I used to live by a cemetery, I could see it from my bedroom window.
Some nights I would look out at it in boredom, willing in my mind for something to happen, something other worldly to appear.
Nothing ever happened, of course, it remained dark and empty. No zombies or ghosts ever appeared, but it was a game I played with myself. Stupid but fun.
That night was different, though that was the night everything changed.
As the years went by and I grew older, my fascination with the cemetery waned as childhood curiosities do.
For whatever reason, though, as I was getting ready for bed, something drew me to the window. When I looked at the cemetery, I saw that there was a light emanating from the ground, at the center of the headstones.
I tried to figure out where it was coming from, a car, a flashlight, maybe somebody had lit a candle?
I dismissed every explanation and decided to go and find out what the light was. In all the years I lived there, I had never seen anybody on its grounds. The headstones were so old that they jutted from the earth crooked and yellow, they looked like they would crumble if you touched them.
The moon was huge, there were no stars, and the air was crisp and sweet. It was unpleasantly cloying, like fruit gone bad.
It had rained earlier in the day, and mud squished beneath my feet. My heart thumped in my chest painfully, and anticipation rushed through my veins.
There is something serene about being in a cemetery at night. I have been here dozens of times and never found it scary. This night felt different, though. I felt different.
It was as though this was the moment in my life that I had been waiting for.
The light was brighter, and there were more of them. They weren’t coming from the ground as I thought, but rather from each headstone.
The epitaph’s glowed as white as angel wings. I read the one nearest to me, and it said:
Baby 0000 - 0000
Underneath it, in red paint, was a crude drawing of a stork with a distended stomach.
I frowned. I had never seen this one before, and it’s not as though you would forget a thing like that.
I checked the one closest to it, and it was the same date. It said:
Child 1111-1111
Underneath it was another drawing. This time it was a smiley face, but where the eyes should have been there were only X’s.
My heart was beating even faster, and my mouth had gone bone dry. I watched as the words on the stone grew darker until they bled a crimson red.
I made to run, and that’s when I saw her. It was a human hunched over a grave, her eyes fixed on me hungrily, and as she smiled at me, I saw how unnaturally wide her mouth was.
The woman straightened, and I heard bones snap. She leered at me, and I screamed as she began to limp towards me on broken feet. Her gait was slow, but purposeful.
She was very tall and very thin. Her skin was the color of fresh paper, and her hair was wild and white like snow. Her fingers were hooked into claws, they looked like the talons of a bird.
I was frozen in place, I forgot how to breathe, and as she came closer and closer to me, I saw just how wide her mouth was, and God she had so many teeth.
I don’t know how she could see me, because she had no eyes. There were only empty black sockets, half full with dirt.
My paralysis broke, and I turned and ran. I ran out of the cemetery and into my house. I didn’t stop running until I reached my bedroom.
My blinds were still open, but there was no way I would close them tonight. I could feel her underneath my window, staring up at me with those horribly empty eyes.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but the sun woke me. It was so bright outside that I felt like crying in relief, and I rushed to close the blinds.
I can’t lie, I did look and saw nothing.
The cemetery was as it always looked. Peaceful. Empty.
From then on, I never looked out my window at night. I kept my window closed and brought black out curtains, so nothing could look in at me either.
I moved out a few days ago, I had graduated and was excited to be going away for college.
It had been a year since my excursion into the cemetery, and my senior year was so busy that I forgot about it. It was so surreal, so otherworldly terrifying, that I convinced myself that it was a bad dream, even though deep down I knew it wasn’t.
I was more than happy when me and my parents finished packing and finally drove off. Of course, I couldn’t help but peek at the cemetery one last time.
Nothing. There was nothing there. If I hadn’t just imagined it, at least I had gotten away. I was going far from the cemetery. I let out a breath that I didn’t realize I had been holding in for the better part of the year.
At least, that’s what I thought.
You see, I have been having strange dreams lately. In my dreams, it’s always night. There are no stars, only the moon, and it is the color of fresh dark blood.
That woman is there. She stands in front of me, smiling that wide toothy grin. She dips her finger into something I thought was paint, but now I see her palms are bleeding. She is drawing with her own blood.
She is so close I can smell the rotting fruit on her breath, and her hair tickles my face. I am frozen in place as her canvas, so still as she draws clumsily on my forehead.
“Mine,” she rasps. “Mine.” It is all she ever says.
When she is done, I wake up drenched in sweat.
This night was different, though. See, after she drew on my forehead, she grasped my shoulders with strong hands and turned me to face a headstone.
It looked new among the others, and in shining letters I saw my name, my birth date, and this year as the date of my death.
Below the epitaph drawn in her blood is a face with black eyes and a crooked mouth, which is made into a frown.
I would just chalk it up to another nightmare, I mean what else could it possibly be? But when I woke up and went to the bathroom, I saw my reflection.
On my forehead is the face with empty sockets for eyes. When I touch it, my hand comes away wet and smeared with blood.
I can hear her now, beneath my window, she’s calling for me.
“Mine…” she says. “Mine.”
I realize now that she’s marked me, and no matter where I go, she’ll just follow.
I used to live by a cemetery, and I’ve learned that curiosity has many consequences and is best to leave the dead and their resting place alone.