Hold Your Breath by the Graveyard #TNTHorrorContest

Hold Your Breath by the Graveyard

Two thousand six hundred forty feet.

That's the distance that Dad measured. He checked it in the car against the odometer. We drove it twice. Sure enough, half a mile from the first prong of the wrought iron gate to the last bent rail at the far end of Four Lawn Gardens. Not off even an inch.

Two thousand six hundred forty feet.

Forty-two tombstones.

No more than a minute depending on how fast Dad drives. For me, with my backpack full of ninth grade textbooks--all of them fatter than Miss Vicky the Sunday School teacher's leg--I take a good ten minutes on foot.

I can't hold my breath that long.

Grandma told me-she swore by the grave of her Civil War general granddad that this was right-you must hold your breath when you walk by the graveyard. She was a wacky old coot. When I was seven she used her Ouija board to find out the hour and day she would die. I thought she needed some of Uncle Tony's medicine that keeps him from killing the president.

Dang it, she died on the exact day she promised as told through that Ouija board. I swore that day never to doubt her again. Sometimes when I get lonely I sit out in the backyard by that contraption that made her so many jugs. When the night's quiet I swear I hear her talking to me. I know what she would say to me right now if she weren't dead and all.

"Hold your breath."

Bus dropped me off on the Old Hollow Road. Driver said she wouldn't take the Old Hollow because of the tires getting' stuck in the mud. Hasn't rained for three weeks. At least the headmaster will believe that excuse. I know that the bus driver's just plain scared.

Can't blame her. Everyone knows that Four Lawn has got some evil buried in it. Grandma knew it. She told me the secret. "Daisy," she called me even though my name's Emily--I told you grandma was a coot. "Daisy, if you ever find yourself having to go past that bonegarden, you keep your mouth closed. Don't even breath. That's how they git ya." Grandma passed out right after that. I figured she bein' so old and not bein' able to hold her whiskey must have put her right off.

We didn't bury her in Four Lawn. She wouldn't have it. We had to cremate her and toss her ashes over her still in the yard.

I miss Grandma.

Dad couldn't come to pick me up at the bus stop on account of him having to appear in court in Green Acres. That means I have to walk the three miles home. Never went by myself. Was never allowed to go near the place. Dad said he didn't want me getting' hurt on all the railings. Tom Kane, he's a boy in my class, he told me that adults don't let kids near the place on account of all the Satanists. Those are people who hold masses that are black and offer up babies out of the mommy's bellies to Old Scratch. Tommy says that if they done catch me, they gonna put a baby in my belly. Next full moon, they will rip the baby out and sacrifice it. He says watch out for the robes. Satanists always wear robes. Just like the choir in church. But black. Black as the night.

Tom's probably full of it.

Probably.

Now I gotta walk. Fast as I can. Don't stop for nothing. Not a pause, even. And hold my breath every step. Dark spirits enter in through your mouth. That's why people say bless you when you sneeze. You can't keep your mouth closed. Dark spirits get in. Bless you pulls 'em right out.