Nightly Watch

The city where I live is dark at night – no moon shines friendly beams over the tops of the trees. Mothers and fathers tell their kids to stay inside, whisper in soft voices to them the secrets of the world. They whisper about dark, evil creatures that walk among us in the evening, that revel in death and feed on blood.

When a child or adult disappears, the family grieves in silence. Because we still like to live under the illusion that they just got lost while playing, and will come through the door any-day.

None of us voice the thought that the thing that comes through the door may not be them.

They wanted to build a large mall in the place where the old Sunnydale graveyard stands, and tractors used to arrive every day to dig up the graves. Nobody mentioned that more than half the graves were empty.

But they could never build it. I remember when I was eight and they had cleared a large site, just dumped the dirt and remains in a pile, like so much garbage. I stayed behind a tree to watch the construction workers start to dig up the last few graves in the late evening. I can remember the shouts of relief as only six of the old graves remained, how they grinned and whipped their brows, anticipating going back into the safety of their homes.

It was an awful sound, really, the roar that came when the shovel lowered. I was scared there was a wild animal there – a lion maybe, or a tiger, such a primitive sound it was.

Before I could blink, the man holding the shovel was on the graveyard dirt, neck twisted at a strange angle. A dark shape landed in front of him, a leather coat – but it looked so much like wings in the dark night – swirling as it moved.

I watched, hidden, breath coming faster and faster in sharp puffs. The creature barely looked like it touched the ground as it moved gracefully, striking the workers and throwing them down.

"Good God, monster, what the hell are you doing?!" One of them yelled loud enough for me to hear. The scream that came next was louder still, and I shivered.

All the men disposed of, the monster turned towards me, and I saw his face. He looked like an angel – a fallen angel with black wings, hands smeared with blood. He moved towards me silently and I scurried backwards – surely he could not see me?

"I know you're there, little girl. Don't worry, I wont kill you. I need you to spread a message for me."

"What?" My voice came out shakier than I had wanted, and I cringed to myself.

"You tell your people never to come here again. They can tear apart the whole bloody world for all I care, but don't so much as look at these graves. If more try to tear them down, I'll kill them."

"Why would you do that for a hunk of marble?"

He chucked then, tilting his head.

"They deserve to rest now. No one will disturb her this time, I'll make sure of it"

He knelt at the middle grave, tenderly wiping a speck of blood off it before pressing his face to the cold marble.

"Who's buried there?" I yelled, scrambling out of my hiding place.

I remember him giving me a two finger salute before calmly brushing off his jacket and walking off into the night and disappearing from view.

After making sure he was gone, I ran to the middle grave, straining to make out the old words edged into the stone.

Buffy Summers
She saved the world.
A lot

To this day the six graves still stand, nobody goes near them anymore. Sometimes my grandkids whisper about seeing a dark figure at one of the graves, howling into the sky. They wonder if they should do something.

I always tell them to leave him alone, to leave the graves alone. Maybe when he sees that they wont be bothered, he'll stop his nightly watch, and join his loved ones.

I hope so.