The Cemetery

Suspense Stories | Jan 1, 2012 | 16 min read
120 Votes, average: 4 out of 5
Suspense Stories

The Cemetery

Paul J
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Chapter One

 

 

Dugald always walked through the cemetery when he'd finished his nine-hour shift at the bakery. In a way it was a morbid act, because he liked doing it, he liked reading the epitaphs (the ones he could make out, some of them had eroded over the years) he also liked the eeriness of the place. It seemed homely to him.

 

Dugald wasn't married and he had no children. Nor did he have any close relatives (his aunt Martha lived in Wyoming) or friends. The cemetery was his only friend, in fact.

 

The walks through the cemetery had begun not long after he'd got his job at Mcpartlingson bakery on Creswell Avenue. One day he had just debated with himself about walking a different way home, possibly for a shortcut, and he had accidentally discovered the cemetery.

 

The cemetery stood a steep brow, a brow that easily tired the legs and lungs of its walkers, and he couldn't keep doing that. It took all his energy.

 

The cemetery was unwelcoming and detestable, but not to Dugald. To him, the place was interesting, holy and honest. He loved it. Many of the town folk called it his obsession. They knew he had begun to take notebooks to the place and write down the situation of various landmarks and certain graves which seemed important. He had been watched by a bunch of kids one day, taking rubbings of some of the headstones. He had not noticed them, though.

 

Now, as he walked to the cemetery, he smiled and thought that nothing else in the world mattered to him anymore.

 

When he got to the gates, he was breathless but he smiled again when he saw the wrought iron sign. It read: CHARNEL CEMETERY-1894. They were locked, of course, because the cemetery had closed in the late seventies. The gates were not very high, only twelve feet at the most, and he climbed, still pretty much breathing heavily, and then he jumped down to the other side. He was in.

 

Willows lined the stone pathways through the cemetery and the grass was overgrown, and hedges grew outwards. Dugald began to walk. A slight breeze rustled the branches and dead leaves gently. At the top of the main path (probably a road for the concierge) stood a small chapel. He didn't think it was a chapel, but it sure looked like one.

The windows were boarded up with old plywood. The plywood was covered with moss and graffiti. The chapel was falling to bits. But he didn't care one bit. He was here and he was happy.

 

He looked around himself and saw the headstones. They were evenly lined, but some had fallen over the years, and Dugald saw the spots where they were meant to be. He strolled slowly over to a group of them (some of them children's graves). They read: JOSIE DEAKIN 1912-1917, MARY CHASE-DIED IN CHILDHOOD, and one, he saw struck him as odd, very odd indeed. This one proclaimed: JACK O'CONNOR 1789-1846. The cemetery hadn't buried its first client until 1894. The dates on the epitaph started a chain of thoughts, scary and a little weird. He wanted to run, find out what the hell was going on with this grave. He couldn't run, though. He wanted to get to the bottom of this...this what? Puzzle? Enigma? He didn't know. But he knew that the grave of Jack O'Connor didn't belong in this cemetery.

 


 


Chapter Two

 

 

Later that evening, as the dark began to swallow the light, Dugald dozed, and dreamed:

 

He walks down the brow toward the cemetery. Around him, the night is cold and breezy. He is not frightened, but he is wary. He is wrapped up warm, in a parka jacket, a jacket he doesn't recognise. It is not Dugalds. An owl hoots gleefully in a tree somewhere beyond startling him. Around him, he can feel a presence, something watching him. The wind howls again, and he turns around quickly, and he sees the gates, their advertisement and name shining in the moonlight: CHARNEL CEMETERY 1894. He smiles, then frowns because underneath the main sign is another sign and it read WHERE EVERYONE IS DYING TO GET IN! He laughs out loud, and then tries to calm himself down. He doesn't want to be seen here.

 

This time his dream has allowed the gates to be unlocked (in previous dreams the gate has remained locked) and he pushes them open, and walks in. Headstones all around him. Now a pang of fright does churn his stomach.

 

Duuuggaaallld.

 

The voice screeches through the cemetery.

'WHAT? WHAT?!' He shouts back. Hands with pieces of rotted flesh start protruding from the stinking earth.

NO!

Dugald-

He was woken by the lightning so suddenly he nearly cracked his head on the night table beside his bed. He looked at his bedside clock, warily. The clock proclaimed it was four fifty-six in the morning. He had to be at work at six. He slowly threw back the quilt then climbed out of bed, rubbing his tired eyes. It was windy outside, but the rain was slowing down to a fine drizzle.

