When night falls across my window and plays shadows over my bed, a tiny, broken body crawls from the inside of my closet. The body is that of a girl; she is small and battered. The girl is wrapped in a tiny, lacy nightgown and cannot be older than eight, however her eyes, her pupil-less, bloody eyes, seem to have lived a thousand lives. She looks up at me as she drags her oozing body across my carpet, soiling it. Her skin is pallid and her toothless mouth is completely black. The blood from the girl’s sockets drips down her face as she sucks in great breaths of air and manages to groan out, “bury me.”

I run to the mostly-murdered girl and cradle her against me, her icy body chafing mine. I push her matted hair back from her face and wipe the blood from her cheeks. I stare at her eyes, those too-full eyes, and I carry her outside with my head down.

I pull the shovel from behind my shed, I walk to the tallest, hulking tree in my yard, and I begin to dig. I dig past the elbow pain and the forehead swear and the leg cramps. While I dig, the dead girl leans against the tree and watches me and even though her mouth is gaping, her face holds no expression.

When the hole is roughly 6 feet deep, I gather the girl back up in my arms. I lean down and gently, ever so gently, place a kiss on a forehead. The spot where my lips have touched her skin glows faintly for a moment then fades. I drop the almost-corpse carefully into the grave and she, still breathing, stares up at me.  

I begin to pile layer after layer on top of her. When the top layer is finally filled, I lay the shovel atop the grave mound and walk back into my bedroom, deed done and ready to sleep.

The next night, as I lay down beneath my comforter, the same almost-dead girl crawls from out from my closet, reaching for me. “Bury me,” she says.

Again and again I will try, but I have learned that the past can never truly be buried.