Entry # A19

Lost Cause

By 

Ellen McKinney

Autumn was my favorite time of the year. I loved the aroma and sounds. I can hardly use any of my senses. I do so miss feeling fabrics and the softness of a kiss, to taste a candy apple, smell pumpkin spice, and see the wonderful colors and to hear the crackling of a warm fire.

I lie dormant all year except for the month of October. My name is Maria Alonzo-Hudson. Who am I? The real question, one might ask what are you? I am a specter, a ghost, an apparition, spirit or a presence of one’s imagination. Most pass my ghostly presence as Halloween fun.

How did I die? I was raped and stabbed repeatedly with some sort of sharp object. An object that was never found nor was the murderer caught.

My case was noted as a lost cause, but I want to think one day it will be solved so I can rest in peace. My husband Detective Rabb Hudson tried to solve my murder, he gave it his all, did his best, but I became a cold case. I am cursed to roam in limbo and only in October. My reasoning was because I was murdered on the thirty-first.

If only I could reach my husband, I want to help him solve my case. I was able to haunt the people around him, but I cannot reach him. What sight I do have was because I got a glimpse of the perp who killed me and when I say glimpse they were dressed in black and I did not see a face.

My little daughter Brie liked to dress up for Halloween and I miss making her costumes and taking her trick or treating. I did pass tradition to her, now she does for her own daughter, my granddaughter. I would always remember her as a small child and she would remember me as a young woman, she was still quite small when I was murdered.

The years have flown by and my ghost was still around, but my case was no closer to resolution. It was a terrible curse for me to still be here.

Brie also became a detective such as her father maybe my lost cause would be found again. But, events happen and I am unable to reach her either. What events you ask?

I am limited as to where I may roam the nature of the beast I suppose or I am doomed to walk the earth in limbo. I get caught up haunting one person and until they hear me I cannot move on, a person in particular was someone close to my heart or was.

I came up behind her, she was my best friend when I was alive, Mallory Chestnut she was sitting at my kitchen table or what was my kitchen table having breakfast with my husband. I cannot cite them for being a couple. My death brought them together, but she left her husband for mine.

My breath was like a whisper and I could see the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she was feeling coldness only a specter can bring.

“Did you feel that?” she asked Rabb.

“Feel what?” he replied as he placed a plate of eggs and bacon in front of her. He was always one for cooking. I was not my talents lay elsewhere or did.

“The briskness in the air,” she replied.

“The weather is changing.”

“It was more than that. I think Maria is trying to reach me.”

“A ridiculous notion, the dead don’t contact the living. Plus she’s been dead for fifteen years why now, why would she try and contact us now?” I had been calling out from the grave, he just cannot hear me.

“The notion is not so ridiculous if you make a statement such as that. Her murder was never solved and she is not resting comfortably.”

“Are you listening to us? She’s dead and buried.”

“It makes perfect sense,” she said sugary as if a light bulb lit up over her head. Yes, I was putting the idea there for her.

“Does it?” he asked.

“Sure it does, tomorrow is the anniversary of her death.” Of course it was the anniversary of my death and it took you long enough to realize it, I was being a very sarcastic ghost. Okay, I have every right to act as I do, I was murdered give me some credit.

She was so on the right track and I was reaching her, it had only taken years wasted on her every October.
“I have exhausted every avenue my on trying to solve this case.”

“Get a fresh pair of eyes to look at her file,” Mallory said with a seeming knowledge of how a detective worked.

“Like who?” Rabb questioned, “No one wants to take on this lost cause least of all me.”

“Lost cause,” Mallory hollered out, “How can Maria be called a lost cause? She was someone dear to so many people including me.” I was putting words in her mouth. Whether or not she wanted to mean what she said was altogether a different story.

He gazed at her stunned she was yelling at him. He then said something that came to a shock to me. “I thought you wanted her out of the way so we could be together?”

I said such wonderful things about him looking for the killer and the killer was haunting me. The blame should have been directed to him all along.

The newspaper the next morning said it so clearly, “Yes, the husband did it. Detective Rabb Hudson was arrested on October 31st the anniversary of his wife’s murder along with his accomplice Mallory Chestnut. His daughter Brie Hudson-Macon set a hidden camera and was able to get a full confession.”

I wish I could thank my daughter for what she did for me. I was resting comfortably and when I saw Brie set flowers on my grave was my curse lifted. I was no longer a lost cause.