Chapter Text
Chapter 1: Bachelor’s Grove
Brookview, Illinois. Friday, September 16, 1988.
In the sleepy forest beyond a small suburb of Rockford lay a cemetery christened ‘Bachelor’s Grove.’ Among the weathered gravestones and draping foliage existed an ethereal presence. His existence remained frozen in loss and longing in the long-decaying body of a nineteen-year-old man.
Not for the first time, a young Mr. Klein wondered what he had done to deserve such a desolate afterlife. Trapped between the realm of the living and the dead, he had grown accustomed to the whispers of the wind above him, alerting him to some semblance of life above his earthly tomb. Time passed him in a haze lingering in a lost world of echoes. Loneliness wrapped him like threads of a shroud woven in a living tapestry he could no longer touch.
Klein wondered if it had been decades, centuries, or even eons since a lightning strike ended his life prematurely. The passage of time had changed for him since being laid to rest, and he couldn’t even put a name to his solitary existence. Six feet underground, hearing everything afoot without vision to guide him or a body to move, he desperately longed for peace in his desolate afterlife.
At first, he could remember things like his birthday, his mother’s face, and where his parents had immigrated from as children. After the visitors to him and his grave mates had ceased for more decades than he could name, he had only held on to the vaguest recollections. He had a foggy sense that his parents had pursued land with their families in the Northwest Territory in the late 18th century amidst a wave of immigrants leaving Europe for assorted socio-political reasons. He couldn’t remember when, or how, or even why they had settled in the small township of Brookview.
His family name was Klein, but he was unsure of his given first name. He remembered complex verb conjugations in English, French, and German, being truly trilingual in all three, but couldn’t remember why he attained this fluency. He lost his parents as an adolescent, but he couldn’t recall precisely how or when. Music was the only thing that didn’t fade. His spirit remained tethered to a love for music.
A piano prodigy from a young age, he continued to conduct, perform, and compose long after that fateful storm that snuffed him out before he reached the age of twenty. Despite the deafening silence of solitude, he clung to memories of beloved melodies and symphonies he held dear.
One brisk autumn day, Klein was unaware of the swirling leaves, imbued in shades of gold and scarlet above him, settling in a wave of change. It was amidst mentally composing a solemn soliloquy of his afterlife's eternal solitude when sounds above him alerted him to a change afoot. More accurately, a change six feet above the dust his feet had likely become in such a state of decay. He became more cognizant of the scratching sounds of footsteps upon the damp earth above him when he heard a woman’s voice along with it. The distant sounds of movement in the abandoned cemetery highlighted the emotional weight of Klein’s isolation.
It was a young woman speaking English in an accent he couldn’t place. Her voice was a welcome interruption to his musical moping. Even while the voice was softly swearing from tripping over the overgrowth of the meadow in the woods. He suspected the graveyard had become choked with assorted trees, flora, and fauna over time. Her voice breaking the solemn silence of his eternity was a welcome interruption to his melancholy thoughts. This muffled string of obscenities was his first connection to humanity, for he couldn't remember how long.
When Lisa crossed the gate to the long-forgotten graveyard in Bremer’s park, the soft crunch of autumn leaves underfoot mirrored the fragile state of her heart. Less than a year had passed since her mother was killed, and the memory haunted her very existence. The traumas from that day lingered like shadows, consuming her ability to connect with others or speak. It was easier to retreat and dwell in solitude, wrapped tightly in her grief. She had accidentally stumbled upon the abandoned graveyard while seeking sanctuary from her unresolved turmoil.
He focused on her words in silent fascination as the first visitor to this barren scorch of earth that was his eternity in decades to hear more of what she had to say.
“It’s not right for this place to be abandoned. No one should be forgotten.”
He silently scolded himself for questioning why she was there, just relieved to be presented with some semblance of humanity after so long. He listened intently as she went on, suspecting she was talking to no one in particular but secretly preening at the hope she was speaking to him exclusively. Though he had spent decades in solitude, only hearing the dimmest echoes of life from the forest above, his unbeating heart stirred by this connection that transcended time and reality.
“I feel forgotten. I can’t remember the last time I said this many words in a row. After my mom died, I got diagnosed with traumatic mutism. That’s where you don’t talk. I didn’t speak at all for like six months. How could I say anything after living through something that makes me feel so shattered? I think I am ready to talk to someone. My therapist in group counseling has been trying to get me to try this Gestalt therapy thing where you talk to a stupid empty chair about your feelings. Why would I talk to a chair? I pick you instead. I can picture you because of the bust on your grave. You look young and like you have something to say.”
