Starlight sets across the grounds like a silvered blanket. It discloses the secret of the birds that sit in their nests, or clinging to their branches, as they watch the darkness below. It paints each blade of grass with a glistening coat, making them look a crusade of daggers, awaiting any unwary footstep. The shifting silhouettes of predators can be seen, slinking further into the shadows, their bodies low and eyes wide, waiting for the opportunity to strike and steal life; as if death does not already hang around them like a miasma.
I know them like old friends, but they do not know me. They cannot see me, though I wish they could. Just to offer me proof that I am more than just this. I should feel lonely, but, I know I am not. Yet, I do not know how I know this.
The church looms skyward, the spire thrusting higher, standing alert and raising a salute to the god it was erected for. It has remained there for centuries, unmoving, ever pious and proud. Clouds are drifting by, limned by the pale moon, looking like spectres of sentience, watching over the buried bodies long forgotten. They’re slow, and vigilant, each one with a tapering, wisped tail that trails behind it like a bride’s train. Yet, there is no happiness here, only death.
The bodies sleep beneath the soil. Endless amounts of them. The trees lurch over them, the boughs drooping with depression, the leaves low with grief, as if they, too, mourn the loss of the very bodies that feed them.
I do not know who I am, or where I came from. I just know that I am, or, rather, was. When morning comes, I cease to be. My thoughts are but a dispersion of awareness, until the cool promise of dusk pervades the sky, and once twilight wins over, I appear.
I glide through the grounds, aimless and lost, yet never confused or lonely. I know I have purpose, I just am unaware of what it is. Like an object in a painting, I know there is reason for me, I just lack the conscience of understanding.
I believed, for a long time, that perhaps I was one of the souls buried within here. I have hovered above every grave; I can read the etchings. Some are fresh, with clear carvings. Whether it be a clean marble that reflects the night sky, and the darkened leaves that knit above. Or whether it be old stone, crumbling under the weight of age, with a soft mossy fur creeping above it. I read them all, yet, they make no sense to me. I feel no affinity with any of them, yet, I love all of them. None of them mean anything to me, yet all of them mean everything to me.
I cannot leave the grounds, but I can see without. The world out there seems equally mysterious, and familiar to me. Like I have watched it develop over centuries, and every year is the year of my existence. Time doesn’t matter to me, though I know it once did. I used to fear its unceasing flow with, knowing that I must adhere to its commands – and now, nothing.
I remember, once, that men dressed in finery – long coats, with canes and hats of finest craftsmanship, and the women in fanciful dresses that bloomed beneath their waists. I know they used to travel in great carriages, with horses reined and lamplight swinging, a pendulous glow that could hypnotise the dead. That, to me, was accepted. And now, they dress in various colours and fabrics; the drive machines where light spears ahead of them, and they roar as they go. That, too, is accepted. How can the world have so much change, and it all makes sense to me? I must have belonged somewhere, sometime. How can I belong to all and none?
Sometimes, I feel grief that blooms from a seed I do not recall planting. Sometimes, I feel longing for memories I cannot conjure, try as I might. Sometimes, I feel a joy so intense and pleasurable, that I believe the heavens have finally come to accept me – yet, I know not from whence the surges of happiness spill.
How could I be? How could I feel so much, so strongly, and have no memory of any of it?
I have seen youth, over generation, slip into my grounds, hooded and mischievous. Their antics amuse me. Teenagers, creeping over the walls, to hide in the depths and feel one another’s forms. Or, small groups, clambering to some hidden corner, and sipping drinks, smoking cigarettes. How do I know what these things are, if I never had the chance to try them? How does my story exist, when no-one has authored it?
Sometimes, I drift and listen. Their conversations sound familiar and queer simultaneously. On a few occasions, when they have sat and smoked for longer than usual, some would look right into me; there is a fear in their eyes that I do not want to feed them. They will punch at their friends, to point in my direction. Sometimes, their friends laugh at their folly, other times, they squint, right into my vision, and they, too, are struck with terror. Then they scatter.
Those youths, I believe, joined the ranks of those buried here over time. I become the guardian of their graves. If that is my purpose.
