Midnight Grinding

by Ronald Kelly

  “What do you mean?” asked the girl, clutching her book bag tightly. “Who are you talking about?”

  A devilish grin crossed Butch Spence’s freckled face. “The babies, that’s who. They crawl up from their graves at night, you know. Old Man Caruthers, the caretaker, he’s heard them out here before…giggling and crying, crawling among the tombstones, trying to find their mothers. And on dark, stormy nights they hop the fence over yonder and crawl through the woods…to your house!”

  It began to rain. “Stop it!” yelled Deanna. “You’re scaring me!”

  “Listen!” said Jimmy Thompson. “Did you hear that?”

  The sound of something stirring in the high weeds on the far side of the fence reached their ears. “It’s them!” yelled Butch in bogus panic. “It’s the dead babies! They’re in the woods already, Deanna, and they’re heading straight for your house!”

  “Stop it!” sobbed the girl. “Do you hear me? Just stop it!”

  The Waller twins squealed and giggled with a mixture of fear and delight. The sounds in the forest grew louder. It sounded as though something was in the thicket, crawling on hands and knees.

  “Mama!” wailed an infantile voice from out of the high weeds. “Dadda!”

  “Gaah, gaah! Goo, goo!” cooed another from the same vicinity beyond the bordering fence.

  “Run, Deanna, run!” called Butch, stifling the laughter that would come later when the grand deception was over and done with. Then his buddies, Hank and Jason—who had beat them there on their bikes by five minutes—would come out of the woods and they would all enjoy a big bellylaugh at the new girl’s expense.

  And the seven-year-old girl did run…through the open gate, across the graveyard, and past the old church to Pear Tree Road. By the time she reached home, the heavens had opened and delivered a drenching downpour. She met her mother at the doorstep, soaked to the skin and crying, the laughter of her playmates cruelly ringing in her ears.

  She had seen one once before…a dead baby.

  That disturbing experience had taken place at the funeral of Grandpa Hudson a couple of years before. Deanna had gone to the bathroom and, upon returning, lost her way among the many mourning rooms, the places where the deceased were displayed before the casket was moved to the chapel for the final service. She had entered an empty room very similar to the one her grandfather was in and, at first, she had the sinking feeling that her family had up and left her. Then she saw the difference in the flower arrangements and in the coffin that sat upon the shrouded pedestal at the head of the room.

  The casket was very small, not over two feet in length. And it was the prettiest shade of baby blue that Deanna had ever seen. Although she was frightened, her curiosity was much stronger than her fear and she had climbed upon one of the folding metal chairs to get a better look. She nearly lost her footing and fell off when she saw what lay in the open box.

  It was a baby boy, about the same age that her little brother Timothy was now. It was dressed in a blue jumper, its head covered by a knitted cap of the same pastel hue. Tiny hands clutched a blue rattle in the shape of a sad-eyed puppy dog. It was the round, little face that scared Deanna the most; a face devoid of color, despite a touch of undertaker’s rouge at each chubby cheek. A face that was coldly deceptive in its peaceful slumber, an endless sleep that would never be disturbed by a middle-of-the-night hunger for warm milk or the discomfort of a wet diaper.

  As Deanna climbed off the chair and started for the door, she had heard—or thought she had heard—the dry sound of the plastic rattle echo from the casket behind her.

  Deanna thought of that as she lay in her bed that spring night and listened to the storm’s fury rage outside her bedroom window. She drifted into a fitful sleep, then awoke to a violent clap of thunder and a flash of lightning that illuminated her entire room, if only for a second. She clutched her Raggedy Ann, cowering beneath her bedsheets at the awful thrashing of wind and rain. She tried to fall back to sleep several times, but her thoughts were too full of Butch Spence’s nasty prank and the baby blue casket at the Milburne funeral home.

  Then, when the disturbing images finally did begin to fade, something else sent her into a fit of near panic. It was a small sound, a sound nearly swallowed by the bass roar and the cymbal crash of the thunderstorm in progress.

  It was the sound of a baby crying. Outside. In the woods.

