Hanging above the fireplace in my library is a picture of Augusta Alexander, the infamous nurse who died in the fire at Gravesend Sanitarium in 1901, gliding through the late-night stillness of Midlothian Cemetery.

A heavy, full moon hangs overhead, covered in part by dark, swirling clouds. Beneath her boots, the earth is littered with fractured masonry, overturned clods of soil, and pale white tulips scattered on her path.

Closest to Augusta, the petals have rotted at the edges, and their stems have twisted into unnatural knots, as if the dead and dying tulips had been tortured by her approach.

The flowers aren’t the only thing being tortured by Augusta.

Since I brought her portrait into my house, I can hear the sounds of the bones in their coffins and tombs telling each other to be quiet. “Be still, she’ll be gone soon enough,” they whisper frantically to each other.

Sometimes I can even catch the soft whisper of Augusta’s veil rippling in the night air.

But I have a terrible feeling that Augusta is still in this world and in that cemetery, and that the dead and I will never rest as long as she walks among the graves and through her picture every night.