(Cue spooky soundtrack)

As if the graveyard at midnight wasn’t eerie enough, Livy’s dad boomed out his annual recitation of Edgar Allan Poe.

“At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon—”

Tonight’s mystic moon glimmered around a cloud, through the tops of evergreens, trying in vain to cast a beam into the mild June night and Brighton Cemetery.

“Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall—”

Livy clutched a handful of flowers to her chest and focused on keeping her breath steady and even. Her feet snapped twigs as she and her twin, DeeDee, followed Dad’s flashlight arc along a row of oaks.

His baritone voice pierced the night. “My love, she sleeps! Oh may her sleep, as it is lasting, so be deep—”

A heavy wind sighed overhead. Branches creaked under the weight of the night. Livy dare not reach over and clasp her twin’s hand. If she did, her shaky grip would betray her. Gravel crunched behind her as the groundskeeper trailed them.

“Some sepulcher, remote, alone—”

Most people would never guess famed rocker Declan Decker quoted Edgar Allan Poe. Tonight he was plain old Dad, Howard McCreary, come to pay his respects on the twentieth anniversary of his late wife’s sudden passing.

“Oh to think, poor child of sin, It was the dead who groaned within.”

She ground her teeth to keep from telling him to shut up, he was spooking her. He’d only say twenty-six was far too old to let a midnight cemetery spook her. Still, at each nocturnal visit to Mom’s grave, a secret phobia gripped her. Coimetrophobia. Fear of cemeteries. Each year, she feigned indifference to the waving shadows and moaning wind. She forced herself to stroll with nonchalant strides like her no-nonsense twin.

Copyright @2015 ~DVC~