The Telling

moving shadows. That day in the rain seemed like an age ago; the gate into the woods must be somewhere nearby. I didn’t look.
    Bits of stone dug into my back and the air felt damp on my skin. I could smell the dark rot of the woods behind me. I could smell the crushed grass beneath me. I could feel my own pulse, the way it made my vision throb at the edges, each invisible blood vessel juddering with its work. I could feel the press of my feet into the earth, the way my calf muscles bunched and my thighs stretched. My hand was haunted by the memory of her wrist, thin as sticks. The failing flutter of her pulse beneath my pressing fingers. The beats of her butterfly heart. I counted her pulse, conscious of the press of Cate’s feet, pushing against the inside of me. The taut, hard pod of my belly. The smell of coffee and chrysanthemums and cancer. And the great choking lump that was in my chest.
    And then a shift. So peripheral to the vision that it registered in the flesh. I couldn’t help myself. I looked up, casting around. The worn faces of the gravestones stared back at me, blotched with damp. The boundary wall stretched out in either direction, its stones dark and cornerless, tracing an egg-shape around the dead. The earthwork rose up to my right. The light was failing fast, colours sliding into grey. The breeze kicked up again; boughs creaked against each other, branches stirred. I was alone.
    I straightened up and pushed away from the wall; coins dug into my thigh, my phone bulged in a back pocket. My legs ached. The breeze stiffened. I scanned the churchyard. Still nothing.
    But then movement. In the corner of my vision. I swung around. An old headstone, low and dark; the same as the others. But there had been something there. Just that flicker of movement , like the houses melting, like the blackbird fixing me with its onyx eye. There would be a cat. A fox, perhaps. There would be a blackbird.
    I was vividly aware of myself; the way my feet sank into the soft earth, the oily chill of my nose and chin, the tug and twist of my hair in the wind. I shoved my hands into my pockets. I was treading on grave earth; it seemed to give too much underfoot. Grit and cotton fibres pressed under my nails. My skin was bristling with cold.
    The trees stirred in the wind, hissing. The shadows flitted over the headstone, making it look as if the stone were crawling with words. I came to the foot of the grave. No sign of a cat, a fox, not even a bird. Nothing but long tangled grass, bleached and dead and sodden. I came close, crouched down and rested a hand on the top of the stone. I read the family name. It was in capitals, across the top of the stone, like a headline. The stone was granular and cool, like sugar.

WILLIAMS
     
    I rubbed at my arms and peered at the smaller lettering underneath . The first burial was in March 1802. Sara Williams and her infant daughter, Mary, buried together. Forty years later, Sara’s husband, Isaac, was interred at sixty-three. Death in childbirth, the husband forty years a widower. I found myself welling up, stupidly, at this. I knelt down to peer at the names beneath. Damp pressed up from the earth and through my jeans. The letters became more cramped and narrow the further down the headstone they progressed. Tobias, Isaac’s son, and Anne, Tobias’ wife. The lettering had been eaten by the damp, algae softening its edges. I pushed aside the long grass at the foot of the grave.

also their son, THOMAS
     
    Unease drew itself together, thickened and crept close.
    Moss grew up the base of the stone; I pressed at it, feeling the dips and troughs of carving underneath. I dug a nail underneath the edge and peeled the moss away. It came off in a scab, bringing with it a layer of the crumbling stone. In uncovering the words I was eroding them, but I couldn’t stop. The stone was darker, damp, the words shallow and indistinct. The name was in capitals . An elongated rectangle of a name.
    The breeze gusted stronger, blowing hair across my face; I pushed it back behind my ears. Then I remember a curious feeling of stillness, as if the breeze stopped, as if my heartbeat and breath were suspended for a moment. I did the only thing that I could think to do. I shuffled close. With a fingertip, I followed the loop and curve and rise of the first word. I was like a child again, struggling, tracing letters with a fingertip, forming words with my lips. The long grass brushed at my inner wrist.

and