The Battle That Never Ends

The Battle That Never Ends

by Deborah Edwards

My funeral was on a warm, sunlit day. When the service ended and the mourners drifted away, I remained behind, seated atop my grave, uncertain of what awaited me now that I had become a permanent resident of Hillside Cemetery.

I was unaware that the dead here weren’t at peace.

Not really.

They interred me in the old family plot instead of burying me in one of the newer sections. My father, my mother, and generations of relatives stretching back to Colonial times lay buried there beside me. A gentle breeze carried the sweet fragrance of flowers arranged around my grave, but as the afternoon faded into evening, it sharpened into a restless wind that grew stronger with the rising moon. Its pale light cast long, shifting shadows across the grass.

A scraping sound to my left caught my attention.

Superimposed upon my ancestor’s headstone was a faint, glowing image of his face. I recoiled before I could stop myself, startled by the apparition. Beneath his beard, the inscription on the stone read:

Pvt. Charles Strong

Civil War Veteran

Born 27 Aug 1837

Died 10 Feb 1925

A gust rattled the leaves overhead, nearly swallowing the words he spoke.

“Come closer.”

I hesitated only a moment before drifting toward him. I was dead too, and nothing here could harm me.

“Great-grandfather?” My voice trembled. “Can you hear me?”

“Of course,” he said with a wide smile. The lichen atop his headstone looked like wisps of white hair blending into his glowing image. As I watched, fascinated, his fist emerged from the earth, solidifying to the elbow before stopping.

“Give me a hand getting up?”

I reached out and took hold of him. His grip was surprisingly firm despite our transparency. I could see the gravestone through his arm, then through the rest of him, as I helped him rise onto the grass. Once upright, he straightened at once into military posture, still dressed in his Civil War uniform.

“Private Charles Strong at your service,” he said, saluting with solemn pride.

“How are you able to appear to me?” I asked. “You’ve been dead for over a hundred years.” I gestured toward the surrounding graves. “Do all ghosts rise at night?”

He studied the rows of headstones before turning back to me.

“Only newcomers can see us.”

Then he removed his hat and held it respectfully in both hands.

“I have a favor to ask.”

“What could I possibly do now that I’m dead?” I said. “I can’t help anyone anymore.”

As the words left my mouth, faint gunfire reached my ears. The air carried the sharp tang of smoke, as though from a recently fired cannon. I turned to the hillside beyond the cemetery. In the moonlight, soldiers advanced in a wavering line, rifles raised, moving toward an unseen enemy.

“I need your help to join my regiment tonight,” he said. “As a newly departed soul, you have the strength to bring me to them.”

He fixed his gaze on the distant battlefield.

“If I were there,” his voice tightened, “they wouldn’t have died.”

Something in the certainty of it made my hollow chest ache.

I followed his eyes. The soldiers were young—far younger than the man beside me. He had survived the battle we were now witnessing.

“What happened to you?” I asked. “Why did you live when they didn’t?”

He lowered his head. “The night before, I fell ill, and they left me behind.” His voice trembled. “Gunfire crackled and smoke filled the sky.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I could hear them dying. There was nothing I could do.”

He faded as I stepped closer.

“Then let me help you,” I took his arm.

We crossed the darkened cemetery lawn together. At first, I tried to avoid the monuments, but soon discovered we could pass straight through them. The farther we moved from his grave, the more transparent he became. When we reached the battlefield, he was almost invisible.

“Look,” I pointed to the hillside. “We’re here.”

A bullet whistled past my head. I flinched, then laughed at myself. I could not die again.

He hesitated at the edge of the smoke, uncertain.

Then one soldier spotted him.

“Strong! About time you showed up!”

The young man grinned and tossed him a rifle.

“Don’t just stand there—help us!”

“Tonight,” he whispered, gripping the gun, “I won’t fail them.”

Not eager to remain in the line of fire, I retreated to a nearby monument topped with the statue of a Civil War soldier and watched from a distance.

Private Strong raised his firearm and aimed. In that instant, he seemed to solidify, as though strength had returned to him. Gunfire erupted. Smoke swallowed the field.

Through the haze, I caught glimpses of him fighting next to the others, moving with the energy of a youngster. He rushed forward, shouting warnings.

“Not that way! They’re waiting—”

No one listened.

The battle unfolded exactly as it had before.

A young soldier beside him—the same guy who had handed him the rifle—jerked backward and tripped. My ancestor dropped to his knees as he caught him.

“Stay with me! I’ve got you this time!”

But the youth’s body slackened in his arms.

The old Yankee froze.

“No…”

The line collapsed around him like before. Men shouted, stumbled, fell, and vanished into smoke. He lurched to his feet and fired now, not aiming, only trying to change something. Anything.

But nothing changed.

The men's cries echoed, followed by a deafening silence.

And when it was over, he stood alone among the dead.

Through the settling haze, I drew closer.

“I was here,” he whispered, hollow. “I was here this time.”

His attention drifted to his hands.

“I tried to save them, and it still happened.”

My hand found his arm. “It was never yours to change, so you didn’t fail them.”

He closed his lids. “I believed things would’ve been different if I’d been there.”

“I was here tonight, and it wasn’t enough.”

His form softened, fading like mist beneath the first touch of dawn.

“I think I can stop trying now.”

When he opened his eyes again, there was peace in them. “Thank you.”

Then he was gone, and the battlefield dissolved with him.

The smoke thinned. The moonlit hillside emptied. Silence returned to the cemetery.

I sat once more beside the monument and watched the last traces of the fallen soldiers fade into nothing.

I had thought my great-grandfather’s burden was unique, but now I understood it was not. Somewhere deep inside, I felt it too—the quiet weight of things I wished I had done differently, the old ache of words unsaid and chances missed. Perhaps that bound the dead here. Not death itself, but regret.

A hand seized my arm from behind.

I spun around, startled, and found myself face-to-face with the glowing image of a young man superimposed upon the monument’s stone. He could not have been over twenty. His eyes darted toward the hillside.

“Please, ma’am,” he said, the words tight with dread. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

“What do you want?”

He swallowed hard and looked at me, his hands trembling. “I need to go back.” His expression twisted with something raw and shameful. “They think I stood my ground.”

He lowered his voice to a whisper.

“But I didn’t. I ran.”

I understood his regret. Some thoughts are better left buried.