Chapter 9 – A Night in Returnal Cemetery

We spent the rest of the early morning reading through Victorvina’s diary, and as the light crept up over the horizon we all felt a little safer. Tiffany and Amy had both dozed off, but James, Will, and I kept pouring over Victorvina’s words as though we might come across the passage or phrase that might wash away all of our fear. We found three things that seemed worthy of remark; an underground river, a mine explosion, and Harson’s growing darkness. The diary stopped there, and we were left looking at each other, bleary-eyed and tired, but far too intrigued and worried for sleep. I closed the diary, setting it on the table next to me, rubbing my eyes. “That’s that. What do we think?”

“I have a theory,” Will said, standing as he put a cigarette to his lips. He pointed a finger at me and then at James. “I’m gonna go smoke, and I’ll tell you what it is.”

I followed Will, and James stood in the doorway between the sun-porch and the living room. We lit our cigarettes, and I sat down in one of the old, wicker chairs, resting my elbows on my knees. Will took a deep drag off of his cigarette, speaking as he exhaled. “Think about this—Robert was doin’ research and stuff on the woods, and then he gets mysteriously killed. Then Keith is killed. Now we know about the woods, and there’s somethin’ after us. You followin’ so far?” He looked to both of us, and James and I nodded. “I’m thinkin’ I might have been right. They’re mercenaries. Ghost assassins that protect Harson and the forest. Make sense?”

“Yeah,” James said. “We all might be friggin’ insane, but it does. What are they, though? They aren’t human, that’s for damned sure. No human could do what they’ve done. Gettin’ into locked houses, then back out again. No fingerprints. Nothin’.”

Then, it was like a light switch flipped in my brain. “The mine that caved in…The shape that I saw was a miner. If the forest has mercenaries, then maybe that’s it. The lost miners,” I said with a shiver.

“Yeah, but the mine was nowhere near the forest. It was up on Penny Ann, so why would the miners be the mercs?” James said.

I nodded in agreement. “Right. Couldn’t be that, then, I guess. Unless…”

“Unless what, Dan?” James asked, furrowing his brow.

“People into this kind of thing say that water conducts energy. What if the water in that underground river is conducting spirits all over town. What if it’s the forest, infesting the water? By land and tributary—we’re getting it from both sides,” I explained, unsettled by my own words.

“That’s a good point. How do we stop that?” James asked, shaking his head. None of us had any idea. We talked things over a while longer, until around ten AM when we finally went back inside.

“You guys hang out in here while I get some rest? I’m dead exhausted,” I said, trudging to the recliner.

“Yeah, Danny. Get some sleep,” James half-mumbled.

I kicked back in the chair, closing my eyes. I had the nagging suspicion I would have that dream again, and I was dreading it. My suspicions were correct, but this time I went farther.

The baby was shriveled and looked mummified, but it cried so loudly that there was no mistaking that the child was somehow living. The baby shrieked and wailed, but I couldn’t keep myself from moving closer. I saw the black shapes more clearly now. They were moving towards me, surrounding me to force me forward—forcing me to confront this horrifying remnant of what was once a beautiful woman, and her preternatural offspring.

I moved forward, hearing her whisper, and though I didn’t know how I knew, the sound of her voice was the sound of blood spilling from a wound, falling against the leaves at our feet. “Burn it down, from the inside out, burn it down spread salt throughout,” she repeated over and over.

The sound carried through the shapes around me until it sounded like some sort of hellacious choir. The words were so familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d heard them before. Then, she swept backwards into the darkness, with the chorus still echoing around me.

My eyes snapped open to see my friends standing around me in a semi-circle, staring. It must have been late in the evening, judging from the way the moonlight came in through the slats in the blinds over the window. James looked particularly concerned, poking me as if I were a ticking bomb. “Are you good, man? You were talkin’ in your sleep.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, sitting up straighter. “What did I say?”

“Something about burning?” Amy said uncertainly.

“From the inside out,” Will clarified. “What in the shit does that mean?”

I widened my eyes as I recalled what I’d dreamed of. “Victorvina Harson…The dream I told you about. It was the same one, but it went on longer.” I told them what the specter had said, and I told them about the black figures in the woods.

“What do you think it means?” Amy sat on the edge of the couch, leaning forward like a little kid listening to a campfire tale.

