Graveyard Girl Ascends

I feared graveyards. Not their “ghosts”. In the deadness and the stillness, the dead were not really “gone” to me. Walking alone in a graveyard, I feared being chased by a human assailant more than a ghost. There was always the possibility, not matter how slim, of tumbling headlong into a recently dug grave. Or interrupting a funeral. I prayed, silently as a precaution should we pass one.

Someone told me (maybe as a warning, maybe poking fun at my fear), “You never know what can follow you home.”

For Memorial Day, we always went to put flowers on the grave of some unknown to me relatives. Later, we would have a backyard BBQ with all the fixings: grandmother’s spicy spaghetti salad, and coleslaw, homemade rolls and granddaddy’s special homemade BBQ sauce on ribs, burgers and hot links.

When I visited Westminster Abbey, my boyfriend said, “People are buried underneath these stones in the pathway.”

I immediately jumped up on the stone archway and cried, “Why did you let me walk on people’s graves.”

He laughed like I was the silliest person ever to live.

Was I? Was this all irrational behavior? There is more to experience than the dead in graveyards. I know that now.

Mariska and I met at my dorm’s “Harvest Roof and Chat” dinner event. The resident advisers thought meet and greet events would help us meet new people. The first time it was me and my roommate and the RAs and some guys from another building no one else.

Soon we got our friends to come. We could talk about any problems we were having adjusting together but the RA's helped us find resources. They wanted to have “fun” projects as a

building. It was a great idea but most people came for the better than cafeteria food and complained about classes.

We were “allowed to dress up” though this was “technically” not a Halloween party. I noticed her immediately. She was my height, 5’3”.  She walked on the edges of the rooftop garden like she was on a tightrope, one foot perfectly behind the other foot. Under floppy sun hats, voluminous dark chestnut ringlets cascaded over her shoulder. Her garish vintage sunglasses evoked seventies’ starlets with their huge frames, rhinestones and smoky lenses. Matching formal gloves due to “bad burns and upper crust tastes” completed her look. Her name tag read “Risky”.

She talked while smoking the longest, thinnest cigarillos with an elegant filter holder.

“I used to smoke a pipe,” she said. “My momma thought I was “unladylike”. Eventually, I switched to these. Here,” she leaned forward, handing it to me. “Just try it.”

“I had my three for a lifetime, thank you.”

“You are a shoe sole licking, lily livered girl. How dare you set foot on this roof. You, varlet, should walk the plank.”

We talked about movies and boys. Her eyes crinkled with her smile as she talked about a boyfriend back in Minnesota. [LM1] They met in the park near her school in France.

“I got slim on red wine and baguettes. Most of the boys are not nearly as good as the food. Bel was the bee’s knees. With his good manners, we never even did it.  Until him, I never saw a boy prettier than me. He’s talented, too. His daddy taught him to play all the instruments in the band. He plays and has his own band now with his younger brothers.”

We talked long after most other people left. Even my roommate left to go study.

“It’s All Hallow’s Eve when the souls of the miserable meet. Go with me to the First Street Graveyard.”

“Risky, I can’t go in a graveyard. Not any time. Not on Halloween especially.”

“Very superstitious,” she started singing.

“I am not VERY superstitious. I would pass out if any bogey thing came out the shadows.”

“Oh, chicken, you’re so fine,” she crooned.

“Ugh. I am not a chicken. I don’t trust graveyards because of the living. How stupid would I be to trust the dead to stay down?”

“Six feet under and falling fast,” she howled as she waved her arms and jumped down from the edge.

“Sometimes, you are the worst friend.”

“We just met. I can’t be the worst.”

“So, that means…”

“That means no. Even if I had a garlic clove on my silver necklace and or a salt blade in my pocketknife.”

“You’re no fun. You’re so normal.”

“Surreal. I prefer surreal.”

“Soooooo reeeeaaaaaal.”

When she spooky voiced me, I said, “It was nice to meet you, Risky the Graveyard Girl.  I have to homework to finish. Gotta be a smarter chicken.”

“Yeah, nice to meet you, too,” Mariska smiled sadly.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On my desk was note from my roommate.

It read, “Gone out. At the library. Back at 10.”

 I re-read the assignment for Rhetoric. It was so boring but so pre-required. I wrote out the chapter answers. I was thinking the whole time about the graveyards within the boundaries of campus.  

Students were hemmed in with the dead. Civil War soldiers, distinguished alumni and “regular” local people with now insignificant lives forever interred on the edges of bustling university life. Monuments to heroic ends: enormous stone angels, statues of children, and marble mausoleums with Corinthian columns, lent a gothic horror “charm” to the places.

As I scanned my work for mistakes, someone knocked timidly on my door.

“Are you awake? “

I stood on tippytoe to peer out the peephole. Mariska stood outside. She still had not changed her outfit. Dark lines streaked her face.

I opened the door a crack. She collapsed on the floor in front of me. Her body shaking with uncontrollable sobs.

“Go with me tonight. Please.”

“Uh… Go where?”

“To the graveyard. The one with the angel. Inside, I hear him calling me.” She tapped the side of her head. “I can’t stay or I’ll lose him.”

I looked at the clock.

“My roommate will be back soon. You stay here with me till then and we will walk you back.”

“To the graveyard?”

“To your dorm.”

“I need to the graveyard.”

Her tear reddened eyes implored me. I sighed.

“Let me write her a note.”

It read, “Out with Risky. Back soon.”

A big fat tear splashed the floor, “You’re the best.”

“Best chicken ever.”

I wouldn’t be warm in my green cotton hoodie and flowery sweats. I slipped on denim overalls and a wool sweater. I tied my boots. And we headed out.

“C’mon then.”

