Chapter 9: Chapter 9

Preston grabbed his arm and pulled him down and against one of the tombstones to ensure they wouldn't be seen. From this vantage point, Luis watched the resurrection unfold.

He had seen something like this once before. When he was young, he had been playing with his cousin in a sandbox behind the house. They had found a big beetle scurrying across the sand and had felt one of those sadistic urges that small children sometimes get. They had buried the beetle and waited to see if it would suffocate or somehow find a way to dig itself out. After about three minutes of gazing at the spot, they saw little twitches which caused the sand grains to cascade down from the mound they had built. The twitches became more violent and little black legs flickered out, disappeared, and then began frantically pushing the sand away. Soon after, the flying sand ceased and the beetle came scurrying out. It stopped in front of them, as if to say: "I know what you did, and I'll be back. You thought you could kill me but I'm not dead and I will get revenge." His cousin seemed unaffected and had raised his booted foot and stomped the beetle back into the ground.

This was like that but on a much larger and more human scale. The ground above the two graves was pulsing back and forth to the rhythm of the grating. Rising in falling, as if the dirt was going to split open at any moment and vomit something to the surface.

"What in God's name," Luis whispered at the sight. Preston just stared. The grating became louder and then finally, like a pregnant flower blossoming in the spring time, the ground in front of one of the tombstones cracked and then parted. There was a cave-in of dirt and then shovel-fulls of sod and grass were hurled out of the pit which had just opened in the ground. Several minutes later the same thing occurred in front of the other grave.

There was more movement and Luis thought he spotted an arm. The dirt continued to spit out of the hole, but now there were flashes of hands and arms. Luis could hear small pebbles striking something hard and metallic at the bottom of the hole. Finally, a pair of fingers emerged and grasped the side of the pit. Luis watched in horror as David Hanson, the man whose bloody corpse he had seen at the morgue, pulled himself from the hole and collapsed onto the ground in front of his own gravestone. He was dressed in the same black suit that Luis had seen on many a dead friend and neighbor before they were lowered into the grave. His tie was ripped and even in the darkness, Luis thought he could see the clumps of dirt sticking to the man's face.

Buried alive? Had he accidentally been buried alive?

The body was motionless for a moment, as if the exertion of digging itself out had proven exhausting. Slowly and cautiously, David Hanson rose to his feet. He took a wobbly step and the motion seemed to stir some disequilibrium in the body because he sank to one knee and nearly fell back into the hole beside him. Once again he rose to his feet and began to slowly and awkwardly shuffle over to his wife's grave.

Luis had once seen a colt born, and the awkward way in which it had first risen to its feet, shaky and exhausted, reminded him of the movements he was now seeing.

Another set of hands emerged and Luis saw Joan Hanson try to pull herself out. Her head appeared and then she fell back down into the pit. Her husband reached the edge of her grave and all three of them watched, David, Luis, and Preston, as she successfully made another effort to extract herself from death's resting place.

This was no mistake, he realized. One person, perhaps, but two people was not possible. Whatever spectacle they were watching defied any explanation.

Luis put his camera to his eye and began positioned it for the best shot. This would change his career. Not only would he have this strange ritual on film, but Preston was a witness who could corroborate the story. It was almost too good to be true.

Before he could take the picture Preston swatted the camera out of his hands.

"Are you crazy?" Preston hissed at him again. "Do you want them to realize we're watching?" Before he could reply that he really didn't give a damn, he heard another voice behind them.

"It's a little too late for that, we already realize you're watching.

Luis froze in terror. Preston's face seemed to ripple with terror and fury. With a speed that impressed Luis, he pivoted around and swung his shovel at a figure leaning against the gravestone behind them. The shovel never hit. Instead, it seemed to careen into some invisible wall protecting the figure and then went spiraling out of Preston's hands. The shovel swung end-over-end and landed with a clunk against a gravestone nearly twenty feet across the cemetery.

"Oh shit!" Luis heard himself yell as the trance broke and he clutched for the piece under his jacket. "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!"

The little boy ignored his swears.

"I didn't expect it to be so easy to find you Preston. Not after what I did to your finger last time." Luis looked at Preston's left hand and saw that the boy's middle finger was missing. He found his gun and pointed it at the boy that he now recognized as Martin Hanson. "Funny that I should see you here Preston, I was just visiting your father a little while ago. Such a nice man, isn't he?"

"Martin, don't take another step forward. I'll fire, I mean it."

"Luis Sanchez, the town's esteemed writer. I guess you've finally found a story worth writing about. Well let me give you a head start on an important and breaking news story." He walked forward and Luis fired. The sound was deafening and it seemed to slice at the solemn, quiet veil which shrouded the cemetery. Luis thought for sure this would wake up the rest of the dead. Martin continued to talk.

"Town reporter and ruffian found dead at cemetery."

He had fired at almost point blank range and the force of the blasts whipped the small body around and forced it back against the gravestone. Martin slumped down but he was still babbling away.

