My boots still bear the marks of the moss of the graveyard. Armed with a dagger, my notebook and a bottle of red wine, I caught a sunset train south to a city of the dead. My plan was to introspect, to feast in an entirely selfish way upon the darkness of the gathered fallen, to revel in their loss and twist it to my gain by way of inspiration.
On the train, I was gathering my senses, attempting not to notice the two overweight fellows discussing, in the way that only those rejected by society do, their many overlooked qualities of valor, of superiority, and of greatness. Helpless to the distraction, I sat there upon the mildewed and overused seats which smelled strongly of countless neglected homeless persons and observed their discourse. It bothered me, as it always does, in a haughty sort of way, a way in which I know I am wrong to be so judgmental.
Soon enough, my reverie was broken by the signal of my nearing stop. I gazed out the windows at the retreating sunlight and noticed the unusually foggy sky. Believing this was completely in line with my dark intentions, I took as it an omen of luck. There I disembarked upon a city in which I had never been, having only lightly grazed the map with my hungry eyes before leaving home. I suddenly realized, naturally, that I had no real idea of how to reach the graves I so eagerly sought.
Thus walking out of the station, I happened upon two walking figures and called to them, with the purpose of divining my route from their knowledge. As it happened, it was the two fat gentlemen, who were still fervently engaging one another in tales of their feats of supposed majesty.
“Excuse me, I hate to interrupt,” I started – which was true, I did hesitate to even ask, given the outward rudeness of such a behavior. One of them had just spoken the word nosferatu, which I found slightly curious at first, given my plan of the night’s exploits, but later on more disquieting. It seemed my world was shaping into exactly what I had asked for – and the asking, as all wise men should know, can be quite a dangerous game.
“Excuse me, I hate to interrupt,” I started – which was true, I did hesitate to even ask, given the outward rudeness of such a behavior. One of them had just spoken the word nosferatu, which I found slightly curious at first, given my plan of the night’s exploits, but later on more disquieting. It seemed my world was shaping into exactly what I had asked for – and the asking, as all wise men should know, can be quite a dangerous game.
“Excuse me,” I continued as they glanced toward me. “Could either of you possibly tell me the way to Woodlawn Cemetery?”
They appeared utterly nonplussed and the one I had earlier overheard said, “Yes, it’s straight down that road,” as he gestured behind him, which was to my right.
“Just go this way?” I asked, pointing unsurely.
“Yes. Just go that way and you’ll find it easily.”
So I turned and began to walk the way he had directed, with a sick sort of spring in my step. This was, it seemed, going to be quite simple. All signs were pointing to it working out exactly as I had hoped. Yet unease loomed in the effortlessness of it all.
Crossing the street a little further on, I found foot traffic light and continued through the descending mist of the coming evening toward the gothic stone structure that marked the entrance to the cemetery. There were businesses lining the street on either side advertising deathly needs: coffins, marble headstones, even tools to dig out the earth.
I passed all these, realizing that I truly was in a remarkably unique city whose only business was death. Walking, I remembered the first bit of knowledge I gained about the town, which had immediately piqued my interest, being that the dead outnumbered the living by over a thousand-to-one. In that deserted roadway, it could never have been more obvious.
When first I set foot upon the lush, wet grass of Woodlawn, I could tell that it was a well-kept and honored place. I approached the arched entranceway with caution, unsure of what kind of welcome a foreign traveler would receive on attempting to enter such a place so deep into the hours of waning sunlight. To my astonishment, not a light was flickering in any of the groundskeeper’s windows to cast the most rudimentary of shadows. I was alone.
Left to my own devices thus, I could hardly keep my excitement concealed. Death had been a part of my life throughout its most developing stages, commencing with the loss of my young sister at the age of five and most recently the suicide of my father in my early twenties. Feeling so acquainted with the reaper, I was annoyed by my near childlike fear of him. After all, death itself cannot hurt us; it comes to all in time. And my secondary goal of the evening here, the one I so nearly hid from my own self, was to bolster my courage in the lonely face of it all.
I passed under the outward facing windows of the arch bearing in a lovely scrawl, “Woodlawn Cemetery, Columbarium, Mausoleum,” and my eye took in far more than I was expecting or anticipating. What greeted me was one of the most beautiful images of old stone and remembrance, ancient wise oaks and hills so majestically rolling away in the golden hour of sunset. How taken aback I was! I had expected to feel fear and muster strength, to turn away from the imploring eyes of the lost. Yet there, as I strolled among them, I found not darkness but peace: a kind of gentle understanding, and a profoundly echoing pity for those with living breath still caught in their chest.
