Chapter 4 – Chap 4

Jeffery’s father’s name was Ben. At least, that’s what he told me. He admitted to being a gambler and said that he spent far too much time playing poker and didn’t spend enough time monitoring his son. I could see genuine remorse in his face as he said this. He was disappointed in himself for neglecting his son.

He climbed into the passenger’s side of my Toyota, whilst I started it up. We had a plan. It was completely insane, but at this point, we had no choice.

Our first destination was not the cemetery, actually. It was Vickie’s Charm and Boutique. It was a local boutique that I’d never really gone to. It was tucked away in a little shopping center, surrounded by a grocery store and a barbershop.

Why were we here?

The ritual required candles. Lots of candles. We needed as many candles as there were gravestones. Vickie’s specialized in candles. The world had paused. I couldn’t see anyone in the store or in the shopping center. We raided the store of candles. I suppose it felt wrong to steal things from a small store, but this was the only way for things to return to normal.

We grabbed every kind on candle. Ocean Breeze. Cinnamon Stick. Brown Sugar. We stole them all, and loaded my car with them. Chiselbrook Cemetery was a huge graveyard, with tons of tombstones. We reckoned we needed at least five hundred to make it work. Luckily for us, the shop was fully stocked. We raided it and brought back to my Toyota a giant assortment of both scented and unscented candles. We took off, but only after counting at least ten times to make sure that we had enough.

Ben and I took off. The whole candle-getting excursion lasted roughly half an hour. We were running out of time. At least, that’s what Jeffery told me. We had to go to our next stop: the gas station around the corner. Each of the candles had to be lit at the same time, with only one match being struck. To do this, we planned to create a trail of gasoline between the candles, which we would light when it was time for the ritual.

This is where we began to face opposition. A group of maybe..five(it’s hard to tell) jumped us as soon as we entered the motion-sensing doors of the gas station. Their out-of-focus, blurry faces still haunt me. I still avoid looking at those impressionistic portraits from the eighteen-hundreds solely because of those creatures. The way they stare at you, when you can’t see their expressions clearly enough…

Anyway, we had to fight them, employing a tactic Ben had learned from his son. Apparently, the only way to put them to rest, at least for a little while, is fire. To burn them. I still had a small container of gas.

I slid across the slick floor of the convenience store. As I glided along the grimy ground, I doused the ghosts with gasoline. The stream of dark fluid splashed against them, slathering them in the oily substance. I couldn’t tell what their reaction was, what with their out-of-focus bodies and faces, but I thought I could make out through the haze the sight of their arms raising in a desperate attempt to shield their faces.

I crashed into a shelf as I slid, causing a cascade of potato chips and candy bars to rain down upon me. I rolled over onto my back and watched as Ben threw a lit lighter into the crowd. The flame erupted into a roaring fire. The ghosts staggered back in obvious dismay. They were quickly consumed by the flame. I was surprised. I had never thought that it would be this simple to defeat the ghosts. I picked up the ashes, little gray particles of dust.

“They’ll be back,” Ben said, shattering my thoughts. “Come on, we need to get some cans of gas.”

We grabbed every canister we could find, and filled them all at the pumps.

All in all, we had eight canisters. I hoped that would be enough. After all, there were a lot of graves. We then began to make our way over to the cemetery. This was what our plan hinged itself on. We needed to be fast. Fast, and sneaky. There was little hope for us if they saw us. The ghosts would know if they caught us performing the ritual, and they would would kill us.

I drove quick as I could around our town, ducking in and out of side streets, weaving through parking lots, and riding along dark, narrow dirt paths. In hopes of being stealthy, Ben had told me about a way into a less-known area of the graveyard. It took longer to get there, but hopefully if we took this route, they wouldn’t notice us.

Eventually, the path got too narrow for me to drive along, so we exited the car and walked the remainder of the final path.

“This is it,” Ben said, with his head down. “We are going to take down the ghosts.” he sighed. “Ugh, even though that kid was an accident, I…” he trailed off.

I didn’t say anything. I don’t like to get involved in the drama that young people dig themselves into. I had figured from the little Ben had said that Jeffery had used his studies of the paranormal as an escape from his rough family life, and had tried to perform one of the ceremonies listed in one of his books. It worked, and then this all started.

Soon, we made it to the cemetery. The enormous fence loomed in front of us. Ben began to scale it with ease, finding footholds in the cracked stone, watermarks of years of decay. However, my climbing skills were..less than stellar. As a seventy-three year old man, I don’t move with such agility and grace. It took me five times as much time to climb the fence as he did. When I finally reached the the top, I almost wished I had stayed down.

Filling the vast space Chiselbrook Cemetery were ghosts, tons of them. There were more ghosts than there were graves. But that wasn’t the most horrifying part.

In the middle of the graveyard, on a statue that was shaped like an altar of sorts, surrounded by the creatures, were two people. Even from this distance, I could see who they were. Margaret and Jeffery. My wife and student. Captured by these loathsome beasts.

I couldn’t give up. Not when their lives were at stake. I wouldn’t be able to bear seeing them turning into…whatever those things were. Ben’s face betrayed no expression at seeing his son in such a predicament.

Luckily, the ghosts were facing in a different direction. The climb down was far easier than the climb up, and in just a few moments I had dropped down to the ground. This was it. We had one shot to get this right. To set things back to normal.

