Read The Complete Collection Online
Authors: Susan Shultz
The Complete Collection
Tales From the
Graveyard
The Complete Collection
Susan Shultz
Loneliness and despair can
be crippling, especially to the young. In some cases, they can be a gift, as
they drive us inside ourselves to create an alternate world. Sometimes that
world can be a nightmare. Sometimes it can be a magical kingdom.
In my case, they are
both—I think of those whom I love every day.
They left me in life, but I
believe they are never far from us here.
These stories are dedicated
to two people whose births and deaths fundamentally changed me for life.
Susan Bjorklund
1970 – 1986
Firefighter Christopher
Siedenburg
1969 – 1994
I am grateful to my family
and friends for their support throughout those experiences, from then to now,
and during the writing of these stories.
Despair can be a window.
Loneliness can lead to learning what your mind is capable of. Darkness can be
devastating—but only if you let it.
Let me show you...
For Lucy and Annabelle
The Blacksmith
Tales From the Graveyard
Book One
Susan Shultz
This book is dedicated to my husband
and children, who are always so patient with me glued to a keyboard, and to my
wonderful friends and family who have been such a support to me.
It is also for the muse that lives
in all of us, allowing us an entryway into a beautiful dream, a magical world
of soft hues and blurred edges—but, especially, for mine.
“All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly
inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored
stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in
a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.”
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
—Shirley Jackson
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Table of Contents
I dreamed of you.
You came to me and took me in your arms,
but your head was at my chest. I was the mother, the Madonna, your healer, your
protector.
I held you to me, your head on my breasts,
and I felt your warmth against me, my fingers in your hair. I breathed in your
purity, your clean skin.
Your arms held me, wrapped around me
tightly. We breathed together, and then held our breath in the silence.
You listened, your ear at my heart. I
waited.
We both heard nothing.
But can I still love?
A baby bird fell. It toppled from the nest
and was caught in string its mother had gathered for nesting. Now it hangs from
its mother’s nest, rotting on a tiny gallows. It drifts in the breeze. Each
day, it rots away more.
My name is Ainsley.
I live among the dead.
My grandmother left me this house. She
died six years ago of ovarian cancer. My father left us when I was born. My
mother killed herself shortly after that. My grandmother raised me.
Behind my house is a graveyard. I spend
much of my time there. I tend to the graves, to the dead things, like an
anti-garden. To you, it may look somber. Dark.
To me, my graveyard is as beautiful as
spring flowers, as fresh as ripe vegetables, ready for picking, mid-summer.
My heart is dead. It does not beat. It
died some time ago. Although it is dead, it feels hunger, like a zombie. It lurches
on, seeking heat, blood. Sometimes it feels pain. The pain in my heart is the
spot where a broken bone, long healed, still aches when it rains.
My grandmother’s house is on a hill set
back from the road in a sleepy New England town. The driveway is hidden. No one
can find us up here. There was a time, when I was younger, when our isolation
frightened me. If a murderer were to break in with a hatchet, I’d be dead and
bleeding long before any police could save me. No one would hear my screams.
Now, I love being far away from
everyone. It seems appropriate. I want to be left alone with my thoughts and my
graveyard. And my secrets.
The graveyard is way at the back of my
large yard. The stones are very old and hard to read. I tend to the dead. There
is grave dirt under my fingernails. My grandmother told me stories about those
buried in the earth. I’m not sure if she actually researched any of it, or if
they were fairy tales to keep me entertained. Fairy tales of death, of sorrow,
and of pain. There was no fairy princess in these tales. No handsome prince.
The name of the family buried there is
Brown.
Mother Brown hated her young
daughter-in-law, my grandmother said. They fought for dominion over their small
house. The stress finally proved too much for the younger Mrs. Brown. According
to her gravestone, she died at twenty-two, but not before giving birth to a
child, who died an infant at two months. Poor Hubert tried to be a dutiful son
as well as a devoted husband and father, but failed miserably at all three. He
found himself caught in the middle between his mother and his young wife. After
his wife died, my grandmother said, Hubert’s mother got him back. All to
herself.
Set apart from the Browns is another
grave. I can barely make out the name on it, but it looks like
Bennett
.
My grandmother told me Mr. Bennett was the family’s blacksmith and friend.
The Blacksmith is my favorite.
Sometimes, I sleep on his grave. Sometimes he visits me, in my dreams, both
waking and sleeping. His hands are coarse from working with metal and heat. I
like their hardness. Don’t give me tenderness. I don’t need it. I love the
Blacksmith’s hardened hands, covered in calluses. I want him to seal off my
insides with his glowing red poker. I want him to make me a suit of armor to
cover my dead heart.
Some people claim they don’t know why
they kill. I do it to feel warmth. To feel life. When you live among the dead,
you start to miss that. The blood at the end of my knife looks like the red of
iron after it’s been cast on a fire. I can taste its heat.
I am thirty-eight years old. My
ex-husband, Daniel, left me just after my second miscarriage, when the doctors
told us I would never carry a child to term.
Even with fertility treatment, my body
couldn’t handle it.
He left me when I was thirty. Daniel
came from money, and his family insisted on having an heir. So did he. He is
full of himself. Daniel still sends me money now and then, and we visit
together. I am not angry with him for leaving me when I needed him most; it can
be convenient to have an almost-dead heart. Or was he the one who killed it? I
try not to remember when my heart died because then I remember the pain. I
don’t want to remember that. And I don’t want to remember when Daniel was my
husband. I don’t think Daniel remembered he was my husband even when he was.
After he left, I returned to my
grandmother’s house. It’s where I belong. My graveyard friends welcomed me. I
couldn’t see them, but I knew they were smiling.
I met Daniel in my early twenties.
Daniel was an up-and-coming stockbroker. I was an administrative assistant,
attending college at night to get my master’s in library science. He was
charming, and I was stupid. Our marriage was unhappy. There were other women.
My time with Daniel had already killed many things inside of me before the
miscarriages came.
Daniel remarried quickly, as I expected
him to. He now has four beautiful, blond children—two daughters and twin
sons. His wife is lovely. She sends me a Christmas card from their family every
year. She doesn’t mind Daniel, and so she belongs with him.
My hair is brown. I dress simply. I try
to blend in with the walls most of the time. You might have seen me once
somewhere, but I’m sure you don’t remember it.
On my knees, I pull weeds from the dirt
by the graves. My graveyard garden is perfect. Healthy grass, spots of
lavender. I scattered step-stones throughout the graves, and there is a bench
for me to sit on as I read or write poems for Sam. I’ll tell you more about him
later.
Beyond the stones, there are other
graves. They are unmarked.
Only the Blacksmith knows who they are.