“I don’t know. What is the ‘it’, and why does it have to be burned from the inside out?” I wondered out loud.

“The house? Maybe she means you should burn down the manor?” Will asked. Some alarm inside my head started going off, but I couldn’t place why.

James scratched behind his ear, then chuckled nervously. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think she means the forest. Think about it, if you burn the forest down, and salt the ground, then nothin’ will ever grow there again.”

“Salt is supposed to be a ward against evil, too. That’s what all the TV shows say,” Tiffany said, tilting her head. “You know what she’s tellin’ you to do. She wants you to go into that forest. Onto the Road.”

“Oh, like hell,” Amy said, flying up off the couch.

“It’s a crazy idea, but I’m thinkin’ about it,” I said warily. “I mean, our options are pretty crappy in any case, right? Get slaughtered by ghost assassins, disappear on the Road, or get arrested for arson. Why the hell not try to do somethin’?”

“It could be a goddamned trap!” Amy half-screeched.

Tiffany stared up at the ceiling for a minute then shrugged. “Well…Shit. I’m in,” she said.

“Are you positive?” I asked, throwing her a wide-eyed glace.

“Are you, Daniel?” she countered.

Tiffany always did have a way of bringing up good points. No, I wasn’t sure, but I was looking at it from a particular what-choice-do-I-have angle. Within minutes James and Will had agreed to come with us, and Amy reluctantly said that she’d join us. We would set out for Blackwoods Bend Road the next morning.

+

James told Will to drive, tossing him the keys, and we all piled into James’ SUV. We were parked at the entrance to Returnal Cemetery, just before nine-thirty the next morning. We wanted all the daylight that we could get, and it would be dark-thirty before we knew it. I climbed out of the vehicle after everybody else, looking around curiously. The cemetery was old, and most of the foliage around it was dead or dying. The gravestones were all slanted or broken, sticking haphazardly out of the ground like crooked teeth. It was a gaping maw, waiting to chomp us to bits before Blackwoods Bend Road swallowed us up.

After a few moments we seemed to pluck up our courage, and James and Will started unloading the tents and backpacks from the hatch of the car, divvying them up between the five of us. “We’ve got enough dried food and water for a few days. Hopefully we won’t be here that long,” James said as we started walking down the road that split the two sides of the cemetery.

The disrepair we had noted from outside the gates was now palpable, so much so that it made my legs heavy. I noticed that I wasn’t the only one who was finding it hard to walk. Amy was dragging her feet, but that could have been because she was scared. Hell, we all were.

“Hey!” All of us jumped, turning in the direction of the voice. Amy sputtered and coughed, and I thought she might be about to vomit from fear. Behind us was an old man, standing in the middle of the left side of the cemetery with a rake in his hand. He was wearing a white, button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up, light blue trousers, and his thin white hair was matted to his head with sweat. How we hadn’t noticed him before I wasn’t sure.

“Yes, sir?” Will asked, his voice a little shaky.

“Where do y’all youngin’s think you’re goin’? The Road is that a-way!” The man pointed a long crooked finger in the direction of Blackwoods Bend Road, confusion written on his face.

“Yes, sir. We know,” James said. There was a certain tone to his voice that gave away that he wasn’t sure this was the best idea anymore.

“See that sign there, boy? That there sign says ‘En-trance is pro-hib-ited’, and y’all are goin’ in anyway? I don’t think so,” he exclaimed in a thick southern dialect, the whole time gesturing wildly to a dilapidated sign that looked as if it was as old as time itself.

“I didn’t know that rust was a language. Nobody can read that sign,” I said under my breath, hearing Will snicker uneasily. I shook my head, and closed my eyes remorsefully. “Sir, I’m afraid we don’t have a choice. We have to go there.”

“Well, you ain’t gettin’ out there so long as I’m here. Might as well turn yourselves around, now. Go on home, where it’s safe!” He made a shooing motion, taking a few steps in our direction.

We all gave each other knowing glances, clearly thinking the same thing. Home wasn’t safe anymore. Robert and Keith’s deaths had proved that. These shadow things—assassins, mercenaries, whatever they were—obviously wanted to keep the Harson secret buried. I knew deep down that they wouldn’t stop until we were all dead, and the secrets of the forest taken with us.

