MIDNIGHT SILENCE
by Sorana Lucia Salomeia

Under the grey sky of autumn, like a huge bell of glass covered with steam, under the dark clouds of heavy rain, in a place where eternal silence and deep mourning have found an everlasting shelter, lies a cemetery. In the middle of nowhere it seems to be, with spectral fears floating in the cold air.

The full moon is reigning in the midnight sky enlightening the spectral creatures of the graveyard. The smog is slowly falling, hiding the far horizon, bringing back to life the dreary mysteries of times long ago.

As night thickens, the candles of the dark sky start lighting one by one like a chandelier hanging in the ceiling of an abandoned castle, with cracked walls and cobwebs in every corner, with old wooden doors with rusty hinges that dangle every time the mighty wind blows, making blood-curdling creaks that echo like a menace in the funeral-like silence of the night.

The cemetery is deserted. So dark, so silent, so sporadic... Old wooden crosses rise in the moonlight with thousands of unseen souls and specters floating in the air.

An unseen clock strikes the midnight hour, tearing the tissue of silence that was being woven. The grave sound echoes like a thunder that comes from nowhere and fades into the unknown. It is all so strange, so frightening when darkness throws its cloak over the world, when the dark veil of dreadful sights falls, covering the whole place.

The silence is torn once again by the bells from a nearby cathedral, bells that keep on calling... Listen, what a sound! But, in the heavy sleep of night, far off under the moon, the song dies under the ground, for, once again, the echo is fading.

The high, chilly winds of late autumn blow through the leafless trees, their branches beating one against the other.
The pale, rusty-coloured leaves on the ground rustle down the alley, with millions of voices blending into a single one.

The wild wind moans over the cold rocks, over the lonesome hills, like an ominous, solitary spirit haunting aimlessly among silent tombstones and crosses in the death of night.

In the distance, climbing on the hill in a long, black veil, there can be seen an unclear figure. It draws near. It is Mrs. O’Grady, the odd widow. Her story has never been told. Always in black, never talking, just quietly walking through the night... A pale face with small, dull, inexpressive eyes, thin purple lips and pale cheeks...

A ghost she seems to be, haunting restlessly among the shadows of the cold night. She is an unchained mystery locked with frozen padlocks of icy silence in a world of grief and sorrow.

Listen, the bells of St. John are calling. It is time for a widow to cry. She goes to the churchyard and cries because it is so hard and painful to look at his cold, silent grave of stone once again and, yet, every night you will see her coming here. There is nothing to free her from all the pain and regret and she knows it is all in vain.

She walks the hills in a long black veil and she visits that grave when the night wind moans, like a specter, like a shadow under the glow of the cold moon.

Darkness and silence wrap her up like a rough shroud, while her eyes are waiting, wide open, in useless expectation.

The earth is dizzy from the boundless darkness which tosses all over the place while, up there, in the sky, the winds wail, fluttering long tissues of whining clouds.

In the grey sky appears, sizzling wrathfully, a light globe like a spying eye on a sea of silence.

Songs and whispers, threnodies and calls head up for the sky, but the moon is cold and dead above thousands of necks bent in silent prayer.


Copyrighted © Sorana Salomeia, Iasi, Romania