Quarter to Midnight: Fifteen Horror Short Stories Page 6

  I left before the men reached a consensus, but from what I gathered in the following days, the third faction eventually won. A half dozen men armed with guns scoured the cemetery, paying special attention to the crypt where Jack said he’d lost Charlie. They didn’t find so much as a hair from the boy’s head.

  Jack’s mother was beside herself. She begged them to search the woods—and they did for the remaining daylight hours that day and for two days following. The woods were wild, remember. It was slow progress with just six men and Jack’s mother.

  On the third day, the found Charlie’s body washed up on the shore of the river, quite a distance from town. He wasn’t much recognisable, except for his shoes, which his mother remembered buying. They gave him a respectful burial—the carpenter had to make a special casket because the boy was so small—and agreed that it had most probably been an accidental drowning.

  Jack, meanwhile, stuck to his story with the stubbornness of a mule. No, they’d gone nowhere near the river, he would say. No, Charlie didn’t wander into the woods on his own. They’d gone to the graveyard, and a vampire had caught him.

  Maybe things would have come out differently if people had believed—or at least pretended to believe—Jack. He was adamant and desperate for someone to take him seriously—and the town ridiculed him for it. Some of the other children found a cloak with a high collar and took turns jumping out from around corners wearing the cape and paper fangs. This went on for about a week before Jack lost it and attacked one of the children. Broke a nose and some ribs. My mother told me not to spend any time around him after that, so I really only saw him from a distance.

  From what I understand, Jack’s mother was patient and kind towards him, but she also believed her son had drowned in the stream. Over several months, Jack became less and less adamant about his story and started using phrases such as “I thought” and “it seemed like”. He stopped exploring and became shy and withdrawn. I sometimes bumped into him at the grocers, but he never spoke to me.

  By the time I was nineteen, I had almost completely forgotten about the entire ordeal. I was engaged to my husband—rest his soul—and eagerly looking forward my wedding the following month when Jack Suffle approached me.

  Since Charlie’s death, the family had withdrawn from town social life. The mother, Mrs Suffle, still ran her late husband’s merchant business, but mostly by correspondence. I sometimes saw Jack in town, but he didn’t seem to have friends. I’d just finished selling some of our hens’ eggs to the grocer when I felt a tap on the shoulder.

  “Can we have a word?” Jack asked.

  I saw him so infrequently that it took me a second to remember his name. “Of course,” I said, then followed him out of the store and to a quiet alley.

  Watching his feet, he wouldn’t meet my eye. He kept opening and closing his mouth, and I was more than a little frustrated by the time he actually spoke.

  “You remember the day Charlie died?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, scrambling to recall the details. He’d drowned, hadn’t he?

  “Do you remember talking with me behind the pub?” Jack chanced a glance at my face.

  It was coming back to me quickly. “Oh, yes, you were upset because they wouldn’t believe you.”

  “That’s what I want to know. What did I tell them? What didn’t they believe?”

  I was becoming uncomfortable, but I answered him regardless. “You said a vampire took Charlie.”

  He let his breath out in a great whoosh, as though he’d been holding it for hours. “Good. Good. That’s what I remember. I just… good.”

  I was starting to regret agreeing to talk to him, but I was too fascinated to stop myself from asking, “Didn’t you remember?”

  He said, “Ha!” But it wasn’t a proper laugh, more of an imitation of emotion. “I thought I did, but mother says… she thinks I made it up later… I just… wanted to make sure I wasn’t crazy. This has been hanging over me for so long. I think I need to confront it before I can move on, you know?”

  I didn’t really know. Still, I nodded to keep him happy. Jack gave me a tight smile then abruptly walked away. That was the last time I saw him.

  His mother says he came home, took the gun off the wall, and left again. She didn’t think anything of it, as he sometimes went out hunting when he’d finished his chores. A few of the farmers say they saw him walking to the edge of the town by the road that led to the cemetery. He never came home.

  Just as they had when Charlie went missing, the townspeople searched the woods for several days. They didn’t find his body, though. After a few weeks, they held a discreet funeral for him. I attended, but not many other people did.

  The popular opinion is that Jack killed himself. Charlie, his baby brother, had died while under his care, and the grief and guilt had grown stronger and stronger until he was unable to escape it. His mother believed he’d taken his own life, too. He’d brought up Charlie’s death that morning, she said, during breakfast.

  Everyone agreed it was a tragedy. Some thought the family was cursed with premature death. Mrs Suffle didn’t live more than a year after losing Jack. She died in her sleep. She’d had a hard life. Her husband and her two children had passed in their prime, and money can’t replace family.

  Well, I have a slightly different theory about what happened to Jack. I think Jack was telling the truth about the vampire. I agree that the grief of Charlie’s death had been eating at him, but instead of choosing to end his life, he confronted his monster… and lost. They searched the woods, but no one thought to search the cemetery. I often wonder if they might have found his body in that big old crypt.

