Erik

I think my love of cemeteries started in 1992 when I was eight and my great-grandmother died. She passed away easily, peacefully and uneventfully of natural causes one night while sleeping in the old farm house she’d lived in for fifty years. I can still remember the way that house smelled, like someone had bottled a day from the 1960s and stored it in a sock drawer. She left us that night, in that house amongst that familiar smell and she was buried in a grassy cemetery on a hill behind an old German church.

The day of her funeral, after we’d said our final goodbyes to Granny Mae and tucked her in tightly to an eternal bed in the ground, I tiptoed through the old graveyard like a history student in a museum. I made my way to the back and studied the crumbling, neglected tombstones that marked the final resting spots of people with names like Edna, Blythe and Fritz. At eight years old, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the dates on some of the markers, most of which displayed birth years in the 1800s, and I was shocked to see a few child-sized graves.  I was perplexed at the thought that the bones underneath my feet had slept through a century of life bustling above them and around them, and they’d begun their eternal sleep long before I was even born. Make no mistake – my love for cemeteries never meant that I wanted to die. I didn’t have a sick obsession with death, nor did I want to kill myself. I think it was simply the ever-present darkness in my soul finding some beauty and peace among those who’d already lived their lives.

I was bored one late August night, and that’s why I decided to go out through my window and walk to the cemetery behind the trees at the back of my neighborhood. To the people who lived around me, it was like wallpaper that they looked at every day. It was a landmark that faded into the background, and many of the grave markers were already crumbling when houses started sprouting around it. I found it strange that it was considered a sacred place for ages past, a place where loved ones would remain forever, but there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t someday end up next to a freeway or a pawnshop. Maybe that’s why I found it so beautiful – a quiet, constant space in the middle of a noisy, rude world.

I climbed through my window, which I’d done many times before, and I slid silently across the roof. I hung briefly from the ledge and dropped carefully to the ground. While I quickly made my escape, my mother slept soundly, and I knew she’d remain that way until the next morning.

I always felt alive at night, and it seemed like I belonged under the moon more than I did in the rays of the sun. My skin was perpetually pale, and my hair was dark brown, almost black. It fell around my face and shoulders in long, wavy ribbons. My eyes were chocolate-colored almonds, and I liked to highlight them with thick eyeliner and black mascara and gaze at people like I could see into their soul. I knew that I was intense, quiet and intimidating before anyone ever told me, but I didn’t care at all. Years of appointments with a child psychologist only provided me with an arcane understanding of other children my age, because I already completely understood myself even if nobody else did. It was tough being quiet and introspective as a kid, but I liked to think that my greatest talent in life was observation. I could walk down a street three times slower than anyone else simply because I was noticing the smallest things about the world around me.

That night, I walked down the streets of my neighborhood and listened to the silence, occasionally pierced by a barking dog in the distance. Everything looked different at night – soft in varying shades of gray instead of bright colors from the harsh light of the sun.  I soon approached the trees that circled the graveyard, and they begged me to enter. I pulled them away like curtains and crunched my way through the grass as if entering a portal. Accessing the cemetery from the trees at the edge of my neighborhood meant I was going in through the back, near the oldest stones. All the way across on the other, newer side was a small road that led to the main street, which was separated from the dead by a rusty gate. The moon was radiant and helpful that night, and fractured beams from distant streetlights managed to make their way in slightly, but very little. It was enough, though, to ensure that I could make my way through without tripping.

Crickets sang to me as I stepped carefully through a few rows of old graves, stopping to squint at several of the stones. The night provided a cool breeze that attempted to introduce autumn, but summer was always reluctant and stubborn in the middle of Texas. I let the wind blow my wild hair over my eyes a few times, feeling the softness whip around me like a blanket of security. I found a clear spot next to one of the graves and sat down, and in that moment of morbid meditation I felt complete peace.

Then I saw the candle. Of course, at first I didn’t know it was a candle. From the back of the cemetery and the way I was facing, I could see the back of the headstones. Ahead of me and to the right, and under the overhang of a large tree, I saw a warm glow emanating from in front of one of the grave markers. The stone was large and something seemed to be draped across it, but I couldn’t make out what it was.

I stood slowly and silently and walked toward the halo of light. The street at the entrance of the cemetery was still far in the distance as I approached, and it remained empty and lifeless. While still behind the headstone, I noticed that the item draped across it was a tan sweater. I crept closer but stopped suddenly as a leg extended and stretched in front of the headstone. It was a male leg, clothed in old, worn blue jeans, and the foot wore a scuffed black boot. Against my better judgment (or more accurately – my mother’s), I walked to the other side and turned to face the gentleman with a candle.