Will twitched his head in the direction of the car, giving the old man a challenging look, and we followed his lead. We turned around, walking back to the SUV, reloading all of our gear into the back, then we got in the vehicle ourselves. “Well…” Will’s voice trailed off as he cranked the SUV, backing it out of the little driveway to the cemetery.

“What are we doin’? Are we givin’ up?” There was the hint of relief in Amy’s voice as she squirmed a little in her seat.

“No. We’re not,” Will said, shifting the vehicle into drive. “We’re gonna wait the old man out. He’s got to go home sometime, and I reckon he’s not gonna be here after dark.”

“So, we don’t have any choice. We have to go in after sunset.” James hung his head, and then slowly reached into his backpack, pulling out a beer. We all stared at him like he was crazy, as Tiffany swatted him on the shoulder. “What? Y’all can’t tell me that you weren’t thinking this would be much easier to do drunk.”

After we were parked a little further down, in a more secluded spot on an access road, we all decided that it might not be such a bad idea to have a little drink to take the edge off. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die, I thought grimly to myself. Hours passed with us sipping on beer, taking turns going out in pairs when we had to relieve ourselves, as we watched and waited for the telling shine of red tail lights, glowing against the archway leading to the cemetery, signaling that the old man was leaving. Dark had just fallen, we were all a little bit buzzed, and there was no sign of the old caretaker leaving.

“If we aren’t supposed to be out here after dark then why is he still here? Doesn’t he have some shack to get back to? Some naggin’ old lady wife? Seriously, I’m losin’ adventure-wood here,” Will’s tongue was getting looser as we drank more and more, and he didn’t seem to care.

“Gross,” Amy grumbled, socking him in the arm.

“We just have to keep waitin’ this guy out. He has to leave eventually,” Tiffany said, giggling in a sort of delirious way. I was worried that if we did make it through this whole ordeal alive, we would all need counseling. The losses that we’d suffered, and the horror that we’d seen were enough to propel anyone to being slightly left of sane.

Another hour passed, and we drank the last of the beer in silence. Finally, after another twenty minutes we saw the old man back out of the cemetery, pulling off towards town. We waited another two minutes, just to make sure that he was really gone, then we pulled out onto the road, swinging a left underneath the arch of Returnal Cemetery’s lychgate.

Will parked the car then switched the engine off. It was pitch black outside the windows, and we sat quietly. The night beyond us was silent and still, and we were all frozen, waiting for one or the other to make a move. Finally, Will blew out a breath, swinging the driver side door wide. The interior lights of the SUV broke the darkness, and Will popped open the hatch. “Well, let’s be gettin’ a move on! I’ve been sittin’ still too long.”

He went around to the back of the vehicle, getting out the camping equipment and the rest of our supplies. I moved in after him, grabbing everything I could carry. James, Tiffany, and Amy picked up their share, and we started walking. Each of us had flashlight, and we moved them back and forth through the misty air as we made our way through the graves, and the rough patches in the path.

We’d walked for a few minutes and still hadn’t found camping spot. Amy refused to let us set up camp on a grave. She was probably right that it would jinx us even further. We moved towards the very back wall of the cemetery, where the graves were more spread out. I had a thought that it was more likely that the stones were worn away, stolen, or just missing altogether. I didn’t mention that to Amy. She would have been jittery all night, and that was the last thing we needed.

We pitched the four person tent, though it would be cramped, having chosen it specifically so that no one was singled out, and we could all keep an eye on one another. We didn’t want to light a fire as it might draw attention to ourselves, so we bundled up inside the tent, wrapping up in our sleeping bags and extra blankets. We huddled together to eat some protein bars, silent as we sat together in a row. As strange as the situation was, there was an underlying feeling of camaraderie that we all seemed to feel.

“We won’t move again until first light. Best to just get some shut eye, and hope we don’t get eaten by a mutant-zombie-deer-boar-rabbit,” James mumbled. He rolled over to face the wall of the tent wrapping an arm around Tiffany, and before long he was sawing logs. Will and Amy curled up together, and after a while they were both sound asleep as well.

That left me lying there in my sleeping bag staring up at the roof of the tent in the center of two couples. Talk about awkward on top of being filled with fear. James’ snoring made me nervous, yet it was oddly comforting at the same time. It was a normal, human sound, and normal was extremely necessary in this situation, but he was snoring very loudly. Anyone or anything within a two mile radius of us would be able to hear him.

