Part 1

Part 1 of The Grave Imps

I must begin by saying that, from my travels, it has become widely apparent that it is nearly impossible to find a man not frightened, in some sort, of death. It is only human, I should think, that we fear that most puzzling of events, beyond which we can see and know nothing. There is something about that haunting uncertainty, which invariably carries a mysterious and eerie quality-- the sort that haunts all but the bravest of men’s souls.

            What so many men are not quick to realize, is the terrible fear one gets when dealing not with those who are deceased, but those who desecrate the already deceased.

            Of course, it is all too well-known, the terrible nature of desecrating one’s grave. Yet, we are still bombarded with the stories of those rare few who decide to challenge the status quo and act out against defenseless corpses. It is a terrible thing for a man to do and even more terrible to witness as an innocent, but still it lacks that terrible horror of which I speak.

            To fully understand the situation, I must explain fully the story of the night that still haunts me to this very day, filling my dreams with those blasted contorted images of that blackest day. 

            It was a humid summer night, like any other night of my childhood, the sort where the sweat pools at your brow and in every crevice of your young body, bringing that most disconcerting feeling of general discomfort to your entire body.  Due to this discomfort, I began to feel restless, tossing and turning in the crumpled sheets of my bed. My body was in an unusual state, as my mind continued to believe that I should have been tired, although my limbs were sending the most blatant of signals that this simply was not the case. Instead, my entire demeanor was that of an energized young boy, and sleep would not come to me, despite how much I wished for it to come. 

            Taken in an instant by a fervent wanderlust, I rose from my bed and walked as if in a trance towards the front door. The house was quiet, which came as no surprise since it was a particularly late hour, approaching 3 am as I remember it, and my parents and siblings had all lain asleep for some time by then. Even the family dog was not stirred by my inability to sleep, and he lay sleepily on the couch in our family room as I made my way through the room and towards our front door. The entire house seemed caked with an ethereal sheet of silence as I passed through it, as if this were somehow another person’s dream into which I had unwittingly stumbled. As i made my way through the thick air, which hung heavily as it so often does on those unpleasantly humid summer nights, I found that my mind was in a haze.  The oppressive heat was clouding my thoughts and dulling my senses in a way I had never experienced.

 

            The unusual stupor which had come over me made the short walk from my bedroom to the front door of our humble home seem impossibly long, and when I finally found myself on the front step, looking out into the dark night I was overcome with exhaustion.  Placing my hands on my knees and breathing deeply, I almost fell at that spot, but through an outstanding feat of willpower, I was able to keep myself aloft. Although, looking back, I wish that I had not done so and rather had allowed myself to fall at that spot. Perhaps there, sleep would have taken me, or at least a sleepiness would have come to my rescue, and saved me from the horrors with which I was soon to be faced.

            Alas such was my fate, that I would not be brought down from my feet and so I continued my walk outdoors. I continued to tell myself that I was only wandering because of my unrest, and that in no time at all I would have brought myself to exhaustion, and head back home for some much needed sleep. Deep in my mind though, I seemed to have other intentions, which began to show themselves as I regained my balance on that front stoop. 

            It was manifested as the uncontrollable urge to make my way to the rear of my house, and to scale the hill that stood there.  Of course, to my rational mind this seemed like an awful idea, as I knew too well that on top of the hill rested a graveyard infamous for the alleged hauntings which plagued it. Unfortunately, as a brash young boy this thought only fueled my desire to climb to that unholy summit, curiosity rising inside me and threatening to boil over if I could not find a way to sate it.

            I was powerless under its hold, and so my curiosity brought my feet to move as if they were not a part of me, and to carry me around the back of my house. Our backyard gave way directly to the summit of the hill, with no fence or other partition to break the landscape, and so I began to walk directly away from that peaceful home, into the dark expanse beyond. The walk was far harder than I might have anticipated, as the light provided by the full moon fell dully upon the face of the hill, and hid many obstacles from my sight. Tripping across twigs and rocks, and often losing my footing, the trip threatened that I might slip and lose my footing, which, on such a steep climb, would most certainly have resulted in the end of my journey for that night, and very likely, serious injury to myself.

            Here, an unseen hand once again held my aloft, keeping me from falling, but as I look back I see it as a mixed blessing. Unlike the incident on the front step, I was now at a point where I could not go back. Even if I had fallen, and hurt myself too badly to continue on, there would have been no way too explain to my parents what I had been doing outside walking to the cemetery at such an ungodly hour. Nevertheless, it would have again saved me from the trauma that I suffered that night, though I cannot be sure that I would have been able to rest for those nights after, if I had fallen. I can only assume that it was fate that I would end at the graveyard, my curiosity refusing to let me put that night behind me.

            It was perhaps a half hour before I finally made it to the summit of that hill, and upon reaching the peak I stopped only for a moment to rest. My knees aching, and the whole of my lower body calling out for me to stop, I attempted to cease the journey there, but the invisible presence which had driven me to go this far was unwilling to let up, and forced my mind to push me even further into the night.  

            Here at the top of the hill, the moonlight was much more luminous and provided a much better view of my surroundings.  Here was Merriwind Cemetery, the oldest resting place in that whole town, which had stood for nearly 400 years.  An enormous wealth of history permeated the soil on that land, and as I gazed out upon it on that night, it stretched across an impossibly large expanse, its physical size matching the wealth of meaning it had garnered over the years. I had never seen the graveyard in that light, and for a moment, I could do nothing but stare out across it, a certain awe coming over me.

            This awe did not last for long, though, as once more the curiosity which was welling up inside of me pushed once again and forced me out into those hallowed grounds. Ever so slowly, my feet began to carry me, a certain tentativeness keeping me from marching headlong into the tombstones which littered the landscape. This was holy ground, or so I had always been told, and to march out here like this, driven not by love for one of the bodies which lie beneath that ground but by my own vain curiosity. Of course, I didn’t understand that at the time, still being not much more than a young boy, but I could still feel it without understanding why, and it brought a horrible uneasiness over my entire demeanor.