Beginning | Previous Page | Next Page
That night, just as she’d closed her book and blown out the candles, she saw movement out her window. For a moment, she thought she was seeing that dancing light again, and felt bad that the ghost hunters weren’t there to see it. She soon realized, though, that she was seeing two flashlights, close together, darting back and forth across the cemetery.
She smiled. They were back.
She shrugged into her white hoodie and zipped it halfway. She wished it were a white dress; that would be much more dramatic. But she figured this would do. She covered that with another sweatshirt, this one a plain black, which she zipped up to the neck, making sure it completely hid the hoodie. She laced up her hiking boots, grabbed her keys, and slipped out into the night.
Even with the moon close to full, she was a shadow among shadows. She knew the cemetery well, knew all the places she could hide: wide cypress trunks, tall tombstones, benches, flowering bushes. She even knew about a cracked slab of cement that opened into a large, underground space from where, she liked to think, an actual zombie must have escaped. She had no problem drawing close while staying out of sight.
She could make out most of what they said; they weren’t trying to be stealthy. Like before, they walked as two couples; unlike before, the couples stayed close together. Two of them swept flashlights across their path while their partners fiddled with knobs and switches on electronic devices. Sam was narrating their adventure into a fancy-looking voice recorder. She had a nice voice.
They alternated between semi-confident requests for the ghosts to “manifest” themselves (“What’s your name?” and “You can manipulate these lights if you want to communicate with us”) and nervous laughter, punctuated with yelps (“Was that you? Don’t do that!” and “Did you hear that?”).
Emma Lee saw a vase of dead roses at the base of a nearby tombstone. She dumped the flowers—alleviating her guilt by muttering, “They’re dead, they don’t care”—and threw the vase high and far behind the gang. It landed in the grass with a muted thump. All four of them jumped and turned and moved in the direction of the sound.
Brave of them, she thought; maybe they are true believers.
She sneaked across the open lawn to the mausoleum without being seen. She crossed the front of the building, pausing to rattle the chains hanging from the door’s security gate. The noise was loud enough that it startled even her.
Once through the hidden gap in the hedge, she hurried around toward the rear of the building. She knelt down and peered around the corner.
The gang stood tightly together, in conference. The flashlight beams shifted nervously toward the front corner of the mausoleum. One of them, probably Myles, stepped forward, a gadget held out in front of him like a ward. He cried out when the light briefly flitted from green to amber.
Emma Lee looked around. From this point, at the top of the rise, she was slightly above them, but she knew she’d be out of their line of sight once she moved over the rise, into the gravestones behind her.
So she did that, staying first behind the building, and then crawling quickly to a headstone she liked: broad, waist-high, next to a much taller monument. The matriarch next to her patriarch, she thought.
She peeled herself out of the black sweatshirt—not easy, it turned out—and laid it in the dirt. She zipped the white hoodie to her neck, lifted the hood over her head, and pulled the drawstring tight. “Okay, ‘Emily,’” she whispered. “Let’s do this.” She rose, slowly, slowly spreading her arms, spreading them wide like the statue of the angel at the head of the driveway.
She glowed in the moonlight.
They didn’t see her at first, but, even at this distance, she could tell the exact moment they did. One of the guys gave a stifled shout and pointed, and the others spun in her direction. A flashlight dropped to the ground; the other remained motionless, pointed off in an irrelevant direction.
Emma Lee brought her arms across her chest as she slowly bowed down behind the gravestone and, once out of sight, grabbed her black sweatshirt and hustled, keeping low, until she was again behind the building. She jumped up and headed for the gap in the hedge, struggling into the darker sweatshirt. By the time the ghost hunters had conquered their shock, she was huddled in the darkness, heart thumping in her throat as she made sure the white hoodie was completely hidden.
She crept along the fence, pausing to watch from the deep shadows of a broad cypress. They were whooping and high-fiving, sweeping the flashlights in wide arcs, looking for any evidence of what they were sure they’d seen.
Emma Lee returned to the trailer. She watched the dance of flashlight beams until the adrenaline ebbed and she was tired enough to slip into bed.
At least one of the ghost hunters hadn’t slept that night: the written version of their escapade, accompanied by a couple eerie, night-vision photos and a promise for a video later that day, was posted on their blog when Emma Lee checked in the morning.
By evening, as promised, they had updated the post with a surprisingly well produced video that covered most of their day, culminating with a wonderfully vague few seconds of the actual “sighting.” At least one of them had been filming, and had managed to catch Emma Lee as she was dropping down behind the gravestone. At that distance, in that light, and with the hill between them, it looked like the figure, glowing and hazy in the moonlight, simply melted into the ground.
“I’m a ghost,” she told Mayumi, and handed her the phone, open to the Spooky Gang blog.
“What?” Mayumi said. She glanced at the blog, scrolled quickly—and then frowned and read more closely from the top. She scrolled up again and hit play on the video. The wavy Spooky Gang logo zoomed into view, to be replaced by a night-vision look at the cemetery gate. “What is this shit?” she asked.
“Go to about 7:30,” Emma Lee said.
Mayumi turned the phone so it would go full screen and tapped a few times. She found the spot, as instructed, and watched. Her eyes widened. “Wait. What?” She tapped at the screen and watched again. She looked up at her friend. “That’s you?”
Emma Lee put her hand on her chest, eyebrows raised in mock innocence. “Moi?” she asked.
Mayumi watched again, from the top. By the end, she was laughing hard. “You are fucking evil, Emma Lee.”
Emma Lee smiled and took the phone back. She tapped and scrolled and watched herself melt into the ground.
“You know they’re all going to come here now,” Mayumi said.
Emma Lee’s smile broadened.
Beginning | Previous Page | Next Page
Story by Greg Kemble. Art and animation by John David Irvine (thejohnirvine.com).
In addition to reading the series on the blog, you can enjoy “Emily’s Grave” in a few other formats (you’ll find links to all of these versions at the Emily’s Grave (a story) page):
- Videobook (YouTube) – I commissioned my friend and former student John David Irvine—now an award-winning animator—to create an atmospheric animation to accompany the audio version of the story.
- Audiobook (mp3) – Recorded by the author (that’s me!). You can listen to it on the blog or download it.
- Print version (PDF) – If you prefer to read written text, you can view or download a PDF version.
Tip Jar – Pay what you like, if you like.
A-and there’s merch! If you like John’s cover art, check out the shirts, coffee mugs, stickers (and more!) at Redbubble.
About the author (that’s me!)
Close-to-retirement English prof.
Occasional musician, blogger, and writer.
Mildly Introverted, mostly harmless.
About the artist
Multi award-winning artist/animator/filmmaker John David Irvine is known for his unique style of handcrafted animation and darkly surreal imagery. His cryptic work explores identity, queerness, and generational trauma, wading into the everyday horrors that undulate beneath the veneer of the mundane. His award-winning short film COMMON MONSTERS is currently being expanded into his feature film directorial debut.
Check him out at https://thejohnirvine.com.
“Emily’s Grave” © 2021 (text) and © 2023 (audio and video) by Greg Kemble are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0