Though, I cannot be sure. All I know is that I am, and time trickles on, forgetting to bring me with it. I do not age, but I do grow, I believe.
Every year, I see them gather here on Christmas- I know what Christmas is, so I am of this world. They join together, and sing hymns. Those hymns are the most familiar thing to me. They are not fragments of reminiscence, or scraps of a borrowed memory. I even know the words to many before they come. How can that be, if I do not, nor indeed, never did exist?
I watch them, as the candles march around every wall, pouring an illumination of amber amongst the congregation. The thin coils of smoke unfurl and dance upward, fading into the shadowed arches of the church. They hold hands, and some smile as they sing, as the spiders creep on their distant webs to observe. Others weep, as the bats scuttle and shuffle at the disturbance. I see families over the years; a new couple, soon an old couple with children they bore, and, finally, the couple fizzles and the children continue their cycle. On, and on, and on. I see the priests change, though, I believe, every year, they see me, and they smile. Do they love me, or do they taunt me?
Perhaps I am a ghost, or demon, or a forgotten beacon of god?
One moment, I feel a flash of something – and see a child that I love. My child? It can’t be, as I did not exist before this form. And then, another child, and another. All are different, not related by blood or era, yet, they are all mine?
And then, they’re gone.
I see my husband, and he fizzles. Then my wife, and she fizzles. Again, and again. My mothers, and fathers. My brothers and sisters. Of a thousand families, of endless years. How can I be privy to so much love, to so many personal relationships when I have none of my own?
What curse was cast on me, to be but a collation of human emotions; a nexus, or conduit, with no form or vessel to let them breathe? Only exist, to gather amongst one another, like clouds pregnant with fulminations they cannot loose.
I pray, as if god may hear me. But, then I remember, I do not believe in god. At that same moment, I remember, I devoted my entire life to god. How can both statements be true? Well, they’re not, because they’re peppered and coloured with a spectrum of sheer adoration to the lord above, to pure indifference. How can I- this damned amorphous, invisible force of sentience be? I am atheist, I am agnostic, I am devout. I am all, and I am none.
I miss my family, though I never had one. I miss every relative, all of them, the thousands that exist… though they do not. I miss the dreams I cannot remember. I miss the delights I do not know. I have a squall of thoughts just trying to break through. They flash at the forefront of my conscience, before they are drowned beneath more, none lasting longer than a lightning strike. I try, so much, to anchor one – but so quickly, it is gone. I know it was there, but I cannot frame it.
Perhaps it is not that I do not exist, or never did… but that I exist in so many forms, with so much energy, with so much thought and awareness that there is no prevalence. Perhaps I’m a collection of all emotions that existed here; the grief of loss, the joy of union, the excitement of new life. Maybe I am the manifestation of human conscience, or maybe I am damned spectre. A wraith – a lost soul, doomed to exist in these grounds until the rapture comes and collects me.
I hear the birds chirping. Oh, how I loved birds. How I hated those damned critters. Their sweet song, heralding the beauty of the mornings I would think are miraculous. Oh, how I dreaded them every day. Oh, how little I cared of the morning. Yet, no matter my scrambling, jolting, tumultuous, endless thoughts on the light of day, I have no power over it.
It is coming, and I will soon fade. Only to return when the day slips to slumber, and nightfall claws back over the cemetery, like a blanket of silence and secrets, and awakens my mass of loss once more.
And, again, I must ponder. Those new thoughts that join me oft, those new memories that float to the top. What am I? What was I? Who am I? Who was I? Am I one, or am I many? Am I at all?
I believe I am, and that is that. Whether a blessing or a curse, I cannot say.
I see the first pink whisper of dawn. Creeping up like a tendril of smoke, ready to claw forward like a hook. Ready to suffocate my conscience, and I will go willingly, to give peace to my existence.
Goodbye, one. Goodbye, all. Think of me, when you next visit your loved one- as, perhaps, they are me, or live within me. I watch, always.
I love you. I hate you. I do not care about you.
Goodbye, until dusk.
Goodbye, until you join me.
Goodbye, from the watcher in the cemetery.