everything covered up?” Noah wondered out loud. He had heard of grave blankets, but the tarps were extreme.
“I don’t know,” Henry admitted.
“Maybe Mr. Romero is conducting experiments,” Emily suggested in a spooky voice. “He could be Dr. Frankenstein in disguise.” She stuck out her arms and lumbered around like Frankenstein’s famous green monster, bumping into her friends.
Noah shook his head but grinned. Emily was fearless and her courage was reassuring. She was like a hero from a Knightscares book.
“Let’s see what’s under these tarps,” Henry proposed, and his friends were eager to oblige.
“What about Ghost in the Graveyard?” Noah said quickly. He hadn’t wanted to play the game before, but peeking under the plastic seemed like a worse idea. The tarps had to be there for a reason.
And in a graveyard he dreaded what that reason would be.
“You’re not scared again, are you?” Carter teased him.
Noah responded with a jibe of his own. “Haven’t you ever seen a scary movie? You’re not supposed to disturb stuff in a graveyard. Everyone knows that.”
“Aw, chill out, guys,” Henry told them. “It’s not like we’re digging up a coffin.”
Everyone but Noah began pulling up one of the tarps. It wasn’t easy. The tarp was heavy and thick like a boat cover. It was also as wide as a garage door and twice as long.
“You could help,” Carter grumbled, “instead of just standing there.”
“No thanks,” Noah replied bluntly.
“Will you be our lookout then?” Emily asked. “We don’t want any ghosts sneaking up on us.”
“Or Mr. Romero,” Henry amended.
“Sure, I’ll watch for him,” Noah said.
He wandered away from the others and shut off his flashlight, afraid its beam would give him away in the dark. Noah didn’t want Mr. Romero to see him before he saw Mr. Romero.
Fortunately a big round moon filled the night with silvery light. Was it the Harvest Moon? Noah thought so. That was the full moon that occurred during the fall equinox. It was named the Harvest Moon because farmers could harvest their crops late into the evening in the unusually bright moonlight.
“Noah, come here,” Henry called. His voice was a whisper but it carried easily across the empty cemetery.
He and Emily had shoved one of the tarps back about twenty feet to the right. Carter had singlehandedly pushed a second tarp just as far to the left. Yet to Noah’s relief, neither tarp revealed anything unusual. Just rows of typical headstones set among neatly trimmed grass.
That suited Noah. No ghosts and no Mr. Romero. He considered it a win.
“I guess there’s nothing to see,” he said hopefully. “We should probably go.”
Kneeling on the grass, Carter let his hands fall to his thighs in defeat. “Yeah, I give up. The Mystery of the Plastic Cemetery remains unsolved.”
Emily nodded. “It’s getting late.”
Henry, though, refused to leave. “Why would someone cover an entire graveyard in plastic? There has to be a reason.” He spread his arms and rotated slowly. “Why, why, why?”
He stopped when Noah pointed behind him.
“Maybe because of that,” Noah said quietly, and everyone turned.
The ground that had been covered by the tarp was smoking in the moonlight. Chalky white vapors rose from it like steam from a kettle.
“Is it burning?” Carter wondered.
Henry shook his head and took several steps backward. “That can’t be good.”
Understatement, Noah thought. “We should go before—”
Too late.
“Look out!” Emily exclaimed, whirling with a terrified look on her face.
More vapors were rising all around them. They steamed from quarter-sized holes in the ground above every uncovered grave. Noah peered into the nearest hole and saw something wriggle inside it.
A dirty finger.
He didn’t wait to see what it was attached to.
“G-guys …?” he hissed, but the impossible happened. An entire hand thrust up out of the dirt. It was gray and filthy and had long, cracked yellow fingernails.
“Run!” Henry cried. “Go! Get out of here!”
The kids bolted as dozens of hands erupted from the ground. Some of them were avocado green; others were the sickly color of drowned worms. All of them clawed toward the sky as if trying to grasp the huge Harvest Moon.
Noah tried not to look at them. He knew what the hands belonged to. He knew but didn’t want to believe.
“Ahh, zombies!” he wailed. It was an undead uprising!
“Get to the rope!” Henry shouted.
“Girls first!” Emily repeated from earlier. This time, though, she wasn’t smiling.
The four jetted across the graveyard like bandits on the run. Everywhere they looked, zombies were digging up out of their graves. An awful moaning filled the air, hungry and relentless.
