Sylvia Fletcher’s spirit may have transformed gradually from a sphere of unspecified energy, but her presence within the grove could not be disputed by anyone who possessed the courage to gaze upon her image. For a man such as Andrew, who suddenly refused to open his eyes, the reality of the moment still did not diminish in his mind. If he listened closely, he would’ve distinguished the intonations of a female child.
Murden welcomed his daughter’s obscure melodies as he always had, but tonight her songs were more meaningful to his ears. They represented a new beginning for both of them. At the same time, Kyle could not shield his eyes from the blinding light cast forth by the spirit’s approach. Even amidst this occurrence, the boy was trying to reposition himself in the pit so that he could get closer to Murden.
Kyle shivered with fright as Sylvia’s image became more distinct. She appeared as pale and fragile as a porcelain doll, with eyes greener than the shimmering emerald from her bracelet. Her summer frock of white satin remained stained by blood and the muck that marked her final moments of natural life. She revealed no expression through her colorless lips; they held firm as though they had been entirely sutured from top to bottom. Her arms and legs remained motionless as well. Had it not been for her enchanting voice, one might’ve assumed that her spirit was nothing more than a figment from one’s imagination. But her songs carried through the mist and shadows with a clarity that wasn’t refutable. The peach trees’ branches seem to clatter in harmony to the young child’s voice.
“Thirty summers have come and went
Since I have walked these trails.
In a grove of trees I’ve sent
These songs to tell my tale.
Through the seasons I have gleamed
A loss of purity and of life.
Across the pond and forest’s streams
I’ve heard the cries of pain and strife.
Where once I sought to tame the hearts
Of all I thought were wrong,
I’ve since learned it’s a shame to part
The anguish from my songs.
And so I brood beneath this earth
Where darkness stays eternal.
How may a spirit pray for mirth
With a punishment so infernal?
In the light of any night
Or the bright of any day,
One can see the blight
That took the trees away.
And I’ve waited ever since,
Debating what is pure,
But now I must commence
A curse to find the cure.”
Ben Murden approached the pit’s edge with his face shining in a shower of fog and light. Sylvia’s spirit hovered directly over his shoulder. The old man peered down at Kyle as one might gaze upon a wounded animal. There was compassion in his eyes, but it was not reserved for Kyle. The presence of his daughter was all that mattered to him now.
“You know what must happen now,” Murden told the boy. The bracelet’s jewels pulsated more feverishly in these seconds. With the bracelet extended over the pit, Murden leaned forward and let the flashing gemstones emit their energy upon Kyle’s face. At the same instant, Andrew pleaded for mercy. But Murden had no intention of offering anything other than death to his visitors tonight.
But at last, Murden had revealed a degree of complacency. He stayed close enough to the pit’s edge for Kyle to attempt a blow with the shovel, but when he tried to swing his arms, he realized that he had lost complete mobility of his body.
“The soil is ready for you, boy,” Murden declared. “Take him now, dear Sylvia. Take him now!”
Just beyond the trees, where the mist thinned, Casey squeezed the stone in his hand and cocked back his arm. There was a space between two trees just wide enough to give Casey an angle on Murden’s position. If it was anyone other than Casey, such a toss into the shadows with the hope of connecting with anything seemed like a lofty aspiration. But Casey was at an age where odds didn’t matter, and limitations had not yet been fully realized. He released the stone with his eyes centered on the bracelet in Murden’s hand. The stone did not deviate from its path. It sailed toward its mark as if it was drawn by a magnetic link.
Murden stood like a pillar of marble with the bracelet, but this victorious pose would be short-lived. The hurled stone connected with its target. Murden’s fingers were crushed upon impact and he screamed as the bracelet slipped from his grasp and fell into the pit beside Kyle. The resistance that Kyle sensed only seconds earlier now ceased, and the boy used this opportunity to swing the shovel like a baseball bat into the old man’s legs.
Murden released an agonizing scream as he legs were taken out from under him. He collapsed into the mist and winced in confusion. Though he was injured, Murden still attempted to find the bracelet. But it was already too late. Kyle scurried out of the pit with the bracelet clasped in his hand. Murden saw the energy seeping between the boy’s fingers, but the gemstones’ light began to fade.
