highgate (or the act of being grossly verbose)

During the day, Highgate Cemetery was peaceful, a little boring perhaps, when compared to the Highgate of the darkness. Night-time is when the spirits come out to play. Ghosts of wailing women search the yard for their children with rake-like fingers. The hungry dead rise from their tombs to feast on the blood and flesh of the living. Witched cast spells and conjure demons to corrupt the hearts of men. All this under the cover of darkness provided by clouds over a full moon.

But it was daylight when I ventured through the wrought iron gate into the historic cemetery, a perfectly safe time to enter, though the gate had been closed and the latch fastened. Determining it to be purely accidental that the gate had been left shut on such a beautiful morning for walking, I had no second thoughts about lifting the latch and slipping inside and closing the gate behind me once more.

Hands in my pockets, I began to stroll, taking in all the lovliness of the grounds as they spread ou below me. Trees flanked the grassy hills on all sides, their sweeping branches shifting in the wind and their brittle leaves whispering some long untold tale of nature. The tall and generally unkept grass rustled against the grey slate of the grave markers like a rattling breath.

I inhaled deeply. The air smelled of fall: of dead leaves and sunshine. My feet crunched in the fallen leaves as I walked the tiny, stone-lined path between the plots, admiring the aged stones and the romantic epitaphs engraved upon them in the flowery chiseled script of skilled hands.

One grave stone in particular had always scared and fascinated me equally every time I laid eyes upon it, and I felt my spirits sink as I turned the corner and saw it at my feet, a low, square stone, small and mossy with disregard. "I'm not dead, only sleeping," the epitaph read and then below that, the three chilling words that filled my heart with unimaginable dread: "Wake me up."

But what frightened me beyond measure, even more so than the strange epitaph, was the crude eye carved deep into the stone above the words. It was about the size of my palm, its almond-shaped lids containing an iris so dark and so large that hardly any room was dedicated to the whites. Three thick lines sprouted from both the top and the bottom in straight lines, giving the eye the appearance of having been drawn by a child. But there was nothing remotely childish or innocent in its sinister gaze.

I shuddered in the brisk October sunshine and pulled my sweater tighter around me. As I started to turn away, something caught my attention. The eye's dark iris seemed to glisten in the light as my shadow moved from over top of the stone.

Nothing could sate my curiousity, not even my unease, as I stooped down to further inspect this anomaly in the stone. I held out my hand and pressed my fingertips to the eye. A chill passed through me and I could feel the little hairs on the back of neck rise one by one. A cold trickle of sweat ran down the small of my back. My stomach turned.

Quickly, I drew my hand away and all feelings of disquiet immediately fled. With a sigh of relief, I looked down and found my fingers stained by with a dark red liquid. Horror surged through me once more like rolling thunder. I rubbed my fingers together, smearing the red into my skin and, as it dried, sticking my fingers together.

Blood.