 

The day at the bakery had been an easy one for Dugald. He didn't feel that fatigue he usually felt on his way home from work, in fact, he felt rather good. He felt, for once at least, in control of himself.

When he turned the corner at Green Avenue and saw the wrought iron fences, fear mixed with excitement rushed through him like an express train. He walked over and saw that the fence wasn't padlocked as it had been only the day before. Now the excitement turned to longing. He wanted to slip in and walk morbidly around the grounds, looking and reading the gravestones, like a child in a sweet shop. Then he remembered his nightmare, those hands poking and clawing out of the overgrown grass, nothing on them but a thin, rotted sheath that was once flesh. He shuddered. If that happened now, he'd die. He strolled back to the group of graves that he'd seen the day before and stared at that one puzzling epitaph: JACK O'CONNOR 1789-1846. An acrimonious wave of puzzlement swept over him, and he turned away. 'This is too fuckin' weird', he said to himself. Then an idea struck him. It was an odd idea, but so what? He'd do it anyway.

 

He went home and searched for his camcorder.

 


 


Chapter Three

 

 

The camcorder was in his back bedroom, neatly hiding behind all of the other useless crap he'd built up over the years. The camcorder worked though. The tripod was packed separately, but he found it under his porn stash in the box marked PRIVATE.

 

His idea (silly, but good if you wanted to find out if anything was happening) didn't fall into his lap, or didn't just come into his head like the switching on of a light bulb, nor did it fall into place suddenly. He had to work this out, and carefully, because if it went wrong, he would never be able to forgive himself. He hated getting things wrong, and he wasn't going to start today, either.

 

Dugald put on his leather jacket and black thermal gloves. He put the camcorder into his backpack, one he used for work. He walked slowly; he didn't want or need to rush.

 

This time when he arrived at the gates, he decided not to open them and simply walk in. He climbed in instead. It was eight p.m.

He had also packed a torch and he clicked it on. It was pitch black. The slight wind was cold on his face and he put his scarf over his mouth and cheeks. The light from the torch shone on the headstones and lit them up. For one terrifying moment, his nightmare came back to him all at once and he flinched. He remembered that voice, crying and slurring his name from the depths of its tomb. He got that out of his head straight away. Thinking stuff like that caused all kinds of problems.

 

He saw the dark outline of the chapel, its spire rising into the overcast sky. It scared him, but yet he felt enchanted. Enchanted to know what was on the other side of its protective plywood. Lightning stabbed the sky. Rain would likely follow soon, he thought. He took the camcorder from the rucksack and placed it in the soil in front of the headstone with that ever-puzzling epitaph: JACK O'CONNOR 1789-1846. He checked the eyepiece to see if it was straight. It was. He slipped a tape into the side slot and switched it on, and hit the night switch. Bingo. His idea was in action.

 

Walking back toward the gates, Dugald thought he heard something, not a voice or a rustle of the trees, but a shuffling, like someone trying to walk on a broken ankle. And it was coming from behind him.

For him.

 

He turned rapidly. 'Who's there?' He almost shouted.

Nothing.

He tried to reassure himself it was his imagination, but when he turned again to walk away, he saw it.

 

A corpse, its hair hanging down its face like wires, one eye missing and a yellow and stinking puss emerging from its blackened, rotted skin was shuffling toward him.

 

'HOLY SHIT!' Dugald ran as the thing tried to grab him with its thin, fleshless fingers. Dugald thought they looked more like claws. He didn't want to know, really. He just wanted out of the place. As he reached the gates he found himself muttering. 'Oh my God, fuck, please Lord, God please!'

 

This time he pulled the gates open and ran faster than he ever ran in his life. He tripped on a kerb and landed awkwardly.

He limped home that night.

 


 


Chapter Four

 

 

When he arrived home, he put some iodine on his ankle. It was swelling like a balloon. He had twisted it. He took two aspirins and a Novepine tablet to help him sleep. Not only was the pain of twisting his ankle bothering him, it was the fear. He was shaking violently all over. He made himself a hot chocolate, wondering what the thing was he had just seen. He knew it was a rotting corpse, but the dead don't just rise out of their graves and infinite slumber and try and kill you. He drank his coco and lay down on the couch, Sleep came twenty minutes later, and this time there were no dreams of any kind.

 

As he watched dawn break from the bedroom window, he was wondering how the hell he was going to get the camcorder back. The pain in his ankle had turned into a dull throbbing, and most of the swelling had gone down, but it hurt to put weight on. His head was also aching. He never in his life felt this shitty before.

 

Getting the camcorder would be easy, he thought, if he went during the day. He couldn't see the 'thing' or whatever it was coming out in broad daylight. He mulled over this thought for a while. If he wanted the camera, he had to get it sometime.

