Jupiter Watched

No one really believed the spirits rested easily beyond the wrought iron fence surrounding Eden Glen Cemetery. Children asked their parents to carry them past the old oak trees that grew near the street, which had twisted over long generations and now arced their branches in ghoulish rictuses. Adults, either consciously or otherwise, did their best to chart courses through town that allowed them to avoid Eden Glen, so the sidewalk passing its entrance rarely enjoyed living company. Between these two groups, though, lurked teenagers, who believed themselves immortal and therefore relished the thrill of a place that menaced all who came before and after them.

There were no gates at the entrance, just black iron scrollwork draped in old moss and hanging vines that almost hid the worked characters spelling out EDEN GLEN. When the wind blew, the moss and vines fluttered like tattered curtains, tendrils grasping at the hair of unfortunate passersby. In October, when the nights of the annual Oak Grove Harvest Fest coincided with the week preceding Halloween, the wind blew constantly.

For most of those who called Oak Grove home, gates were unnecessary to limit traffic among the granite headstones aligned in orderly rows that sloped to the gray mausoleums at the edge of the stagnant pond and the willow that drank there and wept. All but a very select group, the junior and senior classes at Oak Valley High School, steered clear of the graveyard, and during Harvest Fest, those who would soon graduate and make the world tremble dared all. In pairs and trios, in expeditions of a half dozen, they crept away from the heady aromas of the food trucks and the pop and splash of the carnival games and the three rides adorned with flashing lights and booming soundtracks to slip beyond the fence, past the oaks, and down to the mausoleums and their guardian willow.

Legend held that Old Mort Loggins, whose family owned Loggins Funeral Home, had found Jaycie Snider hanging from the willow’s branches just after dawn thirty years ago this week. She had slipped away with friends during the Harvest Festival and no one had noticed when she was no longer with them—not until Old Mort went for his constitutional the next morning, because Mort Loggins was the sort of man who didn’t mind spending time with uneasy spirits. No one had ever been tried for the murder.

For the next few years an officer had been posted at the entrance to Eden Glen during the week of Harvest Fest, but after a few years the added security seemed an imprudent use of public funds. The following season the old tradition resumed, somehow more exhilarating for the knowledge of what had happened when the oldest among them had been in junior high. This year was no different.

“Are you sure?” Carter asked. He brought up Annie’s hand and kissed her knuckles. His eyes shone in the moonlight, yearning for what was to come until he seemed to strain against the walls of time to reach it faster. He wasn’t asking anymore, really. Now the question came so he could revel in the promise of its answer.

Annie nodded, reticent but with no intention of turning back now.

“All night?” he asked.

“Yep.”

He leaned close, the tip of his nose nearly brushing hers. “Say it.”

“All night.”

His eyes flashed, brighter and wider, as he pulled back and tugged her along. He ran with Annie in tow, both of them disappearing between Cartwright’s Hot Dogs and Evanrude’s Popcorn and Candy Apples, where no lights would expose their approach to the cemetery fence. Carter stopped so abruptly once they were alone that she stumbled into him. He was prepared for this, enveloping her in his strong senior’s arms, and then they were kissing, tongues exploring each other’s mouths in a way they had done without tiring for three years, since before either of them had a driver’s license.

She returned his kisses, holding him tight as she could, though her arms could barely cross against his back. He tugged her hair and she moaned softly. Then he was running again, and she had to follow or leave him with her hand. They dashed along the fence, both breathless that someone might spot them, but their concerns were ill-founded. A group of juniors passed them under the moss and vines, each sporting curving glowsticks and cups of cider with cartoon jack o’ lanterns and bats on the sides. A couple eyed Annie and Carter suspiciously, but none dared question two seniors.

“Come on!” Carter urged. They left the twisted oaks behind.

As the juniors returned to Harvest Fest, Eden Glen fell eerily silent; graveyard festivities had ended. Annie tried to check her watch, but in the dark and with Carter pulling her along she couldn’t make out the digital display. She thought of asking him to slow down, but she didn’t want to spoil the evening. They both had been looking forward to this since Lizzie Snook joked that they should spend the night in the cemetery. Everyone at Lizzie’s house that night had laughed, but Carter and Annie had made eye contact; in that moment they sealed their unspoken pact.

For weeks they had carefully arranged every detail. Annie’s parents knew she was spending the night at Lizzie’s house. Carter was going to a party at his best friend Andy’s. Instead they would be in each other’s arms, and after the lights of Harvest Fest went dark and the nightly cleanup was finished, they would banish the chill of the autumn evening together, exploring more than each other’s mouths for the first time. They would have done it sooner, definitely by the end of summer, if they hadn’t been looking forward to tonight with such eager anticipation.

