The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
‘One Last Adventure’ by Christen Spehr. Thumbnail image by CJ Carver.
Contrary to popular belief, graveyards were seldom quiet.
This is due to one simple reason; the dead talk. They don’t whisper and they hardly scream. They are conversationalists. They want to tell their story, their tales of brave deaths and narrow escapes. It was all they could do, the only way for them to cling to that last sliver of their humanity.
Whoever said “dead men tell no tales” was an idiot. The dead talked, it was the living that refused to listen.
My graveyard was like an overcrowded bar. It was so loud you had to scream to be heard only making it louder. Some spirits lacked common decency and walked through one another. The air smelled ancient and filled with body odor. The only thing missing was the alcohol.
I tended to avoid it all. I sat on my unmarked tombstone and watched. I could pick out scattered pieces of conversation — though none of it was interesting. The same old stories, told time after time. I could tell you how every single one of them died, how every single one of them lived. I knew every story in the graveyard … except for my own.
That didn’t bother me so much. Or it wouldn’t have if the other spirits would leave it alone.
“Oh I know,” Denise, a middle aged woman with a shrill voice called, “You were a court jester. A sweet young thing like you could make anyone laugh.” Spirits snickered. I rolled my eyes. Denise shivered, her form flickering in and out of existence as she came closer. “Come now, that was funny.”
I held my tongue. Responding would only make it worse.
A chill went through the air far colder than the summer night had any right to be. Especially when I never felt the cold.
Denise sighed, not noticing the change in air. “You must’ve lost your humor along with your memories.”
A hush fell through the grave yard, slow yet too fast to be natural, subtle and yet abrupt.
I sat upright, noticing some of the spirits staring at something. When I couldn’t see anything I stood on my gravestone. A stupid gesture, I could’ve just as easily floated to the appropriate height, but I was so accustomed to the human weight of gravity.
Two figures had entered the graveyard both cloaked; one in grey, the other in white. They were alive but different from the usual mourners. Grey had a bent back and was leaning heavily on a white walking stick.
While the white cloak moved lightly, almost as if she was more spirit than human. “Mag,” she called in an unsure voice as she stepped deeper into the graveyard. “Are you here, Mag?”
I look over my shoulder, wondering if she is calling to another living being. Certainly not a ghost.
“She’s not here,” the woman said, turning to her friend as she pulled down her white cloak revealing long grey hair neatly parted.
“Perhaps she’s angry with you, Paula,” Grey Cloak said as she tossed her cane aside and kneeled down. “Did you do anything to upset her?”
Paula pouted her lips but said nothing as she looked away.
Grey Cloak grunted, a soundless “I told you so”. She reached inside her cloak, pulling out a half melted candle. She lit it quickly and without the aid of a flit. The spirits around me gasped and muttered in excitement. Witches. Of course. Who else would come creeping into a cemetery?
I was ready to settle back onto my tombstone but something caught my eye. The white walking stick. There was an odd shape about it. I glided towards it, my curiosity overtaking my human brain’s need to walk.
“Maybe you have it wrong, Edith,” Paula said to her friend, her eyes focused on a tombstone in front of her. “It would hardly be the first time.”
“I’m not,” Edith said just as I locked eyes on the cane. Was that a bone? I wasn’t sure but something inside of me screamed that it was human. That this was wrong. “Not this time,” Edith muttered then she began speaking in a deep guttural voice.
I felt a pull. The first thing I have felt in … well who knows how long. I held out my hand, trying to follow the feeling but it faded as quickly as it had came.
Then there was a noise. A scratching. And the earth shook.
I turned instinctually towards my grave. Something was happening.
“Mag!” Paula cried. She jumped forward, her knees smacking the ground but that didn’t slow her as she started digging, scooping the raw earth with her bare hands. I inched closer, unsure what to make of this. Edith continued muttering, her voice becoming louder as if to overcome the noise of Paula’s digging.
It didn’t take long for her white cloak to become filthy but she didn’t stop. Not until a hand clasped hers. Paula tightened hold, then heaved, bringing out a rotting skeleton with ragged clothes covered in decades old dried blood.
I didn’t know much. Not how I died or even my own name. But I knew one thing.
That was my body.
I followed the two old women and my skeleton out of the graveyard. I had little choice. I couldn’t let them walk away with my body.
They didn’t speak. At least if they did I didn’t hear what was spoken. I couldn’t stop staring at the back of my body. It was disgusting; dirt and rags clung to its small form and other stuff… pieces of hair barely holding on to my skull and—I shuttered, the movement repeated in my skeleton. I didn’t want to think about what else was there. What it might of looked like when I was alive.
I forced my eyes away instantly locking on the lone mountain in the distance. I could always see it from my graveyard and now it was my last landmark of where I was. Of where I was going.
“Why didn’t you answer when I called?”
I jumped, not realizing that Paula had fallen behind, her body walking in line with my spirit form. She was speaking to me. Could I answer? “I didn’t know you were talking to me,” I said, watching for a response. For any kind of recognition.
Paula didn’t look at me but she nodded. “It’s common for things to get jumbled for spirits.” She stopped, turning around in a half circle as she examine our surroundings. It was nothing much, just a dirt path with a ravine falling to one side and a mountain of rocks to the other. “Here’s good, Edith,” Paula called. “We have much to do.”
Edith turned pulling her hood down to reveal white hair cut close to her head in crooked snips. Her lips curled as she took in the rocky path around her. “Here?”
