Knowing when somebody was about to die was one of Mary Ellison's unique gifts. More often than not, Mary felt that her psychic abilities were a curse. More often than not she desperately wished that someone else was burdened with her special talents, if they could truly be called talents. Mary Ellison was not gifted with the ability to find lost objects, nor was she able to predict the future at a whim. Mary just suffered many a moment of De ja vu and on rare occasions knew when someone close to her had been hurt. Oh, those abilities didn't bother her all that much, it was the other "gifts" that caused Mary to hate her so called sixth sense.

It was the ability to know when someone was about to die that made Mary rush up from the depths of peaceful slumber and scream into her pillow in the darkest hours of the night. That, and the, thankfully, rare occasions when she heard what she thought must be ghosts calling from the cemetery over the near the Baptist church.

Like tonight. Tonight the restless spirits seemed to be in rare form, shrieking out their suffering to the winds, and praying that someone in the world of the living could end their suffering. Someone like Mary, someone that could hear the voices when they talked.

"Better luck with the next patsy, ghosts. I'm too damned tired to even bother with you." The words were whispered, Mary was afraid that she might offend one of the dead, maybe make them decide that it would be more fun to move on over to the house and say, stay right in Mary's closet, howling away and knowing that only Mary could hear its macabre voice.

Mary stared at the shadow patterns that ran across her ceiling and tried not to think about what her brother was doing. Dylan was a big boy now, eighteen years old, and more than capable of making his own decisions. Even if his decisions were normally the wrong ones, like hanging around with Michael Cobb and the rest of his druggie friends.

She watched the patterns shift and stretch from the ceiling to her wall as a car went past the house. At One-thirty in the morning she had better things to do with her time than worry about her brother, especially when she had to open the diner in less than five hours.

Sleep was almost a hopeless concept by that point, but even a few hours was better than none at all. Mary pulled herself into a fetal position, flipping herself onto her side. She had just reached the pull-pillows-up-over-the-ears-in-a- futile-attempt-to-get-some-sleep stage, when the voices suddenly stopped.

After that it was easy to get rest, already suffering from what had to be the first stages of serious sleep deprivation, Mary's eyes were closed almost before she knew what had happened.

It was only much later, when the problems that were soon to come her way were mostly over and she had time to really sit back and relax, that she realized the sounds had never stopped abruptly in the past; they had always pulled a slow fade that took a few hours, sometimes a few days.

Dylan was a little nervous about this whole scene, but if Mike said it would be fun, then Dylan was willing to give it a try. He was sitting in the back seat of Mike's LeBaron, Willis to his right. The front seat held Mike, and mikes best friend Pete. "Hail, hail, the gang's all here."

Pete looked over at Dylan, eyes already bloodshot and a perma-grin stretching his thin lips into a lazy smile. Pete reached back and offered another hit off his joint to Dylan. Dylan shook his head no, Willis took Dylan's toke along with a few of his own. With his lungs working overtime to hold in the pungent smoke, Willis managed to ask Dylan what he was talking about in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

"Just thinking about what my sister always says, about there being ghosts in the cemetery."

Willis opened his mouth to reply, but Mike beat him to it. "Your sister's a fucking nut case, Dilly. Only girl I know who can trip the night away and never need to worry about chewin' on stamps to do it."

"Fuck you Mike."

"Only in your dreams and my nightmares, Ellison."

Dylan let it rest, normally Mike wasn't that bad about it, and Mike was twice his size besides. The last thing Dylan needed was to have Mike use him as a battering ram against a few headstones.

The whole gang was buzzing along on whatever shit Mike had been passing around earlier. That suited Dylan just fine. As the button on his shirt pocket said: Reality is for people who can't handle their drugs. Besides, if he wasn't bopping along to the chemical tune that was playing in his head, he would have never had the guts to come along on this little adventure of Mikes.

Mike and his grand schemes. "I know, let's go trash the graveyard, let's go rustle us up some fun with dead people. Whattaya say, kiddies, won't that be a grand ol' time?" Dylan could not suppress the bitter, sarcastic thoughts. Even mellowed out as he was, he could still feel his balls pull into his stomach at the thought of how his sister looked on the nights when the "Natives were restless," as she liked to put it. To hell with what Mike liked to think, Dylan fucking KNEW what his sister went through, he heard her scream herself awake on nights when it was really bad. Sometimes he even heard her cry herself to sleep afterwards, on those nights when she could manage to go back to sleep.

