After the police found me in the shed, tied up and bleeding out, they had me immediately rushed to Ravenwood Medical Center. Ok fine, that was my assumption. I had actually been passed out for most of the experience. The doctor said that was typical after losing as much blood as I had.

All I remembered was waking up in a dingy white room, with black and white tile floors, and a large oversized visitors chair that overtook half my allotted space. Next to me was an older gentleman who was listening to something from ESPN. It turned out they didn't let people have single rooms in this dump.

They had me strapped down to one of those automated rising hospital beds, apparently they did that because I was a fall risk. It wasn't like I was about to go anywhere. At least the drugs worked.

Ravenwood Medical Center had shown me exactly how it earned its two stars on yelp over the past twenty-four hours. The nurse they gave me was a monster. She reminded me of Agatha Trunchbull, the angry principal from that Matilda movie.

On top of the horrible service and less than ideal accommodations, my room was ice cold. Perhaps I had died in that shed and instead of being put in a hospital, they put me in this hell hole. I guess it was possible hell had finally frozen over.

When I asked Agatha, or rather Mary, for a blanket she told me they were all out and to stop being a little whiny teen and deal with it.

She made up some bullshit excuse about how all the other patients had complained about the same thing. My guess was she was just lazy, but I wasn’t about to call her out on that. She did control my pain medication.

Instead, I sat there in the cold. To distract myself, I jumped on to check if cold rooms were a common complaint among its visitors, but I came up empty handed.

That’s not to say the review page wasn't entertaining. There was one review that caught my eye from a user that went by RagedUpBrownieAddict. He said, and I quote,

> The cafeteria was the best part of this establishment. Would 100% recommend the brownie. It’s the only reason this place doesn’t have 0 stars.

I had tried that supposed amazing Brownie. If that was the best thing this hospital had going for it, I'd be dead by the morning.

I was curious though, how many Brownies must a person consume to become a brownie addict.

No, this was not a distraction to keep me from processing what happened to me. It was important!

According to the internet, apparently as long as you have a strong physical or psychological urge to do something, it becomes an addiction. I think I might have a new addiction to being in places I shouldn’t. My life would have been much less painful had I chosen the brownie route.

Alright, this was silly. Enough procrastinating. It's not that hard to take the time to process what happened to me.

I guess my situation wasn’t all bad. The doctor did say that if everything continues to heal and the social worker clears me to go, then I can be back in my bed by tomorrow. That seemed like a minor miracle, all things considered.

Ok that's enough processing for now. What else can I look up. I wonder if there are any movies out.

All I know is I needed a break from the supernatural world, so no ghost movies. Somehow I had yet to run into a ghost since Nicole left.

Oh man, Nicole. I had tried my best to forget about her. I felt tears stream down my face. It felt like a crack developed in my resolve.

Why didn't you listen to her you stupid, stupid old man. She had one wish for you and you let her the fuck down.

I hoped you moved on Nicole. I hope you're happy. While I was glad she was gone, I will admit, I did miss her. It was like she had become a part of me.

No not now. This is too much. It's not the right place. I have to stay strong. I have to move on. I looked around.

The fact there were no ghosts in a hospital confused me. With how much life and death goes through this place, more than normal if you believe the reviews, you’d expect I would have seen a bunch.

Maybe the gift was gone? No, it couldn’t be that easy. Something else must be going on. I decided I needed to do something to distract myself from that uncomfortable thought. I turned back to my monitor.

My pointer hovered over the disc drive on my laptop, my finger on the mouse. There it was, The Insiders Digital Guide to Seeing Ghosts. I had run out of things to distract me. I was so desperate for a break from this life. If that was true, then why does my finger want to press the button so badly?

Fuck it, I pressed down, my finger instinctively twitched on the mouse. The folder opened. I already knew the exact video I had to watch. I scrolled until I found it.

There it was. I opened the video titled So You Fucked Up. Alex appeared on the screen.. He looked skinnier and more yellow than I remembered from his other videos. This video must have been recorded toward the end of his life.

I hesitated. Do I really want to jump back into this life? I realized the answer didn’t matter. Regardless if I wanted to or not, I had to know what this video said.

I pressed play.

###

Hey future me, welcome to what I call rock bottom. Yeah it sucks I know. I want to tell you a story. Please don’t leave until you hear me out. It’s important, I promise.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

On June 9th, 2003, three members of the Butler family each packed a single backpack full of clothes during the dead of night. The family walked down the street to the nearest greyhound station and hopped on a bus.

What was their destination you may ask? They were headed halfway across the country to the small town of Ravenwood. There, the family planned to stay with Sharon’s cousin Naomi. Yes, the same one who’s name I mentioned in my opening video. Hopefully by now you two have met.

Sharon had always been a good mother. She had worked tirelessly to make sure her boys had what they needed: food on their plates and clean clothes in their drawers. But the truth was, love wasn’t enough. And when the money ran out, Sharon did what any desperate parent might do—she found another way. A way that would shape the lives of her family forever.

It had all started with Crystal, a coworker at the hotel where Sharon worked as a cleaning lady. Sharon had mentioned to Crystal that she was on the hunt for a second job. The one here at the hotel just wasn’t enough to feed her and her family.

Crystal had handed her a piece of paper, the edges worn from being folded and unfolded. On it was a phone number and nothing more. She told Sharon about the side hustle she had started with the man on the other end of this phone number. Sharon had hesitated, but only for a moment. When she called, the offer seemed too good to pass up.

