I used the expression silent like the grave all the time. Whenever I found myself in a place away from the noise of the city, away from large crowds, deep underground, I’d throw it out there.
Often to attempt to creep out my colleagues, or sometimes to break the tension in a silent room.
The thing is, though, that graves aren’t all that silent.
At least not in our cemetery.
Our little domain has a large number of trees scattered around the area—some cypress trees swaying regally in the wind, several plane trees forming a tunnel down the main path, one huge cedar tree throwing shade on dozens of graves in the southwest corner—which, quite logically, draw many chirping birds of all shapes and sizes. The flowers, both the wild buttercups, dandelions, and violets growing naturally between the graves and the bouquets of chrysanthemums or roses brought in by mourners, draw their fair share of insects.
We’re in a small village, so we don’t suffer too much traffic, but the occasional car does drive by and the mayor’s son zooms past on his scooter at least four times a day.
This isn’t silence.
But it is calm.
And once in a while, our calm is broken by a new arrival. For a short time—days, weeks, or months, depending on the situation—we have a case to solve, someone to help, a ghost to guide through the afterlife.
Although I’ve learned to enjoy the calm, sometimes, like right now, I wouldn’t mind a little excitement.
Clothilde and I usually settle in at a distance during funerals, leaving the grievers their room and not unsettling any of them if they should be particularly sensitive to ghosts. We’ve both developed a rather morbid sense of humor after thirty years together in this cemetery but we refrain from practical jokes during funerals. Mostly.
We’ll get closer to the mourners once the casket is lowered into the ground and people start to chat—in case someone lets slip information that might become useful later.
We’ve made it our purpose in afterlife to help whoever becomes a ghost to move on. We don’t know where they move on to—neither of us have done it, obviously—but we’re convinced it’s a better place, something to strive for.
Not everybody becomes a ghost. In fact, the vast majority of people who are buried in our little cemetery don’t. Only the ones with unfinished business with the living linger.
So we help them finish it.
Judging from the crowd exiting the church today, I’m willing to bet that today’s new arrival was both young and popular. The only reason for this large a number of people in their early twenties to come to a funeral is if one of their own has died.
As the casket exits the little stone church, the crowd at the foot of the steps keeps growing and expanding. There’s no way there were enough pews for everyone to be sitting during the ceremony. They spill out like slow-moving lava, the first ones being gently pushed back by the people behind them, covering the narrow asphalt-covered area and overflowing down the narrow paths winding through the cemetery. Some kids even climb onto the less-cluttered graves, to the mortification of their parents.
The closest family is usually the last ones out of the church. They accompany the casket as it’s solemnly carried through the cemetery. If I were to venture a guess, I’d say the men carrying the casket today are father and brother, and five friends looking like they haven’t quite grasped what is happening. Shell-shocked but doing their job.
Something relatively unusual: a young woman is part of the team carrying the heavy load. She even has the spot up front, across from the man I assume to be the father of the deceased. Her chestnut hair is pulled into two tight braids, reaching just below her shoulders. Her black dress drops to right above her knees and although it’s far from form-fitting, this is clearly a very active and strong young woman.
I have no doubt she carries her part of the weight of that casket, and then some.
Her lips are set into a firm line, her beautiful dark eyes focused on the priest’s back in front of her. She looks almost detached and doesn’t give the slightest reaction whenever someone talks to her or touches her shoulder as she walks past. She seems emotionless.
I’m sure she’s anything but.
“Doesn’t look like we’re getting new company,” Clothilde says. She’s sitting on the roof of a mausoleum not far from the newly dug hole the procession is aiming for, her gray, ghostly feet dangling, passing through the stone as if it isn’t there. She looks to be close to the braided woman’s age, except she has looked this way for thirty years. If she’d been allowed to live, Clothilde would have been in her fifties today.
Her attitude never quite made it out of puberty, though. Sometimes it’s annoying, but mostly it keeps me on my toes and brings some much-needed levity to the naturally somber atmosphere of a cemetery.
“Guess not,” I agree from my position leaning against the mausoleum’s north wall, hands in my front pockets. I have a larger preference for respecting the physical laws of the living realm than Clothilde. Call me old-fashioned.
Usually, when someone becomes a ghost, we know as soon as the casket exits the church. The screams of someone waking up locked inside a sealed casket can be very impressive. Unfortunately for us, ghosts can hear the screams of other ghosts. Fortunately for the living, they cannot.
Depending on the person, it can take up to several weeks to come to terms with the fact that they’ve become a ghost. The casket will only release into the cemetery the ghosts who’ve accepted their fate.
Yours truly took close to two weeks, so there will be no judgment from me.
Today, there are no screams.
Whoever this young person was, he or she must not have had any unfinished business that needed handling before moving on.
We watch as the priest says a few last words, the casket is lowered into the ground, and the closest family throws tiny shovelfuls of dirt on top of the casket. The girl with the braids is the first to do so, even before the parents—she must be the sister.
Clothilde and I stroll around the periphery of the group during the ceremony but we don’t pick up any interesting information. The person who died seems to have been named Anouk and she died in a car crash. And everybody keeps throwing furtive glances at the sister.
The young, braided-haired woman is the last to leave. The parents also stay for a while but after a moment’s silent conversation between the two, they leave their daughter to say her goodbyes in peace.
Except she doesn’t say anything.
For close to an hour, she stands at the foot of the grave, so close to the edge that her toes extend over the hole, her face the same mask as during the ceremony, her eyes unfocused but directed at the casket six feet below her.
Clothilde wanders back to her own grave while I stay and keep the young woman company at a respectful distance. I don’t attempt to talk to her or touch her but I believe that on some level, she will know she is not alone.
Finally, as the shade of one of the cypress trees covers her sister’s casket, the young woman steps back.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she says before she walks quickly down the path toward the church, turns into the parking lot, and drives off in an old and battered Peugeot.
That is when the screaming starts.