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The Dare (Part one)
The Daily Word #153 — Setting
On the outskirts of Blackwood Harbor, in Havenshire Cemetery, lay the graves of a few hundred of the town’s earliest settlers. Havenshire Cemetery, owned by generations of the Havenshire family, was Blackwood Harbor’s only cemetery for nearly a hundred years.
The full moon provided the only lighting that fateful Halloween night, many years ago. Most of the tombstones darkened from the moist weather, but those that had somehow survived the years of harsh climate glistened in the moonlight.
The cemetery grounds were completely overgrown with thorny weeds and brush, obscuring much of the carved words on the tombstones. The graves were spaced feet apart, allowing for a noticeable separation between the skeletons that lay beneath the mulch and mud.
Most of the cemetery’s original trees remained, though they were so massive that their roots broke through the cement of the main pathway. That pathway divided the graves in half and led toward the small white mausoleum — the lone structure in the cemetery — where the Havenshires were all entombed.
The marble mausoleum managed to stay mostly intact, though its once-smooth edges had worn away, allowing tenacious ivy to take root and slowly climb. Emily Havenshire…
