Footsteps in the Forgotten Graveyard
On nights when the village sleeps under a quilt of fog, I walk to the hill where the old graveyard leans against the wind. The gate is a tired hinge, sighing with every touch of the cold air. Moss climbs every stone like a patient memory, and the air tastes of rain and rust. My boots know the path by heart, drawing me toward the oldest rows, where the names go backward into time and the letters are worn to a whisper. There, the soil remembers every footstep, and every step seems to answer a question I never asked: who walks after dark when the ground beneath is listening?
From behind a weathered cross, a pair of footsteps syncs with mine, though I see only my own shadow on the path. I quicken, then slow, as if the earth itself were testing my will. The wind carries a rumor, a rustle of linen and the soft clink of something metallic—an old coin in the pocket of a long-dead child, perhaps. Then the sound stops, and a moment of absolute stillness presses in, heavy as a grave induced sleep. I lean on a stone and read the carved dates, discovering their authors have become patient, deliberate, as if the dead keep a ledger of who belongs and who doesn’t.
“The night keeps its promises for those who listen,” a voice seems to murmur, not from the stones, but from the earth between them. “If you walk long enough, you’ll learn where you’re meant to be found.”
Here is what the ground offers to a traveler who refuses to turn back:
- Footprints that do not vanish when the rain comes and go again with the wind.
- Names that rearrange themselves on the list of graves when you aren’t looking.
- A lantern that never runs out of oil, though it is never lit by human hand.
- Whispers rising from the soil, spelling warnings in a language I almost recognize.
In the end, the line between watcher and watched blurs. I realize the forgotten graveyard is not a place to escape from, but a corridor into a different kind of memory—where the living step carefully so as not to wake the ones who learned to keep count of every arrival. When I finally lower my gaze, I see my own reflection in a polished headstone, not mine, but a future I have not yet earned. The footsteps continue, and I follow, not out of fear but because the night has chosen to tell me a new story with every breath of damp earth and every echoing tread.