Dylan forced thoughts of his sister out of his mind as they pulled up to the Summitville Baptist Church. Even with the growing crime rate in Summitville, the head honchos at the church had never quite gathered the necessary assets to get a fence put around the cemetery. To date there really hadn't been a need for one. I mean, what kind of sick bastards would desecrate a graveyard?

The Le Baron's trunk was filled with all they would need: Spray paint, crowbars, even a twelve pound sledge hammer. "Guess the preacher's gonna scrape up those funds now."

The whole merry crew had discussed the lack of proper protection for the cemetery earlier, every last one of them laughed at Dylan's joke. Except for Dylan, he really didn't find the situation very funny. The more he thought about the whole thing, the more Dylan wished he was at home. With a characteristic sign of impatience, Dylan flipped his long bangs out of his face, hopped out of the car.

Mike, Willis, Dylan and even Pete stared out at the tombstones for several minutes, no one moved in the early morning darkness. Out away from the lights of Summitville proper, buried in the silence of what Summitville called its suburbs, the air felt colder and the light fog that had blanketed the town was more obvious. Bashing a few headstones had been Mike's idea, but even he didn't look like he wanted to be here.

The headstones and statuary of the old cemetery stood in the darkness solemnly waiting for the group to make their decision. Scanning the edifices, not a single one of them thought that this would be fun anymore; not a single one of them would admit to their discomfort. What if the others thought he was wussing out?

No one wanted to be the first to back down, and so the whole crew started unloading their tools. Along with the various mechanical devices there was another twelve pack of Budwieser. Desecration was, after all, thirsty work.

Mike and the rest of the group started into the silent field, glad that the area had real tombstones instead of those little plaques that you could walk right over: with the plaques, they'd have trouble seeing who was buried where, and they'd risk actually stepping on some of the areas where coffins were buried.

The gang all stopped what they were doing a second time and listened for the sounds of Dave Simpson's patrol car coming by. The only sound they heard was a low mournful howl of the wind as it caressed the tombstones and monuments to the dead.

Mike took the first swing with his sledgehammer, missing his target and planting the galvanized steel head into the damp grass. "Fuck, missed the bitch." With his words, the cemetery's almost mystical hold on them was broken, and the destruction began in honest.

In a matter of minutes the whole group was quietly laughing, tipping over headstones and painting whatever slogans came to mind on the marble that was too heavy to topple and too thick to break. The adrenaline from their systems, fueled by a mixture of too much alcohol too many nervous thoughts and too much of Mike's pharmaceuticals, made the work easier than if they were actually being paid to do the strenuous labor.

Willis was the one that lost it first. Willis was the one that dropped his pants and defecated on Simon Monroe's broken marker. After that they all went a little wild. Everyone laughed this time, even Dylan. It was funny, it really was. It was to die for.

 

Otis Miles had worked at the First Baptist Cemetery for ten years, and unlike so many in his profession, he was not known for tipping back a few too many during his working hours. Nor was he known for exaggerations or the telling of ghost stories. Otis simply did his job, earned his money, and stocked away what he could towards his retirement. Otis was, in most people's opinion, a damn fine man. No one thought less of him for the work he did, perhaps because he did it so well.

Otis took great pride in maintaining the cemetery. He was careful of the flowerbeds, and he made absolutely certain that the grass was trimmed around each of the headstones. He had his own family here, after all, and it was only proper to respect the dead.

When Otis Miles saw what the group had done to his graveyard, he openly cried tears of outrage. The dignified order that Otis had struggled to maintain was gone, replaced by chaos and spray paint. Whoever had torn the cemetery apart had been very thorough, even making certain that no part of the lawn larger than a pillowcase was left unmarred. Trenches had been cut into the lawn, gaping sores of muddy soil erupted from the neatly trimmed grass. But it wasn't the damage to the lawn, not even the broken statues that qualified as the worst of the damage, no that honor was left for the violated graves.

Otis stared at the earthly remains of George Willingham, placed meticulously between the thighs of and uplifted skirt of Amelia Thornton, and stared at the abomination for several minutes, tears of shock and shame gone, replaced by cold, numb hatred. Then he went to his offices in the church, and he called Dave Simpson.

