No one ever came out to this cemetery, as stories replaced the deceased, so too did the emptiness replace the visitors. It was just outside of town off and across the old covered bridge, condemned sometime after a flood. The abandoned dirt road leading out passing the ghosts of forgotten houses and barns, swallowed in a time they hardly knew. The gates of the cemetery, so covered now in vines it was hard to make out from the crumbling stone fence leering over the teens, casting shadows as the gloomy sun set. Clearing away layers of vines yielded an ancient and rusted lock, long ago opened by it's age. The gate itself was much harder to push open, all four of them only yielding a foot to press through, creaking and groaning on it's hinges. Large trees scattered ruined stones, while stagnant ponds submerged others. It was more a forbidden forest than a memorial.
For a while the teens were content sitting by the collapsed fountain at the entrance, all too timid to venture further into it's forsaken confines; all poking fun at each other for not taking a dare. The cool mystique of smoking vanished as a crow cawed. Yet it was enough to give James just enough adrenaline pumping to challenge his sister, "I dare you to go to that monument over there."
"Psh, no way in hell." Kerri spat back, flicking ash from her cigarette.
"Ha! Then I'll tell mom it was you who scratched up the car." He returned.
"You wouldn't dare. Mom would kill us both." She scrambled.
"Yeah, but you'd be the one stuck paying for it." His grin widened.
"Ooooooh! Snap!" Jeered Marcus.
Kerri smarted, "Fine, but what do I get for doing it?"
"My love and admiration?"
"Ah, hell no. You're buying me lunch for a week."
He relented. She stomped out the bud, tossed her bag to Ana and ran the twenty yards to the obelisk. Nearly tripping as the collapsed, yet malicious, headstones peaking out just as she was about to step where they laid in wait. Slightly out of breath, she turned around triumphant, fist clenched in the air. The others picking up on her bravado made their way towards her through the minefield of forgotten memories.
"I knew you had it in ya sis!" James said with a slight punch to her arm.
The obelisk made with a dark green and black marble, Each side had a different etched symbol; an open book, a staff with crossed snakes, a badge, and an ink bottle and quill, but repeated ARMITAGE below.
She smirked, "Now it's your turn! Out to that private lot!"
He almost stood back, "Hey now, I challenged you, you gotta challenge someone else."
"Fine. Ana, wanna take a gander?" Grabbing back her bag.
"Erm, well...." Ana began, but Marcus stood forward, "I'll do it. What do I get?"
"The math assignment I'm doing for you anyways seems like a great payment."
Slightly miffed Marcus agreed, running out between the trees, and raised sarcophagus', stumbling on a loose stone, made it to the speared iron wrought fence in one piece. "What now, bee-otches?"
As they arrived, they noticed Marcus had moved further in, "Hey guys come check out this mausoleum!"
Perched along the side wall hidden from the main entrance by wild hedges, and crumbling statues was a squat mausoleum, slightly Faux Ancient Greek, faded orange tiles littering the entrance. One could just make out the word WHATELEY faded with a tinge of gold paint winking in the fading sun. They all gathered around the closed entrance. "Anything good inside?" James asked peering over Marcus' shoulder.
"I can't see anything either. Guess it's your turn, break us in!" Marcus challenged.
"Shouldn't we be getting back to the entrance..." Ana started.
"We can go...after I open the gate! What are the terms for my amazing lockpicking skills? Borrow your car for a month?" James parleyed.
"F**k no dude, I just got my ride. A week, tops." Marcus spit.
"Whatever! You've had it for over a year. How about til fall break? That's a week and a half."
"Fine, til fall break, and not a goddamned scratch dude."
"Sounds good." James eased, popping his fingers. "Kerri, two hairpins please."
The lock looked strangely alien in the decaying landscape. Stainless steel, hardly rusted. Nothing more than a standard padlock, a few seconds later, and a click and pop of the loop. "See? That's the way we do it. Money for nothin', and the chicks for free." Handing back the hairpins to Kerri. She just rolled her eyes. Marcus guffawed, and Ana glanced at her phone.
