by Brhel, John
“It doesn’t seem right, Jamey. There are no cars or sounds or anything.”
James was about to blow a gasket. He knew she was terrified, but he was too. “Just shut up for a while, Alexis. We’ll find our way back. Let’s just follow this road, okay? It loops back down to Memorial Drive and the cemetery.”
They walked, their eyes searching through the fog for any sign of life or civilization beyond an intermittent street lamp. Finally, they reached another road and followed it for some time before coming upon what James knew to be the western gate of the cemetery. There was no evidence of a corn maze.
They walked along the iron fence toward the main gate. No sign of anyone or anything beyond the first few rows of headstones. They continued to the eastern gate, where the maze had begun. Again, nothing. The couple crossed the street to where Greene Park should have been. Nothing. No tents, no rides, no sign that any fair had taken place—just more fog and an empty field.
Alexis screamed, her cries dissipating into a vast nothingness. “James, what’s going on?! What’s happening?!” She grabbed him, her arms shaking violently.
James had a blank, dead look on his face. “I don’t know,” he whispered as they wandered back toward the open gate of the graveyard.
It was then that they did see something. Other souls, just like them, wandering to and from the cemetery. Mutilated corpses from centuries past soon surrounded the pair—beckoning to them, welcoming them to their new purgatory.
* * *
Steve and Rose walked out of the maze and were struck by the glow of orange lights and the sweet smell of kettle corn. The Lester Harvest Fair was teeming with lively, smiling faces, and they were happy to join their ranks.
“Look, Honey,” said Rose. “They still have that same Ferris wheel!”
“Let’s take a ride, for old time’s sake,” said Steve.
He took his wife by the hand and they walked into the fair for the first time in decades.
KNOCKING BACK
Jack and Tim sat with their friends in the Lestershire High cafeteria. They were trying to impress a couple of cute girls with stories of their legend-tripping exploits. The Internet provided fodder for many excursions into the great upstate countryside and suburban wild, even stories of their own humble town and county.
“We found the boy’s tomb in the cemetery up there with the window and everything. You couldn’t see in. Just the fact that it actually existed was amazing. We hear legends, then go out and test them. You guys should come out with us sometime.” Jack had his audience rapt.
“Yep, Jack and I’ve found old castles and abandoned resorts downstate—haunted houses that delivered and plenty of spots that were lame. You don’t always hit it out of the park with these kinds of things.” Tim was referring to the few haunted roadways and gravity hills they had visited that seemed more a waste of gas money than an adventure.
“Have you guys been to Valleyview yet?” Ron spoke up after half-listening to his pals chat with the girls about their kooky exploits.
Jack responded, “Of course, man. Everyone has. You sit on ol’ Schwartz’s tomb and wait to get pushed off. Me and Timmy practically sat there all night—two nights in a row—and nothing.” The girls laughed.
Ron shook his head. “No, no. This one isn’t on the Internet. I heard this from an older guy who’s been cutting the grass there for years. You need to find Eunice’s mausoleum—it’s supposed to be plainer looking and sort of set into the hill. All you do is knock a bit, wait, and she’ll knock back.” The boys were curious; the girls’ interest was piqued.
“You’ve never been, Ron?”
“Nah, I drink and play ball on the weekends, dude.” The girls giggled at Ron’s jab at Jack and Tim’s choice of weekend activity. Ron continued, “But my buddy said that he’s done it and he’s heard the knocking. He said once you hear it you better run, ‘cause if you see Eunice in her current state of decay...let’s say, it’s not going to be good.”
“Shit, Ron, we’re down. Tonight we’ll meet you at the gate and you help us find the spot.”
One of the girls, Lisa, chimed in, “We want to go too, guys.”
Tim had forgotten about his pursuit of Lisa in his excitement over a new legend to test. “Okay, me and Jack will pick you two up and we’ll meet Ron outside the diner?” They all agreed.
