The Cemetery Diaries

I’m a chameleon being, like all survivalists. I’ve been a lot of things, and a lot of places. Times have denoted that I be man and monster alike, handsome and revolting, alluring and outgoing, hermit-like and talented. At first I was a youth who mostly got around on the credit of his looks. Later I became tormented, but paid for my passage across the open ocean with my skills. Now I am a grotesque genius, in my own way. Like most geniuses, I am an addict, but I don’t have the choice of giving up the parcel of addiction and ability. Some people live their life in bottles, green, brown and crystal clear, undisguised decanters of sorrow. Others come to life only when they have white-hot fire buried deep in their heart, getting their hits from their veins. I get my hits in other people’s veins.

And so, I have many faces. I can wear many masks. Yet, I never could have believed for a second that one of those masks was the master mask, the mask of a creator. I’m special, but only in the sense that I’m uncommon amongst the worms wriggling in the damp, dark compost that is society’s underbelly. I’m nothing higher than that. I move in the shifting shadows of dusk, but I am not dusk’s conjurer. I turn my long-dead uncle’s diary over in my hands, admiring the splits in the leather, where heat has cracked it as drought cracks the earth. It is certainly, undeniably old. To think how poorly any skin but vampire hide would weather in the time this artefact has endured! But, no. I can’t distract myself from the diary’s true significance. With a long, slender finger that has known many intimate secrets, the secrets of hearts and arteries, things uttered in the slumber at death’s edge, I trace the secret of the words, their ink turned sepia with age.

We writers are creators… We experience everything more intensely than ordinary people.

‘Gotcha!’

I whirl around, and I see that the morning has regurgitated another creature of the night. This man is haggard, not my equal in age, but more than my equal in ageing. I guess a mere twenty-five years, at maximum, beneath the scraggly, salt-coloured beard and the earthen stains that hard scrubbing would remove. He is a thin character, stretched by too much thought, not enough food and plenty of drink; the kind of man who does well in the heat, and he’s grinning at me.

‘What are you doing here?’ I snarl, repressing the urge to cuff the stranger’s throat with my hands. I replace the book on its shelf, and bring my full presence as I square my shoulders, expecting a shudder that is mixed revulsion and fear. I receive no such reward. ‘Who are you?’ I demand.

‘I’m the occupant of these premises,’ you inform me, in a condescending tone. You’re waving a half-filled beer bottle around like a baton, sucking on its end at intervals. ‘And you’re trespassing on my property.’

‘This is my uncle’s cottage,’ I reply. I don’t bother to add the obvious fact that it’s a dump, clearly uninhabited and uninhabitable.

‘I don’t believe in pretentiousness,’ you say, missing the point.

‘I can see that.’ I cast another glance around, taking in the musty rug, the stained walls, the sunken ceiling and the dust, so much dust, enough to cover all the secrets in the world. I catch you swigging your drink again, and there’s a slight stagger in your step, something that tells me you have less immunity to alcohol than I do. Thunder rumbles outside, making your cower. I can tell that a storm is coming. I can feel the electricity in the air, static and enervating.

‘Your uncle…?’ you say, catching on. ‘Who was he?’

‘Cornelius,’ I reply, curtly.

‘What’s that you’ve got there?’ You jab a grubby finger at my pocket, where the diary I keep for myself and, I promise, somebody else to read in future, protrudes.

‘I’m writing a diary,’ I respond, my eyes narrowed.

‘Not true,’ you say, shaking your head in a meaningful way. Your eyes are wide, wider than alcohol alone could make them. ‘I know what you are. You’re a son of Isaac. You’re writing your own fate.