(This has some formating problems since I copy-pasted it from a PDF)

Though the vernal weather of late has been gradually conquering the frigid aura left in the wake of a dying winter, a bitter zephyr traverses the murky air and low plane of land surrounding me. Late at night, such as now, the air is as cold as a day in the predecessor season. I trudge through the muddy earthen path, the cold iron gate of the cemetery looming above me. It will certainly be locked. I must find an alternate method of negotiating it. However, I know none, save for climbing, and that, to me, seems perilous at best. I approach, the hard ground under my feet crunching as small twigs snap and leaves rustle. I pull my hand from the large pocket stitched into my coat and immediately feel the cool air environ it, just as this gate and wall environ the graveyard. The moon casts the dark shadow of the bars of the gate across my form, and as I look down I can see them, each one a thick line of black against my coat. As I look up, sharp points top the bars of iron that go vertically up the gate. Horizontal bars, though fewer, make it impossible to fit anything larger than my arm through, I realize, as I try it. The first horizontal bar, the lowest, sits only about two feet above the ground I now stand on. Crosses perch atop the fissured and weather-worn stone pillars on either side of the gate, ten feet high apiece. They seem to peer downwards at me, daring me to complete the sacrilege which I have set out to do. I take the shovel I have brought with me in my hands tightly and heave it upwards, watching it fly, silhouetted against the darkness of night. It lands on the ground opposite myself. I lift my foot from the ground, seeing small clumps of mud fall from the bottom of my boots and back to the earth, and place it on the first horizontal bar of iron running across the gate. I oscillate the depression of my foot between my heel and toes through my boot across the bar, testing its friction. Confirming its stability, I pull my other foot up, and then my body. Now I am standing on the first horizontal bar, the tips of my boots through the holes made between the vertical and horizontal bars. My hands, chilled to a pale white as another zephyr permeates the space around me. It is fortunate that heights do not deter me. Each step upwards in my ascent augments my peril. I continue to climb, painstakingly maintaining my safety. At last, my fingers, now gelid from handling the cold iron, reach the peak horizontal bar. With great care, I sweep my leg over the highest bar, and straddle it, careful not to impale myself on the metal point that adorns the top of each vertical bar. Once I am firmly seated at the top, I cannot help but look in all directions, gazing across the dark, cold earth surrounding me. It is a beautiful sight, to my left, but to my right, the graveyard is nestled, devoid of all life. I glance upwards, as an auditory disturbance sounds from above. A lone raven soars above, cawing loudly. I gaze after it for a moment, before continuing down the opposite side of the iron gate. As soon as I am finally standing on solid earth once again, I retrieve the shovel and fix my eyes on the plethora of headstones stretching out before me like a lifeless garden of pure morbidness. At least half of the words carved into the stone have long since faded, the people buried beneath them long since forgotten. But there is one amongst them, the one I am desperate to locate, that draws me, and whether it is truly at my own behest, I can only hope for confirmation. The low-set billowing fog curls around my ankles, as I begin to walk warily through the aisle between the stones, in a nature oddly akin to an affectionate feline. I raise my legs higher with each step, and the fog dissipates from around them. I know, unless I have overlooked a death in the preceding week, I should be searching for the stone appearing to be the most recent. At last, my gaze falls upon a stone. Its surface is still polished to an extent, relatively untouched by the winter. There, etched at the uppermost part of the stone, lies an engraving, etched with minimal care. Rest in Peace Ellen Tannerwood: 1576-1602 My love. Taken from me a pair of fortnights hence while I lay stuporous from the same plague-like illness that claimed her life. My shock and horror when I first awoke from this vegetative state, being told of the occurrences that had passed whilst I lay, was greater than any other I had known. What bliss it might have been to remain ignorant of the events that had transpired while I strayed out of mind and body, to stay in that near-death, dreamlike state while Ellen’s existence ceased, never knowing. Or still, to be claimed by the illness myself, and join my beloved in the afterlife. I refuse to end my existence now, though there was a terrible period where there seemed to be no other option; the sacrilege would be too great. For Ellen, my beloved, surely had been the degree of purity crucial for the ascent to Heaven. I know, almost certainly, whether it be my own hand that dispatches me, or I complete my intended task, I will be deserved of Hell. Thus, it is now, on this night, when the moon is but a necessary sliver, that I will take it upon myself to go to this sacrilegious last resort. If I fail, I am doomed to go home to live out my days alone, living only to die, dying only for eternal damnation. My chilled fingers brush against the headstone, tracing the grooves of the engravings. I must not leave anything to chance. Dropping the shovel to the ground, I review the instructions in my head before fervently whispering them aloud. In all the readings I was able to obtain without detection, three instructions presented themselves most commonly throughout each. So I, with no evidence to support any one method, opted for a combination thereof. Perhaps I will be completely mistaken in my thinking, but no other option seemed any more viable. Foremost, I must wait until the moon is a sliver, travel to the location of burial, and locate the grave itself. I am to place candles around the grave, rectangularly. I was only able to carry ten with me, stored in a pouch I had