Buried

Goosebumps played across Ansley‘s skin and her breath blew smoky from between her chattering teeth. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face for the fog that accompanied the nights chill. Her legs strained to drag her feet through the thick bayou mud and muck. Fear shook its way through her, and her knees nearly buckled. 

Liz was out here somewhere and nothing would deter Ansley from finding her.

“Elizabeth!” Her best friends name reverberated off the moonless sky and echoed all around her. 

There was no response.

Ansley stretched her arms out, her hands seeking something substantial to latch onto so she could heave herself forward. After a long moment of searching, her hands felt something smooth and strong, a cypress limb, she thought as she grabbed it with both hands. Though it wasn’t very big, she was able to move her feet a few paces forward, and then everything changed…

A full moon rose in the distance, low hung and so close it seemed almost touchable. It wasn’t a normal moon: too low, too big, too orange. A harvest moon, Ansley thought. As if on cue with her thoughts, the fog lifted and the world around her became visible in the fiery glow of the moon. She looked down to her hands where they still clasped the cypress, and a scream that started in her gut and clawed its way up to her mouth, erupted from her like lava spewing from a volcano. She screamed until her throat burned and her mouth went completely dry. She screamed until no sound came from her open mouth, only a horrified gasp.

Instinctively, she let go of the arm she had been using as a lever and tried to move quickly backward, but another arm came up from the mud-turned-water. Its hand grabbed onto her as tightly as she had held on just moments ago. Fingers laced in her hair, Ansley couldn’t do anything save comply as the hand drew her face closer to the water. She struggled and fought but to no avail. Just as her face was about to become submerged, the hand stopped pulling her forward. Ansley‘s eyes were squeezed shut, too afraid of drowning,  too afraid to see the person or thing that arm belong to. Though it no longer pulled her forward, the hand held her there mere inches above the water. 

With her own hands at the back of her head, holding onto the hand as if she could somehow tear it away and escape, Ansley‘s eyes slowly opened. 

Her gaze was instantly met by another.

Dead, pale, soulless eyes stared back at Ansley. She wanted to scream, again, but had no voice. She was frozen in place, no longer struggling against the hand which held her. Her body was locked up, and fear was now her only restraint.

“Help me,” Elizabeth said. “An, please, I’m cold and so alone.”

Ansley heard her best friend as if she were standing right beside her, whispering into her ear, but Elizabeth was not there. 

Elizabeth wasn’t anywhere.

Part of Ansley knew this was the nightmare; the one she’d been having for years, but she couldn’t pull herself out of the dream anymore than she could pry herself free from Elizabeth’s grasp.

“I’ve tried to find you,” Ansley told her friend as tears welled up in her eyes and splashed into the water between them. 

An  amicable silence ensued as the two girls stared at one another. Elizabeth looked exactly the same. She hadn’t aged a single day. Her wild and unruly curly locks floated in the water around her, like red snakes in a tumultuous frenzy after a long hibernation. Her hair was always in stark contrast to her perfect, flawless porcelain skin. It was still just as lovely, like that of a doll eagerly sought for collection. Only her eyes were different. They no longer held the spark of today or the excitement of tomorrow. Their beautiful emerald tone with a ring of gold around the pupil had been replaced by the paleness of death. 

As the sun began to rise on the bayou, both girls turned to look at it.

Ansley awoke as the sun began to shine through the sheer white panels of her bedroom windows, dust motes dancing upon the beams. Her pajamas were uncomfortably soaked with the urgency and anxiety of her dream. She looked at her phone. It was 7 AM in the Crescent City and already she could hear the liveliness outside her Royal Street apartment. After fleeing her hometown, she’d chosen New Orleans for this exact reason. There was plenty of distractions in the French Quarter. 

On her bedside table was a journal—stuffed fat with every piece of evidence she’d collected over the years—and a framed photo of herself and Liz from high school. She picked up the journal and flipped the photo face down. She would see plenty of Liz later in the day.

Elizabeth Grace Marshall vanished in late-October of their senior year, ten years ago to the day. The anniversary—as others were calling it, as if it were a celebration—of the dreadful event was to be recognized through a memorial service that afternoon. Ansley would be in attendance despite blaming herself for what happened that night…

The girls had gone to a party and though Ansley thought Liz was too drunk to drive, she did as Liz insisted and dropped her off at a bar on the outskirts of town where she’d parked her car earlier in the evening. With her frame silhouetted against a full Harvest Moon, Liz said sarcastically, “I’ll be fine, mom. You worry too much,” and then her head fell back and she gave a loud, boisterous, open-mouth laugh toward the sky. “Love you,” she said a moment later. 

