Tales from the Yeller House: A Horror Collection

Ménage à Trois

Typical evening. I stretch, open my eyes, get comfier and seriously consider staying where I'm at. Tell myself, I'll get up, just five more minutes, and close my eyes again.

Repeat in five.

Did I forget to mention the part where I cough up grave dirt? 'Cause I don't work night shift.

I'm dead.

I didn't ask to die; what twenty year old on the verge of her twenty-first birthday would? And I sure as Hell didn't ask to be brought back, but here we are.

I claw my way to the surface. It gets easier every time I do it. I just wish I could keep the dirt out of my hair and off my face. I chuckle. It sounds like something I'd said to Callum countless times before. Not in my hair and not on my face.

Too bad Callum was busy these days. Busy on top of Amelia, my former BFF, that is. I haven't even been gone two months and he's fucking her like I never existed. Or maybe it was going on before I died. Who knows? I'm not bitter about it. They'll get their karma, I'm sure of it.

I break through the layer of topsoil and breathe in the crisp Fall air. I don't technically have to breathe; my lungs do not need air and there is no blood in my body for my heart to pump. The leaves swirl around me, dancing under the light of the half moon. A scent wafts past me, metallic and delicious. I lick my lips. Not tonight, I tell myself. Tonight I'm on a mission.

I pull myself out of my grave and sit on the grass next to it. The dew soaks through my leggings, and I stand, brushing the loose dirt from them. (Side note: let someone know what you want to be buried in when you die. My family stuck me in a pink tulle skirt and white shirt, something more suitable for a twelve-year-old's dance recital than a grown woman's funeral and totally not practical for someone living the undead life; I was far more comfortable in my Fleetwood Mac tee and black leggings, snagged from my room on my first outing.) The moon gives off enough light for me to read my headstone. Eden Barrow Born August 13, 1997 Died August 7, 2018 Ah, youth! Forever dear, forever kind.

I know the epitaph by heart. Reading it is just habit now, part of the ritual before I walk out of the cemetery. Right down to the symbol scratched onto the fake marble, the symbol that allows me to sleep during the daylight hours and walk among the nocturnal.

I know what you're picturing. Some rundown graveyard, tombstones falling apart, enclosed by a wrought-iron fence with a rusty gate that squeaks in the breeze.

    You couldn't be further from the truth.

    The cemetery is well-kept and relatively new, as in I can remember when the area was just part of the woods near Pinson Street new. There's no wrought-iron fence, and no gate; it's enclosed by hedges with a wide opening for the entrance. All the headstones are clean, the grass is cut regularly, and litter is kept to a minimum. All in all it's not bad, as far as final resting places go.

I slip through the opening between the hedges unnoticed. Pinson Street is still mostly under construction, so the street lights are few and far between. I don't mind the dark, though. One of the perks of being undead is that my vision -along with my other senses- is heightened. I can see just as well as if it were daylight. There's no traffic out this late, which is another perk. Gamewell is a small town and someone is bound to recognize me. News spreads like fire here and the mayor's dead daughter roaming the streets after midnight is a wildfire. I haven't been noticed yet, by anyone that's living to say, anyway.

I take a right at the intersection, turning onto Stepping Stone Lane. A while back our town decided to cobble the streets in an attempt at being quirky. The project ran out of funds before they finished one street, and Stepping Stone Lane was born. It was also the street where I grew up.