“Give that back to me!” Murden demanded as he reached his hands up through the shadows. “Don’t deny me this moment, boy! You know that I’m right! You must help me avenge my daughter’s death!”
Kyle quickly motioned toward his father. Andrew was now free from the grove’s grasp as well, but he still didn’t attempt to approach his son. By now the mist began to dissolve, too. Even Sylvia’s spirit grew fainter by the moment. It then became obvious that something had disrupted the spell. Kyle examined the bracelet’s gems for a second before determining that something had in fact caused the spell to dissipate. One of the gemstones had been cracked when it fell to the ground; the emerald no longer emitted any light.
“You’re right, Ben,” Kyle then shouted at Murden, who was still lying on the ground. “This curse will end tonight, but not the way you think it should.” Sylvia suddenly appeared no more menacing than a single cloud hovering in the sky. Kyle had taken control of the situation once the bracelet was in his possession. Andrew felt more comfortable by the turn of events and reached his hand out for the bracelet.
“Give me the bracelet, Kyle,” Andrew demanded. “I’ll handle it from here.”
“No, Dad,” Kyle refused. “I’m going to take care of this myself.”
“What are you planning to do, boy?” Murden asked as he struggled to get himself upright and regain his footing. “You can’t leave here tonight, boy. The curse will never end unless you sacrifice your soul to Sylvia.”
“There’s another way, Ben,” Kyle confirmed his thought while staring at the damaged bracelet. The boy still had the shovel in his hands, and he planned to use it to his advantage once again. “No one else will die here tonight! But I promise you, Ben, that Sylvia will get the peace she deserves.”
Kyle dropped the bracelet on the soil. The mist had thinned entirely by now, so finding it proved to be an easy task. He then raised the shovel above his head and leveled it forcefully down onto the bracelet. The peach trees shook violently and the grove filled with the cries of Ben Murden. Immediately following Kyle’s strike with the shovel, Sylvia’s spirit screeched and the aura surrounding her body started to disappear.
The force of the shovel’s impact on the bracelet was enough to shatter another gemstone. Just two more remained intact. It was already evident to Kyle that in order to fully deplete the bracelet’s energy, all four stones needed to be destroyed. Before Kyle lowered the shovel again, he noticed Murden gasping for breath. It was if the energy within the bracelet not only fueled Sylvia’s spirit, but the old man’s as well.
“Hit it again!” Andrew commanded his son. “We can destroy them now!”
Seeing the old man suffering caused Kyle to delay his next strike. This pause provided Murden with an opportunity to catch his breath. He was visibly weakened by the depletion of energy, but he managed enough strength to limp forward a few steps.
“You have the power to finish us both, boy,” Murden grimaced in pain as he spoke to Kyle. “The ability to stop this curse was always within the palm of
your hands. Now what is your choice?”
“I trusted you, Ben,” Kyle cried out, still quaking with the shovel in hand. “You never really wanted to end the curse! All you wanted was revenge, and that makes you as wrong as my father.”
“Look to that man,” Murden roared as he pointed at Andrew furiously, “and you will know what it’s like to stare into the face of true evil.”
Kyle refused to listen to the old man as he leveled the shovel for a third time against the bracelet, this time crushing the garnet stone into fragments. Immediately thereafter, Murden’s body writhed wildly as he released a scream that echoed throughout the grove. The boy now determined that Murden’s life—like that of the spirit—relied on the magic concealed within the bracelet’s gems. He had every reason to suspect that Murden would die with the destruction of the fourth and final gem. The notion of killing a man wasn’t something Kyle could easily rationalize. If he did in fact destroy the last gemstone and the old man subsequently died, didn’t that make Kyle a murderer, too?
“What are you waiting for?” Andrew screamed. “End this thing now, Kyle. Hit the bracelet again!”
The temptation to swing the shovel was powerful. Kyle sensed his arms tingling with the sensation to do it at the sound of his father’s command. But as he listened to the old man wheezing in the darkness, his conscious overwhelmed his desire to eliminate the perceived threat. Still, Andrew bellowed forth a cry of revenge, but it was an emotion that Kyle was not certain his father had a right to express.
“Do it,” Andrew snarled, sounding increasingly irritated by his son’s hesitation. “He was going to kill us both! He’s the madman, not me!”
