When I was a child I'd go with my nana once a year to visit grandad's grave. He'd died a year or so before I was born and, to cheer herself up on the otherwise dreary visits to her late husband, nana would take me along with her. It became our Thing, our little activity together reading kid's books to his tombstone and telling him about our year so far. As I got older we'd share family gossip with him too.
It may not have been everyone's idea of an perfect childhood but it was something just for nana and I. The only thing that upset me was a set of twin graves with realistic bed shaped headstones. They belonged to twins who had died aged four and a half, according to the writing and we're now peacefully laid to sleep forever. It frightened me, the thought that death was just sleeping and never being able to wake up. I guess before that I never quite knew what death was or why grandad was under a stone in the ground.
It was only made worse when I asked nana why they used such realistic beds - it looked like you could just skip between the sheets and nap! She said that if I tried I'd turn to stone and that it had happened all over the world already. Countless children had been turned to sleeping statues by trying to nap on bed shaped graves.
Of course I looked this up and found too many examples of "sleeping child" gravestones with beds that bore a striking resemblance to the twins in grandad's graveyard (as I'd thought of it at the time). I kept well away from the twin beds after that, never telling nana why I wanted to walk to see grandad a different way, the longer way around the outskirts of the grounds by the woods. She never questioned it though she protested at her old bones having to go further.
I kept to that route for years, never thinking to go back near the twin graves until a couple of days ago when my niece went missing. It was a daft, childish part of me that said "remember that one time when she saw a statue of a bed at the museum and asked if she could nap on it? Remember that she also sees grandad with nana? Remember nana doesn't know why you prefer the long route even though she'd rather take the shortcut?"
She was there when I arrived, tucked up under the marble blanket like a little angel made of stone. She was made of stone, her features were perfectly realistic, down to the last hair, in a way that couldn't have been just marble. There was something about the faint colour to her skin, too dark to be marble and yet when I touched her face she was as cold and solid as the rest of the gravestone.
I was so preoccupied by her that it took me a good whole to realise that the other twin bed had a sleeper in its sheets too. A girl about my niece's age, about her build but she was wearing a hijab while my niece had her hair in the usual plaits. After checking the local police station's missing persons board I found the other girl. She went missing the same day as my niece. A twin case that nobody will ever solve.
It may not have been everyone's idea of an perfect childhood but it was something just for nana and I. The only thing that upset me was a set of twin graves with realistic bed shaped headstones. They belonged to twins who had died aged four and a half, according to the writing and we're now peacefully laid to sleep forever. It frightened me, the thought that death was just sleeping and never being able to wake up. I guess before that I never quite knew what death was or why grandad was under a stone in the ground.
It was only made worse when I asked nana why they used such realistic beds - it looked like you could just skip between the sheets and nap! She said that if I tried I'd turn to stone and that it had happened all over the world already. Countless children had been turned to sleeping statues by trying to nap on bed shaped graves.
Of course I looked this up and found too many examples of "sleeping child" gravestones with beds that bore a striking resemblance to the twins in grandad's graveyard (as I'd thought of it at the time). I kept well away from the twin beds after that, never telling nana why I wanted to walk to see grandad a different way, the longer way around the outskirts of the grounds by the woods. She never questioned it though she protested at her old bones having to go further.
I kept to that route for years, never thinking to go back near the twin graves until a couple of days ago when my niece went missing. It was a daft, childish part of me that said "remember that one time when she saw a statue of a bed at the museum and asked if she could nap on it? Remember that she also sees grandad with nana? Remember nana doesn't know why you prefer the long route even though she'd rather take the shortcut?"
She was there when I arrived, tucked up under the marble blanket like a little angel made of stone. She was made of stone, her features were perfectly realistic, down to the last hair, in a way that couldn't have been just marble. There was something about the faint colour to her skin, too dark to be marble and yet when I touched her face she was as cold and solid as the rest of the gravestone.
I was so preoccupied by her that it took me a good whole to realise that the other twin bed had a sleeper in its sheets too. A girl about my niece's age, about her build but she was wearing a hijab while my niece had her hair in the usual plaits. After checking the local police station's missing persons board I found the other girl. She went missing the same day as my niece. A twin case that nobody will ever solve.
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