Chasing

By Melissa M. Sharp

If someone told me that humans were not the fastest animal in this world, I would heartily laugh and thank them for a joke I believe was meant to feign ignorance. How am I to know better? Especially when I saw the fastest human—this distorted whirlwind—chasing something incomprehensible. 

The muscles in their calves were the first thing that caught my attention. These bulges of power seemed to burst through the seams of the fabric that encased them. This glorious flurry of legs, moving in a chaotic illusion, made it impossible to tell exactly how many legs they had. My legs aren’t built for sprinting, but this person, they flew, weaved, and darted through the rows of graves, driven by nothing but pure determination. An admiration for such relentless pursuit enveloped me, tickling my nerves as if to tease or taunt me into joining whatever madman or woman this was. I rose high on my knees, fixing my gaze on this figure, unwilling to let them go, and when I realised that they wouldn’t stop running, I stood up from my mother’s grave and began to chase after them. 

I did not make any noise, yet I was startled when their head snapped back, nearly dislocating their neck from the momentum. Their head, hidden by a dark hood, frantically scanned for any presence lurking behind them as they slowed their pace. However, I believed they hadn't seen me, for the motion of their hood pointed over my shoulder, sending a chill up my spine. I thought, in my moment of curious perception, to look for any anomaly I could find in the graveyard, for anything that might slow this unstoppable flash of force. 

I saw nothing when I looked behind me.

The night’s unforgiving darkness cloaked the graveyard, dimming the faint lamps that stood proudly along the aisles. It was uncanny how each bulb reduced, one by one, swallowing my surroundings like a thirsty beggar. When I turned around, the figure had resumed their pace. 

I moved as quietly as I could, stumbling over overgrown roots and mounds of tufted grass that hadn't been tended for years, with the darkness of night hiding any clear path. But I did not lose them— their faint outline was my beacon of hope, of confusion. I had to know why they were running; I simply had to. And with this uneven terrain and strange darkness, I knew I had to catch their attention if I wanted to solve this mystery.

“Why must you run?” I shouted into the graveyard, along that long stretch of shadowed green, where the runner finally and unexpectedly came to a halt. 

I noticed that they stood eerily still, their shoulders broad and unmoving, as if they had not been sprinting just moments earlier. My breath caught in my throat as I watched them begin to slowly pivot on their heel and glance at me over their shoulder. 

Squinting like a fool, I took a tentative step closer, my boot squelching in a patch of mud. I cringed at the noise, gazing down at my boot as if to glare at it for its idiocy, given that it contrasted starkly with the unnerving quiet that surrounded me and the unknown. 

Only when I looked back up, they were standing right in front of me. 

I fell backwards, landing heavily on the cold ground as the figure loomed over me. My heart pounded, and my ears felt muffled as my body succumbed to the fear of this person. They bent over me, awkwardly twisting their ribcage, with their neck cracking loudly as they leaned directly over my face. This slender figure had grown, breathing sour air over me from the darkness within their hood. 

I started to wet myself, the warmth soaking into my trousers, making me want to break down and sob. I hadn’t felt this vulnerable since I was a young child, this overwhelming need to be protected when the fear becomes too much. A cry began to rise in the back of my throat, a slight whimper escaping until their hand, wrinkled and decayed, reached out from the long, draping sleeves and stroked my trembling cheek. 

It was then that I recognised the two eyes, vividly blue in their peculiar beauty, peering at me from the darkness. My heart thumped with a strange sympathy when I saw that their eyes were wet and streaming a thousand unanswered prayers down what I imagined to be puffy and swollen cheeks. 

“Do not fear me, my child.”

Then, they took off faster than a blink, leaving me in my soiled trousers. 

I ought to have left. I ought to have run away in the opposite direction. 

But I was transfixed by this mystery of a person, who was now flailing their arms like a young bird learning to fly, as they shrieked the most horrid unpitched harmony and leapt over a fresh grave, the grass cuttings lifting in the wake of their breeze. I cringed at the noise as I cradled my head with my trembling hands and almost shouted my own primal cry in response. 

I suddenly felt nails digging into the side of my forehead, threatening to bloody my perfect brain. There was a shrill cackling in my ears, a tongue licking the rim of my earlobe, disgusting hands pulling down my clothes and baring me naked until I rose and ran and ran and ran. 

I followed the sound of the hooded figure’s cries, a wave of sorrow that sank into my bones. I felt sluggish and drowsy, my head spinning, but determination drove me, and I knew, somehow, I had to find this person. This thing. This monster. It was all too overwhelming, but God, how I ran!  

Eventually, I spotted the cloaked figure wailing incoherently in a different part of the graveyard. Their frantic wandering was hard to miss, even in the shadows. I tiptoed carefully onto the narrow strip of uneven grass that divided the cemetery into a confusing maze of delirium. This person hadn't realised I was there yet, and I was glad I could watch unnoticed, finding bewilderment in this scene. 

My mouth parted in silent reverie as they hurriedly pulled out a box of matches from within their cloak, which slipped from their unsteady grip, clattering into the mud below. They snatched it back up greedily, their hands shuddering in desperation, and after a couple of failed attempts, the figure managed to light a match.

It started crouching as they raised their small light to the gravestones lining the edge of this aisle — darting their head side to side, their hood catching on their head as if trying to cling on to the attempt to stay hidden. They circled the graves, now facing me as I tried to remain still and unnoticed. 

Their frantic search grew more violent, their hands shoving the graves in anger, the wailing increasing in volume and desperation. As the match wore thin and the night seemed to pass swiftly, the hood fell, and I saw something far worse than a monster could ever be.

It was my mother. 

Bile rose as my legs gave way, my body crumpling into the damp grass. How could this be? 

The match she was holding, and bizarrely had yet to blow out, shimmered with the horrors only a human could bear. Her frantic eyes betrayed someone who had not seen the light in days, for when she spotted a newly erected gravestone, she, too, crumpled. 

I crawled over, my hands sinking into the mud, coating my nails with broken worms and slugs. I pulled my legs across the grass, tugging and dragging until I reached her. 

I wanted to hug her. To smell her. So, I summoned all my courage to reach out to her, but she vanished, leaving my flailing hand to collide with the gravestone she had been standing in front of. 

My eyes immediately saw it. The truth. The revelation. The acceptance I had yet to embrace. 

Winifred Stapleton. 

A loving daughter lost too early.

May she rest in peace.

It’s strange how the ghosts here toy with your judgment. How my mother, whose face I could no longer remember but whose eyes I would always recall, had led me to my own death. 

I have been lying here on the edge of my grave for quite a while now, since my legs gave out from all that running many moons ago, and a ghost can't run on empty. I hope to leave this place soon so I can see my mother again. If I keep telling this story to the bugs, the trees, the fellow ghosts, or to you, perhaps I will. 

Perhaps I will.

I simply haven’t come to terms with it yet. 

I do not believe I ever will.

By Melissa M. Sharp