He wasn’t surprised to see me. I must have seemed like a zombie for the way I walked into his view with my dark hair, dark eyes and confused facial expression. How do you introduce yourself to a fellow creep in a cemetery at midnight? The scenario was essentially something out of a crime drama about a girl’s final moments, but my pervasive curiosity and dangerous fearlessness assured me that it would be fine. He looked up at me from behind greasy hair that fell in his face and grew down just past his ears in thick brown clumps, and his head rested casually against the sweater-covered headstone. He was wearing a white t-shirt, and the moonlight that made its way through the branches of the overhanging tree dappled it with a weird, blue light over his chest, and that light faded into the candlelight as it approached his waist. He was thin, but he seemed healthy and strong. His right knee was at his chest, providing a resting spot for his right arm and right hand, which was holding a book, and his left leg, the one I glimpsed first, was still extended. A small candle in a glass jar was on the ground to his right, resting on a small, sandy spot.

“I’m Erik. With a K,” he said, dropping his book on the grass and extending his right hand. I looked at his hand, with its smooth, pale skin and long, bony fingers, and I felt no hesitation when extending my hand toward it. In that strange moment, I fantasized that he used those fingers to play a guitar in his free time. Or maybe he used them to write mysterious poetry. I sensed a dark intensity in him that seemed to mirror my own, and it was almost comforting. I continued to stab him with my eyes, forgetting to blink.

“I’m Chloe. Um, with a C,” it came out sounding more like a question than a statement. He smirked. I put my hand in his, which felt cold and hot at the same time like the tingling of a waking limb. We looked at each other for an uncomfortable length of time, at least for me. He seemed perfectly satisfied with our silence. I wasn’t sure where to start, so I asked him what he was reading. He handed the book to me. The cover was frayed and the corners looked like they’d experienced water once or twice. I flipped through it and turned it over to the back.

“The Dharma Bums… you know, by Jack Kerouac?” he explained. I actually hadn’t read it, despite my habit of devouring books constantly. I nodded and handed it back to him, and he took it from me gently. “You can sit down. I’m not going to kill you,” he said as he patted a spot of grass to his left. I decided that if I was strange enough to hang out in cemeteries at night, then he must be equally as strange and therefore no threat to me. I wondered if that kind of strange reasoning would one day come back to bite me, but I figured that was not the night. He looked at me with eyes that were deep like mine before glancing down and brushing some hair out of his face.

“What’s your last name, Chloe?” He looked at me again, and asked his question with what seemed like genuine interest. “Greenwood. I’m Chloe Greenwood,” I answered. I asked him why he was there in the graveyard so late, as if I wasn’t doing the exact same, strange thing. He explained that it was peaceful and he wasn’t sure where else to go, but then he suddenly had a thought. “I understand death, and I’m honored that those who are buried here allow me to share this space with them, so I mean no disrespect if one of your relatives…” 

“No, no. I don’t know anybody here,” I interrupted. “I know what you mean. I like it here, too.” I smiled before glancing around the cemetery, which was peppered with dark headstones and wilted flowers that I could barely make out from a distance. I urged my pupils to continue adjusting to the darkness. I turned back to him and noticed that he was still looking at me. I felt sudden awkwardness, but I tried my best to forget about it by asking him why he chose that particular grave.

“I always sit here. I don’t know, I just feel kind of drawn to it,” he explained. I would have lifted his sweater to reveal the name underneath had he not at that instant leaned his head back to rest against it once again. He looked up at the sky and said nothing. The light from the small candle threw slight shadows across his skin, and it looked smooth and perfect. I wondered how old he was. He seemed to me to be young but with an old soul, as if he’d had a rough life so far and somehow survived unscathed with a wise view of the world and some tattered, old boots. I asked him. “I’m 17,” he answered without taking his eyes away from the stars above.

We shared the same age, but he seemed to dress in a style from a past generation that guys I knew tried to emulate. But he was genuine. He seemed like someone who blazed a trail for everyone else with an effortless air of cool. I told him I was also 17 and would be turning 18 in about a month. He brought his gaze back down to Earth and turned to look at me, his head still resting against the headstone. We were sitting very close to one another in an almost disturbing way for two people who had just met, in a cemetery no less. I suddenly realized that he was in the same spot I found him, and I was the one inching closer.

“Tell me about anything,” he said after a long, mutual pause. I gave a short laugh, but he looked at me expectantly. I suddenly felt a little less confident, which made me realize that I was weirdly attracted to this stranger sitting on a grave and didn’t want to say something to compromise myself.  It was then my turn to look up to the sky. I thought for several minutes while my cheek burned red from his stare. He was sitting so incredibly still, and his relaxation began to calm me. I looked toward him, and his eyes were still on me.

