It’s always cold at the cemetery.
It’s funny that we regularly correlate death with chilliness. When we get a shiver, it’s popular to say that ‘someone’s walked over my grave’. When we die, our bodies grow cold, no longer sustained by the pump–pump–pumping of gallons of crimson. Our bodies are put into freezers to stop them rotting too quickly. Ghosts are said to give rooms an eerie breeze.
And it’s always cold at the cemetery.
Ever wondered why? I know. Not many do.
Spirits aren’t something that everyone can see. Some people seem particularly fine-tuned to spotting them. I guess I must be one of them, because for as long as I can remember, I’ve secretly seen ghosts everywhere.
I can never hear them, thankfully. Many look to be in agony. Screaming their heads off. Besides, if I could hear them, I’d probably just want to talk and try to help them. But that’s not my job. I’d be a useless helper.
It should be pretty obvious to you by now, if you can link a few dots, that I’m suggesting the largest place for the congregation of spirits is in a cemetery. There are hundreds of them. Not at every grave, of course, but a lot of them. At least one in every five. The weirdest thing is what they do.
They just…sit there.
Staring.
Legs crossed at the foot of their final resting place. Eyes fixed straight ahead. Eternally reading their epitaph.
My grandmother is one of these souls. She’s been there since we buried her, ten years ago. We visit the grave on certain dates – Mother’s Day, Christmas, her birthday, her deathday. At first she recognised us. She smiled a lot whenever we came to visit. It was nice to see her happy after the hell of her last few living years.
But gradually, as the years roll on, she’s not smiling so much any more. It’s like she doesn’t know who we are. Or maybe she just doesn’t care. I guess there’s not a lot of fun to be had when you’re dead.
Sometimes my mum walks right into her and my nan will shiver a bit. Of course. Someone’s walked over her grave, after all. But that’s all the interaction I ever see. It’s sad. One day nobody will come here. A hundred years from now, we’ll all be gone, and everyone who could ever remember her will have vanished. The tombstone will erode with the seasons and the grass will grow long, but my grandmother will still sit there, staring on.
I wonder what will happen to those ghosts of tomorrow? Will they grow angry at being abandoned and unloved? Will they somehow regain their minds and move away from their resting places?
Or will they just sit there, as the cemetery around them itself dies, bringing an ice age to a legion of cold bones?
Shane Rynhart 