Although he tried, Silence was unable see through the glass on the doors. It was covered with thick grime, almost like soot. A stone head of Christ jutted out from the top of the mausoleum doors, its eyes filled with green moss underneath its concrete crown of thorns.
A massive pine tree, decayed and rotted, loomed just over the stone building, forbidding and overbearing in its size, thick branches seeming to claw torturously towards the sky. Oddly, no needles grew from its finger-like branches. Sap poured from dozens of rotting holes in the wood like puss and termites covered its decaying base. Silence let his finger touch the sap and then pulled away quickly when an odd burning sensation stung his flesh.
“You’re crazy for touching that thing, Silence,” Dylan said, staring at the tree in disgust. “God knows what’s in the soil underneath this cesspool.”
Silence stared into his friend’s eyes and frowned. Of all the things he did not want to do, digging up Victor Cannon’s grave later that night was the highest on his list. Only his loyalty to Lukas kept him from retreating back to the misery that was his home.
That night, they stood over the Cannon grave and prayed, their imaginations torturing them with what they would find beneath their feet, their sweaty hands banded together. The voices on the tape made the cemetery a much creepier place than it had been the night before. Every time the wind blew, they would freeze up simultaneously, their ears and eyes straining for something that would give them the excuse to flee.
A couple of times, Silence could swear he saw some glimmer of light coming from Jakep Crowlin’s mausoleum like a warning. He wanted to alert his friends, but feared they would only taunt him, and let his eyes drift back to where Dylan and Craig stabbed their shovels into the dirt. Every five minutes, Silence would turn on the flashlight to allow them to get their bearings as he shivered in the darkness.
When the shovel finally struck the wood of the coffin, they stood there for a few minutes, their bodies shaking in the cold air. None of them wanted to open it.
As far as I’m concerned, Silence thought, the fact that we had a real ghost on the tape meant that anything could be in there. This man died in a snuff film, for God’s sake. Silence imagined Victor leaping out of the coffin, screeching dust from his throat, his decomposing body falling apart.
“We ready?” Dylan asked, his voice quivering.
Craig and Silence both shook their heads back and forth.
Dylan snickered. “Me neither,” he said and stuck the crowbar into the coffin lid. “Get ready with that flashlight, Silence.”
Silence wished he were the one holding the crowbar. A flashlight isn’t going to do me much good against ghosts or the undead, he thought.
The coffin groaned under the force of the crowbar. Silence aimed the flashlight towards the spot on the wood where Victor’s head would be. The coffin creaked open, a cloud of rancid air enveloping them with a puff.
Lukas was in the coffin on top of Victor’s rotting corpse, his white eyes wide in the sea of his dark flesh. His mouth was open, his teeth jutting out above his dried-out tongue. Red lines ran from his eyes as if in his final hours he had cried tears of blood. A low ripping noise emanated from the coffin, as if something was about to tear open and throw itself upon them.
Silence dropped the flashlight and tried to scream, but all that came out of his mouth was a silent hiss of air. Craig promptly bolted into the tombstones, crying and whimpering as he ran, soon vanishing into the black night.
“Don’t run, Silence,” Dylan whispered, his voice taking on an inflection Silence had never heard before. “Something has my arm. I can’t move.”
The flashlight had fallen at the base of the reeking coffin, its light giving the newly dug hole an eerie glow. The contents of the coffin remained dark, although the whites of Lukas’ eyes could still be seen glowing in the gloom.
Dylan suddenly jumped a few feet, pulled roughly as if held by spectral puppet strings, and Silence fought the urge to leave his friend behind.
“Oh God, Silence,” Dylan said, his voice now a whispery whine. “Something is pulling me.”
Silence grabbed the flashlight and turned the beam onto his friend’s face. Dylan’s eyes were so wide he could clearly see the red veins snaking around them. He let the light follow Dylan’s line of site and flinched when he saw the bottom of the wrist. The outlines of fingers could clearly be seen on the arm, the thin, bony lines sinking deep into the flesh.
