midnight on darby hill,

8/13/2019 Midnight on Darby Hill,

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G. Mikel Fogerty

THUNDER RUMBLED across the sky and

lightning split the cloudsas the storm began to roll in and in

minutes rain pelted the ground. Misty waves of rain came

down out of the sky and glided over the ground through the


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sleepy town and into the trees toward the cemetery below.

The old stones stood over the ground like a silent family,

with the shapes of angels and statues of men and women

long past standing in the dark, casting shadows over the

ground below. As the lightning flashed in the sky the

shadows danced on the ground with a strange life of their

own.

Fog rolled in and curled around the old stones as the air

began chilly and thick with rain, and just a breath away the

town sat silently in the dark as the hours wore on. Deep

into the night the storm unleashed its fury on the town and

in the fog, lights danced among the stones and wafted

through the air in the darkness. The lightning lit up the

faces of angels, chipped and cracked with age, arms

reaching down to where hands had broken loose over the

years and crumbled away. !racks in the crypts hintedomminously at the people from the past, concealed inches

away behind stone walls retaining them forever.

As the lightning flashed and thunder rolled, the rain

came in sheets, soaking the ground and filling the holes

with water.

The shadows began to dance then, as the air in the town

became deathly cold and the lights in the houses

mysteriously shut off across town as if a giant hand had

turned off a switch.


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Across the pavement of the streets came the phantom

shapes of men on horses, their dim forms drifting down the

roads as they had in life, their pointed hats and buttoned

coats showing dimly in the moonlight that showed betweenthe billowing storm clouds. Faces of people, scared to

venture outside, looked out through a thousand windows

and saw the mysterious blue lights dancing in the dark

outdoors while yet others slept, unaware of the show going

on around them.

The shadowy figures of women in hoop skirts drifteddown the city streets where once had stood buildings they

had fre"uented, their shadows covered with umbrellas and

bonnets, their dim faces indistinguished in the dark,

memories of what had been drifting down the streets and

through buildings that had not been there in their time.

As the thunder shook the ground and a torrent of freshrain glided down the faces of the statues and fell in streams

on the ground, the voices of officers giving commands

filled the air and some people in their houses shivered

under their blankets as the voices swirled in the dark.

The air filled with the smell of smoke from guns that

boomed with the thunder and men shouting, running andmoving in the dark, distant shadows of the past echoing off

the ground and walls around the town as the storm roused

the people from the past from their resting places.


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Through the night the town filled with men and women

who had been but were no more, armies clashing in

phantom battles on battle fields now dotted with houses,

voices trailing into the darkness, guns firing and hoursesrunning as sounds and dim phantom shapes filled the night

and the storm ran furiously from one end of town to the

other.

Then the wind began to fade and the rain thinned and

slowly turned to mist, then to empty rumbles of thunder all

around, still echoing off the stone sides of buildings in thetown. The wispy shadows of long ago began to dance and

fade, then vanish into the night without a trace and voices

became faint and faded out. #orses vanished into the

shadows and the fog drifted away, dissapearing into

nowhere as the moon broke through the clouds and the

darkened stones and monuments shed their coat of rain.As time passed, the lights returned to the town and the

people of the past returned to their echoes in the distance.

#ours later the horri$on turned red as the sun came up

ushering the phantom shapes away and those eyes that had

beheld the dance of the night creatures doubted their senses

as a new day dawned once again.


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midnight on darby hill,

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