┌────── . ° ♩ ✦ ♩ ° · ──────┐
Chapter Two
THIS IS NOT THE END
└────── . ° ♩ ✦ ♩ ° · ──────┘
────── . ° ♩ ✦ ♩ ° · ──────
Rosalie knew before she even opened her eyes that something was wrong. Everything felt different, the air around her felt colder, and the damp sand beneath her even felt different, as if she couldn't even really touch it. She opened up her eyes and saw the darkness that surrounded her. She was unable to make out any of her surroundings, just that there was sand below her and all around her.
Realizing that sand completely covered her she began to panic. She frantically moved her arms around and felt a plastic bag beside her and something hard inside of it. Dread instantly filled her, and she came to the conclusion that she had been buried alive. She screamed for help for what must have been hours before she realized that no one was coming to save her.
She tried to dig her way out but was shocked when her hand went straight through the sand. She quickly pulled back her hand and examined it carefully, wondering what was wrong with her. Shrugging her shoulders, she sat up and mentally braced herself to hit the sand above her, but she didn't. A small smile appeared on her face, and then she quickly rose to the surface.
As she sat on the surface of the ground, she took in her surroundings. She was on the beach that her mother used to take her all the time. From behind her, she could hear the waves washing up on land as the birds sang in the early morning. The sun was just beginning to rise, and she realized that she had been out all night. She never even thought twice about being buried at that moment. All she thought about was getting home because her mother was going to be mad at her.
She didn't notice as she ran through the sand that she left no footprints behind or that the people walking along the beach couldn't see her. She didn't notice that she wasn't alive.
She ran towards the crowd of people and weaved her way through them. Then another thought hit her. She was going to be late for school. Being late to anything stressed her out, so it only made her run faster. She wondered what her friends would think when she didn't arrive at school for first period. She barely ever missed school. Then her mind drifted back to her mother. She was going to be furious when she found out Rosalie had been out all night. Rosalie could only think about how long she would be grounded for.
In her mind, it didn't quite hit her yet that she had been buried on the beach. She had tossed that aside to the furthest part of her mind and pretended like it never happened. Maybe a part of her didn't want to believe in the possibility that she was dead. Maybe a part of her wanted to keep living in the fairytale that she had created in her head where life was perfect, and nothing like this could ever happen.
After a while of running, Rosalie eventually made it to her house. She stood outside the brick walls of her house and wondered what she was going to tell her mother. Her german shepherd, Willow, barked from within the pin that she was in. They had fenced in the back yard after their last dog ran onto the road. They didn't want that to happen again.
"Willow?" Rosalie called out for her dog. The dog barked and began to growl at her.
It was as if the dog did not recognize Rosalie and jumped up on the fence and growled at her as she walked closer. She walked over slowly with her hand out, hoping that her dog would know that it was her. Instead, Willow snarled at her and tried to bite her hand once it was close enough.
That alone was enough to make Rosalie wonder what had happened. She thought maybe her dog had gotten rabies, or maybe she was just sick. The thought that she might be dead never once crossed her mind.
The back door opened, and Mara stepped out, "Willow, what is it?" She asked the dog. Rosalie stared up at her mother and wondered why she hadn't spoken to her. Then she thought maybe she couldn't see her at this angle.
Rosalie closed her eyes and took in a deep breath, and then headed towards the front door. It was time to face her mom and receive whatever punishment her mother gave her. She figured she would be grounded for a couple of weeks, or maybe even a month.
She reached her hand out to grab a hold of the door handle, but to her surprise, her hand went straight through it. She stared at the door and then her hand for a moment, trying to come up with a logical explanation, but she never did. Her eyebrows furrowed as she tried again but with the same result. Deciding on a different approach, she called out for her mom.
She waited outside the door for a few moments before she realized that something was wrong. Her mother couldn't hear her. Immediately her mind began to think the worst. She thought maybe her mother had fallen and knocked herself out, or maybe she had somehow died. Once again, her fragile mind couldn't seem to wrap around the idea that she was the one that was dead.