And today was as good a day as any.

 


 


Chapter Five

 

 

Dugald quickly got dressed. He made himself four hard boiled eggs and wolfed them down. Got to get that damn camera, he thought dutifully. A great feeling of downright vulgarity came over him and he felt ashamed. What if the camera hadn't filmed anything? What if it was just blank, just showing the headstones and nothing more? He was almost sick with longing to know. Outside the day was cloudless but cold. The sun shone brilliantly. There was hardly any breeze.

 

He went out at nine, wondering what his shit head boss was going to say and do when he found out Dugald had skipped work today. Now as he walked to the cemetery he muttered to himself, 'fuck him. In fact, fuck em' all.'

 

The cemetery seemed almost welcoming with the daylight pounding it. It was uninviting at all. He could hear the traffic on the Charnel turnpike, and it was music to his ears. Nothing like a good old dose of carbon monoxide in the morning, he thought bitterly.

 

He brushed that thought aside and looked at the gates. The fucking padlock was back on. He scratched his balding head. Someone was taking care of this place, and he wanted to know who. But if someone was taking care of the place, the grass would be cut (it looked like the everglades in there) and even if they were, what would be the point? The fucking place was derelict!

 

Dugald all at once wanted to know who had been locking and unlocking the gates. What purpose did it serve? Dugald thought. He knew the place had closed in the seventies; a sign near the gate reinforced this fact.

Once he was in, Dugald looked around. He saw what he didn't want to see. A digger. It wasn't being used, but he had an idea what it meant. The logo on the side of the digger gave it away. It was the Charnel County Council. They were going to demolish the place.

 

That just can't happen, Dugald thought.

 

No way.

 

He ran toward the plot of graves where he'd left his camcorder. He looked at the chapel. He saw there were temporary fences with signs on them guarding the perimeter of the place. He ran over and read the signs: NO ADMITTANCE. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. DANGER OF DEATH KEEP OUT.

 

'I DONT GIVE A FUCK!' He shouted. 'GO ON! GET RID OF THE PLACE YOU SACRELIGEOUS CUNTS!'

 

His headache had come back, in all its intensity.

 

'Fuck em, just-' He burst into tears and fell to his knees, and as he did, his inner voice spoke up sounding compassionate: Dugald, don't let them win! Get the camcorder and go home. Check what's on the tape. Come on old boy! Get with it. You do realise that you're crying on your knees in the middle of a disused cemetery, don't you?

 

'SHUT UP!' He screamed. The voice stayed silent. Dugald returned to the plot of graves. It was there. The camcorder was there. He picked it up and kissed it. He walked home with a look on his face that resembled gratitude.

 


 


Chapter Six

 

 

When he got home, Dugald was shaking. He didn't know whether to put the cassette into the VCR. He was frightened beyond frightened. What this terror signified was his own innermost fears.

 

He didn't expect anything so irrational, nor did he want to. The human brain is a fantastic factory for imaginations, where all ideas are allowed to work their magical illusions and go wild. He didn't want to see such a picture on his TV, and it dismayed him when he saw it.

The video was in the VCR, but he couldn't hit the play button. When he finally did push play, and when he saw it, his breakfast came up all at once. He saw a little girl had come from her resting place; she wore a beautiful outfit that her grieving parents would have chosen. She was maybe four or five. But the picture being shown wasn't that of a sweet little girl. Her complexion was sinister. Her arms had been maimed sometime, and Dugald couldn't watch this much longer. But before he could turn the tape off, the girl-thing spoke seemingly into the camcorder and at Dugald: 'DON'T COME HERE AGAIN' then the picture warped, fuzzed and cut to blackness.

 

Later, Dugald got up off the floor and decided to call his shit head boss and tell him where to shove his crappy, low paid labour.

 

'Yeah?' The voice said at the other end.

'Billy, that you?' Dugald said.

'Yeah, Dug, what happened today?'

'I'm not well, Bill, I-'

'Oh fuck the excuses, Dug, we were short staffed today!'

'Well, Billy boy, I've got something to tell you. Shove your crappy job up your wife's cunt. There's plenty of room!'

'YOU-', Billy tried to say, but Dugald hung up before he could talk. The he laughed. In fact Dugald Ryan laughed until he finally fell asleep.

 


 


Chapter Seven

 

 

He woke up sometime after eight that night feeling like shit. His mouth was horribly dry and he got a Pepsi from the fridge and gulped it. The drink made him belch, but it was soothing. What a day, he thought to himself.

