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  Garrett looked at me and must have seen what he wanted, because he simply grinned and started walking down the driveway without me, skirting the mud hole that was starting to look more like a small pond at that point. Still, there was hesitation in my step. I lagged behind, dragging my feet like an angry toddler. It wasn’t until a brilliant display of lightning, followed by an ear-piercing crack of thunder propelled me to follow more swiftly in Garrett’s footsteps.

  Chapter 9

  Have you ever been gripped with fear, only to find that not only were your fears unjustified, but the very thing you feared turned out to be a positive thing? That’s how I felt after entering the canopied driveway. Despite my initial hesitancy to enter the tunnel of trees, it didn’t take long before we were reaping the benefits of our decision. The canopy blocked the wind and diverted most of the rainwater before it ever got to us. The shelter from the relentless storm calmed the uneasiness churning in the pit of my stomach, though it didn’t stop me from looking over my shoulder toward the entrance of the driveway and the ever-disappearing road. Outside the tunnel, the wind still howled, the thunder still clapped and the lightning still lit up the night. The only effect it had on us was when the wind really kicked up and slapped the branches aside just enough to infiltrate our cover. Then it would reach us, but only briefly. A few drops of water dripped off the overhead mash, finding their way through from time to time. But that was it. I actually felt safer among the trees, and for the most part, out of the elements.

  Still, it was creepy dark inside the tunnel, darker by a few shades, and if there was one downfall, that was it. The shadows were more dreadful inside, the depth of the murkiness between the trees deeper. But, I also recognized that nightfall was descending all around us anyway, so I didn’t hold the trees accountable.

  Just before we lost the last bit of light, Garrett tugged on my arm and nodded toward a small hill on his side of the driveway.

  “There’s something over there.”

  My eyes searched the darkness for what he’d been nodding at, surprised he had seen anything in the low light.

  “What do you think it is?” I asked.

  The matter of fact shrug I got in return told me it was a dumb question.

  “Only one way to find out.”

  We started up the hill that was slippery from the little bit of rain that was dripping from overhead. The hill was covered with more raw earth than actual grass, most likely because little sunlight ever broke through the natural awning above, so the dirt was slowly turning to mud. My tennis shoes weren’t doing well with it. The brown sludge caked the soles, stripping away all traction.

  When we’d crawled our way to the top of the mound and peered down the other side, what we saw stopped us in our tracks. Tucked into the shrubs at the edge of the tree line, surrounded by a knee-high, wrought iron fence, was a cemetery. With the way the headstones leaned haphazardly in no specific order, it reminded me more of a burial ground. Jutting into the air in all directions, the markers looked like the oversized teeth you try to bust out with a baseball at the fair.

  “Fuck me.”

  “Uhhhm,” Garrett said, then giggled like a schoolgirl. He knew I usually didn’t use that word. I don’t know why. Neither of us was afraid to roll with vulgarities when we felt like it. We could spew profanity with the best sailors, truck drivers and reality show stars out there. But, for some reason, I always reserved that one word for the really special occasions, and if anything warranted it, it was stumbling upon an old, creepy graveyard in the middle of the creepy woods on one of the creepiest evenings I’d ever experienced. Especially a graveyard like this one, tossed together and, intentionally or not, hidden from the outside world. It just didn’t feel right, and my insides reacted accordingly.

  Against my silent wishes and everything he should’ve learned from the slasher films, Garrett made his way down the slope, slipping and sliding the whole way. He nearly busted his ass twice, and all I could do was watch from the top of the hill. I believe I have already mentioned Garrett’s balls and their sheer size. As for me, I couldn’t have been more frozen in place if the mud had sucked my shoes into the earth.

  “Come on,” he called back, but I didn’t budge. I mean, I nearly pissed myself when I saw that first crooked headstone rising up out of the tall grass. The last thing I wanted to do was go exploring them closer.

  “Do you really think we should?” I asked, as a stray gust of wind found me and sent a shiver down my already wet spine. “I mean, seriously.”

  From Garrett’s own mouth came motivation.

  “Pussy.”

  And there it was. Without even having to look back in my direction, Garrett knew just how to get me off that rise and down there beside him. Every guy knows that when your best friend throws down by calling you a pussy, you can’t just give in and confirm it. You’ve gotta take the bait and turn it into an opportunity to prove him wrong. So with hesitation holding on to the back of my jacket, I sucked it up, slid sideways down the slope and joined him at the foot of the cemetery.

  The short, wrought iron fence that surrounded the area was rusted and fallen over in several places. I nudged it with the toe of my muddy shoe and an entire section collapsed in on itself.

  “This ain’t keeping anything out,” I said.

  “Or anything in,” Garrett added without hesitating, and that creeped me out even more. He always had that ability, to take things one step further. Especially when he knew he could get to me. It was fun for him and I was always party to it whether I wanted to be or not.

