Ghosts of Graveyards Past

by Laura Briggs

  Her grandmother murmured her assent, the atmosphere in the parlor growing somber and silent until the only sounds were the ticking of a clock and the Hinkle daughter sipping loudly from a teacup.

  

  Young Charley’s story should cost you a blush, Henry, along with certain of our friends who know of what I write. For, do you not recall a different Mischief Night some ten years ago, when you helped to play a prank on that same unsuspecting neighbor?

  You will no doubt say this event has escaped your memory, the same as that time you snipped off my braids during a spelling lesson. I shall gladly recount the whole event, as I am sure it would earn more than one laugh when shared by the campfire some quiet evening.

  How innocent it began as we blackened our faces with the soot from the hearth. Granny Clare let us take the old broken stool and barrel for the bonfire, and you generously let me throw both into the blaze. I do believe your plan was to sneak away unnoticed and leave me there as you and the other boys carried out that dreadful scheme with the snuff pinched from Wray’s father.

  Yes, if Wray Camden is sitting beside you, he will recall it was his idea to “smoke out” Mr. Roan from his hiding place. There were four of you eager to share in the guilt, clambering over that rusty old gate in the moonlight. I witnessed it all from the blackberry hedge where you made me hide out of the way. You did not want a girl to tattle on you, but it was not my voice that protested when Wray’s bold fingers struck the match.

  Crouched in the bushes beside Roan’s shack, Nell had watched, breathless as her brother’s friends prepared to carry out their prank. No one had expected Arthur to show up since he already condemned the scheme when they hatched it over school recess. But it was his figure that came beside her in the hedge, placing a finger to her mouth before he slipped out to confront the mischief makers.

  “We will be caught,” he reasoned, “and the punishment severe.” He spoke chiefly to Wray, whose match was snuffed before it could touch the line of powder.

  The warning brought a scowl to the other youth’s handsome features, though his father’s anger was known to have blackened eyes and broken farm equipment in drunken rages. In hushed tones, they argued the danger with Wray ignoring his friend’s advice to light the trail before the hermit’s steps.

  The powder crackled, smoke pouring out just as they hoped. It caught fast, Nell stifling a scream as the popping sound was accompanied by a bright flash. Flames shot high, licking at the porch banisters. A small fire, one that was easily put out, thought it left its scorch marks on the weathered timber.

  Arthur had been lined up for punishment with the others despite having taken no part in the deed. To defend him was her first instinct, but he put his hand gentle on her arm. “Don’t tell. I have to cast my lot with the others. They would do it for me.”

  Keeping his secret had been a privilege, making her feel as if they shared something deeper than the connection of schoolmates and neighbors. It wasn’t true, of course. Arthur, though kind, had never showed any partiality for his friend’s little sister. And now his heart belonged to another, their love carried out in the letters the doctor posted each week.

  Seated before her dresser that night, Nell finished the communication she had begun that afternoon, before the Hinkles’ visit and other tasks demanded her attention. A candle’s flame illuminated the page before her, its glow reflecting in the mirror to show her tired, drab features.

  I finish this letter by candlelight, in place of my usual diary entry. Although, what I record in that tiny leather volume is not so different than what I write here. You must know, brother, that I am consumed with thoughts of this war, and all who suffer from it daily.

  If only I could be of more use, perhaps these fears would not plague me so. There’s work enough for me at home, helping our dear parents and Granny Clare, yet it seems trivial compared to what you and the others must sacrifice.

  Perhaps I will try for a teaching certificate next year as Mama has often suggested. I believe she sees little else for me in this place we call home. Everyone says Miss Mitchell will give up the school house soon as her rheumatism grows worse (though she has not said as much herself).

  Let me hear from you soon, Henry. I will hope that your regiment does not move camp before this reaches it, as I cannot bear to think of such a long delay in your response. Believe me when I write that the suspense of your reply is continuously in my thoughts as much as any of my daily chores or pleasures. There will be no rest for my heart until you and all our dear friends have safely returned home.

