The Lost Graveyard. Read online

HE LOST GRAVEYARD

  By David Thomas

  Copyright 2012 David Thomas

  Art work by Jethro Lentle.

  Note to reader, this story is written in UK English and as the old pirate saying goes. “Ye be warned.” But please read on, there’s someone waiting for you.

  THE LOST GRAVEYARD

  Science is a clock, God is the time upon it and we are its cuckoo.

  Byron Horrox.

  I’ll try and tell you this best I can. It’s a truth that speaks a story, the kind you’d find in a poem or dream - it’s hard to describe. In the beginning none of us could.

  To start with I found myself in this small graveyard - just sitting quietly on the grass in a kind of frozen daze, listening to the trees gently hissing in the cool night breeze. Yet as I sat there some feeling within me - some intuitive emotion was whispering a dark and terrible secret, which crept up my skin like an invisible shadow and on into my mind.

  I knew I was dead and that somehow I’d come back to life. I also knew I had to go back to my grave come the dawn. This would sound frightening to most - crazy even - but I didn’t question it, it was just a feeling I followed, had to follow. Like I said it’s hard to describe.

  Soon I wasn’t alone - Doc arrived. I watched him come crawling out from the soil in an ill-fitting navy suit.

  He stumbled towards me. “What the hell is this - who are you?” His eyes darted around the graveyard.

  “My name is Sexton.” I replied.

  Unsure of where he was, he looked back towards his grave. “I don’t understand this, I don’t, I’m...” He turned back to me, uncertain what to say or do next.

  With my face half-covered with the dark shadows of the graveyard, I spoke without a second thought about how strange and impossible it would sound, to another person. “You’re dead, like me.”

  He took it well -better than expected really - considering the creepy situation. He said his name was Doctor William Murphy - in the end I just called him, Doc.

  We talked briefly trying to make sense of what had happened to both of us; we came up with nothing - except for that feeling that we had to go back into our graves as soon as the dawn came.

  The next moment, we heard another coming up from their grave in much the same way as Doc and I had. He blurted out his name was "George" and began walking round in circles - he was completely disoriented. Doc settled him down best he could.

  Then over the next couple of minutes, four more came. Each took it differently. Some like George, with total confusion. A woman named Mary screamed hysterically for her family and tried to run away. And that was how we found out something else.

  We couldn’t leave - as soon as anyone tried to go through the gates or halfway over the iron railings - panic would strike them down, a total fear would wash over them. Sending whoever drearily back to the group. Strange thing was each spoke their name as they returned like a captured convict.

  In the gathering group there was Sam - a thin looking man - who just stared at everyone with a guarded look. Mr Kydd was an old timer, who was weirdly bright eyed about it all - he made no effort to leave, but instead went round introducing himself - as if he were a host at a cocktail party. Then there was, Scar, a young Chinese-American woman with long black hair, who eventually started playing with a pack of tarot cards that she had found inside her coat pocket. I could see her hands trembling as she shuffled them.

  We were all in a state of total shock, huddled around like lost sheep. We stole glances at each other, numb to what had just happened to us and confused by our bizarre feelings towards it.

  I could see Mary stood by herself - she was a large middle aged woman, with thick brown framed glasses and curly black hair. I went over to her, I didn’t know what else to do - she looked worn out an alone. She didn’t look up at me even as I got closer to her, but instead kept her head low in an almost defeated way. She was nervously fingering a gold cross around her neck.

  As I stood next to her she blurted out, “Do you think we’re evil?” Her voice was low and trembling.

  “No, I don’t think we're evil.” I said.

  “But were dead right, but alive like vampires? And they’re evil.”

  I reached out my hand and held hers. “I know I’m not evil, Mary.”

  She looked up at me. Her eyes were fighting back the tears. “Do you think God knows about us? This isn’t…the resurrection is it?”

  All I could do was smile - she half smiled back, suddenly her eyes flicked passed mine in wonderment.

  “Hey look over there, do you see there.” She said with a giggle.

  In the distance, beyond the graveyard railings, we could see two lines, one white and one red.

  “It’s a freeway.” She began to squeal excitingly like a child. “I know that freeway - I know it, it's Highway 17.”

  She stood up on her toes, staring out at it, excited to see some small scrap of life. The shock of what had happened to us was roller-coasting her emotions, but who could blame her for having some sort of emotional bends.

  “Wonder where they’re all going?” She suddenly pondered.

  “Home probably, it’s late, Mary.” I said cautiously.

  We walked over closer to get a better look and watched the glow of it, an artery in the heart of America, pumping life into a country that had no clue as to how fragile reality could be. The others must have worked out what we were looking at and began to come over to where we stood. Except for Sam, he just lingered alone, watching us.

  The world outside was going straight by us and there was nothing we could do in here to make them stop, to make them understand that we were trapped in the most impossible nightmare any one could imagine. We all just stood there and stared at those two lines in the distance, like children, hungry to see more.

