Footsteps in the Forgotten Graveyard
Night had fallen heavy as a cloak over the town, and I walked toward the edge where the trees gnawed at the moon. The gate to the forgotten graveyard stood ajar, a rusty hinge sighing as if it remembered every visitor who never left. Rain lingered on the iron, turning into a veil of silver threads that clung to my coat. Names wore away on the weathered stones, and moss gathered in the curves of letters like patient memory. I told myself it was only a dare, a rumor to scare the curious, but the air tasted of soil and rain and old promises, and I stepped through anyway, listening for the sound of someone else's footsteps beside mine.
Inside, the earth seemed to breathe. Footprints appeared in the damp soil, not mine, another traveler who trod here when the world slept. They led between graves as if drawn by a thread between two weathered hands. Each mark glistened with rain, then vanished when I looked away, only to reappear where the light hit the wet grass. A slow bell seemed to toll somewhere underground, a pale echo that trembled in my chest. The path grew narrow and the air grew heavier, and I realized the cemetery wasn't a map but a living maze, built from fear and memory and the stubborn will of the dead to be remembered.
At the heart stood a mausoleum with a door cracked like a whispered secret. Inside, portraits stared from the walls, their eyes following my steps with a patient hunger. The air smelled of oil and roses that had long since soured. A name kept repeating, not spoken aloud but written in the space between sentences—each glance changed it, then changed it back. The footprints kept pace, precise and unhurried, as if someone invisible walked beside me, turning my own fear into footsteps I could hear but not see. The ground trembled with every whispered breath, and the corridor of breath opened into a corridor of silence.
We walk the hours others forget, so they may remember us when morning comes.
Then I understood the old rumor: the dead do not vanish; they linger in the memory of the living, shaping our nerves until we carry their hunger within us. The cemetery asked a question with every step: Will you keep walking when the world wakes, or will you turn and pretend you never listened? I chose to listen, and the whispers turned into a chorus of soft names, each name a door, each door a way back to a place I never left. When the last echo faded, I found myself at the gate again, dawn brushing the stones with pale gold, and my own breath fogging the air as if answering a summons I had only just heard.
- A coin that clinks in midair, landing on fresh soil with a glow that lingers in the palm.
- A single flower that refuses to wilt, its roots tangled in marble.
- An epitaph that rearranges itself to spell a name you suddenly recognize—your own.
- The gate sighing your name as it closes, leaving you with the ache of a memory you’ve just started to remember.
Morning makes promises and excuses at once, but the graveyard keeps the receipts. I stepped into the waking street lighter, not lighter exactly, but thinner, as if some weight had shifted to the shoulders of the world. Footsteps followed me into daylight—soft, deliberate, and utterly certain that I would return. Because in this forgotten place, wandering is not a mistake but a vow, and every step you take writes a paragraph in the book of the missing.