Moonlight broke free of the clouds as they neared the old pond and slowed to a jog, still holding hands. An unbroken layer of olive muck obscured the water’s surface. Kids said that it never froze in winter because the sludge on top insulated the water beneath. Annie stifled a laugh, knowing that if she said that aloud, Carter would snicker and say, “Tonight, we’ll be insulated just like that.” Then he would laugh and his eyes would shine the way they did when he was truly happy.

He stopped at a mausoleum wall, using their momentum to spin her ahead of him and then he was against her again, pinning her along the rough stone. She smelled moss stronger than the fallen autumn leaves, also the cloying odor of the pond. They kissed some more, until she opened her eyes and saw the girl’s body, limned by moonlight, hanging from branches high among the willow’s canopy.

Annie scraped her flesh against the rock wall, sliding away from Carter as she fled the sight of what had come before. For a moment she saw only Carter, and when she passed by him enough to see the willow again, she saw there was nothing in the tree.

“What’s wrong?” Carter spun about, following her gaze, hands balling into fists to protect her if need be.

“It was…” she fell silent. How did that sentence end? Jaycie Snider? Certainly not.

“What, Babe? It was what?”

Jaycie.

The name came on the wind, had to have been the wind. She felt it caress the back of her neck, beneath her long hair. Annie jumped, spun about. Her breath caught in her throat, but there was nothing there. Just rows of headstones with family names that she recognized and the given names of people she would never meet. She regained her composure quickly; it was an essential skill for girls.

“Nothing,” she said. “I thought I saw something.”

When he turned back his smile had returned. He put on a cocky swagger that he only used when joking. Carter wasn’t like that, really, even though he could be if he chose. Carter was that rare football player who did not abuse his position in the high school food chain. He was a tyrannosaurus who chose to be merciful to the school’s veggiesauruses and geekasauruses and bookasauruses.

“You know I’d protect you,” he said.

She nodded again, glancing at the shadowy depths of the willow’s canopy.

Nothing, she thought. There was nothing.

He took her in his arms again, but this time they kissed once and then he held her. They sat at the back of the mausoleum, sheltered from the tireless autumn breeze, and watched across the headstones to the remaining lights of the festival. The rides had stopped. Cleanup had begun. Soon the only light would come from above.

Don’t screw this up, Annabelle, she told herself.

“Jupiter,” she said, pointing towards a steady light in the sky.

“Bullshit,” he said, laughing. “You can’t see Jupiter without a telescope.”

“That’s Jupiter!” she insisted, laughing at his slight. “Stars blink, planets stare.”

“Sure it is.” He leaned close and kissed her neck. He breathed in the scent of her hair and moaned as if it smelled like dinner, and dinner was good.

“Do you think this place is really haunted?” she asked.

“Maybe. It is the thirtieth anniversary for Jaycie Snider.”

They both laughed.

“I don’t know,” he said. “My dad says that there can’t be ghosts because there is a God. If everyone who dies goes to Heaven or Hell, then the only way there can be ghosts is if God misses someone when they die. And God can’t make mistakes. So, no ghosts.”

She rewarded him with a thin smile.

“I know,” he said. “I think it sounds pretty stupid, too.”

“It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just, how do we know there’s God? Because, if we’re wrong about that…”

Carter laughed, looking around with an expression of exaggerated fear. “Don’t say that. I’ve got plans for you tonight, and words like that will bring every deacon in church to exorcise you!”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s just…so many things have happened here, even before Jaycie Snider.”

“Most of that’s bullshit, too,” he said. “People want to keep kids out of this place, because we get up to no good…”

He leaned over and kissed her again, and then he was bearing down on her, his weight pressing her into the damp grass next to the mausoleum wall. Abrupt panic welled within her. He drove his tongue into her mouth. Her eyes bulged. From this angle Annie stared up into the willow’s canopy where a girl still hung, neck at an impossible angle, feet dangling, but one arm thrown forth with the index finger pointed directly at Annie.

Leave.    

The word tousled Annie’s hair, tickled her neck and sent chills to the soles of her feet.

She struggled beneath Carter. She realized that she was making a pitiful whining sound. She had not chosen to start making it and could not discern a way to make herself stop. Clenching a fist, she pounded on one of his shoulder blades.

“Okay!” he cried, purposely raising his voice in the darkened cemetery. Irritation flashed across his face. “What is it?”

She scrambled hastily to her knees. “I don’t want to do this.”

Her eyes explored the willow’s branches again, but her angle had changed. What had been so clear in the moonlight before was now shaded by it.

“What do you mean?” Carter asked. He sounded angry.

“I thought this would be fun,” Annie said.

“This is fun!”

“No! I…Carter, please. Let’s go somewhere else.”

The sound of his name should have softened his mood. Tonight it did not. He glared, lowering his head in a way that threw his face into shadow. Annie did not like the air of menace it gave him.

