The Lilacs at Pine Wood Cemetery

    The hint of lilac comes in through the window waking Jack from sleep. It is still dark and he turns to look at the clock. 6:36.  With an exasperated huff he turns over onto his back. An old man stands at the foot of his bed. The man’s hands shake the sloped mahogany foot of the bed. He shouts but a ringing noise covers the sound and Jack cannot make out what the man is yelling. He stares, wide-eyed and unable to move. This is sleep paralysis. A hallucination, he thinks to himself, trying to wiggle his toes to wake his body from sleep. This isn't real. Jack feels a heaviness on his chest like he is being pushed into the bed. The man appears on Mae's side of the bed now. He continues to yell without a sound. Right into her ear he yells. She stirs but does not wake. This is more than a hallucination, Jack thinks. Now the man is beside Jack. The voice is distant, as if it is coming from miles deep inside of his throat. Jack strains to hear the voice underneath the ringing. It is two words: Hollow Creek. 

    “Hollow Creek,” Mae says at the breakfast table. “Honey, are you even listening to me?” Jack is now somewhere between wake and sleep, but he blinks at the words. 

    “I’m sorry, honey, I didn’t get much sleep last night. What did you say?” 

She pushes the printed page of a yahoo map over to him. 

    “Nobody prints out maps anymore, honey,” he says and chuckles at how cute she is sometimes. 

“Look, it’s nearly half way between dad’s place and Stonewall. It will be perfect. I just know it.”

Jack looks down at the red circle on the map then back up at Mae. After four years he still had a hard time telling her no. 

    The town is located off of Exit 65. You could blink and miss it. Half way between his wife's overbearing parents and her classes at Stonewall lies Hollow Creek. He drives and she talks the entire way there. She tells him that she looked up pictures of the town. How she misses living in a small town like she did when she was growing up. Jack takes the exit. After a long winding drive through dense forest the trees open up revealing farm fields and a quaint street. A cafe and small businesses line the street. This town probably didn’t have a Dairy Queen, he thinks to himself. And every small town has a DQ. The car parks in front of Maria’s Cafe, home of the best blueberry pie according to the chalkboard sign. 

    “I need some coffee,” he says rubbing his face.”

    “Do you mind if I do a little window shopping while you do? I know you don’t like that very much.”

   “That’s fine. Just meet me back here in, say, a half hour.”

Mae jumps out of the car and runs over to the shop with hats in the window. He imagines that she will probably come back with bags of handmade shop trinkets and handfuls of town gossip. Jack grabs the Hollow Creek Chronicle from the machine and walks into the cafe. The bell rings as he walks through. The people don’t stop their conversations and turn to see the "new guy" in town like he half-expected. A round middle-aged waitress in a cliched pink dress and white apron seats Jack at the booth near the window. 

    “Just a coffee please.” 

    “One coffee coming up,” the waitress says as she takes the menu from the table. The disappointment at the small tip to come is apparent. The newspaper is four pages. The front page article is about the State Fair and how good old Tom Brown’s giant pig was a sure winner this year. He shakes his head, amused at the things that were considered newsworthy in small farming towns. The classifieds are on the back page. Tractor equipment, lawn mowers, a few women seeking men for friendly companionship ads, and then the help wanted section. 

The job posting is two sentences: 

    Caretaker needed at Pine Wood Cemetery. Lodging provided.

Jack finishes his coffee and stares down at the phone number on the listing. 

   "Do you know how far the Pine Wood Cemetery is from here?" he asks the waitress as she refills his coffee.

    "You don’t want to go up there. That place is haunted if you ask me."   

   "Well yeah I would guess a cemetery would be haunted," he says smiling and slightly mocking her. She shifts her weight to one side obviously annoyed at his response.

   "You take county road thirty-nine about six miles west and then take a right into Primrose. Look for that old red barn or you'll miss the turn."

    "Thank you. Much obliged," Jack says in his best cowboy drawl. 

    "Why would you want to go there?"

    "There's a job listing in the paper for a caretaker." 

The waitress looks back at the men sitting at the counter who had overheard. 

    "What?" Jack says, noticing the unease in the air. 

    "Ain't nobody held that job longer than a week. Too scared to stay." 

Jack looks at the waitress and raises one brow in disbelief. 

    "It's true. That's what they say anyway. Ever since the caretaker's wife ran off with that man. Poor guy became a recluse after that. Nobody has heard from him in months. Some say you could hear screams coming from the cemetery though." The waitress shudders noticeably.

   "That man was a mean old coot anyhow," the man at the counter says. 

Through the window he sees Mae across the street talking to an older man and woman. The man has on overalls. A perfect outfit for a small farming town like this, Jack thinks. 

   "That's a great story," he says as he stands up and lays a five on the table next to the check. 

    "You go there. You'll see," the waitress says. She wags her finger at him. 

Jack steps outside. He leans against the hood and waits for Mae. She is too talkative. The sky is gray. A darker gray is rolling closer in the distance. 

