Cemetery Psalms
by
Danielle Bourdon
Published by Wildbloom Press
ISBN: 9780982831755
Copyright © 2011 All rights reserved
Kindle Edition
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences, is purely coincidental. The characters and story lines are created from the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
For the entire class of Corona High, 1985. It was a hell of a good year.
The Haunted Carousel
Corona, California 1985
Donovan Schneider put the Nova in park and sneered across the front seat at Mark. “Don't be such a girl. Ghosts don't bite. Besides, they're only going to be pushing the car, not chasing us through the orange groves.”
Jillian sat in the middle, squished between their shoulders. Donovan didn't have a problem seeing over the cloud of her red hair.
“Hey. I'm a girl, and I'm not scared.” Jillian elbowed Donovan in the ribs.
He grunted.
Mark scowled. One arm hung out the open window, a cigarette tucked lazily in his knuckles. “Bite me, Donovan. I've never even heard of Gravity Hill, anyway. Nothing's gonna happen.”
“Well, we're here. So we'll find out soon enough.” Donovan gestured out the windshield where he'd brought the car to a stop in the middle of the road. On either side, orange groves crowded close to the asphalt. Straight ahead, they could see glimpses of the sprawling city of Corona, which looked like an ocean of glittering lights now that night had fallen.
Behind them, another car filled with friends stopped thirty feet back. They cut their headlights, plunging both vehicles into the dark.
“Okay, so tell me what's supposed to happen again,” Mark said, shaping the words through an exhale.
The gothic punk outfit Mark had worn to the Halloween party earlier somehow suited him, Donovan thought. Leather, ripped jeans, chains around his wrists and throat. The spiked mohawk was a special touch.
“Legend has it that if you put your car in neutral, ghosts will push you forward.” Donovan glanced in the rear view mirror, like he expected apparitions to suddenly appear. What made the legend exceptional was that this particular spot in the road only went uphill. The gentle incline was nevertheless an incline, so rolling forward had the potential to be eerie on the first visit or two.
Donovan had done this better than ten times. The effect had lost its appeal long ago.
“The road goes up, man. There's no way,” Mark said, shaking his head.
“And I heard,” Jillian added, “That if you're really quiet, sometimes you can hear them drag their nails along the side of the car.” She'd pulled the black and white bride of Frankenstein wig off after the party and ran her fingers through her hair to remove the remaining pins.
Mark snorted. “That's bullshit. Ghosts don't have nails.”
“Dude, it's true. I've heard it. They also say that you can hear their footsteps while they push.” Donovan tried to muffle a snicker behind his hand. He put the Nova in neutral and took his foot off the brake. Dressed as Frankenstein to Jillian's Bride, he'd already pulled off the mask and discarded the square shouldered, heavy jacket that made him look twice as big as he already was.
Jillian, his girlfriend of two years, slanted him a sly grin. He wagged his brows and waited for the inevitable. In the back seat, Cory, Brian and Deeter were too busy laughing about the prank they'd pulled on the carload of friends behind them to engage in the ghost conversation.
“Shhh, be quiet. Mark won't be able to hear nothin' with you guys cackling like hyenas back there,” Donovan said.
“Yeah, Ohhhkay.” Deeter drew the word out and suffered a smack to his chest from Jillian, which only served to kick up another round of snickering.
The Nova, so far, hadn't moved an inch. Crickets chirruped happy cricket songs and somewhere, an owl hooted.
Mark, a transferee from Mira Loma at the beginning of their Senior year at Corona High, had fit in well with their group. All the boys—triathletes, every single one—played hard, studied hard, and partied hard. The only thing Donovan didn't like about Mark were the cigarettes. He consumed one after the other like smoke had replaced the oxygen he needed to breathe. As long as Mark kept it hanging out the window and didn't suffocate them in here, he wouldn't say anything about it.
Jarrett stuck his head out the window of the car behind them and started making rude ghost noises at a decibel that shut all the crickets and even the owl up.
