The Dead Speak, and I Listen

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Scineronic on 2024-11-17 01:57:53+00:00.

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My story begins in a cemetery like all those horror B movies that I watched as a kid. My sister and I were burying our father. Fucking cancer got him. That was horrifying in its own right. Well, I am going to skip over my father's death and burial. It's not really important to this story. Right now, all that needs to be said about his funeral is that it was short and sweet and brought a tear to everybody's eye. He was a good man, and people loved him.

After the funeral, my sister and I went for a walk in the cemetery. Looking at the gravestones was like going back in time through history. Each name had its own story to tell, I just wished I could hear it. Oh, the irony. When my mother had died during my childhood, my father had taken my sister and I on a walk through the cemetery after her funeral. At one point we stopped at a grave from the 19th century. I know it sounds like a fucking Hallmark movie, but I still remember what he said. "How many people do you think remember his story? Not many, I would venture. If any, that is. That's the tragedy of history—it can never be complete. There are stories that will always be lost to time. Make sure that your mother's story is not one of them."

I went in my own head during that walk with my sister. Her voice was like the crunching of leaves beneath our feet—just noise. I was too busy thinking about death. How long would people remember the stories of my parents? How long until they became another lost piece of history, even after what I've done? How long until my story will be lost to history? I mean how many people will read this post that I'm writing? And how many of those that read it will think that I belong in the fucking looney bin? A lot, I venture.

It was in my head that I first heard my father's voice. I thought it was the grief speaking, but his voice kept speaking. It gave me a migraine. My sister saw the state I was in and drove me home. She offered to stay with me, but I told her that I would be fine on my own. My father was still speaking to me. I decided to respond to what I thought was my own grief. What do you want, dad? He of course responded. He wanted to tell his story.

I've written the occasional short story now and then. I thought this was my grief trying to inspire me. What the hell, I thought and sat behind my computer. No, my father said to me. Use a pen and paper. I think that was the moment I thought that this might be a little more than a son's grief over his dead dad. Nevertheless, I grabbed a pen and some paper and began writing. Word by word, my father told me his life story. I transcribed every word exactly, and little by little my migraine lessened. He told me stories that he had never shared before, stories that would put a living man to shame. I guess the dead rise above that kind of human sentiment.

When I penned the last word of his story, I realized that my migraine had completely disappeared. I also realized that I had written well into the morning. If I hadn't taken a few days off work for my father's funeral, I would have had to wake up in just a couple hours to get ready for work. Thank God for minor miracles. It didn't matter any way, I couldn't sleep if I wanted to. I sat back in my chair and looked at the pile of paper in front of me. It was a hell of a lot longer than just a short story. It was the story of my father. His fucking life. And I had written it.

When the cemetery opened up, I was one of its first arrivals. I first went to the grave of my father. The dirt was still new. I spoke to him. I wanted him to speak back, but apparently he had already told his story. He had found his peace. I walked around cemetery, hoping for something to pop out at me. Another story. I did eventually find someone who was willing to share their life to me. I wrote that one down too. Since then, I've heard and written down many stories.

It's been a while since that day in the cemetery. I've written down the stories of all my family that I can find. I've written the stories of friends that have gone too soon. I've also written the stories of complete strangers. Sometimes these strangers are good people. Sometimes they're not. The bad ones make me wish that I had never been "blessed" with this power.

I've written the stories of murderers and rapists and anything else you can think of. The evil hidden beneath the surface (literally) is unimaginable. The worst of them laugh as I transcribe their story. Every evil, every heinous act, is a fucking joke to them. And I am forced to transcribe it. I don't have a choice. The second I hear a voice of the dead, I have to write. With one monster, I tried not to, and it almost killed.

Stephen Martin—that was his name. I found him in some rural cemetery that I now can't even remember the name of. I've been to hundreds of those bone gardens. The names all get mixed up in my head. He told his story, and I did the best I could to keep my hand away from the damn pen and paper. I tried to restrain myself. I didn't want to write down something that horrific. Martin hadn't always lived in that rural area. He had gone there after "retirement." For most of his life, he had lived in the city. And the children... there were so many children. So many parents that had no idea what happened to their kids. And this cunt got away with it. Got away with it all. These children died, their parents mourned over a body they would never find, and he got a fucking retirement. It made me sick. After hearing the briefest synopsis of his life, I promised myself I wasn't going to write down this fucker's story.

The sweats, the fever, the chest pain—those were only some of my symptoms. My sister came over during that time. I begged her not to, but she did. She screamed at me much to my surprise. Hell of a thing to do to your dying brother, I thought. She wanted to know why the hell I hadn't gone to a doctor—why I hadn't tried to find out what was fucking killing me. The problem was, I knew what was killing me. It was that piece of shit in my head. He was tearing me apart from the inside. Another issue was that I also knew how to cure myself. I just needed to put pen to paper. On this front, Martin mocked me. He mocked how I was dying. He mocked how fucking stupid I was to let him kill me. He said that I would be the first son of a bitch killed by a dead man. Unfortunately for him, I just no longer gave a shit. Let him fucking kill me, I thought.

As you might have guessed by the fact that I'm writing this, I did eventually write his story. Something clicked in my head: this bastard's piss-poor life shouldn't be the reason that good people would lose their stories to time. My father's words echoed in the back of my mind: "That's the tragedy of history—it can never be complete." I'm not naive enough to assume that I can create a complete account of history, but I know I can do my damnedest. So I wrote Martin's story. At first I would constantly vomit—and then dry heave—over every graphic description of Martin's deeds, but eventually I became numb to it. I hated that. After I finished his story, I went to bed, but before I did so, I locked the pages of Martin's story in a safe. I wanted to burn his fucking story, but I feared that would make him come back. I put him in a different safe than all the other ones. This bastard didn't deserve to be with my father. His pages deserved to rot alone for all eternity.

I guess it's time for me to present the proof that backs up all this shit. Surely, you didn't think that I would tell you all this without some proof? If I did, they'd lock me up in a goddamn looney bin. A couple months after I transcribed Martin's story, I realized I could give the parents some closure. I knew where their kids were buried. Martin had bared his entire soul—miserable thing that it was—to me. One day, I left an anonymous message to a police precinct in the city where he did his killings. They found them. They found them all. Their parents got closure and were able to bury their kids. I hope that caused Martin to roll in his grave. Maybe someday I will write down their story too. Be able to live through all the good of their lives before they met Martin. But probably not for a while. I already know the end of their stories. And those are not stories I want to rehear anytime soon.