by J. R. Rain
“And how does no one else hear it?” he asks the empty car. His heartbeat is so loud, so thumping loud. Thumping in his ears, his chest, throughout his whole goddamn body.
Adam is, admittedly, scared.
That something is wrong, he has no doubt—whether in his head or body.
To make matters worse, the beating is getting louder. This morning, it had literally woken him from a fitful sleep. Pounding in his chest. Seemingly up through the bed itself. The walls themselves. The earth itself.
Jesus…
The past two weeks, Adam has known only this incessant pounding. It’s driving him crazy. Literally.
“Sweet Jesus help me!” He rubs his chest as he stops at a red light. Today, has been different. Today, the sound intensified. And it only seems to grow stronger.
Adam rubs his temples and is not surprised that a tear squeezes out of his tightly shut eyes.
The beating is so loud, so frustratingly loud. Frustrating because no one else can hear it.
He runs his fingers through his unkempt hair. He knows he looks like a mess. He doesn’t care. Hell, he doesn’t care about anything anymore—not until someone can figure out what the devil is wrong.
As he goes back to staring at the light, waiting for it to turn green, Adam is certain that his heart is going to explode in his chest.
The sound consumes him. He may as well be on a construction site, with a jackhammer nearby. But he isn’t. No, he sits in his little car, scared shitless, knowing without a doubt that he’s going crazy.
Or he’s about to die.
More tears appear, and as he looks up to see himself in the mirror, he sees something else there, too.
He sees a big rig truck bearing down on him from behind.
Adam stares in the mirror as his pounding heart fills the car, fills the air, fills everything.
Mercifully, the last sound Adam Carr hears is not the sound of his own beating heart, but the sound of metal crashing into metal.
t was Tommy’s stupid idea to go to the cemetery on Christmas Eve.
Me? I like to keep a healthy distance from cemeteries. Just thinking about all those dead bodies beneath my feet gives me the heebee-jeebees.
I said as much to Tommy on the way over to Oak Park Cemetery. We were driving in his old Ford Explorer past the disgustingly festive displays that I was certain—damn certain—would pick tonight to break down in the middle of the goddamn cemetery. I said that, too.
“Jesus, Bill…have you always been such a worry wart? Good God, man, live a little!”
“By hanging out with the dead?”
“Exactly! It’s called irony. They’re dead. We’re alive. It’s a beautiful thing!”
Tommy took a right down a side street, away from all the boozy merriment, past lines of cold, lifeless fence around a local military base. It wasn’t far now. The cemetery on the hill was coming up on the right. That it was coming up wasn’t exactly good news. Then again, maybe Tommy was right. Maybe I was a worrywart. It was just a cemetery, after all. The dead were dead. The place was usually empty at night, anyway, as far as I could tell. Meaning, I drive past it often at night and I never see any lights on. Once or twice I’ve heard about kids from our high school partying in the cemetery, but that doesn’t happen very often. But this was Christmas, and the odds of meeting another dumbass dwindled to… zilch.
You see, we came here tonight because we’re idiots.
And we were also bored. Not to mention, neither of us had girlfriends. In fact, I’m certain it’s a universal equation:
Bored + idiots - girlfriends = jail time.
Anyway, Tommy slowed, then made a right into the dark cemetery. Oh, joy. He killed the headlights about halfway up the hill; headlights, after all, could have been seen for miles around. At least from the cemetery. Yes, we might be idiots, but we weren’t stupid. Okay, maybe a little stupid. Still, we didn’t want the sheriff sniffing around.
Now driving in the dark with only the December moonlight guiding our way, we hit some rough ground, the Explorer juddered.
“I think you veered off the main road,” I said.
“There is no main road; it’s all dirt.”
“There’s a dirt main road, and then there’s grass. I think you’re on the grass.”
