I turned away. I never could stare a person straight in the face and lie to them. As a small consolation to myself, I would tell her as much of the truth as I dared without sounding like a crazy person. "Brent and I went to the cemetery to search for Rob. He didn't get back to his apartment and we wondered if maybe he wasn't hurt up on that hill."
Ashley's voice was strained and shaking. Any mention of the cemetery scared her. "And...and did you find him?" She made it sound like we had, and regretted it.
I shook my head. "No, just heard some noises around one of the crypts-" I flinched when her grip on my shoulders suddenly tightened to a painful degree. "Easy there. I'm not made of marble, you know," I joked.
"Which crypt?" Ashley whispered. I frowned and glanced back up into her face. Her eyes were big and her face was as white as a sheet. When I didn't answer quickly she gave me a rough shake. Her voice was shaking, tense. It scared me. "Which crypt was it?"
"I-I don't know. Just one of the ones to the left of the gate." I squirmed and broke free from her strong grasp. "What the hell's the matter with you? It's just a stupid crypt." I wished I could believe that myself.
She slowly shook her head. "I told you last night that that cemetery wasn't normal, not with that phantom there. His crypt's in that place, and it's one of the ones to the left of the gate."
I didn't want to hear any of this, to be reminded about that shadowed man and his infatuation with me. "Could you just stop it with all that crap? I'm too tired to deal with it, okay? I just-I just want all this stupid stuff to go away." I plopped myself down on her bed and cradled my head in my hand. Tears sprang into my eyes and I sniffled. I would've given anything to block out everything around me right then, to melt into the shadows of the room. Maybe even melt into his warm, strong arms.
I froze. That wasn't a thought I'd planned on thinking, but it'd come up anyway. I didn't know whether to embrace it or run away, but I couldn't deny its allure. He'd made too sweet a love to me back there under that tree to deny him entirely, even if he was a phantom. Besides, it was exciting having a secret lover.
I felt the bed bounce when Ashley sat down beside me. She wrapped a gentle arm around my shoulders. "It was that bad out there, wasn't it?" she whispered to me.
We heard a knock on the door and Ashley's mom's voice filtered through the closed entrance. "You two girls okay?"
"We're fine, Mom, but could you get some cocoa ready? I think Jess needs a few gallons of it."
"Already ahead of you. The water's boiling on the stove and you can get it any time you're ready."
Ashley smiled. "Thanks, Mom. We'll be down in a bit." Her mom's footsteps retreated down the hall, and Ashley turned back to me. "You feel up to some nice, hot cocoa?"
I raised my head and wiped away the tears. "Yeah, I think so."
"Good. Then you can tell me the full story after you've had that gallon," she teased.
She led me back downstairs and we sat at the dining table enjoying the warm drink. Her mom joined us and looked me over. "You look like you've been through quite an ordeal." That was her way of trying to get the story out of me.
"She walked all the way from the graveyard," Ashley told her mom.
Her parent paled at the information. "No wonder you were soaked. That's a good two miles."
"Tell me about it. That's a hell of a road when it's wet," I jokingly replied.
"What in the world were you doing there? The place is closed for a reason." Her voice scolded me for my trespass. Ashley came to my rescue.
"She and a friend of ours were looking for someone who's missing," Ashley explained.
Unfortunately that didn't help her mom's mood on the whole episode. "A missing person? You should really report that to the police."
"I don't know if he's really missing or not. He just won't answer his phone, and Brent and I figured maybe he was still at the-" At that moment I noticed Ashley slicing her hand across her neck. I shut my mouth but the damage was done.
Her mom was not happy with either of us. "Still where? At the cemetery?" She glanced between us with her eyes narrowed and her lips tightly pursed together. "Maybe you girls better tell me everything that's happened."
