Grantham Church Cemetery
A thin layer of damp mist hung lingeringly over Grantham Church
Cemetery. The gravestones stood lopsided covered in green algae, so thick you
could hardly see the engravings. It was the route Daniel and I took every
Halloween. Up through the orchard, past the church on ripper street, through
the farm and local shops, into the town centre where the market place stood
deserted all evening, except for the careless teenagers who hid in the bracken
and overgrown bushes outside the cottages and jumped out at us for a fright.
Of course being the youngest sibling out of myself and Daniel I
constantly gripped his hand tight especially when I jumped suddenly. White
with fear I tucked myself into his loveable arms as we slowly began to
quicken our pace and walk on to the next few houses on cobble lane.
Many children took the same route that we did, but once again never
through the churchyard. Every child knew why and didn’t ever question
their parents heed nor even let the painful, frightening thought occur to them.
However I was one of those children who liked to think about such boundaries
like the churchyard, as was Daniel. All the children in the villages knew the
story of the girl Tiffany; the bakers daughter.
Unfortunately she was only eight at the time when she went for a walk
in the evening herself. It was 1838 and she went to pay her respects to her
mother who had died the previous year, when she vanished from site. Her
father saw her last; well her ghost, five years later she appeared on the steps
leading up to the church entrance and no one has been there for at least fifty
years. She is said to still wear her long white gapping robe that trails along
behind her, and red blood shot eyes filled with tears, and her thin brown
straggly hair in tight plaits as they were the day she vanished. As for her
father, he is long gone, perhaps even united with her in heaven.
On this particular Halloween though the storm from the night before
had blown over a tree on riper street leaving all the children stuck on which
way to go. As far as Daniel and I were aware, there was only one way to go,
through the cemetery. Of course many of the trusted children turned and
headed home as they knew there was not another option. Being the
troublesome children we were we cautiously opened the gate to the church
yard. Its hinges were rusted and it made an extremely high pitched sound
when we opened it. The wind battered our costumes blowing a gale,
nevertheless we ventured on further to the path that took us around the side of
the church past the main entrance. The leaves danced on my face like snow
and the taste of the damp mist filled the air. Then vaguely in the thick,
foggy mist I saw her…