The Grave of Elmira Cray

I’ve always been the skeptic in the family, the one who laughs at ghost stories and calls them campfire tales. So when my little cousin, Lily, came to stay with us for Thanksgiving in the autumn of 2009, I expected nothing more than her usual enthusiasm for all things macabre. We lived in a small, forgotten town called Harrow Creek, where the most exciting thing was the annual pumpkin festival. But Lily had heard about the old cemetery on the outskirts of town, the one with the crumbling stones and the legend of Elmira Cray.

Elmira Cray was said to be a witch who cursed the town after being accused of poisoning a well in the 1800s. Her grave was the centerpiece of the cemetery, a black marble slab with an inscription that chilled you to the bone: ‘As you are now, so once was I. As I am now, so you shall be. Prepare for death and follow me.’ My older brother, Jake, had taken me there a few times, and I remember the strange feeling of being watched every time we stood before her stone. Lily, of course, was obsessed. She begged and pleaded until finally, on a damp, foggy evening, Jake, our uncle, and our two obnoxious twin cousins, Mark and Matt, agreed to take her.

I went along because I didn’t trust the twins not to do something stupid. They were the kind of teenagers who thought vandalism was a form of rebellion. As we walked through the rusted gate, the fog clung to our ankles like icy fingers. Lily was practically vibrating with excitement, reading every headstone aloud. When we reached Elmira’s grave, she knelt down, tracing the engraved letters with her fingertips. But the twins, true to form, started snickering. ‘Dance on her grave,’ Matt whispered to Mark, a wicked grin on his face. Before any of us could stop them, they were stomping on the grass above Elmira, laughing and shouting, ‘Hey, witch! Show us your stuff!’ The air turned still, and I felt a sudden drop in temperature. Even the crickets stopped chirping. ‘Cut it out,’ I hissed, but they ignored me, doing a grotesque jig.

That night, we went home, and the house was filled with the warmth of holiday preparations. But I couldn’t shake the unease. I woke up at 3 AM, thirsty, and as I stepped into the hallway, I saw a shadowy figure at the end of the corridor. It stood there, tall and indistinct, with a shape that seemed to bend the darkness around it. My heart hammered, but when I blinked, it was gone. I told myself it was a trick of the light.

Over the next week, the sightings became more frequent. It would appear in my doorway, just watching me, its form solidifying each time. It had no face, but I could feel its eyes on me. I tried to ignore it, but every night, there it was. I stopped sleeping, leaving the lights on. My family noticed my pallor, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell them. They’d think I was losing it.

Then the dreams started. I was in the cemetery, standing before Elmira’s grave. The stone was new, and a woman in black stood beside it, her face hidden. She spoke in a voice that seemed to come from the ground itself: ‘You disturbed my rest. Now you must come to me.’ I would wake up screaming, drenched in sweat.

On Thanksgiving night, after everyone had gone to bed, I felt a cold draft from my bedroom door. The shadow was there, but this time it moved. It walked into my room, and as it approached, I saw that it was wearing a tattered black dress, and its face was decaying, with bits of flesh hanging from the bone. It reached out a skeletal hand, and I felt an icy grip on my shoulder. I tried to scream, but no sound came out.

The next morning, I woke up in the cemetery, lying on Elmira’s grave. The sun was rising, and frost clung to my clothes. I stumbled home, but no one seemed to notice my absence. They were all too busy with the leftovers. I tried to tell Jake, but he just laughed and said I had a nightmare. But I knew differently.

A week later, the twins got into a car accident on the same road that runs past the cemetery. They survived, but they were never the same. They would wake up screaming about a woman in black standing at the foot of their beds. And I, I still see her every night, but now she has a face, and it’s mine. She waits at my bedside, whispering, ‘Prepare for death and follow me.’ And I know that one night, I won’t be able to resist her call.