The Bedrock Lullaby

I never believed in the rot that seeped from the old cemetery across the lane. Our house, a sturdy Victorian with peeling paint and a porch that groaned underfoot, had been in my partner’s family for decades. I’d always found the proximity to the dead peaceful, even romantic in a morbid way. But that was before the dreams, before the scraping beneath my bed, before the nights when sleep became a descent into a cellar of the mind.

My name is Elara, and I’ve lived here with my boyfriend, Julian, for three years. Julian is a heavy sleeper, a snorer of epic proportions, which is why we have separate bedrooms. Mine, at the end of the hall, overlooks the newer section of the cemetery, where the headstones are still crisp and the flowers fresh. His room faces the front, the street, the living. It’s our arrangement, and it worked until about a month ago.

The first dream was subtle. I felt a pressure on the foot of my bed, as if someone had sat down. In the dream, I opened my eyes, and there was a dark shape, vaguely human, but with limbs too long and a head too large. It just sat there, not moving, not breathing, just watching. I woke with a start, heart hammering, convinced something was in the room. But the light from the streetlamp showed nothing but shadows thrown by my own furniture.

It’s been every night since. Each time, the thing gets closer. Now it stands beside the bed, leaning over me, its face hidden in shadow but radiating a cold that seeps into my bones. Last night, I felt its breath on my neck, a smell like turned earth and old grief. I couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. I just lay there, paralyzed, as it whispered something, a name, but it wasn’t my name. It was a name I’d never heard, yet it felt familiar, like a song from a past life.

I’ve tried everything: sleeping in Julian’s room (though that brings its own horrors), leaving the light on, sleeping with a crucifix under my pillow. Nothing helps. The dreams are relentless, and I’ve started to see things in the waking world. Fleeting shapes at the edge of my vision, a cold spot in the hallway, the sensation of being watched even when I’m alone.

This morning, I finally told Julian. We were sitting at the kitchen table, the weak sun casting long shadows across the linoleum. He listened, his brow furrowed, a skeptic to the core. ‘It’s stress, Elara,’ he said, sipping his coffee. ‘You’ve been working too hard. Maybe we should get away for a weekend.’

‘It’s not stress,’ I insisted. ‘It’s this house. No, it’s that cemetery. There’s something old, something hungry.’ He didn’t believe me. He said the previous owners, the Hendersons, lived here for fifty years and never had a problem. I wanted to scream that the Hendersons were a childless couple who kept to themselves, but I didn’t have the words.

So I’ve started researching. I found old maps in the attic, showing the original boundaries of the cemetery. It turns out our house sits on the very edge of the old burial ground, a section that was deconsecrated in the 1920s and sold off. Many of the headstones from that era were moved, but the bodies, they were left behind, unmarked and forgotten.

I also found a name in the county records: a woman named Miriam Holloway, who died in 1919, aged 34. The record says she was a ‘spinster’ and a ‘midwife.’ But in a margin note, in faded ink, it says: ‘She knew the songs of the earth.’ Nothing more.

I haven’t slept in two days. Every shadow is a monster, every squeak of the house a footstep. Last night, I was in the kitchen, getting a glass of water, when I saw her. Standing in the doorway to the cellar, a woman in a long, old-fashioned dress, her face white as bone. She raised a hand, beckoned me closer, and whispered, ‘You must finish what I started.’ Then she was gone, and I was left shaking, the glass shattered on the floor.

I can’t stay here. If I don’t get answers, I’ll have to move, even if it means leaving Julian. But I’m starting to believe the answers won’t come from history books or county records. They’ll come from the other side, and I’m terrified that when they come, I’ll be long past the point of saving.