II. The Cemetery
I.
I met Caleb before I met Beck. We sat next to one another in 7th grade Marine Bio.
We had to dissect a fish together. I don’t remember what species of fish it had been, only that it stank so badly that I swayed in my seat and nearly passed out.
Caleb noticed and immediately took the scalpel from me, ignoring my protests.
“I’ve got this,” he said. “You can take the notes.”
And he cut the fish open by himself while I jotted down the notes.
We became friends after that. There’s something about eviscerating a dead fish that brings you together.
Caleb introduced me to Beck. Caleb held Beck’s hand as she came out to their father, and Caleb took us around town to uncover its secrets.
And now Caleb was dead.
Beck wailed over his body, and Madeline vomited into a bush.
I was distraught, and I was angry. I was angry at myself because I was thinking about the possibility of us being stuck here when I should have been focusing on the death of one of my best friends.
But I couldn’t help it.
If Caleb had been the only one who knew how to get out, we were screwed beyond screwed.
Ezra crouched over Beck, rubbed her back, and talked soothingly. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was worked. He helped Beck to her feet and wrapped her in a hug. As she walked towards me, Ezra took off his jacket and gently placed it over Caleb’s face.
I embraced Beck, and she began to cry again. Her body shook with sobs, and I didn’t know what to say so I just held her.
Eventually her tears subsided and she pushed away from me. She stared at the sky with red eyes, her tears left tracks on her cheeks.
Ezra stood by Madeline, who had stopped throwing up. He reached to take her hand, and she recoiled from his touch.
Her hands curled into fists, and she marched towards us, and before I could do anything, she slapped Beck and raised her hand to do it again.
I jumped between them, and Ezra grabbed Madeline and held her back. Madeline screeched and clawed at the air like a cat.
Beck didn’t react. She kept staring at the sky, her cheek bright red.
“Let me go!” Madeline screamed. “Let me go, Ezra! It’s her fault that Caleb is dead! It’s all her fault.”
“It’s not her fault!” I yelled angrily. “How dare you! This isn’t her fault at all!”
That angered her even more, and she lunged at me. Ezra was lean and tall while Madeline was petite, he easily pulled her away.
“Cut it out, Maddy.” He said sharply. “I know you’re hurting; we all are, but it isn’t Beck’s fault.”
Madeline laughed, it was cruel and ugly. “How is it not her fault? She fought with him, and he fell! She did it.”
“She did not,” Ezra said sadly. “He tripped and fell. We saw it.”
“He wouldn’t have tripped if they hadn’t fought! He would be okay - he would still be here and not dead!”
She crumpled to the ground, sobbing, and Ezra hugged her.
I was grateful that he was here. He was the calm voice of reason amidst tragedy. I don’t know how he did it, but he must have had a lot of practice dealing with hysterics with Madeline as a sister.
“Do you think Caleb would want you blaming his twin?” I heard him mutter to Madeline.
“It is my fault,” a small voice said to my left.
Beck.
I turned to her and grabbed her hands.
“It’s not your fault,” I said firmly. “It’s not your fault at all, Beck.”
She wouldn’t look at me.
“But it is,” she whispered. “My brother is gone just like mom. They’re both gone.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I drew her to me again.
She wrapped her arms around me, and over her shoulder, I looked at Caleb’s still body, Ezra’s jacket a shroud over his face.
❧
“How are we going to get out?” Ezra said. He was looking at the thicket of trees we had come from.
Madeline rolled her eyes. “Do you really think we’re stuck here? As if Caleb had some secret powers that led us here? It’s a trick, you guys, a joke. We get back by walking out of here, of course.”
Ezra looked dubious, and while I hoped she was right, from what we had been experiencing, I didn’t think it was that simple.
Madeline looked at us and rolled her eyes again. “You guys are such pussies. Watch.”
She stomped towards the trees, and her confidence gave me hope.
Maybe she’s right, I thought. Perhaps it was just a joke. We’ll be okay; we’ll get out.
And then she stopped abruptly.
“What the fuck?” She muttered.
“What is it?” Ezra said; he walked over to her. She said nothing, and my curiosity got the better of me.
“Come on,” I said to Beck, who was sitting on the ground, staring at Caleb’s body
“Let’s see what’s going on.” Hesitantly, she took my hand, and I helped her up. We had nearly reached Madeline and Ezra when Ezra shouted,
“Madeline, stop!”
And then there was the sound of something sizzling, the smell of burning, and Madeline’s scream ripped through the air. She fell to the ground, gripping her hand.
We ran toward them, and Ezra shot out his arm to prevent us from going further. He looked sick.
“Don’t. Don’t go any farther.”
“What is that?” I asked. The air in front of us was rippling, shimmering like sunlight reflecting on water. It was beautiful. Gorgeous. Entranced, I reached out to touch it. Ezra grabbed my hand and held it.