Ashley looked to me as the sole person to decide to spill the beans. Besides, she still hadn't heard the full story of my most recent trip to the graveyard. I sighed and hunched over my cocoa mug. "It started last night. Brent and I were taking my boyfriend Rob back to his apartment from Ashley's party. As we drove past the cemetery he woke up and thought Brent and me were a couple. He chased us out of the car-"
"With your knife you were using with your costume," Ashley emphasized. "Don't you dare try to sweep that under the rug. Rob tried to kill you both last night."
"And you didn't call the police then?" Mrs. Stefan interrupted.
I slumped lower down in my chair. Retelling the story definitely made me out to be a complete idiot, but I couldn't change things now. "Yeah, well, it was kind of late by the time Brent and I lost Rob and got out of the cemetery. We just got back to our places and waited until this morning to see if maybe Rob didn't find his way back home."
"And Rob turned out to be a bad dog," Ashley spoke up. Her comment was both a joke and a dig at Rob.
"No, so Brent and I went looking for him at his apartment. He wasn't there, so we figured maybe he was at the cemetery. Maybe he'd hurt himself or something. Anyway, we went there and looked around, and Brent wanted to check out one of the tombs but I went back to the car. He said he'd be back in a few minutes, but he never came. He had the keys to the car, so when the storm came up I decided to walk here. I guess I wasn't fast enough to outrun the rain."
Ashley and her mom leaned back in their chairs and cast a knowing glance at one another. It was then I realized her mom was as big a believer in the phantom story as Ashley. "I'd better call the police. With two missing people out-well, out there, we'd better have the police look into finding them," her mom insisted. I didn't argue this time with that wisdom. The last person I'd argued with about that had disappeared, proving me wrong about how dangerous this situation had become.
While she was on the phone with the cops, Ashley leaned over to me. Her voice was so low I could barely catch the words. "Is that really all that happened?" Her eyes pointedly glanced down at my chest where my scars lay.
"Well, other than me getting wrapped up in a tree. I tried waiting out the storm and kind of got myself caught," I half-lied to her.
She looked into my face and her eyes held my own. "Then how come your coat wasn't torn?"
I opened my mouth to reply but my lips only flapped around like a fish on land. I didn't have a good answer to that one, so I made up a bad lie. "I, uh, I pulled open my coat because I was getting really humid. It was pretty rainy out there. I got caught up in the branches of the tree while I was looking down zipping down my coat." I finished my lie with a smile that she didn't return.
Fortunately her mom did return. To the room, that is. By her deep frown she wasn't happy. "The police won't go looking for them unless they've been gone twenty-four hours, but they'll have someone go up to the cemetery later today to see if they can find anything there. I think they're worried about vandalism."
"They'll find the car," I pointed out. "We parked right up near the gate."
"Twenty-four hours?" Ashley repeated. "They're just going to sit by and do nothing for that long?"
"They like to make sure it isn't just a matter of people just missing each other," her mom explained.
"But the cemetery," Ashley persisted.
Her parent shrugged and shook her head. "There's nothing we can do."
I cleared my throat. There was one other option. "We could go back to the cemetery," I suggested. They both turned to me like I'd lost my mind. I slunk down in my chair so low that my chin could have rested on the table. "Or not."
Ashley's mom sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Well, we'll just wait patiently and see what the police find later today.
" She turned to me and I gulped. "As for you, young lady, you're going to be our guest until this mess is settled down."
"We can't keep her hostage here. She's got to go back to her dorm to study," Ashley argued.
Her mom tilted her head toward her and raised her brows. "She's in college. I've been there before myself. There's no studying involved, especially around Halloween with all its parties and tricks. Besides, I'm sure Jessie wouldn't mind staying over for a night, would you?" The question almost sounded like a threat, but she was right. I didn't have much homework to do and didn't feel up to going back to my cold, lonely dorm room. Then again, I dreaded the questions Ashley was bound to ask about my adventures in the graveyard.
I managed a strained smile. "I don't mind staying for dinner, but I'd probably better go before night fall."
"Fair enough," Mrs. Stefan agreed.
