Just a short story, all characters are over eighteen.
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Spooky McGraw, that was my name from as way back as I can remember, my parents call me Sandy, my grandparents Sandra.
Why? Well, I live in a cemetery. To be precise I live with my parents in the grounds keepers house just inside the main gate of a cemetery. My father is the groundkeeper, custodian, and grave digger of an early Victorian cemetery, the house goes with the job. On the other side of the road is the Norman church and graveyard that the cemetery was opened to replace when the graveyard became over full.
I can't really say that the cemetery was my playground as I was growing up because I was always taught to show a great deal of reverence as I walked around paths and flower beds, and I did mostly walk, running and being boisterous was not showing reverence, so was not allowed.
Nevertheless, I had a good childhood, and I did have lots of places to play and a lot of scope for mischief. The cemetery is very large, and a good proportion of it is deliberately left overgrown and quite wild. My father says he knows every inch of the place, and the name on every headstone and memorial, I have always thought differently, there are places where my dad never goes, deep in the overgrown sections, and over the road where although it is owned by the church my dad does some tidying up for a few extra pounds a month.
I think I was about thirteen years old when I first saw other children playing around the place, I didn't join the two factors together at the time, but I believe I had just had my first period. I didn't see the other children very often, it was only after a couple of years that I realised that I only saw them on particular nights, usually full moons, and more significantly, that only I could see them!
Ghosts, spirits, shades, memories, call them what you want, they were children who were no longer alive yet played around certain parts of the cemetery and graveyard. Some played, a few just wandered, and a few more just sat or stood still and looked forlorn.
At first I had thought they were local kids using the cemetery as a playground, but after trying to talk to them in an effort to get them to leave and finding they ignored me I realised that they couldn't all see me, either that or many of them were ignoring me. Further observation revealed that the clothes they wore were all wrong, some wore rags, others were wearing fashions outlandishly out of date, like hundreds of years out of date. It was then that I knew they were ghosts. I wasn't frightened at all, my dad had instilled in me from birth that there was nothing to be frightened of except the living in the cemetery.
"Ghosts can't hurt you!"
He was right, wasn't he?
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By the time I'd left school and college I was used to seeing the ghosts in the cemetery and even more so in the church graveyard. I had noticed a very strange phenomenon, even stranger than seeing ghosts in the first place. As I had aged, so had the ghosts that I could see, I could still see the younger ones but could now see older ones as well, as if I was able to see those of my own age and younger as I aged. Over the years I'd carried out a lot of research on both those places, for school and college history projects. The church had a particularly interesting history, it had what was reportedly a 'plague pit' in one corner and a section in the farthest corner which was supposedly for suicides and executed criminals, as well as 'fallen' women from the parrish. Quite a lot of the graves were enclosed in iron railings, apparently in order to deter body snatchers in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The same can be said of the oldest parts of the cemetery, lots of iron railings and huge memorials, many including statues of weeping angels (One of the few things to spook me following a certain episode of Dr Who!).
I hated studying, so although I was going to go to university, I decided to take a year out, get a job, and maybe save some money towards a holiday or even just to get something behind me before going off to uni.
I had finished college and was looking for work. It wasn't very fruitful, so I was spending a lot of time hanging around the churchyard, doing some tidying up for dad, cutting grass, clearing leaves, and straightening some small memorials. Some of the graves were surrounded by low stonework that occasionally started to sink, or tip over, I straightened them and pushed supporting sand and gravel under them to hold them steady, not a professional job, but it kept the place looking tidy.
There was one corner of the churchyard that I didn't work in however. Right Back in the furthest corner of the churchyard was an area that I had always known as the criminal corner. I don't know about the criminals, but my research had shown me that it was an 'unsanctified' area, that was used for the burial of suicides and apparently 'fallen' women in years long gone by. My researches had shown that sometimes these people were buried on top of each other, five or six deep, their graves in some cases being only a spades depth deep. That was the reason for the cemetery being opened in the first place.
I hadn't been able to find any actual reports or records of criminal burials in the corner, but local legend suggests that a notorious highwayman was buried there after being gibboted (hanged and then placed in an iron cage to rot).
Unsanctified, unblessed, unholy, call it what you will, it was a lonely unkempt area and always cold, even in the height of summer. The other thing I noticed about it was that the ghost children didn't go anywhere near it, they seemed to avoid it completely.
There was a huge overgrowth of nettles and other weeds in the criminal corner, and one day dad asked if I would like to start clearing it up. It was surrounded by a dry stone wall and the wall wasn't in very good shape either. The church council had actually put a little money to one side to pay for some work on it, dad had said that he (meaning me!) would sort it out. So it was that I took on the job.
On a lovely warm summer day I stood and looked at the criminal corner. This was going to be some task! The nettles were higher than my waist, there were headstones in there, I knew that, but they could hardly be seen.
I took a pair of hedge shears and walked into the enclosed area. The chill hit me immediately, and a strange feeling of darkness. It was as if someone was stood behind me and I was in his shadow, it definitely felt like a 'him'. The foreboding feeling stayed as I began the arduous task of cutting down the nettles. After I'd cut down maybe a couple of square yards I gathered up an harmful and took them over to the big waste bag that I'd brought from the cemetery. As soon as I went out through the gap in the wall the oppression seemed to lift, it was after all, a lovely summer day.
I worked all morning, clearing the heavy foliage away so that I could see the area. Every time I went into the walled area I felt the weight of the world pressing down on my shoulders, every time I left it disappeared.
By lunchtime I had filled two large refuse bags with nettle stems, not small bags, but the huge ones that builders deliver sand and stuff in. I now had to drag those bags back out and over to the cemetery and empty them onto the rubbish heap for the council to take away. It took two trips, and by the time I'd finished I felt like I'd done ten rounds with Mohamed Ali, I ached.
After grabbing a sandwich for lunch I went back to the churchyard. As I stood and surveyed the work I had already done I stretched my back and wondered how long this was going to take me? As I stretched I felt that darkness again, and then I felt there was definitely someone stood behind me! As I made to turn around I felt hands touch my breasts, not grabbing exactly, but sort of weighing each breast.
Shocked and angry I spun around... There was no one there. My imagination? I wasn't sure, it had felt so real.
I decided it must be my imagination and pressed on with the task. Two more trips to the cemetery with full bags and I had cleared the area down to a couple of inches above the surface. I had discovered fourteen standing headstones and a dozen either fallen or set flat into the soil, who knew how many unmarked graves were in there? In one corner was a row of tiny stones, each marked only with a 'P'. Paupers graves, not even deserving of names.
The feeling of some dreadful darkness had never left me as I had worked, and as I gathered myself together to call it a day I once again felt that I had company, and once again my breasts felt like they were being felt, and my nipples responded as though they were being teased.
As I walked away from the churchyard my nipples were so hard that they rubbed on the insides of my bra. This was just weird, I'd been around these graves all my life, admittedly not the criminal corner, but this has never happened before.
The next morning my dad came over with me and after looking at the area decided that it all needed digging over, the roots of all the weeds etc removing and then re-seeding with grass. Some of the fallen stones could be turned over so that the inscriptions were up over, instead of face down, but they couldn't be be reset due to the cost, that would have needed a stone mason, the budget wouldn't stretch to that.