Everyone Dies in the End

by Brian Katcher

  “Charlie, forget the bus stop. I need to look someone up.”

  “No.” Her voice was firm, yet with a tinge of fear. “I don’t like being out here.”

  “Out here with me?”

  She held my gaze. “You’re acting funny.”

  “Ten minutes ago, we were going to elope.”

  She winced. “I want to go home.”

  I put the car in gear. “I just have to check something out. Real quick. If we don’t find it, you can kick me out of the car.”

  I expected her to tell me she’d never do that, but she stayed quiet.

  Danvers turned out to be the most uninteresting stretch of road I’d ever driven, and I’d been to Kansas. Mile after mile of shoulderless blacktop, bordered by occasional trees or dirt roads. Charlie was jiggling again; she obviously didn’t care for the isolation.

  I almost missed my turn in the near total darkness. ‘Hollingshead,’ read the sign, tilted forty degrees. I turned.

  Compared to Danvers, Hollingshead was the proverbial road not taken. The asphalt was cracked, with large potholes. Brambles began to smack the side of the car. There were no lights, no houses, no side roads.

  I’d always believed that it was impossible to drive more than fifteen minutes in Missouri and not hit a highway. But it had been over half an hour since we left Columbia, and not even a street sign indicated where we might be.

  Charlie spoke. Her voice was commanding, deep, a tone I’d never heard from her before. “Turn around, Sherman. I don’t like this area. I want to go home.” In the darkness next to me, I could see her eyes. Wide and scared.

  I slowed, but didn’t stop. “Charlie, I just want to check something out. Seriously. I won’t have another chance.”

  “This is my car. Take me home.”

  I stopped the vehicle. “One last favor, Charlie. I’ll never see you again.” I looked at the clock. 11:20. “Fifteen more minutes. 11:35, I turn around, I promise.”

  Charlie glanced out the window, probably weighing her safety in the car with me against her fear of walking twenty miles back home in the dark. She nodded, just a bit. I took off again.

  I found Irontown Cemetery Road at 11:30.

  At high noon on a sunny day, the road would have been nearly impossible to navigate. Near midnight on an overcast summer night, it was almost hopeless. Grass had stopped growing in the middle of the dirt road several miles back. It now grew straight across. My high beams only picked out the faintest ruts among the dense trees to indicate where I should be driving.

  There it was. Just like the directions said. Past a shallow pool of standing water, almost obscured behind the overgrown grass: the rusty iron gate. The cemetery was real.

  I stopped the car, killed the engine, and turned the headlights down to ‘park’. Taking a deep breath, I turned to my companion.

  “Charlie?”

  She shifted in her seat. “Yes, Sherman?” I noticed her hand was casually draped in her open purse. It may have just been a coincidence, but that was where she kept her pepper spray.

  “Charlie, you see that gate out there?”

  She squinted into the darkness. “I think so.”

  “That’s the entrance to the old Irontown Cemetery. I have to go do something there.”

  “There? Now?” She looked decidedly frightened.

  I pressed the keys into her soft hand. Whatever was out there, I had to face alone. “Go back home. Thanks for everything.” I leaned in for a goodbye peck on the cheek, but she scooted away.

  “What is this? Are you involved in drugs? Is there a meth lab out there?”

  “Nothing like that. No, seriously. Charlie…I have to check something. I have to set my mind at ease.”

  “And you think I’m just going to let you go wandering around in the dark by yourself?” Her tone of voice was the same as when we were talking about her needing clothes for the trip. “If it’s nothing, then I’m going there with you.”

  I was touched that after everything, she was still worried about me. “Stay in the car. If I’m not back in twenty minutes, go back to Columbia and call the cops. Twenty minutes, no more. Got a flashlight?”

  “In the trunk.”

  I flipped the switch and hopped out of the car. I was shocked at the stillness. Only the songs of the hidden frogs and crickets broke the still air. It was cool out there, almost unseasonably so. The light breeze held the odor of stagnant water, animal musk, and decay.

