The Endless Parade of the Dead

The Endless Parade of the Dead

In the valley town of Ashmere, funerals never truly end. From the square, the bells toll with a soft, iron rhythm, and a column of black moves through the streets as if the night itself were marching in step. The procession—meant to guide the departed toward rest—circulates endlessly, a loop of memory that refuses to loosen its grip on the living.

I work as a caretaker at the old chapel on the hill, where rain gathers in the corners of stained glass and where the statue of St. Gabriel leans as if listening for something beyond the wind. Each dusk, I hear the shuffle of boots, the whisper of silk, and the gentle creak of coffin lids being opened and closed again. The townsfolk call it tradition; I hear names repeating in a slow, inexorable cadence, as if the dead themselves are stamping time into our bones.

One evening, I decide to count the march. A pallbearer’s breath clouds the air, a child’s lilac scarf flickers at the edge of the crowd, and a violin sighs between notes that never truly resolve. The same faces pass by, year after year, wearing different moods but the same expressions: patience, sorrow, and an absence that refuses to end. It feels less like mourning and more like a chain binding the town to a memory it cannot relinquish.

“We are not lost; we are in your hands, waiting for you to remember us.”

The turning point arrives when the chapel doors swing inward on their own, revealing a corridor of doors that should not exist. Each door opens to a street I recognize, and along the parade there are strangers wearing familiar names—names that were mine yesterday, yesterday’s yesterday, and the day before. In the middle of the labyrinth, I discover a ledger etched in frost, a registry of names that never fade, kept by a hand I cannot see but feel on my shoulder.

• The procession is built from echoes of lives left unfinished.
• A lilac shawl never fades; a child’s laughter threads its way through the fog.
• The chapel corridor mirrors a street you know—and in that reflection, you may find your own history rewritten.
• Names appear and disappear, as if memory itself were a currency the dead trade for passage.

Amid the line of march I spot a girl who seems barely aged, a figure who moves with purpose yet speaks in whispers. She steps toward me, and in the hush that follows, I hear a memory I had tucked away: a grandmother who kept a photo album open on a kitchen table, a promise spoken into the very air, a name that time tried to erase. The parade pauses, listening, and I realize the living must tell the dead their stories aloud, with honesty and care, to grant them passage toward something beyond this loop.

So I begin—calling each sleeper by name, sharing a memory, letting the room fill with the sound of remembered lives. The drums soften; the fog parts; the endless march shifts. It does not end so much as it learns to walk with us, a quiet alliance between the living and the dead. The Endless Parade of the Dead remains, but its pace slows when we remember who they were, and what they finally deserved to become: finally, truly at rest in a story spoken aloud.