The Halloween Graveyard

By Richard I. Gargus

                It's a true story.  I know.  Only I can know.  Either that, or you'd have to admit I had a good imagination, which I don't, or I was a darned good yarn spinner, which I ain't.  I know it was true… well, cause.. well, you see, I am the boy in that story.  It was me, all alone.  And never before, nor since have I ever.. been THAT alone!   And it was an hour that will forever live in my memory.  Others I have told ask me tell it, again and again, I suppose so they can figure out how they would have reacted, maybe just so they could get the fun out of hearing of someone else in that position, and not themselves.  Maybe they just like to be scared.  I know that as I get older, the details change in my mind, and I know that every time I tell this story, it sounds a bit different.  I think that a lot of that comes from failing memory, and a lot of it comes from telling a very old story, many times, thought about for many years.  I suppose though, any story coming from memory, carries the echoes of the years between then and now.  But, here's what really happened.

                It was October in 1966.  I was playing in the high school band, in Lancaster, Tx.  I stood 5'4" in a farming community, so I didn’t play football.  Still liked the games, but was not into sudden death.  I was more into watching and kibitzing.  I had a friend, a couple of years older than I, pressed 500 in front of me.  Three times!  And he didn’t make the football team.  I didn’t try.  Worse, Lancaster had the small team.  As I recall, it like Mesquite that had the big guys.  Anyway, I played Tuba.  I also was the team manager, the band janitor so to speak.  That's not really bad.  You get to work up a sweat loading and unloading a 100 piece band.  Then you get to wear a 100% wool uniform with a wool overlay.  Then you get to carry the largest instrument in the band.  Windy days make standing a challenging experience.  Marching is hazardous to your health.  My girlfriend played the French horn.  It worked well.. got to ride on the bus with her to and from the games.  Aw.. well.. as romantic as all that was, come Halloween night, my girlfriend was not allowed on the hay ride.  So she didn’t even come to the weenie roast before.  It was a nice place.  The drum majorette's parents lived out south of town in a nicely wooded area.  Mix of pines and cedars.  It was a great place for a weenie roast and the launch of a hay ride.  And I was going to have to miss the best part.

                I decided then, that I would add to the hay riders experience.  It was to follow a path through the old graveyard.  Every hay ride through out Lancaster's long history always went past this old graveyard.  It was such a great old place, it had a couple of graves from the late 1700's and the marble was old and black and green.  Even the sharp edges of the stone cutters chisel were smoothed.  Worn round by something more sinister than just aging.  These were worn smooth with the aging dead.  The trees and shadows hung low in this graveyard, fogs and mists lingered far longer than could be explained.  There was no fence, no wall.  There was a country road crossing it to the north, and the old dirt road south, running past it's west side.  To the East, a small but thickly wooded creek, part of 10 Mile creek, ran past its perimeter a quarter mile east of the dirt road.  On the other side of the dirt road was the prim, trim, new graveyard.  With its concrete circle drive way, with the new clean tombstones.  Nothing in there was older than 1850.  It even had an automatic mercury vapor light.  But the light didn’t travel far east.  No, it was eaten up quickly in the trees and the tombstones, turning it quickly black again.

                This was the graveyard hay rides were invented to be ridden by.  This graveyard was scary as hell at night.  Some shadows danced, casting blue-green flashes of mercury vapor light from the side, mixed with occasional moon light, drifting in and out of broken clouds.  Some shadows stood dead still.  Others moved more slowly yet.  There were things unknown about this graveyard.  There were things there, things I lived to tell you about.  There were things there that could still be there.

                Now, in '66, our big hang out was the dairy queen.  Going to Dallas was going out of town.  I35 was at that time known through there as 77. And it was as two way asphalt road.  When a kid got a car, he was either very lucky of came from a family with money.  I had mixed luck.  My father had suffered a debilitating stroke when I was 14.  I was allowed by the state to get my driver's license at 14 as a hardship case.  , I took over the task of driving my mom to work every morning before school, and picking her up after work every day.  She worked near love field in Dallas.  It was perhaps a 40 mile trip each way.  But it was in about 20 miles of Dallas bumper to bumper traffic.  So I had been driving for two years by this time, and was pretty comfortable driving just about anyplace, either in a car or on my Bridgestone 90 motor cycle.  I was proud of that bike, paid for it myself.

                I had covered all the local towns by, first, bicycle, then motorcycle.  I knew every creek, pond, and graveyard from Desoto to Wilmer/Hutchins, from Lancaster to Waxahachie.  I knew it like the back of my hand.  When I got my first bike, I was careful, my second bike taught me some needed driving lessons.  To this day, some of those lessons are still with me.  One, as a scar across my forehead and nose.  But, that is another story. 