We walked silently past the darkened dorms. The lights from the hallways glowed. The streetlamps threw orange yellow onto the sidewalk. I shivered. A chilly breeze pinned a few candy wrappers to the bars of the graveyard gates.

We walked from the lit sidewalk onto the dark pathway. We wound through the sections of the graveyard towards the center. The trees’ thick branches bent like crooked arms with the gnarled, leafless twigs stretching out as bony fingers above our heads.

Mariska walked deliberately towards one of the biggest of the nightmare trees. She stopped suddenly and silently turned towards me.

“I couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“You couldn’t find who, Mariska?”

“Bel. I searched everywhere we went before I left France.”

With that, she took off her shoes.

“I went to the park. I went to his hostel.”

She wiggled her bare feet in the grass.

“I thought he went back to Minnesota. The address he gave me was a restaurant called The Crossroads Eatinghouse. Three old women worked there said he had gone to his father’s house.”

We continued walking across the grass until we reached a granite bench. It stood in the middle of a small gazebo. On the right sat a stone angel. She walked in a circle around the bench. Counterclockwise three times. She took off her gloves and put her hands in her pocket. She stopped to face the stone angel. She smiled to herself and stood behind the wings.

“They gave me the address. “

I stared at her hands as she pointed to the statue of the angel.

“Right here.”

She slid a packet of cards out of her right pocket.

“They gave me a way to contact him.”

She tapped the angel on the head.

“He promised to take me with him.”

She unwrapped a pack of cards. Her hands looked small, frail and leathery. Scars crisscrossed the skin. She removed a lighter from her left pocket. She knelt on the ground by the bench, quickly shuffling the cards. She stood with the deck fanned out in her hand. She waved them in front of the angel then at herself.

“Pick three but don’t look at them yet.”

“Mariska…I…”

Her eyes implored me. I inhaled deeply. I pulled the first card closest to her burnt thumb. From the middle of the deck, I chose a second. I hesitated and whispered a prayer. I tapped the last card in the deck. She placed them in my hand as she stepped onto the bench.

“Bel, my love. I found your spot.”

When she removed her glasses and hat, her hair came away with the hat. She shook the dress off and started to glow. I stepped away in shock.

She put the deck in the hat. She lit them on fire.

“Here is my beacon.”

The burning hair flew up though there was no breeze. She tossed the hat above her head.  Blue flames wreathed the bench. The angel’s stony figure transformed. I assumed this tall, thin, shining creature was Bel. In his true form, which was not alien, nor completely human. He hovered near Mariska. He held out his arms. Her body rose from the bench. These two light beings merged. I shielded my eyes in their combined light. Then a roar filled my ears that caused me to swoon. Before I lost consciousness, I could hear Mariska’s voice.

“Goodbye, my friend. We’re going home.”

“Good morning, everyone. Welcome Channel Six morning news. I’m Sal Smith. Our main story is of a UFO sighting near First Avenue and Green Street last night.”

“And I’m Wallace Dean. Our own Channel Six crew was out this morning with the late-night Halloween revelers who saw this spooky sight. “

“Let’s switch over now to our own Bren Gadson for the exclusive. Bren can you hear us.”

“Yes, Sal. Thank you. Police received multiple calls from people in the area reporting lights in the graveyard. Central Electric Power company’s after-hours line was swamped with calls from people whose lights began flickering in their homes and lost power shortly after midnight. We were told small electronic gadgets including cars stopped working for several minutes as a blue glow filled the sky. I talked to several people who had their own close encounter.”

“I saw a big ole cigar shaped UFO fly across the sky and just stop,” said a young man in a grey hoodie. “Stopped right over the graveyard and started sucking dead people up.”

Another man held up a sign that read, “UH OH UFO!”

 A group of young boys standing nearby pushed forward a smaller boy.

“We watched from our treehouse and it weren’t a ship either. It was the sky opened up. And the people just went up in the sky. And then the light was gone.”

“I was walking my dog near the cemetery and I saw three people go up into that spaceship last night. I got a picture.” Said an elderly woman in a pumpkin colored dress as held up a computer printed photo with three blue streaks against a black background.

“We didn’t go in there. I just stood there and watched. One of those people I think got one came back or something. I planned to check this morning but when I saw your news van.  I made sure to come right over. I was brave last night. And so was Toto.” She patted a grey faced Scottish terrier she held in a basket.

“This is Bren Gadson with the UFO exclusive. Back to you in the studio.”

“Thanks, Bren. Footage from our own Spookycam atop Channel Six’s roof showed some pretty interesting sights, Sal,” said Wallace. “Take a look.”

On the television screen, a circle of light appeared in the sky. And one blue light descended. Then two ascended followed by a third. Several minutes later, another blue ball of light seemed to float down out of sight of the camera.

“Thanks, Wallace,” said Sal, “Local officials have asked residents with any additional information to please call the non-emergency number.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I woke in in excruciating pain. Migraine level. I did not open my eyes. Could not. The sunlight was bright and hot on my face. My head was swimming and throbbing simultaneously. I thought I was going to vomit when an unfamiliar voice said, “Honey, are you ok?”

I jolted upright. An old lady and her dog were looking at me.

“My head hurts. I don’t know how I got here.”

“Oh, honey I think you got dropped off by a UFO. You hit your head real hard. When you hit the ground that is.”

She walked closer to the burned depression where I had been laying. I stood up shakily to study the scene. No angel, no bench, no Mariska. Her little dog turned three times in the dust and lay down

My thoughts cleared though my pain remained. I reached into my pockets. Three cards from a Tarot deck. The Star. The Chariot. The Lovers.

“I don’t believe in aliens. I believe in true love.”

 [LM1]