  I opened the trunk, hoping that maybe Charlie’s family stored their spare shotgun back there. No dice. I located the flashlight, along with an ugly-looking hammer. I tried to get the jack handle as well, but it was a flimsy, telescoping thing. Useless.

  When I slammed the lid, I wasn’t surprised to see Charlie standing next to me.

  “Sherman…what’s out there? Tell me.”

  I suddenly felt like the biggest fool in the world. What did I expect to find out there? Saberhagen, clawing his way out of a coffin? Dan and his ilk, goose stepping around a bonfire? I was supposed to be headed for Utah, not messing around in the dark like someone on a Halloween dare.

  “Charlie…I need to go in there and check some facts. I have to look at a tombstone. There’s an old legend I want to look into.”

  I could tell she wasn’t buying any of this. “In the middle of the night? And what’s the hammer for?”

  “Um, sometimes these graves are overgrown. It’s all I have for hacking weeds. Just give me five minutes, then I’ll take you home.”

  Charlie shook her head. “You’ll break your leg out there. Let’s get this done with, you big weirdo.”

  I was touched. Even after my strange behavior, she still was concerned, still wanted to look after me.

  Mud sloshed into my shoes as we attempted to avoid the small pool. I hated to think what might live in those tall weeds. Spiders, cottonmouths, things with scales and claws…

  At last we reached the gate. There was no sign, no indication of what lay beyond, but I knew. The gate and surrounding fence were of cheap, shabby construction. A long, narrow chain fastened tight with a rusted padlock held the entrance closed.

  Gripping the hammer, I swung at the lock. It shattered the second time I clobbered it, the bangs echoing out into the obscenely still night.

  I figured the gate would have rusted solidly shut, but it glided open at my touch. Silently. It seemed that not only had it been opened recently, it had been oiled.

  If this had been a modern, well-maintained cemetery with pristine tombstones, plastic flowers, and nicely trimmed grass, it still would have been scary as hell in the middle of the night. This place gave me a great urge to see just how fast we could make the twenty-five miles back to Columbia.

  At first glance, we seemed to be in an overgrown meadow. Nothing but high weeds and an occasional twisted tree. As I shone my flashlight around, I began to make out shapes. Bleak stones, their tops visible among the brambles and undergrowth. A forgotten graveyard.

  Charlie grabbed my arm. She opened her mouth to say something, then stopped, and allowed me to lead her forward. It was a good thing. If I didn’t have to be brave for her, I would have lost my nerve.

  Straight back from the gate, about fifty feet. I repeated the dead man’s instructions in my head. This had to be a fool’s errand. There was no way there’d be anything spectacular about this grave, if it even still existed.

  Those fifty feet seemed like fifty miles in the strangely cold summer night. Stickers grabbed at my wet socks. I banged my foot against fallen grave markers twice. Once, something crunched under my feet. I assumed it was a stick, trying not to think of what decades of erosion might have uncovered.

  The flashlight was not cooperating, I had to repeatedly smack it to get a decent beam. Charlie stuck close to me, grabbing my shoulder to keep from stumbling. Once, she yelped and leapt backward, as something alive skittered away from where she’d stepped.

  The few upright stones we encountered told us nothing. Their limestone f
aces had eroded decades ago, effacing whatever information they once held.

  “Sherman, what are you looking for?” Charlie’s voice took on a slight edge. Irritation was replacing her fear.

  “A grave marked ‘Saberhagen’.”

  Charlie slapped a mosquito on her cheek. “We’ll never find it in the middle of the night.”

  She was right. And even if I came back here in the daylight, what of it? This place was long abandoned.

  “Charlie…” I turned to look at her, then paused. I shone my flashlight on the outline of a low iron fence. In the dark, I’d taken it for the cemetery boundary. But upon closer examination, it enclosed a smaller patch of earth. One of those wealthy family plots, complete with a perimeter fence to keep the lower-class corpses from encroaching.

  Charlie tried to grab at my elbow, but I had to examine this. The fenced-in area was as neglected at the rest of the boneyard. Near the end, I could make out five identical markers, all overgrown and abandoned as Scrooge’s.

