17
I stepped out into the cemetery, where the air was as crisp as it was bitter, carrying with it the faint smell of damp earth after heavy rain. Thick mist lingered low over the graves, curling around the bases of the headstones, and for a moment, I felt as if the ground itself were alive and breathing beneath my feet.
I was still not over the shock of what I had experienced. Untold thoughts raced in my distraught mind, trying to resurface and be heard. But I shook them all off, as if doing so would somehow make everything perish. Though I understood what was expected of me, I could not understand the why. Why me? Of all people, why did this place… chose me?
The headstones had shifted in my brief absence; pointing in the same direction. But the shift itself was not what made my heart skip and blood curdle. It was the direction, as if they were all trying to tell me something – something I was not allowed to miss. Every single one of them, you see, were pointed towards the caretaker’s hut. Some even leaned more than what should’ve been physically possible, as if pushed by an invisible force, or by some wind that had yet to come into existence.
My chest tightened, and a low, cold knot of dread settled in my stomach.
I advanced through the graves, each step soft against the frozen blades of grass. Names, dates, epitaphs blurred together; shadows stretched and twisted between the rows, casting long lines that pointed not just at the hut, but also at me as I reached for the handle, fingers brushing the cold surface, thinking it would be open. But it wasn’t. For days now, the place had been abandoned, and in my mind, I had already placed the caretaker among the spirits of the grounds, something more ethereal than human, a shadow that moved when I wasn’t looking.
But… I was wrong.
I hesitated at the door, hand frozen on the handle. The hut was ever so quiet, yet I felt it deep in the marrow of my bones, that I wasn’t alone. Not any longer. Maybe I never was.
Then I heard the footfalls beyond the door, slowly creeping closer. I told myself at that point that the caretaker had simply returned, that he had never been a ghost, but doing so was easier said than done. My ablaze heart leapt in my throat in those fleeting moments suspended in time, and my body shivered from sheer dread, though I had no reason to feel that way. What was wrong with me?
And then—the door opened from the inside.
For a heartbeat I could not move.
The caretaker paused in the doorway as soon as his eyes settled on me. But even as he spoke, it took me a second to respond and pull out of whatever had taken hold of me. Even until the last second, I sincerely believed that the entity beyond the door would be anything but human. But here he was, made of flesh and bones, and as human as I were. Where had he gone off to all these days?
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
I steadied myself and tried to gather courage, I had no reason to fear the man before me after all but failed miserably.
“I...” My voice faltered. “I’m sorry. I thought... thought you left. That you—” would not return.
“The property’s been left to rot for years, young man. I’ve had to leave, now and then. Find work elsewhere. Otherwise, I’d starve in here with the rest of it.”
I frowned at those words. “Starve?”
“Listen. This place... it’s no ordinary place. It has its secrets. And if I were you, I’d leave before something happens. Do you understand?”
“Secrets?” I repeated. My voice came out quieter than I intended, the image of that horrendous creature that hunted me down still too vivid. “What secrets?”
He looked around the burial ground before leaning in, as if afraid someone – or something – might overhear should he speak louder. “The dead don’t sleep,” he said, “and no secret stays buried forever.”
I recoiled unwittingly, but he followed, edging closer, closing the space until I could feel the heat of his body and the rancid smell of his breath crawling down my throat and twisting my insides.
“The grounds,” he carried on, “keep their own counsel. They remember, they punish. Best not to stir them. Best not to wake what lies waiting.”
It would be a lie to say these words did not give me the heebie-jeebies. But I stood my ground and refused to let him see the fright taking hold of me. Thus, I forced myself to keep the conversation going before the caretaker disappeared on me again. The guy clearly knew something, but not just about this place, but also about what really happened to my aunt. I just knew it.
“What about my aunt?” I began. “Is she too part of these... these secrets the grounds keep hidden? Is she part of the counsel too?”
His expression shifted ever so slightly, a subtle tightening around his mouth, a shadow passing over his eyes. But his voice was firm, unwavering.
“Your aunt? I haven’t seen her in years.”
I studied him carefully, noting the small gestures: the curl of his fingers around the doorframe, the way he held his stance as though every word had been weighed in advance. My gut twisted and churned in that moment, a familiar warning I had learnt to trust over time. He was lying. But why would he? Moreover, what was it about him that unsettled me so deeply? The hollow stare that clung to me without blinking. Or the way his mouth hovered, always on the verge of a smirk, as if he knew something I didn’t – and meant to keep it that way.
