Chapter 2 – Chap 2

I slid the papers back across the lunch table to Josh.

“So?” He said after a moment of silence between us. His eyes were wide with excitement and curiosity. I was still running it all through my mind.

I took a second before I shook my head, “I don’t know, man. It all seems a little too far fetched, you know?”

He picked the article up off of the table and carefully put it back into his backpack. “So, you don’t believe it?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh,” he said, zipping the bag up.

There was something about my old friend’s expression that made me feel like a jerk, even if I really had no reason to.

“I mean,” I added quickly, trying to recover the situation, “it’s possible I guess.”

“You’re just saying that.” Had I really been that obvious?

I tried to rebuttal, “No, really! I-”

“It’s fine, man. I get it, this isn’t your thing anymore,” he cut me off.

Regardless or not of how much our friendship had been strained over the last year or two, I still considered myself an avid horror fan with or without him.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t believe in anything anymore.” And with that he got up and walked away.

I didn’t think those six words could hurt as much as they did.

The days that followed were a whirlwind for our town. When the article broke, the family was obviously hesitant to believe it. These were, after all, the police that we were talking about, some officers on the force were friends with the Fergusons, neighbors even.

Not to mention, in (Redacted) the police were not known to be corrupt. There was simply not enough that happened to lead anyone on to this theory. They were respected among our best citizens.

The Fergusons could only take so much though, and about four days after the article came out, after I read it, they gave into temptation and had their own son’s body dug up from his “final” resting place.

To the town’s shock and dismay, the man with the dog was proven correct. All it took was a slightly damp rag and bit of pressure to remove the makeup in which the police department had used to cover up the blackness that permanently stained the boy’s face. There was an announcement of an internal investigation into the police department and the first responders on the scene. As for Ronnie, to my knowledge, no official cause of death was, or has ever been revealed.

To this day I can’t even begin to imagine what Ronnie’s parents must have gone through. The toll that this must have taken on them in near unimaginable. To them, I mean no disrespect in telling this story. If you read this please understand, in order to tell my own story, I first had to tell his.

The days following the discovery of the coverup had everyone in a suspended state of unease. What would happen next? Would we ever get any answers?

Our quaint little town had been compromised.

I was on edge for another reason, though. The article had been confirmed true, meaning that Josh had been proven right. For once, one of his many ghost stories or conspiracy theories had actually been proven correct.

I was expecting an “I told you so” the following day but it never came. I had no reason to expect one. We hadn’t truly, honestly spoken in over a year, afterall. It was really just a hope. A hope that my best friend would reach out to me, again, after I had turned his last theory away as “far fetched.”

I immediately felt selfish for expecting it to be me that he’d turn to after all that time. I realized that if I wanted to be on those terms with Josh again, I’d have to make an effort myself.

So, three days after Ronnie’s body had been dug up (only a week after my last conversation with Josh in the school’s lunchroom) I decided it was time to call my friend. I dialed in the numbers of his family’s landline from muscle memory, yet I hesitated when his mother answered.

“Hello?”

“Uh, hi Mrs. Biafra, is Josh available?” I couldn’t tell if she had recognized my voice or not. Regardless, she didn’t say anything about it. She muffled the phone with her palm and yelled that her son had a phone call.

“Hello?” He answered just like his mother.

That whole day I’d been thinking of exactly what it was that I was going to say to him. But, when I heard his voice on the other end of the line it all left my head. I let out a struggled, “Hey.”

He recognized my voice. “Hey, man,” he said in a relaxed and welcoming tone, “how’s it going?”

The formalities didn’t continue much further, and it wasn’t long until I brought up my reason for calling.

“So, I guess you were right… about Ronnie.” The mood had changed just like I thought it would.

“Yeah,” he said, “I guess I was.” There was a brief pause before I said what I wanted to say.

“Look, I know I’ve been a jerk recently. I shouldn’t have blown your ideas off like that.”

“It’s alright.”

“No, it’s not,” I rebutled, “You’re right, I don’t try to believe in anything anymore and I want to change that. I’m sorry, Josh.”

For a few seconds, all I could hear was the static of the phone. Then, he asked me something that I can’t forget, “Are you free next weekend?”

My spirits shot up almost immediately. He actually wanted to reconnect with me despite all of my worrying.

“Uh, yeah I think so. Let me go check-”

“Meet me on Monday morning and let me know. I’ve got to go but it was nice catching up.”

“Yeah, I will.”

He’d already hung up before I got the last word of my sentence out.