The Two White Doves

At seventeen, I thought I understood loss. But when Maya took her own life three weeks into our junior year, the world tilted on an axis I hadn’t known existed. Maya was the quiet genius who wrote poems that made you feel like she was reading your own secret thoughts. She was also the one who laughed too hard at her own jokes and cried at the drop of a hat, and we all knew she fought her own private war. Her death left a void that seemed to swallow all the air in our small town of Cedar Hollow.

Her mother, a deeply religious woman, insisted that we all attend a memorial youth group session at the old First Baptist Church on the edge of town. It was a Saturday evening, and the air was thick with summer humidity. My boyfriend Derek and I, along with our friends, were not the churchgoing type, but we agreed to go, more out of guilt than faith. As we pulled into the gravel parking lot, the church loomed before us, its steeple piercing a bruised purple sky. We shared a few cigarettes, the smoke spiraling up to mingle with the lingering dusk, and I noticed a cluster of white doves perched on the roof, their feathers glowing in the last light.

We were late, and as we approached the side entrance, we noticed a group of kids huddled outside, whispering. Among them was a lanky boy named Felix, who was known for his dark sense of humor and his obsession with the occult. He motioned for us to join them. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he said, his eyes wide. ‘Maya left a poem, and it’s… specific.’ He handed Derek a crumpled piece of paper. It was her last poem, written in her neat, looping handwriting. The first lines were about a black ocean and a falling star, but the last line made my blood run cold: ‘Place 2 white doves on my grave and tell them I died for love.’ I looked up at the doves, which seemed to be watching us with unblinking black eyes.

We decided to skip the church service and instead investigate the old cemetery that sprawled behind the church. The tombstones were tilted and overgrown, and the air grew cooler as we stepped off the gravel path. Derek held my hand, and I could feel his pulse racing. ‘This is stupid,’ I whispered, but my feet kept moving. Felix led us to a mausoleum with the name ‘Ashworth’ carved above the door. The door was ajar, and inside, instead of coffins, there were rows of empty cages. And on the floor, a single, white feather. ‘She used to come here,’ Felix said. ‘She said she talked to the birds.’

We heard a soft cooing from inside the mausoleum, and a dove appeared from the darkness, its feathers slightly ruffled. It hopped toward us, and then another flew in through a broken window, landing on the sarcophagus. They both began to make a low, mournful sound, almost like a chant. Then the door slammed shut behind us, plunging us into pitch black. We screamed, fumbling for our phones, but they were dead. A faint glow emanated from the back wall, revealing a hidden door that had slid open. Painted on the wall in what looked like old dried blood were the words: ‘Your love is now mine.’

We stumbled through the doorway into a narrow passage that smelled of dust and decay. It led to a small room that seemed to be a chapel, with a stone altar and a single candle burning. On the altar lay a journal, its pages yellowed. Derek picked it up and read aloud, his voice trembling. It was a diary of someone who believed that love was a poison, and that the only way to preserve it was to capture it in the form of a dove. The diary described a ritual: if you placed the ashes of a loved one in the mouth of a dove and released it, the love would never die, but the person would become a restless spirit, trapped between worlds.

I felt a cold breeze on my neck, and I turned to see a spectral figure standing in the corner. It was Maya, but her eyes were hollow, and her lips were sewn shut with what looked like thread. She raised a finger to her lips, even though she couldn’t speak, and pointed at the altar. Underneath the journal, there was a small box. Felix opened it, revealing two white dove feathers, stained with dried blood. ‘She did it to herself,’ I whispered. ‘She tried to preserve her love for someone, but it went wrong.’

We wanted to leave, but the door to the chapel was gone, replaced by a solid wall. We were trapped. The doves from before flew in through a high window and began to circle us, their coos growing louder and more frantic. The spectral figure that was Maya began to shake, and her mouth opened, the stitches tearing apart. A terrible, high-pitched cry emerged, and the doves shot at us, pecking and clawing. We fought them off, but there were more, and they seemed to materialize from the walls. I remember Derek shouting, ‘The poem! Read the poem!’ I pulled the crumpled paper from my pocket and read aloud: ‘Place 2 white doves on my grave and tell them I died for love.’ The doves froze, then turned and flew at the spectral Maya, enveloping her. She let out a final, ear-splitting scream, and then they vanished, along with her.

The wall behind the altar slid open, revealing the cemetery outside. We ran, not stopping until we reached the safety of the church parking lot. We never spoke of that night again, and we left Cedar Hollow as soon as we graduated. But sometimes, on quiet evenings, I hear the cooing of doves, and I see Maya’s sewn lips parting to utter a silent plea. The white doves on her grave were not just a poetic request; they were a warning. And to this day, I cannot look at a dove without remembering that her love, and the love of others, is still out there, waiting to be released.