Otis knew better than to touch anything. If he touched even one shred of the evidence, something might be lost, some vital clue as to who had committed such sacrilegious acts. Otis desperately wanted the criminals caught. He wanted them caught, tried and hung. This went well beyond vandalism, somebody would pay for what they had done, if not at the hands of the law, then at Otis' own hands.

Dylan slept late, waking sometime before one P.M. He was exhausted, felt soreness in muscles that he had forgotten even existed in the human body. With a groan he flipped over in his bed so that he faced the ceiling. The whole damned room flipped with him and continued a slow, lazy roll even after he had stopped moving. Oh Lord, how he hated the bed spins. One foot flopped to the ground, clutching desperately at shag carpet with its toes in an effort to stop the wild rotations. No good.

Dylan stayed as still as he could for as long as he could, then he bolted into the bathroom, careening off of the wall on his way, and paid homage to the porcelain goddess. What came out looked to have a little red mixed in with the myriad other colors, and Dylan swore he would lay off of the hootch for a while. It was as he was staring into the dirtied waters of the toilet that he noticed the ring out of the corner of his eye.

On his right hand, on the ring finger, there was a ring that he knew all too well. The ring had belonged to George Willingham, the principle at good ol' Charles S. Westphalen High School, his alma mater. It was a beautiful ring, 24 carat gold, in the form of three serpents interwoven. Each of the snake heads had a small emerald for an eye, and in the center of the heads, held in place by the open mouths, a star sapphire.

Oh my yes, it certainly was a beautiful ring, a regular family heirloom for the Willinghams. And it had been buried with the principle when he died two years back. The whole night came to Dylan like a flood of waters from a broken dam, and even as he tried to cry out his denial, he shoved his face back into the toilet bowl. Long after his stomach was empty, the dry heaves continued.

Mary was in fairly good spirits when she came home from work. The day had gone smoothly enough, the tips had been good, and Karl Golden had actually spent extra time there just so he could flirt with her. At this rate he was bound to ask her out in the near future.

Then that little special treat of hers, that certainty that someone she cared for was in serious trouble, slammed into her head. The feeling hit her like a slammed door, damn near knocking her down to her knees. She had enough presence of mind to grab the doorjamb before she could fall.

With the whole room fading into a gray sort of fog, Mary made for the couch in the living room, falling short of her actual goal and having to climb onto the sofa. Just as quickly as the feeling had arrived it faded away again. "Oh, just passing through to see if we were still welcome, glad to see you, gotta go." Mary giggled half hysterically as she sat in the twilight.

Had she been in a better state of mind, Mary might have heard the whimpering cries coming from the basement where her brother sat, using a pair of needle nose pliers to pull at the ring which adamantly refused to let go of his finger.

Dylan was not having a good day. On the bright side, at least the folks were out of town, couldn't see what a mess he'd made of himself. On the darker side, Dylan had done things last night that made him think of suicide as a serious option.

Jesus Christ on a fucking Pogo Stick. What the hell had inspired him to take the old bastard's ring? If anything existed that could be called hard evidence, it was the ring on his finger, the one he'd taken from the corpse he'd helped pull from the ground, the one he'd... No, best not to think about that, best to just forget it completely.

Dylan threw down the pliers and grabbed for the petroleum jelly again, futilely slathering up his finger in an attempt to get the ring to slide off. Nothing had worked so far, and he was starting to worry. His finger was blue, lack of blood, it had to be.

When the pliers failed to remove the offending ring again, Dylan quietly threw a fit in the basement, kicking at his fathers tools and supplies until he damn near broke his toe. From that point on, he just cursed a great deal. Then Dylan spotted his salvation, a pair of bolt cutters.

It took almost twenty minutes to maneuver the cutters into position with just his left hand, but he managed. After all of his fighting and whining in the last hour, the ring fell away with little more than a snip from the cutters and a twist from the pliers. What was left of the ring was deposited in his jeans pocket.

Dylan only really started to worry about his health when his finger graduated from blue to a purplish black.

Later that night, after Mary had collapsed in bed and started her fitful tossing, Dylan slipped out of the house. It had been hard making certain that Mary didn't see his finger, he'd had to snag some of his mother's make up, and he hadn't quite managed the right color, he was certain that Mary would notice. But Mary had been distracted all night, had actually avoided making conversation, which was not at all the norm where Mary was concerned. He was grateful for the silence, but he promised himself he'd find out what was wrong as soon as he took care of his own problem. His finger didn't hurt, but it had become stiff and hard to move. Dylan was starting to get a little panicky.

