Robin held out the chunk of grey speckled stone on her open palm. One side was jagged and the other smooth. A faint scrub of moss clung to its rough edges.
Grady’s mouth hung open.
“Please don’t tell me what that is.”
“Ok. I won’t.”
She turned it over in the light. The shallow imprint of something man made came into view— maybe the bar of an ornate letter T— and the smooth side glittered.
“Girl!” Grady screamed. She knew he couldn’t stop himself. “You are absolutely bat shit! Why would you bring that here?”
“It’s a souvenir,” Robin laughed. She cradled the chunk like a baby bird, her fingers curled around its sides. It was bigger than her palm and heavier than it looked.
“Robin no! A shot glass is a souvenir. A snow fucking globe is a souvenir. Not a weird piece of someone’s headstone you stole from a graveyard!”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“Oh, excuse me. You bought this at the graveyard gift shop?”
“It’s a rock Grady. It was lying in the dirt with all the other rocks. It has no value.”
“Oh I don’t know Robin. I’m pretty sure it has value to someone. Maybe to the dead person underneath it? And their whole family? And the entire Catholic Church?”
“This guy died in like 1800. Please, Grady.”
“That’s so much worse, Robin! Stealing from an old ass ancient ghost? This is the most cursed object in human history. And you brought it home to our apartment. I have to get the sage.”
“Grady. We don’t believe in curses. We’re grown adults. It’s just a stone.”
“Please keep it in your room, Morticia.”
Robin set the stone in her windowsill where it bathed silver in the streetlight. She knew it was more than a stone, that’s why she had reached her fingers down into the graveyard grass to pick it up. But Grady had it wrong. The stone wasn’t cursed. It was charmed.
Everyone else on the graveyard tour had crowded around an ancient mausoleum with a broken lock, jamming their phones through rusted iron bars, using their flashes to try to startle some ghosts into appearing. The tour guide was yapping a tired story about orbs showing up in digital photos.
But Robin had turned from the crowd, closed her ears to their giggling murmur. She unfocused her eyes into the gloom, trying to feel the energy of the place.
At this point in her life, Robin needed the universe to pull some possibility out of its folds. The world of science and reason— the world of men— had failed her over and over. Failed until she was a bunch of taut nerves, tied together by a single worn thread, just waiting for the next disaster.
To keep getting out of bed, she needed to believe in something. She needed to believe that maybe there could be a ghost here, a shimmering misstep in the molecular pattern, a burst of energy that lost its way. She needed to believe that everyone was wrong about everything.
But she figured a ghost wasn’t going to show itself to the tourist horde. It wouldn’t be bright and demanding like an orb. It would be subtle, fogged over like a window at the bottom of a pond.
She tried to clear her mind. She breathed in, absorbing the wet smell of rain and soil, the green moldiness of an ancient wooden gardening shed. She spread her fingers through the misty air. And right then, the lonely chunk of stone caught her eye in the dusky light, its crumbling parent a few feet away. Forlorn and forgotten, the tombstone was illegible. No other big pieces remained nearby, only the one that called to her from the dark.
Prickling with forbidden joy, Robin had shoved the stone in her coat pocket, where it bulged so obviously she was sure she’d be stopped by the guide. But the universe still had secrets, and she wasn’t caught. She carried it onto the plane wrapped in a pair of jeans, emerging from the airport with her one souvenir and her faith intact.
That night, Robin fell asleep thinking of the stone, how it had found its way to her. Maybe it was a good luck talisman. Or a protector. Surely it was no accident.
She imagined that lonely headstone weathering rain and wind for hundreds of years, its lifespan unspooling in a romantic time lapse through her restless mind. Birds alighting from the stone, a spider weaving along its carved eaves, frost feathering its edges and melting away. A generation of groundskeepers wiping at the algae until it was futile. Perhaps a mourner placing a hand right there to press himself up from kneeling.
One day the crack appeared, at first a hairline where the rain trickled in. Then the frost got in, expanding and pushing it further apart. Finally, the crumbling of stone like cake, the hard thunk when it landed in the grass, its owner far below in the dank earth. The sound communicating, with finality, no one alive remembers you.
She dreamed herself inside that dark tomb, far from her bed, with only the worms for company. A creak in her floorboards, then soil pushing up through the cracks. A rattling doorknob that looked a lot like the busted mausoleum lock.
A shadowy figure stood over her. In her subconscious, his breathing reached her ears, heavy and ragged. His face rippled like she was looking through water. I remember you, she thought.
She woke up curled into a tight ball, tense and edgy, a worn husk of her normal self.
“I had terrible dreams last night,” she said to her roommate, pouring room temperature coffee into a cup. “I feel like I didn’t sleep at all.”
Grady looked at her from his perch on the couch, judgment dripping from his arched eyebrows.
“You cursed yourself Robin. Time to call the exorcist.” He returned to scrolling.
Robin sipped her coffee. She pictured the chunk of gravestone sitting in her windowsill, pearly and innocent. Her shoulders shook.
