Unbreakable.

1. Sleepwalker

As my bare feet sank into the wet earth, I tried not to think about the dead bodies buried beneath me. I had passed this tiny graveyard a handful of times but never at night, and always outside the boundaries of it's peeling gates.

I really want to be outside of them now.

In the moonlight, rows of weathered and cracked headstones exposed the neat stretch of grass for what it truly was- the grassy lid of an enormous coffin.

A branch snapped, and I spun around.

"Elvis?" I searched for a trace of my cats grey and white stripped tail.

Elvis doesn't run away much, usually content to thread his way between my ankles whenever I opened the door, but occasionally he would bolt away and I then I have to go collect him.

He had taken off so fast I didn't even have time to grab my shoes, an I had chased him eight blocks until I ended up here.

Muffled voices drifted through the trees, and I froze.

On the other side of the gates a girl wearing blue and gray Georgetown University Sweats passed underneath the pale glow of the streetlight. Her friends caught up with her, laughing and stumbling down the sidewalk. They reached one of the school buildings and disappeared inside.

It was easy to forget that the cemetery was in the middle of a college campus. As I walked deeper into the uneven rows, the streetlight a vanished behind the tree, and the clouds plunged the graveyard in and out of shadow. I ignored the whispers in the back off my mind urging me to go home.

Something moved in my peripheral vision- a flash of white. I scanned the stones, now completely bathed in black

Come on, Elvis. Where are you?

Nothing scared me more than the dark. I liked to see what was coming, and darkness was a place where things can hide.

Think about something else. Anything else.

The memory closed in before I could stop it....

My mothers face hovering above mine as I blinked myself awake. the panic in her eyes as she presses a finger over her lips, signaling me to be quite. the cold floor against my feet as we made our way to her closet, where she pushed aside her clothes.

"Someone's in the house" she whispered, pulling a board away from the wall to reveal a small opening. "stay here until I come back. Don't make a sound".

I squeezed inside as she worked the board back into place. I had never experienced absolute darkness before. I stared at a spot a couple of inches in front of me, where my palm rested on the board. I couldn't see it.

I closed my eyes against the blackness. There were sounds- the stairs creaking, furniture scraping against the floor, muffled voices- and one thought replaying through my mind.

What if she didn't come back?

Too terrified to see if I could get out from the inside, I kept my hand in the wood. I listened to my ragged breathing, convinced that whoever was in the house could here it too.

Eventually the wood gave beneath my palm and a this stream of light flooded the small space. My mum reached for me, promising the intruders had fled. As she carried me out of her closet, I couldn't here anything above the pounding of my heart, and I couldn't think about a thing other than the crushing weight of the dark.

I was five when it happened, but I still remember every minute in the crawl space. It made the air around my feel like it was suffocating. Part of me wanted to go home, with or without my cat.

Elvis, get out here!"

Something shifted between the chipped headstones in front if me.

"Elvis?"

A silhouette emerged from behind a stone cross. I jumped, a tiny gasp escaping my lips. "sorry". My voice wavered. "I'm looking for my cat".

Th stranger didn't say a word.

Sounds intensified at a dizzying rate- branches breaking, leaves rustling and my pulse throbbing. I thought about the hundreds of unsolved crime shows i'd watched with my mum that began exactly like this- a girl standing alone somewhere she shouldn't be, starting at the guy who was about to attack her.

I stepped back, thick mud pushing up around my ankles like a hand rooting me to the spot.

Please don't hurt me.

The wind cut through the graveyard, lifting tangles of long hair of the stay gets shoulders and the thin thin fabric of her here dress from her legs.

Her legs.

Relief washed over me. "have you seen my gray and white Siamese cat? I'm going to kill him when I find him".

Silence.

Her dress caught the moonlight, and I realized it wasn't a dress at all. She was wearing a nightgown. Who wandered around a cemetery in their nightgown?

Someone crazy.....Or someone sleepwalking.

You aren't supposed to wake a sleepwalker. but I couldn't leave her out here alone at night either.

"Hey? Can you hear me?"

The girl didn't move, gazing at me as if she could make out my features In the darkness. An empty feeling unfolded in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to look at something else- anything but her unerring stare.

My eyes drifted down to the base of the cross.

The girls feet were as bare as mine, and it looked like they weren't touching the ground.

I blinked hard, unwilling to consider the other possibility. It had to be an effect of the moonlight and shadows. I glanced at my own feet, cake in mud, and back to hers.

They were pale and spotless.

A flash of white fur darted in front of her and rushed over the grave towards me.

Elvis.

I grabbed him before he could get away. He hissed at me, clawing and twisting violently until I dropped him. My heart hammered in my chest as he darted across the grass and squeezed under the gate..

I looked back at the stone cross.

The girl was gone, the ground bitching but a smooth, untouched layer of mud.

Blood from the scratches trailed down my arms as I crossed the graveyard, trying to reason away the girl in the white nightgown.

Silently reminding myself that I didn't believe in ghosts.