GRAVEYARD SHIFT

MY best friend in school was Darrell Banks. I nicknamed him “Spud” because his favorite thing to eat was French Fries, or some variation on the theme ­­– home fries, hash browns, chips, and hush puppies, but, curiously, he detested potato salad.

Spud and I ran wild as kids and got into scrapes and minor trouble, but mostly we were “good boys” growing up in small town America, playing sports, mowing lawns, and sneaking about.

When we were fifteen, we’d slip out under cover of darkness and stealthily roam the desolate streets like in some Twilight Zone episode, dodging the flunky town cop, Kenny Wimpole (“Wimpy”), who was about as adept at catching curfew violators as a dogcatcher trying to nail Marmaduke with a butterfly net. Our favorite place for thrills was to trespass on the private property of the Old Burying Ground.

One night at Spud’s we were watching a Don Knotts movie, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, where the feckless protagonist takes on a bet to spend the night in a haunted house. We were smitten with the notion of putting our courage to test in the town cemetery. Now all we needed was a bet to place, so the next day we approached a couple of older guys who liked us and clued them in on our bold scheme.

“You’ll never get away with it, girls,” scoffed Joe.

“Yeah,” said Brad, “You creampuffs could get in some big trouble!”

I said, “How about a bet. Ten bucks says we can do it.”

Brad smirked, “Ten bucks! Is that all you momma’s boys can scrounge up? Fifty sounds more like it. Each.”

Spud and I exchanged wide-eyed glances and sly grins, certain we could win the bet.

Joe inquired how we planned to prove our case. “Knowing you little fartbrains, you’ll just say you spent the night.”

“Prove it,” Brad said, “or you’ll have to cough up the dough. Any idea how many lawns you’ll be mowin’ to come up with a hundred bucks?”

The only way this was going to work would be if Brad and Joe met us at the entrance gate at 5 a.m. when our “graveyard shift” would be up. Since they were so confident about winning the bet, they agreed to the plan. We shook hands and settled on the day after tomorrow – Halloween night.

I got permission from my parents to sleep over at Spud’s. We enjoyed a quick round of grubbing for candy in our fake-spooky skeleton and ghost costumes, but as soon as Mrs. Banks went to bed, we quietly snuck out Spud’s bedroom window and bounded off toward our destination, tingly with excitement.

We also felt a sense of dread, not because we were frightened little pansies over the prospect of spending a night in a demon-haunted graveyard (so we’d heard), but because of the trouble we could get into with his mom and my parents, not to mention the law. We were keenly aware that Wimpy made regular night rounds checking for vandals and vagrants.

Halfway there, I pointed up. “Spud, hear that?”

“Hear what?” Spud said. “Oh, that – just a little rumble. Nothing to worry about.”

I said, “Maybe we should think twice about this. Seems a storm is moving in.”

Spud said, “Are you nuts? Think about the money we’ll lose if we chicken out. Imagine what a hundred bucks could buy us!”

Spud had a point. We picked up our pace and began jogging, ducking for cover whenever a car approached, but feeling energized and confident despite distant thunder rumbling in an ominous sky. We got to the entrance gate at around midnight. A blustery wind was whipping through the treetops and the headlights of cars passing by on Craven Road cast eerie shadows. We were flushed with fear (what if we got caught!) and growing ever more wary of impending foul weather.

I shone a weak beam with my flashlight on the wrought-iron gate with its two big chains and oversized padlocks securing it from would-be intruders. Spud pointed out that one of the chains was missing, oddly enough.

We hopped up on the rusted latticework and scaled it like real “Army” boys and dropped down onto the hallowed grounds silent as cheetahs. No turning back now. Come hell or high water, the Old Burying Ground would be our hair-raising world for the next several hours. It already felt dreary and foreboding.

As our eyes adjusted to the dark, Spud said, “I gotta take a whiz. Wait here.”

It seemed like Spud was gone longer than a minute or two. I was starting to get skittish, every little sound setting me on edge. Spud finally returned. “Phew!” he said, and pointed, “Let’s go that-a-way.”

That-a-way took us to old graveyard plots of irregular rows of mid-1800 era headstones. We squinted by the flashlight’s faint glow, reciting names belonging to long-dead people: Carlson, Vickers, Grimsby, Waldrip, Messner.

Spud disappeared somewhere while I read inscriptions on fallen soldiers’ headstones, angelic babies who died of whooping cough, pioneer women who perished in childbirth, and others memorialized in scripture who succumbed from disease or misfortune. One grave marker from 1872 had a noose carved beneath the words, “Henry Walton, left behind a loving wife and 4 children, may his poor soul find peace in Heaven.”

Being surrounded by so much death, on the Day of the Dead, no less, was starting to get under our skin. Strangely, I began to feel an undefinable presence . . . of discontented wandering souls . . . giving me a bad case of the shivers just as Spud reappeared from his walkabout. He laughed when I mentioned it to him.

Then, mysteriously, we heard from beyond the grave – where else? –horrendous moaning and hideous shrieking of a girl being tortured: “Oh, help me! Please help me! They are ripping my heart out! The pain! The pain! Have mercy on my soul!”