Mike's house was just down the block, and Mike had a car. The whole damn thing was Mike's fault, and Mike would help him get his hand fixed, or Mike would be going to jail, it was just that simple. Dylan had to toss the stones at Mike's window with his left hand, only about three of the first ten actually tapped the window. That was okay, after the third, the light came on in Mike's window.

Mike's mom was the one that opened the second story window. "Who's there?" Her voice was distraught, nervous. "Is that you Dylan?"

Dylan looked at the woman's face, thought about running for it, changed his mind. She'd already spotted him, he may as well carry out with his original plan. "Yes Ma'am. I was trying not to disturb you, I know it's awfully late. Is Mike around Ma'am?"

Misses Cobb's round face scowled with consternation, her short curly hair wobbled along with her head. "It's awfully late, and Mike's not feeling well. Maybe you should try again tomorrow."

Dylan felt his butterflies starting in his stomach, panic reached his voice despite his efforts to stay calm. "But, I really have to see him Mrs. Cobb."

The woman's face actually pulled into a even deeper scowl. "No, I'm sorry. You'll just have to try again tomorrow." The decision was obviously not going to change.

"But-"

"Tomorrow, Dylan. Now good night." The window was closed softly, completely.

"Bitch." A visit to Willis' place netted the same result, and no answer at all was forthcoming from Pete's house. Pete and his family had left at first light for St. Simon's island. Still worrying over his finger, Dylan allowed himself a rueful smile. At least he knew that Pete was suffering as well. Pete hated family trips.

When Dylan awoke the next morning, his body felt hideously cold, stiff. His joints protested his movements and his neck felt like he'd spent the night using a block of ice for a pillow.

But the worse than the way he felt physically was the way he felt mentally. Nightmares, dreams about what he and the others had done at the cemetery. Old man Willingham had been bad enough, but poor Amy Thornton, not even a week dead...

He pushed the thought out of his mind. Some things were best not contemplated. Images from the dreams still echoed through him, visions of the dead rising from their broken graves and pointing accusing fingers. The cemetery's inhabitants seemed determined that he should get no true rest. Maybe that was fair, he had disturbed theirs without hesitation. Payback.

Dylan came downstairs to find Mary just closing the front door. Out of the window next to the door, Dylan saw a flash of light blue shirt and dark blue pants. Taking a closer look, he could see the sheriff's cruiser sitting at the curb in front of the house. All the chills he felt physically doubled, multiplied again and again, as he thought about the graveyard. Mary was staring at him, face hard, stone-like. "You sick sonuvabitch." "What're you talking about?" Even as he spoke he realized he was trying too hard to sound innocent. "Who are you to call me names?"

Mary looked at him for a second more, her face turned a little paler, almost a sure sign in the Ellison household that Mary was "At it again." Mary looked at the ground. "You know what I'm talking about. I know what you did, you and your good buddies."

Mary's eyes were brimming with unshed tears. "I had a dream last night. One of my..." Dylan watched her throat work, watched the tears start falling. Despite the desire to comfort his sister, Dylan couldn't make himself move. "One of my special dreams, the ones that come true."

Dylan's mind swam, maybe this little sickness in his body was worse than he thought, maybe he'd caught something when he... He shunted the thought away again. Maybe he'd caught something at the graveyard. "What did you see?"

Mary almost seemed to smile. She didn't answer him, she just shook her head, messy hair falling everywhere, followed seconds later by more tears. She wrapped her arms around herself to fight away the cold.

Panic clutched hard at Dylan's testicles. "What the fuck did you see Mary?!?" Mary tossed her hair back, flipped the bangs out of her eyes in a gesture just like the one he had used two nights ago. Idly he wondered which of them had started that little flip of the bangs.

Mary's eyes were rimed with red, the gray-blue of the iris more pronounced than usual. Her face was ugly with grief. "Momma and Daddy aren't coming back. Their plane's gonna crash."

Warring emotions fired through Dylan's brain: Grief for his parents, relief that it wasn't him. The battle was not yet finished when Mary continued her cold, angry statement.

"I'm gonna bury them at the Cemetery right over there, next to their folks. I'm gonna bury them and I'm gonna pray that they have peace." Dylan reached for his sister, reached out at last to comfort her. She slapped his hand away, furious. "Don't you touch me!" Her voice was shrill, panicky. "Don't you ever touch me again!"

