Fright Squad

by Flint Maxwell

  A glazed look passed over Mr. Jones’s eyes. “I suppose they don’t…not in the traditional sense. However, my overactive ectoplasmic glands would beg to differ.”

  “Yuck,” Zack mumbled.

  Talk about offending the ghost, I thought, but Mr. Jones didn’t seem offended. Ectoplasm, for the unfamiliar, is ghost slime, a spiritual energy left behind by phantoms and the like. Gross stuff, really. I was glad Mr. Jones excused himself. I’m pretty sure that was something we didn’t want to see.

  “Anyway, where were we? Ah…yes,” Mr. Jones said. “The warning. Forgive me, it has been many moons since I have had a visitor. Many moons.”

  We waited patiently for this warning, though it took every last ounce of patience I had left to do so.

  Mr. Jones raised a ghostly hand, pointing upward as his mouth twisted, words on his neither wet nor dry tongue. Then his eyebrows rode the creases of his forehead and he said, which felt like quite a punch to the gut, “Does anyone else think it’s chilly in here? There must be a draft—” A smile crossed his face, realization twinkled in his eyes. “Oh right,” Mr. Jones said, “I keep forgetting I am dead. Death is cold, my friends.”

  “The warning,” I said. “Or something. Tell us where we need to go.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Jones replied. We waited anxiously. “Yes, the warning. I am to warn you about the one you call the Wraith. He is dangerous and evil and the reason this place has been so aptly named ‘Helltown.’ You must stay away from him and the unearthly things he does.” He said it as if reading from a teleprompter, uninterested.

  “Well, we already knew that,” Zack said. “That he’s dangerous. That’s kind of why we are chasing him.”

  Mr. Jones’s finger raised again. “No, my friends, especially you, Mr. Abraham, you chase him for another reason. I can see it in your eyes. Cold eyes, I might add, the same shade as your father’s.”

  How he remembered that I didn’t know and didn’t exactly believe him. We were finding that listening to an old ghost dressed like an 1800’s butler wasn’t the most reliable source of information. Why had Octavius led us to him? I wondered.

  “You chase him for revenge. You chase him for answers. I’m sorry to say you will not find either, Mr. Abraham. All you will find is death.”

  “Bum-bum-bum!” Zack said.

  Maddie shook her head at Zack. “Really? Now? You think now’s a good time for that? I’m not even going to hit you.”

  Zack was smiling and nodding to himself for escaping punishment.

  “Never mind,” Maddie said. She hit him, which brought a burst of laughter from Mr. Jones. He then clapped his transparent hands together soundlessly.

  “Where is it?” I asked, cutting his laughter off. “Where’s the Wraith hiding?”

  “Oh, he’s not hiding, my friend. He flaunts his evil for everyone to see. Waiting for someone to stop him,” Mr. Jones answered. “Because he knows no one can.”

  “I’ll see about that,” I said. I stepped forward.

  “I will not say. I will not talk about the cemetery where the Wraith conducts his business nor will I talk about the glowing lights that escape from the abandoned building by the woods or the abominations that make their way out of that place and stroll on past my church. No, no, my lips are sealed—” He paused, wrinkled his brow. “Oh, drats! I’ve done it, haven’t I? Me and my loose tongue.”

  Like taking candy from a ghost.

  “You heard him,” I said. “Only one cemetery around here that I know of.”

  Zack clutched his stomach and moaned. “Nooooo,” he said. “Not that place.”

  The cemetery in question was the same cemetery that so frequently popped up in the local legends regarding Helltown. The place was called Perdition Cemetery unofficially. Officially, I don’t know what it was called. It didn’t matter, either, because it would never shake the nickname it was given. Perdition, in the Christian religion, is a state of eternal damnation. I guess, in other words, it was hell. A fitting name for a haunted graveyard.

  The files on the dark magician known as the Wraith made no mention of Perdition Cemetery, of course, but now that Mr. Jones had let me in on the secret, it made so much sense.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “We have to do this.”