A man with a wide face and an even wider belly had become her contact. He hadn’t asked for much. Just a few jobs a week. The work had been simple: pick up a car, drive it to an rental home, and wait for a package to be delivered. For each job, Sharon was paid a thousand dollars in cash, under the table of course. That sort of money was life changing for her and her children.

For ten jobs, everything had gone smoothly. She’d driven to the pickup, watched her boys splash in luxurious pools, and waited for the UPS man to drop off the package. Then, she delivered it. Easy. Routine.

She began to grow attached to the lifestyle this new job afforded her. She hated the days the phone didn’t ring. That’s exactly why she answered the phone so eagerly the morning of June 9th. Unfortunately, something about this call was different.

The usual man wasn’t on the other end of the phone. Instead, a new voice, rough and sharp, had come through the line. Sharon hesitated. She contemplated whether she should take on this new risk, but she needed the money.

The job had started like the others. She had picked up the car, taken her boys to the rental home, and watched them play in the pool. When the package had arrived, she had exhaled a sigh of relief. It seemed like everything was fine. But the day that would change her life forever was just beginning.

After putting her boys to bed, Sharon had driven to the same mattress store as usual.

This time, police surrounded the store. The perimeter was blocked off. She saw her contact was in the back of a squad car. She panicked with no idea what to do.

So, she had done the only thing she could—she hid the package under the seat and drove away as fast as possible without raising suspicion.

Back at the rental home, her hands had shaken as she pulled out the package. She had known this job was most likely on the wrong side of the law, but she’d never asked questions. She couldn’t afford to. But now, she had no choice. In her panicked state, she’d torn the packaging on a piece of metal under the seat. What she saw inside the package shocked her.

Fifty thousand dollars. More money than she had ever seen in her life.

Sharon had made a choice that night. The company didn’t know her real name. They had kept things distant. She could disappear. Take the money, grab her kids, and start over. Somewhere far away from here.

And that’s exactly what she had done.

When the bus pulled into the small town of Ravenwood, Sharon and her boys had stepped off, ready to begin their new life. Sharon had hidden the money, even from Naomi.

For months, everything had gone as planned. The boys had enrolled in school, and Naomi had helped Sharon secure a steady job at her office. For the first time in a long time, Sharon had allowed herself to be happy.

But then, on the afternoon of September 30th, everything had shattered.

Sharon had been home, waiting for her boys to come home from school. She had expected to hear the sound of the door bursting open, the excited voices of her sons filling the room. But that never happened. They didn’t come home. And as the hours passed, she became more worried.

Naomi and her formed a search team. A dozen volunteers scoured the neighborhood, hoping to find the boys.

Three nights passed and there was still no sign of them. By this point, hundreds had joined the search. Things looked bleak. Still, Sharon and Naomi never gave up hope.

That fourth night, Sharon finally received some news. It was unfortunately not the news she had hoped.

A homeless woman who had been out walking her dog called into the station. She reported that she found two trash bags stuffed with human remains just outside of town. They had been abandoned near a homeless camp.

Once the bodies were recovered, DNA confirmed the bodies were that of DeSean, age ten, and Greyson, age nine.

Strapped to the bag was the note with just a few simple, but powerful words:

“Consider your debt settled.”

When the police brought her in and broke the news, something inside her just… snapped.

The last anyone heard of Sharon, she was in Cottonwood Mental Health Facility. She hasn’t spoken a word since that fateful day. For years now, she’s sat in the same chair, looking at the same wall, lost in a place far away from here.

That poor woman had become a ghost, doomed to her own internal cage. Unlike real ghosts, her prison was one of her own design.

After I heard Sharon's story, I made my way to that bridge—the one where they found her boys. All things considered, it was a relatively normal bridge. For most passers by, they wouldn’t have taken a second glance at the structure. I saw the reality.

Greyson sat under the bridge. He hadn’t aged a single day since the day he went missing. Hopefully by now you realize you stay the same age as the moment you die. It sucks I couldn’t make it to the age of twenty-one.

Anyway, He looked out at the water, as if he expected his mother to come pick him up any minute now. He just sat there with his knees pulled to his chest, like he was waiting for something that would never come.

I tried everything to help him move on, but no matter what I did the boy just sat there, unmoved. I was finally forced to accept the reality that he was doomed to live at that exact spot for all of eternity.

I couldn’t bear to tell Naomi the truth—that her nephew was still here, stuck in this world, unable to leave. So I lied. It wasn’t my proudest moment, and one of my biggest fuck ups.

There’s something so cruel about that—about telling someone that their loved one is just one of the thousands, maybe millions, of ghosts out there, forever bound to this earth. Forced to walk it alone. It still haunts me.

But here’s the thing—since the beginning of time, ghosts have been trapped here, caught between this life and the next. Imagine being tied to this place with no one to talk to, no one to love. It’s a cruel joke the universe plays on them.

So yeah, you messed up. But at least you gave that ghost a chance to move on. A chance to be saved. A ghost who might have been doomed to stay here forever without you.

Remember, you can live your life owning up to your mistakes or you can shut down like Sharon and wait tired and alone for that warm embrace of death. We have both seen what that life is like. No one should live that way.

If one day you or I become trapped in this world between worlds, and god I hope not, we can only hope that someone like us comes along and gives us even a sliver of hope. It’s better to try and fail, than to walk this world eternally alone.

You did your best. And that’s all you can do. Please, don’t give up.