“Says the woman using a man’s leg as a walking stick,” Paula countered as she gracefully sat on a small patch of moss. “It’s grotesque.”
“Why?” Edith held up the bone. “Legs are meant to walk.” Paula glared. Edith shrugged. “It’s not like he’s using it,” she muttered as she sat down on a boulder. She snapped her fingers and my skeleton sat in front of her like an obedient dog.
I watched as it moved, wondering if perhaps I could control it too. I lifted my hand but it didn’t mirror me. Edith reached into her cloak pulling out a small spade out of her seemingly endless pockets.
“Mag,” Paula said but I hardly heard her. I couldn’t tear my eyes off of Edith as she began scraping the top of my skull, cleaning the mess off of it. I inched forward wondering if she was going to use me in the same way she did the leg.
“There was a reason why we summoned you, Magnolia.”
I turned, the name feeling familiar. Was it mine?
“We need your help.”
“We need answers,” Edith cut in.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. Help. Answers. Two things I couldn’t do. “What? You want me to read the future?” I said as the odd sensation of emotions returned to me. I crossed my arms stubbornly. “The dead can’t see the future, only the past. And what good is that?”
“More than you know,” Paula whispered. “The reason we summoned you.”
“What’d she say?” Edith asked, a colorful piece of ribbon appearing in her hands. She began wrapping it around her fingers.
“She doesn’t remember.”
Edith’s finger’s stilled and that hard shell of an external cracked. Just for a moment. Just enough to show the softness of her humanity and the age of her soul. Her glassy eyes looked as if they had seen the world twice over and the pale scars hidden by her wrinkles told me that she had lived it too.
“Then we’ll just have to remind her,” Edith said sharply as she looked down. Her fingers went to work, weaving the ribbon between my rib cage. Was she decorating my skeleton?
“We knew you once,” Paula said, closing her eyes. “We were your companions, your most trusted advisors and friends.” I found myself moving closer, her words drawing me in a like a rope. “Our country was plagued by a great evil —”
“D.L.” Edith cut in.
Paula rolled her eyes but there was a softness in the gesture, her lips turned upward in a sad smile. “Stands for Dark Lord. The three of us, in our young age, didn’t want to give the man any more power by using his real name.”
“Mag, you were a resilient one,” Edith said, her fingers moving with what I now recognized as love as she decorated my skeleton with ribbon. “It wasn’t your fight but you made it yours. Fought until your last breath.”
“You sacrifice yourself.” Paula opened her eyes. I half expected her to look at me, almost forgetting that I was a ghost, almost forgetting that I was invisible to her eyes. Instead she stared at the lone mountain in the distance. “You killed him.”
I turned to the mountain, wondering about its significance but of course I already knew. It always stood over my grave yard, looming and dark. Not threatening necessarily but it’s strong presence spoke to me on some unconscious level. It was the place I died.
“Or at least that’s what we thought.” Edith’s words pulled me away from the mountain and back to the two witches. “D.L. has been resurrected.”
“It’s why we found you. We need to know how you defeated him before so that we can do it again.”
I nodded my head, even though I knew they couldn’t see it. The way Paula spoke. So calm and reassured. The way Edith tended to my body, carefully cleaning it so it might look presentable. Like it was still alive and still human. These women were strangers to me but I could tell that I was once everything to them.
“But I don’t know anything,” I whispered as I reached for Paula’s hand. My hand went through hers as if she wasn’t even there. “I want to help you but I can’t.”
“I don’t believe that, there are ways we can unlock—” Paula paused, her head tilted sideways as her eyes became distant. “Brandon.”
“Here?” Edith asked, her crooked back becoming straight. Paula nodded.
They exchanged a glance between them, their eyes speaking in their own language. Paula slowly moved forward, her body low into a near crawl as she leaned near the ledge. Edith followed her, cussing as she stumbled over a rock.
Once she settled down, Edith whistled. “You weren’t lying. He’s close.”
I peered down the ravine finding a small squad of soldiers riding horses below. They moved in rhythmic motion, their metal plates glistening in the rising sun. One caught my attention although nothing really set him apart other than the golden band set upon his pale blond hair.
“Who is he?” I asked. Maybe he was the D.L. But no, he had a certain energy about him. Something good and pure.
“My grandson,” Paula muttered. “The King.”
I raised an eyebrow but I suppose I wasn’t too surprise. Paula had the air of royalty while Edith had the air of…well a gutter rat. As I return my eyes to Brandon, something didn’t sit right with me.
“Why are we hiding?”
Paula sighed. “Brandon means well—”
Edith snorted. “Brandon is a toddler playing knight. He wants to claim the glory for himself.”
“It’s not about glory,” Paula snapped. “He’s worried about me. He doesn’t want what happened to—”
She stopped short but it was too late. The words she failed to say still echoed in my head. He doesn’t want what happened to me to happen to her. He doesn’t want her to share my fate.
“This is our battle,” Edith said, pulling herself onto her elbows. “I don’t care if it’s fifty years later and I am already halfway into my grave, I did not sacrifice all that I did to not finish what I started.”
Paula nodded, resilience overtaking the momentary doubt. “We fight so that our children and our grandchildren don’t have to.”
I looked at these two women and can’t help but be inspired. If I had lived to be their age would I be alongside them ready to continue the fight? Hell I don’t even know if I would’ve started the fight to begin with. But looking at them now I knew I would finish it.
“What do I need to do?”