 

He thought vehemently about the video and its macabre content. The video was still in the VCR and he thought: I will not view that again. Never.

 


 


Chapter Eight

 

 

Dugald is eleven and he's doing something which shatters whatever relationship he has with Carla Boswell when he goes behind her back and buys the rarest copy of the horror magazine in town. The magazine is a first edition Charnel Horror magazine.

 

He comes across it when Louis Drakes produces it from his school bag.

'But that's a first edition!' Dugald says.

'Yep, correct Duggie boy!' Louis says.

'How much?' Dugald says.

'Nothin'. Already got a buyer. Sorry.'

'Well how much is that buyer payin?' Dugald is itching for the magazine.

'Twelve bucks.' Louis says, smiling. This is obviously a lie.

'Well, er I'll give you fifteen.' He goes into his pocket and produces a ten and a five. All his money from the chores at home. He had been saving for a bike, but this was better than a bike.

'Naw.' Louis says. He can see the anticipation in Dugalds eyes. 'Ok. Yeah. But throw in a payday and you've got a deal.'

'You got it, Louie, my boy!'

So Dugald has paid the fifteen bucks and a payday bar and gazumped Carla Boswell for the magazine.

 

That was the daydream that came to Dugald James Ryan as he resisted the strong impulse to watch the video again and saw the look on the girl-things face; angry and rotted and crumpled. Also, the words the girl-thing had said; 'DON'T COME HERE AGAIN!' It seemed to highlight almost exactly what Carla Boswell had said: 'Please don't call again.' She'd said that when she had found out from Louis that Dugald had bought the magazine. But sometime, somewhere he had lost the magazine that would surely be worth over two hundred dollars by now, and in a few years a lot more. He missed Carla, and he hadn't seen her since she and her father moved to Los Angeles after Mrs Boswell was killed in a car wreck on I-95. He smiled and thought: No great loss, really. When all the cards were out, death is just a part of life. Mrs Boswell had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. No sweat.

 

At midnight of Friday, Dugald had got those inexplicable thoughts and dreams out of his mind, and he hadn't even thought about the cemetery. Now he was reading through an ancestry book called 'The O'Connor Ancestry.' He'd got it from the library earlier that day.

The book did the ancestry from the years 1801-1903, 1801 being long after O'Connor had been born. So it didn't include Jack O'Connor in the births section.

 

Dugald had decided to research this scary puzzle and find out why O'Connor could have been buried in the cemetery forty-odd years before it had been built. He remembered the first day he'd seen the headstone, and the puzzlement that followed. Now, though, he was gunning for answers. Answers that would probably never be discovered. And they probably wouldn't be, the place was being demolished. He thought positively though. Piousness, he thought, and giggled. If he was going to be a sanctimonious prick, he might as well indulge in the history of Mr O'Connor. And of the cemetery itself, of course.

 

O'Connor had himself a stalker, it seemed. A posthumous one at that. Dugald had his reasons, although nondescript, he was utterly enchanted. He couldn't grasp the reality, but he was also a neophyte in this kind of thing. Tracing the last steps of someone who had died over a hundred and sixty years ago was near to impossible, assuming he talked to the right people. A genealogist in the town would do. Fuckin' A.

 

Dugald needed answers for his own pleasure. So no talking to anyone. It was like finishing a jigsaw puzzle and only just realising you've got piece missing. What would happen? Well, you'd be hell bent on finding the elusive piece.

This was the way Dugald felt, and he was beginning to go mad.

'This is just so, so-.' He couldn't finish. He grabbed his coat and slammed the door behind him as he went out.

 


 


Chapter Nine

 

 

The night was as dull as ditch water. Clouds stuck in the sky like dirty snow on a country road. Dugald hardly noticed the fact that there was going to be a massive storm, and after such a wonderful cloudless day, who would? He was lucky not to be caught in the storm before he got to the cemetery gates. He'd heard a few rumbles of thunder and saw one flash-fork of lightning, but the rain didn't start. Yet, anyway.

 

The cemetery was the same as always, but Dugald sensed a momentary change, whether important or not, and dismissed it instantly. That inner voice spoke up again, this time more demanding: 'Dugald, don't go in there. You heard what that thing said. And anyway, my old pal, a cemetery is a fucking cemetery.'

 

The voice ceased and he was glad. If that interior voice carried on, he would lose his mind.

 

The voice was alien as the surface of Mars; he'd never heard such crap in his entire life. He climbed over the fence, aware now that again the padlock had been removed, and he chuckled. His mind and thoughts and full attention turned to the numerous graves and uncut grass that entwined with the tombstones. He wondered how many graves were actually in the cemetery. He pondered over that for a minute and decided that it didn't matter...after all a cemetery was a cemetery.