  I thought for a moment I’d have to drag Maddie and Zack along with me. When faced with the options of staying with a delusional ghost or battling a dark magician, I’d have thought they’d pick the former.

  But, despite the paleness of their skin and the fear in their eyes, Maddie and Zack were employees of BEAST through and through, trained at the same Academy as I was, slayers of vamps and werewolves, friends of goblins. We had to be brave no matter what.

  So they came.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jones,” I said. I stuck my hand out again and he took it as best as he could, feeling the cold of death passing through my bones. It wasn’t as unpleasant this time.

  “Be careful, Mr. Abraham,” Mr. Jones said. “There are dark things that walk amongst those headstones, dark things that may drive you beyond the brink of insanity.”

  “I will,” I said.

  The old ghost smiled at me. “Kick his ass,” he said.

  “I will.”

  We left the church and the church’s protector behind, got in the SUV, and headed west down Boston Mills Road, toward the cemetery, and not even Slayer was smiling. I was glad Octavius hadn’t sent us on a wild goose chase after all. His hunch had been right.

  The bases were loaded, so to speak, and it was the bottom of the ninth. All I had to do was get a run. I knew that. The run meant saving Lola and Storm.

  But I wanted the grand slam.

  I wanted to kill Doctor Blood.

  22

  Perdition Cemetery’s Strange Lights

  We saw no one else on our way, no men, no women, and no ghosts.

  The road stopped at a dead end. At this dead end stood the wrought iron gates of Perdition Cemetery. In the twisted metal arch, the graveyard’s true name was written, but rust and age and the elements had eroded the letters into indecipherable runes, the symbols of primitive cavemen.

  I was glad for this. I didn’t want to know the true name of the place I would most likely die.

  The headlights shined on the rusted metal. Wrapped around the gate was a thick chain and a padlock. A sign, as old as Mr. Jones himself, stuck crookedly out of the earth. It said NO ASSING!

  Which, I’m pretty sure, had originally read: NO TRESPASSING before some local vandals scraped off the TRESP.

  “This is worse,” Zack said. We were all peering out of the windshield, at the large, black trees, the accusing rock fingers of old gravestones, and the lone building back by the woods. “Worse than the church, man.”

  It was.

  Zack sighed and flipped the brights of the SUV on.

  The lights stretched farther amongst the cemetery, but it didn’t last long. Before we knew it the car made a whining noise that caused my heart to jitter, and then the lights cut off completely. The engine died. Heavy silence weighed on us.

  “That can’t be a good sign,” Maddie said.

  “Strange magic,” I said, remembering the words I’d read in my father’s file. Strange magic meant black magic, of course. I grabbed the bag full of weapons and doled them out. Maddie and Zack both took them eagerly, wanting some protection.

  Maddie got the gun and a cache of silver bullets; Zack took the small hatchet with the chipped blade and the honey-colored handle as well as a handful of stakes and a hunting knife; I took the short sword, some stakes, and the bomb-ball. The little explosive fit snugly in my back pocket. I’ll tell you, though, having a bomb in your pocket didn’t bring about good feelings.

  I turned to Slayer. “Can you watch the car?”

  I didn’t want to put him in danger by having him come with us.

  He nodded eagerly and made a vroom-vroom sound.

  “He’ll be safe?” Maddie asked.

  Zack was sticking the
key into the ignition and grinding it without much success.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I said. I knew the risks of taking a goblin into a battle zone with us. Death was in the air, even heavier than normal since we were at a cemetery.

  The little fella had done enough, saving our asses from the penis-tentacle and arming us with actual weapons. He was a godsend.

  Suddenly, the engine started, but the lights didn’t come back on.

  “Nice! Oh! Wait! Check this out,” Zack said. He hit a button and a small screen came out of the ceiling. Then he hit another button and Spongebob Squarepants’ laugh filled our ears.

  Slayer was absolutely entranced.

  “That’ll keep him busy,” Maddie said.

  “Yes, good thinking,” I said to Zack.