“There’s something else I’d like to know,” I said, my eyes betraying my thoughts as they swept past the caretaker and into the dark entryway.
He shifted, following my eyes, but his expression remained flat – almost as if he already knew what I meant to ask about. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“I went looking for you earlier,” I began, trying to keep my voice steady. “The door was open, so I... let myself in. The whole place looked like it hadn’t been touched in years.” I paused, watching for the smallest flicker on his face. “The carpet; it looked like someone had hurt themselves.”
He opened his mouth as if to respond but remained hushed, so I pressed on as cautiously as was physically possible in this sort of predicament. One thing I could tell for sure though was the subtle way his jaw seemed to shift in response to my words, as if he waited for a certain cue or word that would slip my tongue – one that would allow him to lurch forwards and charge at me.
“I’m not accusing you of anything. It's just—it’s the sort of thing you notice, and once seen, it’s not easy to forget. Thought maybe you’d know what that was about? Looked like blood. At least a decade old.”
“Blood? You’ve got yourself a sharp imagination, young man! This is an old place,” he said, staring through my soul without blinking. “Damp and rust play tricks on the eyes. You’d be surprised how often folk mistake one for the other.”
“It wasn’t just a stain,” I retorted firmly, not giving the man the satisfaction of giving up this easily. “There was a lot of it. More than what could be explained away as rust or damp.”
“Some stray beast might’ve been cornered there. Who knows? Wild dogs get into scraps often enough around these places. Nothing worth losing sleep over – unless, of course, you’ve got reason to believe otherwise?”
A prolonged silence passed between us, one as taut as could be and full of unspoken tension. Neither of us was backing off. What was this guy’s deal, even? Why was he so adamant about not telling me the truth? Perhaps he wasn’t as innocent as I thought at first. But these suspicious could be put to rest for now. Another pressing matter needed to be voiced.
“Another thing,” I said, wetting my lips as the image of the creature popped up. “Has anything... strange ever happened in the main building?”
His posture stiffened and his eyes narrowed, and for the first time, I saw the barest flicker of something behind them. What was it? Unease, fear, or perhaps... guilt?
“How so?”
I hesitated. Every instinct told me to back off, but the words were already gathering at the back of my throat. If I didn’t ask now, I might never get another chance.
“Like, seeing things that aren’t supposed to be there?”
“You got to give me more details,” he said, adding before I could respond, lowering his voice. “Was it a woman you saw?”
I froze. The words hit too close, like he had just seen into my thoughts.
“How did you—”
“Best to keep your head clear in this place,” he cut in. “It likes to play games. Schemes. The more you let your imagination wander, the sooner this place will get a hold of you. You don’t want that.”
Something in his voice, his eyes, told me I shouldn’t push further. I knew that. But I couldn’t help it. The guy kept speaking in riddles, like this was some sort of game of wits, and I disliked every second of it. Something had tried to hunt me down in that building and the caretaker clearly knew what it was – who it was. But it wasn’t even these harrowing thoughts that took over my mind this second, another thought was.
“I’m sorry, I don’t think you ever told me your name?”
“Garrett.”
“...Garrett?” I repeated, adding. “I thought—”
“No. We weren’t native to the land. Not back then, at least. My family came from Germany back in the 1930s, when the Nazis were rising to power. We were part of the migration to Palestine under the British Mandate. They said we were lucky to get a quota spot, but even then, the journey was long.”
“Right. I think I remember that from history class. The Fifth Aliyah.”
“That’s what people call it, yes. We arrived by ship from Hamburg to Haifa, with hundreds of other families packed aboard. That was how we left everything behind and tried to start again.”
“I see. And your family have worked for my grandfather ever since?” I corrected myself nimbly. “Or rather, until he was displaced from the property?”
“We don’t really say that around here. ‘Displacement’. People here like to call it ‘reconstruction’ and ‘clearing of Islamic terror zones.’ I highly advise you to keep that in mind, son. You don’t want the authorities on your throat.”
“I’m a Brit.”
“But you’re an Arab. A Muslim. And we all know what people think of your kind.”
“Not all of us are Muslims – nor extremists, for that matter.”
“All the same.”
“Yeah?” I said, unable to contain the smirk forming on my lips. “Man, Hollywood’s done a hell of a job painting every damn Muslim like we’re subhuman, haven’t they? Credit where it’s due, I guess. Maybe it’s time the smear campaign goes the other way?”
The caretaker mirrored my smirk. “You don’t say.”
My smile faltered. “But here’s the thing: how come the lawyer I talked to told me the property was abandoned? That no one was taking care of it.”
