For Tomb the Bell Tolls

About twenty minutes before midnight on Halloween, Manuel, a friend of mine, called me and suggested we spend the night at our town's oldest graveyard. Until sunrise.

“You mean camping there?” I asked. “Or just wandering around.”

"Don't you want to be surprised?" he asked.

"Not really," I said, and sighed. "Okay. I'll meet you there."

I arrived first. In the moonlight, I could see a dozen leafless trees here and there, like skeletal guardians, their “arms and hands” almost reaching down to the ground. I could also see the dark fenced-in family sections and the pale marble of the more affluent above-ground, temple-like mausoleums. But even the latter were fenced-in. But was that to keep people out? Or, maybe, to keep the dead in?

I should've brought my flashlight. Maybe he'll bring one with him.

Manuel arrived next. No flashlight, though.

Wonderful.

The graveyard's gates were heavy and made of iron, but the iron was so old that it felt fuzzy to the touch. The wind occasionally pushed against the gates, causing them to creak as they moved back and forth on their hinges.

“Let's go home,” I said. "I'm not going in there without a flashlight."

“Oh, come on, Verda,” Manuel teased. “Don't tell me you're afraid of the dark."

"I'm not," I said.

"Or ghosts?" he asked.

“And what if I am?” I demanded. “Everyone has superstitions and fears. Some people are afraid of spiders or the dark or something equally silly, but I'm not. It's just that ghosts -"

“But even if ghosts existed," he interrupted, "how could they possibly hurt you? They can't even touch you. All they can do is to scare you.”

I made a face. “Fine. If you're so brave, you go in first.”

Manuel pushed open the gates. I followed close behind. Maybe too close, because he paused and asked dryly, “Planning on breathing down my neck, Verda?”

“Sorry,” I said and retreated a few feet.

“There's nothing to fear here,” he said.

“Except fear itself,” I said.

He checked his wristwatch. “It's about fifteen minutes until midnight.”

“Which is when all the evil spirits rise up from their resting places and roam the earth,” I said.

“At least you're in the right mood,” Manuel said. “You do remember what day follows Halloween, don't you?”

I nodded. “Dias de Muertos. The Day of the Dead.”

“So we still have almost fifteen minutes until it officially begins,” he said.

Beyond the gateway was a gravel walkway. Trimmed grass bordered it. Every fifty or sixty feet was an intersection with gravel walkways heading to our left and to our right. A tree stood at one corner of each intersection. Like a crossing-guard. Between this world and the next?

The first dozen graves mostly had flowers in vases next to the gravestones. One had a little teddy bear about the size of my hands. I paused and looked at the epigram on the gravestone: “Chas – born in beauty, gone too soon – we will always miss you.” Only a few years old when he died. When I looked up, Manuel was waiting near a walkway that headed for the nearest mausoleum.

“Anything interesting?” he asked when I caught up to him.

“A child's grave,” I said. “Just a few years old. Life just isn't fair sometimes.”

“I couldn't agree more,” he said.

I looked at the gateway outside the mausoleum. “You're not thinking of going in there, are you?”

Manuel nodded. “I certainly am.”

I checked the lock on the mausoleum's gate. “It's locked. So I guess we can't go in.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said. “We can climb over the fence. Can you climb?”

“Better than you can,” I said, and climbed over first.

On the other side, it felt like we were outside an ancient temple. Steps up to the entrance of the mausoleum. Must be nice to be rich enough to afford all this. I guess, since you couldn't take it with you, it sort of made sense to spend what you had left on something that would impress posterity.

“Are we going inside it?” I asked.

He nodded.

We climbed the steps to the mausoleum's front door. Locked, like the gate was.

“They obviously don't want uninvited visitors,” I said.

Manuel took an old credit card out of his pants pocket. “Then they should've made it more secure.”

I watched as he knelt sideways to the door. Eyes closed, he slid the card up and down the vertical crack where the lock was. For awhile, he didn't seem to get anywhere, and then we both heard a faint click. He smiled, stood up, and put the card back in his pants pocket.

He pushed the door open. “Ladies first?”

I shook my head. “You first.”

We entered the mausoleum and it seemed even darker inside than the graveyard outside was. There were only two sources of light: the light coming through the open doorway at the top of the stairs, and what looked like a skylight above the center of the area at the bottom of the stairs. We descended the stairway and found ourselves at the middle of a clock-like arrangement of sarcophagi, one at each number of the “clock”, and an additional one between each of those.

“I feel like we're in ancient Egypt,” I said. “All that's missing are the mummies.”

“And daddies,” Manuel said.

I frowned. “That's not funny.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Just trying to keep things as cheerful as possible.”