The group met at the west end gate of the cemetery after dark, having left their cars in the nearby diner’s parking lot. Ron, Jack, and Tim searched inscriptions on the large central grouping of mausoleums with their two flashlights while the girls trailed behind, chatting. Forty minutes into the search, Lisa’s friend, Kim, was getting impatient and spoke up: “Are we just going to wander around in the dark all night?” Ron was worried he was going to look like an idiot if they didn’t find this tomb.
“Give us another twenty minutes, ladies, we’ll find it.” Tim chatted with Kim while Lisa began looking with Jack and Ron. Not ten minutes passed when Lisa spotted something interesting.
“Guys, none of these are set in a hill…What about over there?” All eyes turned to where she was pointing. Set into the hillside, among a group of big pine trees, was a plain-looking concrete structure.
“I think we’ve got something. Good eye, Lisa.” They made the five-minute trek to the little knoll, which was surrounded by average-size gravestones.
“Not very impressive.” Ron shined his flashlight on the name marker above the door. Sure enough, it read: ‘Eunice D. Walsh.’
“There she is!” The five stood in the crisp autumnal air waiting for a volunteer.
“Well...Who’s going to knock first?” asked Tim. The girls took two steps back.
“C’mon, Tim. Let’s both knock.” Ron backed up with the girls while Jack and Tim coolly stood at the iron door, which was partly rusted and representative of the shoddiness of the structure as a whole.
“On three?” Jack nodded. “One. Two. Three!” The two boys rapidly knocked on the door for a few seconds then quickly jogged back the ten yards to where the other three were standing. The five held their breath in the quiet, still night, waiting for the return knock.
They paused for two full minutes before Lisa started laughing. “Guess she’s not home?” The kids chuckled, though Jack and Tim were visibly disappointed that they did not confront some unstoppable supernatural force that night.
On their way down the winding path they ran into two guys who were looking for Schwartz’s mausoleum. Tim tried to dissuade them from their pursuit.
“Nah, that’s a dumb old story, guys. Everyone’s done that and had a laugh. There’s a mausoleum way up in the pines, set in the hill with a rusty door. You go up there and knock on Eunice’s crypt and she’ll knock back.” Tim was having some fun with these two guys from out of town, who, like them, had found the story of Schwartz’s Ghost on the Internet.
“You guys were just up there? She knocked back?” The five nodded in unison, saying how scared they were and adding other embellishments. The two newcomers were excited at the prospect and hurried up the path toward the pines. Tim, Jack, and their friends left the cemetery laughing at the gullible guys and ate a late breakfast at the town diner.
The next day at school the five joked about their fruitless cemetery expedition. Ron said he had spoken to the guy who told him the story on Facebook when he got home.
“My brother’s buddy, Z., he said you have to go way late, like after two and you have to say, ‘Eunice, can you hear us?’ and then knock.” Kim and Lisa rolled their eyes and giggled at the corny addition to the story.
“Alright, I’m down,” said Tim.
He and Jack were ready to go again that Friday night. Kim was the first to say she had no interest. Ron had an away football game so he was out. Lisa thought about it for a few minutes before agreeing to go with Tim and Jack. She liked Tim and was hoping he would eventually ask her to go somewhere more normal with him.
Tim, Jack, and Lisa hung out at Tim’s house watching mo
vies until midnight, then went down the road to the diner to eat before their cemetery sojourn. It was colder than their previous expedition just a few nights before. Soon enough, they were hurrying along the path up the cemetery hill to the pines and the knoll that hid Eunice’s door.
“Lisa, you get to knock this time.” The three again anxiously waited in front of the crypt, even though they had been disappointed only a few nights before in the same spot.
“Only if Tim knocks with me.” He smiled at her and they stepped forward.
“Wait! Someone has to ask Eunice if she can hear us.” Lisa jumped at Jack’s interjection just as she was about to knock.
“Eunice, can you hear us? We’ve come to let you out.” Tim looked back at Jack, happy with his little addition to the lore. They counted down from three and the pair knocked furiously at the door for more than a few seconds then backed off and waited.
