the Cemetery Cottage

Valentine Heart/John Riley

IT WAS A NIGHT OF SUCH DARKNESS and a spirited wind gusted around the graveyard's sentinel yew trees ruffling their darkly green poisonous evergreen leaves with a vigorous shimmering of movement.

Cast hither and thither strewn split and battered wildflowers blown from their gravestone urn pots, so tenderly arranged and now trampled, broken, wet and dead.

No moon visible this night as would be the case if it had been the time of its fullness. Heavy thunderous clouds block out the night sky.

Soar high above this land now empty of jackdaw, rook and crow. Blow fiercely do ghostly cloudy mass gatherings in huge hosts across a turbulent firmament. Now stars remain hidden from beyond, no lights to guide and plot, as oceanic rolling seas of vaporous cloud mix thick and dark and wild this night. At this place and on this night walk the spectral and ghostly at the dying of light.

Now Beckett had in his ways over long years turned into a mean man who sat alone in the old and forlorn cottage, struck dumb as a mute he listened for a familiar sound that would be soon announcing itself. His face white and eyes hollow. Here be a man who would make Death wait so was his manner these long winter's nights. Upon the hour, according to the pocket watch Beckett had cause to check, the moment arrived. A squealing note sustained and high pitched from the graveyard gate that slowly opened on rusting hinges. Upon the flat tombstone pathway, thoughts of a barefoot phantom in tattered shroud approaching the back door. Over cold stone it walks untouched by the gusting wind and stretched and strained in the darkness a bony hand clenching, no doubt to announce itself with a thump upon the wooden kitchen door.

Inside the cottage Beckett filled his torment with fears and wild imaginings that a haunting presence, that death was at every window and that behind one door was hell; he remained quite still. In times long past he had ventured to call out to it from behind the door not daring to look upon it through the window but instead calling out to ask of its business with him. No answer ever given and the frosty silence made seconds seem like years.

Not all the nights felt haunted by a fear born of this phantom, never shall it be allowed to cross the threshold. No, there are other nights when a different melancholy hangs heavy within the cottage rooms. A resonance murmuring from a phantom image, subliminal messages drawing closer blurred and unclear. Felt first through its movement across the ground then to gather and rise in pitch like the whine of the churchyard gate sounding harsh and grating. A ghost that can appear at its will in any of the rooms, Beckett would come across her faded form reaching out blindly searching with her senses for something so close yet unable to meet. For when she appeared she was wide-eyed and startled drawing in breath quickly albeit a last gasp before the extinguishing of life. This ghost was a stranger to Beckett's thoughts but this ghostly spirit knew of Beckett and the more he saw her he began to exorcise her invasion upon his presence.

Moreover, what of this Beckett, a widower of many years who had become mean and miserly. He was not the sort of man you would readily accept living in such a charming rural English cottage. A scowl was never far from his solemn countenance. A thin poker faced man that one might describe as stoic. He wore blackness in trouser, leather shoes and waistcoat from which he had fastened a pocket watch. His coat never off his back was again black, double-breasted and knee length with a large folded out collar. The only white was his shirt. He wore a silky shiny top hat with black band. Upon his face wire glasses fixed halfway down his nose and in his hand a walking cane.

And what of this English cottage attractive to those no doubt wishing to buy it but would they not avoid it through its closeness to the churchyard. Would they not dislike seeing the graveyard at night or be uncomfortable with the quiet when no one is about and there is stillness and a sense of observation from someone or something unseen.

There is a pathway from the cottage made up of old flat tombstones with inscriptions worn and faded and a soft velvet moss creeping from underneath and wrapping around the edges. At some point left unchecked its suffocating grip, and cover, slithering and spreading across the surface to bury what lies beneath. The path ends at the churchyard gate with rusting hinges that announces the presence of whatever moves through.

The cottage boasts a steeply pitched cross-gabled roof with decorative half timbering in the gable and second storey. The sash windows from which Beckett watched are relatively tall and slender with multi-pane glazing separated by wood muntins. Its chimney is an eye-catching feature with very large decorated ornate chimney pots. They resonate with a mournful deep owlish moan when the north wind blows across their tops. At the front entrance is a steeply gabled enclosed entry, and within are rooms that are cosy and somewhat of irregular shape. So it was that Beckett had a morbid fascination to stand behind blackened window at ground level or upstairs to get a better view from one or the other. His signal to come a looking was the sound of the passing bell, such a mournful drone to announce an interment into the cold grave dug and set ready for the recently departed.

He had stood fixed with an icy dead gaze looking upon few bearers with their torches alight carrying a poor dead corpse to its hole in the ground. Not afforded a coffin the body wrapped in wool, a person once known to Beckett. Here is a woman fated with dreadful looks and attracting gossip amongst her tormenters for being in league with familiars, demons and the devil. Down she dropped with a stiffened thud and as she lay rigid her corpse crushed by clods of clay earth shovelled forcibly and quickly into the grave. There was ale waiting at the pub for the gravediggers.

There was a night not long since the last burial that in the study did Beckett sit alone in the chesterfield chair. On the side table the light of a candle illuminating a safe area within the darkness. These nights he would live repeatedly, waiting in the silence and how time had hardened him to make war with Death itself for taking his beloved.

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