  The scattered headstones were old. Most were small and flat, with nothing ornate about any of them as far as I could see. No large crosses or sculpted angels rose from the tops. No brass urns or modern photo plates were mounted on any of them. In fact, most were simple thin slabs of grey-white granite, leaning this way and that. The only thing on them was green and brown moss. If any had inscriptions chiseled into their façade, they’d worn smooth over time and were even more difficult to read in the near darkness that had fallen around us. Even when I pulled out my phone and used the backlight to illuminate the stones, it was only by running my fingers over the subtle contours and reading them like brail that I was barely able to make out a word or number here or there. The only full date I found that wasn’t too rubbed out was November 13, 1921, but the face of that particular stone was in such disrepair, I couldn’t even tell whether it was the date of birth or of death.

  Somewhere in the sky outside the canopy of trees, lightning flashed again. In the moment of illumination that trickled through the trees, Garrett stepped around a large bush, then jumped back in shock.

  “Fuck me!”

  I heard the words just before the sonic crack of thunder filled the air like an omen. I knew it meant something bad. Garrett also hardly ever used that word.

  Chapter 10

  One time, when Garrett and I were about twelve years old, we saw something that freaked us out big time, leaving an impression against which I would always measure everything else. It was late summer, and if you know anything about August in the Midwest, the heat can be oppressive. The humidity alone will suck the air right out of your lungs. So like a lot of kids who don’t have a pool to cool off in, we spent the majority of our days shirtless and in cutoffs, wading through the streams that wound through and around New Paris. As we spent our last day of summer break exploring and chucking rocks in the shallow stream behind Mr. Nickerson’s dairy farm, Garrett stumbled over a severed calf’s head. I mean, literally tripped right over it and fell face first in the shallow water. It would have been funny, and I would have been more than happy to laugh my ass off if I hadn’t already seen what caused him to trip. But I had. And that changed everything.

  The head looked like it had been there awhile, all rotten and retched. The patchy white hair no longer white, but more the color of piss-stained sheets, flowed freely in the rippling water. Every few seconds, a stronger current would splash against it and
momentarily shoo away angry flies. The eye sockets were hollow, and although it was too decomposed to tell for sure, the top of its skull looked like it had been bashed in.

  The shock on Garrett’s face that day, as he sat in ankle-deep water staring at the severed head at his feet, was one that I would never forget. Very nearly the same look I saw on his face now in the cemetery. Pale and bewildered. At a loss for words.

  Garrett took another step back from the bush before looking fully in my direction. His mouth hung slack jawed, his eyes were wide.

  “Luke.”

  It came out as little more than a whisper. I had barely even heard him say my name over the howling wind and rain, but I could still detect an unfamiliar quiver in his voice.

  I circled around the bush and sludged warily through the mud to where Garrett stood with his eyes still fixed on something. I was already freaked out by the whole situation, and whatever had made Garrett’s face go that pale threatened my very resolve before I had even seen what it was. My thoughts went to the missing girls. Part of me expected to find another severed head, and maybe not a calf’s this time.

  Then I saw it. What Garrett had seen. I saw it, and I stopped where I stood, frozen from the shock of not only the image, but the bizarre implications.

  Laid out before us were three headstones just like all the others in the cemetery, crooked and covered with moss, their white granite worn and old. The names were barely an impression and no longer relevant to anyone living. What made these three different than the other markers, however, were the graves they were marking. Freshly churned soil rose above the rest of the ground in front of two of the headstones. Raw earth turning to mud. Rainwater trickling between the clumps. Despite the antique headstones, these two graves were new.

  Beside them, a third grave.

  An open one.

  Marked by the third headstone, the edges of the casket-sized hole were crude and jagged. It was not a grave dug by a machine, its edges smooth and straight like the one I’d watched them lower my grandmother into a year ago.

  This grave was dug by hand.

  With a shovel.

  Minutes later, my hands were shaking as we stood in the middle of the gravel driveway trying to decide what to do. I was wet and cold, and pretty sure my hands would have been shaking regardless, but Garrett was already looking around, appearing already recovered from the shock.

  “We’ve gotta follow this driveway all the way to the house,” Garrett argued, as he stood with his hands in his pockets, stomping mud off his shoes.

  “Like hell, we do,” I said, more abruptly than I’d meant to. “I say we go back to the road and keep walking until we find another house. Or, at least another creepy driveway.”

  “How do we even know the house and the graveyard are connected? How do we know –”

  “It’s on the same property, Garrett!” I exclaimed. “Beside the f’ing driveway!” I knew I was being short, but I couldn’t help it. I felt like nothing good could come from proceeding to the house at the end of the driveway. Absolutely nothing. And besides that, I was scared. I admit it. By every possible definition, scared shitless.

  “Okay. Calm down,” Garrett urged, putting his hands out toward me as if that was going to do the trick. “You’re probably right. Whoever owns the house probably owns the graveyard, too. But, how do we even know something’s wrong here? Maybe there’s a perfectly logical explanation for those graves being the way they are.”

  I looked at Garrett like that was the most ridiculous statement I had ever heard him make. And, quite frankly, it may very well have been.

  “They’re old graves,” I said. “Almost a hundred years old, easily. And two of them have recently been dug up. By hand, I might add. And the third one is completely empty! Now how the hell can there be a logical explanation for that?”