Dylan was suddenly pulled away from the light, an animal-like squeal firing from his lips. He was hyperventilating, his breath breaking the hushed air like a whispery heartbeat.
Dylan’s scream was cut off quickly to a dull muffle. Silence aimed the shaking beam back at his friend’s face and saw the indentation of fingers just to the left of his lips, his eyes so far open in his panic they looked like they were about to pop from his skull.
Silence watched, unable to move because he was so terrified. A single tear fell from Dylan’s eye and rolled into the air near his cheekbone, seeming to drip over an invisible hand, floating in the air momentarily before falling to the ground.
Dylan was suddenly jerked backwards as if he had taken flight, his body hurling through the graveyard in a hazy blur. His muffled scream and boots dragging over the graveyard grass were the only sounds.
For the second time that night, Silence forgot he couldn’t speak. He opened his mouth and howled with everything he had, but the only thing that came out was a sharp Ssssssssss.
His mind shrieking for him to flee, Silence faced the direction of Dylan’s muffled screams, his teeth biting painfully into his bottom lip to chase back a sob.
I’m not a coward, Daddy, Silence thought. Someday you’ll see that.
Silence ran after Dylan into the darkness of the jutting tombstones, the jumpy beam of the flashlight cleaving through the air around him. Off in the distance, he could see Dylan’s white face traveling through the cemetery like a floating orb—then it vanished with a soft splash.
Silence whimpered, his frayed nerves twitching on his face as he moved towards the splash. Something had taken Dylan into Lake Angel, the very same place he had almost lost his life.
Silence remembered the cold and slimy hand that had clutched his ankle as a child. Not a day went by he did not recall the glowing white eyes in the murky depths of Lake Angel. He had left the lake without his voice, vowing never to go near it again.
Two drag lines led through the mud and into the water of the jet-black lake. Silence let the flashlight beam travel out into the gently undulating water and sobbed.
Dylan was in the creek about fifteen feet away, his shaven head protruding out and glistening in the light. Bubbles of water shot from his nose. Though he could not scream, his eyes did it for him, widening to the point that they looked like white shrieking mouths.
Then he was gone, pulled into the coal-black water in a quick splash. Bubbles broke the surface—an anticlimactic sound to what Silence knew was a scream sharp enough to wake the dead.
There was whispering coming from the large pine tree just above the Crowlin mausoleum, a rush of hissing from the shadowy branches. Silence turned to face the mausoleum.
It feels like I was supposed to be here, he thought, almost like I was required to finish something that had started almost 100 years ago.
Something grabbed his palm, a child’s hand, both cold and warm. It pulled him gently toward the tree and he felt himself moving through the thick, damp air of Greyson’s Cemetery. The dark windows of the mausoleum were illuminated in a dull, muddy glow.
Within the bony branches of the pine tree perched dozens of children, their legs dangling and swaying as if to their own ghostly breeze. White faces radiated in the darkness above like miniature moons. Their eyes were blots of black on their pale faces, their mouths small and pulled tight in painful frowns. One little girl cocked her head to the side slowly, almost like a dream, and studied Silence, her head drifting back and forth. Dylan’s ghost stood unde
r the tree, his ebony eyes staring ahead without emotion. Silence cried, his sobs exploding from his small body, nearly costing him his balance.
Some of the children were moaning, their mouths opening and closing. They cried out, a ghostly choir, their sad faces looking upwards as if to a Heaven that would not accept their souls.
Silence knew, then, that the children had been buried underneath the pine tree. All of the missing. Jakep Crowlin had been a clever murderer. He had known the townsfolk of Rawley would not think to look in the cemetery for their missing children.
With a rusty groan of protest, the mausoleum doors creaked open behind Silence’s tiny form, a faint glow covering his body like mist. Never in his young life was he more painfully aware that he was unable to scream. The children above all turned to face the doors, low, melodic wails rustling from their dead lips. Dylan just stared ahead, his body rocking and back and forth drunkenly.
