Grave Whispers

Duty beckoned the soldier to embark into battle. So, he abandoned his bloodline. Farewells were sung, comforts were released. The Carlisle household straggled along into Julian’s past. 

However, time marched on in his absence. 

On foreign fields, the stoic captain led his band of brothers into the fray. Yet, in doing so, he left a brother behind.

Stranded at home, his sibling, Robin, became despondent. The little bird’s mewls muted as a sign of protest. None of the captain’s correspondence would be given a reply. Six months of fraternal outcry left unanswered. With each absent reminder of home, the captain’s heart grew heavy. Then his paper trail leading home gradually dissolved.  

The captain’s lens fixated on his deployment and nothing more. 

However, soon enough Julian would see that blood runs thicker than water. 

As his tour soon drew to an end, the captain encountered an unnatural phenomenon. One that’d haunt his waking thoughts and latent dreams. That afternoon, the sun beat down on the outpost, upon those weary toiling in the sand. Yet, in his quarters Julian felt an unbearable shudder coursing through his veins. He tossed violently in his nap, as if writhing in pain. In that instant, like the pass of summer’s farewell into winter’s embrace, the captain’s blood froze where he lay. His body succumbed to a frigid fever. Cold sweats dripped down his skin. 

He arose as a shivering heap from the mattress, feet planted onto the floor. But, they did not feel something firm underneath them. Instead, Julian felt a pool of thick swill flowing between his toes. The stench of rusted iron polluted the room. A flick of the light switch revealed the stream of blood flowing into his quarters from the door…

The taint of death left its trail beneath his feet. 

Cautiously treading through the stream, he heard the swish of the blood flow ripple from his presence. The door knob creaked. Before him, Julian saw the babbling brook of blood ooze across the corridoor. Its trail led elsewhere, seeping underneath doors and staining the ground, stretching further away from this outpost for thousands of miles. The trail crossed land and water to reach him alone. In that moment, the captain knew where the trail of bloodflow began.

He is called again by his sibling’s echoes from the past. The next dawn, a letter greeted him with untimely news. A little bird was laid to rest while he was away. After his final tour, the soldier returned to lands forgotten, finally following the blood trail that never left his steps.

What name did he carry back home? Neither rank nor title served him anymore. Here, all semblance of his former self was lost. He tried in vain to regain his civilian life.

A week passed by him unaware.

In the meantime, he sought refuge in an old rented abode. The family name, Carlisle, remained straggling across mail addressed to him. A taunt at the formerly devoted son and brother he used to be. The grave captain couldn’t put the duty off any longer.

Last rites had to be observed tonight. He would take the last steps on the blood brook that never left his side.

So, Julian stood on the edge of a field, an exile in this strange land. The limestone archway loomed above him, bathed in a nocturnal glow. Ravens swept through the night, encircling their sanctuary. Their gurgling croaks dismantled his stoic spirits.

A perilous journey lay ahead of him inside the necropolis.

The stroke of midnight arrived.  

His mind and body knew to take the first step into the fray, but his heart would not allow it. This particular duty was the most uncertain of them all; it was also more reckless than those that came before. 

His warrior instinct commanded him to turn back. Yet, Julian was blinded by grief. The trail of his bloodline lead here. The taint of death left its mark upon him. A babbling brook of blood was oozing beneath his boots. It stained the concrete for miles, from war-ravaged lands all the way to here. It still ran thick, forever pleading him to follow no matter how far he ran away. So, the estranged brother let it guide him without remorse.

But the captain was always prepared. Clad in black, dressed in an inconspicuous hoodie, rucksack strapped on, torchlight in hand. He dared to disturb the slumber of the deceased. 

A conspiracy of ravens gathered around the outer wall. Hundreds of watchful eyes glared upon him from above. They were the sentinels of the witching hour. They demanded a token upon entry.

Julian pulled out a silver obol: the ancient coin etched with an all-seeing eye, unblinking and defiant against those wicked things seen and unseen alike. He opened his palm up towards the ravens - an offering to appease them. In one swift instant a shadow swooped down and snatched it from him. The black bird’s claws stroke through his flesh. His blood poured out and trickled down the side of his hand, rejoining the brook of blood flowing beneath him. He quickly fastened a bandage before continuing on his mission.  

The ravens cawed their haunting anthem. The wrought iron gates groaned open.  He was permitted to enter.

With a stoic stride, he boldly entered through the archway. There he went into the land of lost tales, where only ravens sang. 

The captain commenced his midnight vigil, marching across the dewy grass lawn. The bloodsoaked trail led far into the city of the dead. He prowled through the cemetery like a spectre, seeking out his target. The spotlight cast across No Man’s Land, where memories linger in the air and earth. 

Neat rows of statues lay in wait adorning the landscape, each a mummified corpse enduring outside their coffin. They remained erect in the shape they once breathed in, silhouettes casting their monolithic shadows in the darkening nightscape. A gathering crowd of grey sandstone, granite and marble that observed the intruders who enter their dormant city. Some remained centuries-old and long-forgotten. Some lay strewn and weathered by moss and lichen over decades. But other inhabitants were freshly carved - barely years or mere months had graced them - they glimmered under the night’s veil.    

Yet despite the inhabitant’s peculiarities, they all shared a mark: every single stone statue is engraved. Names etched across the chest where their hearts once lay, dates etched across the crown where their brain once sat. 

An entire history of a community steeped inside the confines of a cemetery. Julian scoured through the endless list of faces and figures that he passed by as he advanced further afield. He pressed forward through the fields ornated in innocuous marble, granite, and sandstone, defying the peaceful slumbers of the departed. 