“Cheerful?” I asked. “In here? You've got to be kidding. You don't expect the dead to laugh, do you?”

We suddenly heard distant laughter. The mausoleum's doorway slammed shut. The amount of light dwindled until all there was came from the skylight above us.

“Must be some kids,” I said. “Trying to scare us.”

“Considering your expression, I'd say they succeeded,” he said. He went back up the stairs and tried the door. “It's locked.”

“Try your card,” I suggested. “Or doesn't it work from the inside?”

He tried it and shook his head. “It's staying locked this time.” He came back down the stairs. “There has to be another way out of here, Verda. You don't build a place like this without a backdoor.”

“Why would the dead need a backdoor?” I asked.

“They wouldn't,” he said. “But a living person might. Or in this case, we do.”

The interior of the mausoleum was square shaped. We checked each wall, but they were all blank. No doors or windows. At least, not within reach. And the skylight was definitely out of reach. Probably a good twenty feet or more above us. We'd need a ladder to reach it, and there didn't seem to be one available.

“Okay, smarty-pants,” I said, “now what? Or do we just stay here until morning, hoping that someone will come to unlock the door?”

“Something has to open the exit out of here,” Manuel said. “At least that's how it usually is in the movies, TV shows, or books.”

“You mean like a lever or switch or something?” I asked.

He nodded. “Exactly.”

“There doesn't seem to be one or we would've found it already,” I said.

“Unless it's hidden, or it doesn't look like a lever or switch,” he said.

“What would it look like, then?” I asked.

He made a face. “If I knew, Verda, I'd tell you.”

While he wandered the room, humming to himself, I went over to the nearest sarcophagus. It looked like a modern variation on the ones I'd seen in museums or videos. It was carved out of stone and probably very heavy. The surface felt smooth. Maybe marble? Then I noticed that the lid wasn't on completely. I pushed it back into place. It wasn't wasn't as heavy as I'd expected it to be.

A bell sounded, echoing inside the chamber.

Manuel paused, turned to stare at me. “What did you just do?”

“I pushed the lid into place,” I said. “Someone must've shoved it out of place.”

“But when you did that, a bell sounded,” he said. “Do it again.”

I figured I probably couldn't do it with that sarcophagus, so I went to the next one. It's lid was completely on. I went to the one after that. Its lid was out of place. I pushed it into place.

The bell sounded again. Manuel looked around, trying to see where the sound came from. It seemed to be the wall opposite the stairway.

“It must be every other one,” I said. “Want me to try again?”

“Yes,” he said.

Nine more times, the lid was out of place each time, and when I pushed it back in place the bell sounded. But nothing more happened.

“Now what?” I asked.

“There's one left,” he said. “Try that one.”

“It probably won't do anything,” I said.

“Try it anyway,” he insisted.

So I did.

This time not only did the bell sound, but a doorway opened. In the wall where the bell sound had come from. Manuel looked through the doorway. I joined him there. It was pitch-black beyond the doorway.

“Almost like ringing a doorbell,” I said.

“Exactly like that,” he said.

“But why a bell?” I asked.

“Houses and apartments have doorbells outside their front doors,” Manuel said. “So why not mausoleums?”

“Because no one lives here,” I said.

“Except the dead,” he said.

“But the dead are dead,” I insisted. “They don't come back to –”

We heard the sound of something behind us. Something getting to its feet.

“Or do they?” he asked.

“Unless we're imagining things,” I said.

Something walked towards us, something with a limp, pulling an uncooperative foot along with it.

“I'm not looking back there,” I said.

“One of us has to,” Manuel said.

“I wish we’d never come here,” I said.

“Too late for that option,” he said. “Go through the doorway, I’ll follow you.”

I didn’t argue. I waited in the darkness, looking back the way I’d come. Manuel was still at the doorway. Something tall and pale and wearing what seemed to be rags was approaching, moaning as it did so.

“What is it?” I asked. “A ghost?”

“Ghosts don’t walk like that,” he said.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked. “Get in here!”

“Not yet,” he said. “I want to see what it looks like.”

He got his wish.

The tall being came into view about ten feet away. Its rags resembled the bandages that ancient mummies were wrapped in. In between two rows of bandages around its head, I could see two pinpoints of light deep inside dark eye-sockets. Two long arms reached out towards Manuel.

This was stupid!

I ran back to him, grabbed him and pulled him into the darkness. Not a moment too soon. The bell sounded again, and the doorway slammed shut, catching the tall being's right arm between the door and the doorway. It sounded angry as it tried to free itself. It pounded on the door with its left hand. Heavy booming blows. The door shook with each blow.

How much time did we have until the tall being freed itself and continued pursuing us? If it didn't consider us a threat anymore, it might just give up and go back to where it came from. I could only hope it would give up and not be stubborn.