  There’s one particular reason I’m inclined to think that. No one else paid much heed to it, but that river they found Charlie in–well, it runs right past the north border of the cemetery. Yes, I think Charlie may have breathed his last in that crypt, then the monster dragged him to the river when it was done.

  Part 2

  That was a very, very different story to what I’d been expecting to hear from Julie. I frowned at her, trying to decide if she actually believed it. She was sitting back in her chair, sipping at her tea, watching me, clearly pleased with the effect of her tale.

  “And no one searched the tomb after he went missing?” I asked.

  “Nope. No one seemed to think of it. The search of the woods was mainly a token gesture for his mother, really. He wasn’t a precocious child anymore; he was a depressed, sullen young adult who had gone into the forest with a gun. No one had much hope of finding him alive, so they had a quiet funeral and called it a day.”

  I thanked Julie, finished my tea, and left her trailer. It was past midday, so I stopped in at the smallest of our town’s three cafes and chewed my way through a greasy burger. I’d seen the Suffle name on a few plaques around town and assumed their family had either moved away or hadn’t had any children. Knowing the tragedy Mrs Suffle had gone through, I thought I would be less likely to overlook their monuments in the future.

  Every town has tales about mythical beasts lurking just out of sight, for men to spread over a pint of beer or for children to whisper to each other during recess. I supposed the vampire was one of ours.

  Still, the story niggled at me. Julie had made it sound as though Jack were approaching insanity on the day he disappeared, and the insanity had centred on the belief that a vampire had taken his brother. I didn’t think it too far-fetched that he’d walked to the crypt, found it empty, then been overcome by depression and taken his life. It bothered me that no one had searched there.

  I finished my lunch and began the drive home. It was a Saturday, and I didn’t have anything to do except a bit of neglected housecleaning. I toyed with the idea of going to see a movie or driving to the larger library in the next town. While I was chewing over my limited options, a third, more exciting possibility snuck into my mind: Why don’t I visit Jack Suffle’s crypt?

  I almost laughed at myself then though
t, why not?

  More than forty years had passed since the events in Julie’s story had taken place. Even if there was a body to find there—and that was a very big if—it was a skeleton. Best case, I would have an exciting afternoon, solve a long-standing town mystery, and give Julie a new tale to tell. Worst case, I would find an empty tomb.

  I turned my car towards the cemetery.

  The graveyard had grown from what must have been a few dozen plots during Julie’s childhood to a few hundred. A stone wall and a dense band of trees divided the old section from the new. I navigated my car down the narrow lane to the cemetery, admiring the dense pines that lined the road. Surrounded by mostly untouched natural woods, the graveyard was a few minutes’ drive from the outskirts of town. It was shady under the huge trees, and the temperature felt several degrees cooler.

  I parked off the road, beside the wall that surrounded the new section of the graveyard. Lichen and moss covered the wall, but it was still stable. The caretaker left the gate open during the day, so I let myself in.

  A couple of the modern graves had wilting bouquets laid carefully under the headstone, and the caretaker kept them tidy and weed-free. I didn’t have any family or friends buried there, so I made my way through the graves at a quick pace.

  The tree divider grew unchecked at the back of the cemetery, hiding the old section of the graveyard. I pushed through the shrubs and found myself facing another wall. This one was very different to the sturdy, lightly aged wall facing the road; it was taller than my head and must have been centuries old. Sections had crumbled, showing slate-grey stone under the moss and vines. There was no gate.

  I paced up and down its length then eventually settled on one of the crumbled areas. Using some of the dislodged rocks as footholds, I clambered up its side, gripping vines until I could pull myself onto the top. The moss was soft and slightly slimy under my hands, and would probably stain my pants. I wasn’t wearing my hiking shoes, so took my time letting myself down the other side, aware that if I slipped and broke my ankle, it might take days or weeks to be found. That thought stuck in my head as my feet touched the weedy ground. Could Jack have fallen and broken a leg? He’d probably gotten in the same way I had, and he would have been hampered by his gun. I walked up and down the inside of the wall, looking for clothes or bones that might tell the story of a man’s last miserable days on earth, but I found nothing.

  That was a relief, at least. It would be a horrible way to go.

  The old half of the graveyard hadn’t been touched in decades. Dry weeds grew up to my waist in sections, and almost all of the headstones were collapsed or overgrown. Gothic statue—some of angels, some of humans, and a few that seemed to depict monsters—sprouted from the underbrush.

  Julie had said the graveyard had already been there when the town was settled. I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, but as I wandered amongst the last records of passed souls, I became aware of how strange it was that a town with nearly a hundred graves could have been so thoroughly forgotten.

  I pushed the weeds away from one of the unbroken headstones and tried to make out the worn-down inscription. Elizabeth Claireborne: Beloved mother and wife. May her soul find rest.

  Insects scurried out of the weeds and began climbing up my arms. I flicked them off with a shudder and moved farther into the cemetery.

  I found crypt from Julie’s story near the back. Made entirely out of black stone, it was almost as big as Julie’s caravan, but much less welcoming. Heavily weathered and a haven for weeds and spiderwebs, the doorway loomed out of the gloom like a tribute to gothic masonry. The light penetrated no more than a few paces past the opening.

