A Wish Come True

Braxton stared longingly out his bedside window at the Bracewell Cemetery. It was raining and Braxton loved the rain. His mother had told him earlier in the day before she left to stay inside tonight because a potential flood was heading their way, and the young boy filled with excitement. There was something about the pitter patter on the windows and the trees swaying in the wind that brought him a calmness that he felt all too rarely.

Braxton had found himself looking out at the cemetery more and more lately. It ran adjacent to the backside of his house and his bedroom and the guest bedroom upstairs were the only ones with a view to it.

Because the guest room was empty 99% of the time, it made him feel that he had something special all to himself. Something that only he could enjoy. He liked staring out at the graveyard and found himself talking to it occasionally. Sometimes you just want to unload without any advice and who better for that job than the dead?

Lately, though, they’d been talking back.

Not in a spooky, haunting sort of way. The voices he heard were quite angelic, calming like the rain. He wondered if the dead liked the rain too. If being buried made them like a flower, where the water would allow them to sprout and stay healthy. Not like zombies. Just to keep them at peace.

He talked to them about his days at school and what people he liked and didn’t like. He asked for advice on what to do about his little crush on Sandra Carmichael who sat next to him in science class and who once grazed his hand while they were conducting an experiment in the lab. They told him, the worst she can say is no, and he thought that was good advice, but he hadn’t seen through to it yet. 12 year old boys weren’t the best at taking advice but he appreciated it nonetheless.

He asked them a lot about how they were doing too.

He expected a lot of negativity, due to, you know, them being dead and all, but they all had surprisingly positive attitudes. Some of them had been suffering through illnesses for years and feeling peace for the first time in forever. Others had just gotten too old and were enjoying the feeling of no longer aging.

Braxton was disappointed that the dead weren’t speaking now, but he was sure it had to do with the rain. It was probably muffling any communication that was trying to go through like a radio signal too far out. Braxton checked his bedside alarm clock and saw it was time for bed. He got up and grabbed the strings on his window to lower the blinds.

BOOM!

A flash of all-too-close lightning and an explosion of thunder suddenly illuminated and rumbled the black, starless sky. A shockwave went through Braxton’s body and knocked him to the ground, but it wasn’t because of the lightning.

It was what he saw in the lighting.

A gruesome shape built from the depths of nightmares, smoldering in the light. He wanted to believe it wasn’t real. That his mind was playing tricks on him. Nothing could be that horrible. Nothing in this world could be that awful.

His worst fears came true when sat back up to look out the window. A mausoleum was smoldering with smoke drifting out from the top, the rain the only thing keeping it from erupting. It was sliced completely in half as if it were a loaf of bread facing the wrath of a steak knife.

Braxton couldn’t look away. His fear glued him to the floor. He couldn’t see what he saw in the lightning but he knew it was still out there. Perhaps, it was watching him, waiting on him to make a move.

He dragged himself up off the floor and grabbed the strings again, yanking them down as hard as he could. As the blinds spiraled down, another roar of lightning and thunder rang out and this time Braxton screamed. Not because he saw anything. He didn’t need to. He simply knew.

Help me, a voice said gently in his head.

Braxton cupped his hands to his ears. He wanted no part of this right now.

Help me. The voice was stronger now. Coming through like a radio station signal going from static to faded music as you drew closer to the source. Braxton brought himself to his feet but still said nothing back to the voice.

HELP ME! The voice cried out with more fright than fury and Braxton collapsed right back down, a searing headache knifing through his forehead.

He screamed again, as did the voice in his head. To Braxton, it sounded like a 400 piece symphony blaring out-of-tune dissonance straight into his eardrums building to a horrible crescendo.

Braxton wasn’t sure if his own screaming or the voice’s screaming subsided first. 

He was only sure of two things: it had gone dark in the house. And he was alone.

The sound of thunder erupted again.

Braxton searched one of his bedside drawers and pulled out a small flashlight. He flicked the switch on, and a beam of light lit the portion of the room directly in front of him. The rest of the room was still shrouded in black, but Braxton was thankful to at least have some light.

He walked on his tip-toes into the hallway and the rooms out here looked much the same. He shined his light hesitantly into the downstairs living room worried that the couches and the lamps would be fried from the lightning. He knew that made no sense because it didn’t hit the house, but neither did shapes in the lightning or voices of the dead in his head.

When the light reached, the living room showed no sign of damage and he took a deep breath and set down the stairs. He didn’t know why he was so worried. Storms happen all the time and sometimes those storms knock out the power. Big deal. He’s just a kid with a vivid imagination, that’s all.

He knew what he saw, though. He knew what he’d been hearing in his head for weeks. He cursed his mother for not being here. For abandoning him for some cheap date that was just trying to use her and leave. He wasn’t quite sure what that phrase meant, but he had heard his mother use it enough times to know it was bad and that it was becoming prevalent.

Help me, he heard the voice in his head say again.

This time he didn’t cup his hands to his ears or fight it. He let the voice in. In the midst of his fright by the sight in the lightning earlier, his brain couldn’t process anything but what the voice was saying. His brain didn’t once stop to consider who was saying it.

As he listened to the voice closely in his head now, his heart dropped. He knew that voice. It was the voice of Rachel Friedman. The kind old woman who died at the ripe old age of 81 and who left behind two daughters and had one grandchild that she loved dearly. She was the one who gave him all the advice too. The one who always listened.

And she was in danger.

Braxton knew what helping her involved. It involved him going outside into the pouring rain where that thing was. That thing in the light. That thing that was hurting Mrs. Friedman.

There was probably nothing he could do. This thing might squash him like a bug and bring him up into the lightning like a UFO tractor beam. It might throw him across the world for all he knew but Rachel Friedman needed help and he owed her one too many.

