Black Sheep

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I can't have blacked out for very long, the sun didn't seem to have changed position in the sky very much. I tried to keep my eyes open, but the brightness of the day hurt my eyes and made me squint and close them. I lay still for a few minutes, my eyes shut tight, my head throbbing, the blood pulsing in my ears.

Slowly, I sat up, supporting myself my leaning on my left hand while I rubbed the back of my head with my right hand. I leaned forward, with my head bent between my knees and tried to ignore the pain shooting through my head. Looking around made me feel dizzy, like waking with an intense hangover, the world seemingly spinning around me. I took plenty of deep breaths and tried to focus my eyes on something a few yards away.

It took a few blinks and the feel of moisture on my cheeks for me to realise I was crying. Not wracking sobs, but a steady flow of tears falling from my eyes and rolling down my cheeks. I wiped away the tears with the back of my hand and squeezed the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger. Slowly, over the space of a couple of minutes, the tears stopped and I was able to regain focus again.

Initially, my mind was completely blank, I had no coherent thoughts at all in my head, more general feelings of confusion, fear and bewilderment. Gradually, the realisation of what had just happened crept up on me. I knew what had happened, or I thought I knew. But I just couldn't bring myself to believe it.

I looked around me, half hoping there was somebody there who might have seen the same thing and half hoping there was nobody there to see me in this state. There was nobody else here, thankfully. I looked ridiculous; red eyed, filthy, shaking, wobbly, sat on a grave in the middle of a scorching hot summer day. I stood up gingerly, another wave of dizziness hit me and the throbbing in my head intensified for a few seconds, before passing, to be replaced by a more steady thumping in the back of my head.

I stood still, giving myself a few moments to gain some element of steadiness and allowing my thoughts to collect themselves. Some semblance of rationality began to reassert itself in my mind. It must be exhaustion, sunstroke, dehydration, over active imagination, being over emotional following this morning's argument. A whole plethora of things could have contributed to my brain short circuiting and making me hallucinate or trip out or whatever had happened. Whatever it was, there was surely no supernatural explanation, because there's no such thing as the supernatural.

Feeling slightly better, despite the headache and feeling physically drained, I walked to where my carrier bags were, at the foot of the graves, and crouched to pick them up. I smiled to myself and shook my head as I thought back at what I'd just experienced, the silliness of it all. If somebody had told me this had happened to them I'd laugh my head off at them and tell them to pull themselves together. I stood up, the carrier bags in my right hand, and made to walk towards my great, great grandparents' grave, intending to give it a little pat by way of saying goodbye.

But something was wrong, something was out of place and it took a few seconds to realise what it was. I could almost feel the blood draining from my face. I took a few small, reluctant steps towards the grave, not quite believing what was there before my eyes. The two pebbles I'd placed at the foot of the reclined cross had moved. Not just slightly, but they had moved about three feet up the cross, to the point where the vertical and horizontal parts intersected.

My first thought was that I had been mistaken, that I hadn't placed the stones at the foot of the cross, which I'd placed them further up. But two fresh white scratch marks, stretching from where the stones were originally placed, to where they were now, were clearly visible in the grey granite.

I hesitantly put my hand out, meaning to touch the marks, but my hand hovered a couple of inches above the gravestone, frozen. With a monumental effort of will, I reached forward and gently brushed my fingertips over the markings. They rubbed away easily. They were fresh, dusty, and slightly chalky, just like the stones themselves. There could be no doubt that these were left by the stones being pushed up the cross, the marks were so fresh and they certainly weren't there before.