Toys Of The Grave.

    (Based on a true story.)

    These days there are many things which I fail to remember, but I shall never forget that little cemetery on Castle Street.

    I'm not sure how I first found it, it was an almost hidden sort of a place, almost invisible from the street. You passed through a tall iron gate with flaking black paint, then through an arch shaped gap in a poorly trimmed hedge, then there it was. A graveyard spread out before you in all its overgrown, crumbling magnificence. Most of the gravestones were over a hundred years old, and none of the stood up at the correct angle. Moss and ivy grew everywhere: nature retaking the dead. Behind an abandoned chapel stood an old Yew tree and beside the graves under that tree was the place where the broken toys were always found..

    The first one, if I recall, was a faded, headless doll. There was a rabbits skull and bits of fur near by.

    At first it was just another oddity in an odd place. like the circle of mushrooms with the egg shells inside, or the friendly, slender black cat, or the nameless graves beside the north wall.

    But the next time I went there, years later and with a lady, on the same grave, amongst the fallen pines and branches of the tree, I found a teddy bear which had been ripped in half. I tried, as you do, to rationalize it.. Perhaps the cat or some other animals had taken it there, but why to that exact place and surely an animal would bury it?

    The next month I returned with the same lady, she liked the cat. There we found a china doll, smashed into fragments.

    I was becoming curious. The next week I returned alone and found a rag doll. It was soaked with rain and its arms were missing. There were wings beside it too, the broken wings of some small bird, maybe a Robin. 

    That night I could not sleep. Curiosity tormented me. I had to know who or what was behind those broken toys. Just before dawn, I decided that I must spend a night in the graveyard to investigate. Only then was I able to get a few hours sleep.

    It was the beginning of winter and so sunset came early. At twilight, I passed though the arch in the hedge and walked through the long grass between the graves. Sat under the Yew, I opened the bag which I had prepared. I took out a glass lamp and lit the candle inside it, then drank from my flask of coffee. The rag doll was at my feet. One of the wings had disappeared.

    That evening was uncomfortable. Clouds hid the moon and stars. The earth was cold and hard beneath me. I was exhausted from lack of sleep the previous night and at points my vision blurred. The headlights of passing cars over the hedge cast twisted shadows amongst the tomb stones and trees. Soon before midnight the cat came to keep me company for a few minutes. Minutes afterwards an owl flew down from the chapel roof and moments later I must have fallen to sleep.

    I tell myself that I must have slept and dreamt.

    I saw... I dreamt... a small figure. A boy, I guess. Short, slender, stooped over, with long, lank hair covering his face. In the candle lights his face was a a featureless blank, but I saw his shinning eyes and the horrid stains on his clothes. In one bony fist he held half of a torn teddy bear, the the other he grasped parts of a mouse.

    They were at my feet when the dawn light woke me.  

    It was then that I understood- he had to break the toys, to make them dead like himself, so they could be with him.