St. Joseph's Cemetery

One

No one knows who he is, the boy in the black hoodie. Nobody in this town knows who the boy's family is or where he lives, just that he shows up at the cemetery every day.

A young boy, no older than eleven or twelve, scrolled down the path alongside the cemetery. His hands were shoved into the pockets of his black hoodie. He never glanced up from the gravel path, not once. As he turned to walk through the open gate, I caught his eyes. Completely black orbs surrounded by white.

I watched him walk down the thin path of grassless dirt through the graveyard. I'm not sure if he knew I was watching him, and if he did know, he clearly didn't care. The boy stopped in front of one of the gravestones, turning his head to look at it.

"No one comes to visit you anymore, do they?" Even from where I was standing, about twenty feet away, I could hear his voice. With the kid's dark, gothic appearance, I expected his voice to be deep and intimidating, but instead, his voice was soft like a child's, yet raspy like an elderly smoker. He sat down in front of the grave. "That's okay, I'll talk to you."

I stood under the elder tree, watching him. The boy stayed there, talking to the gravestone. Seeing the way he talked to it, one would think that the grave was responding to him. The boy in the hoodie did this regularly, he would sit with a different stone every day, usually a very old one, and talk to it. It's as if he didn't want them to be lonely. Some stones, he would only visit once, others he visited frequently. The ones he frequented, he would greet like an old friend.

An old, beat-up pickup truck, which was caked in dirt and mud and so badly scratched up that you could barely tell it was a white truck. When the driver's side door opened, out stepped an old man who should have long ago been gifted to the ground. Old Mr. Bernhard was the groundskeeper for the St. Joseph Cemetery. He was a mean, bitter old man, and he especially hated the young boy who visited the cemetery on the daily. Mr. Bernhard hated children. Any child who came onto his lawn or tried to speak to him would be shouted at by the old man. The groundskeeper had been working at the cemetery for decades and had seen the boy there every day for years. He hated the boy, but could not force him to leave since he was respectful to the graves and never remained at the cemetery after dark, which was when it closed.

However, today when the old man stepped out of his truck and saw the boy sitting in front of the grave, he became visibly enraged. His jaw clenched so tightly I thought he might break it and I swear, I could see steam billowing from his ears. He stomped over to the young boy and abruptly pulled the boy up onto his feet by his upper arm and immediately began to go off on him, screaming at the top of his lungs until his face went beet red and then some. The boy didn't even flinch at this, in fact, he didn't even look up at Mr. Bernhard, which only served to anger him further. Seeing the boy's crystal clear disinterest in his lecturing, Mr. Bernhard started to shout even louder, loud enough to make me flinch from where I watched from under the elder tree.

Suddenly, the man stopped in his tracks. He began to sputter and choke on his own words and his expression quickly changed from anger to fear. His hands shot up to clutch his chest and his face remained a deep, blood red. His cold eyes bulged out of his head. I couldn't hear it, but I was sure he was wheezing from lack of oxygen.

Finally, after several painfully long minutes of this, Mr. Bernhard fell to his knees, and then forward onto his face, lying still on the dirt. A part of me thought to call the police, but I was frozen in place. Had the boy done something to him? No, the boy was just standing there, doing nothing, how could he have caused an old man to have a heart attack? My hand slowly, shakily reached for my pocket to take out my phone, which I nearly dropped from how violently I was quivering. I carefully dialed 911, not taking my eyes off of the boy. He nonchalantly brushed the dirt from his jeans, taking his sweet time, before he began walking away, not looking up. Even as emergency services showed up to pick up the old man's body and take my statement. The police didn't even stop the boy, he just walked right past them.

As I was telling the police what happened, or at least as much as I could tell them, I glanced past the officer and saw him. The young boy was just walking through the gate to exit the graveyard. I thought nothing of it, then he turned his head. His once charcoal-black eyes now had a bright, burning hue to them. They were a bold mix of red and orange, as if his eyes held a doorway straight to Hell. A smirk was present on his face, but I was more focused on his eyes. He shot me a wink, then turned back around to walk away.

Mr. Bernhard's cause of death was confirmed to be a heart attack. The police knew who the boy was since Mr. Bernhard had called them several times on the boy, but they were never able to do anything since the boy was not trespassing or causing harm to anyone or anything. They considered trying to find him and ask him if he saw anything since he was at the cemetery every day, but no one in the police department knew where he lived, and since no one knew his name, they couldn't look him up.

There was no funeral, since the old man had no friends or family. Old Mr. Bernhard was buried in the same cemetery in which he worked. On my daily walks, I still pass that cemetery, and every single day, I see the boy. Every day I stop to smoke a cigarette under the elder tree in the cemetery. Without fail, every day, the boy visits the grave of Mr. Bernhard, and every day, while I'm smoking my cigarette, my gaze catches his. Every time our eyes meet, the boy gives me a smirk, before returning his attention to the grave. Something I noticed is that he never talks Mr. Bernhard's grave like he does all the other graves, he just stares blankly at it, as if he's watching the most captivating cartoon on tv. A soft, red and orange glow would be present on his face, as if he were sitting in front of a fireplace, and sometimes I would see a small, satisfied smile spread on his cheeks.