Page 1 of The Girl on Hallow's Eve

So much can be learned about a place from its cemeteries.

There are the churches that put their graves behind the church, hiding them away behind the building and gates. They pretend they aren’t there except for the occasional laying of flowers or a quick glance when a chill rolls along unsuspecting skin.

There are the churches that put their dead right out front, scattered with flowers, carved into the very landscape of being. They don’t just acknowledge them; they make sure they are still a part of every day, from the cars that drive past to the congregants who walk by them the same way they once did when they sat in the pews inside.

There are the garden cemeteries, designed for visitation and enjoyment, committing the living to beauty in the same way they commit the dead to the earth. Here there are picnics and children laughing. This is where the dead dance rather than resting in peace.

There are the community cemeteries where the graves are simply hollow rather than hallowed. Where so many of the dead line up in the same way they did when they were alive. Anonymous, waiting, forgotten.

And then there are the family cemeteries sprinkled across rural land, the tiny clusters of weather-worn graves and miniature iron gates setting aside sections of fields. There’s something to be said about these cemeteries, about the people who rest in the same place where they lived. Many of them were born on that same land. As children, they walked across the spot that would one day be their grave. Some would only leave that land a handful of times in their entire lives, making that space their entire existence.

All of them share a common thread:

Space.

A full cemetery can create a sense of unease for even the steadiest blood. But there is a particular eeriness unique to a graveyard that has only just opened. Where the graves are gathered in one corner and the vast expanse of empty space around it sits as a silent reminder that the ground is waiting. It won’t always be empty. Those are graves even before there’s a body to place inside. It belongs to someone, and it will wait for them until their last breath.

It was one of the family cemeteries that caused the trouble that day. Sunlight splashed like butter across ground still warm from summer and tinged pale by autumn. With your back to the road, the image was serene. Rolling farmland, a softly slumbering barn, giant spirals of hay brought up from the grassy fields and turned by fleeting whimsical thoughts into giant marshmallows. But turning your back to the barn changed everything.

The machinery lined up along the horizon looked like monsters. Hulking metal creatures with hungry teeth and ravenous claws. People gathered behind them. A few stood in front, staring down their headlights as if they really thought it would stop their progress. Maybe it didn’t actually matter to the protestors if they stopped the massive tires from tearing up the grass and stamping down the rich dirt. Maybe they stood there only so that they could say they did. When it was all over, which they knew it was going to be, they could at least look at themselves in the mirror and say they stood in the way.

But there were at least a few who intended fully and profusely to stop any of those steel animals from venturing any further onto the farmland. They’d been shouting and screaming since the first second they’d heard about the road that would soon slice through this land, since the plan was made public for pavement and cinder block to replace the rolling fields and quiet barn. These were the people who hoped their voices would be loud enough to drown out the commands to begin destruction.

To them, change wasn’t inevitable. They would stop it. If there was a way, they would find it.

And for a brief moment, it seemed like a grave would become the way. One of the smaller machines moved forward. There was a dull crunch and a voice rose above the rest of the chaos.

“Stop! Those graves are two hundred years old. Do you have no respect?“

The tipped gravestone bought them another day. But it wasn’t enough to stop the progress. A bright orange tape skimmed just in front of those graves, blocking them off and delineating where the property ended. Those graves were on a different farm and would be safe, but the contractors were told to watch carefully for other stones. They promised they would. They did their best to quell the anger and tame the protests by assuring every one of them that they’d show the proper respect to the ancestral graveyards and not disturb any of them. There weren’t any on the land they were developing. It was part of the sale. They could take comfort in that.

But comfort was all they could take. The protests didn’t matter. Their anger didn’t matter. Progress was coming and graves still waiting to be made would be sealed over, the stone slabs of a foundation the only memorial marker they would ever have.

The timer on the oven is counting down to its last five minutes, which means it’s time for the dance I do every time there’s a lasagna almost finished cooking inside. I lean down and look inside, gauging how brown the cheese on top is and if those last few minutes are going to be enough. I’ll do it another several times before the alarm goes off, as if it’s going to change dramatically within a matter of seconds. It’s tradition at this point.

The cheese is on its way, so I go back to the table to work on the massive Italian loaf I’m turning into garlic bread to go alongside the lasagna and a simple salad. To top off our clearly very fancy at-home date night, I have a special treat waiting in the refrigerator. My husband’s current favorite dessert is tiramisu and I figured it fit in perfectly with the theme of the rest of the meal. And it’s essentially just cookies, whipped cream, and a lot of coffee, so there’s really no way to go wrong.

I slather a few slices of the bread with thick garlic butter and go back to check the lasagna again. The browning seems to be chasing the timer, so I’m thinking there will need to be some carry-over time. Since Sam still hasn’t come out of the office at the back of the house, I’m not too rushed.

By the time he finds his way out of the office and into the kitchen, the lasagna is sitting in all its golden glory on the top of the stove and the bread is under the broiler. Which means I’m crouched down in front of the stove with the door partially open, watching the bread with every ounce of my concentration. The broiler and I don’t have a good track record together. Not a single bird in the vicinity of my home will ever be vulnerable to poisoning, thanks to the volume of charred bread they’ve consumed after it was tossed out of my back door into the yard.

But tonight, I get the upper hand. I set the pan on ceramic trivets on the counter and turn around toward Sam. I can’t resist leaning in for a hug. In those seconds the world around me smells like garlic butter, melted cheese, and my husband’s t-shirts, and I’m perfectly happy suspending time for as long as it will last. But even through the snuggle and kiss he gives me, Sam seems agitated.

“What’s going on?” I ask. “Who were you talking to?”

He’s been on a call for close to an hour now. For some people, that’s just judgy gossip and hair insults on a Tuesday. For the sheriff of a small town, that long of a phone call rarely means anything good. Especially when he was off duty today.

“Seth Henson,” he tells me, naming one of the officers who has worked closely with Sam for the last few years. “He says the people out at the construction site are causing trouble again.”

“The mall?” I ask.

He nods, sagging down into one of the chairs at the kitchen table to work on chopping the vegetables I’d abandoned during the critical lasagna minutes.

“This time they showed up with bales of hay and piled them up around the equipment. Seth said it looked like a damn harvest festival and the backhoes were stuck in the maze.”

There’s a part of me that wants to laugh at the image of a bunch of heavy equipment blocked in place with hay bales, but knowing that hay was put in place by farm-grown men armed to the teeth and full of rage takes any humor out of the image. The contractors hired for the massive construction project are fortunate it was only hay bales. The unrest has been ongoing for almost a year. Some days it has escalated far beyond simple resistance.

“They had to know this was going to be the reaction,” I say. “They couldn’t think they were just going to wipe out several farms and everyone was going to be fine with it.”

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