“I think I would know, Billy. I’m the one driving. Besides, there’s a lot of moonlight—”
He stopped when the truck went over something big. I bounced in the passenger seat. I looked back and saw it lying flat in the grass, gleaming in the faint moonlight. By it, I meant—
“Jesus, Tommy. You knocked over a tombstone!”
“You sure?”
“Of course I’m sure,” I said. “We have to go back.”
“Forget it. Those things weigh like a ton.”
“We have to do something. We can’t, you know, desecrate a grave.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Tommy. “I didn’t shit on no grave.”
“That’s defecate and a double negative and you’re an idiot.”
“Whatever. We’ll leave a note and say we’re sorry.”
I always knew when Tommy was fucking with me, and he was fucking with me now. But there wasn’t much we could do. Yeah, the thing did look like it weighed a ton. I sighed, rubbed my face, not liking the idea that we had just knocked over someone’s tombstone.
“Well, keep this thing straight.”
“No, problem,” said Tommy, grinning, “we’re almost there.”
By there, he meant, of course, the back parking lot next to the big, central tree. That tree, if you asked me, had to be the most haunted tree in the world. Then again, out here, late at night—and having just run over someone’s tombstone—it was easy to believe in haunted things.
Which is why, of course, we were here in the first place.
To test our ghost radar apps on our phones.
Did I mention we were idiots?
Tommy hit the brakes and we came to a stop next to the Spook Tree. He killed the engine.
“We’re here.”
The night was quiet. Too quiet.
Okay, fine, the night was actually as quiet as it probably should be on a holiday. A normal amount of quiet. But, dammit, it still sounded too quiet. As if someone had used a giant remote control and turned the sound way down. And why the control had to be giant, I don’t know. And who had access to this control, I didn’t know that either. But that was the visual I received, and I was sticking with it.
And, yes, I did have an overactive imagination. At least that’s what my mom was always telling me. Then again, I’ve lived on this island my whole damn life and I have never, ever experienced a night so devoid of sound, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s, or otherwise.
“Where do you want to do this?” Tommy’s voice pierced the night air like a gunshot blast. I squealed and nearly lost control of my bladder. He laughed at me. “Jesus, Billy, you need to relax.”
“And you need to not talk so loud, or give me a warning or something.”
“How the hell am I supposed to give you a warning that I’m going to talk without talking?”
I heard now how ridiculous that sounded. “Fine. Just…keep it down, man. You’re talking loud enough to…” I let my voice trail off.
“Wake the dead?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Hey, we can only hope, right? C’mon, let’s set up by that tree.”
The Ghost Tree, he meant. I hated that tree and Tommy knew it. It just felt…spooky. It also felt alive, somehow. As if all the lost souls of this cemetery somehow congregated within it, took refuge in it.
Yeah, maybe I do have an overactive imagination.
Still, I kept my concerns to myself, although Tommy knew I wasn’t a happy camper. Tommy liked to push me out of my comfort zone. Make me talk to girls I didn’t want to talk to. Try things I would never have tried on my own…like Guiness Black Lager, blech. And now sit under the world’s most haunted Christmas tree. Tommy was
a dick like that. Or cool like that. You pick.
Anyway, we did just that, hunkering down under the tree, with the truck parked somewhere behind us. The tree’s thick canopy blocked out the half moon and the smattering of stars. The tree effectively cocooned us. Hell, even its branches nearly hung to the ground. A cocoon of spookiness. It doesn’t matter if someone hung festive-as-fuck streamers on it. It was still spooky.
Or not. Yes, I needed to relax. To breathe. To chillax, as Tommy would say.
I did all of that, but still felt uneasy as hell.
“Damn, bro. You sound like you’re hyperventilating.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said, breathing through my mouth. “Let’s just do this and get out of here.”
Now that my eyes were adjusting to the gloom, I could just make out Tommy’s pale, smiling face. Why he enjoyed pushing me, challenging me, or seeing me squirm was something I would never understand.
“Okay,” he said, “you pull up the ghost finder app, and I’ll pull up the ghost recorder.”
