by Peter Spokes
I will explain this further… later.
Scene 3: Invading Airspace
The chapel library educates me and the previously mentioned newspapers discarded in the waste bins prove to me that the world – or at least Queenstown Cemetery – is always April 1912.
So here I am – again – wandering the well-kept paths and gardens of the cemetery looking or waiting for something pertinent to my being here.
It may be worth mentioning at this time, and for you to better understand my confusion – not to mention bewilderment – that it was a while before I understood my place in the world.
For a long time, I watched people move about me – and through me – but I thought it was they that were the ghosts.
You will understand my shock when someone moves through you and the greater one when you find that it is not they that are the shade.
One morning soon after I ‘became’, I was sitting on one of the many benches watching people moving this way and that, when presently an old lady with a dog came over and sat beside me. I smiled at her but was ignored. But then she picked up her dog and reached it towards me.
Somewhat surprised I reached to hold it but it was like trying to grasp smoke. There was nothing to hold and the dog was placed on the seat where I sat; that is, taking up the space on the seat that I too held.
We sat there in the same space and time!
What was curious is that I’m certain it saw me even if its owner didn’t.
One can only be ignored for so long and have dogs invading your airspace – quite literally – before the mind looks for unlikely answers; but it was not long before I understood that for one reason or another it was I that was on a different plane of existence. I say ‘reason’ because otherwise I’m just an anomaly – an unplanned mistake – and I cannot bring myself to believe that. There must be rules and protocols or surely, we are ruled by chaos.
So, I learned. I found that I could interact with inanimate objects like the benches; books in the library; even get wet in the rain, but not living things.
Scene 4: The Chapel
It was the chapel library that saved me from the mediocrity and insanity of my existence.
But also, the newspapers discarded in the waste bins were invaluable to me but I had to cleverly ‘squirrel’ them away at night for my research so as not to alarm visitors through the presumably unexplainable movement of newspapers strangely leaving their waste bins and seemingly floating to the chapel.
Unfortunately, even ghosts need to see and so in the chapel I lit a couple of candles, only to have my studies interrupted on no less than three occasions by a member of the local constabulary investigating an apparently – and very wrongly assumed – break-in.
From then on, I would take my books – and candles – down into the crypt to ensure I received no further interruptions.
It has got to be said that the flickering flames created quite a chilling ambience and the ethereal hairs on my neck were raised upon several occasions as the candles created moving shadows, and would splutter wildly when a draft blew from who knew where.
Fortunately, the crypt held none of the rotting corpses or mouldering cadavers that might be expected, but the low-ceilinged room was still a bit creepy and the few bats it harboured still had the power to make one jump suddenly when they were disturbed by the candles and fluttered unexpectedly by one’s ear. It would take them several minutes to return to their perches, but were still off-putting as their inverted heads watched me – or perhaps the candles – intently.
And so I sat on the lowest of the steps that led up from the crypt – book in hand – and learned the history of Queenstown; its industry; and anything that might give a reason for its graveyard to be haunted by yours truly.
A seaport town on the south coast of County Cork in Ireland, it was named ‘Queenstown’ in 1850 to commemorate a visit by Queen Victoria of England. Apparently, it grew in importance during the Napoleonic Wars between France and Britain.
The Old Church Cemetery – which was the official title of my residence – was noted as the final resting place of a Charles Wolfe, a gifted poet who died of tuberculosis at only thirty-one. He was known primarily for his verse on the death of a certain Sir John Moore at the Battle of Corunna; a moving piece indeed I would agree, though deficient in any pertinence to my presence here.
Since the 1850s, the port was instrumental in the emigration of thousands of Irish people to North America.
I once again left my research and chapel despondently aware another April was a week away from closure.
The last few days found me – as usual – on my bench idly watching the visitors come and go. There was the old lady and her dog and the sad chap grasping his bottle.
This latter I often look at as I feel an affinity to him. He too appears lost and bewildered by his surroundings and perhaps wonders how he has ended up here. I too wonder if the spirit – the alcohol that is – is to help him focus and remember, or to prevent the same.
I looked up at the sun; mid-afternoon; the lady with the dog had gone and the border collie was once again urinating on the angel on the corner grave.
I looked around at the sound of a raised voice. There was the gentleman – he certainly was dressed as one – reproaching his wife once again, as the little girl looked on sadly as she played with her flowers.
All seemed tediously normal.
Edgar Allen Poe’s night’s plutonian shore was in evidence when I finally left the graveyard and returned to the chapel wondering what I must have missed… again, as another April drew to a close in readiness for the dawn of another.