In his mind, Kyle recognized that no matter what he chose to do, the curse could neither truly end with the death of Ben Murden nor the vanquishing of Sylvia’s spirit from the peach grove. The real curse that no one besides Kyle had cogitated until this very second was one of hatred. He not only sensed the hate seething from Murden’s eyes, but his father displayed this trait with an equal dose of vulgarity.
Before taking further action that would’ve no doubt extinguished Murden’s life, Kyle dropped the shovel to the earth. He appeared depleted of all his energy as he turned toward his father and said, “I won’t do it, Dad. I’m not a murderer!”
Sylvia’s image was now reduced to a faint shimmer of light, barely enough to illuminate the circumference of a single peach tree. With three stones already destroyed, her presence depleted from the grove quickly. Likewise, Murden remained almost motionless on the ground as though he didn’t possess the strength to utter another syllable.
Andrew glanced at the shovel with definite rage in the ensuing seconds. He could’ve easily grabbed the tool and finished the deed, but his motion stalled. This slight hesitation afforded Murden with just enough time to spring from his fetal position and take hold of his shotgun near the open pit. Andrew reacted to the old man’s movement the only way he could. He reached for the shovel and raised it to strike the bracelet. Just as his son had done, he smacked the shovel’s metal spade onto the bracelet, but the stone didn’t shatter. In panic, Andrew raised the shovel to try again, but Murden had reclaimed his own weapon by now.
A single shot fired through the last traces of mist. Murden used the last of his strength to unload the shells from the shotgun. A look of astonishment immediately set into Andrew’s eyes; he offered no scream to attest to the accuracy of Murden’s aim. But within seconds, the shovel slipped from Andrew’s hands and he sensed a warm sensation flooding the lower half of his abdomen. His fingers clasped at his stomach in a feeble attempt to stop the blood flow that poured from a fresh wound.
Kyle offered a single cry in response to the shot, but his father had already fallen to his knees. Kyle sprang toward his father in an effort to help him. He didn’t realize the seriousness of the injury until he saw the blood spill to he soil under his father’s knees. Kyle held his father closely in these moments, but the weight of the man was too much for Kyle to hold upright. Andrew toppled onto the soil and rolled over once into the pit near Murden.
“It’s too late for me,” Andrew moaned through clenched teeth. “Get out of here, Kyle. Get out while you still got a chance.”
“I can’t leave you here,” Kyle hollered. “I won’t!”
Murden had already dropped the shotgun to the soil. He possessed no inclination to squeeze the gun’s trigger again. A sense of satisfaction filled the old man’s eyes. Andrew was within an arm’s length away from Murden, but neither man motioned to one another at this time. Murden might’ve been content to die, but he struggled to hold onto his own life long enough to watch Andrew wither away.
“God help you,” Andrew gritted his teeth at Murden. His voice grew weaker with each breath, “It didn’t have to end like this, Ben. Just remember that.”
As Andrew and Murden glared at each other helplessly, Kyle had the incentive of putting an end to Sylvia’s presence for good. He reclaimed the shovel from the soil and approached the last glimmering gem set in the bracelet. Just below the lowest branches of the nearest peach tree, Kyle distinguished Sylvia’s faint image. She seemed to be holding out her hands in a gesture of mercy. It was suddenly clear to Kyle that he alone controlled the destiny of this little girl’s spirit. Kyle stood in position to end thirty years of suffering with one swing of the shovel.
“Look at her closely, boy!” Murden screamed out, his voice sizzling with rage and sorrow. “You can send her back for now so that she lingers in the shadows of these trees for another thirty years. But ask yourself if that’s the right thing to do. She deserves better than that.”
Kyle’s hands trembled again as he absorbed Murden’s words. He was ashamed of his father’s deeds, but he was equally appalled by Murden’s secrets. Whatever strength Murden still had reserved in his body, he used it to coax the boy into submission. “Had your father not murdered my daughter, nobody would’ve ever died out here,” the old man said.
“Be quiet,” Kyle demanded, but he was nearly petrified by the notion Murden presented. “All of this is wrong,” he muttered to himself. “No one can win here tonight.”
