Only Sleeping

Wandering through the graveyard I find myself strangely drawn to a small stone in the top corner of the thick grassy plot. It is clearly very old as the carved inscription is quite worn.

I kneel down to try to get a better view. I lean into the stone to try to make out what thoughtful message the letters spell out. I can just make out the top line:

J D aged 6 mths

The age causes me to double-take. This clearly is the final resting place for a very small child- a baby in fact.

I cast my glance to the lines below to try to make out the epitath:

Let not your heart for me be weeping
I am not dead but only sleeping.

I recoil in horror upon reading this, gripped by some sudden instinct that a baby must be buried here alive. Unable to seperate the notion of Victorian sentimentality from reality it seems, I feel compelled to act: To free this poor innocent and endangered child.

Like a wild animal I begin clawing at the earth in front of the stone, digging with my bare hands, digging to release this wretched soul.

After burrowing down only several inches, what at first I had thought to be a mist, arising in the graveyard, now starts to take on an altogether different property: A nauseous smelling and tasting vapour which is now attempting to invade my lungs.

Coughing with the sensation, I draw back. I cannot continue for fear I might pass out. I look around me and decide to dive for shelter in the large stone hall just yards to my left. So I stumble off in the direction of the hall.

In The Graveyard

Through the haze I come to a clearing just up ahead. It is a grassy area, the odd gloomy tree dotted about. There are some dark gray slabs of stone standing upright. They look like - yes, gravestones. This must be The Graveyard in front of Bell School.

How did I come to be here? Must....try....to remember.

There was that knock at the door: That's the last thing that I remember. Seems like only moments ago but in fact almost a year has passed since then. I went to answer it in spite of my growing fear and trepidation. Then came the mask- the man in the mask if man it was.

That thing drew me out of the house with the pink door and into the street. I remember wandering down the street to my left, towards what my instincts assured me was the danger. I made it as far as Grünholz the Baker's shop. Then something told me to stop. Walk back in the other direction. No don't walk, run. RUN.

I ran for what seemed like an age but really only got as far as the next building past the house with the pink door. This was a building set back from the main street. It was a large old stone hall and in front of it was the haze which I walked through for days, maybe weeks till finally I reached the Graveyard.

This place is becoming familiar now. I know this place. I taught here. Yes, that is right. I'm starting to remember now that I am, or was, a teacher. But what is my name? If only I could remember my name. I'm sure it starts with a D or something like that. Perhaps I can look to the gravestones for clues. Perhaps my ancestors were buried here. Or perhaps I am buried here.

389

Three hundred and eighty nine. Blind Willie Johnson.

I had a friend once when I lived in this place. So many years ago.

We correspond every now and then. He sent me a picture of the house today perhaps in an attempt to jog my memory.

The house is For Sale. Yes, that is the one. That is the house where I reside in my dreams. That is the house with the grey bare walls. That is the front of the house. He has sent me another mail with a picture of the back of the house but I'm not ready to open that yet. The danger lurks there. Not ready. Not ready yet.

So much time is passing. Yes I was writing this journal only yesterday, listening to the music and then drifted, drifted off. Now I see that already more than a year has passed.

Where have they gone? Where have all the people gone? Where has all the time gone? It keeps on disappearing.

There is a knock at the door.

The old record-player

As I try to collect my thoughts my mind races from one flashback to another.

It's unsettling to be so unsure of my past but if I let the thoughts race I'm hoping I can piece together at least some semblance of a memory of my life before now.

This place so familiar yet so strange - perhaps it needs to be caught on camera. Perhaps if I can film my surroundings it will help me to stabilize it, help me to remember.

I like to film things. I remember that. Maybe I have a movie camera.

Now something pops back into my mind: A distant memory: As a boy I wanted to make films, and on one memorable birthday as I began to open an impressive present, I thought I spied a silver lens. However, that moment quickly passed as a second similar shape emerged. In fact these were not silver lenses but silver controls on a wonderful record-player.

This present spoke to my other passion I now recalled: Music. Then suddenly I realized, this was my family home. This was the house where I grew up. Though none of my family were now in it, surely the record-player was upstairs in my bedroom. I ran up the stairs, turned right at the top double-backing across the landing to the large bedroom I knew to be ours.

There it was: The record-player from my youth. At once I put on some music. I was in the mood for the blues.

The House with the Pink Door

Three days have passed since my dream of the derelict. I've spent that time trying to familiarize myself with my surroundings. When I woke up that day, I no longer knew where I was. Feelings of deja-vu came upon me often as I slowly started to recognize the old place.

The old place: I know I've been here for so very long and yet still it seems strange and new. This place could use a lick of paint or perhaps a stick of furniture or two. I can't remember why the place looks so bare. I just know this is how it's meant to look.

It's always spartan in decor. It's always the same grey walls. It's home though. It's the base. I know that. Then there is the outside: The outside holds some kind of menace. I can;t put my finger on it yet, It;s a different kind of threat outside the front door to that outside the back door.

The back door leads to the back yard which is open and that's where things tend to get physical. I don't quite know and can't put my finger on it exactly. I just sense that there are tensions that side of the house sometimes and the threat is physical. You need a way to retreat back into the house through the back door. You need to always keep that exit route close.

The front door though leads out onto a more public scene. There's no immediate threat there. It's just a more hidden, organized, watching menace you have to watch out for. You can step outside and venture a lot further than you can out the back. You can walk even as far as the end of the street right to where it opens out on to the main road that leads into the town.

You can even venture some way towards the town. So long as you come back. You must always come back. Back here. Back to the house. Back to the house with the pink door.

The Derelict

Last night I returned to Walker Street. It was early evening and
curiously bereft of souls. I walked through the dull grey evening light down the
steep tarmacadammed road staying, for some reason, in the middle of the road.
As I moved slowly down the hill I felt strangley intimidated by the old
stone houses on either side of me. I don't know why but they were blackened as if
by soot.

I approached the row that ran perpendicular to the rest near the bottom of the street.
These houses, I thought to myself, had long been unoccupied and stood derelict
with their windows black and ominous. Though this feature disturbed me, it also
drew me closer, almost close enough to peer inside the dirty, empty, glass
blackness. As I stopped to satisfy my unexplained curiosity in front of the first
of these houses, I stared into the gloom.

That's when it happened. Their faces startled me - the old couple suddenly appearing
behind the glass and staring right back at me. They were dressed in shoddy clothes,
looking as dilapidated as the house they suddenly appeared to occupy and their stares
were as vacant as the old black house should have been,

Looking closer at the face of the old man, I shuddered at the sight of his deep, black
souless eyes like deep endless pits of despair that seemed to draw the life right
out of me.

All at once, I awoke.