The graveyard is a harsh place
where memories are jostled.
Some of happier times,
others of dark foreboding.

Within such places,
Where the dead lie quiet,
Others do not.
They wake as the sun sets.

A lonely traveller often meets
with these denizens of putrid
horror.
Caught alone and unaware.

Left for dead along a wooded track
where flies and mites invade the
indecent corpse.
Until he rises too.

The veil hides not these
unspeakable entities.
As they prowl beyond the
cemetery wall for our living blood.

Often in much older places
than our clean fields of corpses.
Often in unhallowed ground,
unhallowed because the church has closed.

These dark places were feared by
our ancestors and rightly so.
They knew what lurked beyond
the veil of death.

A mist rises and forms as the
creature escapes the horrid
box.
Vermin flee at the ungodly apparition.

Not quite ghost, nor mortal.
Certainly not dead.
Un-dead would be better.
A drinker of human blood.

Crossroads are forbidding places
Where ancient denizens lurk.
Murderers were hanged here in
ancient times.

Murderers were buried here in
deep fear.
When they rose, they were
confused by the location.

So the judge and cleric would tell you.
Not so.
The damned would soon find
a hapless victim.

The cycle of death would begin again.
And again.
Until some villages perished altogether.
Out of mind, out of sight.

Until our modern day,
when the bloodthirsty dead
lurk in the dark places.
In the veil beyond death.