Vanessa Sinclair

• Bethany Wright, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2019

I woke up with a start, the girl was standing at the end of my bed again. I had seen her before, I knew her face, she was once quite beautiful but not anymore, her name was Vanessa Sinclair before she died. She started to walk out of my room and I followed her not really being able to control my own movements as dreams usually have that effect. She walked downstairs and out the door, I looked ahead of her and saw she was going towards the path that leads into the forest. A little wave of Deja vu floods over me, but the thing that really hit was the fact that I had had this dream before, many, many, many times before. She kept walking and I kept following, every time I caught up to her, she would move further away. She seemed to float rather than walk with no shadow just an eerie glow crawling and tumbling around her like fog. Her Victorian white nightgown stained with dirt and blood, shredded around the hemline. The dark red ribbon once white was half-undone in her wild black matted hair. She glided further into the trees and further into the black of the night. I came through the trees, the smell of rotting flesh and blood in the air and cold hitting me, I cover my mouth and nose with my sleeve to block the smell. She stopped and looked at something. I silently move in closer to see where she was looking. Graves, one with freshly turned soil and the other an empty memorial headstone with ‘Our girl Vanessa’ written on it, I looked over to the fresh grave and there was her body rotted and black. This did not happen the last time I dreamt about her. I peer closer into the grave and the corpse opens its eyes and it reaches out to me with one bony, shrivelled and blackened hand, “Help me” then she turned and ran and I woke up just as my alarm went off. Jack gives me an annoyed meow and jumps off the bed, nose in the air.
It is a cold morning and as I hop out of my warm bed and slip on my shoes. I cannot help but let my mind slip back to the dream last night. I walk downstairs only to trip on the last one, but luckily not fall over. “You okay V?” Kelly tries not to laugh as she watches me from the kitchen trying to pick up and steady myself. Oh yeah, Kelly is my mum, but we have no real connection except over food, if you’re asking why she called me V well… My Parents work for the FBI and they studied Vanessa Sinclair’s case for years, they fell in love with the case and when I came along well…So here I am, Vanessa Rose Goldstein the ‘Ghost girl’. “Sweetie, your father and I need to go to work, breakfast is on the stove and…” “You will have to catch the bus home,” my father finishes Kelly’s sentence. “Oh and don’t forget to feed Jack.”