  Deanna pulled the covers up over her head and tried to wait it out, but that dreaded creature curiosity once again prodded her. Go and look out the window, it told her. You will never know what it is until you do. Maybe it is just a lost kitten or the howling of the wind.

  Despite her better judgment, she climbed out of bed and did exactly what the little voice suggested. She padded in bare feet across her toy-cluttered room to the big window and peeped through the lacy curtains. And she saw exactly what she was afraid that she would see…but, no, it was much worse than that.

  At first there was only darkness beyond the rain-speckled panes. Then a bright flash of lightning erupted, dousing the wooded thicket with pale light. There in the weeds down below, things moved. Initially, she couldn’t quite make out what they were. Then a double dose of electrical brilliance revealed the startling tableau and she clutched at the curtains in horror.

  Small, hairless heads bobbed through the tall grass and honeysuckle like dolphins cresting the waves of a stormy sea. The pale, hairless heads of a dozen lifeless babies.

  She began to scream shrilly. Soon, the bedroom light was on and her mother was there to comfort her. Through her tearful hysteria, she tried to explain the awful spectacle she had witnessed. Her father, his hair tousled and his eyes myopic with sleep, peered through the darkness at the yard below. “There’s nothing down there, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her on the forehead before creeping back to bed. “Nothing at all.”

  Her mother tucked her back into bed, wiping her tears away. “You just had a nightmare, honey. A bad dream,” Mom said. “Now, you just relax and this time you’ll have a nice one.” The girl followed her mother’s advice and, before long, she was fast asleep.

  She was awakened a few hours later, again by a baby’s cry, but this time it was only her brother in the nursery, wailing for his three o’clock feeding.

  ***

  In some Southern communities, Memorial Day is also known as “graveyard day.” That had always been the case in Milburne.

  It was a day of remembrance, a day reserved for respect of the dearly-departed; the recently deceased, as well as those long since past. At the Baptist church it began as a day of work and ended as a day of fellowship. The men would mow the grass and trim around the graves with weed-eaters. The women would tackle the stones, scrubbing away grime and bird droppings with Ajax and warm water. The children also contributed in their own special way. Armed with baskets of plastic flowers, they removed the old arrangements and replaced them with the new. On the graves of veterans, they placed American flags.

  After the congregation had finished sprucing up the cemetery for that year, they would spread blankets and patchwork quilts upon the grass and sit down to eat dinner on the ground. The Hudson family found a spot near the wrought iron gate of the children’s cemetery and, despite Deanna’s protest, they laid out their picnic lunch. After the pastor’s prayer, they began to enjoy a meal of hot dogs, potato salad, and cold iced tea.

  It was during the churchyard meal that the town handyman, Old Redhawk, pulled his rickety pickup truck into the parking lot and staggered up to where the congregation sat eating. Redhawk was a full-blooded Cherokee, once a proud member of a local tribe that had made Glover County its home. But he had fallen on hard times and turned to drink. When he wasn’t cleaning out someone’s drainage gutters or roofing someone’s house, he could be found down at Boone Hollow Tavern, indulging in his favorite pastime. From the looks of him that May afternoon, it appeared that he had downed a few shots of sour mash whiskey before arriving to speak his mind.

&nbs
p; Deanna sat between her parents, gently holding little Timothy’s hand, as the old Indian ranted and raved about things long since past. She couldn’t understand a lot of what he seemed to be so indignant about…something concerning the desecration of sacred land and Indian burial mounds. Soon, Sheriff Harding and his deputy arrived and tried to talk Old Redhawk into leaving peacefully. The drunken man took a wild swing at the constable and, suddenly, they had him face down on the ground, not more than six feet from where the Hudson family sat.

  The seven-year-old watched, appalled, as they handcuffed the old Indian and pulled him roughly to his feet. For a second, the Indian’s eyes met Deanna’s. Those bloodshot eyes seemed to hold a dark message just for her.