  As ever, you are in my prayers.

  Your Loving Sister

  

  Jenna placed the letter aside with a wistful feeling, wishing to know more of the letter writer and her family, the fate of her brother and their friends.

  There were no more letters from the unknown girl, though, or from anyone. All that remained from the scant collection was a series of Confederate Army regulation documents and a battered ledger stored in a plastic bag. Probably a local business’s records pictured in the tin type photos that emphasized the dry goods store and bank.

  Disappointment crept over her, along with a sense of fatigue. If she was lucky, the Internet would yield some birth and marriage certificates from genealogy sites. She envisioned tracing family members via phone or e-mail, ones who might or might not be able to divulge the details of their ancestors’ lives. Often people were uninterested, even with the promise of an acknowledgment in a soon-to-be-published story.

  Reluctant to begin, she reached instead for the ledger. Her gloved fingers rustled the pages gently, opening them to a random section. Hand-written entries filled a page faded to brown, dated for the year 1862. Paragraphs were written journal style, instead of the bullet type lists one usually found in a record of sales or inventory.

  She glanced over one of these, catching its meaning as she read.

  “Mrs. Morgan, one o’clock. Patient split her left foot open while chopping firewood, nearly severing one toe. Have cleaned and stitched the wounds and advised her to return as soon as Monday to see how it does.”

  A physician’s daybook, not business inventory. One from 1862, the same year as the letter she just read. Which meant…yes, it had to be. This item belonged to the doctor, the one mentioned in the girl’s letter.

  Jenna had to stop herself from turning the fragile pages too hastily as she made her way back to the front of the ledger. There, inscribed on the leaf insert, was the name Mariah Moore, MD.

  Moore—wasn’t that name among the stones at the abandoned cemetery?

  Yanking her notebook free, she flipped its pages until she found the one she wanted. The one with the moon engraving that was mysteriously placed beneath the sycamore, two marble headstones beside it.

  A woman doctor? Jenna raised her brows at this unexpected development. A female doctor in the Civil War era rural South was not something she would have imagined.

  Already trembling a little from excitement, she jumped when someone laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Ma’am?” the voice was apologetic, belonging to the male volunteer. He gestured to the clock that hung above the stained glass window. “It’s uh…almost time to close.”

  Unconsciously, Jenna tightened her grip on the artifact, remembering the manager’s warning about no scanned copies. “Could I have this put on reserve at the desk? I’ll need to see it a few more times,” she explained, thinking how valuable it might prove for providing background on the town as well as the cemetery. The little details were what her readers looked for and what she desperately needed to make this feature come to life for them.

  The boy looked uncertain, his fellow volunteer, Paige, reappearing from one of the aisles with a rolling cart. “No problem,” she told Jenna. “You’ll need to fill out a card for it. That’s all.” Rummaging among her supplies, she located one and handed it over. “Write the serial number from the tag on this bottom line,” she added.

&
nbsp; “Thanks.” Jenna filled out the necessary information. “Any chance there’s a genealogist in the area? I’m looking for someone who might have copies of those papers that burned in the fire.”

  The students exchanged a meaningful glance. With a smirk, the boy told her, “Old Lady Maudell. She has everything from the last hundred years—which is about as long as she’s lived.”

  “This…Maudell,” Jenna said, uncertainly. “Is she a local historian?”

  He snorted. “Hardly. She has all this rare stuff she’s bought up from auctions that no one’s allowed to see. It makes her feel important or something.“

  “She used to work here,” Paige supplied, “but that was years ago. Everyone says she’s the town’s oldest citizen, but I think she’s only ninety or so.”

  “I had to interview her for an essay last year,” the boy said, tossing a can of furniture polish between his hands. “You would have thought I was asking her to reveal nuclear codes or something. Got me a ‘B’ on the paper, actually.”