I did just that—and quickly. Anything that helped get us the hell out of here. I wasn’t very surprised to discover that my hands were shaking slightly.
Get a hold of yourself, Billy, I thought to myself. Then I immediately forgave myself, too, since I was sitting under the tree from hell in the middle of a cemetery late at night. I had every right to be damn nervous.
Soon, we had our apps up and running. Tommy’s freckled face was aglow in the light of his own phone, looking very much like a disembodied ghost himself. “Okay, so far nothing,” said Tommy. “How the hell does the ghost finder find nothing in a graveyard?”
“Maybe there’re no ghosts here,” I said. Perhaps I was a little too quick to bash his new ghost finder app, an app that supposedly could sense the fluctuations in the magnetic field around the phone.
“Like hell,” said Tommy. “This is a fucking cemetery. It’s filled with ghosts.”
I didn’t doubt he was right, but having him utter it in a cemetery, while under the ghost tree, sent an ice-cold shiver down my spine. Then again, it could have just been a ghost, too.
I moved over and looked at Tommy’s iPhone cradled in his palm. His wasn’t as big as my Galaxy Note 4. In fact, no phone was as big as my Galaxy Note 4. Perhaps nowhere in the known universe was there a phone as big as my Galaxy Note 4. Anyway, his phone was easy enough to read in the near pitch darkness. On the screen was a greenish, circular radar, with a rotating arm. The radar could find ghosts within a diameter of twenty feet. Supposedly. So far, the screen was empty. I guess that was a good thing.
“Are there any ghosts here? Jesus H. Christ,” mumbled Tommy, and I cringed at the blatant question and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain. You see, I kinda wanted Jesus H. Christ on our side on a night like this. I would ask him, of course, what the “H” stood for.
Then again, we had come here to find ghosts. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. At the time, we were bored, having just spent hours playing the latest Halo on Xbox One. Now… well, now I regretted like crazy agreeing to come. But we were here, and we weren’t going anywhere until Tommy got his ghost fix.
So I kept my mouth shut and played along…all while silently hoping we would get the hell out of here in time to get drunk on judiciously spiked eggnog.
As I hoped like hell, something rustled in the undergrowth nearby. I think I peed myself a little.
“Relax, Billy,” said Tommy. “It’s just a squirrel or something—look!” He pointed to the screen, and I could see it too. A bluish blip had appeared within the greenish circle, in a direction that indicated it was to our left. “We’ve got our first ghost!”
“Yay,” I said, and I might have sounded less than enthusiastic. Still, I looked over to my left. There was nothing there, of course. Just a lot of darkness.
“Let’s talk to it,” said Tommy excitedly. “Let’s ask it some questions.”
Asking it questions was suddenly about the last thing I wanted to do. Then again, I was pretty sure these ghost radar apps were full of shit. Maybe. On a night like this, though, in these conditions, with Tommy’s face aglow and a bluish ghostly blip nearby, it was suddenly very easy to believe that the ghost radar was real and that we were in some serious shit.
Damn my overactive imagination.
With a heavy sense of foreboding and a strong need to empty my bladder, I started the recorder, using my own phone app. “What do you want to ask it?” I asked.
“Don’t talk to me,” said Tommy. “Talk to him.”
“How do you know it’s a him?”
“Well, it’s a blue dot…just feels like a boy, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said. I took in some air and, already regretting the words that were about to issue forth from my mouth, I asked: “Is there anyone, um, here with us?”
“Geez, Billy, could you sound more like a downer? Put some more umph into it.”
“I don’t think ghosts care if there’s umph in it or not.”
“They feed off our energy, man. They know when you don’t really want to talk to them.”
“Well, I don’t really want to talk to them.”
“You did earlier.”
“Earlier we weren’t in a cemetery. Earlier we were sitting in my bedroom.”
Tommy nodded. “Earlier your mom was making us cookies.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“I like your mom,” said Tommy, then quickly added: “I mean, she’s a cool mom.”