After a long pause, they heard it. A muffled knocking seemingly from the other side of the door. When the knocking grew louder and more erratic, the kids bristled. Lisa gasped and hung onto Tim, and the three turned and flew down the hill until they exited the gate.
“Goosebumps; look.” Jack showed them his arms while they panted from their exertion in the diner parking lot.
“I frickin’ can’t believe it.” Lisa looked excitedly at a grinning Tim.
“And that, Lisa, is why we do these little trips.”
The guys dropped Lisa off at her house and stayed the night at Jack’s, talking until sun-up about their night. They slept for most of Saturday and ate a long breakfast mid-afternoon. Ron was the first person they messaged about their night. Of course, he did not buy their story, as he knew how these stories grew to be popular in the first place. Jack and Tim were already planning on returning that night for another go.
“What you think happened, man?” While Tim wholeheartedly believed in ghosts and all the things they explored, Jack liked to think of rational explanations for the stories he sought to experience firsthand.
“I guess someone could’ve been messing with us. Or, ghosts, zombies, you know...” replied Tim, who didn’t think too hard about it, really.
“You said the door seemed looser the second night, like when you knocked it might have only been held by a small bolt lock?” Tim nodded, unsure what his friend was getting at.
“Tonight, we have to open that door, dude.”
Tim knew his friend was serious. “I’m a lot of things, Jack, but I’m not a cemetery vandal.”
“I think we could nudge it open and get a peek inside, not really break anything.” They went back and forth for some time until Jack more or less bullied Tim into agreeing to try and pry the door open, if only a crack.
Before the pair left for the cemetery, Tim had a long conversation with Lisa on Facebook about the previous night and even made an actual date with her for the following weekend. Jack and Tim played video games, researched other stories for future legend trips and just killed time until they could go back to the cemetery once more.
When Jack put screwdrivers and a crowbar into his backpack, Tim stopped him and questioned his motives. “We’re not desecrating someone’s tomb, Jack.”
“Of course not, buddy. We’ve been on all these adventures together. When have I ever been a vandal?” Jack was right, Tim had never seen him purposely destroy anything on all their trips together. But it was driving Jack mad that he had finally come into contact with a legend that turned out to be true, and he wanted some bit of evidence. He was not thinking as clearly as the time they explored the underground tunnels and he’d insisted they turn back at the sight of a mutilated cat.
It was uncharacteristically dark in the cemetery that night as Jack and Tim walked the winding path toward their destination among the pines. There was no moon, and for whatever reason most of the streetlights on Memorial Drive that usually cast a faint glow upon most of the cemetery were out. Even the diner had been closed; the sign read ‘for repairs.’
Tim shone his flashlight on Eunice’s lonely tomb as Jack unpacked the tools. First, he twisted the handle and nudged the door. Tim was right about it being loose, and it almost seemed like he could just break the lock with little effort.
“The top of the door. I think we could bend it in.” Tim pushed the top corner of the door while Jack crowbarred the growing crevice. They struggled at the door for a few minutes before it became clear their idea was not going to pan out.
“God, it’s almost like I could just open the door, the lock is so loose.” Jack shimmied the handle on the slim, rusted metal door. When he was about to give up and go back to his tools, the door popped open nearly six inches and came to a dead halt.
“Holy shit!” Tim looked at Jack. They were both smiling ear to ear.
“And we didn’t have to break anything. I think there’s something blocking the way. Help me push the door.” The pair pushed at the bottom of the door so it was open about eight inches, which gave them enough room to peek inside with their flashlights.
Tim was the first to peer in at the shoddy concrete insides. There was nothing ornate from what he could see.
“Doesn’t look like much. I guess there could be coffins in the walls, but I don’t see any markers inside.” Jack pulled Tim back so he could look in. He saw the same white, seemingly blank wall, and noticed something on the dirt floor, just behind the door.