“Oh god, tell him to be quiet! No one's gonna hear anything with him howling at the moon like that,” Jillian complained.
“Jillian said to shut it, Jarrett.” Donovan called the command back and received two honks and three expletives in return.
Jillian rolled her eyes.
In the three second silence that ensued, the Nova started to roll forward.
Mark glanced out the window and sat up in his seat. The cigarette fell out of his hand onto the ground. Under the tread of the tires, gravel crunched and cracked.
Donovan started grinning and looked over to see the open suspicion and doubt on Mark's face. And, if one listened close enough, it did sound like there were footsteps at the back of the car.
Mark craned his head out the window and looked back. “No way.”
The Nova, against all logistical odds, inched up the low-grade hill.
“See man? Toldja.” Donovan shared a knowing look in the rear view mirror with Deeter, Cory and Brian.
“It's totally one of the guys from the other car,” Mark said.
“You'd see 'em. There's no one back there. Look, Jarrett and Dane are leaning out the windows and they can probably see Poundcake from the space station.” Donovan made a vague gesture with his hand behind them. True to his word, Jarrett and Dane were hanging half out of the windows. Ross Kelly, otherwise affectionately known as Poundcake, was roughly the size of a small car. Starting linebacker on the football team, his pound-'em-into-the-ground status was legendary. Even Donovan could see his and Wesley's faces in the back seat of Jarrett's vehicle. Everyone was accounted for.
Still, the Nova rolled forward. Someone could stroll by and outpace them, but there was no doubt they were moving.
“Listen! What was that?” Jillian leaned over him and wrenched a look out the window.
“What was what?” Donovan asked. She was setting Mark up for the nail scratches. He'd bet his last beer on it.
“I heard scratching.”
“That's crap,” Mark said, plopping the right way in his seat. “I don't see nothin' back there.”
Jillian smelled like cinnamon, jasmine and apples. Donovan let her lean across him to peer down the side of the car.
“No seriously. Didn't you hear that?”
“It ain't nothin',” Mark insisted.
The Nova rolled forward a little faster. Donovan snapped on the headlights. They illuminated the slope of the incline.
“I think there are scratches on the car, Donovan,” Jillian said.
Donovan felt her shaking with laughter against his chest.
“Better not be. I'll break someone's head.”
�
��The paint job looks like someone applied it with sandpaper,” Mark pointed out.
Donovan laughed, because it did. If the Nova got scratched anywhere, no one would be able to tell.
From Mark's side of the car came a distinct scrape of what sounded like nails on metal. Mark jumped and jerked his head around to look.
Jarrett, who had apparently snuck out of the other car when they were distracted, lunged and shouted at the passenger window.
Mark twitched backward in surprise, crushing Jillian against Donovan.
“Oooo...Oooo...” Jarrett loomed in the window, laughing and taunting Mark.
“Shithead,” Mark spat. Elbowed by a laughing and complaining Jillian, he bapped Jarrett with the heel of his hand on the forehead.
Jarrett, snickering, arched back and then draped his arms on the sill to peer inside. The car rolled forward slowly, though no one pushed it. Dane, Poundcake and Wesley joined him, two on each side of the Nova. They walked while the car moved, undaunted, unafraid.
“So, okay. Let's make it real,” Jarrett said. “Let's take Mark up to Skyline.”
“Ooh, man. Are you crazy?” Dane said. Decked out as a rapper, he adjusted his backwards baseball cap and stared through the car at Jarrett.
“You're talkin' about the Pitchford place, aren'tcha?” Brian asked from the backseat.
“Of course. What, you think I meant to meander along the road, looking at the scenery?” Jarrett scoffed, reaching in to knuckle Brian's head.
“What's the Pitchford place?” Mark asked, digging out another cigarette.
“Perry Pitchford. Owns a hundred or so acres up there--”
“Owned,” Wesley corrected.
