Morbid and creepifyin’ I got no problem with WHO River Tam OT Multiples WHAT River makes the most unusual friends WHERE Havenwood Cemetery WHEN October 4, 2016; 5:00 PM RATING TBD
It was fall. As the weather became cooler and crisper, it brought with it the inherent understand that Halloween was just around the corner. Costumes and sweets and going door to door to ask strangers for candy had excited River when she was much, much younger, but that had been a lifetime ago. Now, the only thing that resonated with her were the ghosts.
She’d wandered around town before, but it was usually to places that lay between their home and the animal shelter. The cemetery was not only far, but off her normally beaten path. Simon might worry if he returned home to find her gone, but she planned to be back before then.
Her first steps into the grass brought the soft crunch of early fall frost, the blades undisturbed and forgotten. She paused at the edge, pulling off her boots to walk barefoot. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh in the cooling air, but she didn’t shiver, even though the only thing keeping her warm was the loose, oversized sweater she wore over her thin cotton sundress. The sun was already hanging low in the sky, but she pressed on through the graves, running her fingers over stones slick with condensation.
It’s like they’re crying, she thought to herself. Can you cry for yourself?
She wandered on, pausing here and there as she heard a whisper, a gentle burst of air that tickled at her ears and left her with a passing memory or feeling. At the bottom of a sloping hill, she came to a worn marker, one barely legible in the dying light. She ran her fingers over the faded engraving, and felt a sorrow so deep, she was beyond tears. Instead, she simply sank to the ground, arms wrapped around her knees to hold them tight to her chest. Her eyes fell closed, and she let her head come to rest against the side of the gravestone.
She stayed there for a long time, long enough that she could feel the last warmth from the air vanish as the sun settled below the hillside. Then, without moving or opening her eyes, she decided to finally acknowledge the other presence that had joined her.