Chapter 2: Visions and Gravestones
Scene 1: A Vision
A very strange and alarming incident happened today which is worthy of note. Generally, I find that anything different has to be good – but only in the sense that it gives me more data to work with. This particular ‘incident’ was not good; on the contrary, it was most unpleasant – and gives me much to think on.
I’m keen not to miss anything pertinent and will try to be as meticulously accurate as I am able.
It was not a dream – I don’t sleep – so it must have been a vision… or hallucination.
But of what?
Can a ghost hallucinate if that is what I am? Or maybe it’s a forgotten memory? I don’t know the rules or protocols to which my current existence applies.
I have no understanding as to where the vision came from and I can only wonder again whether I’m finding my own rather spurious way through the dark or being guided by hidden forces. Was this a vision of something that has happened or is it going to happen? Or is it just giving a clue to something else?
Ironically – considering the unpleasantness of the vision – my greatest horror is that it may be nothing at all.
But for what it is worth – here it is:
It was 2.00 am and I was in the crypt comparing old and new newspapers when suddenly there were screams and the sound of water – much of it. I looked around more alarmed than you can imagine for I had become quite used to my quiet and relaxed isolation. The sound seemed so very close and then suddenly I found myself in a narrow corridor filled with men and women – their number too numerous to accurately judge. They were crawling over each other to escape their confinement and the intense deluge fast approaching behind them.
Lights flickered several times and then all was darkness and cold… so very… very… cold.
I could see nothing, but in the shouting cacophony, my hearing focussed on two voices. I heard from behind me, “Linus… Linus! Where are you?” and a response from in front of me.
“I cannot help you, April – I need to save myself.”
“I’m not leaving without Alex!” I heard the reply and then louder, “Alex, come to Mummy; listen to my voice…!”
Then I heard nothing as freezing water filled m
y mouth and covered my head.
After choking for several moments I looked up and found myself on all fours, in a muddy graveyard. My mind was still in the cold, dark corridor for before the lights went out I would swear I recognised the angry man from the graveyard running up some steep steps.
I shook my head and rose to my feet and looked across at gravestones, but my seeming return to familiarity was short-lived as I looked around at an entirely different graveyard from the one I knew.
Slowly I turned a full circle. From the bright light of the moon I could see its enormity. It was huge with gentle, undulating hills.
What seemed odd – on top of everything else – was that the stones all appeared identical. Each was made of a dark grey granite and appeared as if they had all been put there at the same time such was their condition.
I was halfway up the hill but walked over to the closest and stopped to read its epitaph.
In memory of April Lombard,
A devoted wife,
Lost to the sea
When The Ship took her life.
15th April 1912
249/252
Then beside it another stone read:
In memory of Linus Lombard,
A family three
A husband and father
lost to the sea
15th April 1912
250/252
And beside that:
In memory of Alex Lombard
A young life taken
An endless sleep
A life unlived
When The Ship met the deep.
15th April 1912
251/252
I looked at the other gravestones and noticed that they all had the same date; the row behind and the one behind that, likewise.
I wondered too as to the number at the bottom of each marker – which was different from its neighbour.
Clearly, so many people had died at the same time, but how? And what was the ship mentioned? Actually, it was ‘The Ship’ which implied a vessel of some import.
I renewed my feeling that there was something guiding me and this wasn’t some spurious and aimless pursuit.
I wondered if I could be dead or alive depending on a choice; a circumstance or decision made subconsciously and lightly – the magnitude of the consequences lost, or rather not recognised – by those with the power for the change.
Do I, therefore, live in this halfway house; a created potential of life not realised?
But just then my reverie was broken by the sight of a modest sign nearby. I walked over to it for a better look.
I read ‘Fairview Lawn Cemetery, Halifax, NS.’
I looked around again, and jumped, for there must have been several hundred men, women and children, standing before me and looking directly at me.
In the night’s silence I just stared at them – even the children nestling up to their parents’ legs gazed sadly at me.
I felt an overpowering energy being projected at me; was it an expectation of responsibility on me of action… or blame?
I turned and ran… and couldn’t stop myself. But then I tripped and fell… onto hard, cold stone.
As I raised myself up I found myself staring at a candle. I was back in the crypt.
I looked at the flickering flame – the only source of light. Curiously the candle appeared no shorter than it had been before my vision though I would have sworn that I had been away for at least an hour.
All was silent again but for the occasional flutter of a bat. I felt such a tremendous sense of disorientation – and something else; the same feeling of immense loss that I shared earlier.
Am I responsible for something I’m unaware of? My death… someone else’s death?
By now I hope you will understand my need to speak to a virtual third party. The complexity of my existence is such that some lucidity is muchly desired – to say the least.