She raised her hand up to push the doorbell, hoping that it would work, when the door opened. Rosalie smiled at the sight of her mother, answering the door. "Oh, good." She said. "Something weird is going on, but I promise I'm okay, mom." She tried to reassure her mother before she could even speak.
But instead of looking at Rosalie, her mother seemed to look through her. Rosalie stood there confused, and then she turned around to see what her mother was looking at. The mailman walked up to her and gave her a package. As he did, his hands went through Rosalie's body. She let out a loud gasp and quickly moved out of the way.
Her mind started spinning, trying to think of what could have caused this, but she came up short. Taking the opportunity, she walked through the open door while her mother signed for the package. She wondered what her mother could have ordered, but then she remembered that it was her birthday next week. November 5th, she would be turning seventeen, only she didn't know that she would never reach that age.
Once her mother made it back inside the house, Rosalie stepped towards her. "Mom, I'm sorry for staying out all night." She said quickly as her mom set the package down on the kitchen table. "I don't know what happened."
She waited a moment for her mother to speak. But as the seconds passed into minutes, worry began to creep up on her as she watched her mother take a seat on the couch and stare at the front door. "Mom, can you at least speak to me?" She asked as she took a seat down beside her.
Soon the front door opened and her mother perked up but some she saw that it was her husband. "I put the posters up all around town." He spoke and then placed the last one down on the coffee table. Rosalie sat up straighter to get a look at the paper. When she saw the big red word missing with her picture beside it, she felt a sick feeling in her stomach.
Her breathing began to pick up as she looked between her parents. "Mom, Dad, I'm right here. Why can't you see me?"
At that moment, Mara felt the sense that her daughter was close, but she couldn't tell where. She left her husband in the living room as she went down the hall to Rosalie's bedroom as she carried the poster. Rosalie followed her down the hall, wondering what had happened.
Her mother opened up the door, and Rosalie could tell that it was precisely the way that she left it yesterday. Mara hung up the poster on the wall, and Rosalie took a better look at it. She saw the date on it, the 27th of September, and then on the bottom of the right side corner, she saw the date that it was printed, September 30th.
Instantly she began to connect the dots. She remembered the night she walked home from school, how it was getting dark, and ran into who she believed was her teacher-then waking up buried on the beach. She felt a sense of dread flood her as she thought back to how no one could see or hear her. Or how her dog, who used to be her best friend, now hated her. She had always heard that animals could see spirits, but she never believed.
She felt tears build up in her eyes as she realized that this entire time she was dead. It made sense when she thought about it. How she could pass through solid objects and how everything was a little colder.
She spent days watching her mother grieve her. Rosalie understood that she had been murdered, but to everyone else, she was just missing. They haven't found her body or any evidence to make them believe that there was foul play involved. Many thought that Rosalie simply ran away.
She watched as her parents drifted further and further apart. Every night they would come home from work yelling at one another. Though her dad didn't show it that much, she had caught him going into her room late at night after her mother was asleep. He would always sit on her bed and stare at the pictures that she had on her dresser and hanging on the wall. The photos of the three of them smiling and having fun on the beach last summer. Sometimes he would talk to himself, wishing he could go back to the day she went missing and speak to her.
Rosalie's mother cried most of the day. She didn't even go to work the first week that Rosalie was missing. She stayed at home and cried. When her seventeenth birthday came around, Mara baked a cake, chocolate, which was Rosalie's favorite, and brought it to her bedroom. She placed the candles on the cake and smiled sadly at it as she lit them. Rosalie stood beside her, wishing desperately that she could talk to her mother.
Rosalie leaned forward and blew out the candles. Her mother looked around the room for a source of wind that would have caused the candles to go out. But she knew in her heart that it was her daughter. She knew that Rosalie was dead. Some part of her just knew.