Jakep Crowlin, the Nightwalker and child murderer, stood before the open doors, a cryptic smile on his phosphorescent face, his malevolent eyes narrowing into slits. His long hair flowed around his face like underwater reeds. Craig’s body was on the stone floor inside, his right arm resting over his throat as if he had struggled to breathe before he died.
Crowlin nodded and held out his long arms, his dark eyes blazing with quiet rage. Silence felt himself drawn to the figure, the wispy and ethereal forms of dozens of dead children pushing him forward and into old man’s arms, their moans singing a morose lullaby.
Crowlin embraced Silence fiercely, his frosty arms wrapping around his slender frame like the loving father he never had, both inviting and suffocating.
Silence looked up into Crowlin’s dusky eyes and felt dead and rancid breath blow from the decrepit mouth.
The last sound he heard before he died for the second time in his life was the harsh slam of the mausoleum doors closing behind his back in a rush of frigid wind.
Silence perched in the pine tree, his brothers and sisters lodged in the limbs around him as he clung to the dead branches. He felt oddly sad watching his Dad search for him through the cemetery. Silence could tell by looking at his father’s face that he had really loved his son, and that he had many regrets. Many people had searched the graveyard for the missing children, but Silence merely watched from the tree, neither caring nor remembering why anything mattered.
Some lost part of his soul knew no one would think to look under a tree that’s been undisturbed since the nineteenth century and he moaned, his small feet swinging from the rotting branch as if moved by a ghostly breeze.
Scarecrows Scare Demons Don’t They
by Weston Ochse
Edwin had mixed feelings about being home. It had been twenty years, and instead of returning as the conquering hero he’d bragged about so long ago, he’d returned penniless, homeless and dismarried. He liked to call it that because he’d been married several times, but for many reasons, most involving his eternal love affair with alcohol, they’d never panned out. Like being disenfranchised, dismissed and diseased, he was just dismarried. To set the record straight, he wasn’t exactly penniless, either. After all, he did have his Army retirement, and half pay for doing nothing the rest of his life wasn’t too bad a deal.
His main concern, however, was a place to live, and that’s what had sent him out of town on this old two-lane road. The drive brought back memories. Some good ones— remembrances of hunting, fishing and the frolics of youth. And some bad ones—- demons that possessed the soul until one’s only friend was oneself.
For the hundredth time this week, he wondered what had drawn him back.
Like all the roads up on the mountain, this one wound along property lines, creating a dangerous meandering path through dense forest, blind corners and switchbacks. His daddy had been a moonshine runner when he was young, and used to tell young Edwin stories about taking these roads at a hundred miles an hour in the old Chevy as Smokies tried in vain to keep up. Even so, Edwin would never be his daddy and he took it slow and careful.
There was a break in the forest up ahead as it gave way to a split rail fence, old and gray with kudzu wrapped around as if it was what kept it from falling. Edwin slowed the pickup as he approached the mailbox and read the cramped painted words, faded and flaking after years of neglect. Jonston. This was the place.
He examined the house, once a proud two story, now in disrepair with several differing shades of paint and tar lathered on to repair cracks and sprung seams. He could just see the silken tips of some healthy looking corn in the back yard, probably twenty acres planted with waist-high tobacco. Edwin didn’t see a silo for the corn or a barn to dry the tobacco, so he supposed the old man must be either leasing the land or selling the raw product. Not as much money to be had, but still, it provided some income. Edwin figured the land had been in the old man’s family since they’d originally sharecropped and other than taxes and electricity, there shouldn’t be too many bills.
He’d met the old man at the Legion Hall last week when all the veterans and townsfolk had gotten together and celebrated Edwin’s return. Only in a small town would they have a party for someone they hadn’t seen in twenty years. It wasn’t Edwin they liked anyway, it was his service record and the uniform they loved. Still, the food was free and the drink was plentiful. Then the old man had approached him and offered free room and board and three hundred dollars a month if he’d sign on as a live-in caretaker. Edwin pulled in and up the dirt drive thinking this might just be the opportunity he needed.
