The Resting Place
A Ghostly Tale
In the end, it all comes down to how you look at things. As soon as I laid eyes on that place the words wisped out of my mouth without my even thinking.
“What the hell…?”
It was the last thing I expected to find hiking through lush green woods near my late brother’s land out in the country. The closest landmark I could see was a dirt road that didn’t even have a name. I had walked through these woods before, but this was my first time back since he was gone. Somewhere along the line I must have taken a wrong turn. No signs gave warning, no fences or paths marked the spot. Set back in a small clearing it had all the looks of a place lost and not meant to be found ever again.
Yet there I was, standing still and looking at a small collection of tombstones.
Seven in all. Choked off from the rest of the world by tall trees and untamed grass. Not one of them stood straight. Some were cracked, one cleanly broken in two. The dirty white slabs appeared at first glance to have no markings on them. It was a late summer afternoon with not a cloud in the sky, but the light and warmth of that day hardly seemed to reach in here. Maybe that explained the slightest of chills that crawled up the back of my neck as I stared at those stones. What were they doing out here?
Right away I caught a whiff of something sour in the air. Maybe a dead rabbit or something. Maybe some wild mustard weed growing nearby. What struck me next was the noise — there was none.
No birds or insects buzzing, no rustling of leaves in the trees. Just a quiet stillness that went from curious to eerie in the space of two or three hushed breaths. Then I saw something over to my right.
A long thin snake, solid black, slid over the broken stone and a bare spot of ground. I watched it stop for a moment, lift its head, then continue on and disappear in the tall grass.
When finally I felt it safe I stepped carefully over the hard ground toward the nearest marker. The chiseled letters on the tombstones were speckled with moss and so weather-worn as to be almost invisible unless you were right on top of them.
Mathias Petersen Born 27 Sept 1862 Died 12 April 1869
Hans Petersen Born 27 Sept 1862 Died 13 April 1869
Eighteen-Sixty-two? Eighteen sixty-nine? Holy shit!
Only with a second look did I catch other peculiarities. Twins — born on the same day and dying at a tragically young age, one day apart.
The slightest of breezes blew out of the north, and I might have been relieved to feel it were it not for something else, a strange noise it carried. It was faint and seemed to swirl in the wind, but for a few seconds I swore I heard it: horse’s hooves. It could have been coming from any direction, or none at all.
I’d heard about an Amish settlement a few miles west of here, so the idea of a horse and carriage traveling down the nearby road wasn’t so far-fetched. No sooner had I begun to wrap my thoughts around that idea than the breeze died away and any sound of a trotting horse, if ever it was really there, vanished as well. Dead silence returned.
I stepped toward the next two tombstones. Same last name. Same date of death.
Johanna Petersen Born 10 June 1849 Died 19 April 1869
Engebret Petersen Born 6 Mar 1846 Died 19 April 1869
Then the next two:
Albert Skaarsgard Born 25 June 1848 Died 19 April 1869
Greta Halvorsen Born 17 Oct 1847 Died 19 April 1869
The final marker, the broken one, lay face down in the dirt, and visions of that snake crawling over it moments earlier kept me from reaching down and lifting it up to read the name inscribed.
It struck me that I was standing on hallowed ground. A final resting place for seven souls long ago departed. Just because it didn’t look like your typical manicured cemetery didn’t make it any less of a final resting place. But why was there not so much as a single crucifix or peaceful symbol carved anywhere in this place? Why not even a word of grace? No hint of anything holy here.
And then there was that snake, coiling back and forth over the ground like some devilish sentry guarding its post. Something about this place wasn’t right.
Oh, for Christ sake, get a hold of yourself.
Obviously, someone thought enough to make these headstones; maybe that was how they did it back then. Just names and dates. No big deal.
I stared again at the names of the twins. I pictured two boys wearing scruffy trousers, cotton shirts and wide-brimmed hats. These immigrants to a new land. Happy despite the hardships, and too young to know any better. Walking down a dirt road or through a tall cornfield on a hot summer day, laughing and playing the way all kids should.
That quaint little snapshot lingered for a moment until I started thinking about what could have happened to them — to all of them — to make them end up here.
I heard something: a whispered, chattering sound coming from beyond the trees. I looked all around me but saw nothing. A few seconds went by before I heard it again — this time longer and louder. That’s when I realized what I was hearing wasn’t a bird, it wasn’t an animal, and it sure as hell wasn’t the wind. It was the unmistakable sound of children giggling.