Andrew groaned through clenched teeth in order to get his son’s attention. “End it, Kyle…stop this evil now…”
Kyle wanted to obey his father’s request, but his mind was not functioning clearly. Once again, his hesitation proved to be all the time necessary for Sylvia to make her final bid for justice. As she had done so many times before, her plea came forth in the whispery syllables of a song. Kyle could not fully comprehend the potency of her words, but the sound drifted into the core of his brain and distorted all rationale thought. He could no longer hear the relentless cries from his father. It was as though the trance grew stronger in his mind, and the energy seemed to pour from Kyle’s body and filter into the spirit hovering in the peach grove.
“When the ground grows cold and skies turn gray
While we gaze upon fields lit by day,
Our hearts race quick with scents of spring;
To our Mother Earth it is this bliss we bring.
Yet fragile is She in the seasons of deceit.
The pink blossoms swell to foretell what is sweet.
We partake in the fruit She has granted so kind,
While some do not sense the sorrow they’ll find.
At the core of a man there is a pit that will rot
Should he profess to be the one he is not.
And should he eat from this tree while others look on,
Will his soul ever feel the harm that he’s done?
To live and die beneath the cruel dark soil,
And to watch the innocent as they cry and toil
With all that is unfair in this life we share
With all that is lost in those who won’t care.
Is there an end to the madness and pain of living?
Does it begin when we know the fate we are given?”
A spell of vertigo suddenly consumed Kyle’s thou
ghts and he felt himself tumbling to the ground only inches away from where Andrew and Murden lay dying. The shovel had slipped from his grasp in the process and he lost sight of the bracelet completely. Though he might’ve surrendered consciousness due to exhaustion, Kyle crawled across the soil and offered one glance at the old man. Murden’s eyes had already rolled back into his skull. His mouth remained partially agape and a line of blood trickled from between his lips.
“It’s too late for you, Ben,” Kyle whispered, realizing that Ben Murden had at last died. Kyle then realized that Sylvia’s spirit had just as quickly disappeared from the grove. He reserved an urge to smile for now. His father was still moaning in the darkness.
Kyle lowered himself into the shallow pit next to his father and cradled Andrew’s head on his lap. While many thoughts circled through Kyle’s mind in these seconds, his immediate concern was to stop the blood from his father’s wounds. In the distance, he heard the approaching police sirens. Help was not too far away.
Andrew shivered slightly before uttering, “I never thought it would end like this, Kyle. Please forgive me.”
“It’s okay,” Kyle murmured as he tried not to stare at his father’s wound. “Help is coming. You’re going to make it.”
“You stopped him,” Andrew whispered, revealing a smile that seemed partially directed at Murden. “I owe you my life…”
“It’s not me that you owe,” Kyle remarked. Before another word was exchanged between father and son, Robby and Casey raced into the grove to assist their friend. Neither of the boys possessed the words or thoughts to express their grief in these moments. They simply gazed at Kyle with a sense of sorrow; no words were needed to identify Kyle’s mortification.
“Is he really dead?” Casey asked, peering at Murden’s motionless corpse.
“Looks that way to me,” Robby said, shining the flashlight at Murden’s colorless face.
“Go and get some help,” Kyle told his friends. “My father’s been shot.”
Andrew didn’t attempt to say anything else to his son on this night. An ambulance would soon arrive and take him out of this grove, sparing him a fate that he delivered to another human being a long time ago.
“You’re going to get out of here tonight,” Kyle whispered to his father. “Everything will be okay.”
Soon the peach grove was flooded with the sound of sirens and the footsteps of frantic investigators trying to piece together the events as they happened. Robby and Casey would eventually provide enough details to clear Kyle and Andrew of any wrongdoing, although they had no explanation about the ghost.
No one, not even Kyle, was exactly certain what happened to Sylvia’s spirit, but he suspected that Murden’s death had in turn caused her to flee the grove. He was escorted from the peach grove by several officers, but not before managing to reclaim the bracelet from the soil as a reminder of what this night would mean to him in future years.
The time for Kyle’s family to talk about these incidents would no doubt come. Kyle only hoped that the curse had been extinguished from these woods, and that Sylvia’s lost spirit finally found a sense of peace. The answers to these questions would be answered in the seasons to follow.
Chapter 25