Phantoms and Fangs

One

The late afternoon sun was growing to be Reyna's greatest enemy. She was biking from Her crumbling apartment building to the Crown Hill Cemetery, a nearly 2 hour long trip. Sweat dripped down her back, her moms scolding voice playing on repeat in her head.

"Reyna, if you just finished your degree and a good paying job, you could afford to fix your car. But no, you had to drop out and become a ghost hunter." The late September heat was sweltering, every turn of the pedals had Reyna considering turning around. But giving up would force her to pick up more shifts making coffee and overly sweet drinks for kids, whose parents couldn't care less about their caffeine intake.

Tonight could be the big break she needed, boosting her streaming channel to the point where making overpriced coffee would be a thing of the past. Reyna would finally be able to focus on proving that supernatural phenomena actually existed.

She always had a fascination with the macabre, sneaking downstairs after her parents sent her to bed, just to catch a glimpse of the latest horror movie her brother Drew was watching, and reading the horror novels he handed off to Reyna as soon as he finished them. Days of slasher movie marathons interrupted by attempts to recreate the practical effects on screen were now a sorely missed thing of the past. So was Drew.

Now Reyna spent too much of her free time hunting down the monsters she used to wish were just some twisted idea from a delusional stranger's head, and while Reyna wanted to believe in the supernatural everytime she explored a new supposedly haunted or cursed location that belief dwindled piece by piece. But tonight would be different, she needed it to be.

Biking to the Crown Hill Cemetery was giving Reyna too much time to think about the boy she met freshman year, he was the only reason she decided to explore the defunct burial site.

Conner McCormick was a year older than Reyna and the most energetic frat guy she had ever met. Reyna likely never would have even glanced at him if he hadn't sat next to her the first day of her chemistry lab, effectively sentencing her to be his lab partner. He was nice, but terrible at chemistry, failing the class two times in a row. More times than not Reyna spent the lab period completing the experiments by herself while Conner goofed off and helped clean the glassware.

After the semester was over she never thought about him again. That was until the coffee shop owner decided getting a tv mounted on the wall would help draw in business. The local news channels consistently struggled to find an interesting story and usually just played some sort of political propaganda piece. The flashing breaking news banner was the first intriguing event of the morning, and the story was even more captivating.

The news anchor's cheery smile fell to a serious expression, Reyna had to do a double take at the next image that popped up on the screen. Sandy blond hair, angular features, and those muddy green eyes were too familiar. It was Conner, he was missing. The anchor's tone was too upbeat for the words that came out her mouth.

"Conner McCormick, a twenty one year old senior at Pinecrest University, has recently gone missing. The young man was reported missing two days ago by his roommates. We've been told he was going out of town towards the Crown Hill Cemetery the day he went missing. Any information that could aid the Pinecrest police department in locating Conner would be greatly appreciated."

Conner going missing was more than likely a misunderstanding. Reyna was willing to bet he would turn up at some point in the next week with a crazy story about drinking too much and getting roped into some sort of bizarre scheme.

Reyna's ancient laptop that crashed more often than it worked displayed the Wikipedia page of the Crown Hill Cemetery. Established 1792, and later condemned in 1926 after the chapel that once stood there burned down. The community that surrounded it fell into superstition, deciding the area must have been cursed.

Reyna was puzzled over how she had never heard of the graveyard before. A supposedly cursed cemetery with a burned down church. It was a ghost hunter's wet dream. Conner going missing was just icing on the cake.

The sweat that dripped off Reyna on the ride over was cooling on her skin, the sun seemed to be setting faster almost as if it was running away from the hill Reyna was perched at the top of. The lichgate must have been imposing once, elegantly twisted metal covered in rust and bird poop hardly gave the sense of elegance and refinement the original caretakers were going for.

Reyna pulled a bike lock out of her backpack, after her first bike got stolen two years ago Reyna didn't want to take any chances. The black lanyard holding the lock's key was a small but comforting weight against her chest, escape was just a single turn of the key, if everything went to hell.

The lichgate creaked as she pushed it open, moving decades of dead crunching leaves along with it. Walking through it sent a shiver down Reyna's spine, something felt off about this place. She toyed with the matching spiked snake bite piercings on her bottom lip, a bad habit that always snuck up whenever she was anxious. Reyna pushed her hair out of her face and shook the feeling off. No one liked being in a 'haunted' graveyard by themselves, but if enough people watched the stream tonight she would never feel alone again.