He didn’t once consider that Rachel Friedman was already dead and that the thing outside might be supernatural. Kid's minds don’t work like that. That’s what makes them fearless.

Before his mind could process the thought of “no”, he was already five feet out the door, his little flash light reflecting cosmically in the rain.

Braxton hopped the fence leading into the dark cemetery and landed in a deep puddle that he worried was quick sand although the nearest bit of quicksand was forever away. He wiggled his feet gently out of it and was relieved to see that it was just a puddle of mud. His shoes were ruined but he didn’t care much for this pair anyways.

He turned his flashlight back on and nearly tripped over a gravestone. The faded stone read Allen. Braxton knew who that was too. Patrick Allen. A young man who died in a car accident not too long ago. He shined the light closer to the front of the gravestone and behind it and was relieved to find no other danger. It seemed whatever that thing is was only after Mrs. Friedman.

Braxton trudged deeper into the mud-ridden cemetery, the rain drenching his pajamas, and felt no fear of the dead around him. They were his friends. They would not haunt him for stomping on their hallowed ground.

Braxton jumped back and almost fell into a puddle.

A flash of lightning had struck the sky again, this time farther off. Braxton didn’t see the creature in it but he felt a sense of dread nonetheless. If the creature was all the way over there, that meant it was more than likely done with whatever it was doing to Mrs. Friedman.

He didn’t want to go any further. He didn’t want to face whatever was in there now. He knew he would see something he’d never forget. He would never be able to identify Rachel Friedman’s voice with the sweet old lady she was. Instead he would only see death and suffering.

He stepped into the cracked mausoleum anyways and screamed.

The dead were alive. Skin, flesh, bones, eyes, ears. Everything. There were five bodies in all, squirming on the ground as if they were newborn babies. Maybe that’s exactly what they were. Born again with a bolt of lightning.

There was still death in here, though. Braxton could smell it, reeking all over the room. The smell of decay and dust.

Braxton glanced around for Mrs. Friedman but found no sign of an old woman. Everyone here was young. Not adolescent young, but late 20s, maybe early 30s.

“Mrs. Friedman?” he asked.

His flashlight began to sputter. Illuminating the dead as if they were club-goers under strobe lights. He shook it out a few times like he saw people do in the movies and it stabilized ever so slightly.

He later wished it hadn’t.

Before him in the light stood a woman in a cherry-red skirt and white blouse, her brown hair tied back in a thin pony tail. She smiled at Braxton. A gentle smile that for a moment, made him forget he was inside a smoldering mausoleum in the middle of a cemetery in the middle of the night where a scary creature in the lightning lurked.

“Hello Braxton,” the voice said gently. Rachel Friedman. Her beautiful voice was even more soothing in person. “I’m so glad you came.”

“The least I could do,” Braxton said, blushing.

“You’re appreciated more than you’ll ever know.” Rachel laid a hand gently on his cheek and Braxton felt the whole world go away again. Any questions of how Rachel Friedman and her ancestors were alive in the flesh went out the window. The question of what he did to save her never crossed his mind. The lightning evaporated from his memory. He was happy. He was at peace.

Mrs. Friedman used her other hand to draw him into a motherly embrace like he’d never felt before. He squeezed her back more than he had ever squeezed anybody and closed his eyes as his head rested gently on her shoulder.

The first sign of trouble came when he opened his eyes. The eyes of the other ancestors were looking back at him like vultures, locking onto their prey. They opened their mouths to smile and they had no teeth. Just any empty abyss leading to another abyss all together.

Braxton tried to pull away. He thrashed and writhed but Rachel still held on calmly without a struggle and began to stroke his hair.

“Shhhh,” she said. “It’ll all be over soon.”

Braxton screamed, the sound muffled into the once dead woman's chest. He writhed some more until finally he was able to get his head free to look into the sky.

The monster was there.

Right above him with a smile on its face or whatever the creature’s equivalent was. It seemed to look down on him with pity.

Braxton didn’t scream this time. He only looked into the creature's eyes with blunt, defiance. 

And that was when the lightning came down.

Maggie Friedman was resting in her bed after a long day of birthday festivities. She had gotten everything she wanted. Well, almost everything.

Her mother got her a hot-pink bicycle that she rode immediately around the neighborhood as soon as she got it and didn't stop until her parents made her come inside for dinner. Her father got her front-row concert tickets to her favorite band. It was a perfect day. But she still didn’t have everything she wanted.

This was her first birthday without her Nana. She loved her Nana dearly and when she died six months ago, Maggie didn’t come out of her room or go to school for a week. It killed her to not have her at her birthday today. The first one she had missed in ten years. Maggie had kept herself from crying the entire time until her parents told her to make a wish when they brought out the birthday cake.

Her face folded into a frown as she blew out the candle and her mother asked her if she was okay. She tried to say yes, but instead she burst into tears and ran up to her bedroom.

She had wished for her grandmother to be there. Was that too much to ask? Nana didn’t deserve to die. Other people deserved it so much more. So that’s what she wished for. That heaven and Earth could make a trade. A soul for a soul. For her precious Nana back.

The next morning, Maggie heard a knock at the door.

“I’ll get it,” she yelled out to her mother as she sprinted downstairs to the front door. She always loved to be the first ones to greet visitors, be it the mail man or one of mom’s book club members.

Her baby teeth formed a crooked smile as she opened the door but it quickly evaporated. She did not know who this woman was. She wore a red skirt and a white blouse, her brown hair in a thin ponytail.

“Hello, dear,” the woman said, her cadence melting into her granddaughter’s ears like butter.