Author's note: Thanks for choosing to read my story. This is a take on a ghost confronting his past and passion with a willing woman visiting the graveyard on Halloween night. I wrote for the
Halloween Story Contest 2023
. I want to extend my thanks to blackstallion21 for editing help.
The graveyard's silence was broken by the soft footfalls of Isabella, who unknowingly entered a world where the living and the dead would soon intertwine. It was almost midnight on Halloween. The time-worn graveyard floor was bathed in fog and the full moon cast its glow on the aged headstones. A sudden chill in the air pierced deeper than Isabella had anticipated. Her skin prickled from the cold as looked down to her thin black dress. Isabella stopped along the path near a cracked and weathered tombstone. She took a cozy fleece blanket from her basket and wrapped it around her shoulders for warmth.
Hovering in the shadows, a silvery body loomed. Lucas, who had lost track of the decades he'd spent in this place, was accustomed to the fleeting presence of the living. They did nothing to settle his unending solitude, so he chose to ignore them. This particular visitor, however, had piqued his interest. There was something unexplainable about her. He moved closer.
Sensing a presence nearby, Isabella's voice carried confidence as she addressed what she could not see, "Who's there?" Her body betrayed her as it tensed and stilled.
After a long moment of silence, her fear subsided and her shoulders relaxed. She bent down to her basket and retrieved a hardbacked book. As she rose, her gaze was drawn to the moonbeam's caress on the tombstone's surface.
Using the moonlight, Isabella softly recited the inscription, "Lucas M. Carver: Son, Brother, Husband. Born on December 11
th
, 1848, and died on October 31, 1869." Her voice was mixed with reverence and melancholy as her fingers tenderly brushed the timeworn letters. "Oh, Lucas. Today is your death day," she whispered with a touch of sorrow. She reached into her basket.
Unseen to Isabella, Lucas watched intently as she withdrew a tea candle, arranged it with care on the ground, and lit it with a match. The scent of sulfur lingered in the air, a scent he hadn't encountered since the day of his untimely demise.
She took the book in her hands again and flipped through its pages, searching for a specific passage. When she landed there, she tenderly traced her fingers over the words. He studied her with an intensity he hadn't felt in years, closing the distance between them until he could peer over her shoulder. She tightened up the blanket as he got closer.
His name, written on the page, drew his spectral attention. She was reading about him.
Isabella's voice carried through the still night air as she read from the book, "Lucas Michael Carver, Plot 643. In the late hours of Halloween night in 1869, tragedy struck the Carver family. Lucas Carver, then a young man of twenty-one, and Anna Carver, his wife, were in their home when it caught fire."
The words transported Lucas back to that fateful night over a century ago when life had pulsed through his veins. He vividly remembered the deep love he had for Anna. She had been the center of his world, the source of his joy. They had been married just a year, and the dinner was meant to be a surpriseβa celebration of her news. She was pregnant.
Isabella, keenly aware of the profound connection being made, turned a page and continued reading. "Sources believe the fire started in the kitchen, rapidly consuming the wooden structure."
Lucas watched the haunting scenes play out in front of him.
An ember leaped from the fireplace, landing on a stack of dry firewood he forgot to place against the wall. He didn't see it happen. He was on the other side of the room. Panic gripped him when he felt the heat and realized he couldn't reach it in time. The blaze grew with a furious hunger, faster than he could control. His heart clenched as he remembered the sound of Anna coughing from the room upstairs, her voice screaming out his name.
"A neighbor saw the house engulfed in flames and ran to alert the fire brigade."
With adrenaline coursing through his veins, Lucas raced to the second floor but the fire had reached Anna first. He could hear her cries as the walls closed in around her. Lucas rushed to her side, but the inferno's fury had become insurmountable.