This was new – am I getting more positive data on my current ‘predicament’ or is it simply clouding an already unclear understanding?
I picked up the candle and wandered up the steps to the library and looked for the geography section where I might find a book to guide me as to where the hell ‘Halifax, NS’ might be.
I thought back at my vision: a most important point was that in my dream I heard shouts and names: Linus, April – and Alex.
I could still feel the icy water on my skin. ‘Linus’ had appeared to be saving his own skin, but it was the name ‘April’ that had brought forth in me such a powerful feeling of an intimate gravity … and loss.
And, of course, they were the names on the first gravestones I ‘happened upon’ at the Fairview Lawn Cemetery, Halifax, NS.
As I rested the candle onto the bookshelf its light illuminated dried mud on my hands.
Scene 2: Halifax, NS
O… kay… I thought with some bafflement.
I was looking at a map showing me the south-east coastline of Canada. There was an area of land – almost an island – called Nova Scotia – NS – and its principal city was called ‘Halifax’.
It lay about midway between the equator and the North Pole.
I looked up feeling a little duped as instead of greater illumination, I felt more confused than ever.
I stood up and despaired. Maybe my ‘mission’ along with my reason for ‘being’ had never been real after all. It is inherent within us to seek order in chaos, meaning in the seemingly meaningless and random – because otherwise, what is the point… to anything?
Despite late evenings reading up on Queenstown and Halifax, there was understandably little to learn about the latter in a chapel in a small harbour town in southern Ireland.
What possible connection could there be between Queenstown and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, other than they both have graveyards? And, I suppose, they are both coastal… and therefore possess a harbour or dock…
Just then I looked up. The Ship I said to myself.
Scene 3: New Gravestones
Another April had no sooner started than it was again ended, and I was more confused as ever in finding an anomaly in my predictable existence.
I was tired from more study in the crypt and so wandered around the only place I could – the graveyard.
I wasn’t conscious of the gravestones as I passed them and a little too inwardly focussed on what I might have missed this time around. But then I stopped – something felt different.
And different was good.
I looked around but all seemed as usual. But just then I saw that the oak was noticeably bigger and the seat under it was now a metal one.
I shook my head and looked around at old and worn stones, but then I turned to see two new gravestones.
I looked closer and kneeling down read the epitaph.
April Morgan
Died April 15, 1978
Loving Wife to Dermot
– and the one beside it:
Dermot Morgan
Loving Husband to April
Died April 15, 1972
For a long while I stared at the stones and not simply because I was familiar with the Christian name on one of them; but because they indicated that this couple had died – or more accurately will die – more than sixty years in the future!
I stood and walked around my cemetery – it most definitely was the same burial field I had ‘haunted’ for God knows how long.
But it was as I passed the entrance that I noticed a new sign. ‘Cobh Cemetery’ it said. What happened to ‘Queenstown’, I wondered.
I saw no connection other than ‘April’ which was not a particularly common name in southern Ireland. So why had I found myself drawn to these stones.
Time… I said to myself; Is that it? Is that the key?
Another April came to an end.
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Scene 4: Hull 401
I am excited – I think – for today my quest for coherency and meaning to my ‘existence’ took a step forward… or at least it did at first. I had supposed that any new data must be good, but now with the business of the names on gravestones, dated in the future, I once again wondered…
It was the beginning of another April when I left the chapel crypt and found myself back in my graveyard and sitting on my old wooden seat.
I had become so familiar with the mediocrity of my routine that it was with some lack of interest that I picked up the discarded newspapers. The visitors indirectly and mutely informed me of the time of the month. However, I decided to remove every newspaper and meticulously note each article. This was not easy as I have already mentioned and needed to give the appearance of them being seemingly blown along the lawns and on to the chapel steps where I would lift them up and take them down to the crypt.
Late that evening I wandered down the steps to my catacomb of solitude. The bats fluttered as usual, but as to them being a welcome or a warning, I was not to know.
Once in the crypt I perused the editions that I had collected that day.
All seemed mundane but then I came upon an article about a massive ship that was due to leave Southampton on the 10th April for Cherbourg to dock here at Queenstown on the 11th April before sailing on – unfortunately, not to Nova Scotia – but to New York. Clearly nothing to do with ‘The Ship’ that I was so interested in.
But there appeared to be much pomp and ceremony over it, however, and much editorial given to it, and so I read further. There was much description and detail on its construction at Belfast’s Harland and Wolff shipyard.
Apparently, before it was named – and during construction – it was known as Hull 401 being the 401st ship to be constructed at the yard.
It was further described as an Olympic-class ocean liner operated by the White Star Line Company, and from its colossal size I was not surprised by the name it was finally given.