  Better watch where you sit, little girl, they seemed to warn her. There are things buried beneath you that you could never hope to imagine. Arrowheads and pottery and the dusty bones of many a brave warrior. And, on top of that, despite the protests of the tribe, others were buried. Innocent children whose foolish parents interred them in sacred ground. There are nights at certain times of the year when the magic of the great Elders raise those tiny bodies from their earthen slumber and return them to the world of the living. Never mind what that comforting inscription atop the cemetery gate might promise. Whatever crawl this hallowed earth in the dead of night…they are far from being angels.

  “Come on, you crazy old coot!” growled the sheriff as he herded Old Redhawk off to the patrol car. “Let’s see if a week or two in the county jail will teach you to leave decent folks alone.”

  Mom handed Deanna a hot dog. “Just try to forget him, dear,” she said, stroking her long blond hair. “People do and say crazy things when they are all liquored up like that.”

  The girl absently took the food, her eyes glued on the tiny stones that jutted along the hillside—or was it burial mound?—on the other side of the fence.

  ***

  That night Deanna had the most frightening nightmare of her young life. She dreamt that she stood alone in the half-acre cemetery in the dead of night. A full moon was out, highlighting the tiny stones, making them look like bleached teeth sprouting from earthen gums.

  She stood atop the small hill beneath the thick foliage of the magnolia tree, barefoot, her pink nightgown fluttering in a cool breeze. She watched as the iron gate opened and a tall figure stepped within. It was Old Redhawk, but not the same drunken old man that she had seen earlier that day. He was now a proud Cherokee chief with a feathered headdress and streaks of warpaint smeared across his ancient face and arms. Behind him filed a silent gathering of braves and squaws. Old Redhawk began to chant, lifting his hands skyward. The clouds boiled like the depths of a dark cauldron. Lightning jabbed downward like gaunt fingers of blue fire upon the horizon.

  Before she could flee through the backwoods to her house, the ground beneath her began to buckle and heave. Clods of grass erupted, yielding a harvest of pale-fleshed heads. Soon, they had clawed the smothering confinement of dank earth away and were there before her, some toddling off balance, others crawling on all fours. The maddening noise of old rattles and squeaky toys pressed against her ears. Her screams drew their attention and, with an infantile mewing, they started up the hill toward her. The only source of escape was the tree. Limb by limb, she ascended the magnolia, glimpsing the pale little forms between the clusters of thick leaves.

  When she finally reached the top, she thought herself to be safe. But she was not. Hearing a faint stirring in the leaves above her, she looked up and saw her baby brother, Timothy…his chubby face ashen…his Winnie the Pooh pajamas soiled and dank with fresh earth. And, as he reached for her, she recoiled from his cold little hands…and fell.

  Deanna awoke, drenched in sweat, and her mouth was cotton dry. Trembling, she turned on the hall light and crept downstairs to the kitchen for a drink of water. She was filling a glass under the tap, when she heard a noise on the other side of the back door. It was a dry sound, the sound of tiny beads clattering within a plastic shell. A sound much like dry bones rattling within a casket. Small bones inside a small casket.

  Don’t look outside, she told herself. Just go back upstairs and crawl into bed and forget all about it.

  But that annoying little voice—Miss Curiosity—whispered insistently in her mind’s ear. It could just be an old newspaper blown against the screen door, maybe a jackrabbit scratching against the concrete steps, wanting a carrot from the fridge. She walked slowly to the door and unlocked it. For a second, she simply stood there. Remember what you saw the last time you looked, she told herself. But she opened the door anyway.

  Nothing was on the backdoor stoop. No crumbled newspaper. No bunny rabbit. Nothing but…a single pink bootie lying in the center of the newly-cast concrete.

  Cautiously, she picked up the knitted article of baby footwear and examined it. It was old…very old. Its cotton threads were rotten and reeked of soil, like the peat moss Daddy had spread around the shrubs last Saturday. And there was something else…something alive. She tossed the bootie away with a cry of disgust.

  There had been squirmy white things crawling between the interlacing fibers. Maggots.

  Then, as she was about to step back inside, she heard the faint rustling of the high weeds at the far end of the house. It was pitch dark that night, no moon at all. She strained her eyes until she actually began to see them. Tiny, pale splotches against the deep shadows of the pine grove. Not emerging from the thicket, but retreating.