James dropped the chain and padlock as he pulled aside the curtained gate, opening up into a small square room. It kept up the Greek look with marbled walls, stone columns topped with bleak blank-faced figures in every corner, and tattered red velvet curtains hung clinging to threads on hooks. Around the inlaid coffin covers each inscribed with a family member deceased, "Noah" "Lavinia" "John" "Wilbur" two on the left and right walls respectively. The teens glanced over the old visitors book upon the pedestal, intrigued by the glass case on the rear wall. Their vague reflections staring back at them as they looked in at the silver locket behind the pane of glass.
The locket rested upon bust, it's untarnished silver weakly glinting in the dying sun. The locket itself was shaped unnaturally like a human face, eyes hollowed but filled with fine black diamonds, and swirls of inlaid gold to reflect cheekbones. behind the necklace held a sign in spidery script paint dripping from a callous or impatient painter. "Frigg Nekhabed Gauri Ninhursag", webs rests in the crevices of the case.
James turning to Ana, "By a process of elimination, it looks like it's your turn. Take the locket."
"You said we'd leave after you broke in." Ana protested.
"Nope, we've all taken bets, it's your turn." Marcus and Kerri all surrounding Ana by the case, Cheshire cat smiles revealing their military gravestone-like teeth.
Ana frowned. This simply wasn't going her way. she sighed, "I get my book back, and we never come back here. Agreed?"
They all nodded in agreement, and backed off. She opened the case easily enough, the necklace had surprising heft for it's size, weighing it for a second before Kerri snatched it from her, "I wanna look!" Looking it over, "Man, the thing won't open!"
"Give it here," James grabbing it. "Whoa, weird. Check out this back! It looks like I'm wearing a mask." Handing it over to Marcus, and to Kerri each having a turn examining their face in the surreal pale mask. Kerri was handing it back to Ana when a sudden silence fell over the graveyard. The trees no longer creaked, the dripping stopped, and the insect buzzing vanished. Ana quickly put the locket around her neck as they looked back into the twilight of the yard.
No longer were the grounds as the teens remembered them, but everything was different. The layout seemed familiar, but the trees were no longer populating, nor the ponds sinking. The stones were new, and similar to the faces on the Whateley statues, each headstone finely carved and with a jutted deathmask on it's face. A slight wind started whispering. Other whispers swirling about. As they crossed the threshold from the mausoleum into the yard the masks rose from the stones, oblique and disjointed shadows formed ghoulish bodies, the transparent black contrasting the white masks.
"Oh God, this isn't right." Kerri hissed.
"What the f*ck?" Marcus managed to stumble out.
"I'm getting out of here." James practically yelled dashing straight towards the entrance. The spectre's turned to his outburst and the closest moved to intercept, and was consumed by the shadows.
Marcus and Kerri took off in a panic, Kerri repeating her previous mutterings. Both quickly overtaken, and they too were no longer.
Ana for a while was frozen to the spot. The phantoms not venturing much further than their graves. She felt ice prickling through her fingers and toes. The dreadful whispers gaining in coherency and volume. More of the ethereal masks stood from their graves, she took a step forward. None seemed to notice. She moved forward again. Again nothing. She started towards the gate, quietly, one near her noticed and shifted her way, she tried to out walk it, but it caught her, there was an indescribable pain, or was it pleasure? But she pulled free shaking fiercely, and she too took to a run. Others followed, several tried to ambush, but she pushed her way through them, Ana in tears made it to the gate, and pulled herself through the gap, but masks and clawed hands started unfurling around the gate as well. With all of her will she pulled the gate shut, and with the slam, what was a quiet evening in September seemed deafening. She crumpled in a heap, and sobbed. Looking down into the mirror on the locket she only saw herself, and she was alone.
--Add a super cool ghost with a cape maybe?
--Add a beginning.
--Draw in a reference to James lying, and Ana showing some respect for the graves.
--Maybe re-write the writing in the mausoleum.
--Waffles, everyone loves waffles.
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