Speaker 1: Calorogu Shark Media. Welcome to ghost Scary Stories. This is
February second, Episode two. The Confession Loop four or five.
I'd started losing count each time I woke. On February second,
I told myself I would do something different. Skip the funeral,
leave town, drive until the road ran out. Each time
I ended up in that church. It wasn't a choice anymore.
I'd tried to leave, packed my bag, got in my car,
drove toward the highway, but the roads curved wrong. Every
turn led me back to the church parking lot. Every
highway on ramp deposited me at the front steps, engine idling,
like the car itself had decided where I needed to be.
So I stopped fighting it. I went to the funeral
again and again, and each time it got worse. The
fifth loop, the minister mentioned me in his eulogy, not
by name. He just said Claire had family who couldn't
be here today. But his eyes found me in the
back pew when he said it, and his voice dripped
with something that sounded like contempt. The sixth loop, the
eulogies changed completely. The coworker didn't talk about the library anymore.
She talked about Claire's difficult family situation. The neighbor described
how Claire used to cry in her kitchen, how she'd
lost her sister long before she lost her mother. The
seventh loop, people stopped pretending I wasn't there. They stared openly,
every person in that church, turning in their pews to
look at me. Their face is blank and accusing. The
minister kept talking, but his words had become meaningless, a
droning hum beneath the weight of all those eyes and Claire.
Every loop, Claire looked worse in the coffin, her skin grayer,
her features sharper, her hands gripping the rosary like she
was holding onto something. The ring gleamed on her finger,
always the ring. After the seventh funeral, I didn't go
back to the house. I went to a bar instead,
a dive on the edge of town, the kind of
place where no one asked questions. I drank until the
room spun, drank until I couldn't see Claire's face when
I closed my eyes. It didn't help. I woke up
on February second, with no hangover, no consequences, just the
same sunlight through the same window and the same buzz
of my phone on the nightstand. That's when I understood
this wasn't a loop I could escape by running. It
wasn't a puzzle I could solve by changing my actions.
It was a prison, and the only key was the
thing I refused to remember. Loop eight. I tried something different.
Instead of going to the funeral, I went to the cemetery.
Claire's grave, the one that would hold her body after
the service, was already dug, a rectangle of brown earth
in a field of white snow waiting. I stood at
the edge and looked down into the hole. What do
you want from me? I asked. The wind blew, the
snow swirled. Nothing answered. I didn't steal the ring. I
know I didn't steal it, So why won't you let
me go? Silence, just the creak of bare bransunches, and
the distant sound of cars on the highway. I was
about to leave when I noticed something at the bottom
of the grave, a glint of metal, half buried in
the frozen dirt. I climbed down. It was awkward, undignified,
a forty three year old woman lowering herself into an
empty grave on Groundhog Day. But I didn't care. Anymore.
Dignity had stopped mattering several loops ago. The metal was
a ring, small silver set with a single sapphire, grandmother's ring.
I picked it up. It was ice cold, so cold
it burned my fingers, but I couldn't let go. I
held it up to the gray February light and watched
it sparkle. This was impossible. The ring was on Claire's finger,
in the church, on her body. I'd seen it every loop.
It couldn't be here, in her empty grave, waiting for me.
But it was. And as I held it, something shifted
in my mind, a door opening, a memory surfacing from
the deep place where i'd buried it. Mom's bedroom, the
hospice bed, the smell of antiseptic and dying flowers. I'd
been there, I'd been there the night before she died.
The memory came in fragments, at first, a late night
flight from Seattle, a rental car, the drive to Millbrook
in the dark, arriving after midnight. Claire had called me
that afternoon, begged me to come. She's asking for you, Helen.
She keeps saying your name, please. Whatever happened between us,
she's your mother. She deserves to see you. Before i'd
hung up, told myself I couldn't get away from work,
told myself it didn't matter, that Mom would pull through
like she always did, that there would be time later.
But something had gnawed at me, some flicker of conscience
I couldn't extinguish, And that night, at eleven PM, I'd
booked a red eye flight. I arrived at the house
at two a m. Claire was asleep in the guest room,
exhausted from weeks of caregiving. I crept past her door,
down the hall to our mother's room. Mum was awake, helen.
Her voice was thin, papery, but her eyes were clear,
clearer than they'd been in months. You came, I came,
sit with me. I sat, I held her hand, and
for an hour, the only hour I would ever have,
I was her daughter again, not the one who'd left,
who'd stayed away, who'd built a life that didn't include her,
just her daughter, holding her hand in the dark. Near
the end of that hour, she'd reached for something on
her night stand, a small box. This is for you,
she said, your grandmother's ring. I want you to have it. Moum.
