Chapter 2

That unease did not last long, as it was me only a scant moment before I was marching at full speed among those graves, my young and bewildered eyes scanning all that surrounded me.

             I quickly found that the graveyard had taken on a wholly different appearance in the faint light of the moon. Indeed, I had seen the graveyard at times when the sun shone brightly, and this was not the same place. During those many days, the cemetery had always looked so still and tranquil-- almost calming in a sense. It was a comfortable place to waste away my hours, and once in a great while I had come here when I required the time and peacefulness that deep thought always necessitates.

            I think if I had never seen what really transpired amongst those stones, that I would have returned there many times into the future. There were many who did so in those days.  They would say that it was calming to have the voices of the dead whisper in your ear, that it brought comfort and relaxation of an almost supernatural quality to their minds. In light of my own horrible experiences, I could never understand what these people talked about. Not while knowing that it truly was unnatural, yes, but also that it was of the most devious intent. 

            At night, the graveyard looked every bit as devilish and imposing as I later found it to be. There were no shadows in that place and there were shadows everywhere. It was as if every place that should have been home to a shadow found it mysteriously absent, but strange shapes were drawn out across the entirety of that awful place by such odd, sprawling shadows as to draw from even my young and temerarious mind a cold shudder. Even without the wisdome that comes with age, when I looked on those shadows, I could tell that they should not have been there. Everything about them was just, simply wrong.         

            The sight of these shapes crawling menacingly across the grounds captured my attention and held me in a hypnotic sway. They seemed to be the product of some ethereal life force, a pulsing and undulating thing that made of these graves a home.  I did not know it at the time, but they were driven by the same evil which had brought me to this space to begin with.

            Still, for all of this fear that filled and tormented my mind, I could do nothing more than wish to fight even further into the grounds. My pace by now was frenzied, and I raced to the center of the cemetery, an old crumbling mausoleum which held the remains of our town’s greatest citizen, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. My mind was, for some reason unbeknownst to me, set upon reaching this spot and I spared no time to look about myself any longer as I hurried headlong into the stones.

            My progress was halted when a curious noise fell upon my ears. It was quiet at first, aa a faint panting, like someone else was up here. At first, I thought it might only be myself, tired beyond my notice, not out of the question as my mind had been so distracted with its ridiculous demands. It was not long before i realized that it was not coming from me, but from somewhere in the distance.  When this dawned upon me, my hope to reach that mausoleum was shattered, and I wanted- no, I needed- to find the source of that cryptic sound. 

            Without entirely knowing why, I pursued the source, hunched low to keep hidden from sight.  Ducking behind tombstones as I went and jumping from grave to grave, I made my way towards the breaths, hearing it grow ever louder as I approached. I noticed, too, that as I came closer a faint glow could be seen coming from near the ground. I assumed it to be the glow that rises from a town late at night, and dispersed any notions of worry for the time being. My progression brought me closer and closer to the sounds and glow, until I came to a part of the cemetery which I had never seen before. 

            Here, before me, was a small dirt path, leading up to the top of a small bluff, upon which I could only hardly see the tops of several small gravestones. No longer could I travel under the cover of stones. But I still needed to know what was happening atop that hill. I fell to my belly, and began to crawl, keeping as low to the ground as I could, and moved slowly up that slope, taking care to reamain somewhat off to the side of the path.

            That hill was unnaturally sparse, I noted, as it was completely devoid of any trees or bush, and even the grass felt scanty beneath my body. The ground was particularly dirty, as well, and I found it staining my entire body, from head to toe, caking me in a thin dark dust. I thought nothing of it at first, but as it began to compile, I realized that it was no dirt which I was picking up, but rather it was becoming an ever-thickening layer of ash. Ordinarily, I believe I would have been seized with fear at this time, as my mind would have run amok of all manner of grotesque and disturbed theories about where this ash had come from, to be resting in such great quantities in that accursed boneyard.    

            But my mind would not be distracted by such things,  and so I continued my ascent. Within minutes, I had reached the top of that hill, and found it to be littered with the most beautifully crafted and ornately decorated graves in the entire cemetery. Almost directly before me lay a particularly impressive grave, crafted as a raised sarcophagus, with beautiful motifs running the length of its edges. The stone was old, I could tell, but it still retained a certain luster, reflecting back at me.