                The weenie roast had been fun, the fire was dying down, and it was time to load up the hay ride.  Since I didn’t have a date, I bade farewell to all the fearless, yet foolish friends riding off to their certain doom.  I pleaded with them not to go.  I honestly did my best to convince them to steer clear of the old graveyard tonight.  I had a real bad feeling and I didn’t want to read about anything tomorrow.  But alas, they laughed me off, and waved with cavalier tosses of the hand.  Little did they know or even care at that time what lay ahead in that night.  Maybe they care now.  Maybe they don't.  Who's to say.  But, no one could have guessed how that night would end.

                After the wagon turned the corner to disappear into the night, I mounted my trusted steed, and headed the shortest route to my appointment for the night.  I had spent all the early afternoon at the graveyard earlier.  I had rigged ropes and pulleys in the trees, I had lights hidden.  I had speakers in different places.  I was rigged to "liven up" a place of the dead.  The plan was to allow two items to cross just in front of and above the wagon, just enough to brush anyone who might be standing, with the tail of a sheet which had been hung onto a weighted pulley.  Close enough to see a shadow in the moonlight, just far enough to not be seen in detail.  Lights in trees were wired to plugs around me.  I was ready to make this a hay ride to be talked about for years to come.  And it worked.  I keep having to talk about it myself.

                There I was.  It was dark now.  I walked my bike in among the tombstones, to a place I had set up before.  There were two large tombstones about 15 feet apart.  The made a great hiding place for me, and for my bike.  I parked it in the dark shadows of the stone on the north, and then felt around in the dark for my pack behind the other.  Finding everything as I had left it, I sat with my back to the great stone and waited.  I was ready.  So I sat there and waited.  And waited some more.  I had gotten here a bit early.  I was convinced though that I would hear them coming up the road at any moment so I didn’t want to leave.  My better judgement told me to get out and maybe go to the lighted treeless side and wait till I saw the "whites of their eyes".  Yeah, it was a dumb idea and I knew it when I thought of it.  So, I sat and waited instead.

                Much time passed.  Way too much time in fact.  I had been hearing some noise from down in the creak area for some time now.  It was getting closer from the sound of it.  It was like someone chopping wood.  Chop……chop……chop.  It seemed to be moving north through the woods, and getting closer too.  I could not see anything.  Toothy tombstones randomly blocked my view of that actual creek.  Even if they and the trees didn’t completely block my view, the darkness of the shadows would surely swallow up the rest.  I waited a while longer, briefly counting the chops.. then making up a rhyme to fit into the rhythm it made.  Anything I could think of to hasten the passage of time. 

                I realized suddenly, how much closer the sound was.  It didn’t have that echo quality anymore.  Like you could almost point to it by the sound alone, but still I saw nothing.  I got up and went to my motorcycle.  I started the engine, turned on the light, and shined it in the direction of the sound.  The light played hard on my eyes, bright white rectangles against pitch blackness.  Nothing moving, only mists and vapors.  I turned the light off trying to recover my night vision.  I looked deeply into the darkness, willing myself to see further, deeper into the inky black.  I could see nothing.

                But onwards came the chopping.. but now.. it was more of a clopping.  The sound had changed subtly as it had gotten closer and clearer.  Instead of a woodsmen's axe felling a tree making this sound, this was a sound of a heavy hoof striking dry, packed earth.  Again, I started the bike and shinned the light into the ink.  Still nothing showed itself.  Only the haunting echo of a hoof strike. .. again.  Again.  I left the engine running.  I didn’t want to hear it any more.  The little two cycle engine puffed raggedly, making its own unsteady rhythm.  I sat with may back to a tombstone, keeping it between me and the approaching steps.  I had begun to hear the sound even over the sputtering thrumming of the small motor.  Realizing that running the engine was closely akin to sticking my head in the sand, I decided to turn it off.  But only after one more thorough sweep of the area towards the creek.  Still I saw nothing. 

                After turning the engine off, I again crept over and sat with my back to the oncoming thing.  My imagination was at its peak, I could just see and feel hands coming from around the tombstone and up through the ground, grabbing me, holding me, pulling me under the surface.  Several times I stole fleeting glances around the sides of the stone, seeing no signs of the encroaching visitor.  Still nothing to see, but now I began even to hear the raspy wheeze of tortured lungs.  In..  and out.   In and out,, clop,  clop, clop.  It was headed straight for me, and I could still see nothing.  Just hear it getting closer and closer.  Closer still, till..

                Now, I felt it's hot breath, smelled its wretched foul air expelled down the back of my neck.  The hair on my neck was sticking straight out, and chills ran down my back in waves.. again the hot breath flowed down the back of my shirt and just as I was about to roll forward and run as hard as I could.. the evil animal behind me emitted a low long…. moooooooooooooooo