I took a breath and told him the first thing that came to my mind. “I hate how the whole world tells me who I should be,” I said, unsure if that’s the type of story he was expecting. I continued, “People at school look at me like I’m a tarantula in an aquarium or something, like I’m an oddity on display.” He grinned and looked to the ground. He broke off a blade of grass and held it to his nose, smelling it. When he was satisfied with its scent, he threw it into the breeze, and it nearly tangled with a long lock of my hair as it blew in front of us. He looked back at me, and I instantly felt embarrassed. “Sorry, that was some weird information for me to share with a stranger,” I apologized.

“We aren’t strangers. I’m Erik, and you’re Chloe. We both like cemeteries at night, and we both don’t have a place to be. Physically or figuratively,” he explained. In that moment, it made so much sense to me that I would meet him there, but I wasn’t sure why. He picked up a lock of my hair and smelled it, just as he had with the blade of grass. I must have looked at him strangely, because he began to explain. “I can’t stop myself from smelling everything. Smell is the best trigger for memory, you know. I can smell honeysuckle and instantly feel like I’m nine years old again.” He let go of my hair, and it fell softly onto my arm. I looked at him, and in the dim candlelight I could almost see a tear in his left eye. It glistened with the tiniest amount of shine.

It must have been the only tear, because it dried almost faster than I could pinpoint it, and then we both turned and looked forward. Erik seemed like the kind of person who could sit comfortably in silence for long periods of time without the need to fill the spaces with small talk. I instantly liked that about him, being a girl who’d always preferred to listen over actually speaking. For what seemed like ten minutes, we sat and listened to the wind, to the distant neighborhood asleep in the early morning, and to the nothingness of the graveyard around us. After facing forward for most of that time, I thought maybe my new acquaintance had drifted into a silent, peaceful sleep, but when I glanced at him I noticed that he was staring forward with his eyes wide open.

He turned to look at me, and he asked me to tell him more about myself. I quickly got the standard replies out of the way early – explaining to him where I was born and how I ended up in Austin. I told him about my father’s premature death and my mother’s innocent indifference thereafter. I briefly touched on the topic of my older brother, who’d left our household five years before and hardly looked back. He took it all in with periodic nods, but his eyes lit up when I mentioned my almost religious love of music and my interests in painting and drawing. I realized suddenly that I was telling a stranger so much about myself that everyone else seemed to care so little about, but I felt from his eyes that he was truly interested. Why? I didn’t know. But his face was genuine and his focus never left me for a second. Maybe I was just relieved that someone was actually listening to me. I was always hypocritical in the way that I was quiet, reserved and introverted, but I lived my life perpetually angry that nobody cared what I had to say.

When it was his turn to speak to me and my time to listen, he didn’t explain his background or go into detail about his family, but he spoke of abstract ideas and life in general. He talked of a few books he’d read and what they taught him. He recalled music he loved that really moved him, and he spoke of his dreams in an almost solemn, erstwhile way. He smiled when I agreed with his views on the ridiculous, asinine habits of society, and I knew that he felt like an outsider, too.

Despite our pleasant conversation, I felt nagging sadness when I thought of his earlier statement – that he had nowhere else to be. I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant, but it gnawed at a sense of compassion I wasn’t even aware I had. I didn’t want to ask him to go into detail. Maybe he’d simply escaped his dysfunctional family life by crawling out of an upstairs window, just as I had. Regardless, in that cemetery, on that night, I decided that I’d just enjoy time with another lost soul as we sat amongst all the many lost souls buried beneath us.

I realized once again that we were very close, and I could feel his soft, white shirt on my right arm. I leaned my head against the tombstone behind us, and I felt the sweater that was draped there as it cushioned the back of my hair. “What’s your last name?” I asked him, quietly. He turned to look at me before responding. “Vail,” he said.

The name Erik Vail floated and somersaulted through my mind for a minute or two as if I’d known someone with the same name in my past, but I decided that if I’d met him before I would remember. My stomach fluttered with a bit of nervousness, and I took a deep breath to silence it.

“So, Chloe, have you ever loved anyone?” he asked, yanking me out of my thoughts. He was looking up at the sky while holding a lock of my hair again, this time twirling it between the fingers on his left hand. I thought about his question briefly before deciding on my answer. “No,” I stated, realizing how sad it sounded. It was the truth. He closed his eyes. “I have, and it ripped out my guts,” he said, softly. I didn’t know what to say. Was he hanging out in cemeteries because he was depressed after a teenage love affair gone wrong? Was he talking to me as some sort of sick rebound?

