Ethan and The Shadows

Ethan always passed this graveyard: on his way home. Somehow, he always finds himself walking alongside the metal fence that separates the sidewalk and the tombstones. Home from a friend’s house, home from work, home from a walk around town. He never gets a sense of unease, or feels a chill run up his spine, or the urge to walk faster. It was always more of a neutral feeling, people having their eternal sleep inside the premises after their time was up. There was nothing to make him look at the graveyard for too long or to think about who might be under those stones. Just rotting bodies in holes.

Tonight was different.

Ethan is walking home from another day at work. He’s tired. The clouds are low, spilling a sea of fog that engulfs him. The moon is out but hardly visible in its crescent phase, light barely illuminating the streets in the late darkness as it hides among the clouds. It is too cold for the season. Ethan can see his breath puff in front of his face. A streetlight flickers down the road. Where he would normally continue on his walk, he stops. And he waits, not knowing what he is waiting for.

Then, there is this feeling nagging in the back of his brain. A draw to the graveyard. An invitation to enter the gates.

The tug is something he cannot comprehend at first. Then he can see it. He sees the shadows. It is dark, there should not be many shadows. But the moon gives just enough light for Ethan to see them. On the street, they are hidden. But in the graveyard, they are everywhere. Hiding behind the gravestones, underneath trees, coming out of the fences. They look faint but stark against everything else. Looming in the darkness. But more like just waiting where they belong, confined within the gates.

He glances over his shoulder, to the entrance of the graveyard. Only a few sidewalk-squares away. Just retrace a few steps and there he would be. Ethan allowed himself to retrace those steps. Past the open gates. Stepping into the graveyard, his own shadow in tow, Ethan makes it onto the cobblestone path and enters the premises. Following the stone patterns spread out under his feet, he presses forwards.

There are rows upon rows of the dead. But nothing in here was going to hurt him. Nothing dead anyways. So, he takes his time. Just a little stroll in the graveyard late at night.

Soon he is immersed in the grounds. The fog low and overtaking him, eyes only able to see in a small bubble around him. Somehow it is not as cold as outside the gates, despite the frost coating the grass and tombstones. An inviting warmth shielded him. A warmth that made him feel safe and welcome. He is no longer tired, that feeling lifted off his conscience and left at the entrance.

Stone with names and dates and last messages. A crow caws in the distance. The breeze blows strong and firm. Dark colours. Dried flowers and weathered stuffed animal offerings. The scent of the earth. The sound of loose gravel crunching under his feet between the cobbles.

There are so many people here, yet they are not. They’re dead. The sand in their hourglasses collected at the bottom. Time ran out, leaving them to rest underneath the layers.

It was a calming thing to think about.

The idea repeats in his head as he makes his way deeper into the fog, deeper into the final resting place for so many individuals. The deeper he goes, the more shadows he sees. Latching onto their gravestones, their names, their birth to death dates, to their owners. Some shadows do not move. Some lay in acceptance. Some struggle against the wind. Others refuse to be put down, to be silenced. But most are forever still as he passes by.

Ethan’s own shadow takes each step with him. The deeper they go, the more graves and the more shadows they see.

The dense rows begin to fade. The fog begins to part as he gets closer to a clearing he stumbles upon. A nice patch of grass surrounding a tall pine tree on a little hill. Different to the setting, yet it fits in with the grounds. An inviting space, a place to take a break.

Ethan takes a seat underneath the big pine. His shadow sits with him. The dead needles underneath him a prickly cushion. He just sits and takes a deep breath, breathing out hot air into the cold. He looks down at the shadow attached to him in the darkened night. It sits still. A comforting presence accompanying him, there every day. If he looked long enough, he might be able to see it give him a little wave.

He knew one day his own shadow would eventually engulf him in darkness. Take him away to whatever lay beyond. Drift off together. Someday.

It did not seem like a threat to Ethan, however. After all, it is like a partner in this life. A companion assigned the day you were born. Sewn to the bottom of your feet, undetachable, sharing the valuable steps you take through time as your own clock ticks away.