(Word count: 849, approximately 5 minute read.)

In our youth, Elatha and I would play in the cemetery for different reasons. The rolling hills of our local Kentucky cemetery was an ideal spot to find different types of vegetation, something I had always had an interest in. For Elatha, she would read the tombstones and make up stories about the people who lived there. As I studied and collected my samples, she would regale me with tales of far off adventures.

Most of the time, I wouldn’t care. But there were times that Elatha’s creative juices would turn dark. She would make up a horror story with a person’s name, turning them into a zombie or a vampire, ready to leap from their grave.

I hate horror stories, and though Elatha was my friend, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with her lurid tales. Once, at dusk just after I flipped my flashlight on to examine mushrooms, she was telling a story about a young lady named Patricia who had turned into a ghost. It started to unnerve me.

I turned my flashlight on Elatha. “Stop it! I’ve asked you not to tell me those horror stories!”

“But they’re the best kind, Cassidy,” replied Elatha.

“No they’re not.”

I was irritated because the mushrooms weren’t the ones I had hoped for, it was getting dark, and she knew that those stories made me anxious.

Elatha put her hands on her hips. “You’re just scared. And you should be. The ghosts are all around us along with the zombies, vampires, mummies—”

“Mummies! Now you’re gone too far. There are no mummies in a Kentucky graveyard. You’re stupid.”

Elatha’s eyes blazed. I had gone too far. “I’m not stupid. You think you’re so smart, but you wait, Cassidy. One day, something will happen to you that you can’t explain.”

Our grades had always been a sore point between us. Elatha struggled in school, while I excelled.

“Everything can be explained,” I said.

Elatha waved a finger at me. “Not everything.”

She marched away. Though we made up later, we decided, from that point forward, if we went to the graveyard, we would go alone.

Forty years later, and I had become a respected botanist who has discovered over a dozen new species of plants. I’ve traveled the world, given lectures, and written books. Elatha, however, eclipsed my accomplishments. She had become the best-selling author of horror books. She reached number one on the New York Times bestsellers list at least three times and had a following on social media that I could only envy.

Unfortunately, Elatha caught breast cancer, and though we corresponded, I was too late to say goodbye. When I arrived in our hometown, I heard from her sister that she had just passed. I decided to stay for the funeral.

Elatha being Elatha had one last surprise for everyone. When I arrived for her wake and viewed her body in the casket, I gasped. She was wrapped up in mummy’s bandages with the excess pooled around her head. Before they closed the casket the final time, she instructed the funeral home to wrap her head, too. Elatha was nothing else but dramatic, and her stunt lit social media on fire.

Elatha was buried in the same cemetery we had visited as children. At the gravesite, Elatha’s sister handed me a note from Elatha. She asked me to read it before leaving town. In my hotel room, Elatha begged me to stay until midnight and visit her grave. For the sake of our friendship, I agreed.

Naturally, it was raining that night. I went to the cemetery, flashlight in hand, recalling all those early evenings where she and I would visit these same graves. As I made my way to her site, I spied a figure dart behind a tree. After all my travels, I was braver than I was as a child and I approached the tree. My flashlight made a circular light on the trunk. When I looked around it, no one was there.

Maybe I wasn’t as brave as I had thought. I decided to hurry to Elatha’s grave, kiss her tombstone, and run away. I scurried to her site, glancing around as I made my way. I was that frightened girl again and wished I was back at my hotel room.

As I approached the tombstone, I heard something shuffling behind me. My heart trembled. I hoped it was an animal. I turned around and shrieked.

I stood face to face with a female mummy, wrapped in white bandages. They looked new as if freshly applied. Someone had hastily wrapped the head, and I spied one lone eye staring back at me.

Elatha!

I screamed again and cowered as the monster raised its arms. It whispered two words.

“Not stupid.”

With that proclamation, the bandages collapsed to the ground. No body. I saw what I saw, but I couldn’t believe it. Rain pelted down on me as my heart slowed to a more reasonable rate.

I picked up the bandages in a heap. Instead of kissing the tombstone, I kissed them instead.

“I’m sorry.”