She was Still Waving

There were three of us in the car that night.

The driver had died some time ago, yet nobody questioned why he was still behind the wheel. He drove as though death were a minor inconvenience, death had changed nothing except his complexion. One hand resting casually on the steering wheel while the tyres balanced on the edge of a track barely wide enough for the car. Beyond the window, the land fell away into darkness. I prepared for the worst. 

No one asked him to slow down.

In the back sat a woman from overseas. She spoke quietly, as though she already knew how the journey would end. I thought I knew her from somewhere, not quite knowing where but whatever, it wasn't important right now.

"We're almost there," she whispered.

Ahead stood a stone house. A farmhouse, Georgian,  English.  "But we aren't in England.."

It had been all over the newspapers.

A terrible family tragedy had unfolded there. The woman who lived in the house had been portrayed as the killer - a woman struggling with severe mental illness, she'd had mental breaks before, but no one had seen this coming. 

Her real story had been reduced to sensational headlines. Rumours had travelled faster than facts, and the truth had been buried beneath speculation.

As the car approached, she appeared in the garden.

She smiled.

Then she raised her hand and waved.

Not angrily.

Not desperately.

Simply... waving.

As though she had been expecting us. She had something she needed to say.

The woman beside me leaned closer.

"Did you see the photographs?"

"I did," I replied.

"So everything is fine?"

"Yes..."

But it wasn't. I knew the photographs were more than enough.

For me anyhow.

But it wasn't.

The car dissolved into static.

Suddenly, I was staring at the evening news."

The presenter spoke in measured tones.

"Police have arrested her brother."

I stared at the screen.

"What?"

"He was arrested, he killed them all. "

"But why?"

"For the inheritance," someone answered behind me. "Money."

The words echoed around the room, it was more than unsettling. 

"Oh my God..."

Then another voice.

Quiet.

Certain.

"That's your brother, Charles."

I turned.

"What do you mean?"

"Charles is like that."

"How do you know?"

The reply came without hesitation.

"Just believe me when I tell you. Watch him. Be careful. "

I felt the room growing colder.

"Yes... yes, of course."

The television flickered.

The house vanished.

The car returned.

But the woman in the garden was gone.

Only the empty gate moved in the wind.

"We've missed her," I said.

The driver never took his eyes off the road.

"No," he murmured.

"She'll return."

"How do you know?"

"Because the dead can forgive many things. And they can find you easily. "

He paused.

"But they will never stop searching for the truth."

The road disappeared into the darkness.

 Behind us, lost in the dark, a hand lifted...

Still waving.