That should go to Claire. She's been here. She's taken
care of you. I don't deserve You're my daughter too.
Her grip tightened on my hand. You made mistakes, so
did I, so did Claire. But I love you both,
and I want you to have this to remember me.
She pressed the box into my hands. I took it.
I took the ring, and I put it in my pocket.
And I told myself I would explain everything to Claire
in the morning. I would tell her i'd come. I
would show her the ring and explain that Mum had
wanted me to have it. We would grieve together and
maybe maybe we could start to heal. But I didn't
stay until morning. I don't know why. Fear, maybe cowardice,
the weight of two decades of distance that couldn't be
bridged by one midnight visit. I told myself i'd call
Claire later, explain everything, later, fix it later. I kissed
my mother's forehead. She was already drifting back to sleep,
her breath shallow, her hand still warm in mine. I
love you, ma'am. I love you too, Helen Always. I left.
I drove to the airport, caught a six a m
flight back to Seattle. Told myself I would call Claire
as soon as I landed, I didn't call, And four
hours after I left, while Claire was at the grocery
store buying food she would never cook, our mother died alone.
I stood in the empty grave, holding the ring, and
I remembered everything. Claire calling to tell me Mom was gone,
her voice breaking. She died alone, Helen. I stepped out
for an hour, and she died alone. And I'd said nothing,
hadn't told her i'd been there, hadn't told her about
the ring. I'd let her believe Mum had died without
seeing either of us, that her weeks of caregiving had
ended in failure, that she'd abandoned our mother in her
final moments. I let her carry that guilt. I let
her drown in it. And then, weeks later, when Claire
was going through Mum's things, she'd noticed the ring was missing.
She'd torn the house apart looking for it, called the
hospice agency, accused the night nurses, filed a police report,
and then she'd called me, did you take it, Helen,
Mom's ring? Did you take it when you were here
for the funeral. She'd given me a way out, a
lie I could hide behind. I hadn't been there for
the funeral. I'd come, paid my respects and left the
same day. If the ring had gone missing, it must
have been before I arrived. But something in her voice
told me she knew. Somehow, she knew I didn't take anything.
I said, Helen, please just tell me the truth. I
don't care about the ring. I just need to know,
I said, I didn't take it. Mama asked for you
before she died. She kept asking where you were, and
I didn't know what to tell her. And now the
ring is gone and you're the only one who I
don't have your ring, Claire, maybe you lost it. Maybe
you're not remembering things clearly, you've been under a lot
of stress. Silence on the line, a long, horrible silence.
You're lying, she said quietly. I don't know why, but
you're lying, and I don't think I can forgive you
for that. Ung up, we never spoke again. I climbed
out of the grave. The ring was still in my hand,
cold and heavy as a stone. I looked at it
for a long time, this stupid piece of metal that
had destroyed everything, that I had let destroy everything. Because
Claire was right, I was a liar. I'd lied about
being there. I'd lied about the ring. I'd lied to
myself for two years, burying the memory so deep I'd
almost forgotten it was there, But not quite. Some part
of me had always known, some part of me had
carried the weight of it every day, even as I
pretended I was innocent, even as I convinced myself that
Claire was the one who'd been unfair. She forgave you,
the therapist had said, she forgave you for what you did.
But I hadn't forgiven myself. I hadn't even admitted there
was something to forgive. Until now. I walked to the church.
The funeral was different this time. The pews were empty.
No mourners, no minister, no boyfriend weeping in the front row,
just me and the coffin and the flowers and the silence.
I walked down the aisle. My footsteps echoed in the
empty space, impossibly loud, like the church itself was holding
its breath. Claire lay in the coffin, exactly as she
had in every other loop, eyes closed, hands folded the ring,
the same ring I held in my hand, glittering on
her finger. I stopped at the edge of the coffin,
looked down at my sister's face. I lied to you,
I said. The words came slowly at first, then faster.
Everything I'd buried, everything i'd hidden, pouring out of me
like water from a broken dam. I was there that night,
the night before Mom died. I flew in from Seattle,
and I sat with her for an hour, and she
gave me the ring. She gave it to me, Claire,
and I took it, and I was going to tell you,
but I was scared. I was scared you'd be angry
that I came without telling you, Scared you'd think I
was trying to steal something from you. So I left.
I left before you woke up, and I flew back
to Seattle, and I didn't call. I was crying now.
I hadn't cried since the first loop, hadn't been able to.
But now the tears came hot and fast, blurring my vision.
She died alone because I was a coward. She died alone,
and you blamed yourself and I let you. I let
you think you'd failed her when I was the one
who failed both of you. I failed both of you.
