Children of the Grave

By Nathan Godwin

Bradley Hayward is a divorced and retired real estate agent who lives alone in an apartment in Pittsburg Philadelphia. One day, he recounts a story to his friend about a legend in the city concerning the burial of a little girl whose funeral he had attended fifty years earlier. According to him, the girl had mysteriously appeared to the funeral gathering shortly after she had been buried and altered her own gravestone.

Now he is being haunted by the picture of a missing woman he has seen in a newspaper who seems to be the adult version of the girl. He finally journeys to Louisiana to find out about the origins of this woman. Here he discovers a reality of the world that is known only to a few people on earth. But he also discovers that there is a larger and more mysterious purpose to his journey to Louisiana that is unknown even to him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Godwin
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223631743

Book preview

Chapter 1

"I t was a roughly two by five foot coffin, but having a hexagonal structure with two long sides - the sort that vaguely reminds one of those ancient Egyptian coffins. It lay open, and I could see the little girl lying inside it in her speckled silk blue dress upon the red velvet. Her eyes were closed and both her hands were resting on her chest peacefully, as though she was in an eternal sleep. Her face glistened slightly in the sunlight from the ointment that was embalmed on her skin. She seemed so innocent. Such a tragedy that she should have died so young.

"After the eulogies, I watched as the door of the coffin was closed and then people went forward and began placing wreaths and bouquets on it. The vault was then lowered deep into the earth. We had paid our last respects. That was on Saturday, 20th of June, 1936.

"I remember itching afterwards to go and attend some business of my own. But I nevertheless stayed with everyone else for the final prayers.

"It was a rather blissful morning that Saturday in Pittsburgh. It was sunny and warm, though also a bit breezy. I could hear birds whistling blithely in the widely spaced trees behind us not far from where we were. The burial field had a scenic charm to it that seemed ironic given the aura of death that it represented. Anita’s uncle and aunt, Paul and Judith Prescott, who were also her foster parents, were standing to some distance at my left with several people between us. Their two children were staying at home. We were all adults at the funeral and I was the youngest person there.

"Paul, who I worked for, was the older brother of Anita’s deceased mother. He had taken Anita into his care after her parents died four years earlier in a car accident. Anita had been their only child. Just five days earlier, she had drowned accidentally in the pool of the Prescott house where she had been playing. She was eight years old when she died. Paul and his wife had chosen to bury the girl near the graves of her parents. Their graves were on the right side of hers, her mother’s being the nearest and located about six yards away. A large pile of soil stood a few feet from Anita’s open grave waiting to be filled back into it.

"The gathering of thirty four mourners were standing around the gravesite in a roughly circular form. Besides the Prescotts, there were only a few people that I knew or recognized. The priest was standing at the end to my left opposite Anita’s tombstone, reading from the Book of Psalms. The place was otherwise very quiet and serene. No one else was around apart from us. I knew because I occasionally glanced around absentmindedly and didn’t see anyone.

"I was still thinking about the business I had to attend to after I left the place, knowing that the service would soon end. I glanced at my watch at some point and saw that it was almost 11:30am. Though I don’t remember exactly, but I think the priest had stopped reading from the bible and was saying the final prayers when it happened.

"The first thing I remember hearing – or at least thinking that I heard –was a sound that was like a clap of thunder, even though it wasn’t raining. I looked up at the sky, and I believe some other people did as well. The previously bright and sunny sky had become dull grey as the clouds darkened. Normally, this should simply have told me that it was about to rain, which would not have been a big deal since we were about to end the service anyway. But there was something about the transformation of the sky and the atmosphere that seemed odd and unnatural. And, come to think of it, it did not normally rain at that time of the year. It was, after all, summer. That was what made the sudden darkening of the clouds seem all the more strange.

"We could have nonetheless ignored it and simply wrapped up of the service had it not been for the bizarre manner in which the clouds began to behave. By now, I believe, everyone in the service was looking upwards. As we watched, the clouds got darker so that it was as though seven hours had somehow passed by within the space of merely two minutes and it was 6:30pm instead of 11:30am. Some of the clouds looked black along their edges and lower surfaces, though the rest of their bodies remained dark grey. The strangest thing about it was that the clouds appeared to be moving as though they were a mass of thick dark grayish smoke floating through the air. And they were moving at considerable pace...towards the horizon that I and the people at the side where I was were facing. The clouds also seemed to be creating space among themselves so that light continued to pierce through them from the sky above, thereby preventing the place from getting much darker than it would otherwise have been.

"In addition to the dimming of the atmosphere, the air had become more noticeably windy. But I don’t think it was so much that the breeze had gotten stronger than it already had been; it was still somewhat mild. Rather it was because of the howling sound it was now making.

"On the whole, it was as though the sky was fleeing. Though from what, I could not imagine. Everyone was looking around at everyone else, and then, intermittently, at the sky, wondering what was going on. The priest, who had been making an effort to ignore the strange vagaries that were occurring, had now stopped praying and was either staring upwards or glancing at everyone else in bewilderment.

"Suddenly, someone within the crowd, who was to my right and facing opposite the priest,