MicroHorror

Edmund Clemm hadn’t seen anybody in the cemetery for a very long time. Off in the woods on a short, craggy rise, he wondered if the townsfolk knew it was there. They placed graveyards on flat land now, but in Edmund’s youth they wouldn’t waste prime farmland like that. He remembered digging a few graves here, how rocky and unyielding the earth had been.

Edmund tried to recall when he had last seen Ms. Berkley visiting her husband’s marker. Surely she would have been in her nineties by then. Edmund had stopped counting his own birthdays after he had become a nonagenarian. After a certain age, what did it matter anymore?

His mind drifted back to when he and Ms. Berkley would share a few words each day, and early in their friendship, Edmund remembered thinking she could have passed for his mother, had Mother lived that long. Edmund had been a young boy during his mother’s trial. The town’s elders had pressured him into given testimony, and later that same day, they made Edmund light an area of dried wood, igniting the pyre. As the flames kicked to life, Edmund stepped back, his mother’s eyes catching his. A heavy weight descended in Edmund’s chest then, bearing on his ribcage and weakening his knees. Only when Mother began to scream did his burden lift.

I was so young, Mother, Edmund thought. Please, forgive me!

He didn’t want to ponder that anymore. And besides he was here to see his wife, Eleonora–not brood about the past.

Eleonora rested at the top of the slope and Edmund’s ancient bones climbed the hill without hardship. He had enjoyed a lifetime without physical discomfort, having never needed the services of a doctor. His only experience with doctors had been when Eleonora was dying with the cancer. Edmund didn’t like to think about how Eleonora had looked when she died and had chosen to remember her healthy spirit and beauty.

Edmund reached his wife’s stone, sitting on the damp grass. After all the years, he still missed Eleonora and loved her as much as he had on their wedding day. He never considered suicide, fearing Hell, though he did hope he would die in the cemetery by his wife’s side. Could there be a more fitting place?

The sun registered the passage of yet more time, shadows of the forest creeping along the hill. During the long, slow hours, Edmund wondered about his mother’s ashes. He never knew what had been done with her charred remains.

A horseless carriage backfired on the distant dirt road, pulling him away from those thoughts. No Luddite, Edmund knew progress was as inexorable as Nature. A few months back he had viewed his first moving picture and, stranger still, he had read in the papers about the Wright Brothers’ successful test of a flying machine in Kitty Hawk.

As darkness came, Edmund spoke the words he always said to his wife.

“If my mother’s spell ever breaks, Eleonora, I will see you again. The wait seems insufferable, but my moment will surely come.” He placed his lips on the mossy, cracked stone. “Until tomorrow, my love.”

Time had faded the etchings on the marker, but Edmund knew the words by heart: ELEONORA CLEMM, born April 1684, died October 1733.