“Owned,” Donovan rolled his eyes and continued. “Anyway. There's this old carousel way back behind the house--”
“You want me to go see some kiddy carousel?” Mark, just about to light the cigarette, protested when Jarrett snatched it out of his mouth and tossed it somewhere behind him. “Hey man.”
“Don't you know that'll slow you down?” Unrepentant, Jarrett shrugged and picked up where Donovan left off. “It's not just a kiddy ride. There's some real cool things besides horses on it. Gargoyles, a Mime, a Jester. Like that. Eccentric freak that Perry was, he bought it somewhere in Europe and had it shipped piece by piece all the way out here.”
“And then there's the story that old Perry, who kicked the bucket in his yard, still wanders around on the night he died,” Dane added.
“I'm guessing that's tonight.” Mark glanced back and forth between the faces looming at the windows.
“Yup. Halloween, three years ago. Knew someone who said they saw an apparition out near his tombstone.” Wesley said.
“So he's buried on the property? How'd he die?” Mark asked.
“Buried off to the side of the carousel somewhere,” Donovan replied. “Heart attack. Just keeled over sometime in the middle of the night.”
“Hey. We can take some pictures after Mark blows a bunch of smoke in the air near the tombstone and say it's Pitchford. Freak people out at school.” Jillian lifted the camera she'd taken to the party earlier up off the layers of tulle and satin that made up her Bride's dress. The white and black paint on her face made her smile look eerie and a little wicked.
“We'll say we all saw it,” Dane added, rubbing his hands together. Thick, fake gold chains clinked around his neck and on his wrists.
“Next weekend, we can drag a bunch of them up here and scare the crap out of them. Hide behind the carousel or whatever,” Deeter said from the backseat.
Donovan set his foot on the brake and put the rolling Nova into park. The headlights gleamed ahead, spearing into the darkness. He glanced across at Mark. “What do you say? Up for a ghost hunt?”
Nonchalant, Mark shrugged. “Sure, why not.”
“Alllllllrriiiiight. Let's go!” Wesley rat-a-tat-tatted his hands on the hood of the Nova and raced Dane back to the other car.
“Oooo...” Jarrett wiggled his fingers while he made ghost noises, terrorizing Mark until he sprinted away toward the car with the guys. Poundcake strolled in their wake, taking his sweet time to arrive. He wasn't half as fast as Wesley nor as slow as he pretended to be. The yellow glow of his fireman's costume was a bright beacon in the red haze of Donovan's taillights.
It took them less than ten minutes to travel along the dark roads to Skyline drive. Running parallel to the city, it got its name from the expansive view it offered over the sweeping valley below. There were few houses this far up the foothill. Once or twice they passed a homestead sat back on a handful of acres, windows lit from within.
Several feet past a series of snaking curves, Donovan pulled the car into a U shaped driveway on the left. Stopping the Nova with enough room for the Explorer to come in behind them, Donovan cut the engine and took the keys out of the ignition.
“We're here.” He got out, holding the door for Jillian while she slid out his side.
Over the roof of the car, Donovan eyed the Pitchford place. It stood like a dark sentinel against the foothills, two-story with several sections of sloping roof and a wrap around porch, the windows seeming to suck the night in through their rectangular shape.
“God, it's creepy,” Jillian said, snapping off her first picture of the house.
Mark, Deeter, Cory and Brian piled out of the Nova. From the Explorer came the rest, spilling out into the night with grins and mischief in their eyes.
“Looks like any other house to me,” Mark said. He'd lit up between parking and getting out. Smoke curled into the air.
“C'mon. Let's get the pictures before it rains.” Donovan could smell the ozone on the air, feel the weight of rain in the clouds rolling in from the north. He led the way around the house, Jillian clinging to his arm, the boys bumbling over each other in that way rambunctious boys do when they have too much energy to burn.
