Buried

The deer hesitated on the edge of the clearing. Grass simmering in a pool of sunlight. Warm, inviting.

Skye stared at the deer. Willing it to step beyond the treeline. It was quiet but not quiet. The forest vibrated with a thousand million insects.

The deer cocked its head, alert. Gingerly took one, then two steps closer.

Gently, swiftly, she pulled the bow string back. The tension hummed in her fingers.

Nothing moved. Everything was alive.

A cacophony of squalls erupted overhead. The moment shattered instantly. Her gaze darting up and back, too late. The deer scattered.

Skye glared at the murderous crows alighting from the trees a hundred yards away, disturbed by something unseen.

Just as quickly, the forest was still again. She quivered her arrow.

Then there was the unmistakable sound of underbrush breaking under a human foot. That same direction.

Her brows knitted further; a moment’s hesitation.

She dashed into the thicket behind, ducking and weaving. Travelling a path that only her keen eyes and sure feet knew.

Disintegrating headstones, mossy piles of masonry, rusting iron railings - all flitted past, crowding in, becoming harder to avoid. If you didn’t know the way in.

A permanent twilight lived this deep within the cemetery. A strange light that tricked the eyes. An extra layer of protection.

The mausoleum loomed up behind the graves. More moss than stone, strangled by vines, its elegiac lines were no longer visible. In the dim light it might have been an impenetrable thickening of the forest.

Skye paused behind a grave - a mournful angel, it’s wings long-broken - scanning the statuary behind.

Satisfied, she slipped through the long grass and disappeared through a wall of ivy hiding one side of the tomb.

It was reassuringly dark and dead within.

She expertly picked her way through the vestibule gloom to one of the crypts, feeling along a shelf for her stash of matches and candles.

She lit one, dripping wax onto the marble shrine above her bedding and carefully standing the candle up.

Safely ensconced in the tomb, she could finally think.

This was the first time she had heard intruders in The Park in many months. But the signs had been accumulating.

Once, she had found the remains of a fire on the Eastern Edge, by the railway line. Another time, a fox, gutted and mauled, near-shredded, close by the Northern Gate - clearly the work of dogs.

Perhaps it was a Straggler or two. Solo travellers looking for shelter and passing through. Perhaps something worse.

It was the dogs that worried her.

It wasn’t unusual for Stragglers to travel with one for protection - but the state of the fox pointed to more than one.

They might have been wild. A pack, hunting...but wild dogs rarely came within The Park. They preferred the streets where the rats and cats were easier pickings.

The Northern boundary was the weakest side. Even with her careful ministrations to promote nature’s natural defences there, it was still permeable in places. Unlike every other edge. It wasn’t entirely impossible that a wild pack would have followed their prey inside from the street.

She caught herself justifying the more reassuring explanation. Trying to avoid the darkest corner of her mind.

But hiding from that darkness would not keep her alive.

If it wasn’t wild dogs, it meant hunting dogs.

And hunting dogs meant hunters.

At that thought, her fingers found the locket around her neck, unbidden.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst - that’s what Abbey used to say.

For as long as she could remember, Skye had lived in The Cemetery Park. But she had not always been alone.

After she realised that Abbey was not coming back, that in all likelihood she had been killed, Skye refused to leave the mausoleum for days. She wanted to die, too. To join the ranks of the dead that she lived among.

Now the thought of not being alone again was even more frightening.

She gripped the locket, her fingers tracing the well-worn catch. Before she could stop herself, she had pried it open.

Abbey’s heart-shaped face stared up from the heart-shaped locket.

She told herself that she shouldn’t keep looking at it - clinging to the past like a child to a safety blanket. She needed to grow up. She needed to be strong. If she was weak, she would miss signs. Make mistakes.

But she didn’t want to forget.

Sometimes she thought the memory of being with Abbey was the only thing keeping her from becoming just another wild animal in the forest. The only thing keeping her human.

The only thing keeping her alive.