Gravebound

Shrouded in the dense fog of a winter night, a scraggly figure stands silhouetted against the full moon. The light gives the impression of heightening the death-like pallor of her skin, but it isn't truly so. She has no skin, no skin at least that is visible. Her eyes glint as she peers over the dug up grave at the cemetery. Richard Yeaves, reads the stone at the head of the gaping hole in the ground. 1946-. Strange. No date of death.

She turns her eyes toward me and in that moment, panic, unbidden, took a hold of me and fixed me to the spot.

"Um, hello?" I murmur. Though I could only hear the last syllable, the rest of it caught up in my throat and was lost.

There was no answer. 

It is only possible to critically evaluate a moment of sheer panic in retrospect. The blood rises to one's ears, it is known. The difference in pressure creates a deafening din that doesn't otherwise exist. It feels much like music from another realm that rises to a crescendo and wanes as the last note hangs in the air, creating a lull pierced by the high pitched screeching of several unheard voices. You become aware of the cold around you, but not of cold sweat. That is a luxury afforded to those who survive. The chill grasps your throat in its vice-like grip and your breath comes in short bursts. Mixed signals from your brain tense up your muscles and root you to that spot and you stand there, limp at the mercy of whatever demon you would rather not face.

I see her jaw fall. She might have intended to open her mouth, but the tendons at the joint were slashed and her jaw fell at a right angle, revealing a blackness within. There was a sharp sucking in of air and she slowly lifted her hand, a bony finger pointed at my general direction. 

My heart is a ticking time bomb hammering in my head. Sweat trickling down my forehead runs into my eyes, and I blink because it burns. And she is gone. Blink. She's not there.

I can feel the blood rush back into my arms and body. My breath comes in gasps and I drank in as much of the cold wintry air as my lungs will allow. And as I regard my current position, I let my mind wander back to that ghastly image. A dark hat flopped to one side on her head. A net had veiled her mien. A purple gown, moth-eaten and botched with white faded patches hung loosely about her, draping off at the elbows and revealing a pair of clammy white hands. And the eyes! Burning white coals set in sunken hollows that sat in a mist of their own while black tar ran down her cheeks to the dry skinny upper lip stretched thin against a set of deathly white teeth. Her lower jaw had no covering of flesh. 

What did she say? I wonder. Fear still chains me to this spot. Is it fear? I am aware of the weight of gravity nonetheless.

Her words were as faint as the wind was loud. The star-riddled sky, the rolling hills of grass in the distance and the lurking moon at the corner of my vision are constant, conspiring to assure me that she never really existed. That there were no words lost to the wind. But the specter of a long forgotten whisper sprang forth from my mind, an amorphous cloud of noise being given form by my urgency to remember.

What was it? What had she said? And as I wrestled with my mind to fill in the gaps, I am aware of the chill once again. The rising din seizes my ears again. Urn? Turn..Turn?

The hair on my neck stands on end at the feel of a soft exhalation and a softer voice. 

"Return", I remember as I hear it out loud. 

And the earth and dirt thunder down around me as the ground gave way beneath my feet.