“Don’t,” he said, voice tight.
Madeline was still holding her hand, howling.
I spotted something on the ground. It was small and shaped like an eraser on a pencil. I frowned and picked it up and then dropped it in disgust.
It was the tip of a finger with a melted pink acrylic nail attached to it.
The smell of burning flesh was so strong, and when I looked at Madeline’s hand, I retched.
The tip of her pointer finger was gone, but there was no blood. The wound was smooth and looked as though it had been cauterized.
I looked at that invisible shimmering wall. It had sliced Madeline’s finger off.
Beck’s face was expressionless. She picked the nub of Madeline’s finger up off the ground and rotated it slowly, mildly interested.
“There’s like a force field here,” Ezra said, gesturing at it. “Like a barrier. I don’t think we can leave this way.”
“Are you okay? Does it hurt?” I asked Madeline. She looked up at me, tears in her eyes.
“No, it doesn’t hurt. It did at first. It hurt a lot.” She flexed her hand and inspected it. “This is so weird.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I’m glad it doesn’t hurt.”
I turned to Beck and Ezra, who examined the barrier, careful not to touch it. Ezra gingerly poked it with a stick he had found and jumped back as it caught on fire.
“Beck?” I said.
“Hm?” she replied distractedly.
“Are you sure there was nothing in Caleb’s notebook? Like positively sure?”
Her face scrunched.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I mean, there could have been something I missed.”
“We should look at it,” I said. “There might be something in it that could help us.”
Beck nodded. Her eyes were still red, but I saw the determination in them and the way she set her jaw.
“I think I threw it over there.” She said and pointed towards the cemetery. “It-“
Her words were cut off by her sudden gasp. Her eyes went wide with terror and her entire body began to shake.
I whipped my head around so fast my neck cracked. I froze, and my heart pounded in my chest.
The door to the church was wide open, and a figure stood at its entrance.
The figure was tall and as white as a ghost. It bent at the waist and stood crookedly to one side, as though its back were broken.
The darkness that flooded out of the doorway especially pronounced its whiteness.
It had wild white hair and wore a shaggy white robe. Its face was the color of chalk, and it’s lips were bright red with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. The smile revealed rows and rows of sharp white teeth.
I couldn’t breathe. It was as though the air had been sucked out and replaced with this drowning feeling. My lungs wouldn’t expand. I am going to suffocate; I thought.
“What is that?” I said when I could breathe again.
“It’s The Witch,” Beck breathed. “The Witch, it’s her.”
Ezra had gone very still, and Madeline was breathing so hard that I thought she would pass out.
It’s The Witch, I thought. The Witch, she’s real.
The Witch, The Witch, The Witch.
Beck’s scream crashed through my thoughts.
“She’s got him! She’s got him!” She pointed at the church, hysterical. “Caleb! Caleb!”
Caleb’s body was lying at The Witch’s feet, Ezra’s jacket wrapped around his neck like a noose.
The Witch stared at us, still smiling crookedly. Her long tongue ran over pointy teeth, leaving a smear of something dark red.
Blood.
She raised a long finger and bent it in a come hither motion. Caleb’s body turned right side up, standing.
His head flopped to the side like a rag doll; and when The Witch bent her finger again, his body slowly began to turn and twist. His joints broke one by one.
His spine snapped, his hips popped, and his ribs cracked.
“Stop!” Beck screamed. “Please stop!”
But his body kept twisting, kept turning, kept breaking, and then
It stopped and Caleb’s body was as crooked as The Witch’s; contorted beyond recognition.
The wind kicked up and showered us in dirt and through slitted eyes, I saw that The Witch was still staring at us.
And then I heard her. Her voice sounded like broken glass had shredded her throat. A croak punctuated each word.
It was as though she were speaking directly into my ear.
“You will not leave,” she rasped. “You are mine. You are mine. You will not go.”
My bladder let go. I pissed myself, and warm pee trickled down my leg.
And then she and Caleb were gone, as if they had disappeared with the wind.
The church’s door slammed closed, and The Witch left us numb and terrified in her wake.
❧
Beck threw herself at the door, Ezra and I right behind her.
“Caleb!” she screamed, pounding on it. “Caleb! Caleb, please!”
Ezra and I looked at one another. He shrugged and grabbed the door handle, twisting and shaking but it didn’t budge.
Beck was still screaming; she was hysterical. Her laughter was piercing and wild, and her eyes rolled in her head.
So many terrible things had happened, but this scared me the most. She was having a mental break and slipping into insanity.
She’s losing it, I thought. She’s losing it, and who could blame her?
Beck kept laughing and crying, laughing and crying. Intervals of madness. She was losing her sanity, and I didn’t know what to say or do.
Something shoved me hard, and I nearly fell over.
“Move,” Madeline snarled, and without hesitation, she slapped Beck hard across the face.