A well-meaning distant relation had a funerary bust commissioned from a sketch he had long forgotten. He vaguely wondered if it resembled him and decided it didn’t matter as long as this curious soul felt a connection with him while he lay to rest six feet below the mossy gravestone. He also offhandedly recalled that the German word “gestalt” refers to pattern or configuration. Young Mr. Klein agrees that 'a pattern of speaking to furnishings' is an inadequate method for processing grief and trauma.
“Your name is the first gift your family gives you, but most of yours is rubbed off. The only legible letters left are E-I-N. E-IN,” she tentatively emphasized aloud. “Mind if I call you Ian? I-A-N is Scottish Gaelic for John, and John was a common name in your era.”
“Please do. I’ve forgotten my own given name. I like Ian. Ian Klein. Actually, Ian ‘John’ Klein. Ian. John. Klein. It is perfect. You are perfect. Please keep talking.”
“My name is Lisa, by the way.”
“Sweet Lisa!” Ian thought unbeknownst to her. Her soft voice brought warmth to his cold existence. Listening to the sound of her pained honesty ignited a flicker of curiosity and affection within him. He desperately yearned to better understand this brave young woman who had wandered upon his forlorn existence.
He could vaguely hear the rustling of foliage and overgrowth above him as she cleared vines from his tombstone to further her inspection.
“E-I-N died in 1837. It’s 1988 now. Unmarried. That’s harsh. I know this is Bachelor’s Grove, but people should be remembered for being sons, friends, and neighbors. Not for being single.”
He hadn’t known unmarried was written on his tombstone. “Good lord, is it really? My marital status is etched in marble for all eternity? That is mortifying.” Ian would have rolled his eyes if he could.
Lisa found solace in her conversation with the gravestone’s statue as the minutes turned to hours. She opened up about her mother’s life, now layered with guilt that composed her grief at her passing when Lisa was only sixteen. Ian began to fall in love with her. Not in the obvious romantic sense, but in a profound appreciation of her resilience. He admired her courage in speaking to him after so many months of silent mourning and wished he could guide her toward healing.
Each exhale of vulnerability pulled at Ian’s heart. He had experienced a brief life with dreams and aspirations cut short in a flash of lightning. He wished he had some way to help her discover the beauty of her own life and let her know that even in the darkness of trauma, there existed light.
“I’m so lost. After mom died, I feel like I’m walking in a constant fog. I miss her so much. Everyone keeps saying time heals all wounds. Time is the wound. Taking away those good smells. Some days, I can hardly find the strength to get out of bed and just exist. I was trying to find a spot in the park by our house to be away from people to think and just be me, you know?”
“Please don’t be anything else,” he thought softly. Ian sensed the weight of her sorrow echoing his own in his lifetime and magnified in the eternity of his afterlife. His spirit was bound below the solemn earth, but he wanted to reach out and comfort her in any way he could. He wanted Lisa to know she could return to share her feelings like a gentle rain saturating the forest floor.
“I’ve been out here awhile, Ian. It’s getting dark. Now that I have found this place, I’ve got to go. I’ll be back soon. I promise. Goodbye, Ian.”
“Please stay!” he wished fervently and silently, hoping his plea would somehow reach her. It was at this moment in the woods that he had viewed as his eternal prison, the forest seemed to hold its very breath, conspiring to keep her presence close to him in her physical absence.
This unseen spectral being no longer yearned for a return to his previous life, cut short in a literal flash of light. He didn’t even desire the restoration of the memories of names, faces, and experiences long forgotten. It no longer pained him that he couldn’t remember his first name. Lisa, his lifeline to reality, had christened him once more.
“I am Ian John Klein, and whether I never hear her voice again or she returns every day for the rest of her life, I will not be forgotten or unknown.”
This feeling of kinship and optimism at their first meeting even surpassed his relationship with music. For the last century and a half, the forest had served as a cruel reminder of music he could no longer hear. Futile attempts at grasping notes in the air had slipped like shadows beneath his unmoving fingertips.
His thoughts reverberated in the woods surrounding him as a gentle breeze reminded him that he was no longer alone. The world was still vibrant and full of life. Now, even the absence of Lisa began soothing the ache of an eternity of solitude. Her promise of future visits salved the pain of longing for the warmth of human connection beyond his reach in his strange eternity.
As he replayed their encounter repeatedly in his mind, he pondered if the bright light of her voice and attention was worth the agony of her exit. Thankfully, before too many days passed, he heard her again in a rush, speaking so quickly that he had to focus to understand.