  George looked closer through the railings and started to shout out like a half crazed man on a desert island, who’d spotted a ship. “HEY OVER HERE, WE’RE HERE.”

  Doc stood next to him. “They’re too far away George - they can’t see us, let alone hear us.”

  He shouted a bit more and then breathed a heavy sigh of disappointment, while rubbing his eyes. “I know I know. It’s just that I can see something I can make sense of. It’s grown so big, how did it get so large?”

  Mr Kydd stood on a large flat headstone, to get a better look. “It looks beautiful, so very beautiful, like a trail of stars. I can remember horses once going down that road.”

  Scar looked up at him. “You can remember horses riding down roads, down that freeway there?”

  He turned back round to her slowly - she was wearing a long black coat, green army trousers, with a red t-shirt that had some sort of faded Chinese writing on it and a pair of tattered boots. “I can remember when young ladies wore dresses and ribbons in their hair and not men’s clothing.”

  She got out a tobacco pouch from her coat and glared at him, thought for a moment and then spoke. “I like you - you speak your mind, no bullshit. How old are you, Mr Kydd?”

  Mr Kydd broke into a broad smile. “And I like you young lady for the same reason. I see you have some tobacco.”

  She looked down at the dark leather pouch. “I had a friend, a bookseller - I used to buy a lot of Egyptian books from. She must have left some bits and pieces in my coat. I think it was her way of saying goodbye to me, she knew I liked this brand. Would you like me to roll you one, Mr Kydd?”

  “I would be delighted if you would and as for my age young lady. My father fought for the South.”

  Doc looked at him in amazement. “The South, but that would make you?”

  “I think it would make me almost as old as America herself, Doctor.” He started to chuckle. “Well almost.” <
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  Scar handed him a cigarette and silver Zippo, on the side of it there where strange markings, but I couldn’t tell what they were.

  “What was your time like, Mr Kydd?” She then said.

  By now, Mr Kydd had sat down on the flat headstone and leaned on a walking stick he had, the top of it was made out of ivory. He lit his cigarette and handed back the Zippo to, Scar while blowing out a thin blue line of smoky satisfaction. “My dear, truth is it was probably as complex as yours. Each age has its own - how would you say - flavours. What was yours like?”

  She slowly rolled her own cigarette and frowned. “Bittersweet.”

  He leaned back and took out a small gold pocket watch from inside his jacket and stared at it; it looked like it had long since stopped. Then with an almost afterthought he spoke, to no one in particular. “I wonder what year it is now.”

  No one answered - no one could, yet seeing that sign of life out there in the distant had somehow snapped us out of our daze. Time passed slowly and one by one the lights went out on the freeway, till all that was left was us alone, in this graveyard as the dawn's early light began breaking free from the night.

  We each knew what to do next. I saw, Mary weeping to herself as she crawled back into her grave. The sense of what we had to do made us sick to our stomachs, it was degrading to go down into that dirty choking black hole, like something vile and unnatural, that none of us should have come out of in the first place, but we did it anyway, we had to. It was the only thing that made sense, even when we were going down into that cold soil like some twisted version of an embryo - wrapped in an unfeeling womb, it still made sense.

  The following night it was raining heavily. So we all decided to go into a nearby mausoleum to keep dry except for, Sam, again he didn’t come near us. Instead he sat under some trees at the furthest end of the graveyard.

  Inside it was dark with a rank smell of wet leaves and soil - some of us sat on the dusty coffins, no one spoke; each of us was still locked away in their own private thoughts, except for Doc and Mr Kydd, who quietly chatted about Mr Kydd’s life.

  Then slowly outside a noise came - subtle but deliberate, like a hunting dog prowling the long grass. We all glanced at each other. Maybe it was Sam, maybe it wasn’t.

  I decided to peek through the rusting iron gate to get a better look. And there instead, through the sheets of heavy rain, I could make out a figure that could never be real, never be here. My stomach twisted with the shock, as I saw not 20 yards in front of me, the terrible lone figure of the devil.

  His cruel face was a dull red beneath the stormy night, while his dark cloak rocked heavily in the cold wind, like a corpse hanging from a traitors noose.

  Mary screamed from behind me. “OH GOD NO! NO!” and rushed to the back of the room, cowering behind one of the coffins.

  None of us knew what to do. Who would? We all stood there frozen to the spot, scared out of our wits. He began to move around the gravestones looking at each one, his face unmoved by any emotion. Was he looking for us? Were we in fact, in hell?

  For a few more minutes we all watched - fear-struck - as he zigzagged around the headstones, I could hear, Mary, behind me trying to pray as the terror engulfed her.

  Then, the impossible happened. He stopped and reached up with his hand and touched the end of his hook nose and did something that made us all gasp out at the same time.

  He slowly took a mask off and there instead