Either way, we had to find our way through this darkness, feeling our way as we went along.

The walls and floors felt solid, with a light layer of dust. We were probably the first living people to come this way in … how long? Years? Centuries?

“At least we found the backdoor,” Manuel said.

“But it doesn't seem to lead to any exit,” I said.

“Not yet,” he said.

After another fifty or sixty feet in the passageway, my feet bumped into something in the dark. Something on the floor. A step? No, it wasn't hard like stone. It sounded more like plastic or wood when I kicked at it. I knelt, and searched with my hands. I picked up what felt like spoons or sticks. Who would try to eat in a place like this? Then I felt something about the size of a softball, but with a hard exterior.

“What did you find?” he asked.

“I'm not sure yet,” I said. “It's not a fallen statue or statuette. Whatever it's made of is too flimsy for sculpture. This round thing has some bumps and openings on one side. Almost like a small jack-o'-lantern.”

“Like a what?” he asked.

“Jack-o'-lantern,” I said. I gave it to him. “What do you think it is?”

He ran his hands over it. “It's not a jack-o'-lantern, Verda. It's a skull. A human skull.” He laid it back down on the floor. “It's like a do-not-disturb sign on a hotel room door. In which ase, I think we'd better leave it alone”

“Someone has been by this way,” I said.

“Maybe not recently, though,” he said.

“Graverobber?” I suggested.

“Possibly,” Manuel said. “Maybe killed by whatever that thing was that we saw back there.”

“Let's keep going,” I said.

The passageway continued for another hundred feet or so. An open doorway gave access to another large chamber. Maybe another mausoleum interior? There was more light here. Maybe the graverobber came from here, before getting caught and killed in the passageway? There were several sarcophagi arranged in a star shape around the chamber's center. We checked them. Their lids were all in place.

Like the other mausoleum, there was a stairway leading up to the front doorway. We climbed up the stairs. This time, the doors had been yanked off their hinges and hurled until they'd landed in between two gravestones about a hundred feet away, under one of the trees.

“I can't imagine a graverobber being that strong,” Manuel said.

“Maybe that mummy or whatever it was?” I suggested.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe there are more of them.”

“How comforting,” I said sarcastically.

We exited the mausoleum and walked over to the gateway in the fence. The gate had been torn off and hurled aside by someone too impatient to deal with its lock.

This time, though, something had been left behind this time. Something that marked where our mysterious quarry had been. Something strong enough to hurl doors and tear off gates. A trail of blood, sometimes stepped in, creating bloody footprints. They looked fresh.

“Why don't we call the police and let them take care of it?” I asked.

”Do you think the police would believe us?” Manuel asked. “That some mysterious monster is killing people in a graveyard? They’d probably tell us to quit imagining things. That this is real life, not a Stephen King novel.”

“What do we do, then?” I asked.

“We keep going,” he said.

We kept our ears open and our eyes on the ground in front of us. The trail wandered across graves sometimes, and around them other times. And then there was one larger puddle of blood, where apparently what we were tracking had stopped long enough before moving on again.

“Good news,” he said. “It can bleed.”

“But what wounded it?” I asked.

“I wish I knew,” he said.

At one point, the trail stopped at one side of a fenced-in family plot, only to start up again on the opposite side. Had the being jumped over the plot? It seemed more and more likely that it wasn't like the mummy or whatever we'd seen inside the first mausoleum.

Then we saw a dead body, sprawled face-down. There was a torn-open backpack next to it, with bloody fingerprints along the tear. Something had been inside the backpack and it had been removed by whatever we were following.

“He was a graverobber,” he said. “I guess he thought that the dead don't take revenge on the living. Especially if the living is trying to rob their resting place of valuables.” He shook the backpack a few times and a ring fell out of it. “Apparently missed by whatever killed the graverobber.”

“I think we should take it back to the nearest mausoleum,” I said. “I wouldn't feel safe taking it home with us.”

“Agreed,” he said.

We took the ring to the nearest mausoleum, the one with the torn-off gates and front doors, and laid the ring in the doorway. We backed away, found a hiding spot, and watched to see if anyone would come to claim the ring.

And they did. Something pale green, long-armed and long-fingered reached through the doorway, picked up the ring. It closed the doors as it retreated inside the mausoleum.

“You still want to stay here all night?” I asked Manuel.

“Not anymore,” he said. “What about you?”

“No thanks,” I said.

As we walked back home, he wondered, “Did all that really happen? Or did we just imagine it?”

“It seemed real enough to me,” I said.

We heard a distant bell ring. Twelve bongs. It was midnight.

“For tomb the bell tolls,” he said, grinning as he dodged my open palm.