Thin clouds raced across the dark sky. The wind howled as it brushed against the tall trees that enclosed the old cemetery. The moon hung brightly in the night sky, casing ominous shadows upon each other. The sounds of night settled in and magnified as four figures slowly crept through the cemetery, hiding in the shadows of the ancient trees. A small box was carefully protected under by the figure in the front of the group; he stood waiting for the others to catch up.

“Turn off that damn light!” Michael whispered between his teeth. He shot a deadly look over towards Alex, who brought a flashlight because he was a little scared of the dark. Alex’s hand fumbled as it tried to find the switch, but he got startled and dropped the flashlight on the ground.

“Michael…”

“What?”

“I think we lost him,” Kyle answered. He grabbed Michael’s arm to stop him from moving forward, Kyle wanted to wait for their friends.

Michael shook Kyle's arm off and turned around to see what’s his problem was. Michael was not a touchy guy, especially if a guy touched him. He saw Kyle pointing behind him and understood the reason why they stopped, both Alex and Max on their knees searching for the fallen flashlight. “Why did you bring them?” Michael asked Kyle sternly.

“Wasn’t my idea man. Yours.”

“Then why didn’t you stop me?” Michael tried to transfer some of the blame off of him to Kyle. It was Kyle's fault for not stopping him from bringing Max and Alex along. It was his idea to go, but he didn’t know that the other two would have caused so much trouble.

“Again, I did. But you wanted to scare the shit out of Alex remember. Max just came for the ride.”

Michael narrowed his eyes at the short Kyle and went to help Max and Alex look for the flashlight. He hated being wrong. Alex stood up as soon as Michael got to where the two were on the ground. He carefully looked over the flashlight to make sure it was still in working condition. His dad would kill him if anything happened to it. Making sure the bulb wasn’t broken; Alex turned it on once more. The beam hit his face, causing his face to distort by the shadows created on his features.

Michael quickly grabbed it and threw it over to Max, who caught it in the nick of time. “Alex you are going to get us caught!” Michael said it louder than he meant to.

“SHHHHHHHHHhh…” All eyes shifted towards Kyle who was standing a few feet away, alert. As if the surrounded knew that it had to be quiet too, there was silence. Everything stood still. Kyle kneeled down to the ground as his eyes moved quickly back and forth. The other’s followed suit as they headed their way towards him. Kyle quickly placed his index finger in front of his lips when he saw Alex opening his mouth to speak. They all had to be extremely quiet.

A few minutes passed before they all stood up. The natural sounds of the dark were no longer silent as the four figures stood close and alert.

“What happened?” Alex inquired.

“I thought I heard a noise. Like someone stepping on a branch.” Kyle looked around, peering into the dark at any sudden movements in the shadows.

“It could have been the wind…” Alex swallowed his growing nausea.

“No. I know what I heard. You could feel it, couldn’t ya?” Kyle looked over to Michael, who too was searching for something in the darkness.

“Yeah, like someone was watching.”

“Yeah,” Max agreed. Three pairs of eyes looked at him. They all were surprised he even spoke; he’d been very quiet the whole night. “Lets go.” Max passed them and continued to walk further and deeper into the graveyard.

The four of them walked in silence, but occasionally one would look back to see if they were followed. As they went deeper in the graves, they got closer and tighter to each other. The grass was growing wild and tall, it was un-kept. It was getting harder to walk since they couldn’t see in front of them for the moon was hidden behind the clouds. The air felt stale and old. Alex wanted to take his flash light out, but Max had it and never gave it back to him. Alex was the first one to speak, he couldn’t take the silence anymore, it was making him nervous. “Man… don’t step on people’s graves.” Kyle just snickered at Alex’s remark. “Seriously guys, don’t. It’s disrespectful.”

“Alex, they're dead. They don’t care.” Kyle said jokingly as he tried not to be disrespectful.

Alex smirked when he noticed that his friends were discreetly trying not to step on the graves. He kept up with them, making sure he was never last. From time to time, he felt the hair on his neck tingle and he needed to shake off that feeling, but he didn’t want the guys to know that he was really scared. He didn’t know what possessed him to go with the guys to a cemetery in the middle of Halloween night. Feeling that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach again, Alex turned around to look behind him. The fear was so consuming that he didn’t notice the guys had stopped until he ran into Max. He got the wind knocked out of him as he landed on the floor.

Michael shook his head at the clumsy Alex as he carefully placed the box on the ground. They have tried it earlier, but nothing happened since Kyle was laughing too hard. He never took anything seriously.

“It works better if you put it on the grave,” Max instructed as he knelt next to Michael. Michael nodded.

“Actually it works better if you use a tombstone,” stated Alex off-handedly.

“What?” Michael said irritated.

“You know that Chinese guy, something Kim, in our Bio class. He told me once that if you use a tomb stone, you can get better results.”

“He’s Koran,” Max stated as if he was certain.

“I’ve always thought he was Cambodian,” added Kyle.

“Would you guys shut up? We’re not going to get anything if you girls keep on yacking.” Michael gave his friends a deadly glare; they were being too noisy.

“Yeah… Alex, stop distracting us,” Kyle said as he playfully hit Alex on the shoulders. He looked around nervously; it was really dark. “Hey I think this is where those people were found and buried.”

“What? What are you talking about Kyle?”

“When I was a little boy, my grandfather told me about this unexplained killing when he was younger.” Everybody gave him their full attention as they looked at him, wanting him to continue. “He was in his early 20’s and the big story during that time was the mass killing of 10 people in this cemetery."

“It happened on Halloween. A group of teenagers went to the cemetery for some fun. The next day they never returned home, so the authorities went searching for them. Grand-pa knew some of the kids so he went with the cops to help look for them. When they finally got to the cemetery… my grand-pa called it a ‘blood-bath’. Body parts were scattered all over the place. Graves were open and empty. And no one knew who did it or what actually happened. None of the bodies were ever identified since everything was chopped up and none of the heads were found.”