James quieted down eventually, but that’s when I started to hear the noises. It was chilly outside, but there were crickets chirping somewhere nearby. The faint sounds of frogs singing in the darkness echoed off the tombstones as leaves rustled in the wind. That reminded me of the sound I’d heard in my nightmares, and the night before, when I’d seen the shadow figure at James’ house. I tried not to let my thoughts linger on that too long.

Just like when any paranoia sets in, the sounds outside the tent in the darkness seemed to get louder. I lay in my sleeping bag tossing and turning. The slightest creaks, pops, or groans of the nearby forest were sharply audible, and began to feel oppressive. Worse, I really had to pee. Not eloquent, I know, but it’s what happened, and don’t you want to hear the rest?

I didn’t want to leave the tent, and I thought of every trick in the book to hold off from immanent embarrassment, or death; whichever way the cards fell. I wiggled my feet, adjusted the way I was laying, sat up, then laid back down, until finally I couldn’t take it any longer—I had to go out there.

I grabbed a flashlight, opening the tent, cautiously checking around outside before I crept out to make sure that there was no danger of being seen by anyone or anything. I zipped the flap of the tent closed behind me, creeping off to the most secluded place that I could find. I didn’t want to piss on a grave by accident, so I slunk slowly and carefully to the edge of the cemetery.

I was close to the gate in the back wall, but still out of sight. Necessity had brought me out by myself this far, and after a minute, when I was no longer miserable, I started back for camp. The walk back through the cemetery to the tent seemed to stretch forever. It may surprise you, but as a general rule of nature, wooded areas usually have nocturnal animals, so I anticipated sounds from branches, or the tittering of raccoons or other small mammals.

Instead, I heard pure silence, where there once was an almost cacophony of bugs and creatures. Not even the crickets chirped, holding stock still, wherever they might be. The night went from sounding like a balmy, southern, autumn night, to the muted stillness of a crisp, winter morning in only minutes time.

To say that I was uneasy would be an understatement. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I felt dread hang thick in the air. I resisted the urge to shine the flashlight around me to see if there was anything near me. If there was something there, I didn’t want to know. I kept the beam of light pointed steadily at the ground just in front of my feet, watching as I walked, not looking up. I was only three feet away from the tent—in the home stretch—when I heard a twig snap just to the left of me.

Immediately I stopped, debating on whether I should be investigative, or if I should be a giant chicken, and cluck my way on back to the tent. I could hear a shuffling sound like feet dragging across the dirt, and then a sniff. Then another shuffling sound, and another sniff-sniff.

“Listen, if that’s one of my very stupid, very drunk-ass friends you better speak up now, or I’m coming at you guns blazing,” I announced, cringing slightly at my own bravado. I had no gun on me, and if it wasn’t someone I knew, things would likely not be pretty for me. There was no answer, but a few seconds later I heard another sniffle from a different layer of space then more shuffling. There wasn’t just one someone, there were many someones.

The tent was so close, and if I scrambled wildly, then I might just make it to a semblance of safety. Run hard enough to touch base, and you’re safe, right? Then the wheezing noises started. I’ve seen zombie movies. I realized that I was in the stupidest place I could be, if zombies decided to peel my eyelids back to eat my eyes like grapes.

Whatever or whomever was out there in the darkness, just yards away, was starting to make throaty, wheezing sounds. It caught on like a chant between them, or maybe they were communicating. I couldn’t help myself, and I turned the light in the direction the sound was coming from, immediately regretting my decision.

Standing in a staggered cluster were what appeared to be emaciated people. Men, women, and children who looked like they had been starved to death, then reanimated. Their mouths all hung open, producing the strangled half-groaning noises I heard. The jagged teeth in each gaping mouth resembled the headstones in the cemetery around us, and their eyes in the light of the flashlight looked like they had the glaze of cataracts. When I shone the light directly on their faces there was a reflectivity in their irises, like they had cat’s eyes.

I was frozen in shock. It wasn’t that I hadn’t ever seen anything scary—not by a long shot at that point. The truly frightening thing about these creatures was that they weren’t just ghosts, these were physical people. People shuffling slowly towards me, and the camp where my friends slept.