I crept along the muddy ground, soft and mushy from the heavy rain that had fallen upon the earth recently. The humidity worried me. The fire might not spread if there was to much moisture in the air.

No. I couldn’t worry myself with things like that. Not when we were this close.

We started setting the candles on the headstones. Perfectly centered. That was what the ritual required. The candles had to be perfectly centered. I dodged and weaved through the crowds of impressionistic faces. I couldn’t tell what they were doing, but I could recognize the sounds of the chant that I had heard coming from them when they had invaded my house.

Each of the ghosts were cad in outfit from various time periods. They dressed in colonial attire, clothes from the mid-1800’s, and the 60’s and 70’s. Each of these blurry ghouls were just shadows, impressions of people. People who had once been alive. Now they were reduced to this.

Ben and I placed the candles on every tombstone that we could. The rest were blocked by those creatures. This meant we had to destroy them. The ghosts would come back after they were burned, but it would delay them long enough for us to place the rest of our candles an to release the captives.

In hindsight, we should have gotten more gasoline. We would hardly have enough to light all the candles and to kill these ghosts. I grabbed a canister and crept around behind a large cluster of the chanting ghouls. I splashed them and ran away before they registered what I’d done.

I continued this process, unfortunately using up three cans of gas along the way. Ben used one. Now we only had four cans.

Ben did the honors. The ghosts shifted, moving closer to each other. He took this as an opportunity, flinging a lit match into the crowd. It was a magnificent sight. The fire spread rapidly amongst them, causing them to run and panic, which only led to them catching themselves on fire even more.

They were al soon dead, reduced to ash. I staggered over to the altar, and began slashing at the ropes that bound Jeffery and Margaret. It took a few minutes, but eventually my student and wife were released, pale and shivering.

Meanwhile, Ben busied himself with setting up the candles. The three of us soon joined him, placing candles onto the tombstones. After they were set up, I grabbed the remaining cans of gas and poured a trail of the fluid between the candles. I had to be conservative, as we had barely any left.

In the end, we ran out too soon. A stretch of gravestones were untouched. Oh, no….

We all stared at each other solemnly. There wasn’t enough time go back into town and get more. This was an emergency. What would we do? The candles had to be lit with a single match, and this was the only way to do it.

Then, I remembered. I still had a small container of gasoline from earlier in my car. I ran as fast as I could to my Toyota, leaving my comrades behind. I scaled the wall quick as possible. I soon reached the woods and slowed to a jog. I was running out of stamina, but determination kept me going. My shoes crunched along the gravel path, which was overgrown with trees and weeds.

My footsteps were the only noises that I heard. All was silent. I was alone, an unsettling feeling.

Suddenly, I was tackled to the ground. A blurry, out-of-focus creature fell upon me, punching me and kicking me. The shock had temporarily stunned me, but I soon got control of myself. I pulled out a lighter and weakly tossed it into the air.

It landed on it. The flame quickly spread, and the ghost was engulfed in fire.

I stumbled back, breathing hard. It took me a second to recover from the surprise, and I reminded myself of the task at hand. I swallowed hard and staggered through the woods, until I reached my car. I opened the passenger side door. Grabbing the container, I closed it back and continued to jog back to the cemetery.

I scaled the wall again, where a nasty surprise awaited me. All three of my partners were tied up, surrounded by chanting ghosts.

No. No. No.

Before, I had at least had Jeffery. I had at least had Ben. But now, I didn’t have them. Their fate was in my hands. Now, it was my duty to save them. I hopped down, lighter in hand. The ghosts were on their guard now. I had to burn more than one of them to keep the others away.

I ducked behind a headstone. I could see the obvious trail of gas lining the ground. I threw some more in the area, completing it.

Now came the hardest part. We were out of gas.

You might be wondering why I didn’t light the trail. That wasn’t how the ritual worked. To properly complete it, the person who summoned the ghosts had to do it. How was I supposed to burn all of those ghosts?

I decided hat I wouldn’t. Instead, I needed to do something clever.

I charged, full speed, into the crowd of ghosts. I screamed, loud as I could, attracting their attention to me and breaking it away from my friends and their chant. I ran around the graveyard, fast as I could, dodging and weaving. However, the ghosts maintained a firm guard on the altar.

I let myself get caught. I stopped in my tracks, allowing them to grab me. They picked me up and began carrying me to the statue. Their chant began again, this time faster and more enthusiastic. I could physically feel my energy being drained out of my body.

This was it. One last shot. They set me down at the altar.

I took a deep breath.

They pulled out the ropes.

I grabbed the lighter.

They reached out, blurry hands groping toward me.

I sank low, under their reach. I dived through them, slowly, carefully. I landed on the other side.

I bounded around the altar and passed Jeffery the lighter. I pulled out my knife and cut the ropes. He leaped out of his bounds and touched the lighter to the gasoline.

You probably expected it to explode, as it does in the movies. However, the flame didn’t do that. It spread rapidly, igniting the candles.

It was an amazing sight, watching those candles light up. The ghosts began to dissolve. By the time each of the candles were ignited, the ghosts were completely gone. No ashes. No sign of the events that had just taken place.

The warm glow of the candles illuminated Chiselbrook Cemetery. The trail of gas was gone, having been burned. The ropes were even gone. I sighed and sat back on the grass, satisfied.

The nightmare was over.