The deal was done. I'd be their house guest until dinner. Turns out that didn't last as long as everyone expected because at mid-afternoon there was another knock on the front door. Ashley and I were upstairs in her room at the time and peeked out her window onto the driveway. Just off the porch we could see a parked police car. Downstairs a male voice spoke with Ashley's mom, and soon we heard her calling us. "Ashley, Jessie, you need to come down here."
We looked at each other, then rushed downstairs. An officer stood in the living room and I noticed his boots were filthy treading through mud. He smiled at both of us as Mrs. Stefan gestured to him. "This is Officer Perkins. He said he found an abandoned car out in front of the graveyard."
"That's Rob's car. Brent and I left it there when we went into the graveyard," I explained to the newcomer.
"You know that cemetery's closed for a reason," the officer scolded me.
"Yeah, but we were looking for a friend. We got separated in there last night and we haven't seen him since," I replied.
"Where's your friend now?" the officer asked.
I shrugged. "We split up and I went back to the car. I waited for him for a while, but when he didn't show up and the storm came over I walked over here."
"And this friend of yours, Brent, did he have the car keys on him while he went looking around the place?"
I nodded my head. "Yeah, he said he didn't want me getting scared and driving off with the car." There was something about his question and expression I didn't like. He was holding back something from me. "Why? Did you find him?"
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a key chain. It was a very familiar key chain because it was Rob's, and the one Brent had had on him when he wandered over to that mausoleum. "I checked to see if one of these keys matched the ignition in the car. Ones does. Are these the keys Brent had on him?"
None of this made sense. "Y-yes, but where did you find them? Did Brent give them to you?"
The officer shook his head. "No, I found these just outside one of the mausoleums." He glanced over to Ashley and her mom. "I don't think I need to tell you ladies which one."
"No, sir," Ashley's mom solemnly replied.
I knew what it meant, too, but all I could imagine was Brent somehow getting himself caught in one of those stone crypts. "He said he was going over to one to check out a noise. Did you look inside? Maybe he's trapped in there," I frantically suggested.
The officer pocketed the keys. "I tried but the heavy thing wouldn't budge. I'll need permission from the organization that takes care of the cemetery before I bring in more men, but I didn't see any recent activity around that place except for these keys. They were tucked in the roots of a tree standing by the door. In the meantime, I suggest you tell me exactly what happened out there and why you were out there in the first place."
We sat down in the living room and I retold my story to the officer. By the time I'd finished his face was very grave. "And you've heard nothing from Brent or Rob since these incidents?" he asked me.
"Not a thing," I replied.
"Have you tried calling his phone?" Officer Perkins wondered.
My eyes widened at such a simple, ingenious suggestion. I whipped out my phone and dialed the last number to call me. My hand was shaking when I put the phone up to my ear. It rang once. Twice. My heart sank as it kept on ringing. Then I heard Brent's voice, but it was only his answering machine. I hung up and shook my head. "No answer."
"Do you know where this Brent lives?" the policeman questioned, and I shook my head.
"Not a clue. He didn't tell me."
"Well, I'll see what I can find from the college records and see if I can't track him down. Maybe he lost the car keys and wandered back to town thinking you'd done the same," the officer suggested. He stood up to leave.
Judging by the look on Mrs. Stefan's face, I don't think she believed such a rosy story. "But what about the other boy, Officer Perkins? Shouldn't we be worried about him, too? He's been missing for over half a day," she pointed out.
"I'll have a look into that, too, but I'd like to make sure how many people we have missing before I go looking for two of them," he pointed out. He turned to me and took out a piece of paper with a pen. "Could I have your phone number in case I need to get a hold of you quickly? And would it be too much to ask you to stick around town until we solve this mystery?"
"Yeah, no problem," I agreed.
I wrote down my number and we said goodbye to the officer out on the porch. As he drove away, both Ashley and her mom glanced over to me. It made me nervous. "What?"
"This isn't some prank or something, is it?" Ashley asked me in her most serious tone.
My shoulders drooped and I frowned. "You think I could come up with something this complicated? Besides, the police really are involved so I'd be stupid not to fess up when he was here."