“Hey-Ian-it’s-Lisa-I’m-back!” She put something heavy down with a slight “clunk” above his grave.
Lisa's voice emerged from the depths of silence, weaving through the forest air like a long-forgotten melody. Her words brushed in the air, filling the void of crushing loneliness from over a century of solitude. His physical heart had long stopped beating, but his soul stirred within him again.
“Lisa!” he thought desperately, hoping she could somehow feel his presence and admiration from the beyond with his unspoken one-word plea. Their bond transcended the physical plane, and he prayed to whatever deity or twist of fate brought them together that she, too, would begin to feel peace in his presence.
“You probably didn’t catch that. Let me start over. My name is Lisa. Ian, is it? Nice to meet you!”
She paused, and he pictured her shaking the stone hand on his tombstone.
“I am supposed to socialize more, and I choose to spend time with a good listener.”
“I adore you.”
As she settled some unseen belongings in the grassy patch of earth beside his grave, Ian felt an inexplicable emotional pull towards her. Her sweet voice captivated him with an optimism that he was incapable of in his afterlife. For the first time since his death, he felt alive with the warmth of positivity surging through him.
“I wanted to come back sooner, but it's been raining for days. I brought a bucket of garden things today to freshen up the place. It looks like the last time someone pulled weeds and vines around here pre-dates you. I’ve brought my little garden rake thingy, trash bags, garden gloves, clippers, and a shovel what’s-it. Here, hold this by your statue hands, if you please.”
Ian pictured her putting one of the mysterious gardening implements near the stone hands of his bust and marveled at her thoughtfulness. She described what was happening above him since he couldn’t see and was considerate enough to bring tools for cleanup. She was probably right about the last time anyone had bothered to clear the scorched earth around him and his gravemates.
“I’m going to get the worst on the pathways, so it’s not a tripping hazard coming to see you in the future. Then I’ll get all this leafy rubbish from the grassy spot next to your grave for a place to do homework and read near you.”
The fact that she was already planning forthcoming visits and thinking of ways to fill the time with him in the future erased all thoughts that the heartache of her departure may not outweigh the sunshine in his life she had already become.
“Thank you, kind angel, with the gloves for gardening, sacks for trash, clippers, shovel 'was it' and 'rake thing E.' You make my spirits soar with implements I can barely name.”
“I’ll come back to get your grave tidied up at the end. Best for last, huh?”
The next few hours passed in a haze of scratching sounds. Lisa would occasionally fill the silence by describing her task at hand.
“I’m glad I brought gloves; this ivy could be itchy.” But mostly, she worked without much dialogue, removing what Ian could only assume from her introduction last time was nearly a century and a half of woodland debris. He could also hear the foliage being deposited in rustling sacks she put by the gate. Once satisfied with the clearings she had made in Bachelor’s Grove’s pathways and general outlay, she returned as promised to tidy his marble gravestone and what sounded like a massive growth of vines around it.
“I think that’s the most gardening I’ve done since, well, since ever. My junior year started this month. Dad and Janet…”
He could tell in how she said, “Dad and Janet,” that they were not relations she always held in high regard.
“…will be taking me to my old school in Rockford every day. I can already predict tension in the future from them both because I’m going to school two towns over, and Taffy is going to school down the street. Taffy is my stepsister. It’s a nickname for Stephanie. She’s pretty, popular, and nice. Everybody either wants to be her or be friends with her. She keeps telling me, ‘You need more socialization.’ I know she means well, but it still doesn’t change the fact that my dad remarried way too soon. And then there’s Janet…meh. She’s not horrible, but she’s not great either.”
Ian basked in the glow of his Lovely Lisa speaking to him when she felt uncomfortable talking to anyone else. He yearned to tell her he understood what it was like to have conflicting feelings about well-meaning but bumbling distant relations after the loss of a parent. He also struggled with basic social interactions after his mother and father died and isolated himself from the world because of their death.
“I’ll be back this week with homework, and we can talk some more, Ian. Bye!” She grabbed the rustling sacks and left.
“I thank you for your horticultural enrichment of this barren place, and I pray time moves swiftly until we have the pleasure of each other’s company again!”
This time, her departure didn’t fill him with dread or resentment but hope for the first time since his passing. The hope of future joy she would bring him and solace he prayed she would find as well.
Unbeknownst to Ian, Lisa’s inner monologue walking towards the Bremer Park dumpsters with garden bags in her hands and a bucket of tools on the crook of her elbow was very similar.
“Talking to somebody from the grave is more personable than a stupid empty chair. I can get used to more afternoons like this. I hope he doesn’t mind.”