Abject terror flooded our hearts when we then heard agonizing groans and excruciating screams of a woman in horrific distress: “Dear God in Heaven, if you exist, spare us from this horrible fate! They have plucked my eyeballs out and raped me with daggers – Oh, dear Lord, please!”

We reeled in shock and confusion. Had we gone mad? We had to be imagining this!

“Spud, what’s going on? I’m spooked! Let’s get outta here! Screw the money!”

The woman’s ghastly wailing filled the chilly night emptiness: “We are suffering an evil fate at the hands of Satan! Aaaaah! The misery! The horror! Have pity and mercy on us, Dear Lord, if you exist, please . . . Aaaaah! The sharp knives and axes are now descending on us.”

Such disturbing words caused me to nearly unload in my pants. Spud could see I was terribly shaken. He could no longer contain himself, and burst into laughter. “Tommy! Tommy! I really fooled you, didn’t I! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

“Very funny, Spud,” I said. “What are you talking about?” I trembled upon hearing the little girl’s voice: “Kill me now! Get it over with!”

Spud explained, “Well, when I went to take that whiz, I planted a small voice recorder right over there. Then, while you were reading the inscriptions, I snuck over and turned on the tape which I pre-recorded yesterday with the help of Jill and Mary, those two theater chicks in school.”

All I could do was shake my head at the prank and say, “Good one, Spud! I think I need a clean pair of underwear, though.”

We moved on to a different plot of graves. Spud disappeared again while I bent over to read the epitaph of one Jane McClean Dawson – “She hath done all she could” – when a holler pierced the night. “Help me, Tommy! Help!”

Spud’s cry of despair sounded like another prank, but no, he had just stumbled into the hell pit of a freshly dug grave! I rushed over and stared down at poor Spud, shaken up but unhurt. Then, without explanation, a malevolent urge overtook me. I became a cutthroat nemesis who had made Spud dig his own grave before I was going to shoot him in the legs and bury his sorry ass alive. Spud played along at first, but then a darker force seized hold of me. I grabbed a shovel next to the grave and began raining dirt down on Spud who was desperately trying to climb out, but without my help he kept slipping back into the hell pit.

I snarled, “You gonna die now, sucker, and it ain’t gonna be purty!”

“Are you crazy, man! Stop it! You’re getting dirt in my eyes! C’mon, help me outta here!”

I frantically heaved more dirt on Spud. “When your ghost comes haunting, punk, tell me how it feels to be buried alive!” I snorted in demonic glee, “MWAHAHAMWAHAHA!”

Angrily, Spud yelled, “STOP IT! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU!”

That broke the spell. I snapped out of it and returned to my senses. “Sorry, Spud, I was just kidding! Here, grab the end of the shovel and I’ll pull you up.”

Once he was up and out of the hell pit, we shared a good laugh at both pranks, though something in the back of my mind wondered about my sanity. I was convinced an evil alien force had possessed me, because I had not been pranking him.

A couple of hours had passed. What next? We decided to check out the columbarium, a granite-blocked, green-tiled building that had fallen into ruin long ago. On the way, we spotted a hearse parked on a gravel access road. We went over and kicked the tires and peered in the windows, shocked to see it held a casket. We agreed to circle back after investigating the columbarium.

After unsuccessful past attempts, we were determined this time to break in, especially since it was sprinkling, and we would need shelter to stay dry. We ignored the “Keep Out!” signs and walked around the building looking for an opportunity. The dirty stained-glass windows were barred up all around, except for one on the south-facing side obscured by thick brambles growing up the wall. The bars had been mangled off, and the window busted out.

We tippy toed up a granite block and hoisted ourselves up, barely managing to squeeze through the window opening, and then jumped down five feet onto the concrete floor. It was pitch black. I pulled out my flashlight for visibility, scattering a dozen screeching rats, freaking us out. It smelled almost sulfuric, of moldy cigarettes and rat piss. Tangles of spider webs clung to our skin, and a rank oxygen-deprived odor of moldy abandon diffused the air.  A real creepy vibe.

We passed into a hall with sequestered rooms, feeling like explorers in the pyramid chamber of King Tut’s tomb. Then our blood curdled when a sound like metal banging on a skillet echoed, followed by feral grunts, and then a bark from some beastly entity. “Who’s there? Get out of here or I’ll bust your skull with this chain!”

We froze as a figure slouched out of the shadows – a squalid apparition swathed in filthy rags with a gnarly blanket slung over its shoulders. I shined the light in a corner exposing a fetid den littered with empty Mad Dog 20/20 bottles, cigarette butts, candle stubs, tins of chili beans, and crumpled up newspapers scattered amid dirty cardboard slats and a grimy foam rubber pad. The zombie moved in closer and I aimed the beam in its eyes revealing a face covered in festering sores and scabrous blisters oozing sickly yellow pus. We gagged at the fetid ripeness of warm urine and excrement vaporizing off its god-awful filthy body.

