ghost stories

bones

Someone suggested going to the cemetery in the middle of the night. It was 1995. Five of us, tromping through soggy October leaves and drizzle, cold air mixed with bonfire smoke and wet apple trees. Creeping our way over the grass in the dark, fingers running along tombstones. Drunk and stoned in that hazy way that held the world’s roughness at arm’s length for a few hours. We played Truth or Dare, and then one of the boys said there was a gravestone that had fallen over. The uprooted earth left an enormous crack in the ground, and he said you could see the edge of the casket beneath, although I think he made that part up. We dared each other to go sit there. To hold handfuls of the cold dirt in our palms, put our hands into the grave, feel ghosts reverberating on our fingertips. We went in search of the fallen tombstone, flashlights streaking light across the graveyard. I walked in front to look brave, but everyone knew I was pretending because my voice shook whenever I spoke. Trepidation hunching over my shoulders, quivering on the words that came out. My body always betrayed me like that. Somewhere across the cemetery, a dog barked. One of the girls screamed, so we all ran instinctively. I lost my balance on the wet grass and tripped over my own feet, tumbled down on my hands and knees. A small gravestone rested in the ground between my palms, and my flashlight rolled across it, illuminating the engraving. A square, flat stone that said: Baby Girl. The birth and death dates were the same, and my breath caught in my chest. Tiny bones resting underground. “Let’s go,” my friend said, and she jerked me up by the elbow to keep running. We ran through the soggy cemetery, zigzagging between tombstones, spirits at our feet. Five flashlights bouncing in all directions, throwing light like wild electric storms all across the sky.

Anna Doogan is a writer, dancer, and mother of three living in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Hip Mama, Mutha Magazine, and The Literary Kitchen. She was the winner of the 2015 Hip Mama Uncensored/Unchaste Readers Writing Contest.

For more work by Anna Doogan, visit her page on our Online Sundries site.