Hearing the trampled footsteps of passersby, Julian bid each of these strangers a solemn nod. Tonight, they shared the same purpose: to seek communion with the dead. These faithful stalkers scoured the slumbering city, awaiting the appointed hour of reunion.

He moved delicately between graves, treading lightly across to avoid disturbing the peace. The slumbering souls did not stir around him: they relinquished any care for the affairs of the mortal world. Julian crossed beyond the hundredth neat row. I’ll be there soon, his thought a reassurance that his sibling’s cry will be answered for once.    

The captain remained stalwart in mind, yet fearful in heart. 

He had walked doggedly through the trenches of death, yet here despair hung heavier over him, like a grey cloud, trailing him wherever he roamed. As he approached closer and closer, his footsteps grew heavy in the bloodstream as if his limbs filled with lead. Although the plateau provided little resistance against his weary advances, his body defied his wishes. It anchored itself into the ground as he drudged along further into the graveyard. The tramples of his boots subdued to timid steps, then to shuffles, until he reached the adorned row of gravestones at the cemetery’s far Northern end.

When he eventually arrived at the objective, the stoic captain didn’t know what to do. He followed the brook of blood and its trail ended here. It remained pooled beneath his boots. His task is at hand, but he cannot command it from him. Julian stood before the gravestone statue marked: “Robin Carlisle, Born 12th September 2002. Died 6th June 2010. A boy full of promise, with a smile full of hope. Taken from us too soon.” 

The elder sibling stared vacantly at the grave of his kin. His gaze fixed upon the puerile statue, a boy barely eight years of age. The features were remarkably carved as if preserving the flesh and bone of this family legacy. 

The witching hour encroached.

Julian’s lips quivered as he falters on his words. It was time for his own eulogy far into the necropolis, where only the dead can hear him. The city came to a standstill as if permitting him to speak just this once. Neither lingering murmurs, nor the whispering wind dare to intrude during this pressing minute. He brazenly spoke the words aloud:

‘My brother had the habit of saying the right thing at the wrong time. I wished I could’ve been there to hear it one last time. Maybe then he could’ve knocked some sense into me before it was too late. I miss your voice.’

As he said it, Julian couldn’t quite remember the sound of his little brother’s voice. It was as alien to him as this land that he used to call home. The echo of memories replayed in his mind, yet there was no sound attached to little Robin, his sibling who always spoke from a tender heart.

The captain prayed to be chatting to blank fieldstone, instead of this haunting figure that only stirred tragedy. But before he knew it, the witching hour commenced. The veil had thinned out.

The city of the dead stirred. 

Stone grated and rumbled in the shadows. Suddenly, a choir of hushed wails resounded into the night. Julian fixed his eyes upon his sculpted younger brother revived to life. The little statue rose wearily as if from a deep slumber. Julian scrounged amongst his rucksack and revealed a possession that Robin used to borrow from him to play the nostalgic Snake game on. He handed the pocket-sized device over to the little mute statue, and it looked glumly at it for a moment. Suddenly, the Nokia 6110 phone lit up.

The statue typed crudely on it, handed it back, and Julian read the greeting. His eyes glowed with excitement. Disbelief had been dismantled. The captain looked left to right, gazing at all the other torchlights illuminated in the darkness. He wondered it their totems had worked as well. 

Although a pang urged him to reconsider this nonsense. Julian felt the warrior instinct surge again - What if this isn’t my brother I’m talking to? - and he deliberated on what else crossed the veil instead, lurking inside this statue boy…

But blood runs thicker than water.

The instinct was dismissed as Julian’s exuberant spirits seized him. The little mute statue examined this curiously. One passerby might say there was a hint of a grin lurking at the corners of its mouth.

They chatted back and forth, the old phone exchanged between brother’s hands in turn. The former captain fell into his old skin: unleashing a hearty chuckle and fraternal affection towards this block of sculpted stone. His instincts to flee this situation didn’t matter anymore, since it was his little brother that he believed to be peering through inside the cold stone eyes of the statue.

Meanwhile, the air became chillier around him, harsher on human flesh. Late night breeze sifted between the living and the dead as they mingled in communion. Many stayed late into the early hours before dawn. The night’s veil slowly lifting to reveal the sun’s sultry glare. Time to depart for all. Soon, this short-lived reunion would pass. But waiting another twenty-four hours for the next reunion felt like a lifetime away. However, many paid heed to the omens and swiftly took their leave. 

A faithful few, the captain and other trespassers, would bathe in this everlasting communion. Till death do them apart. Julian was a shadow of a man afraid to retreat from his little brother’s memory.

As he lingered, his senses dulled, his body deadened to the life existing beyond the fringes of the necropolis. Cars and lorries roared as they passed on their ungodly commutes. Dogwalkers roamed dejectedly wherever their animal companions wished. 

Julian eventually bid his farewell to the dead. But the necropolis wouldn’t permit his leave now. 

Before his body started to withdraw from the little mute statue, he muttered some final words under his breath.

‘It should’ve been me first,’ he said. 

Julian placed a tender kiss on Robin’s forehead and embraced the meagre body in his arms. The first ray of lights chirped on the horizon. The hour was too late.

As the captain turned to leave, a shudder crawled over his skin. A spectral hand grasped his shoulder and pulled him close. Then a ghoulish whisper echoed in his ear:

‘Welcome home. We can be here together, forever.’

Julian’s cries were muted in an instant. The trail of his bloodline ceased where he stood in this field. Every drop of the blood brook vanished in sight. Where there was once a captain who visited his kin, now there were two brothers, standing side by side. Forever reunited as a pair of statues inhabiting their new sanctuary.

Yet another slumbering soul had found their home within the necropolis.