Katie Marie Robinson-Sherlock

27^th August

I have never been the type to journal; the only diary I have ever owned is one where I write appointments. But the strangeness I currently find myself a part of has driven me to write. I fear I cannot speak out loud to my friends or colleagues, for I fear they would think me mad and, with all the best intentions, end my current endeavour and I could not abide that.

It started in the summer, which, much like all British summers, had the rain as a near-constant companion to our small village, its constant patter reminiscent of an old clock ticking down to some unspoken reckoning. It was on the dreary afternoon of 16^th June, beneath a sagging sky that pressed upon the mourners like a leaden weight, that I first saw him.

The funeral was for Margaret Pritchard, a widow who had lived a quiet, unremarkable life tending her garden and feeding her cats. Her death was sudden; a slip on the wet stone step outside her cottage broke her neck. Most of the village ignored her passing. Yet, as a local amateur historian, I attended her service out of a sense of duty, documenting the details for posterity.

He was there, standing at the edge of the cemetery, his presence almost an afterthought among the gathered mourners. Tall and impossibly gaunt, his figure seemed barely substantial, as though he might dissolve into the mist at any moment. At once, both ageless and ancient, his face was the visage you see once and find etched into your memory, no matter how hard you try to forget. His dark suit, outdated but immaculate, hung on him like a shroud, and his eyes, pale as winter sunlight, scanned the crowd with an intensity that made my stomach churn. The moment his eyes met mine, I looked away, chilled despite the warm, humid July air. I would have dismissed him as a curious outsider, a distant relation perhaps, if not for his demeanour. He stood apart, not grieving, just observing. His head tilted slightly as if listening to something no one else could hear. There was a strange stillness to him, a stark contrast to the others’ quiet sobs and shifting feet.

After the funeral concluded, the small crowd dispersed, heading to the Local to see the old girl off properly. I lingered at the cemetery’s edge to jot down my notes, and I confess I watched the strange man, but when I glanced down at my papers for a moment before raising my gaze, he was gone.

A week later 24^th June, there was another funeral. Jacob Marsh, a retired builder fishing near the Mill, drank too much and went into the water. His wife wailed at the funeral, but I was distracted when I saw the same man standing at the periphery, his eyes fixed not on the casket or the grieving family but on the open grave as though he were waiting for something to emerge from the earth.

It became a pattern. Each time the church bells tolled their mournful peal, he would appear. Old Mr. Greaves, who succumbed to pneumonia in hospital (2^nd July); young Lily Carter, struck by a delivery van (11^th July); and Henry Wills, found dead in his armchair with no apparent cause but old age (13^th August). Each funeral brought him back unchanged, unshaken, unmoved. I watched him as much as he seemed to watch the dead. He never approached anyone, never spoke, never wept. His pale eyes would sweep the gathered mourners with a detached curiosity, lingering on each face as though memorising them for some private collection.

Driven by equal parts dread and fascination, I resolved to confront him. At Henry Wills’s funeral, I positioned myself near the path he always took when leaving. As the ceremony ended and the mourners drifted away, he walked past me, his steps slow and deliberate.

“Excuse me,” I said, my voice trembling despite my resolve.

He stopped, turning to face me. Up close, his unsettling presence was overwhelming. The faintest hint of a smile played on his thin lips, but his eyes held no warmth.

“Who are you?” My throat was dry, but I was determined; I launched into the speech I’d rehearsed before leaving the house this morning. “I don’t mean to impose, but I’ve seen you attending funerals these last two months, and I was wondering if you were, perhaps like myself, a local historian or maybe a journalist?”

He regarded me in silence for a long moment, then said, in a voice that seemed to echo all around us despite being only a whisper, “I am only watching.” He met my gaze, and like at Margaret’s funeral, I felt a chill, only this time it was so intense I had to tense myself to stop my body from trembling. It felt like all my body warmth was forcibly pulled from me and replaced by ice. Before I could recover, he stepped around me and disappeared into the crowd.

That was a fortnight ago, and I fear I’ve hardly slept a wink since. My thoughts churned with questions and half-formed fears. Who was he? Why did he suddenly come to every funeral? What was he watching for?

I began to dig, not in the graves but in the town’s archives. I started with the church’s burial records, yellowed pages that smelled faintly of damp and decaying paper, a smell I usually enjoyed. The Reverend had allowed me access to the archives years ago when I moved here and introduced myself as a historian, pleased that someone took an interest in the history of our village. I spent hours hunched over those records, tracing names, dates, and familial connections. At first, nothing seemed unusual, a parade of names long since forgotten, their lives reduced to ink on paper.

Then, I began noticing a pattern.

The same last names cropped up repeatedly, generations of families buried side by side in the small, weather-beaten cemetery. And every so often, between the records of these burials, I would find an inexplicable notation: a scribbled phrase in the margins, a faint sketch of a symbol I didn’t recognise, or the name of the man who officiated the burial underlined twice.

It wasn’t until I cross-referenced the dates with the old photographs in the town archives that the pattern became chillingly clear. There he was, the stranger, his gaunt frame and unsettling presence captured in sepia tones. The first photograph I found showed him standing apart at a funeral in 1923, his pale eyes staring directly at the camera. Another, from 1897, depicted him in nearly the same spot, his posture identical, as though the years between had never passed.

The further back I went, the more frequent the images became, though they faded with time. A painting from 1842. A woodcut illustration in a tattered book from 1816. And finally, an impossibly old sketch on parchment, dated 1748, depicting a tall, thin figure standing at the edge of a funeral procession.

Each time, the funeral was for a member of the same family.

And that dear reader, is why I have decided to keep a formal log of my misadventure. I know many would think me mad, an old man looking for excitement in his golden years, inventing stories, seeing what he wants to see. But please believe me, when I tell you that the ice-cold chill in my heart still hasn’t eased from that day I spoke to him, and the dread that grows increasingly large in my gut is screaming at me to hide, not to attend another funeral. Yet, I find myself compelled to continue; the historian’s purpose is to accurately and truthfully record events. I simply cannot do any less.