I don’t know if I ever want to go back. The fact that it was there all day and I didn’t know it makes it that much creepier. Have you ever spent time with someone who claimed they were connected to the other side? All day long, they’d go about saying they saw this ghost or talked to that one. I didn’t believe my sister when she said that she saw a monster. She’s six, everything is creepy to a six year old.

Breakfast that morning was fine, the rice a little too mushy, but other wise alright. Keiko probably won’t let me live that down anytime soon, but she still ate it for me. It’s pouring rain outside, and whereas most kids would sit inside and read, Keiko wants to go explore. Mom always jokes that she was supposed to be a fish. Keiko wanted to go visit dad, so I obliged, getting her all dressed up and everything. She wore her special dress mom got her, and her little heels.

Walking to the cemetary wasn’t bad. The chill hadn’t seeped in yet, and Keiko was jumping in most of the puddles. She kept looking behind us, and telling something to go away, but I just thought her imagination was running wild. I looked back and saw nothing.

“What do you keep talking to?” I ask her, laughing softly. She shurgs her shoulders and looks back again.

“I have a friend.” My eyebrows raise, but I drop it. We reach the cemetary and find our dads grave. We both sit under a tree nearby and try to stay clean, away from the mud. I take out the soup canister from my bag and share it with her. After a while, Keiko starts to get tired, leaning heavily on me.

“Say goodbye to dad,” I say softly, picking Keiko up. She says goodbye, and burries her face into my neck. Random chills get sent up my spine, and I look around, locking eyes onto a woman in a trench coat. Her face was covered, so I couldn’t see who she was. Brushing it off, I start to walk Keiko and myself back home. The way we had traveled lead us under a bridge, and right before we walk under, I notice the same lady standing there.

Confusion blooms in my chest as my brain starts to overwork. I left her behind me in the cemetary, there was no way she could get ahead of us. I pause, trying to gage all outcomes. Her face turns up, and my blood runs cold. A skeletal face looks back at me, blank eyes staring into my soul. The upturned shape of the mouth will haunt my dreams for the rest of my life. I start to back track to get out of there, when Keiko speaks up.

“Do you see her too, Ito?”