Music Of Life

Grim Grinning Ghosts

A song that reminds you of a holiday: Grim Grinning Ghosts by Buddy Baker and X. Atencio.

When the crypt doors creak and the tombstones quake
Spooks come out for a swingin' wake

"Blake, remind me again why you dragged me out of bed to come visit the cemetery with you." Chase, Blake's older brother, asks while rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The three of us are standing on one of the many paths in the town cemetery, just down the street from our houses. The three of us are next-door neighbors and have always been close.

"Derek is the one that wanted me to come out here with him. I wasn't about to go to a haunted cemetery at night without dragging you along with me." Blake pans his flashlight around us before landing the beam on the rocky path in front of us.

"The cemetery's not haunted. You have just watched too many horror movies. How can you even stand those things, they freak me out!" I say, shuddering at the memory of the last horror movie Blake forced me to watch. I had nightmares for a week about a zombie apocalypse.

"I like what I like, and I don't like what I don't like."

"Can we just cut to the chase of why you dragged us here Derek." Chase, the ever-impatient one demands.

"Would you believe me if I told you I have no good reason? I just wanted to visit my mom's grave and didn't want to do it alone." I lead the way to my mother's grave.

"Couldn't we do this during the day? You know, when the ghosts won't be out." Blake asks, his face becoming one of sheer terror the further we walk into the cemetery.

"Ghosts aren't real Blake!"

"They are too!" Chase interjects.

"Have you ever seen one?"

"Well no, but you don't have to see something to believe in it." Blake and I continue to bicker back and forth about the realism of ghosts until we reach my mother's grave, neither of our opinions changing.

I look around at the surrounding graves for flowers to put on my mother's grave. I spot some snapdragons, my mom's favorite, on the grave of Landon Bennet. He was a sophomore at my school and was one of the two students killed in a car crash Blake and I were involved in last year. Blake and I were on our way home from a party, drunk as can be. I was the driver, thinking I would be able to function correctly. I t-boned the car Travis Moore was driving as they were on their way home from a big school soccer game. Neither of them were players on the team, but they were big supporters of all the school teams. In the end, Blake received a broken arm and concussion. I had broken ribs, a black eye, and a gash across my forehead that turned into a sick scar. Travis Moore and Landon Bennet weren't quite so lucky. Landon, who had been sitting shotgun in the car, received the most damage of everyone and died on the spot. Travis died on the way to the hospital. I haven't thought about Landon or Travis in a long while. They were nobodies in school, whereas Blake and I were among the popular students. We were that is until we killed those two, now we're pretty disliked by everyone. I didn't get any condolences from the people I used to call friends after my mom passed just two months back. No one cares about the kid who murdered two kids.

Chase, he's the goody-two-shoes of the bunch. He doesn't party, doesn't drink, and hasn't experimented with any drugs. He's one smart cookie, straight A's and all of that. I always wondered why he hangs out with Blake, me, and a few other outcasts we've befriended. I finally asked him one day and he said he wants to show the bunch of us what living life actually looks like. I told him he was living life the wrong way, that living life involves having fun. He blew me off and we both pretended like that conversation never happened.