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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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