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>>8702375
My companion of nearly a decade passed away just yesterday. His body has been consigned to the pyre and his ashes will be spread among the fields where he was raised. I now have been given the task of going over his will. It all seems so dirty now as though the very act of his death could have been avoided...
It seems only yesterday my friend and me were playing marbles, well losing more then playing I should say. Admittedly I always played a bit rough and knocked his marbles nearly into the next room. Once we played marbles out on the driveway which had always been safe since there was nearly no traffic on our street. I struck my friends marble out into the street... only half way out to grab his marble did we happen to see the truck. The ensuing crack and screams were enough to give even a strong heart a good jump. I rushed to see that my friends arm took the brunt of the solid smack against the grinning grill of the truck. He lay there screaming and holding his oddly angled arm. From what I remember of that whole day the sight of his blood is something I'll never be able to erase from my mind.
. . .
Days now have passed his memory is still here floating like a specter. Seems only proper to describe his memory as a specter he was always silent and seemed to just float about from place to place. Even in my sleep I can't shake his image. The times we shared haunt me more and more each day as though something was trying to pull him back from the winds. I've prayed for him each night since his passing that he may find peace. It seems that there is no rest for him now though.
Nights now come and go. I sit most days just watching the sun's journey across the sky and watch as shadows play against the floor and walls. The wall's themselves seem to echo with out childish laughter from years gone bye. There are nights that the laughter seems the only noise I can hear. It begins to madden me mostly from lack of sleep.
. . .
It's been twelve nights now since his bones were laid to rest and yet... I could have sworn I had seen my friend sitting near my fireplace tonight! It was only last night that I got a full nights rest with out hearing laughter... or the newer clacking of old glass marbles on the floor. I half expect one day to be felled by some rouge marble that's crept from a dusty nook somewhere in this house. As damnable as it may be I wish these memories would fade! Leave me be o dreary spirits and let me sleep! 
. . .
I must be losing my mind! Once again I have seen the vision of my friend though this time with flesh dripping from his face! I cried out and feinted against my bed. What horrors have been unleashed?! What monstrosity is loose in my home?! Why does this visage of my friend choose to haunt me and no one else? I've not heard of any queer sightings from anyone else who knew him... but yet he haunts me as though I'm the cause of his suffering!
I've done nothing... NOTHING! If anything he's the mad one... mad for thinking I'd do any harm to him. Yes... mad indeed.
. . .
Damnation! I hear it now louder then before... the childish laughter now on dark moonless nights twists and contorts to a fresh hellish scream. I wish I'd never met that bastard child now! I'll never rest again should this spirit continue...
. . .
Its been nearly a month now... nights have blurred into days and days blur into hellish nights. I could have sworn I'd seen bones now sitting around the house. In the fireplace I watched as the vision of a skull appeared, the flames licked and caressed it as though the skull was the coveted prize of the devil himself! A chill ran down my spine as I watched for what must've been a minute or more, before I turned my head and closed my eyes... I could have sworn I heard a shrill muffled half laugh squeal as from some overly giddy child.
The devil be damned... this house will be his after I pass but not before! The bones I continue to see them but just glimpses from now and then, mainly from the corners of my eyes... horrid sights seeing such memories of mortality laying about.
. . .
I have seen him now... his bones sit beside my fireplace nearly every night speaking to the flames like a puppet on strings. I asked him to leave but he heard nothing it seems. He's chilling to look at... he doesn't even look back to me when I address him. Those old bones... those damnable old bones! All I can hear now is their clattering as he walks around talking soundlessly to unseen bodies. Thankfully he's not yet come to my room but damned near to it! He stops outside my door and for a short while just seems to stand there... only a few times have I actually heard something from within the hallow of his grinning skull! Moans are what I hear outside my doorway on rare nights...
. . .
He now enters my room freely almost as though the house was his own. When he enters he glides over to the side of my bed... dear heavens above I wish I'd not been awake to witness the sight! He does nothing but stand at the side of my bed his eyeless glance turned down toward me 'watching' me with his unblinking yet unstaring eyeless voids. A cold fear swept over me the third night of this occurrence. I felt that death was staring at me directly through the bones of my friend. The chill from the fear hasn't left me yet... I fear death is only a night away now.
It’s not my friends touch I fear... It’s the touch of what is controlling him that I fear far more than any other.
Death.
© 2011 Stephen Brown