by Kevin Jones
(This story contains murder and dark fantasy-horror elements.)
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve been there — to the graveyard. How many times I’ve felt the bone-chilling stares of the headstones as I walked through the raven-black gates. Every time, I gripped my flowers, my eyes roaming the silence, my heart pumping like a maniac because I felt something. At first, it was just the headstones. They surrounded me like a hungry murder of crows, each one different in its own way. Everything within me screamed to go back to the entrance, but the memories of my mother called to me. When I reached her headstone, the previous flowers I had laid stolen from the desperate fingers of the wind, the memories came stabbing back.
The midnight cries of pain.
Mother rolling out of bed, too weak to stand on her stick-thin legs, her curly brown hair matted down with sweat. She would puke before I could get there, and her eyes would push back so deep in her skull that I couldn’t see the color anymore. Just the pain.
“Kill me,” she would whisper, laying on the bedroom floor, the only light in the room coming from the hallway.
“Mother, I–”
“Please,” she interrupted, weakly swatting away my hands.
Please.
My lips trembled. Every inch of my body shivered as I stood before her, my fists balled. Tears fell from my face, staining the carpet along with the puke. I knew her. I knew my mother. But this wasn’t the woman I recognized.
Silence swallowed the room. Heat sizzled the tips of my fingers and Death, because I knew it was there, stood in the corner, masked in the shadows. I took a step, wordless, and I knew Mother could see it. The look in my eyes. What I was about to do. And she smiled. She smiled and closed her eyes before I grabbed a pillow from the bed and shoved it over her face. Her lungs, already weak from sickness, fought for air like the madness that clawed for my sanity. But I didn’t stop. I stayed quiet, my body shaking violently while her boney hands tore at the carpet. Death whispered to me. It told me to keep going. It reminded me of the constant suffering Mother was in. So, I kept pushing, kept going.
Until it stopped.
I laid the red flowers on a dirty patch in front of her headstone, shaking away the memories. I knew that’s why I came. To see, by some shred of luck, if visiting her would show me something that I could never see before about why I killed her. When she died, I knew the pain would no longer grasp her bones. That steadied me and made it seem okay.
I stood, wiping the dirt from my jeans, noticing the rope in the grass and felt the feeling return.
Being watched.
I bit my lip, scrutinizing the dead trees. The ancient monuments of greying stone with cracks that looked like wrinkled skin. The death-black crows with jagged bleaks and empty eyes that walked on the iron-picketed fences and made my skin crawl. The sorrow and misery evenly draped on every inch of the graveyard. All of it.
“You alright?”
I turned at the voice, nearly losing my footing as I quickly stood. I looked. Everywhere. Just crows, just trees, and just headstones. Thunder rumbled even louder above. The smell of rain coated the air. I looked at Mother’s headstone, wondering if the voice was in my head.
“Hello?”
I swiveled again, my eyes opened wide. A crow cried from the limb of a tree and the thunder rumbled again. Louder. No, no, this wasn’t right. I had to go. Mother wanted to be dead. She asked me — begged me to end all the suffering.
“Don’t go.”
I screamed without thinking, my hand flying to cover my mouth.
“What’s wrong, darling? Cat got your tongue?”
I took a step back. A man, a dead man, stood in the hole of a grave, only half of his body showing on the surface. Dirt covered nearly every inch of his dead-grey skin and mangled clothes. No eyes filled his sockets, nor did teeth hang from his gums.
This wasn’t real.
“Oh, but it is,” he growled, his voice deep and deranged like a brainless beast. “It is real.”
I shook my head, wincing from the pain clogging my head.
“Take a breath, my dear.” He waved a decaying arm. “Have a seat with me, hmm?”
“Who…” I cleared my throat, every part of me frozen with fear. “Who–”
“That’s Tom,” said another voice behind me. “Don’t mind him. He’s just one of the graveyard’s eyes.”
I sharply turned around. A woman, dead and in the midst of decay like the other, with a wide smile that sent spiders crawling down my back, stood in an open grave.
“God, Betty, what is it? I’m trying to talk to the lady.”
“Are you?” she snarled. “Or are you trying to get something from her?”
“Nonsense,” declared Tom, now pointing his skinless fingers to my mother’s headstone. “Sit with me.”
“No,” I whimpered.
“She doesn’t believe it, does she, Tom? Oh, the poor girl. You startled her to death!”
“No, I did not.” He paused before adding, “Did I?”
I rubbed the side of my face, feeling their cold stares dig into me like a crow’s beak. “This isn’t real.” I pushed away the grueling fear and began to walk, each stride shaky.
“He’ll get you before you leave,” taunted Tom.