He replied without missing a beat, like he had anticipated I would sooner or later ask this very question.
“Like I said earlier, I come and go. I don’t get paid a penny for keeping this place in some semblance of order. It’s no mystery the lady hasn’t seen me around.”
“Yet you somehow know I’m talking about a woman?”
For once, the caretaker’s smile failed him and his face hardened. There was not a single trace of warmth in his eyes now, just a subtle hint of expressionlessness that I could not wrap my head around.
“Are you implying I’m lying?”
“‘Implying’ is a big word,” I said. “Let’s just say I’m making sure you are who you say you are.”
“And why exactly would I lie?”
I looked away. I was asking myself the same thing. There was no reason for him to lie. The man was old, human enough it seemed, and this place offered nothing in return. Nothing at all. Only a fool – or a ghost – would linger here. But this person wasn’t a ghost. So, what exactly was he? I had to keep a close eye on him until I figured it all out. Watch his movements. Listen to his words. One way or another, I would find out what tied him not only to the burial grounds but also to my aunt’s disappearance.
“I’m not sure,” I said at last. “It’s just a feeling. Instinct, if you will.”
He didn’t answer.
The silence between us stretched.
Then I walked away, the cemetery stretching behind me.
The whistling wind stirred the mist between the graves as I passed by, carrying the faint scent of wilted leaves. Every shadow seemed deeper here, every whisper and rattle like a warning. I forced myself to steady my breathing, telling myself to remain calm, to keep my cool, but the knot of unease in my chest refused to loosen. I couldn’t ease it; could not calm it.
The feeling of being watched, however, clung to me with every step I took. Even the gravel path felt heavier against my booths, as if the ground remembered the things that had happened here, the things that could not be spoken aloud.
I forced myself to breathe, to push down the rising panic, but it refused to be silenced. Something in the way he had stiffened at my question about the main building lingered like a warning, buried deep, waiting for me to pay closer attention. I knew then that his absence over the past few days had not been as random as I at first thought.
I thought of my aunt, of the creature that followed me around in the time loop, its menacing eyes pleading without words, and then my mind wandered to the evidence, to the photograph, she... or it had left me. I realised in that moment, with a resonating certainty, that the horrors I had attributed to the settlers – the fires, the chaos, the children trapped and screaming – were perhaps only part of the mystery that had somehow found me.
Shivering, I pulled my coat tighter around me, but the cold was nothing compared to the chill that ran down my spine as the truth settled into place. Because this was no longer just about memories, or visions, or the stories that haunted these lands. This was about the living and breathing danger that still walked these grounds, and the silent, unbroken voice of my aunt demanding that I bear witness. And I knew, in the quiet aftermath of the chaos I experienced, that my next steps would have to be careful. Much more careful. For now, the caretaker too was watching; keeping an eye on me.
As I walked along the overgrown paths leading into the heart of the village, letting the fog curl around my boots, the caretaker’s words, or perhaps the true meaning behind them, left a bitter taste in my mouth. Each shadow seemed to flicker, bend unnaturally, as if the world were distorting into some hidden pattern only I could see. My thoughts kept returning, inevitably, to the creature, and the way it had appeared and disappeared in the time loop, leaving clues that only I could follow. In a way, it had trusted me to witness what had been done to the people who once lived here, to bear the weight of the grim truth. And now, I realised much to my dread, that the past and present were beginning to blur together.
When I returned to the burial grounds a few hours later and passed by the hut, advancing towards the main building, I couldn’t help but peer into the windows of the hut that had darkened with soot and age, holding my breath. Anticipating. What for? Even I did not know.
The silence was thick, broken only by the occasional rustle of the heinous wind through the branches of uprooted, naked trees. Somewhere inside, I just knew, that the caretaker moved, or had moved, that he was now observing me as I was observing him. And then... I saw it. The slight shift of a curtain; the faint reflection of movement on the glass.
I paused and listened, though I knew I should not.
There was a macabre rhythm to the silence now, one I that I could not place anywhere. Not until then, that is.
My eyes drifted to the headstones without warning, before I even was aware of it, and caught how they all now pointed in another direction, guiding me out of the grounds and towards a forested area outside the property, towards a narrow pathway leading who-knows-where. I had noticed the trail a few times in passing, but never quite put any thoughts on why it was there or where it led to. But now the grounds were telling me to follow it into the unknown, where the brightness of light did not penetrate the suffocating darkness.
The question was, did I dare to follow it?
To be continued...
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