That was it; a few simple words. The only concrete evidence that Mona had ever existed at all. Over the next century the wind, rain and snow would wash away her name and then there would be nothing left at all. The scene revealed more about Mona than I'd ever dared to ask.
"Your birthday," I said after what felt like a perpetual silence, "it was only a two weeks ago. Why didn't you tell me?"
Mona shrugged. "What use is a birthday when you're dead? It's not like you could have bought me a friendship bracelet or anything. I'm going to be seventeen forever, now. Or until I move on to whatever's next, at least."
We drifted into a swampy, cushion-like silence. It sucked me down, piling me heavy with remorse. Out of the mist, a realization occurred to me. "And the other date, when you died... that's next week!"
"Yep. But don't worry, that's just another day on the calendar, too. Not even my family had visited in ears."
"But Mona, next week marks thirty years since you died. Surely that has to mean something?"
"Nope." She was trying to sound detached from the whole thing, like the gravestone belonged to somebody else entirely, but I could tell from the heaviness of her stare that it was bothering her. "It's just another reminder of everything that's happened. I'd rather just forget."
"Then why did you bring me here? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm honoured that you feel like you can share this with me. But if all this just serves as some horrible reminder, why bring me here at all? Why would you want to put yourself through coming here again?"
Mona's expression softened. "Because you're my friend. My only friend. The past thirty years have been the loneliest thing that an entity can possibly experience, and I never thought I'd ever speak to another human being again. So I just wanted to share this with you. You know like when friends share secrets, or little personality traits that nobody else is allowed to see?"
I begrudgingly thought of Debbie, of how she sometimes tried to put me in a headlock or how we could watch whole movie marathons and recite whole scenes by heart, dispensing the character roles between the two of us. I nodded, my chest suddenly feeling as though it were filling with water.
"Well, it's sort of like that, I guess. This is a side of me that I wanted to show you."
I didn't know what to say. I realized, with a giddying sense of revelation, that the only secret I really possessed, was the one that I shared with Mona. The one that had brought us together in the first place. It was the one thing I hadn't told Debbie. What did that say about our friendship?
Mona let out an uncomfortable giggle. "This is so silly, I feel like I'm showing you a really embarrassing old photo."
"Listen, no matter how good friends we are, I will never show anybody my baby photos," I said, trying to inject some comedy into the oddity that this morning had turned out to be. "I look like a cabbage."
Silence festered in the surrounding mist. The whiteness intensified, and I could tell by the creeping temperature that the morning sun was doing its best to wheedle its way through. Mona's grave seemed to repulse it, so that I felt as though we were standing in a clear dome, pressed in on each side by the haze.
"Mona," I began, a question forming on my lips.
"Yes?"
"How are you still here?" Mona winced, and I hurried to clarify myself. "What I mean is, I've seen spirits before, and they always hang around just for a little bit to do whatever it was they remained to do, and then they move on. How come you haven't done the same?"
Mona's expression turned steely. Instantly, I wished I could take the words back. "You've asked this question before," she snarled. "The answer hasn't changed."
"I know, I'm sorry, but-"
"Do you want me to disappear? Is that what it is?"
I was stunned, as though I'd taken a blow to the stomach. "What? No! How could you say that?"
"Well when your only friend seems to express the persistent desire to question your existence, you really do start to wonder!" she spat. Her hair began to writhe again, gaining a life all of its own as her temper picked up its momentum.
"No, Mona, stop it," I insisted. "You're taking it the wrong way."
She ignored me, her hair and her clothes whipping about her being as though caught in a freak hurricane. "Just because you're a Sensitive doesn't mean you hold all the secrets to the universe, Saffy!" she bellowed. I felt a sickening crunch in my stomach as she began to rise from the ground, nothing between her and the grass but thin, empty air. "You can't just assume things because that's what happened before. Don't you think it's torturous enough for me to be this way, without having to be reminded of it by you? Don't you think I've suffered enough misery?"
"Y-yes," I stammered. Mona's face began to warp with shadows that shouldn't have been there. The mist threw no shadows, and yet here they were, conceived by pure rage.
"Then why do you keep reminding me of it, Saffy? Why are you doing this to me, after all I've been doing to help you?"