“Who?” I asked, slowing my pace. I eyed the rope again.
“That feeling, my dear … the one that haunts you every time you come here … is him.”
Betty nodded. “Yes, yes. He’s been watching you, dear. Sad to say but the devil rides his coffin. He wants you.”
“Why?” I looked between the both of them, another burst of thunder shaking the air.
Tom’s eye sockets became tighter. A thin line suddenly formed his lips, the grey skin stretching in unnatural ways like a contortionist. I took a steadying breath.
Was this real?
“Confess.”
I blinked. “Confess to what?”
Thunder rumbled again. The dead trees swayed from the quickening wind.
“You better hurry,” Betty whispered. “Before He comes.”
“Who!” I screamed, feeling the tears gather behind my eyes.
Tom pointed a finger behind me and mumbled, “Him.”
I followed his finger, followed it to the malevolent figure that stood beside a tree, one with the shadows. My heart dropped to my stomach, and I shook my head, remembering it from the night Mother died.
Death. It was here.
“Tell us what really happened to your mother.”
My mother …
I took a breath. “I killed her. She asked me to do it.”
“Hmm.” Tom clicked his rotten tongue and the woman chuckled. I blinked, no longer seeing Death by the tree.
“Lie again, my dear, and we won’t stop him.” Tom’s voice became angry like a demon. “We know what happened. She wasn’t sick.”
“Yes, she was!” I shot back. In response, lightning blasted, covering the world in blue. Shadows danced around me, too fast for me to follow. Tom and the woman watched, their grins stretching from ear to ear like a sick clown. Whispers danced around me, taunting, making Tom and the woman laugh.
This wasn’t right. I … I helped Mother. She was sick and old! It was time for her to die.
Another strike of lightning shattered the graveyard and Death was before me. But it wasn’t Death. Mother’s face, grey and withered to the bone with black eyes, stared back at me, only inches from my face. I couldn’t move.
“Say it,” Tom and Betty yelled together.
Mother was silent. A cry stormed my body and my legs swayed. I fought to look away from the eyes, her swallowing black eyes, but they held me like the dead’s hands. No, it wasn’t okay. Nothing I did was. Seeing her … seeing what I did …
“Say it,” they told me again.
Something inside of me cracked as the memories tried to overtake me — tried to pull me in its cruel dark depths with no room for remorse. Flashes of my life before her death, before what I did because I had enough, stabbed at my head, my eyes, my knees as they buckled beneath me and sent me falling to the wet ground below.
Say it.
Tears streamed from my eyes. Finally, the thing inside of me broke like a stone shattering glass, and, suddenly, I was back inside of her house, a headache thudding my skull from the smell of piss on the floor, my arms burning from the constant scrubbing, hearing about my friends while I stayed trapped in the house caring for Mother. It wasn’t fair. She was already old. She was ruining my life. I was becoming an adult! So, I poisoned her food. Every day, I crumbled rat poisoning into whatever she ate. I did it until she begged me to kill her from the swallowing pain, and I did.
Mother’s eyes released me, leaving me breathless. Sweat fell down my face and everything burned in agony. Time must have passed because it was dark, a kind of darkness that now reached my soul.
What I did was unforgivable.
Gulping air, I stood up on shaky feet.
But there wasn’t dirt beneath me.
No longer did the wind reek of death.
No longer were there eyes from devilish crows, watching.
Looking up, there wasn’t a sky with a moon; just a roof.
My mother’s roof.
“Please,” someone whispered.
I turned at the voice. A pinch of light creeped from under the doorway, showing a thin shivering body covered in a limp gown.
Mother.
Something moved in the corner. Even without looking I could feel it … feel the depthless cold eyes cut into me, whispering.
It was Death.
A sob cracked out of me as I threw myself over her. Bone jutted beneath skin from how malnourished she was because of me. Yet, she was alive. She was here.
Somehow.
“I’m sorry,” I said through the tears. “I thought I killed you, Mother. I thought—”
She softly planted a cold finger on my lips. “You did kill me,” she began.
Light from beneath the door creeped away like fingers trailing skin.
“And now you will pay.”
Out of nowhere, a strong hand grasped my foot. I screamed, digging my nails into the carpet as it tried to drag me under the bed.
“This is what you deserve,” she said calmly. “This is what you did to me.”
The hand pulled harder, breaking skin.
“I’m sorry!”
My nails ripped as it pulled me farther. I clawed at the carpet, arms straining, heart screaming for my mother.
This was how she felt, I realized between sobs, now smelling death. All because of me.
Finally, the hand took me, but I didn’t scream.
Only darkness greeted me.
Category: Featured, Short Story