I put the ring on the edge of the coffin,
let it go. You were right to hate me, you
were right to cut me off. I didn't deserve your forgiveness.
I don't deserve it now. I wiped my eyes, made
myself look at Claire's face. Her eyes were open. I
didn't scream this time, didn't stumble backward. I just stood there,
looking into my sister's eyes, waiting for whatever came next.
I'm sorry, I whispered, I'm so sorry, Claire. Her lips moved,
not the grotesque twitch I'd seen in earlier loops, something gentler, softer,
almost like a smile. I know, she said. Her voice
was wrong, thin and distant, like it was coming from
very far away, But it was her voice's voice. One
last time. I knew, she said, I always knew. Mom
told me, ma'm she woke up after you left, just
for a minute. She told me you'd been there, that
she'd given you the ring. Claire's eyes still open, still
fixed on my face, glistened with something that might have
been tears. I was angry, so angry, but not about
the ring. I was angry because you couldn't tell me
the truth, because you'd rather lose me than admit you
were scared. I was scared. I was so scared, Claire.
I know. Her hand moved just slightly, just enough to
brush against mine. Her skin was cold, but the touch
was gentle, familiar. I forgave you a long time ago, Helen.
I just wanted you to stop lying to yourself, if
not to me. I broke down, collapsed against the coffin, sobbing,
clutching my sister's cold hand like I could pull her
back from wherever she'd gone. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I know, she said again, I know, and then her
eyes closed, her hand went still, and she was just
a body in a coffin again, just my sister who
was dead, just the absence that would never be filled.
But something had changed. The church felt different, lighter, the
air moved and I could hear birds outside the windows,
and the gray February light had shifted towards something warmer,
something like spring. I stood up, wiped my face, looked
at the ring, still sitting on the edge of the coffin.
I picked it up, slid it onto my finger where
it had always belonged. Goodbye, eye, Claire, I said. I
walked out of the church. I woke up for a
long moment. I didn't move, didn't check my phone, didn't
look at the window. I just lay there in the
bed in my childhood room, feeling the weight of the
ring on my finger. I'd told the truth, finally, after
two years of lying to everyone, including myself, I'd told
the truth. Whatever came next, whether it was February second again,
or the rest of my life, I could live with it.
I could live with myself. I reached for my phone.
The screen glowed February third, seven fifty two a m.
I laughed, a broken, exhausted sound that turned into a
halfway through February third. The loop was broken. I was free.
I got up, showered, dressed, packed my bag. Before I left,
I went to the window one last time, looked out
at the backyard where Claire and I used to play.
The snow was melting, just a little, revealing patches of
brown grass beneath. Spring would come eventually, it always did.
I drove home to Seattle. I still have the ring.
I wear it sometimes, not every day, but on the
days when I need to remember, when I need to
feel the weight of it on my finger and recall
what it cost me, what I almost lost forever. Claire
is buried in Millbrook, next to our mother. I visit
twice a year now, once on Mom's birthday, once on Claire's.
I bring flowers. I talk to them both. I tell
them about my life, my job, the small victories and
defeats that make up an ordinary existence. I tell them
I'm sorry every time. I'll probably never stop. But I
also tell them I'm trying, trying to be better, trying
to be the person I should have been all along,
the sister Claire deserved, the daughter Mum always believed I
could be. Some days I succeed, some days I fail.
But I don't lie about it anymore, not to anyone,
not to myself. That's the thing about being trapped in
a loop. You learn eventually that the only way out
is through. The only escape is the truth, even when
the truth is the thing you fear most, even when
it means admitting you were wrong, even when it means
standing in an empty church, looking at your sister's body
and finally saying the words you should have said years ago,
I'm sorry, I was wrong. I love you, Please forgive me.
Last week I dreamed about Claire. We were on the
swing set again. In the backyard of our childhood home.
The sun was warm, the sky was blue, and Claire
was laughing that bright, infectious laugh. I'd almost forgotten. Higher,
she shouted, Push me higher. I pushed, She soared, and
for a moment, just a moment, we were children again,
with our whole lives ahead of us, certain that nothing
would ever change. Then I woke up. It was February second.
I lay in the dark, heart pounding, waiting for the
loop to close around me again. But my phone said
February fifteenth. Valentine's Day had come and gone. The world
had kept turning. It was just a dream memory surfacing
in my sleep, just my sister saying good bye. I smiled,
closed my eyes, let myself drift back toward her. Higher,
I whispered, and somewhere, in a place beyond loops and
time and all the things I couldn't change, I heard
her laugh.