Her voice had taken on a monstrous, rumbling tone that didn't sound completely human. Her hair and her clothes tore about frantically and the air around her entire body seemed to judder. I wanted to cover my ears, close my eyes shut and scream.
"You want me to leave you alone, is that it?"
"No!" I cried. I clamped my eyes shut and tried to shut myself away.
"Well if you want me to leave you alone, then I will. You can fend for yourself!"
Her last words deepened and reverberated through the air until I could feel my bones rattling. The ground shuddered beneath my feet. And then, without any declaration, the chaos ceased. For a second I was convinced that I'd gone completely deaf, that the mounting turmoil had damaged my eardrums, but then I opened my eyes.
Mona was gone. The air where she'd been hovering was completely empty and I could see through it to the crumbling catacomb beyond. I rotated in a full circle, just to make sure she hadn't reappeared somewhere else amongst this legion of the dead, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Relief flowed into my lungs. I'd never seen Mona like that before, so full of wrath and so... inhuman. My hands were still trembling, even as I directed my gaze to her idle gravestone. Cherished daughter, beloved sister. The words replayed themselves in my mind, resonating with derision, as though they were in on some joke that I wasn't.
Slowly the tranquillity of the cemetery returned, like a timid creature that was just regaining the courage to emerge from the undergrowth after spotting a predator. But then I heard something, a whisper in the air that didn't sound completely dissimilar to the pitter-patter of raindrops.
I glanced upwards and locked eyes with the colourless mist. There was no rain, at least not yet. My ears zoned in on the peculiar sound and my attention veered to the catacomb beyond Mona's plot. It was coming from inside, I was certain of it.
I edged my way over. When I reached the catacomb, the noise from inside was unmistakeable. I had to make myself look. My heart was beating inside my chest, the nerves sizzling only millimetres beneath the surface of my skin.
There, inside the darkness of the catacomb, was a sight that made my entire being surge with dizzying nausea. My throat began to burn and my intestines constricted so that I had to clap my hand to my mouth.
The ground of the catacomb was moving. It was alive, writhing and bubbling with the rot-thriving creatures of the earth and mud. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of thick-ringed worms, glistening and tangled in each other's stringy bodies. Cockroaches scrambled over this heaving mound, some of them as large as mice. Everywhere I looked, rice-like maggots squirmed and twisted, helpless as the earth pushed more through its dirt-clogged pores.
But it was the rats that made me scream. There were so many of them, all of them muscular and bulky as though they'd been exposed to copious amounts of radiation. They scurried around the edges of the squirming pile, darting in every now and then to snatch at the worms before dragging them off to be eaten.
I turned and bent over a thick knoll of grass, completely forgetting for a second that I was in a graveyard and not a dark alleyway outside some dingy nightclub. I forced my hair out of my face with trembling fingers only seconds before I began to vomit into the undergrowth that rose to immerse the walls of the catacomb.
My lungs heaved and my innards were on fire. There were worms in my lungs and no amount of heaving and choking would get them up. There were rat's tails' curling around my ribcages and no amount of retching could shudder them off.
"I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world-"
The music blared out over the graveyard, diffusing the peace that tiptoed behind me. I groped at my pocket like a blind man and pushed the mobile phone upwards through the fabric of my jeans until it fell into my hands.
I glanced at the screen. It was Vivian. There was no point ignoring her; if there was anything that woman preached, it was persistence.
"Hello?" I sounded like a dehydrated frog, but my mother didn't seem to care.
"Saffy?" There was noise in the background, dwarfing the sound of her frantic voice. It sounded like men shouting. I sat up straight, suddenly alert. "Where are you?"
"I'm at the-" I began, and I was dreading spilling out the truth. What would she think of that? Thankfully, Vivian didn't let me finish.
"Get over here right now."
"Where, mum?" I croaked. "What's happened?"
"The bakery," my mother said, and the wobble in her voice was distinct. "It's the bakery, Saffy."
There was a click, and Vivian was gone. I listened to the air, and noticed a stark difference. Silence. There was none of that wet squirming sound, like spaghetti being mixed together in a big bowl.
I turned my attention to the catacomb and stepped tentatively towards it. When I peered inside, my suspicions were confirmed. They were gone; that churning carpet of worms and cockroaches and rats, it was all gone, replaced instead by a pure and complete darkness.
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