Noah and the others weaved in and out of tombstones, avoiding the ghastly hands that sought to clutch their ankles. The scene was like a real game of Ghost in the Graveyard. Only now the ghosts were ghouls.
“There’s too many!” Emily shouted, dodging a zombie that had pulled itself waist-deep out of the grave. It wore a tattered suit coat covered in worms. Noah gagged at the sight.
“Keep running!” Carter hollered. “I can see the tree! We’re almost there!”
“No!” Henry’s shriek was so bloodcurdling that everyone stopped. “Someone cut the rope.”
He stood panting at the base of the oak tree. All eyes followed his to the branch to which he had tied the rope. The knot remained. So did a short strip of rope.
Nine feet above the ground.
“We’re trapped!” Emily howled. “How are we going to get out of here?”
“The gate,” Noah said, turning and starting to run again. The others followed just as fast.
They slowed quickly.
Zombies were everywhere now—dozens of them, maybe hundreds. They shambled throughout the graveyard, snapping the air and moaning. Always moaning. The constant hungry noise made Henry want to scream.
Still in the lead, Henry dodged a small zombie. It clutched a dirty baby doll in one hand while clawing after him with the other.
“Nasty!” he shouted, twisting to evade the zombie’s grasp.
Carter didn’t try to avoid it. He lowered his shoulder like a football player trying to break a tackle and crashed into the monster, knocking it down. The baby doll flew from its gray hand.
“Zombies beware!” Carter howled, throwing back his head. He juked in a little dance, paying no attention to his feet.
So when the zombie clutched his shoe, he fell.
Emily screamed and desperately reached for him, but the zombies arrived first. Dozens of dirty hands grasped the boy—his shirt, his hair, his legs. They caught him wherever they could and dragged him into the dark.
“Carter, no!” Emily wailed.
Henry snatched her arm and pulled. “We’ll get help and come back for him!”
The little group ran on, now only three.
A gravel road appeared and they veered left onto it. There were no zombies ahead of them. Tarps still covered this part of the cemetery. The kids had a straight shot to the gate.
“We’re almost there!” Henry shouted.
“I can’t believe we’re going to get out of this crazy place,” Emily said.
Noah couldn’t believe it either, especially when he saw the scarecrow-thin figure teetering on the other side of the gate. Was it a zombie? Had one escaped ahead of them? Was anywhere still safe?
Henry skidded to a halt and threw his arms wide to stop his friends.
“Mr. Romero!” he gasped.
The figure outside the gate wasn’t a zombie. It was the cemetery’s caretaker.
Mr. Romero was old enough to be a great grandfather. His ragged white beard was sparse, which matched the wispy hair on his wrinkled, balding head. A p
air of huge black-rimmed glasses was perched on his long nose, but he barely glanced at the kids when they arrived.
He was too busy looping a thick chain around the gate.
“What are you doing?” Noah demanded. “Stop! Don’t lock us in. We have to get out of here.”
“There are zombies everywhere!” Henry exclaimed.
The elderly caretaker threaded the shackle of a heavy padlock through the chain.
“Tonight’s the Harvest Moon,” he said in a surprisingly strong voice.
“Good for the moon,” Emily snapped. “Now let us out of here!”
Mr. Romero continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “I must cover the graves every Harvest Moon. If I don’t, the dead will rise and seek a harvest. Only afterward will they sleep again.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Noah asked. He cast a glance over his shoulder and saw zombies approaching.
Mr. Romero looked into Noah’s frightened eyes and smiled sadly. Then he snapped the padlock shut, locking it.
“You’re tonight’s harvest,” he said.
The End
This story and twelve others appear in Mystery Underground: Undead Uprising. Look for it on MysteryUnderground.com.
Secret of the Sinkhole
Gainesville, FL
May 4, 2:11 pm
Brady Thomas picked a ripe orange from a low branch and cocked his arm back like a quarterback in the big game.
“Calvin, go deep,” he called to his friend.
On cue, Calvin Lyons started sprinting down a row of overgrown orange trees. He waved a hand while looking back over his shoulder.
“I’m open!” he shouted.
Brady tossed the orange with practiced precision. It sailed crisply through the air, arcing toward its target. Calvin cupped his hands and prepared to make the easy catch.
“Interception!” a third boy cried.
His name was Troy Polacek and he suddenly burst