9 Tales Told in the Dark 11
Page 14
Gillis drove deeper into the woods, the sun now hidden completely by the canopy of trees overhead. Twigs snapped, leaves rustled and the sound of his breathing roared in his ears but Gillis never looked back. They were there, he knew it and didn’t need to see them to know they were getting closer.
Almost there now, Gillis thought and smiled. He hastily wiped a sleeve across his bloody mouth and drove himself onward. Up ahead he could see the sun shine into the clearing just beyond the woods. That was it. That was where they needed to follow.
Gillis screamed as one of the boys grabbed for his shirt from behind but a low hanging branch helped break the tenuous grip and he pushed himself harder. So close now, so close.
“I’m going to get you boy,” Mike Oberndorf said through heavy breaths seemingly just over his right shoulder. “And when I do you are going to die, I’m going to kill you with my bare hands you little shit.”
Gillis cleared the woods then and sailed over a small creek that he knew had been there. Oberndorf cursed as he slipped into the small creek and regained his footing. Gillis gained several yards on the boy when that happened. The sun glinted off something smooth about sixty yards ahead and Gillis pumped his legs harder. He had to be just a bit more ahead of them when he reached the old timers if this was going to work right. The grass and brush was about waist high and it served to slow down the larger boys more than it did Gillis. It was working just as he had hoped so far, now came the payoff.
This field just west of the woods lining Route-28 and his family’s farmhouse contained the remnants of the first Wenneman family graveyard. All in all, twenty-seven of his long-dead ancestors were laid to rest in this small field, the earliest of them having died in 1828.
Gillis had been out here with his father many times when he was younger, when times were better…before the darkness crept behind his father’s eyes…they would move slowly from plot to plot, staring down at the small headstones of his Grand Uncle Charlie, his Great-Great Grandmother Gertrude and the old family matriarch herself, Mother Claire Anne Wenneman. Hers was the tallest of the headstones at just under two feet high and just barely visible on the weather worn stone were her dates of birth and death and the following words, “At the ripe old age of 106, this was a long time in coming.”
Gillis had never thought that his old dead relatives would come back to save his life but, if things worked out the way he had planned, that was just what they were doing today. His path had been memorized through the maze of headstones, burned into his brain so that he knew every square inch. The headstones weren’t visible underneath the tall grass and bushes that lined the clearing but Gillis knew where they were and where they weren’t.
The old chisel and cutting tools he had found in his father’s work shed had really come in handy over the past month or so. After running every day through the woods in preparation for this day, he had ended up out here in the graveyard to begin his work. Grinding and cutting, sharpening and smoothing, he had taken the headstones of his ancestors and turned them into his own private little army.
Gillis entered the graveyard and scampered across it in a zig-zag motion. The other boys were close behind and just sailed straight on, their only thoughts were of catching the smaller boy. Gillis was maybe fifteen yards ahead of them when he abruptly stopped and turned to face the running boys.
His satisfied smile only made them run at him harder. The first of them went down and screamed. By then, all of the boys were running too fast to stop themselves. A geyser of rich dark blood shot up into the air as Jerry Bruckheimer severed an artery on old cousin Stuart’s small headstone.
Kelly Stein caught an extremely sharp corner of stone in the left temple and his brains gushed into the thick green grass. Marty Kaiser and another boy fell together and landed atop several stones, the sharp points piercing their stomachs and chests. One by one, the chasing boys fell, dying and screaming, pouring their life’s blood into the graves of Wennemans. Gillis stood proudly and smiled as his tormentors finally got what was coming to them. He took particular satisfaction in watching Mike Oberndorf stumble once and fall into Mother Claire Anne’s headstone where the sharpened point atop the cold gray stone tore into his chest and emerged from his back.
Suddenly it was over. The screaming had come and gone, now there were just a few moans. Five of the boys were already dead, two others were quickly dying. Blood was everywhere and Gillis slowly stepped back into the graveyard. He passed Marty’s corpse and spit in his face. He squished his shoes into Kelly Stein’s brains and laughed once at how well his plan had worked. Mike Oberndorf was spitting a pink frothy liquid on to the grass and trying hard to push himself off of the sharpened stone that protruded from his back. Gillis stood in front of the boy and watched the life continue to drain out of him. At the very last moment, while there was still a spark of life left in Oberndorf’s eyes, he raised the boy’s chin with his right hand and said, “This was a long time in coming.”
A few minutes later, Gillis Wenneman walked out of the woods and back on to Route-28. There was no need to clean up the mess back there, the creatures of the woods would pick their bones clean by morning. Only the parents of those boys would be worried tonight, wondering where their troubled teens had gotten themselves off to this time.
Gillis wasn’t worried about any of that. For him, the terror was over, now the healing could begin. He may still be a little crazy, even now that it was finally over, but at least the beatings would stop. The pain would leave him and he could begin to feel whole again.
Now, if he could only get his father to chase him through those woods one day, Gillis thought to himself wickedly as he turned up the driveway and headed for the old family farm house. Yeah, just maybe…
THE END
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