Beck stopped laughing and stared at her, dazed. Madeline smacked her again. She grabbed her shirt collar and pulled her close.
“Get it the fuck together, Rebecka.” She snarled. “For you, for Caleb, for all of us! There’s enough shit we have to deal with it, so get it together.”
She slapped her once more, and I winced.
Overkill, I thought.
But Beck’s eyes were bright and clear now.
I never thought I would be grateful for Madeline.
There was an awkward silence that hung in the air.
“Thank you,” Beck said quietly, rubbing her cheek. “Thanks, Maddy.”
Madeline smiled at her. “You’re welcome, Beck.”
“How’s your finger, Maddy?” Ezra asked dryly.
Madeline flipped him off. “This one is perfect.”
❧
The sun was setting, and the horizon burned.
I walked in its orange light and looked for the notebook while Ezra and Beck tried to open the door. Madeline sat on the crumbling steps examining her hand.
“It’s like it’s cemented shut,” Beck groaned as they pushed all their weight on it.
The notebook was near where Caleb had snapped his neck, on top of the memorial plaque. I stepped around the headstones gingerly and picked the notebook up. I paused and frowned as I read the plaque’s engraved inscription.
It said:
Baby
000000 - 000000
And underneath that was a crude drawing of a stork.
Caleb’s words from earlier ran through my head.
“The trees! I figured out that you have to trust the trees. And then the crows follow them, but not the bats; the bats are liars. And the grave! The baby’s grave. It’s there; it’s all there.
Before I could stop myself, I brushed the epigraph with my fingers, and the words began to glow red.
Crouching over the grave, I looked through the notebook carefully. It was blank, just as Beck had said. But as I reached the end, I spotted a litany of words written on the bottom right of the page in Caleb’s neat script.
the bell
dirt
drown
burial
sacrifice
Not much, but it was something.
I closed the notebook.
“Guys?” I called. They stopped what they were doing and hurried over to me.
Their faces glowed as they stood in front of the headstone.
“What is this?” Beck asked. She bent to read the inscription and then looked up at me.
“The baby’s grave….”
I nodded. “Yup, the one he talked about.”
“Why is it glowing?” Ezra asked. He looked unnerved.
“I touched it,” I admitted. “I touched it, and it just started doing this. I also found this.”
I showed them what Caleb had written.
Beck rolled her eyes.
“Of course, so cryptic he can’t write full sentences.”
“So, we have to get to the bell,” Madeline said. She was looking up at the steeple, doubt all over her face. “Easier said than done.”
The walls of the church were smooth despite its dilapidated state. There would be no way to climb it to reach the bell. It wasn’t a particularly tall building, but if you fell, it would hurt.
“Looks like it,” Ezra said. He was still looking at the glowing grave. “But we have to get in somehow, and I don’t think the door is how. Maybe…” He trailed off.
“Maybe?” I prompted.
“Maybe we’re not meant to get in that way.” He gestured towards the church door.
He walked around the expanse of the cemetery and eventually crouched in front of a small white one.
He paused and pressed his hand onto it. Underneath his palm, it glowed an ethereal shade of gold.
He looked over at us. “This one says Child, but with sixes instead of zeros. And there’s a drawing of a face.” He looked sick. “A face with eyes but no mouth. I’m guessing the numbers are the ages they died.” He frowned. “But what does any of this mean?”
“I have no idea,” I said; I looked around, and another grave caught my eye. It was in much better condition than the others. It looked brand new.
My heart was beating fast, and it leaped into my throat as I read the epigraph.
Somebody died in the creek, you know - a young boy.
That boy had been my friend. He had lived next door, but when he died, his family had moved away.
It had been years since it happened, and nobody talked about it. Nothing was exciting or mysterious about his death. A young boy had drowned. Case closed.
Just an ordinary tragedy in an average town. It happens all the time.
I had seen the police carry his body out of the woods, and I had gone to the funeral with my parents and brothers.
We hadn’t gone to the cemetery afterward because, as my mom told me, his parents had him burned so he could always be with them, no matter where they went.
So why was his headstone here?
It said:
Aiden Green
DROWNED
And a drawing of a body, its stomach bursting and crawling with bugs.
Wordlessly I pressed my hand to the smooth stone, which glowed dark blue. The color of the water Aiden had drowned in.
I have never told anybody that I had watched him die. It has always been my secret. A memory that I’ve buried and left to rot, but sometimes I dreamed about it, and sometimes I wished I had been the one that died.
I watched as the headstone blurred and the drawing transformed. It was as though the stars were projecting onto his grave the last picture of Aiden Green ever to grace the earth.
His body lay on the muddy banks, and his eyes were open and full dirt and algae. Dark liquid seeped through his puffy lips, his stomach was bloated, and I knew it was full of bugs.
