The Girl Who Could See Death

Although everything about Lily seemed normal, she was actually the farthest from it. She wasn’t like you and I, in fact, she was extraordinary. You see, Lily could see the dead, and she knew when and how people would die. One example is when her parents were going to take her to see her grandfather. Before they left, she insisted that they didn’t need to go.  She asked “But why, mommy? Grandpapi died half an hour ago.” Lily’s mother called the rest home where he stayed, and sure enough, they confirmed the dreadful news. Lily’s parents were terrified. They told her not to tell anyone about what had just happened, and not to say anything like this again. She didn’t understand why she had to follow these rules, after all, she was only five-years-old, but she followed them, nevertheless.
Of course, these rules were put into place so Lily wouldn’t be made fun of at school, but they also created some tragedy. Lily wanted to tell her father he didn’t have much time left, but she was told to not say these kinds of things to anyone. So, when her father passed away due to a malfunction at the factory, she wasn’t at all surprised. In her depression, Lily’s mother became furious with her. She kept asking Lily why she hadn’t said anything, and maybe he could have lived. Lily was oddly calm for a five-year-old, more calm than most adults, and she simply played with her doll a bit and reminded her mother that she and her father had told her not to say anything about when people would die.
After a few weeks of nonstop crying in her bedroom, Lily’s mother, to no surprise of Lily, hung herself in her closet. Lily simply went to her neighbor, and told her that her mother was hanging in the closet. As the neighbor ran into the house, Lily skipped home, not having a care in the world. The police soon arrived, and took Lily in to ask her if she had seen anything that would imply her mother was murdered. Of course she said no, because she knew exactly what happened, every single detail.
She was placed in a foster home, with a loving mother and a working father. Lily refused to call them mother and father, however, and decided to call them by their real names, Dolores and John. To them she seemed absolutely normal, like any other child, except she wouldn’t play with children her age. Instead she would play with her doll that she took everywhere and her “imaginary friends” who were, in fact, the spirits of the deceased. Dolores and John brushed it off, as they thought it was normal for a child her age to play with imaginary friends.
As you can imagine, after a month of having her in their care, Dolores and John began to worry about Lily. She still wouldn’t play with her classmates, even at school. When they asked her if she made any friends, Lily would always respond with “I don’t need anymore friends. The ones I have now keep me happy.”
One day, soon after Lily arrived home from school, the telephone rang. Dolores picked it up, and on the other end was Lily’s kindergarten teacher. She was told Dolores how well Lily did in school, but then she explained the real reason she was calling. Lily had watched another child trip. While his hands were bleeding, Lily told him not to worry, because it wouldn’t matter soon. Lily’s teacher was extremely worried for Lily’s mental state, and she wanted Dolores and John to do something about it.
Dolores was extremely furious with Lily, and asked her why she had said such things to her classmates. Lily didn’t pay any attention to her adoptive mother, in fact, she was busying herself with her favorite doll, one she claimed talked to her. In her fury, Dolores snatched the doll out of Lily’s hands, and threw it into the open flames kept within the fireplace. Dolores screamed at Lily for not paying attention to her, but Lily did not care. She stared into her adoptive mother’s eyes . . . and waited. Lily knew what was going to happen next, and she welcomed it with open arms.
If you had gone down that street, you would have seen fire trucks and police cars blocking the street, while the house in front of them burned to ashes. The only thing that was left was the soot covered foundations and an odd item that dumbfounded the investigators. In what used to be the family’s fireplace, they discovered a strange doll.