  I pulled my car keys out of my pocket and pressed the button on the small LED light attached. The light was laughably weak, but it was better than being blind. I walked through the archway and took four steps before the floor disappeared.

  I cried out and stumbled back, managing to catch my balance at the last moment. Shining my light at the floor showed the edge of a step, and I swallowed. What I’d assumed was the entire crypt was merely an entryway.

  The steps were slimy and damp, so I took them slowly and kept my free hand pressed to the wall. My eyes slowly began to adjust as I moved deeper into the tomb and the darkness thickened, and the LED light became more useful. The walls were smooth stone, carved carefully and blemish-free. Whoever had owned this crypt must have been either very wealthy or very important—or both.

  I counted twenty steps before the floor levelled out. I had been expecting a single room, but the steps ended in a hallway that extended to the left and the right. Leaves, dirt, and even a few animal bones littered the foot of the steps, and the musty, stale air pushed against my eardrums as though the pressure had doubled. I peered as far as I could down both pathways, but the light was too weak to see more than a few meters. I chose left.

  The path continued for twenty paces. Like the stairs, the walls were perfectly smooth. The leaves on the ground soon disappeared, leaving stone with a thin coating of dirt. The air was heavy, almost as dense as soup, and it clogged my throat. Before long, the path ended in another intersection.

  I thought I might have stumbled into a subterranean labyrinth, so I chose left again, so I could retrace my steps easily if the path kept splitting. The passageway ended, however, after a dozen steps, in a square room. The room was just a few meters wide. A raised dais took up most of the room; a carved stone coffin sat on top. Intricate runes were spaced around the lid, with words carved in the centre. I approached it carefully and shone my light onto the inscription:

  Eleanor White

  Loving mother, compassionate friend

  Unlucky in marriage

  May her sleep be eternal

  The inscription felt unreasonably gloomy for someone’s last resting place, but, I supposed, maybe her husband hadn’t been liked. He would have been wealthy—possibly the wealthiest man in the town—to afford the below-ground temple. And, historically, the rich didn’t always place well in popularity contests.

  I left the room and followed the pathway straight, down what would have been the right-hand turn from the main passageway. It ended in another room that had a dais, but no coffin. I gave the room a quick search, but there was nothing to see: just smooth stone walls and floor and an empty waist-height dais.

  The subterranean crypt was cold, and I pulled my jacket around myself more snugly as I retraced my steps into the main passageway and past the stairs to the outside. The leaves crunched under my feet for a dozen paces before the floor returned to being empty. I was becoming disoriented and dizzy. The thick air and the identical empty walls and floors were clouding my head and making it hard to think. The farther I walked, the more aware I became of a stench. The cloistering smell got down my throat and made me want to gag. It was musty, bitter, and dry, and it carried hints of organic decay.

  For a moment, I thought it might be the smell of Jack’s corpse, but he would have turned to bones a long time ago. It was more likely that an animal had gotten into the cemetery and died in a corner of the crypt.

  Just as it had before, the path split. I chose left and soon found myself in a small room identical to the first, where a stone coffin rested atop a dais. I leaned over the coffin’s lid, careful not to disturb the layer of dust, and read the inscription.

  Christopher White

  Taken in his Infancy

  His mother loved him

  I turned, casting my light around the room in case I’d missed something, but it was completely empty except for the coffin and a dead beetle in one corner. The smell was only slightly better than it had been in the passageway, which meant its source had to be in the remaining unexplored room.

  I returned to the passageway and continued on straight. In the final hallway, I found the first signs of imperfection in the walls. If everything else hadn’t been so eerily smooth, I would have missed it, but the hollow caught my eye as soon as the LED’s light fell over it. The small
indent was the width of my finger, and something shiny and silver was inside…

  A bullet. So, Jack was here after all… but which trip did this lodged round belong to? When Jack came with Charlie, had he accidentally shot his brother after all? Or had the second visit been the last expedition of his life?

  I could see the entrance to the final room ahead. The smell was nearly overpowering, but I sucked in a breath and stepped through the doorway. It was simultaneously very similar and very different to the previous rooms. It was the same size and made of the same stone, but the walls were pocked with nearly a dozen holes. What was he firing at?

  The coffin on the dais was not intact. The stone lid lay on the floor, cracked in three places. Dust had gathered over the toppled lid; the coffin must have been opened for a long time. I couldn’t see inside.

  I’d come to the old graveyard with the specific goal of finding a skeleton, but faced with the possibility of actually seeing one, all I could think of was leaving the tomb and running to my car without looking back.

  Don’t be a coward. It’s just bones.

  I approached the lip of the stone box, my heart hammering and the hairs over my arms standing on end. Images flashed through my mind: a twisted corpse, its clothes in rags, scraps of dried skin still stuck to the bleached-white bone. I squeezed my eyes half closed as I peeked over the edge, then I let my breath out with a whoosh. The coffin was empty.