Mary turned, still in her nightgown, and bolted out the front door. Dylan felt the need to cry himself, but no tears would come. The gravity of what Mary had said finally reached to the center of his being, Dylan fell to the ground and curled himself into a fetal position. For the first time, he noticed that the purple color in his finger had spread to the rest of his hand. He'd slept on his hand last night; that must have been what made it worse.

Dylan turned his hand over, the palm was still pale, almost bloodless. Didn't matter. Mom. Dad. He hadn't even spoken to them since they went on their second honeymoon. Too busy with his friends. They were due back today, in a few hours.

When the phone started ringing, Dylan pulled himself into a even tighter fetal position. That would be the call. "Hello, is this Mary or Dylan Ellison?" Yes, this is Dylan Ellison. "Mister Ellison... I'm afraid we have bad news... It's your parents, there was a plane crash. We're very sorry about this, it's so tragic. Of course, we can claim no responsibility until the F.A.A. has made their report, I hope you understand. But then, at least we were there to talk with your parents. Hell, we would have been there in a heartbeat. Such nice folks, Mr. Ellison, hard to believe that they raised a little necrophalic bastard like you."

But I never...

"Oh who the hell do you think you're fooling you sick little bastard! Everyone knows what you and your friends did to poor Amy Thornton! Wouldn't put out in life so you took it in death. Well, You'll get yours you disgusting little fuck! You'll get yours in SPADES!!!"

Dylan awoke with a start, tried to open his eyes and found that he could not. His bowels felt bloated with gas, his body was sore, stiff, and felt damn near frozen. He knew by the texture of the shag carpet that he was still on the floor. Behind him, he heard Mary talking on the phone. The she hung up, then she started to cry again. Her voice sounded jagged, filled with broken glass.

Dylan tried to move, but nothing happened. He tried concentrating on just moving his finger and still nothing. In a near frenzy, he did his all out best to thrash around, push himself from the ground and get his hands under him. Still nothing.

Sometime later, he heard voices, but they made no sense. Talking about the remains, the body, the deceased. Then he felt himself rolled over, felt his joints forced into new positions. Despite his protests, his screams, he heard no sound from himself save for a few minor snapping sounds accompanied by white-hot flashes of pain.

After that it only took a few seconds to realized just which body they were talking about.

Mary visited the First Baptist Cemetery regularly, always placing flowers at the headstones of both of her parents. She missed them terribly. Mary talked to them of many things: how her life was progressing, her engagement to Karl Golden, how she was doing in college.

She never talked to them of Dylan, or his friends, the others that had died the same way. Maybe because it was painful, maybe because she felt they already knew. The closest she ever came to discussing them was to let her parents know that she had donated a portion of her inheritance to the renovation of the cemetery, and to the stone fence that now surrounded the premises.

She never visited Dylan's gravesite. Nor the graves of any of the other members of his group that had been involved in the desecration. There was no malice in this action, simply self-preservation.

Mary's special abilities had almost completely faded since the day after she dreamt of her parents' death. With the exception of a few minor bouts of Deja Vu she almost never had her flashes of insight, and really, who hasn't felt the strange feeling that they've made a certain step before, or said a particular sentence at least once previously? For the most part the dead left her alone, she was no longer haunted by voices in the dead of night.

Except for Dylan and his friends. Whenever she got too close to their burial sites, she could hear their shrieks of pain. She'd braved the sounds only once, only to let Dylan know that she understood what he was going through. That was enough for her, the madness in his silent screams was just too much to deal with.

In a way she was at last at peace, at last freed from the screams of so many souls. Save for the screams of a few. Her only regrets were that her brother suffered so much, and that she could not escape from his screams as well.

Mary had almost told him what he was going to suffer. But she had wanted to give him some sort of hope. She wondered more than once if he would have been better off with cremation. But Mike Cobb had been cremated, and really, his screams were no less severe.

Mary was glad that her gifts were gone, she worried that perhaps her blessing was her brother's curse, but she was glad just the same. Glad also that she had buried her brother in the new cemetery, the one with the little plaques in the grass. She was certain her parents would understand.

 

Copyright 1999, James A. Moore. All rights reserved. Back to Original Fiction Back to Horrors Main Page   Special Thanks to the Camden County, New Jersey Cemetery for the beautiful Statuary and a visit I'll never forget - Wissago.