"Then do you know what's really going on?" Ashley persisted. "Two boys around you disappear in that-well, that cemetery and you're still here. What are the odds?"
I leaned toward them and glared at them both. "I don't know, what are the odds? You two seem to know more about the place than I do. Care to tell me what the hell is going on in there with this phantom? Who is this guy really? Why's he haunting the place? Was it because of his sudden death? Anybody tried asking him or doing something about him?" I took in some air after that long-winded question. They didn't immediately answer and that just made me angrier. "Well?"
The mother and daughter looked to each other, and Mrs. Stefan sighed. "I don't know how much you've heard about the cemetery-"
"Just Brent's story. He said the guy up and died, and was buried in that crypt, but he doesn't stay buried," I told her. My anger was deflated by their willing cooperation.
"Our family's been farming these woods and fields for quite a few years. Originally it was owned by the phantom, but after his death we took it over and there's been, well, sightings of him around," Mrs. Stefan admitted. "He's usually just stood in the shadows of the trees and doesn't go toward anybody, but his presence is, well-"
"Terrifying?" I suggested.
"Unnerving," she returned. "He never approached the men, but the women were, or sometimes are, bothered by him. He'd catch our attention and come toward us, and we couldn't run. Ashley here experienced firsthand his mesmerizing presence."
"I told her," Ashley informed her mom.
The parent paused and folded her arms across her chest. "You two seemed to have passed around a lot of information already. Is there anything else I need to know before I go on with my story?"
"What I'd like to know is why the hell he's out wandering and bothering women. He got some sort of a lust for us?" I asked them.
Ashley's eyes narrowed and she gave me a good look-over. "Why are you wanting to know that? Have you seen him?"
"Y-yeah, well, kind of." I glanced down at my feet and my face reddened. My secret was out, but not all of it. I'd keep the unusual affair to myself. "I saw him, but that's it. Brent didn't see him, though, so I was wondering why he showed up for me but not for him."
Ashley's mom shrugged. "A good question, an
d one only the phantom could answer if anyone dared ask him."
"So I'm guessing there's only been these run-ins and everyone's ran screaming away?" I surmised, and they both nodded their heads.
"That we know of, but Brent was right when he said there's been a lot of people disappearing around that cemetery for years," Ashley replied.
I shuddered when I thought about the situation I was in just then. My voice was a ghost of a whisper. "Like Brent and Rob."
Ashley gave me a pity-smile and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "Unfortunately, it's exactly like them. Nobody's ever found so we don't know how many people the phantom's gotten a hold of."
Suddenly I didn't want to know anymore about this phantom, and most especially didn't want to have another meeting with him. That last part would be hard to do, though, when some part of him was inside me. Ashley's mom saw my face turn a horrible ashen color and clapped her hands together. The slapping noise made both me and my friend jump. "Well, let's hope for better things and that those two boys are found. I'm sure the police will find them somewhere in the woods lost and hungry."
"Yeah, you're probably right, Mom," Ashley agreed. She didn't sound any more convinced than I felt.
"And while we're waiting why don't we get that dinner started? Jessie will be wanting to get home, and with all these accidents in the night I don't want anyone on that road," Mrs. Stefan insisted.
The early dinner proved to be great, but it was ruined by the autumn evening. The sun sped its way across the sky and by the time we set out there was only an hour's worth of light left. Ashley drove me home along the eerie road, and I couldn't help but look at the graveyard gate as we passed by it. Rob's car was still parked outside the closed entrance, though with a sticker on the back showing the cop had been there, and Ashley slowed the car to catch a glimpse of it herself. "Kind of spooky, isn't it?" she softly asked me.
"Yeah," I quietly agreed.
A wind blew past our stopped car and Ashley shuddered. She stepped on the pedal and drove away from that darkened place. I turned around in my seat and watched the entrance fade into the distance. "You really shouldn't be interested in that place," Ashley advised me. "That place just isn't good."