Chapter 1

Five years.

Five years since they said I vanished, five years since they called me dead.

Bayou's Rest wasn't resting, not anymore.

A quiet disquiet spread through the town, especially near the old bayou, my bayou.

Things happened there, strange things.

Michael, my Michael, was mayor now.

He married Jessica, my sister.

Publicly, he laughed off the whispers, called them superstitions.

Privately, he was scared. I could feel it.

He hired a man, a "paranormal expert," he called him.

To cleanse the bayou, to quiet the fears, his own most of all.

Jessica, she played the grieving sister.

But her eyes, when she thought no one watched, were cold.

She'd whisper to Michael, paint me as troubled, a lost soul.

She was good at painting pictures with lies.

The expert, a nervous man with too much equipment, started his work near the old oak.

Our oak. Michael' s and mine.

He chanted, waved smoking herbs.

His "cleansing" didn't do much but stir the mud.

Then his shovel hit something hard.

A wooden box, rotted, half-buried.

Not a full skeleton inside, no.

Just arms, bones stark white against the dark earth.

And a journal, leather-bound, soaked but holding its shape.

Michael' s face went pale, a sickly green.

Jessica gasped, a perfect show of horror.

Then Father Gabriel arrived.

The old priest, his face kind, his eyes seeing more than most.

He said a feeling drew him, a deep unease in the air.

He looked at the box, then at Michael, then at Jessica.

I felt a flicker, a tiny shift, like a door creaking open.

Michael didn' t want to look at the journal, not at first.

He waved it away, "Old trash," he said.

But Father Gabriel, his voice gentle but firm, insisted.

"Let me see it, Michael. Sometimes the past needs to speak."

Reluctantly, Michael nodded.

The priest opened it carefully, the wet pages sticking.

My words. My handwriting.

I watched them read, my unseen presence heavy in the humid air.

The journal spoke of my love for Michael, deep and true.

It spoke of his sudden coldness, the confusion, the pain.

And it spoke of Jessica.

Her jealousy, her sly words, her careful manipulations.

Then, the worst part.

Being locked away in that abandoned fishing shack, deep in the bayou.

Starving. Alone. Jessica's mocking laughter. Her hired men, their cruel faces.

Michael read, his hands shaking.

Jessica saw his face change.

"Lies!" she screamed. "She was always unstable, Michael, you know that! Vindictive!"

My parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, they were there too, summoned by the commotion.

They nodded, "Jessica' s right. Sarah was never right in the head. Always making things up."

They always favored her. Always believed her.

Their words were like stones, adding to the weight crushing me.

Michael looked from the journal to Jessica, to my parents.

He looked lost.

Father Gabriel didn' t look lost.

He looked at the journal, then at the skeletal arms.

His eyes held a deep sorrow.

He read more, his voice low, only for Michael and Jessica and my parents to hear at first.

The journal described Jessica' s plan, her gloating.

"He's mine now, Sarah. You'll disappear. Forever."

It hinted at more, at things too dark for me to write clearly back then.

The dismemberment. Scattering me.

So I' d never be found, my memory defiled.

Tied to old, dark legends of the bayou, places no one went.

And then, the last entry, a secret I barely dared to write.

I was pregnant.

Michael' s child.

When Jessica killed me, she killed our baby too.

The air grew cold around them.

I felt a surge, a need for them to know, to feel a fraction of my horror.

Whispers, just at the edge of hearing. Father Gabriel' s head tilted.

A locket, one I always wore, with our pictures, suddenly glinted from the disturbed earth near the oak.

He picked it up.