Paupers' Grave
The autumnal sun slowly dropped out of the sky as mist crept off the field, over the lane and into the cemetery. A dog howled in the distance as day turned to night. The village streets were empty save for a few souls.
I was early for my bus connection to town after a day's hill-walking so I strolled along the lane. An arched gateway loomed out of the mist. Painted green, the gate and surrounding ironwork had faded and peeled in places. I tried the gate, and to my surprise it opened after a heavy push. Looking at my watch I entered the graveyard.
Stone angels gazed at me through the mist as I walked along the main gravel path across which two large pine trees touched one another. Suddenly, I saw a light in the Gothic arched window of a small building at the end of the path. The building sat before a high wall at the rear of the cemetery.
I crept up to the window and peered through the latticed glass. All I could make out, as the glass was dirty, was a single candle flickering on a table. Next to the window sat a Gothic shaped green door. I tried the handle expecting a locked door, but with a gentle pressure it opened.
“Hello?” I asked the flickering gloom, but there was no reply. I hesitated for a moment and entered the small room.
The table with the candle sat by the window, and two rocking chairs were by an open fire which was about to go out. Must be a workers shelter, I thought. But, I didn't see anyone outside in the cemetery.
Suddenly the door slammed shut blowing the candle out. I ran and grabbed the handle, but the door had jammed. Mist flowed into the room from under the door. I stumbled backwards past the chairs onto the rear wall. I noticed the fire had gone out.
The mist swirled around the room as ghostly laughter filled me with panic. A terrible shaking overtook me as a coldness grabbed my soul.
“You've come back,” hissed a voice.
I stood wide-eyed against the wall.
“You've come back Robert Duncan,” said the voice, louder and meaner than before.
I looked through the mist out the window; darkness had fallen. “You are mistaken. I have never been here before, and my name is John Wilks.”
A wild laughter erupted. “Yes now it is! You will pay for what you did...” said the mist as it flowed back under the door.
After a moment the candle re-lit and the door opened a jar. I slumped down the wall and rubbed my eyes. Then, after looking around, I rose, ran out the door and out of the cemetery.
Reaching home much later that night I found sleep hard to achieve. My mind kept whispering: “You've come back!” I sat up and put on the bedside light. Come back from where, I thought. My name is now John Wilks; what's that supposed to mean?
After work the next day I looked up the archives on-line of the local newspaper, the Advertiser, for the name Robert Duncan. I found several articles on a Robert Duncan of Strathtor a local landowner in the 19th century. One article told of several families who were tenants on the estate dying because of the potato famine and the rich Duncan refusing to help. I downloaded an e-Book on the subject which told of Duncan mixing with aristocracy and even royalty while the people who were his tenants lived in abject poverty. In 1845 he forcibly evicted most of the families out of their homes to make way for more grazing land for sheep.
I couldn't read anymore, so I gazed out of the window. The voice again hissed in my mind: “You've come back!” An uneasy feeling spread through my body. I wasn't sure about reincarnation, but was this a case? Could I have been this tyrant in a past life? Rising, I walked around my living-room. A feeling of guilty shame gripped my mind. Surely we are not accountable for sins of a past life? I thought. The word karma flashed across my mind. “Cause and effect,” I said to myself with a sinking feeling.
The gravel crunched as I walked along the main path of the cemetery. Dying rays from the setting sun cast long shadows across the land. I saw the light in the building at the end of the path.
“I'm not going there,” I said to myself, but my body didn't listen. In fact I wasn't sure I was walking anymore, just moving toward the light.
The door opened, and I entered the dimly lit room; the rocking chairs were sitting by the fire. Flame from the candle on the table by the window fought off the gloom. The door slammed shut. Panic grabbed me and I ran to pull on the handle, but it was no use the door, like before, had jammed shut.
“Why am I back here?” I screamed.
Mist flowed into the room again from under the door. I ran to the rear wall and watched it swirl around the place.
“Why don't you leave me alone?” I shouted.
“The way, in the end, you should have left your tenants alone you mean,” hissed the mist.
“That wasn't me!”
A laugh echoed around the room. “Oh yes it was... remember!”
Gaunt children's faces appeared in the mist. “Why d'you do this to us?” They moaned collectively. Then with skeletal thin bodies draped in rags they left the mist and walked toward me. I ran to the door and hopelessly pulled on the handle. “Help!” I shouted as I hammered on the jammed door.
Gasping for air I turned around; the ghostly children had turned and were heading toward where I was now standing by the door. I ran over to the window and threw the candle off the table onto the flagstone floor. Grabbing the table by two legs, I smashed the tabletop into the latticed glass of the window. The top smashed halfway through the glass, so I pulled it out and swung it into the glass again. This time the top went right through, so I let the table drop and cleared out any remaining glass. I stepped onto the window sill and then jumped through just as the phantoms reached the window.
Outside, darkness had descended, and the dreaded mist hung around the gravestones. I ran along the main path, but came to a juddering halt for coming toward me was a ghostly host. A host of not only children but adults. I turned toward the building and watched the child phantoms emerge from the now open door.
The only proper option open to me was the smaller path round the inside of the wall. I had to go right as the ghosts were cutting off the left-hand side. Then, running along the path, what the hell, I thought and ran through the forest of gravestones.
I found myself in a rundown part of the cemetery. The ground was uneven, and the grass hadn't been cut. A roughly hewn stone cross stood in the centre of the area. Suddenly the ground opened up and ghostly hands gripped me. I screamed as bodies with gaunt expressionless faces with dark holes where the living eyes had been rose toward me.
The other ghosts appeared out of the mist and pushed me into the gaping maw of what I realised was a mass grave... a paupers' grave!