I suddenly felt very uncomfortable next to him, and I shifted my weight in the opposite direction. I considered standing up to leave, but he turned to me with sad, empty eyes. “I’m sorry I brought that up. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about tonight. I loved her and she didn’t love me back.” I waited for him to continue. “Loving someone can be amazing, but it can also be the darkest, blackest ink that tattoos you forever.” He looked up at the sky again and seemed to remember a happier time with his beloved. “But at the same time, it leaves such lovely scars.”

I waited for what he would say next, but he said nothing. We sat in silence again, and I almost forgot that a stranger was playing with my hair and had just told me intimate details of his life. It felt comfortable again, so I decided to share something about myself. “I don’t know if I’m capable of dating anyone. I’m toxic,” I spoke into the darkness, surprising even myself. He glanced over at me and touched the right side of my face with his hand. “We’re all toxic, but you just have to accept it,” he said. His face was suddenly very close to mine. I could feel his cool breath, and I waited.

His hand dropped to his lap, and he sat back against the tombstone as he pulled his gaze away from me and looked down at the small candle as it flickered obliviously. I realized that I wished his hand was still on my face and his cool breath still on my cheek. The place where his skin was touching mine just moments earlier burned hot, and I hoped he wouldn’t see me blushing. The candle must have fascinated him, because he stared at it for what seemed like forever. I looked at his white t-shirt longingly and had a strong desire to touch it, so I did. I placed my hand on his shoulder, gingerly, and he turned and looked at me with red eyes, and I was certain this time that he was on the verge of tears. He inched closer to me, and I moved my hand from his shoulder to the back of his neck. I felt his soft, cool hair between my fingers, and he leaned toward me and began kissing me softly and cautiously. My normal instinct to pull away dissolved, and it was as if I was out of my own body watching myself embrace an absolute stranger.

I don’t know how long he kissed me that night on top of that grave, but it seemed like forever and just a brief moment all at once. I knew I would never forget the feeling of his soft lips on mine and the gentle way he moved the hair away from my face and placed it behind my ear. I’d never forget the warm, cottony feeling of his shirt and the velvety, fine hair at the nape of his neck.

We fell asleep sometime during the darkest hours before dawn, and I slept more soundly than I had in months. I drifted off as he lay behind me, his arm around my waist and my hand intertwined with his. I felt an indescribable safety that was unknown to me as I slept with his body so close against mine. We were two lost strangers with nowhere to be except right there.

***

I slowly opened my eyes to the quiet, violet dawn, and it took me a moment to remember where I was. The grass around me was damp with a fresh coating of dew, and it seemed as though the rest of the world wasn’t yet awake. Despite the fact that it was an August morning in the middle of Texas, I felt unusually cold. Gone was the feeling of warmth and safety from the night before, and I looked down to see only my own arm resting at my waist. I knew he was gone. It was loneliest I’d ever felt, a kind of emptiness that turned my stomach and ached in my bones.

I sat up and looked straight ahead at the road at the entrance to the cemetery. I figured I should make my way home quickly to avoid the beginnings of the hustle and bustle of a new day, and certainly to beat my mother’s natural 8:00 a.m. wakeup time. I smoothed down my hair, which had become wild during the night. Despite my urgency to get home as soon as possible, I wondered where Erik was and why he would leave me there alone. I considered calling his name or walking through the streets in hopes that I would see him, but I was torn. It astonished me that I’d slept through his departure, because we’d become so intertwined. I was certain that I would have felt the safety of his arms leaving me as he stood up to walk away.

I turned to my left and noticed the small glass that held the candle the night before. It was burned down completely, leaving only a waxy residue and small, charred wick. Erik’s book lay next to it, soggy from the morning humidity. I picked it up and held it close, like his last remaining relic. Or maybe I was clinging to any evidence that the events of the night before had even happened.

While still tightly clutching the book, I rose to my feet and dusted sand and grass off of the back of my clothes. A car turned onto the road ahead, its headlights casting a soft glow across me before continuing down the street. I turned to walk back through the cemetery toward the wall of trees, and I noticed that Erik’s tan sweater was no longer draped across the gravestone. I bent to read the name of the person whose grave had made a bed for us the night before, and I felt my heart palpitate as my eyes scanned the words in stone. I stepped backward as blood rushed through me and pumped loudly in my ears.

Rest In Peace
Erik Vail
A wonderful brother, son and friend
November 13, 1976 – July 8, 1994
“I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life”