When she was dressed for work, Robin snatched it off the windowsill and slid it into her pocket. She was afraid Grady’s superstitions would get the better of him, and it would find its way to the garbage outside. More than that, she was enchanted by the stone. Its long life in the quiet and still graveyard, its mysterious maker carving it by lamplight, and of course the man who slept below— maybe he could bring her something different than every day had delivered before. Maybe her dreams were a sign.
She wondered about the state of his exquisite bones two hundred years buried. His burial clothes turned to shreds. She thought of the forgotten quarry where the raw rock had been born before finding its exalted purpose, the furnaces inside the planet that formed and fired it. She filled her mind with the sepulchral story, allowing the romance to crowd out her fear.
She rubbed a thumb over the carved line, felt its gritty chill and something else. The stone had found its way to her in the dark. The stone had sought her out.
Despite the charm in her pocket, Robin was not at peace. At work, she scrolled through news feeds that made her spine curl into a comma, her sternum bowing in. A protective posture, a retreat from the world. Silently consuming panicked updates like a hunched internet goblin.
She faked her way through the work day, clicking the thumbs up on messages from her colleagues that she barely read. During a meeting, she doodled in her planner, little hump shapes over and over, cartoon headstones filling the margins. A spreadsheet sprouted tufts of grass between grey cells. She rolled her neck, but her muscles were stiff. Her eyes began to ache from staring at the screen.
When she went to lunch, she found herself looking over her shoulder. The figure from her dream loomed in her wired imagination. Waiting in line for salad, a man brushed against her. She took a step forward in line and he stepped in close behind. Too close. She fantasized about turning around and screaming at him. Letting him see her bloodshot eyes bulge, swinging the chunk of stone through the air like a mad woman. The pulse at her wrist jumped through winter faded skin like something wild caught in headlights.
On the way to the train she raced, her teeth grinding. The sun had set too quickly and too completely for six pm. One star hovered in the black sky. Her eyes felt gritty. It would be good to get home, relax, try for a better night’s sleep. Grady worked remotely, and he would probably have made dinner. The warm glow of their living room lamps and a fuzzy white throw blanket beckoned her.
It felt weird when no one else got off at her stop, and ominous when the crowd around the station dissipated to zero. Where is everyone? She wondered. Her own frigid exhales clouded her vision, and her ears were full of that ragged breath from her dream.
That terrible, strange dream. Grady’s superstition sinking into her subconscious. She was not afraid of ghosts. Graveyards were not cursed, and chunks of stone even less so. Her stone was only good luck, she had to believe it.
Still, she sunk low into her coat’s collar, walking as quickly as she could without breaking into a jog.
When the footsteps behind her finally broke through to her conscious mind, Robin realized they had been following for a few minutes. She should have paid more attention, should have taken the longer, busier route home.
She risked a darting glance over her shoulder, trying to act casual. Her stomach dropped.
There was someone there, about fifteen steps behind, matching her quick pace. It was too dark to see him well, but he was broad and alone, his coat open and billowing to the sides as he strode. His boots clipped on the sidewalk. Her mouth went dry.
Approaching the vestibule of her apartment building, Robin knew she couldn’t go in. If he pushed in after her he could shove her into the garbage room, and no one would see. Stories of women attacked in the public areas of apartment buildings were fresh in her mind, as were loud warnings from the police not to open the door if you were being followed. She walked past her building, head high. She tried to retrieve her phone without slowing, but her gloved hands were blind.
She walked on, keeping her speed steady, keeping her head up. Maybe she could get to the grocery store— it was only a few blocks and would probably be open. But then what? Ask a cashier to walk her home? He was probably just a random commuter. Probably he wanted nothing to do with her.
Jamming her hand in her pocket so it wouldn’t shake, she felt the stone. Her fingers crawled across it. She wondered, not allowing herself to think what she was thinking.
In an instant, Robin stepped sideways into a dark doorway between apartment buildings. Her breaths were shallow as the clipping approached. She backed into the shadow and squeezed her stone. He would probably keep walking. She was probably overreacting. Please help me get through this.
She pulled off her glove, felt the stone speaking through her fingertips. An electric current ran through her veins. Hefting it in her hand, Robin felt something other than panic. It was heavy and it fit so well. If he did stop, if he put a hand on her, if she wasn’t overreacting…
Her chest opened and she stood tall. When a face appeared in the doorway, much too close, she wasn’t scared. She was enraged.
“Where are you off to in such a hurry? You too good for me?” he seethed at her through closed jaws. One hand found the door frame, blocking her exit. The other, stiff in a leather glove, circled her wrist. “I just wanna—”
She swung for his temple.
Hands shaking, Robin set the stone in its place on her windowsill.
She thought of everything it had gone through to reach her.
The way it tugged at her eyes in the shadow of the graveyard, demanding her attention.
The way it dropped into her pocket with its satisfying mass.
The way her thumbnail slid comfortably along the carved letter fragment.
The way that new little smudge faded into the patina like it had always been there. Like it had always been hers.
i could feel the weight of that thing, I'm happy you didn't write about it any further
Excellent! A gift from one who hasn’t much left to give; just a perfect chunk of gravestone. Perfect for its eventual purpose. I love this!