of it.
My knees give out and I collapse into a quivering mass of tears on my mother’s grave. I wasn’t insane. I had really seen my father last night.
I absently place my hand over the muddy handprint on Delilah’s tombstone. The fingers are bigger than mine, the palm wider. I bring my knees to my chest and curl into a tight ball, leaning my weight against the headstone. I sit like that for a long time. The air is cold, stingingly cold, but I don’t mind. I keeps me lucid. The sky grows darker and I remain stationary. Soon it is night.
I rock back and forth for a while, but then an odd warmth begins to envelope me, starting at my back and working over my arms. It continues to spread until I am warm all over.
“Abby…” I hear my name, as gentle as the breeze, from behind me. I know the voice. It’s a voice I’ve always known. My mother.
I turn to see her standing behind me. I rise from my spot on the ground. She’s beautiful. There is no wind, but her golden hair flows freely. She wears and silky grey dress that comes to her feet, which are bare. She looks no older than me, as she peers at me with a mischievous grin. I want to hold her, to be held by her, but her form is translucent, stereotypically glikelike.
“Mother…” Her smile widens, merry like a child.
“I’m so confused, what’s going on? Why is this happening now?”
Without explanation she places both hands on my forehead, and a sudden charge of electricity shoots through me. What I see is hard to comprehend. The colors are skewed and far to intense, but I get the gist of it. I am witnessing the death of my parents.
They are in an alley with four other men. I am seeing it all from an aerial view, I can only make out the foof mof my parents as they are shot.
The vision blurs and now I see my father like I saw him last night, dressed all in black with his face painted red. I realize now that it is not his blood he wears, but the blood of the bastards that killed him.
Delilah removes her hands. I stand still, staring at her. We seem to communicate wordlessly. I understand everything now.
“I love you Abby. I have always loved you.” Her airy words caress my cheek like a feathered hand. I reach out for her but freeze when I hear my name being called, louder and more violently, from behind.
“Abby! Abby!” It’s May, bounding toward me from behind. I ignore her and turn back to my mother, but just like the night before, she was gone. May reaches me and pulls me tightly to her chest. I don’t resist but I don’t reciprocate the embrace.
“Oh, honey, you had me worried sick!” As she stood there holding me, I couldn’t keep it in anymore. I began to sob in her arms. She pulled me away from her and wiped the hair away from my face.
“Abby, what’s the matter? Why are you crying?”
“I saw them, May! I saw them!”
“Saw who? What are you talking about?”
“Mom and Dad!”
“Honey, sit down, I think you’re delirious.” She tugged my by my elbow to a near-by bench and forced me to sit, taking the space beside me.
“Now what do you mean?”
“Last night, I was walking alone in a bad part of town when a homeless man tried to mug me,”
“Abby! What have I told you about-“
“Please, May, Let me finish.” I tell her all about last night, about my father saving me from the homs mas man, and about my mother’s ghost in the cemetery. As I speak her face changes from a look of concern to a blank, glassy stare. When I finish she remains quite.
“May, please talk to me. Tell me I’m not insane.” She rises and takes me by the arm again.
“Come on, Abby. You nto cto come home now.”
“May, please,”
“Quiet!” She moves surprisingly quick to her car parked outside the cemetery. Without waiting for me, she climbs in, slams her door shut, and turns the engine. I rush to get in before she drives away.
She speeds all the way to the county hospital, where she works as a nurse. We pull into the employee parking lot. Without explanation she gets out and locks me in the car.
As I watch her waddle into the building, I feel an overwhelming sense of doom. She’s probably going to have me committed to the mental ward. I bury my face in my hands and wait for her to return.
I don’t have to wait long. In about ten minutes she returns, carrying a small box. She gets back in the car, keeps the box in her lap, and guns the engine.
“May, please talk to me. You’re scaring me.” She keeps her eyes on the road, same glassy stare, ignoring me.
When we finally get home she jumps out of the car and motions for me to follow her. She fumbles for her keys with an unusual clumsiness as we approach our apartment. Once inside, she closes the door tightly behind us and orders me to sit down on the couch. She sits beside me, her face red and breathing ragged.
“May?” I hear her suck in a deep breath as her hands wad the fabric of her sweater’s hem; An old nervous habit. At last she speaks, her voice strained.
“They were going to take you away from me.”
“What?”
“Jason and Delilah. They were going to take you from me.”
“May, I don’t understand,”
“Did you know I was married, Abby? I was. Before you were born. But he left me because I was barren. That broke my heart.” She laughs, a strange laugh that sounds more like a gasp.
“I was always so jealous of Delilah and her perfect relationship with Jason. And then, when they had you, I’ve never told anyone this, but I considered suicide. They had everything and I had nothing. But when money got tight and Dah tah took that shit job at the factory, she asked me to take care of you during the day. You were so cute, Abby. Round tummy and cheeks, just like a Cambell’s kid. When I was younger, that’s how I always imagined my children would look. Like the Cambell’s kids.” She laughs again, this time more high pitched. I’m confused, I don’t know where she’s going with this. I can feel my heart tightening in my chest as her eyes darken.
“Then your dad got an offer from his uncle to come and work for him. It was a better job, better money. All the way in California.” She looks me in the eyes for the first time since the cemetery.
“I couldn’t let them take you from me, Abby. You’ve got to understand that.”
“What are you saying?” The room seems to blur to black, and the only thing I can see is May.
“I paid to have your parents killed. My entire life’s savings, plus a don’t ask don’t tell policy for the killer at the hospital. I gave it all to a man named Wherther, who said he’d take care of everything.”
“No! I saw how they were killed, Delilah showed me! Dad saw something he wasn’t supposed to see, another murder, and they killed him for it!”
“It was all a setup, honey.” Her tone is flat, dead.
“No, No!” I try to get of the couch, but she grabs my wrist with iron strength, pulling me back down. I’m crying now, sobbing.
“I’m so sorry Abby. I though you could forget about them, and it would just be the two of us. Now I see that’s not going to happen. You can’t forget. It was wrong of me to expect you to.”
“You’re sorry?! That’s it? You ruined THREE lives May! You expect me just to stay here now?”
“No, no, you’re going to go be with them now, Abby. You’re gonna see them real soon. I’m going to finish what I started.”
I sit paralyzed on the couch as she opens the box, extracting a small vial and a syringe. She punctures the vial with the needle and sucks up the liquid until she can fit no more.
“Abby, please…” I try again to flee the couch, to run, but she trips me and I fall, hitting my head on the coffee table. The pain ripples through my body like boiling water and I crumple. I feel her kneeling over me, taking my arm into her hands, her freezing hands. The pinch of the needle pales in comparison to the pain in my head. I feel my body start to tingle, then go cold. My vision darkens. The last thing I see is May, caressing my cheek.