Burn My Paranoia One Last Time

2. Welcome to the Graveyard

"Hurry up, slowpoke! The Witching Hour waits for no one, you know," Amber Wright glanced back at her curvier friend, Carmen Fuentes as they trudged up the steep moonlit hill.

"Ugh give me a break! I don't swim laps every day like a demented goldfish I would know, Amber," Carmen panted before holding onto her knees. "Can we take a break? My calves are killing me."

Shelby Thatcher, who finally managed to catch up with Amber, snickered. "She got ya there, Amb!"

Amber rolled her eyes and stopped to adjust the bobby pins keeping her short, wavy honey blonde hair away from her face. "Fine, we can take a break. But only a short one! Last time we came late because someone decided she wanted to fool around with that hunky senior from English Lit."

"Oh, but he was so into me!" Shelby swooned. "And you saw what a hottie he was, right? You all saw!"

"He was pretty hot," Carmen giggled.

Amber reached into her hoodie's pocket and ran her hands over the surface of the warm EMF meter just to make sure it was still there. "Yeah, well, looks are all he's got. 'Cause a brain he has not," she scoffed.

"Geez, take a chill pill Amb," Shelby raised an eyebrow and shook her head. Casting an eerie shine on her sharp porcelain toned cheekbones with the flashlight under her chin, she smirked. "What are you, a zombie?"

Sneaking behind a shivering Carmen, Shelby took her by the shoulders and whispered dramatically, "Maybe she only wants us here early so she can devour our brains! No one will hear our screams in this dreadful hour, let alone in this cold and mysterious graveyard!"

"Oh!" Carmen vigorously swabbed her friend away like a pesky little fly. "Stop it with your horrible stories, Shelby! You know I can't stand the dark as it is!"

Shelby guffawed loudly, her high pitched laughter echoing across the misty graveyard.

Amber rolled her dismissive amber eyes and continued up the hill. "Come on guys, or we'll miss it!"

Shelby and Carmen followed close behind, Carmen nervously securing her arm around Shelby's bare arm and gripping a closed camcorder in the other.

"Why do we have to rush all the time?" Shelby whined as they trudged up the gradually steepening hill.

Amber walked around a lonely grave with dead flowers to avoid disturbing it. "You know perfectly well. The witching hour is between 2 and 4 a.m., when the veil between life and death is thinnest. Only then can the beings of the spiritual realm cross over to the mortal realm. If my calculations are correct, then we only have a little less than half an hour to summon the ghost of Willowburg High."

Carmen's teeth chattered as she gripped harder onto Shelby's arm. "D-do we really really have to? I mean, maybe we should just let her rest."

"Aw come on Carm!" Shelby clasped her hand over her frightened friend's hand to give her comfort. "It's too late to back out now, anyway!"

"Seriously. Do you have any idea how famous this would make us?" Amber's eyes lit up as the distance between them and the gazebo at the top of the hill closed. "I can already see the headlines for tomorrow's newspaper: 'School Spirit: Three Young Paranormal Researchers Communicate with the Tragedy of Willowburg High."

"Look, I just don't think we should be messing with this sort of stuff--" Carmen stammered as she forced herself to squint away visions of shadows lurking behind the dark trees.

"Stop being such a baby! You know you want to see a ghost just as bad as we do," Shelby reminded her.

"I— I mean I guess," Carmen stammered. In her head, she knew she had no choice. It was either go through with this plausible paranormal investigation or encounter god knows what on her way back home alone in the darkness. She took a deep breath, the warmth from her lips forming a visible cloud in the chilling air. "Let's get this over with."