Preface: The Graveyard

Preface: The Graveyard




         A young man stood in a graveyard. It was well past midnight, and a chill wind whistled through the trees and the tall, green grass of a meadow near by. The moonlight cut through the leaves making them glow silver, a pattern of light painted across the young man’s already pale face. Some miles away lay a small city; the haze of its lights could be seen like a halo over the distant trees.
         The graveyard had once been used by the Catholic Church in Britain just before the American Revolution, and had been abandoned over two hundred years ago. It was a special graveyard reserved for the murderers, the thieves, the suicides, and those believed to have been practicing witchcraft. It was a graveyard that had been created especially for the damned.
          The young man tried to avoid this part of the world as much as possible. He only came this way every one hundred years to visit a certain grave, and it was with a great deal of reluctance. However, he was very duty bound, even after all these centuries, and he would do his best to full fill his obligations. Even this particular duty, the one that caused him the most personal pain, had to be done.
         He found the grave quiet easily even though it was unmarked and somewhat hidden behind an old weeping willow. He sat at the base of the tree, peering through the thin leaves and the darkness, at the spot where his sister had been buried so many centuries ago.
         There was no telling how long he might have to wait, it seemed to be different every time, but if the years had taught him nothing they had taught him patience. A quality he defiantly hadn’t possessed before his ‘death’. Usually the earth would quake for a moment, the trees would sway, and that would be the end of it, another hundred years of safety.
         Sitting beneath the stars in a place so close to home, he was reminded of times before, of places he had tried so hard to forget, that, no matter how many years passed, refused to leave him. Things had been so simple then, so beautiful and innocent. The world had lost much of that innocence now; it was hard to find anything pure or real these days. Never had he wished for an end so violently, he had not been meant for this age, and it was slowly sucking his very soul away from him. He was tired, so very very tired. There were reasons man was not supposed to live forever, the ageing of the world slowly takes its toll on the heart and mind, there is only so much pain and sorrow one person can take before going utterly mad with it. He was an outsider, a lone traveler looking for something to live for, and having to go on any way when he found nothing was suitable. He’d tried to end it, a couple of times, but he’d only managed to cause agonizing horrible pain, as his body healed and remade it’s self. Now he simply watched the world pass by, paying hardly any attention at all for the past fifty years or more, the rest of the world whizzing by, wars gone in the blink of an eye, and he walked slowly from one year to the next, an invisible memory,
         Suddenly a pain flitted through his stomach with a violence that left him gasping, his hands clutching at the cold damp earth. Overhead the moon turned reddish, it’s once silvery light like drops of blood in the trees and grass. His first thought was that the newspapers would be raving about the strange occurrence; some were sure to claim the end of the world. They wouldn’t be far from the truth.
         The sound of wet earth and squelching mud drew his attention, and he turned towards his sister’s grave. After four hundred years of waiting the end was coming, and for a moment he was relieved, a feeling he pushed back before it planted it’s self in his heart. He could hear his heart pounding in his years, and he was shivering slightly, somewhat from shock, but mostly from fear.
         After what seemed like eternity, a pale muddy hand burst from the grave, making the young man’s heart stop and his head reel, the world around him spinning and twisting out from under him. When he had regained some control, enough at least to open his eyes ever so slightly, he found him-self staring at his twin sister, looking as beautiful and charming as the day she had died. The dirt and grass made her look wild and devilish rather than less magnificent, the blood red moon bathing her in earth real light.
         “Hello brother, you are looking well after so many years,” her voice was slightly raspy to him, as she pulled a large clump of muddy grass from her shimmering black hair that now cascaded around her pale unclad feet tangling with the flowers and leaves, which for a moment reminded him of jewels and precious things, as if she were a queen drenched in finery rather than adorned in a torn and muddy white dress with yellowing lace.
         When he didn’t respond she smiled, her teeth dyed red by the light as though she’d just drunken blood.
“What? No happy reunion dear brother? How long has it been now? Nearly six hundred, five hundred years?”
         She laughed, a tinkling sinister laugh that made his spine tingle.
         “Ah, to feel the wind on my face again, to breath air once more, it is like being born again.”
         She continued to stare at him, her blue green eyes, so very like his own, shinning with something like hate, and he felt his heart break all over again, to know his sister was truly gone forever, eternally damned. Unless…
         No the whole idea was impossible, this coming, this resurrection, would be the last, and it would be the end. He felt all the resistance leave him as if his body and soul had finally given up, and he lay there, sprawled against the tree, staring up at her as if he were very far away and she were the sun above.
         Her voice was low and seductive when she spoke again, “There brother, you finally understand, this world will be hers at last, mine at last, and this time, there is nothing any one can do to stop it.”
         Suddenly she was there above him, the smell of earth nearly overpowering him, her face inches from his. And he suddenly remembered her as clearly as though it had been only days ago rather than centuries. He remembered her covered in blood, laughing and laughing, her body no longer her own, the ceremony completed. But unlike so many others before her she had done the ritual willingly, bringing about the evil all of her own will. His beautiful sister had murdered her family, their family in the name of evil and power.
         Something in him snapped and he was suddenly pinning her to the ground, tears splattering her dirty cheeks, as hate slowly filled him. His hand tightened around her throat, and her beautiful eyes widened in fear and shock as she struggled. An image flashed briefly through his mind, his sister surrounded in light, dancing before him like an angel as they played in the fields near their home so very long ago. Could his sister, so kind so loving, have really committed such an evil all of her own accord.
         His hand loosened ever so slightly against her quivering throat, and he was suddenly on his back nearly a yard away, his breath coming out in short painful gasps. Her laughter echoed through the clearing and he managed to prop himself up on one elbow.
         “This will not be the last time we see each other brother, in fact I expect to see you some time very soon. Now I am off to find my sisters and awaken Her!”
         And then she was gone, racing through the trees like a demon, her hair a dark cape about her.
         He sank back to the ground, the cool air drying the tears and sweat, and he prayed with all his heart and soul to just die, for his life to be over. But after a while he gave up and sank into misery, knowing he was the only one who could possibly save this retched world, and he just closed his eyes and tired to remember what happiness must have been like.