The unholy presence of this ghastly Halloween spook left no time to think, only act. Without warning, the zombie began swinging the chain round and round in the air like a deranged cowboy about to lasso a mad bull.

We backed away from the menacing specter, but the zombie suddenly charged at Spud with blind fury to kill him, but Spud, being on the wrestling team had a few moves. He deftly side-stepped and leveled the zombie, grabbed the chain, and whacked it on the head, giving us a chance to make our escape from the columbarium – faster than scurrying rats.

“Screw this, Spud,” I said. “Let’s get outta Dodge before it’s too late! Forget the hundred bucks!”

Spud said, “No way, man! The night’s young! Adventure awaits!”

I sighed. “All right, Spud, whatever.”

Then it began to rain . . . and rain . . . and rain. Gusty winds picked up, thunderclaps popped, and lightning cracked – KABOOM! A rogue bolt suddenly struck the ground near the columbarium lighting things up in a display of frightening fireworks much too close for comfort.

The thought of getting fried by lightning scared us witless and getting completely drenched could give us pneumonia. The thought we might actually die in this graveyard seemed like a real possibility now. What were we poor, pathetic boys to do?

Then we remembered the hearse! We dodged raindrops in a frantic dash for blessed shelter, infinitely relieved to find it was unlocked. We crawled in, thankful for safe harbor to ride the storm out until the night was over and we could slouch home victoriously.

But, oh, what a long, long night was in store. We never could have imagined such a fate during this worst of all possible storms. Plus, we were in fine company now, as we discovered, with a corpse in the casket!

How could that be? It made no sense at all. But events up to now had been so weird, this was just one more thing to deal with. We made no attempt to explain the bizarre circumstances, we were just fortunate to count our blessings to be safe and out of the storm.

I winked at Spud. “Things could be worse, you know . . .”

Just two or three more hours left to win our bet! We were in the homestretch! We ate candy bars and jerky and tried not to think too much about the macabre scene in the hearse. We huddled up, listening to the rain pummel the windows as claps of devilish thunder and electrifying bolts of lightning tested our resolve. And then it began hailing nonstop for ten minutes, battering the hearse so loudly we could barely hear ourselves think.

I found a blanket in the back, a real godsend being so wet and cold. We warmed up and eternal minutes faded away as I slipped into an edgy half-conscious dream state – visions of tortured souls, demon rats, psychopath zombies, buried alive mobsters – when we were suddenly jolted awake by an ear-splitting sound like an M-80 firecracker detonating in the back.

Spud jerked around and cried, “Holy crap!”

I stammered, “What the hell!”

Spud exclaimed, “It’s the casket! It exploded!”

I blurted, “NO WAY!”

In seconds, a shock wave of putrefying stench hit us. A nauseating odor permeated the hearse, choking and gagging us. The corpse, you see, had been poorly embalmed and noxious gases had been building up over the past several days, with the horrible consequences (and awful timing) of succumbing to pressure forces, and – BAM! – just like that, it exploded.

With the last dying beams of my flashlight, I looked back in dreadful curiosity to see what hell borne mayhem awaited – truly, the grisliest Halloween horror show imaginable. Worse than the nasty zombie ordeal. An ungodly mess of gristle and entrails oozing from the coffin. The ceiling and walls drenched in brownish slime and the residue of splattered body bits that had infiltrated our nostrils and colored our hair. Between the unsightly gore and the wicked stench, Spud and I vomited all over the floorboard of the hearse.

Just our luck, the storm of the century was raging, and here we were stuck in a hearse unable to even roll the windows down. For the rest of the night, we did our best to cover our noses and not smother under the blanket. We thought long and hard about bolting and losing our bet.

But the angry Gods of Wind and Rain, and the aggrieved Lords of Thunder and Lightning were unrelenting. There was no way we could safely make it back to Spud’s without getting killed by falling tree branches or electrocuted by a lightning strike or a downed power line.

So, we manned up like tough Army guys and endured the remainder of that squalid unthinkable night, stewing in our vomit and the slimy gore befouling the puke-stained hearse. All for a bet that now seemed like a lousy hundred bucks. With two more endless hours to go, how much more torture could we endure? We vomited a second and third time as the odor intensified – trapped in an olfactory hell worse than the rottenest possum that went and died in your basement a week ago.

Finally – THANK GOD! – a hint of daylight and the epic storm had come to an end! We wasted zero time making a run for it. At the entrance gate, Brad and Joe were nowhere to be seen. How was that going to play out in collecting our lousy hundred bucks?

With our last boost of energy, we scaled the gate, joyous the episode was over, and we would soon be home, cleaned up and safely tucked in a comfortable bed. Then we saw the swirling red light, and the lumpy figure getting out of the car, and heard Wimpy say, “Hold it right there, boys, not so fast. You’re under arrest.”

We turned white as ghosts and pleaded with Wimpy to let us off the hook. "We can explain, sir." Wimpy pursed his lips and nodded. “Well, boys, give me a hundred bucks and I’ll look the other way.”