   "The people in this town--" he starts to say as he backs out

  "Aren't they great? I love it here." She watches the buildings and old houses as they pass. He watches her and smiles at how excited she looks. He puts his hand on her leg and she puts her hand on top of his. He takes her hand and kisses it.  Otis Redding plays on the radio and they both sing. She waves her arm out of the window and let's it dance through the wind.  But there is something unsettled in the pit of his stomach and the feeling of dread sits in there like a boulder. He doesn't see Mae's face as she turns and looks out the window, but the same feeling is in Mae's stomach too. 

    As they turn onto County Road thirty-nine fat drops of rain begin to fall against the windshield. After six miles it is pouring out and the windshield wipers cannot clear the rain fast enough.

They cross a wooden bridge that looks about fifty years past its prime. The murky brown water is moving like a river through the narrow creek bed. 

Through the foggy wet windshield, a red blob appears in the distance. As Jack gets closer he realizes it's the red barn. 

A row of fir trees lines the right side of the road like an impenetrable fence.

   "I need you to watch for Primrose Lane. It should be on the right. It must be somewhere in between the trees." 

Mae does not respond. She is looking in the passenger side mirror. The lady with the bloody hands and scared face is there in the reflection. Sitting behind her. She has seen the lady before. It wasn't something she could tell Jack. He would think she had lost her mind. He didn't believe that ghost story nonsense. The lady turns her head. Mae turns her head.

   "Here. Turn here," Mae says without inflection. Her voice is different.It does not sound like her.

Jack turns right and drives up the narrow lane. The trees crowd the road. It is just big enough for one vehicle to pass through. They drive through a gate made of wrought iron. Two hooded figures stand at either side, pointing the way forward. The cemetery smells of lilacs. The road snakes through. The curved tops of tombstones and stone crosses peek up through the unkempt grass. 

   "I think that's the house up ahead. Slow down," she says and Jack grimaces. He pulls next to the house.

    "Don't tell me how to fucking drive," he says and throws the car into park. He had never talked to her like that before. Jack wonders why he hasn't before. She got away with too much if you asked him. 

They get out of the car and Mae runs up the stairs to the porch which wraps the perimeter of the old colonial house. He watches her from the car. Between the wipers she switches from blurry to clear. The feeling of dread has been replaced with irritation. It is taking bites from his insides. He starts to walk up the porch steps towards Mae. The old man is behind her. She doesn't know he is there. 

    "Maybe he has a phone," Mae says. She heads for the door and walks through the old man. She knocks against the door and it opens slightly.

    "Hello?" she calls out. She steps inside and calls out again. 

The house smells like rotten apples and cigarette smoke. 

They walk through the house. Nobody is there. 

   "There's no signal." She taps the banana yellow phone receiver three times. This annoys Jack. 

   "The storm probably got to them." He turns on the radio. The reporter says the bridge is out. 

A cold breeze comes in through the open door and Mae shivers. Her dress is wet. 

   "I'm going to find a towel. We might need to stay here for the night." 

    Mae walks upstairs and Jack grunts at her to stop. She tells him she will be right back and ascends the stairs in spite of his protests.  She goes left at the top. The hallway is short. There are two doors on either side and a room straight ahead. She walks into the room and stands in front of the open window. The sky is black now. Flashes of lightning illuminate the cemetery. The woman with the bloody hands is standing next to a tree near a small building. The lightning flashes again. The lady is gone. Mae doesn't know Jack is behind her until she turns. His hand comes fast and hard against her face. The force of it knocks her to the ground. A hot tingling sensation throbs on the side of her face. Her ear is ringing. He is yelling something, but she can't hear what he is saying. The ringing is too loud. The voice is distant. Jack kneels down and grabs her hair. The lightning strikes and it is not his face. It is somebody else's face she sees. Another man. The scream comes from her mouth, but it is not her screaming. The toe of his boot comes down swift against the side of her head. He grabs hold of her ponytail and pulls her across the splintered wood. The blood begins to pool in her eyes. But she can see as he drags her from the room, as they pass the door on the left. The old man is sitting on a red recliner. The top of his head is gone. The shotgun is on the floor in front of him. His big toe is broken inside of the trigger. A breeze blows in through the hole in the wall behind him. Blood gurgles up as Mae tries to scream. Jack bends down and picks her up over his shoulders and walks down the stairs. She sees the bloody-handed woman in the reflections of the pictures as he carries her down. The front door blows open and Jack walks outside. The road curves down to the bottom of the hill. The small building is ahead next to the willow tree. He carries her through the tall wet grass. It soaks through his shoes and slides like razors against her face. In front of the small building a stone angel hangs over a pillar and reaches towards heaven. Jack sets her down on the stone step of the mausoleum and pushes the metal door open. The marble floor is cold as her back slides against it. There is a grating sound as Jack slides the coffin from the crypt. It opens as it falls onto the floor. The woman is there. Her face is distorted and desperate like the stone angel. Her fingers are worn, peeled down to the bone. The silk lining has been ripped.  Jack places Mae gently inside. He covers her mouth and muffles her screams. The casket closes. It is dark inside. The woman beneath her is nearly liquid. Mae screams and pounds against the silk lining. She can feel the coffin end lift. She hears the grating as it slides inside the narrow crypt. The coffin vibrates as the metal door opens then closes.  Her screams fade as Jack walks up to the house through the tall wet grass. She claws at the coffin. Her fingers are bloody. She hears the gunshot.