Suddenly I was getting the strangest feeling that I was being watched. My mind said no, that’s not possible, but the hot tingling on my skin said otherwise. I wasn’t alone. Then something fell into the grass near my feet. An acorn maybe, or a small pebble. Almost like it was being thrown at me.
Another object skipped on the ground and bounced off one of the headstones. I didn’t have to wait long before it started up again. This time it was coming from those trees over to my right. Children laughing. Swear to God.
“Lookin’ for something?”
I jumped when I heard the man’s voice. I didn’t know who he was or how he got there. Suddenly he was just there, standing behind me at the edge of the clearing, a thin old man with stringy white hair and an unruly beard.
I waited for my breath to come back. “Jesus Christ.”
The bib overalls and red plaid shirt were as smooth and worn down as an old saddle. And cradled in his right arm, pointed to the ground but menacing nonetheless was a shotgun. The damn thing looked like an antique.
“This is private land,” he said calmly, like so many around here a man of few words. A trace of Scandinavian accent hung in his voice.
I thought about going up and offering my hand, introducing myself, but the unblinking stare — not to mention the gun at his side — held me back.
“I’m sorry if…I was just hiking through the woods. My brother’s place is…was over that way. Guess I got lost.”
“You best get on back then.”
“Wait a minute. Hold on. You’re the owner here?”
His answer was slow in coming. “You might say that.”
“So what do you know about these headstones?”
“Why?”
“No reason, just curious. My brother never said anything to me about a cemetery back here.”
“Don’t figure many folks knew about it.”
He paused before going on. “A family of Norwegian homesteaders passed through this way once, looking for good farmland to set up stakes. God-fearing people. Never caused nobody trouble. But then the whooping cough come around and the two boys took sick to it. Weren’t no doctors or nobody to help. The young ones died first. Father had to dig the graves and lay them down with his own two hands. After that he got tore up with anger. Cursed God for taking his boys.”
His bony hands tightened around that shotgun.
“Some say he lost his mind. Others say he made a pact with the devil himself to get his boys back. Believe what you will. But one night while the rest of the family was sleeping he loaded up his gun and put the barrel to each and every one. Saved himself for last.”
The old man let out a sigh and lowered his head. “Does terrible things to a man when he has to bury his only two sons.”
“So who buried them here? I mean, if the whole family was dead…”
He looked up but all he did was shrug his shoulders. His sad gray eyes wouldn’t leave me alone as we stood facing each other, me in the sun, he in the shade.
“That’s quite a story,” was all I could think to say.
The old man stood there, saying nothing, doing nothing. That unnerved me as much as that shotgun he was holding.
“My brother he…uh…owned land back there,” I said, pointing quickly over my shoulder. “Maybe you knew him — Josh Barton?”
The man shook his head. “Don’t much know people around here no more.”
“Well, he…he passed away two months ago. Heart attack. Kind of thing you never see it coming. But then, who does?”
“You miss him?”
What the hell kind of question…? “Yeah, I miss him. Miss him more every day. It’s still hard to believe he’s gone.”
“You got family of your own?”
“Divorced,” I said. “Got a four-year-old girl.”
“A man should always stay close to his family.”
“Yeah, well…tell that to the judge. Anyway, look, I don’t understand…what exactly is this place?”
“Said it yourself, you only found it ’cause you was lost. Well, you should start heading back the way you came and be on your way quick. You don’t belong here.”
“Who are you?”
He nodded toward the ground behind me and I followed his gaze to the tombstones. Right away I focused on the broken one lying facedown in the dirt. The one name I hadn’t read.
“I’m the caretaker,” he said. “I see to it nobody disturbs these graves.”
When he spoke next his voice seemed to carry an echo, like it was coming from deep inside a tunnel. “This here is private land and you’re trespassing. Now you best get going.”
A glint of dark anger flashed in his eyes, and that was enough for me. I started backing up, and after taking one more look at those tombstones I turned around and started walking faster and faster until I was practically running like a scared little kid.
By the time I found my way back to the hiking trail I was sweating and out of breath, but I didn’t stop until I was safely across the property line, back where I belonged.
I looked back one last time at those lush green trees as a slight breeze blew through them. And I swear I heard it again — the faintest sound of children giggling.