“Let’s get it open more so we can see what’s blocking it.” They pushed harder, it felt like sandbags weighing on the other side. There was enough room so they could both squeeze in. They were nervous and excited as they entered the dusty crypt, kicking up a cloud of dirt as they shuffled in.
“What is that?” Jack bent down in the dust shining his flashlight on a form and gasped.
“It’s a body!” The dust settled enough that they noticed a second body slumped partly beneath the first. When they nervously shifted the first to see the second, it fell against the door, shutting it. They didn’t notice the door close due to their shocking discovery of the two corpses.
“Oh hell, Jack—I think it’s those two guys from last week!” The flashlights shone on the sunken, pale-gray faces and Jack too recognized the gullible legend trippers from their first trip to Eunice’s mausoleum.
“Christ, they must’ve gotten stuck in here. We have to call the cops.” Tim and Jeff looked at each other with the same horrific thought and lunged for the crypt door.
“Goddammit, it’s stuck!” Jack and Tim fought the door with just their hands, attempting different methods of prying it open. Jack had left the bag with his cell phone and tools outside so he could fit through the crack. The door seemed firmer, not loose or shaky at all from the inside.
The pair took turns screaming for several days. Eventually, dehydration reached the point where they could no longer even speak to each other.
* * *
That following Tuesday, Ron brought Lisa back up to the tomb in the hillside so she could show him what she, Jack, and Tim had witnessed.
“C’mon, Lisa, I know you’re messing with me.” They had not seen Jack nor Tim at school and Lisa kept insisting they had heard Eunice knock back. “In fact, I’d bet you anything we won’t hear a knock.” She smiled.
“How about the loser buys dinner then?”
“I’ll take that bet.”
They took their places in front of the rusty metal door and excitedly knocked. After a brief pause they heard a faint knocking and then a louder more haphazard pounding. They bolted away from the haunted mausoleum, screaming and laughing.
Slumped against the other side of the door, Jack and Tim expended the last of their energy answering the knock, hoping someone would hear and rescue them before they took their final breath.
OUT TO LUNCH
Mark Hurley was morbidly obese. He had been warned by his doctor of the risks and complications of carrying so much weight, specifically the likelihood of heart disease and organ failure. But the same could be said of millions of
other folks who know that what they are doing is a path to death—they either do not care or are unwilling to tackle their vice.
The Broadview Diner served Mark each weekday during his lunch break: two double burgers with french fries and two sodas. The other regulars sometimes eyed him accusingly; some of the waitresses almost seemed to feel complicit in his gluttony. Mark was a nice enough guy, tipped decent, and no one ever said a thing to him about his habits—at the diner, anyway.
The reason Mark even became a regular at the diner was because his coworkers’ lips were getting looser regarding his size and midday intake. He was becoming more anxious at the longer stares at the diner and knew it was only a matter of time. His anxiety fueled his eating habits and Mark had concocted a new routine to feed his turmoil.
“Hey, Mark—the regular?” Annie, like most of the waitresses at the diner, knew Mark’s order, but this time he shook his head.
“Annie, I told my pals at work how much I love your guys’ burgers and fries. I’ll take four double burgers, four french fries, two regular and two diet sodas, please—to go.” The waitress smiled and went off to put in his order. Mark was always nervous lying, and he knew his face was red just from telling this small fib.
The woman returned with two bags of greasy diner fare and a drink carrier for his sodas, and Mark was on his way. He had thought about eating in his car, but he worked close by and did not want someone he knew to catch him wolfing down his food in embarrassment. He had never been in the cemetery before and had driven by so many times, it just came to him that morning; he could eat exactly what he wanted in peace and quiet without the world’s judgment coming down on him.
Mark tossed the two diet drinks in a small garbage can on the sidewalk before he slipped passed the west gate of Valleyview Cemetery. He certainly did not need four sodas, especially of the watered-down, diet variety. The sun was out, but it was not much more than seventy degrees, just about perfect for a shady picnic under a group of poplars. Mark ate his volume of burgers and fries, finished his sodas, and was back to work before his hour break was up.