  We stood there for probably thirty more seconds as the trees around us swayed in the wind like arms at a hip-hop concert. Garrett had nothing. No reasonable argument to make. Occasionally I was right about things and this was possibly one of those times. Probably was, in fact. But, there was still that something in Garrett’s eyes. That something that told me I should trust his judgment. I’d seen it before, and to his credit, he had never steered me wrong. Still, I fought the voice in my head telling me to give in.

  I tried to zip my jacket up to stall for time, but the zipper was already maxed out against my chin. I was shivering. From the rain and wind? Or from what I had seen at the cemetery? Who knows? Just the same, my resignation was wavering, and I wasn’t happy about it.

  “Luke. Dude,” Garrett started, then took a long look in the direction of the house that wasn’t yet visible, hidden somewhere among trees that were more menacing than they had been only minutes before. He turned back to me for a second, then cast his eyes back toward the main road, procrastinating, choosing his words carefully. Making sure that whatever he said to me would get the result he wanted.

  “I really don’t wanna walk for who knows how much longer before we find another house,” he said like he regretted the decision so I would agree with him. “It could be miles, Luke. And in this weather, that means hours.”

  As if he somehow planned it, Mother Nature gave him a hand just then with another rumble of thunder echoing somewhere beyond the trees. The sound of rain spattering the treetops intensified, and the temperature dropped as I stood there. The fear was holding fast, but the fight was draining out of me with the stream of water running off my nose.

  My shoulders sagged with defeat and, uttering that word I rarely said, I walked past Garrett down a long driveway toward a house that may or may not have a good explanation for the empty grave in its abandoned cemetery.

  PART II

  You are of your father the devil,

  and your will is to do your father's desires.

  - John 8:44

  Chapter 11

  She rolled the severed finger across the floor like a marble. Like a toy car. Its sinewy flesh was already drying, already shrinking away from the exposed bone protruding from one end. With every push, the finger bumped and tumbled across the uneven wood planks.

  She had long stopped caring for the girls. No longer felt sorry for them. She had shed tears over the first girl, but Father had corrected her. Rightfully so. We don’t cry over them. They’re just objects. Sometimes playthings when time allowed. But, nothing to cry over either way. Nothing at all.

  Picking up the severed finger, she laid it on top of her own. Even in its deteriorating condition, she thought the other girl’s was prettier. She liked the pink painted nail, even though some of the polish had chipped during the struggle. It reminded her of bubblegum, that long forgotten novelty. Even the wrinkled skin, she could tell, had been beautiful and unblemished, not filthy and scarred like her own. She could feel the envy rising up and had to steel herself against its familiar pull. Squash it.

  Stupid girl. Her father’s voice.

  Scowling, she turned the finger over and looked at the end, at the bone itself, sticking out just slightly. She wondered what the inside of her own finger looked like. Were her bones as beautiful and white as this one? Could they bring money, also? Or, more likely, was the inside of her body just as tainted, just as wretched and cruel looking as the outside? She imagined it was, but still wondered. Maybe someday she’d find out. Just cut off one of her own fingers. Maybe a toe. Did she need them all? Certainly not. Someday. Maybe someday she’d do it.

  Her father’s footsteps thumped on the stairs. She slid the finger into her dress pocket and made a mental note to return it to his workbench so he wouldn’t notice it was missing among the arms, legs and feet. And hands. Those delicate hands. It was her father’s work. And he was so busy lately.

  Chapter 12

  The house turned out not to be a house at all, but rather a small church. Abandoned. The long, winding drive with its once prestigious-looking gate posts lured me to expect a grand estate lingering at the end. Lord knows there were a
few of them scattered around the lake. Garrett and I were always gawking at them from the boat as we fished. Two and three-story monoliths made of glass and stone with their paver walkways leading down to boat houses with televisions and fully stocked bars. I always wondered what these people did for a living to be able to afford such luxury.

  No such wealth waited at the end of this driveway, though. The dilapidated building had probably been painted white, like many of the small churches you see on television and scattered along country roads. Quaint, is how my mother would have described it. But, this church’s best days were behind it, and the clapboard siding was now gray and weathered. That much was obvious even in the limited light. Dark spots, probably moss, lounged on the siding like uninvited guests overstaying their welcome. Black shutters, at least the ones that still remained, hung by a single nail or two, crooked and abstract, straddling long, boarded up windows. Even some of those boards hung precariously by only a nail or two. And towering over the entire dilapidated structure was the large pointed spire, rising up above the awning that sheltered the double doors of the entrance.

  The tiny churchyard, surrounded by the fortress walls of the dense woods, wasn’t faring much better. No one had cut the grass in years and it had largely succumbed to an invasion of dandelions. Long forgotten shrubs, creeping well beyond their sunken-bricked borders, were all that passed as landscaping. Lining the front and side of the church, their hundreds of tiny finger-like branches shot out in every direction, shaking in the wind as if to warn people away.

  A tin-roofed shed sat behind the main building, up against the foreboding woods. The tiny structure leaned to one side so much, the wind and rain threatened to bring it down at any minute. That would be doing it a favor. Put it out of its misery. But then, looking at it from my point of view, the same could have been said about the church itself.