And then it changed. The dead boy turned into a dead girl. Her hair was long and curly, and her skin was dark brown.
Her stomach had burst open, and from her innards, flowers bloomed.
Me. It was me.
It confirmed what I had already known. I was supposed to have drowned that day. Not Aiden.
We had been wading in the river and trying to catch small fish in our cupped hands.
This is where things get hazy. It’s as though someone has stabbed my memory and left it full of holes.
One moment Aiden and I were splashing each other and laughing, and the next, I was flailing in the river, trying to scream, but I swallowed mouthful after mouthful of water.
And then I’m lying on the ground, shivering and terrified. I watched helplessly as the water overtook and swallowed Aiden.
He never resurfaced, no matter how much I screamed and begged. He was gone.
I remember running through the woods, cold and scared, but I did not slow down. I ran until I reached my house, locked myself in my room, and cried in my bed for the rest of the day.
They found Aiden two days later and would have found him sooner if I had said something. Maybe they could have saved him if I had run fast enough and gotten help.
It was supposed to be me. I wanted to scream in his parents’ faces at his funeral, but I said nothing.
It’s remained my secret. It was mine and mine alone.
The Witch knew. Why else would she have this in her cemetery? It didn’t make sense because they told me he had been turned ash and bone.
Perhaps that was true, but it didn’t matter here. Because here was The Witch’s realm. She decided what her reality comprised.
I saw it so clearly. I imagined Aiden’s bloated face gazing up at me from underneath the ground. His torso would be splayed open like the fish in Marine Bio, and his eyes would be full of algae and grave dirt.
“I’m sorry, Aiden,” I said. “I am so sorry.”
At my words, as though inscribed by an invisible hand, letters appeared and formed into one word:
sacrifice
It glowed blue like the ocean.
“This is dumb.” A voice said behind me. I jumped. It was Madeline; she scowled at the headstone. “I mean, this is cool and all, but uh, how is it supposed to help?”
But I knew what to do, and I knew how to get in.
Without a word, I ran towards the brook, which in the night looked like it were full of black ink. It was much deeper than I thought, and that was good. That made it easy for me to sink into its depths and drown as I should have years ago.
This will show you guys the way, I thought. It will. I know it.
At least you guys will get out. Don’t you get it? I’m the sacrifice. I have to drown. It’s supposed to be me in that grave. Not Aiden.
The cool water burned my lungs, but eventually, the pain subsided, and I didn’t hurt anymore. I couldn’t feel anything. Everything was so calm and peaceful. My vision was fading. If this was what dying was, it wasn’t so bad.
“It should have been you.”
It wasn’t bad at all.
“You should have died instead.”
I’m lying on mud, and soft lips are pressed against my own. I recognized the shape of those lips. I have kissed them countless times.
They breathed into me until I could breathe on my own. I vomited brackish water, and when I opened my eyes, Beck was above me. She was soaking wet and looked terrified.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She gasped. “What the fuck, Lou?”
I tried to answer, but more water bubbled up my throat.
“It was supposed to be me,” I murmured. “I was supposed to die.”
“Well, great, well done, you nearly did,” Beck snapped. She grabbed and held me and kissed me hard. “Don’t ever do that again.” She whispered into my ear. Her breath was so warm. “I can’t lose you, too. I can’t.”
I hugged her back but said nothing. I was exhausted.
When I felt I could stand, Beck, helped me up. I shivered, it was night now, and I was drenched. If The Witch didn’t kill me, my catching pneumonia definitely would. I felt horrible that Beck had gotten wet too. But I had to do it. It was the only way we could move forward.
Back at Aiden’s grave, I saw that the headstone had been wiped clean–no epigraph, no drawing, just a smooth black slate.
I am so sorry, Aiden, I thought, and the ground underneath me trembled ever so slightly. From the soil, I heard in a small voice that would always belong to a child:
“I forgive you.”
I touched the headstone again, and this time, it didn’t just glow. It rumbled and shifted forward, and I had to jump back to avoid falling into the chasm and the stairs that had been revealed. Steep stairs that, from what I could see, led deep into the ground.
The light from the moon revealed at the very bottom a solid stone path.
Always with the paths.
There was a long silence, and then Madeline giggled uneasily.
“This is some Harry Potter shit,” she said, still laughing.
“Some Legend of Zelda shit,” Ezra added.
I laughed weakly.
“Good job nearly killing yourself for this,” Beck said, but she didn’t sound mad. She sounded like she wanted to laugh as well.
“No problem,” I croaked, and I cleared my throat. “Well, should we go in?” Beck nodded.
Ezra went down first, then Madeline, then me, and last came Beck. Her hand was warm on the small of my back.
I was grateful that if I died here, I would not die alone. At least I would be surrounded by friends and the woman I loved.
We descended into a darkness I have never known before, and I watched the moon until it vanished and the dirt swallowed us.