  He was leaning back in his chair, watching Spongebob and Patrick frolic through a field of jellyfish.

  “Oh, man! I love this episode!” Zack said. “Maybe we can wait until it’s over…?”

  I shook my head.

  “Damn,” he whispered.

  I exited the car. The air was colder around the cemetery, sending chills up my spine and bringing goosebumps out on my skin. Maddie and Zack followed.

  We all stood in the darkness, the only light coming from the faint glow of the illuminated screen in the SUV, but not even a million of those screens could brighten this place up.

  As we stood there, strange lights escaped around the edges of that distant building. They were green and electric blue and perfectly cosmic. It reminded me of seeing a much more condensed version of the aurora borealis. These strange lights hypnotized me for the moment, and when they left, their glow hung in the air, like the death we sensed.

  The building was something straight out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a place you’d wholly expect one to be slaughtered in. The walls were chipped and the bricks seemed rotten, one harsh wind or pissed-off wolf’s breath away from blowing over.

  “Did you see that?” Maddie asked. Her voice was quiet.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Unfortunately,” Zack said.

  “What— What the heck was that?” Maddie asked.

  I now noticed I was holding the sword out as if prepared for a duel. Embarrassed of the fear I’d let come over me, I quickly dropped it down to my side.

  “I don’t wanna know,” Zack said.

  Well, unfortunately, we were going to find out.

  I stepped forward, put a hand on the cold metal of the gate, then looked back at my best friends. The smile on my face went against every emotion I was feeling.

  That was when we heard the scream.

  I’ll admit, it made me jump, but where I only jumped about a few inches off of the ground, Zack had jumped a few feet.

  It was an unnatural scream. A scream of pain and agony. Exactly what we didn’t want to hear at the moment.

  But it was a scream that sounded familiar.

  It was Lola.

  I stuck the sword through the bars of the gate, just below the padlock, and scaled upward.

  If we were already screwed, I figured I’d rather be screwed as a hero than as a coward.

  23

  Attack!

  It was so quiet that we could hear the rush of the Cuyahoga River on our left.

  I had landed on the cold ground with a bone-jolting crash. Luckily for Zack and Maddie I’d been there to catch them, help ease them down.

  “We’re not going toward those lights, are we?” Zack asked.

  Yes. We were and he already knew this.

  The scream rose again, this time louder. Then, following it, was a sound of menacing laughter. It was a villain’s laughter if I had ever heard it. Booming.

  Besides what he had done to my father fifteen years ago, the Wraith, the dark magician, Doctor Blood—whatever lame name he preferred—had attacked my home away from home, had hurt people I cared about. Now he would pay for it.

  I took off toward the sounds only the way a lunatic could. Zack and Maddie were right there behind me.

  So there we were, a bunch of lunatics running through an old, scary graveyard in the middle of the night.

  Trees and headstones with skeletal bouquets of flowers lined our path toward the place known as the Slaughterhouse.

  As we were running, the sick air rushing through our hair, I heard Zack cry out behind me.

  I stopped. So did Maddie.

  Zack had fallen, the source of his trip was a branch, dark and twisted.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  He wasn’t.

  He grimaced and clutched his leg. Sucking in a breath through his teeth, he grunted, “Aw, what the hell? That branch attacked me!” He winced again. “I think I’m okay. Leave it to me to ruin our big moment.”

  Maddie looked at him with an arched eyebrow. “Did you say a branch attacked you?”

  We lifted Zack up. He limped for a second, but eventually walked it off, brushed dirt away from his jeans and then found his hatchet below a blank headstone. “Yeah. Like, I tripped over it. I was just trying to be funny.”

  I didn’t like that. Not with the rumors of rogue trees roaming around Helltown.

  Zack smiled at me. “Hey, what about Beast Bashers?” He stepped forward again.

  And fell…again.

  Six feet into the earth this time, .

  “Son of a bitch!” he shouted.

