I’m so sorry. I should have listened. I just couldn’t face the thought of the rest of my life never hearing him again, I had to try. It wasn’t a scam, not like you said. He sounded different when he called. He was all eager with an off-putting sort of excitement, not like our earlier face-to-face consultations. He just gave me an address and told me to be there that night: Grantham Cemetery. I started to wonder if this was all just another messed-up sales pitch. Some preachy lesson about acceptance and letting go before asking for more cash. But I had to know, so I went to the cemetery. I used to love the night. When Arthur couldn’t sleep we would just walk for hours under the lampposts, just us and the occasional headlights streaking past. It frightens me now. I look at the shadows, not the lights. They hide whatever it was that took him away from me. The cemetery gates were wide open. I don’t know if I would have had it in me to break in. I was so nervous that the smallest obstacle might have sent me running home. But they were open. So in I went. Slowly, towards the grave. It’s not a big graveyard, and spacious enough that I could see the figure standing there before I got too close. For a moment my heart skipped and I thought it might be Arthur but no, the shape… The shape was all wrong. Then my step faltered, because I had no idea who else it could be. They were too short for the consultant. Maybe someone else entirely, some innocent mourner? In the middle of the night? I doubted it. I was scared, Darla. I was so scared. I was certain I’d been set up, that I was going to be grabbed. I turned to leave, hoping I could get back to the main road lights but then the figure began to speak from where it was stooped in the dark. It was his voice. It was Arthur’s voice. I know you won’t believe me, but he called my name and I know it was his voice. I froze in place. It came closer, and as the moon escaped the clouds, for a moment I could make out the discolored skin, the mismatched features. It moved slowly, shuddering towards me with a jerky, ungainly step. Something was pressed against its skin, from the inside. I said the only thing I could think: “Arthur? Is that you?” And that voice I have loved for twenty years answered: “Some of him.” And then it laughed. Great heaving gasps and wheezes that seemed to leak out as if through a rotten bellows. It laughed and laughed, violently throwing its head back and forth, faster and faster, impossibly fast. So fast I could hear bones snapping. I ran, and it didn’t chase me. I don’t know what to do now. I’ve not left the house all day. I keep thinking I see something at the bottom of the garden, but I can’t bring myself to check. Do I call the police? What could I even tell them? I tried calling the helpline but no one answers. Are you free tonight? I don’t want to stay at the house. I know you warned me that it was too full of memories, but this isn’t that. I’m afraid, Darla, and worse, I think it’s Arthur I’m afraid of. Or what’s left of him. Please get back to me a.s.a.p. – H