The overwhelming sense of humanity rolling into me with the mist had set aside all thought of hunger for the small provisions I had pocketed for my trek, or thirst for the wine which I found I was still clutching in my numbing fingers. As I walked, I began to focus on every two or three headstones, often the most enchantingly carved. Names of people I could never know or have known slid past my vision, into my peripheral and out of my life so quickly I hardly had time to stand in awe of how far back some of the dates traversed. Then I saw, etched into a large sculpture of a mossy angel with chipped, sharp and outspread wings and a single-fingered fist pointing away to the heavens, set directly upon the soft earth, in a hand nearly undone by the sands of time,
“Like the pedals of a rose
One by one
Our loved ones fall.”
As I looked upon it, I felt a kind of sadness I had not expected. In the beauty of it all, the sleepy timelessness of the beyond, there was still one somewhere who wept. Had they been there with me, I would have proffered my best poetic sweeping aside of the anguish of loss. Oh, but how empty it would have been, as I myself was taken in so.
And in just that moment of introspection, I noticed a slight change in the color of the stone, retreating from its once rosy tinted gray and becoming dull gunmetal blue. As Apollo’s chariot was edging its way out of the world, so was the hue from this newfound universe of memory and wonder. And, admittedly, as the reassuring light of day faded, the stones became nameless; dates increasingly impossible to read became meaningless. The night seemed to immediately and unwaveringly engulf all but them, and I, a soul as yet Earth-bound, was suddenly a trespasser.
I averted my eyes as to discover some other glimmer of hope, but found, not only that I failed to remember how deep I had come into the graveyard, that only aging rock stared back. Then, without prelude, a white light in the shape of a glowing sphere, purer and brighter than the least-polluted worldly light, manifested itself, tiny and hovering, over certain stones on a far hill as if a lighthouse to guide me. At first, despite my oncoming terror, the awe of them drew me. Yet as I stepped closer to that hill in the distance, the realization that lighthouses are used to deflect wayfaring ships from dangerous shores jarred my senses. There I stopped, only to find myself in a sea of colorless mist. The moon had been blotted out and only the small aforementioned floating orbs seemed to reflect any light at all.
Thus, the wine undrunk, the page hardly scratched, I knew it was time to leave. Yet as my pace quickened in a hopeful direction, drops of moisture thicker than the cocooning mist began to spatter upon my path. I passed a grave reflecting in its ghostly light the measured script of Mandarin Chinese and a bas-relief image of a noble, while quite dead, man. There, from the very soil, erupted Loki’s own evil snickering, and it seemed to follow my every footfall.
Candle flames suddenly sprung up from nothing, first only one, then three more further off, highlighting the names I would otherwise have missed. I was being called or, at the very least, directed to look, to gaze upon the faces of specific lost. Horror was coming upon me.
Then I found a gnarled old tree, and leant up against its powerful roots, unsure of where to go. I began to write what was happening on the dampening pages of my book in an attempt to prove to myself by putting it down in perfectly Earth-based language quite how impossible it was to be experiencing anything more than panic. But then, as I glanced from the page at the sound of a pinwheel spinning above a child’s uneven gravestone, a shimmering silver gown slid from my vision to hide behind an oak. My pulse pounded, yet, utterly taken, I sat there and allowed the dead to watch me.
There were indeed then faces looming in the dark and perpetual thunder every time the lids came closed on these eyes who had met death. I recognized the stillness of the cemetery for the first time. There were no squirrels to chatter or toads to croak, only the occasional band of squawking black ducks soaring just over my desolate position.
As if the residents no longer living had been arguing as to their intentions, I could suddenly sense the renewed displeasure of eyes, who could no longer see, bent upon me, ears, no longer able to hear, listening to me breathe, and ghastly fingers, too cold to feel, pushing me away. I was suddenly and painfully aware of stomachs that could no longer hunger feeding on my life and my fear!
“Go!” they screamed in silent anguish and seeming unison. “Leave me to my mourning!”
I was up from the wet earth like as to the call of King Henry to war and compelled my feet to lead me out. After several agonizing minutes, the light of a lantern was visible only tens of meters in the distance. I stumbled after it, afraid that if I stopped for the slightest of moments, my feet would be encased in the cement of gravestone and my name would be forever etched on that very spot, only to light the paths of other unwise and seeking youths to my place of unrest.
The arch was suddenly, as if I had never been inside, behind me. A few moments later, standing under a streetlamp near the station, my breath caught up with my heart and I marveled at what had just occurred. And, feeling as though I had been spared, I allowed the mist, the dusty tears of the night, and the last train to drive me home.