"I'm already dead Luis. You can't kill me. The joke's on you," he giggled. Luis saw the three bullet holes in Martin's body, one near his right shoulder and two under his heart. Instead of blood, a noxious, thick smell seemed to have been released, as if the corpse had slowly been rotting inside and his bullets had released the stew.

"This is crazy," Luis said.

"Very crazy, very insane," Martin agreed.

Preston pulled him away and they stumbled to the top of the ridge. From this vantage point, Luis could clearly see Martin staggering to his feet. His parents still stood confused, as if they were waiting for instructions. Preston pulled a gun from out of his pocket and pointed it at the ground in front of Martin's feet.

"Burn in hell Martin!" he said quietly before firing the trigger. Luis understood. The smell was gasoline. Preston must have realized what was going on and he had soaked the cemetery grounds around the grave with enough gasoline to run the town's cars for a month. The bullet struck about a foot away from Martin's feet. Martin looked at them.

"Nice try, but I knew the gasoline was..." His words were cut off as the ground around him erupted in a twisting gyrating pattern of flames. They braved the heat and watched the flames for a minute or two to see if there was any movement. Slowly, the conflagration began to die down and as the fired cleared, Luis could see three forms advancing towards them. The forms were alight like torches, burning bushes that had been uprooted and were relentlessly pursuing them. The sight broke Luis's last vestiges of control and he began to run. He wanted out of this, out of the damn cemetery and the horror which he was seeing. This was more than the occult, what he had witnessed were the laws of physics and life completely turned around and warped.

He didn't know what happened to Preston. For a minute the boy was running beside him and then he was gone. Perhaps they had gotten him but Luis wasn't thinking; he was concerned with his own self-preservation. The cemetery looked endless and he began to realize he would never find his way out. He passed gravestones that looked the same and the markers he had first seen on his way in seemed to have disappeared. Indeed, it looked like the cemetery was involved in a conspiracy to see his doom.

And then panting and completely out of breath, he recognized the wall he had climbed over. He ran towards it, tripped on a rock, and plunged over a wall. His body hit the ground and rolled in front of his car's right tire.

"Oh thank God, thank sweet Jesus," he said to the night air as he looked up at the inscription on his tire. He made the sign of the cross and then scrambled to his feet.

Luis had trouble driving. He tried to focus on the yellow lines in the middle of the road but his hands were shaking so hard that he had to pull over for a minute and let the tremor pass before he could continue. He had regained his control, nearly. He drove slowly and cautiously, but it was a battle to shut out the voices in his head that told him to gun the accelerator and get as far away as he could. His foot felt heavy, and he just wanted it to drop right on that pedal. More gas, more speed, more distance away from this nightmare hell, he told himself.

But his sanity prevailed and Luis eventually came upon Wellow Falls center. For an instant he considered steering his car into the police station. He could regurgitate the whole event for the badges in blue and let them investigate. Yet, his past experiences told him how useless that would be. He already had a reputation for being a gossip journalist, and the far fetched story would only bring snickers from the fat small country cops who were more content to chomp on donuts than investigate any kind of disturbance. The Hanson deaths may have slightly altered their priorities, and if he was lucky they might investigate the cemetery. If they did, they would find the aftermath of the blaze and the two new missing bodies. That wouldn't prove his story, but only draw further suspicion and make him a prime witness and possibly suspect.

No, it was far better and easier to just stay away from the police. But what could he do, and perhaps more importantly, what had he just seen in the cemetery? The image of the flaming torch figures moving inexorably towards them was blazed into his mind. He tried to blink it away but it was useless. What he had seen was the occult, perhaps the greatest example of it. There was something going on in this town and somehow, someway, he was going to have to get the word out.

As he turned his car into the newspaper offices, his mind was already beginning to formulate the questions he would need answered.

The wind rustled and he thought that he could hear movement in the shrubbery.

"Don't be silly," he whispered to himself. He put his key into the lock and turned back to face the woods.

Damn, he was sure he had heard something. He turned the key and giggled a bit madly. It was amazing how this stuff could get to you. He needed to stay calm and cool if he was going to unravel this mystery.

But did he want to unravel it? What he had seen had been simply terrifying.

Luis started walking down the hallway and the questions mounted. How had the Hanson's become involved in this entire nightmare, and why was Preston at the cemetery? And perhaps the central question, how had dead corpses come back to life? Vampires, zombies, black magic, this was the stuff that Luis had always investigated but never really believed to be true. At times he had almost been fooled himself, butin his gutthere was always the realization that it wasn't real. Perhaps the participants fully believed in it, or had convinced themselves to believe in it, but it wasn't true magic.

This time Luis was certain that what he had just seen was the first legitimate example of the occult. Of something that wasn't just wishful thinking, or the product of an overzealous mind. It was real, and it had been terrible. Deep inside, where he judged and evaluated things, Luis also had a terrifying feeling that what he had seen was just the beginning.

Luis sat down at his desk and began to make a list of the items he would need to investigate. As he began to create the list, a shudder passed through his body, and he wasn't sure if it was excitement, or sheer horror at what he had witnessed. Or perhaps a little of both.