something new.
In the past few years, we’ve seen kids getting dressed up and going door to door trick-or-treating. Back when I was alive in the eighties, this wasn’t part of the Toussaint celebration in France but something we heard about from across the Atlantic. Now the tradition seems to be inserting itself into French society as well.
In the afternoon, we see the kids with their sugar. At night, it’s the teenagers and students—with their alcohol.
My inner police officer winces every time I see these groups. They’re drinking too much, wearing too little clothing, not always making sure nobody’s left behind. I once saw a girl who couldn’t be more than sixteen stagger down the street running along the south wall of the cemetery, wearing nothing but what appeared to be a bloody nurse’s uniform with a lot of pieces missing and clearly not in a state to take herself home. I wanted to help her, I wanted to call someone who could actually help, I wanted to yell at her friends for abandoning her.
But as a ghost I couldn’t do any of those things.
Tonight, it seems like someone wanted to up the stakes. At five minutes past midnight, a witch’s hat appears over the south wall, in the spot where the ivy covers it completely, quickly followed by the rest of the witch. She’s wearing all black, has long dark hair and enough makeup to make her look seventy instead of probably-nineteen. She jumps the wall and lands on our side with a little squeak and a stumble—yep, she’s drunk.
“It’s all clear!” she whisper-yells across the wall.
“What the hell is going on?” Clothilde asks. We’re standing on the Jacquier family tomb, watching the new arrivals. “Who breaks into a cemetery at midnight?”
“Someone who wants an extra thrill on the Night of the Dead.”
Three more heads appear over the wall and with various levels of expertise draw themselves over the wall and through the ivy, to land next to the witch. We have one nun with fake blood pouring out of a slit throat, one zombie who’s either very good at imitating the walk of a zombie or very drunk, and one—
“Is that girl dressed as a garden gnome?”
Baggy dark clothing, a red fluffy cap, huge fake beard, large black combat boots, and a heavy backpack. “That…uh…yeah, maybe weird garden gnome.”
The gnome seems to be in charge. “All right,” she says in a voice tense with excitement. “Let’s split up. Whoever starts running or screaming first loses. Selfies in front of at least six graves from different parts of the cemetery. And make it look good and scary, yeah?”
The zombie, who’s listing at a fifteen-degree angle, pats himself down, I assume in search of a phone. He ends up finding it in a back pocket and takes an inordinate amount of time to extricate it. “Goddit,” he slurs. And ambles off in the direction of the church.
The nun and the witch exchange a glance. “Let’s start down there?” The nun nods her head in the exact opposite direction of where the zombie went.
“Nuh-huh.” The gnome adjusts her backpack and I can hear the clinking of glass. Is she carrying the alcohol of the entire group in there? “We go separately. Otherwise it won’t be as scary. And we won’t see any ghosts.”
Clothilde chuckles. “They want to see ghosts, do they?” Her eyes gleam with anticipated glee. “Can I play? Please, Robert, can I play?”
I can’t decide what to think of the situation. The idea of teenagers coming into a cemetery at midnight in the search of ghosts feels…ludicrous. Who still believes in ghosts at that age?
Then again…there are actually two ghosts here and we’re most definitely real.
And the idea of messing with the kids—because, of course, they don’t actually believe in ghosts, they just want to give themselves a good scare—is quite tempting.
“Okay,” I tell Clothilde. “We’ll follow them around and see what opportunities come up. But no scaring so somebody actually gets hurt, you hear me?”
Predictably, Clothilde rolls her eyes. “Yes, Dad.”
There’s a short argument between the three girls, but the gnome ends up getting her way. They split up, each going toward a different part of the cemetery.
“I wanna mess with the nun,” Clothilde says, and takes off after the girl in question.
I’m more intrigued by the gnome, so I decide to follow her. She seems to be a lot less drunk than her friends but still clearly the instigator of this nightly outing. She’s also not at all looking for ghosts. She walks past looming mausoleums without so much as a glance inside, doesn’t spare a second thought to the rotting iron door that’s squeaking on its hinges in tonight’s slight breeze, and barely even notices the stone angel with only half a head and skeletal wings that people tend to stay away from even in broad daylight.
This girl in on a mission.
Her head does whip around when a scream sounds across the cemetery. It’s followed by loud cackling but I’m the only one who can hear it—I’d recognize Clothilde anywhere. Guess she managed to give the nun a good scare.
“Seriously?” the gnome girl mutters, hitches her backpack higher on her shoulders, and keeps going. When she passes the Beauvois chapel, her clear eyes dart inside.
I’ll admit to considering the possibility of doing like Clothilde and playing with the girl—until I remember I’m a grown man and a police officer to boot. Spooking kids in a cemetery really should be beneath me.
The gnome girl comes to a stop—in front of the Tessier grave.
She dumps her backpack on the ground and opens it to pull out a shovel of all things. Please tell me she’s not going to vandalize the grave of the poor Tessier boy. The mother has suffered enough as it is.
She walks around the grave with the shovel, studying the granite and the ground around it. She definitely wants in. Why?
After two rounds, she gives up. There’s no way for a person to get into that grave without some serious tools. A small spade certainly isn’t going to do the trick.
So she starts branching out. Leaving the backpack at the Tessier grave, she ambles past the neighboring graves, looking into the ones with chapels, going behind the large ones, apparently hoping for a hidden entrance.
Then she gets to the newest grave. The one that doesn’t host a casket or a body yet.
We don’t know who’s coming, of course, but someone died recently and their grave is being readied. They came in two days ago to dig the hole and I expect the funeral to take place within the week.
Another scream pierces the night. This time it’s definitely male and coming from a different part of the cemetery. Clothilde has decided to have fun with all of them.
The gnome girl looks up and frowns in the direction of the scream but doesn’t stay distracted for long. She seems happy with the empty grave. She goes to get her backpack and proceeds to empty it.
First three empty beer bottles. Then several heavy black plastic bags.
“What you got in there, little gnome?” I ask her. I’m not liking the looks of this.
A flash goes off somewhere nearby. I think I see the witch girl over by the scary angel statue—she’s working on their selfie challenge. Clothilde is standing right next to her—a shame she won’t show up in the picture—talking into the girl’s ear but from the lack of reaction, I’m guessing this girl isn’t sensitive to supernatural activities at all.
The gnome girl stays perfectly still, crouching by the open grave, and waits for her friend to move on. When she’s alone, she dumps the contents of one of the plastic bags on the ground.
It’s a leg.