Chapter 17
Chuck stood beside the wrought iron gate of Veal cemetery. Strangely, there were few grave markers in sight and the grounds were neat and trim. Several bushes lined the outer fence and a small elm tree offered shade from the blistering morning sun. He wondered, “Who cleaned up the cemetery. Where are the rest of the graves?”
A black hearse was motoring up the narrow clay top road leading up to the graveyard with two or three dozen people walking along behind. A voice from deep inside said, “It’s the funeral.”
“Am I dreaming?” Chuck asked the voice. “Where are Gail and what about Blake and Bill?”
The procession slowly drew closer until he could see a woman and a small boy. They walked ahead of the procession. All were dressed in black mourning and he wondered who had died?
Behind him a deep, Negro voice said, “Okay, Jeb. Let’s move out of site. They’re here.”
Chuck turned and saw two black men, gravediggers, gathering their tools from around a freshly dug hole, a grave. Stacked beside the fence was a large pile of bright red bricks and a wooden barrel. Chuck recognized the bricks. They were the type used to cover his Grandfather’s grave.
As the early 1940’s Cadillac drove past he felt the hot wind emitting from its exhaust pipe and smelled the raw gasoline odor that comes from an engine left idling too long in the hot August sun. Through the glass side windows of the car he saw a casket made of dark red oak and treated to a deep, red, finish. Brass handles and hinges glittered in the sunlight. He felt the weight of the vehicle in the trembling ground beneath his feet until it rolled to a stop at the entrance to the Veal Cemetery.
The woman and boy stopped. The man clasping a Bible to his chest stepped from the crowd of followers and moved to the rear door of the auto. Without a word, he turned and nodded to a group of men who followed and formed a dual line. “Pall Bearers” the voice said.
The driver opened the door of the hearse and the line of six men; three to the side, removed the heavy casket. They swung the casket around lining up with the Cemetery gate, and then carried the cumbersome box forward with the rest of the followers in step behind them.
The procession walked slowly to the freshly dug hole and placed the casket atop support boards that crisscrossed the opening into the earth. They paused a moment, heads bowed, and then stepped back and away.
The others gathered around the preacher who stood silently watching until everyone was in place and still. Clearing his throat, he opened the bible to a marked page, looked up and started speaking words that Chuck could not hear.
He moved to the outer circle and strained to listen. The preacher’s lips were indeed moving but there was no sound. He looked around the cemetery and realized there were neither birds fluttering about in the trees nor any indications of motions and sounds, not even a breeze to shake the higher bushes that lined the back fence. Then they were singing, each person’s lips moving and looking skyward but still no sounds reached Chuck.
Suddenly Chuck wanted to know about the casket. Who had died? He found a break in the crowd and stepped through and into the circle of humanity. From beneath the casket he saw a lone hand appear from out of the hole and using a finger motion that meant Chuck that he was to come closer. A voice spoke “The lies began here.”
Chuck dropped to his knees and peered under the casket and into the hole. There was something there‑ a body? He crawled around to the opposite side, glancing at the many void, figures now listening to the Preacher read from the bible again. Chuck could see better from that side because the sunlight reached to the bottom of the hole. He peered inside and downward, and there was a body but with no face, just an outline.
The faceless man said sorrowfully, “I tried to kill your brother because she killed your Grandfather. It’s here where the lies begin. It's here where they must end.”
Chuck jumped back and almost screamed. The grave disappeared‑ the cemetery disappeared‑ the people, the trees, the sun were all gone.
Then, he heard a car engine. He turned into the light and watched a blue Trans Am stop near the edge of the muddy dirt road near the cemetery. The driver’s side door swung open and a heavy stream of dark creek water poured out and pooled on the ground underneath. A lone figure got out of the car and turned to face him. It was his father. He said, “The lies begin and end there,” pointing at the cemetery.
Chuck turned and saw the brick topped grave of his grandfather. When he looked back, his father was gone; the car was gone; then darkness engulfed him. There was a nothing, blank like none other experienced in his life.
He tensed, turning in all directions in search of light, any light. Then, slowly, near the edges of the void, he saw a trace of shadows. There was an approaching light and quickly the darkness lifted. He was in a room, a study; it was the study inside Whispering Pines estate.
A beautiful woman stood before a roaring fireplace. Two people, seated on the couch, faced her, a man and a woman, young and dressed in the older style clothing of the 1940’s. The woman, standing at the fireplace, spoke, grinning slyly, almost smirking, but she was not speaking to Chuck. She was talking to the man and woman seated on the couch.
Chuck strained to hear the words but none reached him. On a small table before the couch were three coffee cups. The woman at the fireplace stepped forward and took two of the cups handing one to each before her. She stepped back and then laughed. There was insanity in the expression of the laughter and then she pointed a white, trembling finger at the two figures and for the first time Chuck heard her speak. “If I can’t have you then nobody will.”
Chuck knew the woman, or at least, sensed her identity. She was a young, beautiful, and evil Abatha Pary. The couple, seated on the couch before her, slowly turned toward Chuck. The seated woman looked like Edie Pary and the man was...Matt? No, too young. It was his Grandfather, Tom Veal.
Looking directly at Chuck, the man raised the coffee cup for him to see that it was full of snakes, hundreds of them. Chuck tried to scream but the words wouldn’t come. There was no air to fill his lungs. He suddenly knew he had to warn this man and woman not to drink from the cup... Why? Because there was poison in the cups and Abatha Pary wanted them to drink, she wanted them to die. Chuck’s mouth opened, his vocal cords tensed, his mind darkened but the words never came.
The man took a large drink from the cup, “Now you know the lie. Now you know where it ends. Don’t come with me yet, dear Grandson. Go back to them, to her. There is still much to be done.”
Chuck awoke screaming, “Grandpa? No, Grandpa don’t go... come back.”