Stories from the Cemetery

Many thought of him as an outcast—a weird, bizarre human being who found joy in touring the town’s largest cemetery every day. But the outcast did not simply visit the cemetery. He was on a mission to bring life to each grave, to each person forgotten by the loved ones, to each stone suffocated by the weeds. He would rise at dawn and start from the depths. He would pave the paths that people had forgotten about and discover the graves that did not get love any more. He never claimed to love these strangers, but he wanted to seek out their stories and let their memories live—even if they did not anymore. After all, what is life if memories of us do not outlive us?

Marcello

The stone he came across was tiny. Perhaps the tiniest one he has seen in a while. It was buried among the wild bushes, and its color had started to fade. He started clearing the stone after years of neglect to find the engraving. And there it was, the answer to who lay underneath the soil. The grave belonged to Marcello, a son of a wealthy duke and duchess of Argyll. The duke longed for an heir for years to no avail, when finally, on a bright summer day, his wife brought him the best news of his life; she was pregnant. The couple prayed every night for their son's health, and when the day finally came, the two were blessed with the most perfect baby. A baby boy with cheeks so pink that you could see them from a neighboring estate. Marcello was growing up with so much love that he never knew any worry. He had everything—title, money, loving parents, a beautiful home, and legacy. There was nothing in the world that Marcello dreamt of that he could not have. Except…more time on this earth.

The outcast moved to clear the engraved years below Marcello’s name. When he finally unraveled them, he felt a sinking sensation in his hollow heart. Marcello was born in the year of 1882 and died in 1883. The son of a loving couple who had everything was tragically taken from his parents by scarlet fever. There was nothing the duke and duchess could do, except give their little baby love one last time.

Magdalena

He knew of the famous Magdalena even before he cleaned her grave. Ironic, that someone so famous in her lifetime could ever be so forgotten. Magdalena was an actress of the roaring twenties. Blessed with the siren look, jet-black hair, and the most enchanting green eyes, Magdalena would have men falling at her feet—or at the movie screens. Magdalena’s life was all bling and sparkle, until she was found dead in her house. No one knows how this came to be, as Magdalena’s death was ruled homicide. No one could fathom that someone would kill the “darling of Hollywood.”

But there was more to Magdalena’s life than simply bling and sparkle. Hidden behind the curtains of Hollywood was a simple woman who dedicated her life to civil rights. Although she could vote in 1920, she understood the disbalanced nature of such a law. Magdalena understood that although some women like her could now engage in political lives, others could not. Something about such injustice made her restless so she embarked on a journey behind public’s eyes to give these women equal rights.

Magdalena fought relentlessly. She founded councils, groups, inspired protests—all anonymously. Her life became a duality, split between the movie screens and strenuous civil battles. She put on a fake smile each time a camera approached her face and thought back on the forgotten women these movies tried to ignore.

Soon enough, Magdalena produced many enemies. Her anonymity did not hold back the conservatives from coming forward and threatening her. She had to give up on cinema, the life of bling, and retract back in the shadows. Still, she proceeded with the cause she so strongly believed in.

One evening, when Magdalena opened the door to a strange knock, nothing would be the same as before. As the vile man entered her apartment and grabbed her neck, Magdalena’s siren eyes started to flood. She fought with all she had, like she always did, but this fight she could not win. The man was simply too aggressive, too motivated by his superstitions to allow her to make a difference in the world. A man blinded with hate choked life out of Magdalena within a matter of minutes.

Police found Magdalena’s lifeless body in her apartment the following day. It was obvious she was murdered, but the city’s local government did not need a roaring scandal. The so-called investigation marked her death as possible suicide, and the newspapers flamed with headlines for the next week. The second week, however, barely anyone remembered brave Magdalena. She was forgotten by many, until today, when the outcast unraveled her grave and gave it the respect it deserved.

Tobias

The outcast could tell there was more to this grass-ridden grave than met the eye. As he proceeded to clean it, he unraveled engravings of stars, planets, and galaxies on the cold stone. Among these carvings was the name of who lay below the ground, followed by a phrase that struck something in the outcast’s hollow heart: “Tobias—the boy who swallowed the universe.”

Tobias was only four when he looked at the sky and found his passion. Something about the grandeur of the universe suffocated his thoughts. It was all so beautiful in his mind that soon after, there existed nothing but the universe for him. Every day for the next twelve years, Tobias would wake up with the only goal to observe the stars and the planets for the entire day. He would then move from his telescope to the papers, make calculations, test hypotheses, and finally go to bed in the dead of the night.

As the years passed, Tobias descended into his routine even more. His parents found no remedy for his mundane life but sought solace in the fact that Tobias loved what he did. He even believed that he was tasked with solving the mystery of the world. The answers to life, in his opinion, were to be found somewhere in the galaxy; he simply needed to focus more.

Through his research and calculations, Tobias believed he would “swallow the universe.” His meticulous determination to finding all the answers motivated him beyond reason. One day, the world would recognize that although the universe was immense, Tobias’ knowledge and grasp of the world was even bigger. Nobody would be ever able to grasp the world better than Tobias. One day, he would swallow the universe in its entirety.

But at the age of sixteen, the universe finally swallowed Tobias. As he woke up on a normal mundane morning, he felt different. He felt as if that day, he had all the answers. He spent the day doing calculations and finalizing research, and as the sun went down to expose naked stars in the sky, Tobias was ready to share his knowledge. He looked through his telescope to see Venus, the planet of love, and then opened the window to be met with a gust of wind.

-“Venus! My love. I am ready!” whispered Tobias as he let the gravity overtake his body and make him float from his window.

The loud thud woke up his parents. The entire neighborhood was out as the mother clung to his little boy’s lifeless body. She cursed the universe with her screams, holding Tobias as hard as she could, as if the universe was going to take him from her any second.

But the universe had taken Tobias at the age of four. Tobias never swallowed the universe, but the universe did swallow Tobias. As months flew by following Tobias’ suicide, the mother went into his room to publish his son’s research, only to find that all these years, he produced nothing, but mere gibberish scribbles. No one knew that Tobias had gone mad a decade before. Nobody knew that Tobias’ calculations were never real. Nobody knew that Tobias never truly understood the universe.

The outcast gave the grave one last look. Here lay the boy, swallowed by the merciless universe, who gave his life to Venus—the planet that did not even bother to burn a degree hotter on that cold night.

The sun was almost setting. The outcast managed to clean three graves that day. Three was a lot, given that the outcast had to dive into each of their lives, and watch their stories unfold. In truth, the outcast only had one hope in this world—that one day, someone would find and clean his grave too, for he was no human, but a mere ghost stuck within the bounds of the forgotten cemetery. Although forgotten himself, the ghost’s selflessness would never let memories of other souls to ever be lost. He accepted this truth. After all, what is life if memories of us do not outlive us?