The graves where his puzzlement lay were quite dirty. The grass had totally gone and there were three, deep holes. They looked like they had been dug with a spade- and with expert hands. He felt sick. The caskets were not in the graves. Empty. Above him, the clouds finally succumbed to their destiny and it rained, hard. Bits of hail fell with it.

 

'Oh, great,' he muttered. He tried to cheer himself up with the thought that this might not be such a bad thing. But part of him said different. Part of him wanted to get the fuck out of the cemetery. Post Haste.

He looked down toward the gates from where he was stood. He didn't know or realise that the inside of the cemetery was so precipitous, because he'd never paid that much attention.

 

The wind had picked up, blowing dead leaves around like confetti. Good old autumn, he thought.

 

The cemetery had life. A low rumbling started and Dugald screamed in shock. Suddenly something moved in the shadows, behind O'Connor's tombstone. Dugald stiffened.

 

'Hello?' He called out, shakily. 'O'Connor? I'm here to help you. Help you onto the other side.' This was a lie. He was saying all this out of sheer terror. He backed up a little bit, nearly tripping over a fallen headstone. Something started to shuffle out of the shadows. Dugald squinted a bit, trying to make it out, then he gasped in a huge intake of air that filled his lungs, and his eyes nearly popped from their sockets. He was rooted to the spot by fright. He found himself staring at a horrible monster. The O'Connor thing had come to life; it looked like a black tarry skeleton. It spoke in a voice like someone trying to talk through a mouthful of food, the true voice of the O'Connor thing, undisguised by its attempt to sound human again.

'YOU WERE WARNED, DUGALD, NEVER TO RETURN!' It said in a lustful croak, shuffling toward Dugald, raising its arms to clutch and grab him.

The chapel blew its plywood from itself and lit up in a strong blue light. Thunder rumbled and the rain and hail pounded him, drenching him.

 

'NO!' He wailed. Tombstones fell and graves opened, gargling sounds came with the rotted bodies as they levitated from their graves. 'COME!' Another voice screamed. Dugald turned rapidly and nearly fell again. A dark patch appeared near his crotch as he wet himself.

'THE TIME HAS COME!' The O'Connor thing screamed. It sounded pleased.

'You're not real, you're not real-' Dugald said. But it did no good. He was sure he could hear the chapel moaning. Blood ran down its walls, a yellow puss looking substance oozing from its spire, and still it continued to moan and groan, like a tortured animal.

 

The graves launched their headstones into the air and they landed all over the path like rubbish. The trees started to burn like giant torches...and Dugald began to smile. Then grin. Then laugh like a lunatic. The O'Connor thing turned its head, the bones cracking in its neck.

 

Dugald sat down. Dark shadows swallowed the fire light and moved toward him.

 

The thing gained on him, and as it did, Dugald began to scream and scream. Then silence.

 


 

EPILOGUE

 

 

The Charnel fire truck had been dowsing the flames for close to three hours. The State Police had arrived at the scene first.

 

'Whaddya think, boss?' One scrawny trooper asked.

'Kids. Arson. The little bastards!' Trooper Bellamy said. He lit a cigarette.

'Sir?' The scrawny trooper asked.

'Yeah?'

'Oh, nothing I'll tell you later.'

'Wait for me a minute, lad, I need to check something.' Bellamy said.

'Yes, Sir.'

 

Bellamy walked down the narrow path toward a little patch of four graves, all intact, except for a few bits of plywood after the explosion. The grass around them were overgrown, it almost covered them. He looked at the headstones. One of them read JACK O'CONNOR 1890-1964, another JOSIE DEAKIN 1912-1917, but one, the last one, although puzzling and macabre to him, read: DUGALD RYAN 1962-1998-NO GREAT LOSS, REALLY.

 

Bellamy walked away.

 

He was enchanted.....

THE END

Hyde, 2003-2010 COPYRIGHT PAUL RAIMI.

 

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Priyanka Jan 3, 2012

good work Paul...!!!!!!!!

Bon Rose Jan 2, 2012

Good story Paul. I loved the last sentence! I noticed a few misspelled words and this sentence I think should have "not" in it - "It was uninviting at all." But I'm sure if you decide to put it in a book or e-book you'll double check all that. I found mys

Paul J Jan 2, 2012

I like to have realistic names in my stories and I happen to know someone called Dugald (he has since passed) and I used that. It is a strange name, and fitting, especially for the character in my story. I'm glad you liked it; the idea for this spawned wh

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