by Stephanie Parent
(1000 words)
If you see the ghost bride with yellowed lace covering her face, turn away. Whatever you do, don’t lift her veil. Look in her eyes, and you’ll die.
Amelia remembers the old verse as she fingers the bright white wedding veil in her lap. The matching dress encases her ribs, and now it’s time to place the veil over her eyes. She should be thinking of honeymoon nights and Brian’s lips against hers, but instead she shivers as if a spectral wind crosses her arms.
Amelia can’t say what came first—the verse or the bride—but they’d all seen the ghost, Amelia and her three best friends, growing up in their tiny town. At sleepovers the bride lingered in corners, came out once they slept and dripped the edges of her veil over their closed eyes. When they got older they’d find the ghost in graveyards and at bonfires, emerging after the last blunt had been smoked and the final drop of beer drunk. A few times, when Amelia was alone, she’d seen the bride outside her open window. Her yellow veil rustled in the moonlight, whispering secrets, begging to be touched.
Together, Amelia and her friends swore they’d never lift the ghost bride’s veil. They echoed the promises they made to their families: they would be good girls. They’d avert their gazes from dark alleys and boys who smoked cigarettes. They’d grow up to wear white wedding dresses and have happy families of their own.
A knock on the closed dressing-room door, the sound like clacking bones. “Babe?”
It’s just Brian, but a skeletal grip circles Amelia’s throat.
“Y-yes?” she squeaks.
“You almost ready? Christine’s allergic to the bridesmaid dress. If you don’t come in five minutes she’s going to rip it off.”
Christine, Brian’s sister, the only bridesmaid. Because even though Amelia’s still here, in the same town where she grew up, all her friends are gone.
“One minute,” Amelia calls through the ghostly clutch on her throat. She hears Brian’s loud sigh, his dress shoes stomping off.
Amelia should have someone to help her, to arrange the veil and guide her to the end of the church aisle. But if she can’t have her old friends, Amelia would rather be alone.
She lifts the veil a few inches, thinks of her vow never to reach for the ghost bride’s musty-sweet veil. She wonders if her friends’ promises were ever as sincere, and what temptation made them change their minds.
Tracy was the first to go. She disappeared after the eighth-grade winter dance, and her father, who raised Tracy on his own, threw out every bottle of alcohol in his home and led the town in search after search. They found nothing till the spring, when a bloated body surfaced from the filthy lake as it thawed.
The rest of the friends made it longer, all the way to senior prom. Amelia went with Brian but danced with Sarah and Lizzy most of the night. The disco-ball light reflected off their dresses, bright enough to repel any ghost. They all had college acceptances, even if Amelia was only going to the state school nearby. That night, they celebrated surviving.
But then came the holidays after the first semester, when Sarah said she was dropping out, moving back home. Her eyes looked jaundiced, as though nightmares were rotting her from the inside out. The next time Amelia came to visit, her mother told her Sarah had overdosed. She also told her the cancer was back.
“Amelia?” There’s her mother’s voice now, tattered as old lace.
Amelia lifts the veil almost to eye level. Her throat tightens further, but she manages to say, “I’m coming, Mom. Just one more minute.” She remembers when her mom’s voice was thick and warm as a blanket. All that vitality, lost.
“Do you want me to hel—”
“No, Mom,” Amelia says quickly. “Go sit down.”
Amelia wants her mother to believe she’s happy to be here, marrying Brian, in the town where she grew up. She wants to give her mother that, now that the cancer has taken everything else. But if her mother comes too close, Amelia won’t be able to keep the illusion up.
Amelia holds her breath till the whisper of her mother’s heels fades. She thinks of her last friend, Lizzy—the only one who’d made it out for good. But when Amelia called to tell her about the wedding, Lizzy’s phone had been disconnected; her Facebook page hadn’t been updated in a year. Amelia went to see Mrs. Cranston, yet the old crabapple woman only said, “I knew that girl would disappear, just like her no-good mother. I raised two generations, and now I’m done.”
Amelia hopes Lizzy has escaped, found a new life, but deep down she knows: Lizzy, who had her mother’s wildness in her, must have looked under the ghost bride’s veil.
And now, Amelia is the only one of her old friends left. Here she is, lifting her own veil. But before her eyes the white lace yellows, some sickness seeping across it. A stain burning through the fabric like acid, till Amelia can see through to the familiar apparition beyond:
The ghost bride is here, but she’s lost her veil. Her hair is the color of the dirty lake water where Tracy was found. Her cheeks are the yellow-green of Sarah’s flesh, the last time Amelia saw her.
And the bride’s eyes? Amelia is sure they’re the restless, rushing-water shade of Lizzy’s, but she refuses to look.
Amelia squeezes her eyes shut, and visions of her future rise. Pretending to believe Brian’s excuses when he comes home late, then not at all. Watching her mother wither, like the autumn leaves in the abandoned park where Amelia, Tracy, Sarah and Lizzy once played on the swings. The chains were rusting even then, but those girls swung as if they could fly.
Amelia’s eyelids fly open, and she looks into the ghost bride’s eyes.
END
Stephanie Parent is an author of dark fiction and poetry. Her debut gothic horror novel THE BRIARS is forthcoming in May 2023 from Cemetery Gates Media. Connect with her on Twitter at @SC_Parent and Instagram at @stephanieparent30.