Old Man Jonston sat on the porch, a pitcher of iced tea breathing on the table next to him. Edwin prayed that it was whiskey, but he knew that it was only his preference. As he pulled up, the old man walked to the top of the stairs and waved. Edwin waved back and stopped behind the old man’s truck— same make and model as his own, but thirty years older.
Edwin hopped out and moved up the stairs, noting how they creaked and already thinking about ways to fix them.
“Welcome, Mr. Lavern. Have any trouble finding the place?”
Old Man Jonston wore black work boots and faded denim dungarees over a white t-shirt. Edwin held out his hand and smiled.
“No, sir. Everything’s coming back to me, and your directions were dead on.”
“I bet,” said Old Man Jonston. “Here, let’s sit a spell and you can tell me about your world travels and about old Saddam.” With a liver-spotted hand he gestured toward several chairs on the other side of the round table.
Edwin moved over and went to sit down.
“NO! Stop. Not that one, that one,” indicated the suddenly irate old man.
Edwin was caught in mid-sit and stood up slowly and sat in the chair indicated. This one was old and rickety and he discovered right away that you had to sit perfectly straight and still or it threatened to break. He glanced longingly at the chair he’d almost sat in and envied its sturdy lines and well-used cushion that still held the indentations of a million sits.
The old man sat across from him in an equally comfortable-looking chair and laid his hands face up.
“Sorry about that, Mr. Lavern. That was Henrietta’s chair, may she rest in peace. That chair is reserved for her, you know.”
Edwin raised an eyebrow, then smiled. The old man was certainly getting along in years, maybe even a little senile. Edwin waited as Jonston lit a cigarette, noting the old ceramic mixing bowl that was being used as an ashtray and the hundred or so butts that almost filled it.
“It’s okay, Sir. And please, call me Edwin. I’ve never been called Mr. Lavern and it sounds funny.”
“That’s right! You went in the Army when you was eighteen. Probably never heard anything more than Private and Sergeant in your life.” The old man’s cigarette was perched in the corner of his mouth. He reached over and poured a tall glass of tea and slid it in front of Edwin. “And stop calling me Sir. I bet you had enough of that to last a lifetime, Huh? Call me Jonston. Everyone else does, anyway.”
“Too tr
ue. Too true. Alright, then... just Jonston,” he said taking a sip of the tall glass, wishing it was whiskey. He’d a flask in his pocket and as soon as the old man turned his back for more than a moment, he was going to spike it proper. “Mighty good tea.”
Jonston waved his hand, brushing aside the nicety. “It’s my Henrietta’s favorite. So you’re interested in hiring on here, are you?”
“Well, I don’t have any firm plans, but yes. It does seem like a good opportunity. I’d like some more details, of course.”
“What’s that?” asked the old man leaning forward addressing the empty chair that was Henrietta’s. Jonston nodded several times, “Of course I’ll get around to it, My Dear. Just let me do it in my own way.”
“Uh, Jonston? Are you okay, Sir?” asked Edwin, wondering if the old man was hallucinating.
Jonston glanced at him irritably, then smiled and sat back. “Sorry about that. I’m just a crazy old man, you know. A little crazy and almost harmless.”
Edwin laughed nervously and took a deep drought of the tea. Yeah, he thought, drunk crazy.
“You joined the Army in 1973. Isn’t that about right?”
“Uh, yes. I mean, I finished a twenty-year tour.”
“You know that’s the same year my wife died.”
Edwin sat back and observed the old man with compassion. Poor Jonston had never really let go, probably talked to his dead wife all the time—keeping him company in his old age.
“In fact, she told me she’d seen you before you joined up. She always said how handsome you looked in your dress greens.”
“Thank you, Sir,” replied Edwin. The only time he’d worn them was the day before he’d left and that day had been nothing but a bad day. “I mean, I didn’t know your wife, but thanks just the same. Of course, it was so long ago and I seem to have forgotten much.”
“Oh, I doubt you could ever forget her. What’s that, my dear?” Jonston asked the empty chair. “All right. All right. Settle down. I’ll ask him. I know you want to end this as much as I do.”
Scary Rednecks & Other Inbred Horrors Page 19