A hard-packed dirt path branched away toward a small field. Surrounded by palms and eucalyptus trees, secluded by the rising foothills beyond, it seemed a perfect spot for ghost sightings and gravestones. Donovan didn't see the burial spot first; he saw the eerie carousel rising out of the gloom, pale as alabaster, big enough to hold at least sixty riders. The menagerie of fiberglass animals and humans carved onto the running boards was impressive; There were horses with prancing hooves and lashing manes, gargoyles with forked tongues and bulging eyes, a mime in a black and white striped suit, a jester with a wide red smile. On closer inspection, the lacquer under the layers of dirt was better preserved than Donovan thought. Brilliant colors of red, blue and gold were waiting to be liberated with nothing more than a good cleaning.
“Holy crow, man,” Brian said, pacing to the edge of the carousel. “Look at this.”
“It looks happy and scary at the same time.” Jillian lifted the camera to take a picture. The flash lit up the night for a millisecond.
Donovan frowned, snapping a look on the red devil with a spaded tail. The pitchfork in its hand couldn't have moved—it must have been a trick of Jillian's flash. With a squeal, she climbed onto the edge of the carousel and posed next to a grinning pirate at least a foot and a half taller than she was. She took a picture of herself at arms length and made googly eyes when it blinded her.
Donovan laughed and hopped up next to a gargoyle. The other boys, including Mark, dispersed to examine the figures with round eyes and snickers of, “Coooool.”
Overhead, lightning blazed across the sky. Rain was imminent.
Their combined weight made the carousel squeak and groan, but overall, Donovan thought it felt pretty sturdy for being left to the elements so long. Snatching the camera from Jillian's fingers, he took her picture while she pretended to kiss the cheek of the mime. White faced, black haired, with paint around its eyes, the statue looked both classical and weird. Donovan couldn't tell if it was the look on its face—which reminded him of someone who knew a secret you didn't—or the edgy sense of realism achieved by minute detail.
In pe
riphery, he saw Mark go toe to toe with the devil and he twisted his shoulders to snap another picture. The flash highlighted Mark's droll expression and—what the hell? Donovan lowered the camera to look at the devil statue without the viewfinder in place. Its eyes, straightforward, had a somewhat slitted appearance and were red rimmed around a black iris. But they were focused ahead, not to the side like he thought he saw when the flash went off.
“Whoever made this had a vivid imagination,” Mark said. He flicked the butt of his cigarette out onto the grass.
Donovan raised the camera again and took another picture. Nothing unusual seemed to happen.
“Weird,” he muttered.
“What's weird?” Deeter strolled in and out of the menagerie, pausing to throw a leg over one of the painted horses.
“Nothing.” Donovan gave Jillian back the camera. “But we should get a picture of the grave or whatever. Gonna rain soon.”
Like a freaky portent, lightning split the sky.
From the other side of the carousel, Dane shouted in surprise. Donovan and Mark jogged through the statues to see Dane brushing hard at his arm. The chains around his throat swung back and forth from the volatile motion.
“What happened?” Donovan asked.
“I just got hung up. No big thing.” Dane glanced at the grinning Jester he stood next to.
“Aw, did it scare you, Daney-waney?” Deeter snickered while he taunted Dane.
Dane scowled. “Shut up.”
“Guys, I found it!” Jillian, standing several yards from the carousel, pointed at a large tombstone fifty feet beyond her.
Donovan clapped Dane on the shoulder and hopped down to the ground. He could just see the outline of a tall cross and headed that way on Jillian's heels. Instead of white or gray, like most headstones, this one was glossy black.
“Mark, come spark up,” Donovan called, suddenly wanting this business over with. He couldn't say exactly why, but his skin was crawling. Jillian, who stood out against the gloom with her eerie, distressed Bride's dress and pale face, made a circle around the headstone.
“How are we going to do this? The base isn't big enough for Mark to hide behind and hold the cigarette.”
Cemetery Psalms (5 Ghost/Horror Short Stories) Page 1