Xaos - Chaos Magick

I don’t believe in ghosts - I thought, as I lit a cigarette and temporarily blinded myself with the sudden flame of the lighter. ‘Ghost’ is too broad a term to believe in. Some people consider it to be the remnant of a memory, others say it’s the whole of a soul that’s failed to find peace; the definitions go on and on, and never wholly define the term. Give me a better word and I might find my belief.

It is past the witching hour. Ghosts don’t hold to arbitrary time tables, and I’m cold and the smoke is making me feel colder. The lamplight is weak; each lamp is old, spaced far apart. It is dark beneath the cloudless sky and the lightning like branches swaying above my head. The bench affords me no protection from the biting cold, and I hunker down into my scarf and overcoat.

We had our first frost last week; puddles froze and icicles grew on guttering. The weather forecast says tonight will be another snap, and it certainly feels cold enough to freeze me to my seat. I don’t have a thermometer - who does? - and so I came out early, not wanting to miss anything. My breath seems to freeze in front of my face, hovering like a leaden cloud before escaping in wisps. The cemetery is equally leaden, cold and grey. The grass is grey and sparkly, the trees are dark and twisted, the paths are pitted with shadows. The gravestones yawn in greys and silvers.

I’m sat opposite two graves without headstones. Headstones take time to carve, time to erect, so these young graves lie naked. There are remnants of flowers at both, and a strip of that horrid plastic astroturf near one. I have no idea who might mourn those interred, I don’t know who lies in front of me across the way. I’m not here for them per se, but here to witness them.

My fingers are so very cold, and I’m thinking about smoking another when my breath catches and I exhale a stream of cold steam. I’m alert to every sound now, and my eyes dart left, right, left to track the echoes of crispy leaves scratching on the asphalt and the creak of a branch. Accross from me the graves seem to phosphor in the cold lamp light. Where shadows ought to drain, a haze coalesces. I’m looking from one unmarked grave to the next; I tell myself that the haze is only laying on the fresh mounds of dark earth but the truth is it’s covering everything. Everything in front of me, across the way, not this side of the path, not to my left nor my right.

The light breeze stirs the haze and I can see it move; it’s not a trick of the light, or the shadows, it’s an independent smog laying over the graves, flowing over the graves. I stare at the earthen pile of the grave to the right; I will myself to see the mist clearly, to identify wisps and track them carefully, never blinking. My eyes dart left and right and I mentally affirm that the vapour is thicker around the two fresh graves. I’m worried that I’m convincing myself too easily, but the mist is undoubtedly more active around the two mounds, visibly flowing and shining sinuously in the cold white lamp light.

Perhaps I lose track of time, or perhaps the breeze picks up for a second, but a chill runs through me so violently that I have to shift my weight and stretch my back. The mist rises thinly, I feel enveloped by cold vapours as if walking through a mountain cloud. I feel the coolness on my eyes, in my lungs.

I am the only son of an only son of an only son. I am also the seventh child of a seventh child, but don’t ask me to introduce my brothers and sisters, for I don’t know them well enough to do so. My grandmother’s mother told me once when I was too young to care what she told me, that souls move on in the winter. The first frost sets the timeframe; come the second, the natural cycle spins onward.

A story by Xaos.
I am a man of multitudinous experiences;|
many of which actually happened.

Photo credit: AZAdam