There’s peace among graves. In the dead silence of night, graveyards are like a long exhale after years of holding your breath. You can hear the wind here. The night whispers of old demons and forgotten pets. The ground is alive here.
I overstay my welcome, night after night, a dying life among the living dead. The living world hums, a lot; explosions, glass doors, metal bullets, empty words. Too many things beyond my grasp—expectations, conversations, complications of generations. It’s so much and yet so little. Hollow screams of earning a future and mirages of a happy past. So much smoke and not a single spark. Here in the graveyard… here, there’s only the me, the silence, and my friends.
Maybe I drank the wrong gin. Maybe I ate a German delicacy that I wasn’t supposed to. Or maybe the world just broke me open and made a little room for the dead. I can’t say for sure, and I don’t wanna know either. Too many nights are lost to whys and hows; I prefer to stay in the now. Catch a bit of life before it passes me by, you know. Anyway, I don't know how it began, but I know that they talk, and I listen. The rest is just wool in a dryer.
I sit by Hermon’s grave, the stone cool against my back, and wait for the familiar heavy sound to drift up from beneath. I know it'll come. It always comes, eventually—soft at first, like a whisper carried on the wind.
“Fast day?” he says. He knows the answer. He asks out of courtesy.
“Fast day,” I murmur like it’s the heaviest thing in the world. And maybe it is, for now. The living spends so much time coming and going, but the dead… the dead stay. They’re reliable. Solid in a way that the world above ground never quite is.
I never asked for this, but I think I like it. I like the way the air feels heavier in the graveyard, the way the world seems to slow down around me. It’s the only place that makes sense anymore, the only place where the noise quiets down and I can just… be. I do think about how strange it is, this gift, or curse, or whatever it is. I don’t raise them, not really. I can’t make them spin around my ink-ridden nails. I can’t even call them back here with a wave of a twig. They don’t breathe, scream or rise. They just… speak.
And I listen, like I always do. It’s enough, I think. More than enough.
“Do you miss it?” I ask, not sure what I’m even asking about anymore. Life? Walking? The sky? Tiramisu? The world we used to share?
“Miss what?” Hermon’s voice floats up through the earth, drowsy, like he was remembering a dream he had half-forgotten. His voice always feels so heavy, like a barrel of wheat. What even was he tired of? Death? It sounds so peaceful. Maybe it's just a worm in his larynx.
“Everything.”
He chuckles, and the sound curls around me like a snake, faint but familiar. “Maybe. But there’s less to miss than you think. Up there, you’ve still got dreams and hopes. In here… it’s lighter. Quieter.”
Quieter. That’s it, isn’t it? Death is quiet. The dead don’t demand anything. No forced smiles, no awkward pauses to fill. Maybe an occasional letter to an old flame, but that’s much more manageable than a dozen texts that lead to nothingness. No Rachel, I'm not going to your third cousins’ wedding. I talk to the dead but you wouldn't care even if you knew.
I think that’s what I like about it, why I keep coming back. They don’t want anything from me, and that’s a rare gift. With them, there’s no pretending. No expectations. Just the steady rhythm of their voices, like waves lapping at the shore. Constant. Unchanging. Trustable.
I glance at the graves, shadows stretching long in the fading light. Nina, Kevin, Mr. and Mrs. Talbot. They’re all here, waiting. They always wait for me. I know how odd it sounds—necromancy, but lower; much, much lower. I'm just glad I have friends now. Friends that stay. Friends that'll always remain, bones and all. Hehe. But it’s not so strange, is it? Not really. The living have never understood me. Too busy trying to fit me into something I can’t be or don’t want to be.
Here, though? Here, I belong. I can sit with the dead and fit right in. I can hear them, and they can hear me, and that’s more than I ever got from the world above.
“What was it like today?” Hermon's voice slipped through the cracks of the earth, slow and careful, like he was afraid to shatter the fragile quiet between us.
“The same…” I say though the answer feels hollow. “… they’re always the same. Moving too fast. Talking too much, … saying nothing.”
“Hmm,” he hums, the sound low and thoughtful. “Maybe you didn’t listen enough.”
I nod, though he can’t see.
The wind picks up, brushing through the grass like a sigh, and I close my eyes. I don’t need to see to know they’re here. They always are. My friends. My strange, silent companions. And I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
In the distance, Nina’s voice drifts toward me, soft and laced with something I can’t quite place. “You’re staying, right?”
“Yeah,” I whisper, settling in against the stone. “I’m staying.”
And for once, that feels like enough. More than enough.
