The Overnight Dare in the Graveyard

People called my sister and me, “The Crazy Twins” because we got our reputation for doing dangerous things, such as speeding in street races, riding our motorcycles over running trains from one cliff to another or gliding during thunderstorms. 

     One afternoon when we were washing our SUV on a driveway at our parents’ house, a car, full of the Sherwood High School kids, stopped by. We stopped working and stiffened because that school had been a rival of our school, the Grant High School for years. Their leader, Big Mike, was the biggest bully in our neighborhood, and liked to taunt us now and then. He sneered, “Heard you both dismissing ghosts, eh?” 

     Angry, we held our breath. He laughed, “We’d like to bet one hundred dollars that you both won’t spend an entire night in the Old Juniper Memorial Cemetery. Otherwise, we’d tell everyone that you both are ‘fraidy cats.’” Locals regarded it as the most haunted spot in our town.

     Kayla, my older sister by a few minutes, took a few steps forward. “One hundred dollars? How can you pay us if we win?”

     Big Mike paused, rubbing his chin with his hand and gave a feral smile. “My rich grandma just gave me a large load of birthday money so I decided to give some of it-in cold cash-for fun.”

     Kayla’s eyes gleamed, and she turned to me, “Helena, what do you think?”

     The amount looked a lot, I thought. I could use some of it to buy a certain blouse for my date with my boyfriend this Saturday night so I nodded. “Why not? We can divide the loot afterwards.”

     My sister beamed and turned to Big Mike. “Yep, the bet is on! What time do we start?”

     That evening, after dinner, the kids picked us up at our house, drove us to the cemetery and dropped us there before roaring away. We packed our sleeping bags, snacks, water bottles, flashlights and our smartphones in our backpacks so we trudged through rusty iron gates, past rows of ancient headstones to a hill overlooking our town that just started sporting lights as the sun vanished beyond horizon. There, we found our spot under a two hundred year old oak tree. Kayla took out our blue blanket out, put it on the ground and helped me sit down because of my old knee injury from a gymnastic accident. We took our favorite bars out and started chewing. We listened to the oak tree’s branches whispering through winds and an owl’s hooting but we felt relaxed, delighted at such an opportunity to stay away from our bickering parents and our nosy eight-year-old brother at home.

     As time passed by, we grew bored and started playing our games with our smartphones. A full moon moved up high in the night sky. Nothing happened. Not even a white mist or anything else like that.

     Then, we heard footsteps behind us, stopped our games and looked at each other. Was it what we expected? At Kayla’s nod, we turned our heads slowly but all we saw was a slender blonde girl, dressed in a pink t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, carrying her pink jacket, decorated with butterfly and flowers in silver embroidery. She smiled at us. “Hello, what are you two doing here at this hour? It’s past midnight.” 

     Kayla, the suspicious one of us, crossed her arms on her chest. “Who are you?”

     The blonde girl raised her hand to indicate peace. “Oh, sorry. I’m Maybeth. How about you both?”

     After we introduced ourselves, we explained to her about our bet. Maybeth raised her eyebrows. “Big Mike, you say? Oh, I’m also from the Sherwood High School but I agree with you that he’s a big imbecile. I used to call him Big Idiot or Red Nose.”

     At this, we burst into laughter, and that of Maybeth sounded musical.

     When we calmed down, the blonde girl glanced at her wristwatch. “Whoa, it’s time for me to go – they’re expecting me back before dawn; otherwise, I’d be in big trouble.” She looked at her jacket and handed it to us. “Please take this to Big Mike and tell him, ‘Big Idiot, you lose.” 

     Puzzled, we looked at each other but Kayla nodded at me to take the jacket. Maybeth’s face beamed. “He’ll understand what I mean, and he’d take care of this. Farewell.” She turned around and walked into darkness.

     I asked Kayla, “What do you think of this?”

     Her mouth twisted, her eyes looking thoughtful, she paused before replying, “Rather odd but we better carry out her request and see what happens.”

     I nodded. “ I agree. But as far, we haven’t seen any ghosts around here, and this is supposed to be the most haunted place in this town.” 

     Kayla scorned. “Yeah. So, the ghost stories are all fake.” I nodded. We sat down, unrolled our sleeping bags and fell asleep on our blue blanket.

     Sunlight woke us up, we packed everything into our backpacks and cleaned our messes up. Kayla picked Maybeth’s jacket and handed to me before going down and out of the Old Juniper Memorial Cemetery. There, we waited at the exit gate for ten minutes before Big Mike and his gang arrived in their car.

     They jumped out and strode toward us but when Big Mike noticed the pink jacket in my arms, his face registered disbelief. He demanded, “Where did you get this?”

     Startled, I managed to hide my fear and looked at his eyes. “Maybeth told us to give it to you last night.”

     To our surprise, his face broke into tears, his knees falling on the ground. He started repeating, “Impossible, impossible!”

     Kayla and I looked at each other before she asked, ”What’s wrong?”

     Big Mike’s shaky voice said, “Maybeth was my older sister, and she got into her boyfriend’s car after a party but he drank too much beer. He drove too fast and got off a cliff into ocean. When they recovered the bodies, her jacket went missing, probably washing out into the ocean. That happened three years ago.”

     Shocked, Kayla and I both exclaimed in unison, “It can’t be true! Maybeth looked solid, all blood and flesh - not in white mist form.” 

     Big Mike insisted, “There’s still Maybeth’s grave in this cemetery – I’ll lead you there now.”

     He did, and we stood, staring at a big granite headstone bearing Maybeth’s full name, birthdate and date of her death. We stared at it, not believing our own eyes. He turned to us. “Now you believe me? Yes? You both actually saw her ghost.”

     When I was handing Maybeth’s jacket to him, he asked me, “Did she leave any message for me?” 

     I glanced at Kayla who nodded and repeated Maybeth’s message to him. Big Mike’s tears started flowing again but he smiled. “Yep, it’s her, all right.”

     He took his wallet out and paid us two hundred dollars. “an extra hundred ones for returning my sister’s jacket, as a thank you tip.” We thanked him for his generous gift before jumping into his car.

     He drove us home, and we gave him our condolences for his loss before going up to the front door of our parents’ house.

     Since that incident, Big Mike, never again, had bothered us. Instead, he spread word that he regarded us as the bravest chicks in the town. This pleased us beyond our wildest dreams.