I looked at him sideways. Truth was, my mom was still a knockout for her age. I always suspected my friends had crushes on her. “Yeah, she’s okay,” I said. I raised the recorder. “How about this: You ask it something, since you’re the expert.”
“Fine, give it to me. You hold mine.”
“That sounds gay, man.”
“Well, we’re not gay, so let it go. At least, I’m not gay.”
“I’m not either,” I said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”
“Settle down, Seinfeld.”
We switched phones and Tommy went on to ask a series of lame questions, all of which were meant to establish whether or not someone or something was with us in the cemetery. We next played the recording back, listening closely to the silence between the questions…and got exactly nothing. No ghostly voices. Nada. In fact, even the blue blip disappeared.
“This sucks,” said Tommy. “It’s not like the TV shows. Man, they’re always getting voices and shit.”
“Well, too bad,” I said. “We tried. Hey, are you hungry?”
Tommy was always hungry, and he was always game for food. My question was, of course, well calculated to get our asses the hell out of the cemetery and over to the local McDonald’s. No luck. Tommy ignored me, his face aglow as he studied my cell phone screen.
“Hey, look at this,” he said. “It’s another app. Google is recommending it. Probably because you bought the ghost app.”
“What app is it recommending?” I asked.
“It’s called Raise the Dead for Fun and Profit.”
“Fun and profit?” I asked. “How the hell do you make a profit on raising the dead?”
“I don’t know, but let’s get it.”
“Oh, hell no,” I said, knowing I was going to have to act fast. Once Tommy had his mind set on something, there was no way in hell I or anyone would ever get him to back down. “Man, I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry?”
“There!” said Tommy excitedly.
“There, what?” I asked, mildly horrified.
“I just downloaded the app.”
I reached for my phone. “Jesus, Tommy…I don’t have any money—”
Tommy pushed me away. “Relax, it was free.”
And he kept holding me away as he read up on the app. As he did so, he started laughing. “You’re not going to believe this, Billy.”
“That you’re a douchebag. I believe it.”
He unleashed a wicked charlie h
orse on my upper arm that finally got me to retract my hand. “Hey!”
“That’s for calling me a douchebag. Punch for a name. You know how it goes.”
He was right, of course. That was our thing. If any of us called the other a name, the other got a free punch.
“Anyway,” he said. “It says here that this app is guaranteed to raise the dead.”
“Guaranteed how? The app was free.”
“Whatever,” said Tommy, now mostly ignoring me. “The instructions are pretty basic.”
“What are they?” I asked, still nursing my sore shoulder. Tommy had a punch like a Mack truck. Mostly, I regretted like hell for asking Tommy what the instructions were. Stupid curiosity.
“Find a graveyard, sit comfortably, and then press play.”
I didn’t like how this was adding up, and was just about to grab the phone back, when Tommy, anticipating my move, held it away from me…and at the same time, pressed play.
Almost immediately, a voice speaking in another language issued out.
“What’s he saying?” asked Tommy.
“How the hell would I know?”
“Sounds like gibberish.”
“No,” I said, “it sounds like an incantation.”
“What the hell is an incantation?”
“It’s a spell, dumbass.”
“Like a witch’s spell?”
“Yeah,” I said, “except I can’t understand what he’s saying.”
“Sounds trippy,” said Tommy.
“Maybe we should turn it off.”
“Why? He’s just getting started.”
Truth was, I was getting very, very creeped out. A shiver had started working through me, a shiver that I was having a hard time controlling. In fact, if I wasn’t careful, my teeth were going to start chattering soon. And it wasn’t even that cold out for December.
“I’m being serious, Tommy.”
“Uh oh. Billy’s getting serious. I’d better turn it off or he might throw a hissy fit.”
“Or, more likely, he’s going to kick your ass.”
“I’d like to see you try it.”
Tommy and I were always challenging each other. Of course, never once had we actually come to blows, but we’d been close. “Just turn it off.”
