Beloved: Memoir of a Phantom

Chapter 2- Rendez vous in the cemetery

CHAPTER 2

             Rendezvous in the cemetery

When I got inside I found that it was well after midnight and both of my parents were waiting up for me. My Mother immediately noticed and panicked over my bloodied foot and had my father drive us to the emergency room. I required 4 stitches for that little shard of glass, so now I was stuck on crutches for a week and a half; great!  

Both of my parents made jokes about how if this is how I come home from dates, then maybe the dating thing wasn’t for me. I found it neither funny nor appropriate as I was crying my eyes out over having to have stitches.

Now I wasn’t sure how I was going to hop the cemetery fence tomorrow night on crutches, if I was even going to go see Gabriel tomorrow night after he ran away when I needed help like that!

Even though I thought he was a colossal jerk for abandoning me, there was something about him that I couldn’t resist and I knew I wanted to see him again.

After a good night sleep and many hours the next day debating whether or not I was going to go; I told my parents that I was going over to Genia’s to study (a weak excuse but they bought it anyway.). When in reality I’d grabbed a flashlight and headed over to the cemetery, Crutches and all.

I got to the cemetery gates at 5:30, which was great because the gates were open until 6. I knew I was early; the sun wouldn’t set until almost 8:30.

So to kill some time, and to be sure I wasn’t going to kill myself by tripping in the dark; I decided to have a look around.

It was a beautiful sunny day in the peaceful, quiet cemetery. It was cool in the shade of the gargantuan oak and maple trees as well as from some of the taller monuments by the path. Despite its beauty it gave me chills wandering around near so many dead. Also most of the cemetery was well over 200 years old, including the chapel, making everything all the creepier.

The Chapel was the oldest, most eerily beautiful building that I had ever seen. Surrounded by tall Greek column style monuments; the large, Perfectly round, yellow brick building looked more like a castle sitting atop the steep hill in the middle of the cemetery with all its towers and peaks reaching towards the sky. When I approached the bottom of the hill I noticed a long, narrow stretch of stone steps meeting before a giant arching door covered in wrought iron. It was at that door that I decided to sit for a moment. I was so exhausted from the climb that I thought I would just rest my eyes and my foot for a moment… just for a moment.

I woke at seven. At first I’d thought it was much later than it was, but then I realized that the sun had just sunk behind the sanctuary. Rather than risk falling asleep again I decided to continue exploring. As I wandered around the older parts of the cemetery, hobbling over a tiny bridge over a tranquil stream; I noticed that the light was starting to grow fainter and fainter. I turned on my flashlight so that I wouldn’t trip and fall. Oh, this was such a beautiful place; if I were a better poet I would have been inspired. As I hobbled along on my crutches, I read some stones as I wandered. One particular stone caught my eye, so I stopped to look at it further.

The stone was a black copper statue of a life sized angel, standing atop a granite boulder. The wings that reached up to the sky were tarnished green; other than that, everything about the statue was incredibly life-like right down to the delicate fingernails on her outstretched hand. I eased myself down onto the dirt path in front of the stone to get a better look at the plaques.

St.James was the name engraved in the stone over four copper plates curving the entire front of the boulder. Obviously a family plot. The plates were so tarnished and moss covered I had difficulty making out the names on them, so I leaned in for a closer look. I scrubbed the moss off of the plate closest to me. It read as follows: