Chapter Text
145-4-23
They don’t bury him for a week.
When they load his body onto the wagon to begin the journey back to his hometown, the horses know. They roll their eyes and stamp their feet in place, anxious. The smell of death hangs on the air.
Castiel Novak follows the coffin holding his body with a heavy heart.
He knows he should regret his choices. Signing his heart, mind and body over to the Union, donning the blue uniform, and taking a musket in his hands. Marching south with his fellow soldiers to fight the Confederacy.
Now, with his uniform torn and bloodstained, his heart still, his body cold, he knows he should have regrets.
But he doesn’t.
He joined the Union army to make a difference in this world, a difference to his country. To fight for what he believes in. And while he may not have lived to see the consequences of his choice or the choices of thousands of other upstanding men across the country, Castiel Novak died for what he believed in. He had died for a cause. And he had made a difference.
It doesn’t matter that none of the other soldiers truly mourn his loss. Everyone knows someone who had died in that battle, and there had been many others like Castiel—marooned, adrift from their bodies and desperately trying to gain the attention of those dirt-streaked, grim-faced soldiers who had survived.
No one mourns Castiel, because there are so many others to mourn.
But that doesn’t matter to Castiel, as long as he has made some difference in this war, no matter how small. The one regret he has is that he didn’t get the chance to do more.
He’d never even fought before, never faced the dark end of a musket and known what it was to feel true, crippling fear, and overcome that fear for the sake of a greater purpose. If only he’d gotten to make just a little more impact.
Instead, Castiel’s life had been cut short, red blossoming over the blue he’d been so proud of, the morning dew of the grass soaking into the knees of his trousers as he fell.
He hadn’t understood, for a second.
It had hurt so badly, and he hadn’t understood why, only that it hurt, it hurt, and then he couldn’t feel anything.
And then.
And then he was standing, staring down at his own body, at the crumpled coat and the unseeing blue eyes.
And he’d understood.
It’s a strange thing, to watch your own body be carried, cleaned, placed into a coffin. He’s so pale, his eyes closed, and Castiel wishes that he didn’t have to see himself like this. It’s hard to shake the feeling that he’s failed in his duty, his cause, even though there was nothing he could have done.
As long as I have made a difference in this world, he tells himself as they load his coffin onto the wagon bound for Kansas, my death is not for naught.
The more he repeats that in his head, the more he hopes he will believe it. He did all he could. He fought valiantly for a noble cause. His death may not have been heroic, or hugely significant, but as long as he had an impact, that doesn’t matter.
Now, Castiel is left here, travelling beside his own dead body back to Kansas and wondering what it is that will come next.
He’s not sure what happened to the other spirits he’d seen, each in various stages of shock or grief and mostly ignoring each other in favour of processing their own death. Castiel himself can’t move very far from his body before he feels a tethering impulse pulling him back, and he imagines that the other spirits had been the same. When Castiel’s body had departed for his hometown, he had had no choice but to go with it. The fate of the other spirits will forever be a mystery, and now he’s left on his own to face whatever is coming next.
The journey takes a few days, and that leaves him with an abundance of time to think. It’s only him, the horses and the wagon driver, after all. They didn’t even send anyone with his body to announce his death—not that there’s really anyone to announce it to, apart from his immediate family.
Castiel would talk to the wagon driver if he could, but it doesn’t seem like anyone who is still alive can see him. He’s tried waving in front of people’s faces, or yelling at them, or trying to touch them, but he either phases through their body or is completely ignored. So the wagon driver isn’t an option.
The horses are a little more sensitive—while they’ve grown used to carrying Castiel’s body, they still grow a little uneasy when he draws near, though they never directly react to any of his actions. He’s found that he’s able to calm them if he really focuses on it, but in the end it doesn’t do him much good.
So, for most of the trip, he sits in the wagon, beside his own coffin, and tries not to think about what will become of him now. That proves to be rather difficult, since the only way for Castiel to pass the time is to think, and it’s a relief when they finally roll down the main road of his hometown.
No one pays the wagon very much attention until it rolls to a stop in front of the Novak house.
145-4-16
Castiel Novak is Lawrence’s first casualty of the Civil War. The town grieves, none more than the Novak family, but secretly, the townspeople are simply relieved that it was not one of their own kin, or someone equally as loved by the town as a whole.
Still, they gather to bury Castiel as a town, and Castiel follows them, and tries to ignore the whispers said behind his family’s back, the thanks said to God that the town had not lost someone more beloved.
They bury him on the land above the river, by the new church. The Lawrence Memorial Cemetery—except it’s only Castiel, Castiel’s body in its coffin, being slowly lowered into the ground.
He can’t quite believe it’s happening, even as he watches his family toss dirt on his grave, and the rest of the town slowly disperse, their interest dissipating.
Castiel watches his coffin disappear beneath the earth, spadeful by spadeful until it’s completely covered, and again, he wonders what will happen next. It’s not long before his family departs, and Castiel is left alone, still standing by his own grave, waiting.
He waits for what must be an hour, and then another, and another, until night is falling and he has not moved. Is he doing something wrong? Is there a heaven, or a hell? Has his life on Earth made him unworthy of any afterlife at all?
During the night, he finds that he can wander further from his grave, exploring the area around himself to pass the time and hoping that perhaps he’ll stumble upon something that will give him a clue as to what he’s doing wrong. Why hasn’t he passed on yet? Is this what happens to every spirit, everyone who dies?
When the sun begins to rise the next morning, Castiel has walked as far as he possibly can in every direction, to the very edges of the newly marked out cemetery, and now he sits by his headstone.
All it reads is:
Here lies Castiel Novak
9/18/1835 – 5/18/1862
Castiel curls up against it, his back to the stone.
As the sun rises, golden over the treetops, he finally lets himself cry.
145-2-29
Castiel is the only one in the cemetery (if it can even be called that, with only one inhabitant) for a long time.
Until he’s not.
It’s late one afternoon when a procession climbs the hill to the cemetery, and the sound of weeping draws Castiel’s attention from the colony of ants he’s been observing.
The coffin they’re carrying is so small.
The family sets it down not far from Castiel’s grave, now covered over in grass. There’s been a hole dug next to it—it must have happened while he was away, or distracted—and he watches as they prepare to lower the small coffin into the ground. None of them can see him, of that much he’s certain by now, so he stays where he is.
It hurts to know that such a young person has had what should have been a long life cut cruelly short, but part of the scenario doesn’t register with him until he sees a small figure peering out at him from behind the group with wide eyes.
The child’s spirit. Of course.
When Castiel lifts his hand in a little wave from where he’s sitting, the child peeks out a little further, and he can see them more clearly. It’s a little boy, no more than three or four years old, his face tear-streaked and his body possessing the same slightly translucent quality as Castiel’s own.
“Hello,” Castiel says, giving the child a small smile. “My name is Castiel. What is yours?”
Slowly, the boy steps away from his grieving family, blinking watery eyes up at Castiel. The closer he comes, the clearer his small, hiccupping sobs can be heard. “I… I’m Johnnie,” he says between sobs, his voice small. “Why won’t my mama h-hug me?”
Castiel’s heart breaks.
He stands and makes his way over to the boy, then kneels down on the ground before him. Johnnie wipes at his running nose and hugs his arms around himself; when Castiel reaches gently for him, the boy lets him, and Castiel folds him into his arms. He’s had experience with this, tending to his younger siblings, and it helps that as soon as Castiel touches him, Johnnie seems to calm, his sobs becoming little hitching breaths as he relaxes into Castiel’s embrace.
“Your mother can’t hug you right now,” he murmurs against the boy’s hair, one hand stroking soothingly along his back, “but I know she loves you very much. She would want you to be brave right now. Can you be brave for me?”
It takes a few long moments, but eventually Johnnie nods against Castiel’s chest, his hair ruffling against the fabric of Castiel’s uniform coat. “I can be brave,” he whispers, and Castiel smiles.
Before he can reply, though, Johnnie’s form starts to become even more transparent, until Castiel can see the grass through him. His arms are no longer embracing the boy, but passing through him and then Castiel blinks, and he’s gone.
Just like that.
Castiel sits back on his heels. What just happened?
He’d been so sure that Johnnie would be the same as him, that he’d be stuck here. Is that not the norm? Is there an afterlife, a place to pass over to?
Why hasn’t he gone there? Why is he still stuck here, where no one can see him or touch him save for other spirits?
Castiel presses the heels of his hands against his eyes for a second, then takes a long breath—something that has long since become a habit rather than a necessity. Whatever is going on with him, and with his spirit, he’s here now. He’s not sure why, but there’s no point agonizing over his situation if he can’t do anything about it. Surely one day his time will come, and he’ll find his way to the other side like Johnnie had. Until then, he will just have to wait.
He straightens up, his gaze falling on the grieving family still present by the freshly-dug grave. This is Castiel’s cemetery, small as it may be. It is his to watch over and to protect, for as long as he is here.
This will be his purpose.
30-2-17
For as long as anyone can remember, there have been stories about the Lawrence Memorial Cemetery.
Throughout the years, many people have reported strange happenings. Lost items turning up by the front gates, nearly-dead flowers looking alive and revitalized the next day, the cracks in the headstones of loved ones repairing themselves and disappearing.
The Lawrence Memorial Cemetery feels alive, many people say. Those who believe are sure that there’s a spirit there, but that it’s a benevolent, kind one. One that protects and watches over the dead, and over those who grieve them. One who wishes no harm to anyone who crosses the borders of its domain.
There is a spirit in the cemetery, and that spirit is a grim.
The first to be buried, tied to the cemetery and never to leave, it is the grim’s purpose to watch over the graveyard and to guide the spirits who rest there to the other side.
Castiel Novak doesn’t know that, of course—doesn’t know that he’s a grim. He merely wishes to comfort people, and he tells himself that he has long since made peace with the fact that he never passes over like all those he has helped on their journey.
But regardless, even though he tells himself he’s okay, that he’s resigned to an afterlife of solitude…
The grim of Lawrence Memorial Cemetery is lonely.