The Cemetery Diaries
Flowers of Death
It’s back to feeding, back to days that are nights and nights that last forever. We are twins, light and dark, gold and black, stalking the cemetery that rings my churchyard home. I thought I had lost you, but then I found you again, in another body, in another place, my love. I step over headstones from three hundred years ago, taking the centuries in my stride. I lope, and you whisper beside me, your cloak running like liquid over the ground, over the ornamental rocks and the weeds in the meditation garden. That’s what they call it, this alcove of greenery beside the old church with its nightmare steeples biting into the night like prongs or fangs. This is where the roses grow, where my roses grow, but you’re a tiger lily, not a rosebud or a lily of death. I’ve never had a flower like you before.
They call it a lich gate, because this is where the liches, the dead bodies, enter the cemetery. In the olden days, it was where the biers were carried and the priests gave their blessings in shelter from the rain. These days, it rains seldom in this catchment. The drought has been long, and coffins are plentiful again. The lich gate is no longer needed, superfluous and anachronistic. It belongs to another time, to the time I haunt. Like you and I, it’s a relic in a mortal world.
Come through my archway, into my universe, my little slice of history. Come through to the churchyard where the graves are oldest, and weep for all humanity has lost, though it will never bear a loss as great as ours, we who have lost humanity altogether. We have even lost our names and our personalities. We’re one interchangeable shadow to the human beings, but not to me. I’m developing a taste for names, having given out one already. That name was Trixie, but I speak it no more. You, I shall call Tiger, after the way you walk, and Lily for the coldness that runs in you. Tiger Lily, my newest pet. If we were living, I might call you my mate. Perhaps we may procreate yet.
We tread amongst the sleepers, disturbing none of the stones that lie on their heads. We pass under the pine trees, amongst showers of needles that rest in heavy piles upon the rows. Crows harken our presence, unsure why they are so alarmed by us. Their calls barter to and fro, changing direction with the wind. It is a silent night, a night for regathering. I gather myself, and turn down the path that runs cobbled to the crypt. Here is my absolution, beneath holy floors and holy waters, where I am least suspected to dwell, but we go merely into the church, not below it. They always hold weddings here in the summer night, weaving fairy lights amongst the groves of vigilant trees, and lighting candles whose flames burn like will-o-wisps in the balmy darkness. Parties are contained across the churchyard, in the old town hall whose windows are waxy bright. Soon, the ladies and gentlemen will emerge from both sets of doors, from church and hall, to meet and mingle, and only a few will go missing.
I pick the ones who look most like us, who wish to approach death in black velvet, but know not the true nature of her veil. They expect the pretty gauze of dusk, strewn with stars like handfuls of diamonds. They see in courting death an echo of love, a shadow of a bride’s veil. They fathom not the cold chill of the tomb, and the feeling of that curtain like a dusty spider’s web, limp and lifeless with decay. This is the true covering of the entrance and exit of worlds, and some will step through it tonight, feel it weighing heavy on their eyelids as they glimpse phantasms on the borders of their last dreams.
This is as close to a family as we come, to wear the veil of death together and hunt under its disguise. You are my one and only, and they are your bride’s maids, the ones who come to flirt with us in the dance, after the nuptials are over. It is a masked ball, under the mottled sky. They never suspect. Lithe fingers fold themselves into my hands, wanting to be held, longing for indiscretion. I’ve got an admirer now, and so do you.
We lead our respective victims by their hands, never meeting their hooded eyes, enticing them with feeling. They walk out into the grove of the meditation garden, passing through the lich gate as they come. They’re never coming back. Throats bared, into the twilight they bleed, and into the beds littered with rose petals they fall. These flowers are plucked, not preserved like you and I. We are eternal blossoms, blossoms made of silk, of silver, of gold. Only cold and still and dainty things fill the reaper’s bouquet, or wear its stolen scent. Only our artifice can trump nature, and make her lay her aces flat. She folds.
They call it a lich gate, because this is where the liches, the dead bodies, enter the cemetery. In the olden days, it was where the biers were carried and the priests gave their blessings in shelter from the rain. These days, it rains seldom in this catchment. The drought has been long, and coffins are plentiful again. The lich gate is no longer needed, superfluous and anachronistic. It belongs to another time, to the time I haunt. Like you and I, it’s a relic in a mortal world.
Come through my archway, into my universe, my little slice of history. Come through to the churchyard where the graves are oldest, and weep for all humanity has lost, though it will never bear a loss as great as ours, we who have lost humanity altogether. We have even lost our names and our personalities. We’re one interchangeable shadow to the human beings, but not to me. I’m developing a taste for names, having given out one already. That name was Trixie, but I speak it no more. You, I shall call Tiger, after the way you walk, and Lily for the coldness that runs in you. Tiger Lily, my newest pet. If we were living, I might call you my mate. Perhaps we may procreate yet.
We tread amongst the sleepers, disturbing none of the stones that lie on their heads. We pass under the pine trees, amongst showers of needles that rest in heavy piles upon the rows. Crows harken our presence, unsure why they are so alarmed by us. Their calls barter to and fro, changing direction with the wind. It is a silent night, a night for regathering. I gather myself, and turn down the path that runs cobbled to the crypt. Here is my absolution, beneath holy floors and holy waters, where I am least suspected to dwell, but we go merely into the church, not below it. They always hold weddings here in the summer night, weaving fairy lights amongst the groves of vigilant trees, and lighting candles whose flames burn like will-o-wisps in the balmy darkness. Parties are contained across the churchyard, in the old town hall whose windows are waxy bright. Soon, the ladies and gentlemen will emerge from both sets of doors, from church and hall, to meet and mingle, and only a few will go missing.
I pick the ones who look most like us, who wish to approach death in black velvet, but know not the true nature of her veil. They expect the pretty gauze of dusk, strewn with stars like handfuls of diamonds. They see in courting death an echo of love, a shadow of a bride’s veil. They fathom not the cold chill of the tomb, and the feeling of that curtain like a dusty spider’s web, limp and lifeless with decay. This is the true covering of the entrance and exit of worlds, and some will step through it tonight, feel it weighing heavy on their eyelids as they glimpse phantasms on the borders of their last dreams.
This is as close to a family as we come, to wear the veil of death together and hunt under its disguise. You are my one and only, and they are your bride’s maids, the ones who come to flirt with us in the dance, after the nuptials are over. It is a masked ball, under the mottled sky. They never suspect. Lithe fingers fold themselves into my hands, wanting to be held, longing for indiscretion. I’ve got an admirer now, and so do you.
We lead our respective victims by their hands, never meeting their hooded eyes, enticing them with feeling. They walk out into the grove of the meditation garden, passing through the lich gate as they come. They’re never coming back. Throats bared, into the twilight they bleed, and into the beds littered with rose petals they fall. These flowers are plucked, not preserved like you and I. We are eternal blossoms, blossoms made of silk, of silver, of gold. Only cold and still and dainty things fill the reaper’s bouquet, or wear its stolen scent. Only our artifice can trump nature, and make her lay her aces flat. She folds.