  I inched closer and directed the fading beam onto the left-most stone. Either it was blank or the words had long since worn away. I moved the light along other graves. They all seemed to be topped with a strange symbol or device. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it appeared to be a three-pronged image, hovering over a cross.

  I wasn’t up on my Christian imagery, so I examined the stones further. Using the claw hammer, I hacked at the weeds, trying to make out what else they said. The first two were eroded, but the middle one clearly showed the name of the deceased: SABERHAGEN.

  “Charlie! Come look at this.” She didn’t look, just crept backwards, out of my line of sight. I knelt next to the grave. There were no dates, no scripture, not even a first name.

  I shuffled over to the next block. “Charlie, this one also says the same name! Listen, do you know what this means?” I didn’t. Had Denton been on to something, or was this just a family plot?

  “Sherman…”

  And that’s when the grave opened. My foot was standing in nothingness, and I began to fall into the open tomb, plunging into the open gates of hell.

  For two feet. My legs found purchase and I sprang backward, collapsing onto a stone. I stopped screaming long enough to tell Charlie to stop screaming, then played my flashlight over the opening.

  Too rectangular to be natural erosion, the six-foot hole plunged about a yard into the ground, directly in front of one of the Saberhagen stones. There was no corresponding pile of earth. It was as if someone had unearthed the coffin, then shoveled all the loose dirt back into the grave. Denton hadn’t been totally imagining things.

  “Charlie, why would someone dig up an old grave like this?” I wasn’t buying the resurrection theory. Had Saberhagen been some sort of cult leader who insisted his followers unearth him after a time? Or had his body been desecrated by someone he’d wronged in life?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a literal peep from Charlie. I turned the flashlight in her direction. Standing there in her sexy clothes, her pale skin stood out in the darkness like a will o’ the wisp. Her trembling hand pointed in my direction, her mouth chattering.

  “Sherman,” she whispered. “What’s that?”

  As if that wasn’t a terrifying enough statement, she was pointing directly behind me.

  I swiveled in my seat, fully expecting to meet Saberhagen in person, all barefoot, worm eaten, and blank-eyed. Instead, I saw nothing but the dim humps of other tombstones. That was even more upsetting, since Charlie was seeing something horrifying that I couldn’t.

  Her voice stammered again. “What are you sitting on?”

  You ever just don’t want to look? I’d assumed it was some sort of rock or bench. But as I gently laid my hand on my seat, I came in contact with slick, moldy wood. Flat, polished, and boxy.

  I nearly fell back into the grave as I jumped up off the coffin. I hadn’t been so petrified since I asked out Nancy O’Snee in the seventh grade.

  If Saberhagen really had been as important as Denton made him out to be, then he certainly chose the budget model to be buried in. The casket was unornamented pine, already cracked and rotting. It lay upside down near the back of the tiny plot.

  I kicked at it. Predictably, it didn’t respond. I returned to the decorative fence and wrenched a stout, rusty pole from the gate. Using it as a lever, I righted the casket.

  Empty. A grassless patch indicated the box had laid in that position for years.

  “They took his body! Holy Jesus, Charlie, they actually dug him up and took him away!”

  I looked at Charlie when she didn’t answer. She was just standing there, hugging herself and whimpering. Time to go. I took her arm, which she gratefully clutched.

  After a step or two, I paused. What about the last grave in the row? It was probably the most recent. Disengaging myself from Charlie, I went back.

  The stone was newer than the other four. And the ground in front was mounded. Normal. Nothing to worry about. No one had been around here for probably years. Whoever was in this grave was all tucked away, sleeping in the earth. Right?

  I leaned on the pole. The end cut into the dirt. The mound seemed to suck at the post, pulling it down deeper. I yanked it back, dislodging a large clod.

  There was one sure way to ensure that my late friend was still slumbering, but I wasn’t quite nutso enough to go grave robbing. Whatever secrets lay here would stay buried. I needed to take Charlie home, then begin my long journey with no destination.