sown into my coat before I set out for the graveyard. After, I am to mix a singular drop of blood from the smallest finger on my right hand with a drop from my left thumb, letting it drip onto the ground above where Ellen was buried. For that, I have brought a small pin with me. To light the candles, I have brought flint and steel and twigs and sticks dried over my fireplace in my cottage. I set out, burying each candle a few inches in the earth, ten in a rectangle. I lay the twigs and sticks in a diminutive accumulation on a patch of dry grass, saving one for to light the wick candles. Rubbing the residual traces of their bark from my hands, I collide the steel against the flint. With an angry hiss, a solitary spark flies from the flint and is extinguished almost instantly. I strike the two objects together again. Another hiss sounds in the dull quiet of darkness, On this attempt, of the trio of sparks produced, one lands softly on the sticks before being extinguished as well. Sextuple attempts, and at last, three sparks cling to the dry grass nether to the sticks. My breath held tightly in my throat, I watch as a miniscule flame is born, dancing joyously in its infancy. A small plume of smoke billows from the flame. I crouch, the fabric of my breeches dampening at the knees from the moisture in the ground. The flame makes a snap leap upwards, curling around the nearest twig. I whisper to myself, expressing absentmindedly a wish for the absence of another wuthering zephyr to reset my progress. At last, the twig is aflame. I observe it, now sure of the potential of its success. After a time akin to eternity, the flame is of an adequate magnitude for my purposes. I grasp the stick I set aside between my fingers, and hold it to the small fire I have created. I pull it back, inspecting it for any traces of fire. Upon viewing none, I return the end opposite where I am grasping it to the fire. When I take it back once more, the end is imbued with flame. Deftly, I touch the flame at the furthermost point of the stick in relation to myself to each of the wicks of the candles. Each one glows alight, the warm, reassuring flame contrasting the dark, oppressive blanket of darkness that environs me yet. It occurs to me, now, that I should be reluctant to dwell on any one of my tasks. I am uninformed of the length of time which it will take for my ritual to come to fruition. If the sun should rise before my task is completed, the sliver-shaped moon will not be present. I remove the small pin from the pouch in my coat, once I have completed the task of setting the candles alight. WIthout taking time to overly ponder the sensation I am likely to feel, I insert the pin sharply into the smallest finger on my left hand. I release a pained gasp, as the pin is no longer in its original honed state. I immediately perforate my right thumb with the pin, and I transport my pained digits to the space in front of my eyes, gazing in morbid awe as a drop of blood beads at the site in which the pin entered my skin. I position the small finger over my thumb vertically, watching fixedly as the blood droplet slides down the surface of my skin until it has traveled to the underside of the digit. Presently, it drips down to my waiting thumb beneath it, until both drops have mingled. Hovering my thumb over the grave, attempting to let it fall as accurately as I can into the center of the rectangular shape created by the position of the candles. The drop falls, and lands in what I believe to be at least similar to my intended target. At long last, it is finished. I stare downwards in the direction of the grave, the earth unmoving, no sound of any kind, no disturbance in the air, no zephyr, no screeches of demons come to drag me down to the fiery depths. Then, it occurs to me that I have forgotten one aspect of this ritual, one that I had decided to include: A few words in Latin, spoken aloud. I had taken a combination of various words spoken as the final portion of several of the rituals, and combined them with what other portions I had decided upon. I reach into my coat and rummage around, producing a crinkled piece of parchment with several words in latin messily scribbled down, late at night. I speak, my voice hoarse from the cool night air, my heart beating in my eardrums, rapidly and loudly, pulsating. “Mors fiat sub lumine novaculae lunae, igne circumdata, sanguine conservata.” A cool brush of air flows over me, billowing my coat into waves. I look upwards, and the thin moon is gradually being obscured by a dark cloud. Something is happening, surely. I can feel it, but if the moon’s light is extinguished before it can be completed… I can do nothing about the moon but wait and watch the grave. The grass above it stirs and bristles, swaying and dancing. There suddenly appears a pale light from the headstone. The engraving is glowing brilliantly. I shield my eyes with my sleeved forearm and fall backwards as I feel the earth beneath me shift and rumble. I cover my ears as the sound of ferocious gusts of wind becomes deafening. When I open my eyes, the glowing light, the sound, even the wind, has fully ceased. I gaze upwards. The headstone is cracked, split apart, even, and the earth of the grave is disrupted, with piles of earth around it. I watch in awe as a young woman, dressed in light grey robes, stands from a kneeling position near to the rectangular hole of the grave, where a rough wooden coffin rests, its hinged cover open. She is shaking off clumps of dirt from her clothes. Ellen. Her form is very dark, and I look upwards. The moon is now completely obscured by a cloud, and, judging by its size, the cloud will not disappear for a long while. I struggle to my feet, righting myself and walking to Ellen. She looks around her, seemingly bewildered by her resurrected state, before settling her pale eyes on me. Something is peculiar about her appearance, but I am too overwhelmed with joy at her sight, something I have not held in my gaze in over a month. She is so radiantly beautiful, just as I remember her, no blemish anywhere. I reach my hands out to take hers, to see if she is indeed real and not just a figment of my imagination and