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In the summer of 1988, Emily Deetz was brutally murdered by an axe-wielding maniac. It was, by all accounts, an absolute tragedy, only compounded by the fact that her daughter, sweet sixteen year old Lydia, was hiding in the next room when it happened, holding her breath as the killer savagely hacked her mother to bits.
Lydia had always been a bit off, avoiding her peers and burying her face in books like Live or Die or The Colossus, wandering in quiet places with just her thoughts to keep her company, but after her mother’s death… Most people who knew her would have said that it had gotten bad .
Her clothes turned from dark to black, her make-up free face became a canvas to capture the remnants of her tears in leaky mascara and her general demeanor had turned… Feral. Her father’s decision to remarry within the year of his wife’s passing certainly did not help, and one would have been hard-pressed to find two people more different than the gothic teen and the washed-up nature loving hippie, Delia.
A move to a new town was exactly what Lydia needed, according to her father. Winter River was lovely, nudged in a valley traversed by a pleasant water stream and surrounded by woodlands, a far cry from the grime and crime of the big city. Lydia, of course, had not been consulted in the matter.
The house on top of the hill should have been to her liking. Victorian, proud and stern, a bit isolated from the rest of town, it had all the aged charm she would have liked, if not for the adults she had to live with. The tall oak trees surrounding the valley were much more to her liking. She would take her bike and follow the trails, taking in the sights of the leaves turning yellow and red, letting the melancholy of nature cycling through the last stages of its life before it perished. Lydia had always loved autumn, its bitterness. The acceptance of death in the last struggles of life. The teen sometimes wondered if she would live to see another year, another decade.
Delia had tried to accompany her once, hoping to bond with her stepdaughter over the love of the great outdoors. Lydia had only managed to get rid of her by heading straight to the abandoned bachelor’s cemetery.
The bachelor’s cemetery was different from the one in town, the one near the church where generations of the Winter River populace would end up composted. No, this one was for the men that had died last century, too young, or alone, or the ones with no family crypt or who had committed crimes that made everyone else want them as far away from their own resting place as possible. The outcasts. The ones like her.
It was a dreary place; damaged tombstones, twisted rail guards, overgrown with bushes and vines. Delia had thought it was haunted. Lydia loved it. It was a good place to remain alone, but still feel the company of the dead, a good place to read, to take eye-catching photographs, a good place to just… Exist.
The centerpiece of the cemetery was a luxurious bust throning in the center. A good landmark when night started to fall and finding her way became too difficult. Like most tombs, the man’s name had been erased by time, but his features remained. Curiously, it did not exert its magnetic pull on Lydia, not like her favorite. This man had clearly been loved enough in life to have received such a tender depiction in his eternal resting place. No, out of all the headstones, Lydia’s heart went to another, and she thought she might have been the only one to choose this one.
In a corner of the cemetery, near the twisted iron fence, covered in ivy and mushrooms and almost indistinguishable from the ground, there was a broken headstone. It was barely noticeable. Almost invisible. The broken half had long disappeared, taking with it the name of the person lying within. Lydia had felt her heart swell with an inexplicable feeling the first time she’d seen it, stumbling upon it and grazing her knees, swearing up a storm before she saw what it was. Had anyone even realized it was there in the hundred years or so it had remained in this corner?
What remained of the headstone was covered in plants, and Lydia had had to yank them out, palms bleeding once she was done, huffing as she read the almost indecipherable script.
… orn under the star Betelegeuse.
It was such a strange epitaph. Not “ dear friend ” or “ beloved son ” or “ affectionate brother ”. No description of character or accomplishment. Not even a passive aggressive comment illustrating someone’s hate, like “ long time debtor ” or “passable shoemaker ”. Just the most neutral, matter-of-fact statement about the man’s birth. Could one get any more basic than that? It reeked of indifference.
Lydia would visit the cemetery often. She found it soothing to tend to the graves. Gratifying, even, when no one else would. She could not tend to her own mother’s grave, so she made do with what she had.
She visited them after school. Called them “my stiffs”. Read to them from her books. Brought a few flowers when she found some on the way - which was rather rare in October, but the dead guys probably didn’t mind the pretty leaves and acorns she chose instead. At least they got some nuts, not like they were gonna get any otherwise.
On that specific day, October 31st, 1989, not telling her dad where she was going was probably a bad idea. Going while threatening grey clouds gathered had probably been a bad idea. Bringing a bottle of schnapps her father would not miss from his liquor cabinet as her treat had probably been a bad idea. Lydia was full of bad ideas.
And when she leaned on her favorite tombstone, more than a little bit tipsy, her book lost in the wet leaves and droplets of rain falling down on her black lacy dress… Monologuing at a dead guy was most definitely a bad idea, although to be fair, she never would have suspected it even if she’d been sober.
“I wish…” Lydia slurred, “I wish I was w-with you.”
Oh to be six feet under. It would have been easy, too, wouldn’t it have? To stay with her stiffs, to lay down and let the worms devour her flesh, to become just white bones, and then turn to dust over the centuries.
“B-Betelgeuse,” she read aloud from the carved stone.
She giggled. In her inebriated state, the word sounded so… strange. Strange like her. But also, strange in a fun way, fun in a way she hadn’t been in a long time.
“Betelgeuse,” she repeated, before having another giggle.
She looked at the sky, the grey clouds now dark and buzzing with electricity, the fat raindrops crashing on her face and mixing with her tears.
“Betelgeuse,” she sighed longingly before closing her eyes.
The bolt of lightning did not wake her.