Story Time

Graveyard Dreams

On a random, rather uneventful day, a few of my friends and I decided it would be a fun idea to spend the night in a haunted cemetery in my town. We decided we would meet at Town Square before sunset and ride our bikes there together. At around seven o'clock, just as the sun was beginning to make its descent into the horizon, we arrived.

Even in the day, the graveyard looked cold and gloomy. The cracking cement headstones were covered by moss and ivy, and the grass around the graves grew tall and wild- a result of it not being managed in decades. The graveyard was owned in the '50s by the Peters family, a family made up of Mr. and Mrs. Charles and Evelyn Peters and their three children- James, a fifteen-year-old troublemaker, Emily, a sprite six-year-old, and Carson, a quite shy four-year-old. They were extremely well-known in the town; some would even say famous. Every Sunday they sat in the first pew in church, they donated to charities regularly and volunteered at the local homeless shelter, and when the Evans family lost their house to a gruesome fire, the Peters hosted a huge fundraiser and raised enough money to buy them a new one. Model citizens is what anyone would have described them as. Then, one day, they just disappeared. Their car was still in their garage and everything in their home seemed to be in order, according to the police; but they were gone, without a trace. There were rumors, though, that they were murdered in their home and buried in an occupied grave. Many conspiracy theories came about, but none of them ever seemed to pan out. Now, people say that they haunt the cemetery along with the other spirits.

"Dude, have you ever looked at the dates to see if they died on the same day as your birthday?" I asked my friend Tyler as I pointed to one of the graves. We always asked each other random things like that- mildly deep questions brushed off as jokes.

"What?" He said, a sour look on his face. "Who does that?"

I shrugged in response. Anytime I went to a graveyard I checked all the dates I could to see if anyone died on my birthday. I don't know why, but there was something about knowing that the day I celebrate my birth is the day someone else mourns the loss of one of their loved ones that made the world seem balanced. It was weird, but it became a ritual of sorts for me.

"Wanna know what I do when I come to cemeteries?" Jasper, my other friend, asked. I didn't even get out a "what?" before he started running around and stomping on graves.

"Heck yeah!" Tyler joined in. He started kicking the headstones, chunks of rocks flew into the grass next to him.

"Guys, have some respect for the dead. Come on, man." I reasoned.

"Have some respect for the dead people," Jasper mocked me, his voice high pitched and his face deformed.

"Seriously, man. You never know the type of power spirits could have."

"Man, I don't believe all of that crap. They're dead and gone. I'm not hurting anyone." He said.

I sighed, shaking my head in disapproval. Jasper was the type of person who was fun to hang out with most of the time, but sometimes he could get annoying. He was the youngest and definitely the most immature of the three of us. Tyler was the oldest but he was no better; he pretty much just enabled all of Jasper's foolishness, which made it even worse for me.

"Let's just set up everything before the sun goes down." I said.

We set up our sleeping bags in front of a tall stone statue of a naked woman, her private parts covered by a sheet. I've always wondered how sculptors could make something as hard as stone look so delicate, like a real piece of fabric. It baffled me.

"Wanna tell scary stories?" Jasper asked.

"Sure," I replied.

The three of us ate ham and cheese sandwiches in the soft glow of the small lamp I brought from home as we told our stories- tales of ghouls, boogie men, and wild axe murderers. Owls hooted quietly in the distance as crickets chirped around us. We shivered as a thick fog began to settle around us.

Two hours later, we decided it was probably a good time to try and get some sleep. Even in the cold, I fell asleep quickly.

I opened my eyes, and I was in a dark hallway. Ahead of me, there was a faint glow of light, bright orange and alive, like a campfire. I walked toward it and into a large, featureless room. In the center stood a seven-foot tall goddess made of stone. It was the same statue that I had fallen asleep at the foot of.

"Why have you come here?" A woman's voice asked. It was loud and powerful, but gentle and feminine at the same time.

"What do you mean? Where am I?" I asked, my voice shaking with fear.

"Child, answer the question. Why did you come to this cemetery tonight?" She asked, her voice more menacing than before.

"I'm just h-here with my f-friends," I stuttered. "We wanted to s-stay somewhere haunted."

"Foolish," she spat. "You all come here and disrespect the spirits of the rested and expect no consequence. You mock the souls of your predecessors with no remorse, and for that, you will pay."

"Please! No!" I pleaded. "I tried to get them so stop, but they wouldn't listen!"

"Hmm," she thought. "I do see the purity in your heart. You don't see things the way everyone else does. For this reason, and this reason alone, I will let you live. But never return."

"Thank you," I said, bowing at her feet. I didn't know that you could cry in dreams, but right then I found out.

"Now, leave this place at once!" Her voice boomed and echoed.

I woke up in a cold sweat, my shirt soaked and sticking to my chest. The sun was coming up in the distance, and I laughed at the crazy dream I had just had. Then, I looked around and noticed something. I was completely alone. Tyler and Jasper had abandoned me. Their sleeping bags were still laying next to me, so I knew they couldn't have been far. I thought they probably went to use the bathroom. I called out their names; no response. I called both of their phones, and they went straight to voicemail. After about fifteen minutes I decided they couldn't have been using the bathroom all this time, so I called their parents to ask if they were home yet. They said that they hadn't seen them since they left the night before.

Hours went by, then days, then months. Search parties spent weeks searching for them, to no avail. News stations from all over the country came to cover the story, asking people to be on the lookout. There were no calls, no letters or e-mails from Jasper nor Tyler. Nothing.

I never saw them again.