grief. My fingers entangle with hers, and she stares at me with a light in her eyes as if nothing has changed, no time gone by, and no resurrection taken place. All is as it was before. I am too overcome with elation to speak. I only embrace Ellen, holding her close to me. I fear if I release her, she will slip from my grasp and be dead and buried again. After a while, I pull away, a single tear of joy falling from my right eye. I stand back, still in awe at my success. Her eyes never leave mine, and their staring seems to bore into me, almost predatory. This is what, in retrospect, had been peculiar about her appearance. The eyes. Looking directly into mine as if they desire to consume my very soul, and yet full of love and longing. She outstretches her arm to me, and I am too frozen with uncertainty, or possibly, though I am loath to admit it, fright, to move. She speaks in a feathery, comforting voice. “It is me, my love. Do not be afraid. Let me see you. Let me touch you.” Suddenly, the moon, that had been covered by a blanket of clouds above, begins to shine through again, the light creeping up behind Ellen, still standing in darkness. Just before her hand can touch me again, reaching for my face, the moonlight washes over her. My throat clenches around my scream, stifling it before it can be made audible. Ellen’s outstretched hand in front of my face now is withered and rotted, fingernails yellowed if there at all. Large strips of skin are hanging loosely from the hand or are torn off altogether, revealing either grey bone or bloody reddened flesh. Traveling up her arm, her skin is similarly shredded into strips. Her clothes, once beautiful robes, are now tattered moldy rags. FInally, my horrified eyes settle on her face. One of her sockets is empty, save for a tendon dangling down from within. The other eye is a strained red, bulbous and bulging out of its socket, oozing an unknown yellow substance from the corners. Still, my scream refuses to leave my throat. Her nose has all but disappeared, leaving the bony holes of the nostrils in her skull. Her hair, once a dark golden color, is now nothing but foul brown strands and is matted to her partially exposed, rotting skull. Her mouth is missing about half of its teeth, and the remaining ones are rotten and full of small holes. Her gums, yellowed and blackened both, have receded almost to the roof and bottom of her mouth. Ragged holes are torn into both of her cheeks. Worst of all, several earthworms are burrowing into several parts of her face and body, writhing and wriggling horribly. “Join me, my love. Be with me in death. Please, do not be afraid.” She rasps, both of her rotted hands wrapping around my throat. My scream finds its way to the surface, echoing reverberating throughout the graveyard. My hands grasp her wrists, tearing away skin like dry parchment and leaving bone. I struggle for air, not able to pry her hands away from me. Gradually, I sink to my knees, my mind hazy and unfocused. For a moment, I wonder if I would be content to be dead and resurrected as Ellen is. For now that she is alive, undead, she will not die once more. I could allow her to kill me, asphyxiate me until my life drains away, then bury me and complete the same ritual. It was something about the moonlight that turned her into what she is now. Possibly, when in darkness once more, she will return to her living, beautiful state. Perhaps that is the curse of this resurrected form. I could also stay away from the light, living with her just as things were before, just the two of us, away from the world. Was something unsound about the ritual? I could not find detailed reports of a successful ritual in my readings. I simply do not know. I can hardly think, and I do not know. Instinctively, my hands grasp for something, anything at all I could use to defend myself. My fingers close around the handle of the shovel. My mind screams at me not to do what I am about to, but in my oxygen-deprived state, I cannot stop myself. I swing the shovel as hard as I can with the one hand that is holding onto it, angling it towards Ellen's rotted visage. The hard metal of the shovel strikes her forehead off-center, and she staggers back, her hands relinquishing their hold on my throat. I gasp as the cool night air fills my lungs once again. My gaze, returning to its normal, focused state, finds its way to Ellen. Once again, the moonlight has been extinguished, temporarily, by a cloud. Ellen, now in her normal, beautiful, otherworldly form, is staring at me in shock, one hand pressed to the large dent the shovel has made in her skull. Blood trickles down the side of her face. A single tear forms in her eye and runs across the smooth surface of her cheek as she speaks. “We could have been together again, my love.” she whispers. Then, her eyes roll upwards until only the whites are visible, and she slowly teeters, before falling downwards into the grave once more, into the coffin from whence she had appeared. A portion of her robes brushes against one of the candles, still alight, and catches fire. I try desperately to stagger towards her, but I am still too weak from the deprivation of air. By the time I am able to reach the grave, the coffin is completely engulfed in flames. I stand, slumped over in devastation. After a time, the flames die down to an extent. In shock, I slowly take up the shovel once more, and fill in the hole of the grave around the coffin with the piles of earth scattered around it. I use the tip of the shovel to close the blackened lid of the coffin, which slams down with a thud, and cover it with earth, burying the candles with it. No one will ever know I was here, save for myself. The person I saw resurrected could truly have been a malicious entity with the intent to kill me by betraying my trust and posing as Ellen, and was unable to prevent its true form from being revealed in the moonlight. Or, simply, she could have been an accursed version of the woman I loved, and who still loved me back. I will never know. Perhaps it will be better not to know, but the thought bears no comfort. I dare not ever attempt this again. In anguish, I take my leave of the graveyard.