Tales from The Campfire

Part 5

                "Dude, don't be a pussy," Ben said, "just put your foot in my hands and I'll lift you over the fence." They had been walking around the iron bars for what seemed hours. Beyond was the cemetery, just as Chad had told them the night before. Nestled upon the hill overgrown with manzanitas, prickled shrubs and sticker bushes. Those spiked little balls were a real nuisance, getting stuck in their shoelaces and socks. And if they made their way into your shoe, or worse yet your pants – they would break the skin and cause an irritating rash. Thankfully, the soil here was far more substantial, but rockier – a welcome difference from the odiferous sludge that surrounded the nearby lake.

Sean adjusted his glasses with a push of his forefinger and shook his head no. "No way, man. There has got to be another way in."

"Yeah don't be stupid, Ben. We all go in together or we don't go in at all." Johnathon picked a stick up from the leaf-littered ground and rapped it against the weathered stone walls. They were thick, grayish and about three feet high, arching up every ten feet or so to a square pillar. Half-black and half rusted wrought-iron fencing raised up from the wall. Each was tipped with a sharp and long pyramidal point. It ran the course of the barricade like tiny blackened teeth stained with dried blood. The sound of the stick cracking against stone interrupted the natural solitude as it echoed within the woods.

"But I hadn't thought of that in years."

"What was that?" Ben asked. The voice had come from Sean's mouth, it definitely had – he saw it himself. Lips moved, sound came out – but the voice. The voice... It wasn't his. Feminine, and... The word sprouted in his mind like an unwanted weed, coarse and uncomforting – ELDERLY.

"What was what?"

Ben stopped walking and looked Sean in the eyes. "Why did you say that?" The hair on Ben's arms stood up when he did. Maybe it was the gust of wind that elected to swim through the trees that made the hissing noise, or the sudden drop in temperature that accompanied it. But whatever it was that caused Ben to become enveloped in a scrim of fear when he looked in Sean's eyes made Ben to want to run home immediately. Something wasn't right.

Their shadows faded off as a cloud spread over the sun. "I didn't say anything," Sean replied.

"Yeah you did," Jon said, "you said something but in a weird voice."

"No, I did not."

"Stop fuckin' around, dude – we both heard you."

Sean giggled small and wiped his hand beneath his nose. "You guys are funny."

Jon shook his head, letting it go. "C'mon guys let's just keep circling around. We're bound to run into the front gate sooner or later." It made sense – and eventually, they had to run into the entrance. Above, clouds began to group. They gathered and began to merge together – piecing together a fabric of memories that stitched something that Ben hadn't thought of in a long time.

People under the stones.

ELDERLY.

Ben was six years old when he came home from school that day. The school was celebrating Veteran's Day, and enlisted a native American Indian as a guest speaker. The class sat around him on the speckled vinyl tiles in a circle as he began. It was like a ceremony, Ben would realize years later. His voice was deep, and soothing – but gritty as well. He told them stories that used talking animals as characters. As he told them the tales he would beat on a strange drum. A ring of wood with a dried animal skin pulled tightly over it. He would bounce the rabbit-tail mallet over it in a strange rhythm as he spoke. Mimicking animal voices punctuated with growls, snarls, yelps and sometimes the screeching, rattling and cawing of birds.