  This all sounded a little daunting, but Jenna was willing to do some wheedling if it meant learning the secrets to the town’s past. And if anyone knew them, why not the oldest citizen? Especially one locked away with a collection of priceless relics.

  Placing the pen against her notebook, she asked them, “What’s her address?”

  9

  A coincidence—it had to be.

  That’s what Con told himself when he found the gravestone rubbings. Chalk shading, a little bit crinkled. Made by his wife a few years after they moved near the spring, all three bore the same design.

  A half-moon turned on its side; a cryptic V-shape laid over it.

  Considering how often he visited the old Lesley homestead, Con should have noticed sooner. Maybe he had seen the markers too many times, had grown so used to them he didn’t think about the weird design carved into all three. When he held the chalk copies of the Lesley stones next to Jenna Cade’s crayon one from the cemetery, there was no mistaking the connection between the symbols.

  Should he call her, then?

  It hardly seemed worth it, to tell her something that only raised more questions. But the paper with her cell number continued to flutter on his corkboard, catching his eye every time he fetched a tool or answered the wall phone.

  His conscience tugged at him, along with the memory of the young woman’s persistent gaze. There had been no resentment in her manner, only disappointment and a kind of hurt. Part of him wished she had chewed him out, accused him of being unprofessional—anything to make him feel justified in letting this go instead of calling the number she gave him.

  Being in the middle of a project hardly seemed the right excuse, but he would take it for now. He looked at the cross-shaped monument that still lacked its most dominant pattern. The roses were finished. The basket weave would come next.

  Air-powered tools created the three-dimensional effect, while special-made rubber stencils would help to shape the lettering. Keeping things old-fashioned was difficult, but necessary, for preserving the art. At this moment, he was thankful for the marble’s soft surface, letting his tools carve more easily than the granite he was often commissioned to use.

  He preferred these symbols of faith to the secular ones requested by most customers. They seemed to endow his work with more meaning, giving the fragile creations an almost eternal significance. Death was part of his trade, but the life afterward concerned him just as much, especially in light of his recent grief.

  The writer had worn a cross, he remembered. A silver one around her neck, catching the light as she leaned to study this same memorial. Did it represent faith? Or was it just a pretty ornament? Instinct said it was faith, though, he knew for countless people that a cross was just a necklace, its symbol no relation at all to the soul within the person it adorned.

  Why she kept returning to his mind was hard to say. Guilt was one explanation but curiosity was another. As if his interest extended beyond her work and their shared link to the world of forgotten monuments.

  He shoved the thought aside, along with a cardboard box that clinked noisily as it moved. Glancing inside, he saw the remains of the marker he was currently duplicating, broken beyond repair, the chips and bits of jagged stone unrecognizable as the work of an eighteenth-century artisan.

  Trashing it would be difficult as he knew its original glory through photographs. His fingers cradled a few of the pieces, coating his skin in layers of dust. As he held the fragments, the rough edges brushing his palm, he thought of another occasion involving shattered gravestones.

  Like this one, they were torn apart by vandals. Kids seeking an outlet for the boredom found in a small rural town as they wielded baseball bats in a darkened cemetery. And he, Con Taggart, had been one of them.

  

  It had been Marcus Gradley’s idea to smash the headstones that summer night fifteen years ago. A rebel by the standards of most adults in the community, Marcus was the only boy in Con’s tenth grade class to own a car, and more importantly, a motorbike. This had given him an edge over the older high school boys and even the athletes, none of whom could match him for sheer daring, despite their brawn.

  Why he chose to include the transfer student from Kansas among his circle of friends was a mystery to most of Sylvan High, Con included. Not that Con was complaining—he was simply relieved to belong somewhere amidst the crowd of strangers, where it proved dangerous and a little painful to draw the eye of a resident bully.

  It wasn’t until later that he realized he had aligned himself with a force just as destructive.