  I poked the useless rod into the grave and gave it a twist.

  And something twisted back.

  – Chapter Fourteen –

  It might have been my imagination. Just a little yank on the pole, as if something underground had pulled on it. I released the shaft, leaving it upright in the dirt.

  Charlie was gripping my shoulder. I stared at the iron rod for another moment. The movement had probably been the result of it collapsing into an air pocket or something. Lacking the courage to investigate, I allowed Charlie to pull me away.

  There it went again! I could just make out the jagged top of the pole against the tombstone. It was slowly, almost imperceptibly, sinking into the earth.

  There must be water or something under there. Or maybe Saberhagen’s coffin has rotted away, and the dirt’s collapsing inward.

  I recalled Denton’s warning. ‘Tell me if his grave looks…normal.’ And still it sank! It was almost halfway gone.

  I pulled away from Charlie, intending to grab the shaft, yank it out of the grave, prove to myself that it was only a cave-in that was engulfing the rod.

  The movement stopped when I approached the grave, as if it had encountered something solid. I reached out to touch it. Without warning, it shot upwards, poleaxing me in the jaw. I awoke five seconds later, flat on my back, gagging on what turned out to be bits of two shattered molars. For half a minute I lay sputtering in the dirt as pretty colors swam behind my eyelids. Only the realization that we were no longer alone kept me from blacking out.

  What rose from the grave appeared humanoid. About six foot tall, with arms, legs, and a head. But though I could see it clearly, even in the dark, I couldn’t give further details. Was it wearing clothes? What color was it? Perhaps I was merely blinded with pain, but I couldn’t make out even the most obvious features.

  The thing didn’t shuffle or shamble like a decent zombie. It didn’t vaporously arise like your typical ghost. It didn’t even lunge like a slasher movie villain. It simply crawled out of the grave like a city worker climbing out of a manhole.

  The thing moved towards me, gliding more than walking. As it stood over me, I looked into what would have been its face, had it had a mouth, a nose, ears and hair. It did have eyes, though. I looked into the staring eyes and began to cry.

  I was worthless. In seventeen years I’d not amounted to anything.

  The eyes stared. They were featureless, like two ping-pong balls.

  I’d let everyone down. Everyone was worse off
for having known me.

  The eyes stared. They were yellow and had slits for pupils.

  I was a coward, a wimp, a loser. I didn’t have any balls. I wasn’t a man. My father was ashamed of me.

  The eyes stared. They were huge and emotionless, like the eyes of the great squid.

  I should have been a miscarriage. I should have died an infant. I’m the reason Mom left.

  The eyes stared. They were bloodshot and angry.

  If I were dead, everyone would be less miserable. Hell, they’d be a lot happier.

  The eyes stared. They were two empty sockets.

  It wouldn’t be hard. I could correct nature’s mistake.

  The eyes stared. They were multi-faceted, like an enormous insect’s.

  Do it! Now! Unconsciously, my hand reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the straight razor I’d been carrying for protection.

  The eyes stared. They were human and smiling.

  I put the blade to my throat. The sharp metal clawed at my skin. One quick slash.

  DO IT!

  “Stay the hell away from him!” The mental fog lifted and I dropped the razor, horrified at what I’d been about to do.

  “Stay the hell away from him!” Charlie. She was advancing towards the monstrosity, brandishing the hammer I’d used to smash open the gate. The flirtatious girl from earlier was gone. In her place stood a mother bear, protecting her brood.

  The thing turned toward her. It seemed much more substantial as it grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to drop her weapon. She was already screaming as I climbed to my feet.

  I’d like to say she was screaming in fear, but the sound was unmistakable. She was in agony. The apparition held her by her shoulders as she threw back her head, howling in pain.

  Not stopping to think, I grabbed the pole and rushed whatever ghoul I’d called up. I swung for the outfield fence, almost expecting to meet no resistance from the phantom. Instead, there was a nice solid crack as the metal connected with whatever passed for the monster’s ribs. It released Charlie, who collapsed to the ground.