  “Deanna,” someone whispered behind her.

  She nearly screamed, but recognized her mother’s voice before she could. She ran to her, quivering in the warm comfort of her arms. “What’s the matter, darling?” Mom asked, bewildered. “Were you sleepwalking again?”

  Deanna said nothing. She just continued to cling with all her might.

  Mom had come down to fix Timothy’s three o’clock bottle. When the milk had been warmed and tested on the inside of Mom’s forearm, the two mounted the steps to the upstairs hallway.

  The nursery was strangely quiet as they stepped inside. Mom felt along the wall for the light switch. “Surely he didn’t fall back to sleep,” she told her daughter. “He was screaming like a little banshee only a few minutes ago.”

  A click and the light came on. The nursery was revealed: lacy blue curtains, dancing clowns painted upon the walls, and in the crib, beneath a dangling mobile of Sesame Street characters, lay…

  Mom screamed.

  The baby bottle slipped from her hand and rolled along the hardwood floor.

  Deanna could only stand there and stare…and think about the magnolia tree.

  ***

  The Milburne pediatrician said it was something called “crib death.” Deanna didn’t know exactly what that was…only that it happened every now and then in Glover County. Her baby brother’s passing had been disturbing for the girl, as had his funeral— baby blue casket and all. But the most devastating thing was the place they had buried him. Deanna had screamed and cried when she found out, but the grownups had ignored her and buried Timothy there anyway. On the half-acre hill of stones…beneath that blossoming magnolia tree.

  After that, Deanna found it hard to sleep at night. Her parents worried that the strain of her brother’s death caused her bouts of insomnia. But it was not. It was something much more sinister.

  What drove the comfort of slumber from young Deanna’s mind were the nightly visits.

  Visits by a single tiny shadow outside her bedroom window and the low cooing sounds that drifted from beyond the sash. She would lie with her back to the window, her thin body shivering and her eyes screwed tightly shut, until the first rays of dawn chased that awful presence from her midst. For she knew that if she listened to her little voice and turned to look, she would see his pale and bloodless face pressed against the panes. She would see those dark, liquid eyes, glazed and unseeing, burning in at her with some strange light…some unholy motivation torn between the restlessness of the living and the mo
ldering of the dead.

  And, the following morning, there would be another toy missing from the cool sheets of Timothy’s abandoned crib.

  YEA, THOUGH

  I DRIVE

  Surprisingly, the practice of hitchhiking is still prevalent, even after years of well-deserved paranoia and tragic news reports about the perils of trusting strangers who travel the roads with their thumbs stuck in the air. Whenever I see a driver slam on the brakes to pick up someone holding a cardboard destination sign, I want to honk my horn and yell, “Hey, maybe you ought to give it a little thought first. Doesn’t this guy look familiar? Jeffery Dahmer’s second cousin, maybe?”

  This tale of hitchhikers on a stormy Tennessee night takes place on the fictitious stretch of Interstate 53, where a grisly fellow by the name of the Roadside Butcher has been pretty danged busy lately…

  There was a massacre in progress on I-53.

  The interstate system stretched from Atlanta, Georgia, across Tennessee and Kentucky, clear to Cincinnati, Ohio. Until the autumn of that year, it was known mainly for its scenic beauty and the Southern hospitality exhibited at the restaurants and motels that served as overnight havens between the long miles of rural solitude.

  Then the killings began.

  In three short months, the “Roadside Butcher” had murdered seventeen travelers along Interstate 53, each one varying in degree of brutality and mutilation. Some drivers were found sitting in their cars or eighteen wheelers with their throats neatly slashed from ear to ear. Others were found lying at the side of the road, sliced open from gullet to groin, gutted like a deer at hunting season. And then there were the more grisly of the Butcher’s victims…those who had been hacked to death, dismembered, or decapitated. The strange thing about the whole ordeal was that there was no definite pattern. The victims had been hitchhikers and drifters, as well as vacationing travelers and burly truckers who regularly frequented the five hundred mile stretch of southern interstate.