Death is Black and White

If there’s one thing I can do right, it’s drawing. Late that night I grab my bulging sketchbook, almost filled completely filled with copies of objects in my room, flowers, and facial features. Adam’s hands. The left side of Sam’s face. Adam’s cat, Squeegi. I don’t like to draw outside of art class and my bedroom, mostly because I’ve only just gotten decent at drawing.

I flip through the book, trying to get a sliver of inspiration for my next sketch. Looking back I can see that, especially with the first few pages of the book, I wasn’t very good. My first drawing was of my windowsill with a flower on the ledge, but the flower was out of proportion and I didn’t understand the concept of shading. As the book goes on, the drawings get better.

I smile at my work and settle down with a drawing pencil against the headboard on my bed. What to draw, what to draw… I wonder, wobbling the HB pencil between my two fingers. My eyes fall on the full length mirror and I get a chill. My eyes shoot across the room in an attempt to get my mind off the mirror. It’s not the mirror, Lyd, it’s the ghost. There’s nothing wrong with your mirror, I think to myself, altough that thought hardly makes anything better. And it won’t hurt you. It’s just a polterguess or whatever Sam called it. Harmless.

I pick up the pencil and start sketching a blanket that’s rolled up and thrown on the floor by my closet. It’s boring, but I can’t think of anything else to do. ‘Misguided Ghosts’ blares on my iPod, and I sketch in rhythm with the acoustic guitar. Finally feeling good about something for the first time all day, I pick up a darker pencil, a 2B, and start on a fold in the blanket.

My hand jerks, and a huge black line cuts across the paper. “Fuck,” I mutter, and lean over to find my eraser. But my left hand with the pencil stays on the paper, and I feel like I need to keep drawing. I did that on purpose. I need to finish it. My hand loops around the page mindlessly and I gaze at the sketch. The result makes me frown.

Draw me.

I didn’t even sketch a thing, much like I thought I was doing. The words ‘Draw me’ are scrawled on the paper in untidy writing and I look up suddenly at the mirror. The words pulse in my head and I flip the page absentmindedly. After picking up a new pencil, I draw the exterior of my mirror, anticipation pricking my skin. Without thinking, my hand draws an ellipse, a head. I’ve never drawn from memory before, but I feel more confident about this than I have about a drawing in my life. I smile and imagine what Sam will say when she sees my ghost.

The girl’s back is done, and I sketch a small arm, holding my comb. My stomach lurches and I move the pencil to the other side of the mirror and begin the outline of her reflection. I can’t stop, though. I draw the brush with clumps of dead and bloody hair in it, her scratched up arms, waterlogged dress. I save the face for last. A pale face—I barely shade it at all—with blood on her forehead, drippling down her chin and spotting on my carpet. She’s smiling; a smile that I can’t possibly forget. Her black eyes are empty and cold, holding my attention. I always make the eyes too big, but these actually look proportionate. I darken up the hair as much as I can, and my hand slides to the bottom.

In the left hand corner, as if writing a signature, in one sweep of my wrist I write “Lotty” in a kind of handwriting I’ve never seen before. Holding it out for a last look, I realize I’ve been holding my breath. Letting it out, the blood drains from my face and I realize what I just drew. I spring to my feet and fumble for my phone.

After an endless amount of ringing, Sam finally picks up. Before she can even get in a ‘hello’ I whisper, “Her name’s Lotty.”

Click. She’s on her way over.

~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~

“Happy birthday dearest Lotty, happy birthday to you!”

Lotty blew out the candle and smiled. Her grandmother gave her a hug and whispered, “Thank God you’ve made it to nine years old.”

Lotty hugged her back but didn’t say anything. She didn’t talk much anymore anyway.

Lotty’s mother shook her head. “All these deaths in the past two years,” she muttered to the grandmother.

“And all of them being children…” the father chimed in in a worried tone.

Lotty ate her cake silently and eavesdropped. In her mind she was laughing at the irony, but she knew if she smiled that she’d be sent to her room, birthday or not. It wasn’t like she minded being sent to her room, if you could call it that. Their house was so small that she had to sleep with her parents in their room. She tried to be innocent though, and believe it or not, she wanted this birthday to be a good one. Her eighth was terrible because her mother was still grieving over the loss of her brother John. Lotty killed two people that night out of anger.

The killings didn’t matter to her; she knew that she was better off than those children because she could survive, unlike them. The lady told her that night that Lotty would grow to be just like her. Lotty knew the lady who prompted the killings was not a normal human. She wasn’t even sure if the lady was alive.

“How many deaths would you say, Charles?” Her mother asked.

“I heard it was around twenty.”

Twenty-three, Lotty thought to herself proudly.

“I’m not afraid of death,” Lotty retorted.

Her parents gaped at her. “I’m sorry?” her mother gasped.

“Death is normal,” Lotty said, skirting around the word ‘good’ so her parents wouldn’t think ill of her. “And when I die, I’ll stick around. I’ll even come back one day, I’m sure.”

Everyone just stared at her, then the silence was broken by a laugh from her grandmother.

“You are so cute, Lotty,” she giggled. “Why don’t you go run along and play? This is grown-up talk.”

Lotty sighed and her grandmother gave her another hug.

Behind the house, the lady appeared for the first time in a while. Instead of her usual comforting voice, she stood tall in a flowing white dress and long black hair. Lotty never looked at the woman’s face, and she never felt the need to. “It’s my birthday,” Lotty told the woman.

The lady shook her head. “Birthday’s are not important, darling.” Lotty looked down, ashamed. She needed to impress this woman, she helped Lotty so often.

“You’re running out of people, love,” the lady said softly. “I can try to attract people to move to this region, but it isn’t easy.”

But Lotty’s mind wasn’t on killing, she was still thinking about what she had said to her family a minute ago. “What happens when I die?” she blurted out.

The lady didn’t miss a beat when she said, “It’s difficult to say, dear. You are strong, that is why I picked you. I can feel that you will be strong after death.”

“What do you mean, strong?”

“Well, Lotty, some people leave and others stay,” the woman went on, still making very little sense. “You, I can feel, will stay. And staying is hard to do. Staying is painful, and lonely, and cold.”

The resentful composure of the lady made Lotty uncomfortable. “But,” Lotty whispered, “I don’t want to stay, then. It doesn’t sound fun.”

“There is no choice, love. You get no choice. But there is a way to fix it. Youth, darling, is like a portal. Someone who stays is stuck here, and that person needs to find a way out. Youth is the answer, and that youth has to be strong.”

Lotty nodded her head, even though she didn’t understand. Lotty was strong, the lady told her so.

“Am I strong?” she picked her words carefully.

“Not strong enough,” the lady hissed uncharacteristically.

Lotty was taken aback. “What do I need to do? I don’t want to be stuck!”

“Keep doing what you do. But not tonight, I fear… I fear some of the children are beginning to suspect you as the killer.”

Lotty’s eyes widened. “Can’t I just get rid of them?”

The woman put a warm hand on Lotty’s shoulder. “You cannot cause problems. You cannot get caught or I will lose you, I can feel that much. You need to be strong to help me, Lotty. I am stuck, love. I am staying right now. And without you, I will stay stuck. Do you understand?”

Lotty nodded, but she didn’t understand. What she understood, though, was that she needed to kill someone tonight.