  Marcus and his friends spent their weekends straddling the line between unruly and unlawful, snitching booze from their parents’ kitchen cabinets, breaking curfew hours, and lobbing rocks through windows on abandoned buildings.

  Con went along with most of these, as he reasoned it didn’t hurt anyone but himself. His parents knew only that he stayed out later than they preferred, but since neither his homework nor his church attendance suffered, there were no repercussions.

  Until the cemetery.

  “There’s no caretaker, so all we have to worry about is Deputy Vic’s patrol,” Marcus instructed, handing out steel bats and cans of spray paint to the group of five gathered by Sylvan Grove Cemetery’s fence. “We’ll start with the rows in the back, the old stuff. Most of its already half-broke, so we’re just finishing the job.”

  A few snickers met this comment.

  Con fumbled the bat another kid tossed him. He might have argued or thought of some excuse to leave, except that Marcus’ girlfriend, Liane, had come with them. Small, with fierce features and strawberry curls she kept bundled in a ponytail, she was the only girl to infiltrate the group.

  She surveyed Con with narrowed eyes as they waited their turn to scale the fence. “Scared?” she asked, one brow flicking upward in a question. She seldom spoke to him, but he had sensed her watching him before, in class and the cafeteria, her gaze sliding away before he could read whether disdain or admiration lay in its depths.

  “No,” he answered. He wasn’t scared—not of the graveyard, anyway. It was his father’s wrath, should the man ever find out about this or any of their activities, which caused a slight breathlessness in his reply. He climbed over the fence before he could lose courage, his jacket tearing on one of the iron spokes as he dropped to the ground.

  They didn’t start defacing the stones right away but instead leaned against them smoking the cigarettes Marcus had bribed from his college age brother.

  Noticing Con’s was unlit, Liane passed him hers. “Try it.” A playful edge warmed her voice as she urged him.

  He pressed it between his lips, aware it had been against hers moments before. A taste of mint was followed by smoke scorching the back of his throat, a cough escaping before he could bury it.

  She didn’t laugh but continued watching as he practiced taking drags. Her hand gradually crept through the grass to touch his, sending surprised
shivers up his spine. “Good, isn’t it?” she said.

  “It is.” He didn’t say which he meant—the cigarette or this new connection between them. Instead, he let his fingers twine with hers, confusion rivaling the warmth he felt from her hand.

  Across from them, Marcus stubbed his cigarette’s orange glow against one of the monuments. There was an edge of darkness in his expression as he gripped the handle to his bat, telling the group, “Let’s do this, all right?” Had he seen them?

  Stone cracked beneath the impact of metal, shards of rock mixing with dust to litter the grass below. Con’s arm swung to shatter a small stone engraved with a lamb. His hands froze at the sight of its severed body, jagged rock replacing the curve of the neck. A blow from someone else’s bat filled the tomb with cracks that snaked from the base to its top.

  “Don’t start something you can’t finish,” Marcus warned with a smirk. His heavy boot kicked the remains to the ground, where he crushed them repeatedly with his heel.

  The youngest of the group, a kid named Bradley, spray painted a hexagram over the Bible verse on another tomb. The paint stained his fingers and the ground around them a lurid red that nauseated Con.

  “Help me with this one,” Liane shouted, tugging his sleeve in the direction of a couple’s shared memorial. Her flashlight revealed a simple scroll design, the words of John 3:16 etched upon it.

  The air around them rang with the others’ yells of excitement, the sound of stone splitting apart beneath heavy blows. Con touched the couple’s monument, its surface cool despite the summer heat. He could feel Liane’s expectant gaze, his fingers tracing the promise carved into the stone. This was wrong, a sin even…but turning back seemed pointless now.

  Until another voice joined the shouting. One deep and angry in its timbre as it told them, “Stop right there—don’t move a muscle!” A local deputy, his flashlight beam sweeping across the scene of destruction. He was upon them in what seemed no time, the guilty teenagers vaulting over tombstones as they fled.