A graveyard at midnight is not exactly a warm and welcoming place. Shadows abound and sounds seem magnified in the presence of the dead. The air is filled with a sinister feeling. The darkness has a palpable, eerie quality.
Something is coming.
Something is waiting.
Something is watching.
That something may or may not be human.
It is a feeling that cannot be shaken off in a cemetery in the late hours of the night.
A small crowd had gathered in the gloom. They stood silently by the gravesite. Coy Noel and Dee Dee Noble were there. So was Florine Aurelia and Elda Mandy.
All the old timers had come down from the hills to pay their last respects to Button Dudley. How did they get here, Hadley wondered, on such short notice?
It wasn't as if all these old folks were wired to the Internet or had phones. Most of these people didn't have indoor plumbing or even electricity.
It was another of life's inexplicable mysteries.
Granny Dilcie and one of the Elanor twins were there. Hadley didn't know which one.
Impossible to know, unless you asked her. They were all dressed in black. Solemn men in black suits. Somber women in long, flowing black dresses. Black bonnets and black hats. Black brograns and sturdy work shoes. They stood quietly with their hands folded in front of them.
Waiting.
Waiting.
The scene was like something out of a Shakespearian play.
The night was as dark as ink. The cool winds whipped off the mountains, chilling to the bone. Each old timer held a burning torch, and the light from the end of their wooden firebrands flickered in the infinite obscurity of the sky above them. The small knot of mourners stood in a circle around the hole where Button's coffin rested.
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Nobody Can Say It's You
Mystery / ThrillerA monster is running down Main Street! An old mountain hermit, dressed as Death, drops dead at a Halloween festival in Hope Rock County. Nobody knows why. But mysterious forces are at work on the Appalachian ridges. Granny witches and the Ancients...
