Stopping to catch my breath at the foot of the mountain I watched as my scout silently slip across the field and into the woods. His companionship however brief had been curiously comforting and how I wished he would have stayed a few minutes longer. Never have I felt so vulnerable. I was the rabbit trapped in an open field.

 "Run!" the voice in my head shouted and without thinking I rushed into the thick ground fog that veiled the landscape before me, further hindering a quick end to the day's expedition. As it turned out my sprint to safety was agonizingly slow as I sank into soft, spongy ground with every step. When I was not struggling to free myself from the mire I was stumbling over unseen rocks and boulders but myy goal was in sight. I had nearly reached the footpath that led to my door when the earth suddenly gave way beneath me and in that dark cavity I felt something crush beneath my weight. I was not unlike a drowning man who in his panic, arms outstretched, gropes wildly in all directions. In that last moment of hope my hand hit against a large rock, an anchor on solid ground. I took hold of it and pulled with all my strength. Dragging myself up, my face pressed into the wet grass, I could smell the musty odour of decay. It was then I became aware that my fingers had slipped across what felt like etching or carving on the face of my stony savior. I could have put an end to this nightmare within minutes by taking the few steps left leading to my door but instead, struck a match to investigate. The stone was well worn by the elements but clearly a marker of some sort. What my fingers had detected were letters across the face, mostly indecipherable but unmistakably a name and date; Nathaniel, 1865.Then I saw in the last flicker of that dying match that my weight had broken through the wooden casket of a grave! The horror of it paralysed me. My mind racing I realized there had been some truth in what the old woman had told me. Could there also be truth in that danger awaited me in that house she called “the sleepers? Who or what were these "sleepers" if not ghosts?

 
 

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