Sundog

Author Note: This is a 500 word flash fiction story based on the prompt “Write about a haunting.” Enjoy!

“You told me once that the cemetery was the last place you’d look for a ghost.”

My brother doesn’t answer, but I know he’s remembering what he’d said too. “Cemeteries are only haunted by the living. They’re the ones dragging the dead away from their rest, not the other way around.”

It was better comfort than Dad’s derisive response had been. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” Despite the ever-growing distance between us, my brother still understands me in a way no one else ever will.

My brother places a sketchbook and a pack of pencils in the snow at the base of the headstone. Flowers are hard to come by during the Alaskan winter. “Sometimes I wish ghosts did exist. I wish I believed in them because—” he chokes back a response.

“Why?” I prompt.

“Because I wish I could say sorry”—he delicately traces the letters on the headstone—“for not hearing you when you asked for help.”

I swallow hard. My own regret leaves a taste in my mouth: bitter as a pill. I wish I could comfort him, though there’s nothing I can say that would ease his pain. But the least I can do is try. “It’s never too late.”

“It’s too late for an apology,” he says. I rest a hand on his shoulder, feel him tense and shudder. He glances in my direction. “But the least I can do is try.”

I smile wryly and withdraw my hand. “Never hurts to acknowledge what’s haunting you.”

He looks down at the headstone. “I came to say goodbye. To tell you I’m sorry. I’ll stop haunting you so often. I’ll let you rest.”

But he stays, waiting for sunset. I stay with him.

“Sundogs,” he comments. An optical illusion—the bright spots of light to either side of the sun—false suns that shadow the real one.

“You think it means the sun knows what it’s like to be haunted?”

“Means a storm is coming. It will snow soon.”

I hover near him, a quiet companion until he finally stands, walks away from the grave without a backward glance.

“You were wrong, you know,” I call, unable to hold my tongue any longer, to waste one last chance to make him hear me.

His shoulders stiffen as he turns and stares intently in my direction. But his gaze skates right over me.

“No.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “I’m imagining things.”

“You aren’t. The living aren’t the only ones who haunt cemeteries.” But my brother still doesn’t hear me.

“You’re dead. You’ve been gone a long time. I have to let you go.” He turns, hands tucked into his pockets, backlit by the setting sun. “Goodbye.”

“See you later.” I sit at the foot of my grave as my brother drives away, wishing it were true that only the living haunt the cemeteries.

It is past time to go. I stay and watch the sundogs chase the sunset over the horizon.