Audio and transcript for your entertainment.
It is as good a place to perch on damp moss cemetery bench. To fix an unwavering dead stare with berry black eye and wait as the dead do in their graves.
This is a mournful plot, where a wailing and weeping of melancholy pours uncontrollably on this crisp October morning.
Here, deep down six are the dead, spread out around the cardinal points, and at the centre is a Blessed Norman stone church wrapped in ivy. Such isolation and kept that way, by a cemetery fence of splinter and bone.
Among ash, sycamore, oak and beech, all turning over into a blaze of fiery colours, crows roost in the rust coloured leaf canopies. Rasping things that wake the dead these black feathered acolytes with beady fixed stare.
Autumn, it may be, turning mellow and ripe, more like a season of decay, mould and death. But only a cold breath away is an icy chill, tempered by a watery sun that makes it feel like a winter’s day.
I can imagine what took place here, for I confess to a growing feeling for the macabre. This forlorn place, brings quick to memory the tale told by my friend. He, on hearing the episode, was in no doubt as to what took place here.
Imagine if you will a grating gate swung open. A grieving woman and her wicker baby stroller pushed along the cortege narrow pathway. A presence of woeful form treading along sorrowful memories. One noticing the musty decay of spoilt flowers long before passing the compost heap.
Onward she makes her pilgrimage to the plot marked by a simple memorial vase over which many an outpouring of tears have been spent.
Unnoticed on mossy bench is an observer.
Ruth, for that is her name, a young woman drawn grey and sombre, haunted and bereft of joy. For it is again another day she attends to the pain, clutching her broken heart, bleeding that it is, all consumed with grief. For in the bleakness she wails, exorcising the anguish. For here lies one lost too young of age, slaughtered by a woman spurned.
Then, out of nowhere, something to unsettle the ritual. What was that? Something crossed over her thoughts. For emotion held back a breath and pulled her out of a place deeper than a well. Come a haunting are those tales and grave warnings of being here alone. And in the shadow of an angel bowed in despair, Ruth aware of unnatural silence.
Looking out beyond and the way out of here, gathering from yonder hill seeps damp mist. Taking unnatural form like some entity of murk creeping and smothering all in its wake.
What is it, being in this place of repose does observe her beyond the dense fog?
What was that figure that lingered in aftervision?
Look again.
For Ruth is mistaken. It is only a tattered black crow watching her from the bench seat.
Upon her did a winter’s coldness make her shiver. She should make haste, placing the small posy of violas in the urn.
Did not the sound of crows grow louder and that an agitation be upon the flock now taking to the foggy skies?
Then Ruth saw it, or thought she did. A shadowy figure in black weeds and long veil standing near the stroller.
No, no I am mistaken.
Her weeping eyes distorting the vision, it was a crow perched upon the handle of it.
Ruth given to shoo the thing away and it squawking taking flight.
A tremble chill upon her. The blankets still wrapped around and untouched save for a black feather lying in a fold. Undisturbed was Edwin, not quite 8 months, sleeping soundly and snuggly protected.
Just one more moment for tearful goodbyes to her husband’s grave, but something passed over in that way to release a tremor to shake the bones. Turning to face the wet veil of mist did Ruth and their son leave.
She pushed the stroller with a quickening pace. “Don’t look back, don’t look back.” saying it under her breath a thousand times now huddled up into herself.
For behind her waiting at the grave stood a tall figure, all stately in black gown and long veil. It watched mother and child. Only turning away when Ruth fell to her knees clutching at the pain tearing through her frail body screaming at a world unable to hear as she held close Edwin’s limp body, just as a black feather blew away on a stray and cold breeze.
There is very little more to tell you. I am here to fulfil a request for my friend and perform a particular set of skills to attempt to end the nightmare haunting my friend’s sister. That there is a crow with its beady eye on me, perched as it is on the mossy bench, shall give me no rise for concern…
story by John Riley
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