All the kids in Rust knew about her. Parents kept you in fear of her fate. The town was tense in those early days. At dusk we left the parks and the playgrounds answering the calls of our parents hollering for us to get inside for dinner when dinner was far from ready. The woods were off limits and no one and I mean no one was walking alone on the path through the Witherspoon property.

I remember that old car. We'd go there to hang out and drink beer. Remnants of the last teenagers left discarded without care on the rusted out floorboards. Condom wrappers, beer cans, empty cigarette packs, all those things kids do when they know better but think they are invincible, or don't care. The back seat of that car was yellowed from the sun, rotted, so dry it hissed. I don't know how anyone was ever comfortable enough to have sex in there  with the spring poking out right in the middle like that, but they did. I guess comfort was never a concern.

The car was towed away and used for scrap when the police were done with their investigation. We just found another abandoned something to do our misdeeds in, there was no shortage of them in a town like Rust.

To this day I can rememeber the sound of the leaves crackling and crunching under my feet when Bobby took us to see the feet sticking out from behind a red bush. The bush with leaves burnt blood red orange. I never saw a bush like that again. A person is never ready for the kind of intense shock and fear that runs over their body when they come across something like that. I ran and so did the others. We ran to the store and told the cashier what we saw. You just know when something that once was alive is alive no longer. We didn't need to see everything to know it was a body and we sure as hell weren't gonna stick around to join it.

We were questioned and questioned, forced to go to therapy, write about our feelings, draw pictures and be evaluated for any possible trauma we may have suffered from. There was nothing to really talk about.

I went back home not too long ago and I saw the old Henderson's house vacant and disturbed. Paint peeling like the skin of a leper. Wood timbers rotting and the sense of morbid decay looming from within. It didn't take the family long to leave. Not with the National attention the story received. Not like today when similar incidents are common sound bites for our daily human record of behavior. The house was razed not long after I stood quietly in front of it sharing moments with ghosts.

For Raymond

No matter the incline, 
No matter the pace,

No matter the speed,

at which his heart raced.

He believed he could control it,

He believed he could compete,

He believed he could claw at the beast,

that made his knees weak.

The same one that had captured, 

The same one that had slain,

The same one that had cursed others
to bathe in regret yet exult at her name.

Like the burn of the sun,

Like the bite of the snow,

Like the unbridled waves of the ocean,

She was not a place to call home.

Yet he fought not to lose her,

Yet he fought to hold this breath,

Yet he fought the exhale,

to stave off their death.

He then dismissed the counsel,
He then dismissed the cost,
He then dismissed the others,
To follow her graces into the Forest of the Lost.

So loud were the voices in his head he could no longer hear the mechanics of his heart, and he worried that it had stopped beating forever.

(For some reason I couldn't resource 'Audience' by isabellamari, so I wanted to make sure it was noted here!)