The Pale Grass of June

In the simmering summer of 2014, I found myself in the small town of Lindon, perched on the edge of the Everglades. The town was a curious blend of new subdivisions and old oak trees draped in Spanish moss. My roommate, Mara, and I had moved there for the research opportunities, but we quickly fell into the rhythm of biking everywhere. The trails wound through the town, past the high school, and alongside a peculiar patch of land that held the old Lindon Cemetery.

The cemetery belonged to the First Congregational Church of Lindon, but it had long since been abandoned by the congregation, left to the care of the town. There were no fences, no gates, and the graves dated back to the 1880s, when the town was just a trading post. The cemetery sat directly across from the high school’s football field, where on Friday nights the lights blazed and the crowd roared, but during the day, it was a peaceful patch of green, a quiet island amid the bustle.

When we arrived, the cemetery was in the midst of an expansion. The town had decided to add new plots, and workers had torn down a stand of ancient oaks on the eastern edge, leaving raw, red earth and a tangle of roots. The new section was marked by white stakes and string, looking like a skeleton of a future resting place. I often felt a pull toward that place, a sense that we should stop and pay our respects, but Mara would always shrug and say, ‘It’s just a cemetery, let’s keep moving.’

One afternoon, in late June, the heat was oppressive, and the air hung thick and heavy. We were riding home from the library when we saw a figure standing among the new plots. It was an old man, dressed in a faded black suit, holding a shovel. He seemed to be staring at the ground. Curious, we slowed down and eventually stopped at the edge of the road. He looked up, and his eyes were pale, almost colourless, like the sky after a storm. He called out to us, ‘You should come see this.’

We hesitated, but something about his voice compelled us. We walked our bikes across the street and onto the soft grass. The old man gestured to the ground. There, partially exposed by the uprooting of an oak, was a grave. The headstone was small and weathered, barely readable. It read: ‘Elias Thorne, 1847-1891. Beloved Father.’ But what made my blood run cold was the grass around it. It was wrong. It was a vibrant, almost unnatural green, and it grew in a perfect circle, as if the ground had been recently disturbed.

‘They tried to move him,’ the old man said, his voice a dry rustle. ‘When they cleared the trees, they found him here, but the records said this plot was empty. They thought he was in the old section. But he’s not. He’s been here all along.’ He knelt and placed a hand on the grass. ‘And he’s not happy.’

Mara and I exchanged glances. The old man looked up at us, and for a moment, his eyes seemed to gleam with a strange light. ‘He’s been calling out, and I’ve been listening. He wants his family to be together. He wants them all in this new plot. But there’s no peace for him here. Not until they’re all here.’

We backed away, mumbling apologies, and rode off, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching us. That night, I dreamt of the cemetery. In my dream, the new plots were filled with headstones, all bearing the name Thorne. And in the center, the grass was a deep, dark green, almost black, and it seemed to writhe like a living thing.

Over the next few days, we couldn’t avoid the cemetery. Our route to everywhere took us past it, and we found ourselves stopping more and more. The old man was always there, sometimes working with a shovel, sometimes just standing. He told us that Elias Thorne had been a founding father of the town, but he had a falling out with the church. He had been buried outside the consecrated ground, in the patch that was now being cleared. When the church had expanded decades ago, they had quietly moved his remains to a pauper’s grave, far from the new plots. But then, during the expansion, the construction crew had inadvertently disturbed that grave, and Elias’s bones had been scattered.

‘He wants to be whole again,’ the old man said. ‘And he wants his family with him. They’re all buried here, you know, the Thornes. But they’re in different spots. He’s been trying to bring them together, but they resist. So he’s trying to create his own plot.’

We started to see strange things. A circle of grass would appear overnight, perfectly green, while the rest was brown. The headstones in the old section seemed to lean slightly, as if straining toward the new plots. And on moonless nights, we could hear a faint moaning from the cemetery, carried on the wind.

The old man began to ask us for help. He wanted us to help him dig up the Thorne family graves and rebury them in the new section, in a neat row beside Elias. He said that was the only way to appease him. We refused, horrified at the desecration. But he insisted, saying that if we didn’t, worse things would come.

One evening, we found the old man in a frenzy, digging frantically at the base of a tree. He had a wild look in his eyes, and his hands were bleeding. ‘He’s coming!’ he screamed. ‘I can feel him! He’s moving!’

We tried to calm him, but he was beyond reason. As we stood there, the ground began to tremble slightly. A headstone nearby toppled over with a thud. Then another. The moaning grew louder, and from the new plots, we saw the grass begin to ripple, as if something was moving beneath.

We ran. We didn’t stop until we were home, and we locked the doors and windows. But that night, I couldn’t sleep. I looked out my window, and I saw a light in the cemetery. It was a pale, blue glow, hovering over the new plots. And I saw the old man, standing in the middle of it, his arms outstretched. Then the glow vanished, and the old man collapsed.

We didn’t go back. We heard that the old man was found the next morning, dead of a heart attack, right on the spot where Elias’s grave had been. But the strange occurrences didn’t stop. People reported seeing a tall, dark figure among the tombstones. The grass in the new plots grew in unnatural patterns, spelling out ‘THORNE’ if you looked from the right angle.

We moved out of Lindon shortly after, but the cemetery has stayed with me. I still have nightmares of that night, of the ground moving, and the sound of a shovel scraping. Sometimes, I think I can still hear the old man’s voice, whispering on the wind: ‘He wants his family together. He wants them all.’

And I wonder if, in some way, we are part of that family now, bound to that pale grass and the restless dead below.