My name is Lewis King, and if you’re holding this letter and reading these words, it is very likely that I am dead.
Straight to the point, I don’t know what has befallen me, and I have held my own sanity in doubt for some time. Only the fact that I am still able to consider my mental state at all assures me that I still hold some degree of mental soundness.
My only hope at this hour is that this letter might serve to you, dear reader, as an explanation and warning as to what has occurred and that it might prevent someone else from following in my unfortunate footsteps.
This ordeal all started with my boyish desire to do a little “ghost hunting,” as is the fashion nowadays, in this very same vast and ancient cemetery. My drive to and from the office took me past the place twice a day, once in the early morning and again in the evening. I gave the place little thought in the beginning, but as time passed, the graveyard intruded into my thoughts more and more. You might say that the place called out to me with its own siren’s song and now I feel an unwanted kinship with that poor, weak fly who is stuck for good in the deadly, sweet nectar of the Venus flytrap.
Tonight is the last night of October and surely you will grasp the overtones of that dread date. Know that this morning, I packed a large flashlight, a digital camera and a tape recorder. My plan was to spend the night in the cemetery to see what experiences I might have. I half expected a boring night filled with nothing more than the sound of the occasional squirrel or the infrequent hoot of a prowling owl.
My flashlight batteries are long dead now, the result of what felt like long hours of searching for a way out of this dreaded place. My hand shakes as I write these words by the faint light of the distant moon. A bitter cold has descended on this place, joined by a weak fog that hangs about my knees and hinders my ability to see anything more than twenty feet ahead.
I cannot shake the feeling that I have crossed some unseen boundary, as if I am walking through some twisted mirror image of the cemetery I entered long ago as the sun sank in the west. My surroundings appear the same, but the moon seems to have slowed in its march across the vast vault of stars overhead. I listen, straining my ears, but there is no sound of bird or insect now, and I am afraid that there is no way out.
With that said, it would be a mistake for me to lead you to believe that I feel that I am alone in this place. The feeling that something, maybe many things, seem to move just beyond my field of view cannot be denied. At first, what remains of my rational mind took the noises as nothing more than the skitters and scratchings of tree branches across wrought iron fencing or maybe as the sound of leaves being blown down between the endless rows of headstones. Either way, the sounds are drawing closer, and I feel that I will lay eyes on their source sooner than I wish.
My wristwatch stopped a long time ago, and now I have no way of knowing how long I’ve wandered among the headstones and over the many graves. I feel that the sun should have risen long ago. Oh, I pray that it would, for surely its rays would lead me to an exit from this foul smelling place. Sadly, there is no hint of dawn in the cloudless eastern sky.
I know that the river flows between its high banks not far from here, and I distinctly remember that when I first arrived I could hear the faint sound of all that water moving south. Now, even when I am perfectly still, the river cannot be heard, but the faint mud and catfish smell hangs in the air more powerful than ever.
My stomach growls now for my hunger is as great as is my thirst. Would that I had thought to bring something to eat, a canteen of water or a thermos of coffee. Those things seemed so unimportant and unnecessary at the outset, but are now magnified and are adding to the misery of being lost in this cemetery.
Who knew this place was so large? In all my drives past it, did I appreciate the depth of the graveyard, the great distance that it must penetrate the surrounding forest? When I first realized that I had forgotten my way back to my truck, I thought it best to set off in one direction and walk as far as I could on that path. My thought was that if it wasn’t the right direction, I would either encounter a fence around the property or a wood line beyond which there would be no graves. Once there, I would follow the fence or forest edge as far as it would take me back to the cemetery’s entrance. Unfortunately for me, that sort of logic does not apply on this night in this place.
The feeling that I have walked a great distance, maybe many miles, through this place is unmistakable, but I know it is impossible. I’ve chalked that feeling up to nerves and being alone in such a place. Sadly, the farther that I have walked along my chosen path, I have only found more graves. At times, I found myself walking through long gaps of dry grass and darkness where there were no graves and just when I made to retrace my steps more graves would appear, and I would continue.
When my flashlight gave out, seems like a week ago now, I began to follow the general direction offered by the moon. It never seems to move now, and at times, when I look closely at the sky, the arrangement of the stars there do not seem quite right. For some reason beyond me, the stars don’t look right, as if they are out of position, as if they were stars you might see from the surface of some other world.
Again, I tell myself that there is no logic in such thoughts and that if I am to survive I should not waste too much energy on pointless thoughts such as these. If I am to survive, there is no point in pondering such fantastic ideas. I am sure that such thoughts are the product of nerves, hunger and the general situation.
Let it be known by whoever finds this note that I never would have even called my sanity into question or began this letter if not for one peculiar aspect of this experience. It all has to do with my beard. Only a short time ago it occurred to me that it is getting quite long now. All my reason tells me that I shaved my face clean this morning when I awoke, as I do every morning. Now it has grown longer than I have ever grown it in my life.
Again, I grasp at the idea that my fatigued mind is playing tricks on me. Hair, even on the face of a grown man, does not grow to that length in a day. The only reasonable and acceptable explanation is that I must have forgotten to shave for some time, an unrecognized omission in my daily routines.
I am getting close to the end of the page now, so I will bring this thing to a close. If you happen to find this letter, look about for me. My head pounds with hunger and thirst, and while I may be still alive, I may be too weak to call to you for help.
Sincerely written on this day, October 31, by Lewis King of Claiborne.
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