“I love you too,” Ansley replied. 

That was the last time Liz was ever seen again, and a decision that would haunt Ansley for the rest of her life. 

Pen in hand, Ansley flipped through her journal, loose articles and printed pages from the internet scattering all over her bed. She found the last page she’d written on and began writing down every detail she could remember from the dream, just as she always did. It was reoccurring but little details were always different. Of the last dream, the sun rising on the bayou had never been part of the dream before.    

When she finished the journal entry, Ansley got out of bed, dressed for the day, and pack to go home. The journal that was both her burden to bear and her sanity, was tucked safely away in one of her two bags. Over the years she’d grown accustomed to going back to Thibodaux, only an hour drive from New Orleans, just once a year. She didn’t go for holidays, birthdays, or to see her family. She went only for Liz, every year, for the same horrific reason. 

The small, Spanish-moss-draped, bayou town hadn’t changed much over the years that Ansley had spent hiding amid the hustle and bustle of the Quarter, trying to forget or simply move forward. Neither of which had come to fruition. 

St. Joseph’s cathedral was still the most beautiful building in town. Built in the early 1920s, the renaissance revival architecture with its beautiful stain glass windows and towering turrets to either side of the main building was nothing short of marvelous. A beautiful place to celebrate the life of such a beautiful person. 

As Ansley rounded the corner and the scene came into view she mumbled to herself, “Liz would’ve loved this.” The cathedral’s lawn was covered with people; its parking lots packed. Old friends, family, strangers, nationwide news crews, everyone was in attendance.

It was noon before folks settled into pews and began quieting down. Ansley nervously stood behind the pulpit, as she was to speak on behalf of Liz’s friends, something she’d never done before despite countless requests for interviews.

The sun was pouring through the circular window at the back of the church and coming in at an angle that blinded Ansley. She fought back the urge to cover her eyes and instead looked over the crowd before her. Most of the people that filled the room never knew Liz and the rest of them couldn’t stand her for their own jealousies.

Ansley approached the slim microphone that jutted out of the dark mahogany podium. Minutes past in absolute silence. She was frozen, locked in place, unable to speak or move.

“It’s okay,” a voice whispered in her ear and she turned to see Memphis Anderson beside her. He was next in line to speak, as he had dated Liz for two years before she disappeared. Taking her hand, Memphis walked her off the stage and down a small, dark corridor. 

Once they were tucked inside a bathroom, she collapsed against his chest and let the days emotions pour out of her. When she had settled down, Memphis took off his jacket and slung it around her. She was trembling uncontrollably when the words began pouring out of her as thoroughly as the tears before them.

She told him about the dreams, about Liz haunting her, and about her guilt for leaving Liz alone that night. When she finished, Memphis was staring at her with a strange expression on his face, one of shock or perhaps disbelief.  

“Have you told anyone else about the dreams?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, why?”

Memphis rolled up the sleeves of his baby-blue button down, exposing his forearms. Ansley stumbled back and away from him, having quickly recognized the scene etched into his skin in fading colors of green, orange, and red: a woman with fiery red hair that seemed to wrap around the entirety of the tattoo was looking toward the rising sun as it come up over cypress trees and what Ansley had come to know as a watery, bayou grave…

Memphis grabbed Ansley and turned her in a circle, her back going to his chest as he clamped a hand down over her mouth. She struggled to free herself from his grip, clawing at his arms and face, she dug her nails in deeply, collecting as much DNA as possible. 

Despite her efforts, Memphis pulled Ansley out a side door of the church and down a flight of stairs. As he dragged her, kicking and thrashing and wildly fighting against him, they past her car in the parking lot. She thought of the journal tucked away inside a bag on the passenger seat and dug her nails into his face, making the wound impossible to hide. 

And then, everything went black…

“The bodies of two females were recovered from this part of the bayou near Thibodaux, Louisiana,” the news anchor spoke into the camera. “Their killer?” she went on, “Memphis Anderson: a boyfriend to one and a longtime friend to the other. Long missing Elizabeth Marshall was found 10 years after she went missing, buried deeply in the muddy earth alongside her best friend, Ansley Lockton. Lafourche Parish deputies are saying Lockton uncovered the truth about what had happened to Marshall but, unfortunately, she never had the chance to tell authorities as she too became a victim of Anderson. 

It’s a dark day here in Thibodaux as the mourning, grief, and disbelief are nearly palpable, but the mystery of what happened to beloved Thibodaux resident, Elizabeth Marshall, has come to light. Lockton has been hailed a hero. And, a killer is behind bars.”