  It was then we noticed the holes all around us. In the near-complete darkness, we hadn’t seen them. Our eyes must’ve still been trying to adjust, and now that they had we saw that nearly every grave in this section of the cemetery had been dug up, the dirt tossed aside in a savage manner as if whoever had done it had done it with their bare hands instead of a shovel.

  The worst of it, though, I noticed as I looked around, was that the graves were empty. No coffins, no bodies.

  Someone had done quite a lot of grave robbing.

  Maddie asked, squinting at the headstone, “Is George Tooth down there?”

  “George Tooth?” Zack called back. He hadn’t been seriously injured, thankfully. His face was just streaked with dirt and there were worms in his hair I didn’t have the courage to tell him about. “Who the hell is that?”

  “The guy you’re sharing a hole with,” Maddie replied.

  “Oh yuck!” Zack said. “Wait a second…no, there’s no one down here with me. Which, oddly, I find more disturbing.”

  We helped him out of the hole.

  He dusted himself off again. “Probably shouldn’t run anymore.”

  “Good idea,” Maddie said.

  “Probably should’ve brought flashlights, too,” I said.

  Hindsight is twenty-twenty and all that.

  “Give me a second,” he said. He leaned up against a tall tree with a few clinging leaves on its branches and untied one of his shoes. He took it off and shook dirt and small rocks out of it. “Can’t save anyone with pebbles in my boots,” he said as he almost toppled over again. I decided standing nearby and making sure he didn’t fall would probably be the responsible thing to do. So I did.

  As I leaned up against the tree, though, I felt the trunk quiver.

  It had been totally unexpected and caught me slightly off guard. At first I brushed it off, and by this time, Zack had laced up his boot and taken off the other one.

  Maddie waited nearby at a different tree.

  The trunk squirmed again. It was as if the bark had been overlain with a bunch of snakes.

  When it did it the third time, I lost my cool and pushed off from the tree.

  “Whoa!” Zack said. “What the hell?”

  “The tree,” I said, almost unable to find the words. “The tree moved.”

  “Well, yeah,” Zack said. He looked at me as if I was crazy. But I wasn’t crazy. I had felt the tree move, breathe, almost like my own rising chest. “Trees move when there’s wind, Abe.”

  “No. I felt the trunk squirm. Don’t you remember that urban legend that came around here about the tree
s moving—?”

  “Guys?” Maddie said, her voice making us both jump. She had drifted away from the grave Zack had fallen down. She was now standing in a patch of bare land, no headstones, no upturned graves, no nothing.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  She turned around. Her face was so drained of color it practically glowed. “The tree. It’s gone.”

  It was then I realized she hadn’t moved.

  The tree had.

  I pointed at nothing, looked at Zack, and said, “Well, this is just not good.”

  “Ya think?” Zack said.

  Leaves rustled above.

  Slowly, we turned and right there to meet us was the large tree. It bent over, jagged branches hanging right in our faces. The trunk was scarred and gashed, chunks of wood were missing and somehow it had made it look like the tree had a face. A sinister face.

  “Run!” I shouted.

  But before we could get very far, branches plucked me from the earth and lifted me fifteen feet up in the air.

  The dark world turned upside down.

  “SHIT!” Zack yelled. He was next to me, dangling by one leg like a human Christmas ornament.

  Maddie had gotten away.

  The tree stood up straight and I thought I heard deep rumbling laughter from within it, but I quickly realized that was just its roots ripping from the ground and stepping down.

  Then I was whipped through the air. My neck snapped backward and for a moment I had thought it broke. The world around me went even blacker. I smelled tree sap and earthworms, tasted blood in my mouth. Splinters stabbed my legs, which the tree’s branch was currently wrapped around.

  The cold wind sliced at my bared torso as my jacket and shirt hung over my face because I was upside down.

  “Zack!” I shouted somehow through all this whirling. “Your hatchet!”

  I felt like I was going to throw up.

  Also, I had dropped my sword when I was lifted from the ground. It didn’t matter much, though, because I didn’t think that sword would have any luck getting through the thick branches.

  The hatchet, either, but it was worth asking if Zack still had it in hand.