Oh, God, she thought. Carter’s fingers curled into the grass in frustration. His knuckles whitened. She glimpsed the line of his jaw, set in a long, grim line. She felt his eyes on her, like she was a treat he had been promised and that he intended to enjoy. Annie had never been afraid of Carter before.

Her father’s words rang out in her mind, You can become a victim or you can choose to be a survivor. I didn’t raise any victims.

Annie shook her head. I don’t want to be either one, Dad.

“Carter?” she said. Her voice sounded small. It sounded frightened. Would that get through to him or encourage him?

“Yeah?” he asked.

“I’m not saying never,” she told him, realizing that was exactly what she was saying. This man would never touch her again, no matter what he did past this moment.

He sat there a moment longer, staring at her from the shadows. Then he shook his head. His posture changed. He was Carter again. “I’m sorry, Babe,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get mad. I don’t usually do that.”

“I know,” she said, relief welling within her breast.

Placing a hand against the granite wall, he pushed himself to his feet. Tentatively, he extended the other. “Can I help you up?”

Now he sounded nervous.

Annie considered, then took his hand. He helped her up and they stood, two hands touching and nothing more, Carter abashed, looking into her eyes with an expression that matched what Annie had heard in her own voice just seconds earlier. Annie? she imagined him saying in hopes that the sound of her name would soften her mood.

“Let’s just get out of here, okay?” she asked.

He nodded, relieved that she had spoken. Stepping forward and turning on his heel, he fell in line beside her, deftly interlocking their fingers the way they had done since before they were in high school. Annie allowed herself a sigh of relief, reassured that she would be home and in bed within the hour.

“Say bye to Jupiter—What the hell?” Carter swatted at the back of his neck and jumped away from Annie and the mausoleum both. He came down awkwardly, stumbling towards the willow. One foot slid into the muck at the edge of the stagnant pond.

Annie stared.

He spun about, hands swiping at the air as if he stood in a cloud of midges. He uttered an inarticulate howl, swinging again and again as he staggered back from the water’s edge. As he moved, he cringed twice more and ducked as if something had taken a swipe at the back of his head. The second time, Annie saw his hair move as if in a gust that flowed counter to the breeze.

Finally, he stopped near where the crazy jig had begun, breathing heavily and staring about with eyes so wide that Annie saw white surrounding each iris.

“You’re right,” he whispered. “We need to get out of here.”

He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.

“What did she say to you?” Annie asked.

LEAVE!

More urgently than before, the wind seemed to scream the word into Annie’s ear. Her hair blew around her. Annie did not flinch. She stared into her boyfriend’s eyes, and in that moment she overmatched him, outweighed him, towered above him.

“He…” Carter started. Then, “She who?”

He sidestepped, putting more distance between himself and the pond, the tree.

“What did she say to you?” Annie repeated.

The breeze picked up, whipping into sudden gusts that pushed Carter harder than they did Annie. The wind curled around her, colder than it should have been on a temperate night, as if tomorrow brought winter.

GO!

Annie saw Carter buffeted. A sudden change came over him, making him someone else again. Down went his head in that way that cast his eyes into shadow. His jaw set with determination. He clenched fists. His full attention fell on Annie, and she understood that the wind’s commands had not been threats. They had been warnings.

She ran, but she had waited too long. Carter was the fastest running back on the team. No one in school could outdistance him. Running uphill towards the entrance, Annie would not make it to the first row of headstones. With no good option, she took the only route she could see. She ran straight at him.

Carter saw her coming and planted his feet. Hands at the ready, he intended to catch her like a football, but Annie had learned from a young age that her legs were longer than anyone’s arms. Well beyond Carter’s reach, she drew up her leg parallel to the ground and shoved her foot forward with all her might, just as Dad had taught, delivering a blow between his arms and into his unguarded stomach. The force of impact, coupled with her momentum, drove Carter sloshing into the murky edge of the pond.

Now Annie ran, dashing beneath the weeping branches. She did not look up and she did not look back, but from among the branches four stiff digits traced parallel lines through her hair. Come morning she would find streaks of white from roots to tips, and the hair in each of those places would feel cold to the touch for the rest of her days.

Resisting the urge to close her eyes, Annie locked her gaze on the reversed iron letters above the cemetery entrance. With each step they grew larger until she burst through the moss and vines onto the sidewalk and continued to run until the fence was no longer at her side, would no longer be visible if she looked over her shoulder, could not be seen from an upstairs window of any of the houses lining the street where she stared up and Jupiter stared silently back. The cry she expected to hear from the boy she had considered her first love never came. The last sound she ever heard from Carter Hauser was that surprised grunt as the air fled his lungs. As it turned out, that was the last sound anyone ever heard from him.