Rosalie watched as she placed the package that she had gotten when Rosalie returned to the house. Her mother sighed and opened it up. "I got you this last week because you said you wanted it, but you said that you couldn't have it because it was expensive." Her mother spoke softly into the empty room. She pulled out a camera that Rosalie had been wanting. "I put off paying a few bills so that you can have it." She said as tears started falling down her face.
Rosalie sat down on the bed and tried to place her hand on her mother's, but it went right through it. "Thank you, mom." She whispered through her own tears.
For months she had been looking forward to her birthday. She wanted it to be perfect, but now that it was her birthday, she didn't care about it. Maybe it was because she was dead. All she knew was that she wanted her mother to be happy.
A few days later, she stood outside the art room where the banner would be displayed. The parade had been postponed because of Rosalie, so now it was just two people working on it instead of three. The school allowed them a couple of days off to cope. But now, Rosalie watched as her friends painted the design that she came up with and watched as they laughed as they talked about something.
They were moving on with their lives. Rosalie felt it was unfair for them to be happy while she had been buried for weeks, and no one has found her yet. She wondered why this had to happen to her. She wondered why someone decided to ruin her life and the lives of those around her. Those she loved moved on and grew old while Rosalie stayed sixteen years old.
She watched on the anniversary of her disappearance her parents split up. The divorce wasn't final until what would have been her eighteenth birthday. Her father moved to a different neighborhood a few blocks away. Her mother stayed in the house. It held all the memories of her daughter, and she couldn't bring herself to move anywhere else.
The years passed by fast, and she watched her mother age, and she wondered that when her mother did die, would they be able to see each other again.
Rosalie found herself spending most of the days sitting on top of the damp sand where her body was buried. She had hoped that after all these years, someone would stumble upon it, that her mother could get some sort of closure. But maybe all that would do would reopen old wounds that are just beginning to heal.
As time passed along, she watched her friends graduate and get married. She watched as they lived their lives the way she hoped they would. They were happy and had moved on, and sure there were some days where they would meet up at the memorial that was placed in honor of Rosalie but then they would go back to their families. Mara never remarried or even dated. She never let go of the small sliver of a chance that Rosalie was still out there. But she always knew that if Rosalie were alive, then she would have called, as much as it hurt her to admit she knew that her daughter had died that night.
As it neared the anniversary of the tenth year of Rosalie's murder, she sat in the sand watching the waves crash upon the shore. The sun had risen into the sky, and the people crowded the beach. It had been a decade since that night, and she had started to lose hope that her body would ever be discovered.
She watched as the people danced along to a song that was playing and three guys singing along the beach. She smiled at them, happy that some people are still able to enjoy life.
A little girl who couldn't have been older than five and her sister, who looked to be seven, started to play in the sand next to where Rosalie sat. They started building a sandcastle, and the little girl dug down in the sand with her bucket and discovered a black plastic bag. She handed her bucket to her sister and then continued to dig around to see what was buried. The plastic bag had been buried for a long time, and pieces of it had started to break apart, so the skeleton hand of Rosalie's body poked through it. As the little girl uncovered the hand, she let out a scream, and the sister stopped what she was doing and pulled her sister away.
All the people on the beach stopped to see what was going on, even three ghosts who happened to be there. The girls ran to their mother, who sat a few feet away. They quickly told her what they had seen, and she pulled out her phone and dialed the police. She hoped that what was buried in the sand was some Halloween decoration that had been forgotten.
Within a few minutes, the police arrived and a few dogs to ensure that the bones were real. They roped off the area as Rosalie finally noticed what was happening. A small crowd had formed around the roped-off area, all of them looking sad but not Rosalie. She was the only one in the group that had a smile on her face. The three ghosts looked over to see what was going on and were confused to see the happy expression on the face of Rosalie while the police removed the body from beneath the sand.
°
°
°
°
°
°
Merry Christmas! It's not a very happy chapter but merry Christmas.
Hey, guys, thank you so much for reading. I hope you enjoyed this chapter and if you did then don't forget to vote and comment.
Thank you guys so much for 300 reads, it means a lot to me.
Who do you think the killer is?