“The police couldn’t even say what or who did it?” asked Alex as he looked over his shoulder.

“Grand-pa said they were just as puzzled, didn’t know if animals or people did it.”

“So… so what did they do with the bodies?” Alex asked trying to keep his voice claim.

“They buried most them in a huge grave.”

The wind started to pick up and the sound of rustling leaves got louder, but not as loud as their breathing. The taste of bile raised up their throat as the agonizing screams of pain echoed in their ears.

“Where?” Alex swallowed the fear that was rising in his stomach.

“Your standing on it!” Kyle pointed towards Alex’s feet.

Kyle started laughing when he saw their faces. And when Kyle saw Alex jump on Michael because he didn’t want his feet on the ground, Kyle bent over crying on the ground. He didn’t stop laughing until someone pulled him off the ground by the collar of his shirt. A very upset Michael was looking at him, but he didn’t care, it was all worth it.

“Kyle stop your BS,” Max said sternly. He was getting feed up with Kyle’s childish behavior. He went and gathered the box that had moved during the commotion.

“Ah….. but I am not making it up,” Kyle said in a teasing tone.

“Whatever.” Michael stood there scratching his eyebrow; he should have known Valenti was up to something.

“Believe it or not, but it's right there.” Kyle pointed behind them. There stood a structure that was hidden by the shadows.

Max looked at Kyle, studying him, to see if he was going to pull another prank. After he got what he needed, Max carefully walked towards the structure with the others following behind him. It was a tomb and it was very big. The tomb had steps to go to another level where there was a door. It reminded Max of the pictures he had seen of a cemetery in France. He didn’t want to get to close, but there was an inscription on the door. Taking out Alex’s flashlight, Max shined it on the door and read, “ ‘Our Loving Children. May they rest in Peace’. Kyle, there only nine names here.”

“Yeah, there was one survivor,” he answered softly.

“How do you know?” Alex asked as took a few steps closer to them. He couldn’t help but feel like they were being watched, but he didn’t want to tell the guys, they were just going to say he was being paranoid.

“When I got older, I actually looked it up.”

“You actually went to the library?!” Alex said in an amused tone.

“No you idiot, I went through the police files.”

“So who was the survivor?

“I forgot his name, but it said he went crazy. They found him a couple of days afterwards. All bloodied in this cemetery, lying next to where the mass grave was going to be. They couldn’t get anything out of him. He was also evaluated by a shrink and they said he had been through a lot of trauma and that was what made him go crazy, other than that, he was perfectly healthy, the only thing physically wrong with him was that he was missing his middle finger in his right hand.”

“You can remember all that crap and you can’t remember his name? No wonder why you suck in school.”

“You’re not doing all that great either Guerin.”

“Hey, hey... guys look,” Alex tried to get their attention. “Look at the names…”

Max noticed it but he didn’t want to bring attention to it. They all looked at each other as a sinking feeling settled in their stomachs.

“Yeah, we better finish this up and leave,” Max broke the silence.

“Where’s the box?” Michael asked. He didn’t want to stay here any longer than he had to.

“I left it over there,” Max answered. He pointed to where they were before. He took a few steps and his foot hit something that raddled. Pointing the flashlight to the ground, he saw the box that he was sure he left at the original place. Michael came over and picked up the box and gave Max a questioning look. Max just shrugged his shoulders, what else could he do.

They all looked at the box that Michael was holding then looked at each other. Michael slowly turned around and headed towards the tomb, with the other guys following right behind him. Michael placed in on the ground and opened the lid. The four guys looked at it in awe. They’ve tried to get it to work an hour earlier, but nothing happened. Kyle wasn’t serious enough and Alex tended to get scared, but with the recently development, they all were willing to concentrate and get it to work. Michael looked up at his friends to see if everybody was ready. They all nodded to answer him. He carefully lifted the object out and placed it on the tomb as his friends crowded around it.

The four friends placed both hands on the object and closed their eyes to concentrate. None of them dared to speak, but they all knew that it was time. With their eyes closed tightly, no one was able to see their surrounding getting darker and mincing. Alex felt it first, the hair on his back stood up as did his arm. Slowly the object started to move in circle on the oujia board. All four of them opened their eyes at the same time, looking at each other and asking the same question, are you the one moving it. But they already knew the answer; no one was moving the pointer around.

Max swallowed before he spoke, “Who are you?”

The pointer slowly moved on the board from letter to letter. Finally spelling out the word JAMIE. All four of them looked up and swallowed. They all waited for the next brave soul to speak up. Michael shifted his eyes from one friend to another, and then finally built up the courage to ask, “Are you buried in the mass grave?” He already knew the answer. Michael had read the list of names that was engraved on the door; there was no Jamie. Michael choked when the pointer said “NO”.

“Are you buried in this cemetery?” Alex asked in a low throaty whisper.

“YES”

“How did you die?” Kyle quickly added.

“NO”

They all looked at each other in confusion. They didn’t understand what the ‘NO’ meant. “You don't want to tell us?” Michael asked, he was becoming very curious. All of them were not very surprised when the board answered NO.

Kyle too was becoming a little curious. “Can we see your grave from here?” All four started to breath harder when the pointer said YES. “How far are you from here?”

Alex' skin started to crawl when the pointer moved to read ‘21 NE’. Max looked at his three friends. They all nodded in agreement. One by one, they took their hand off of the pointer and started to stand up. Max took the lead with Alex right behind him as Michael took the back of the line. They all took 21 steps northeast and came up on a grave that was over run with weed. All four of them stood there staring at the grave, unable to move. They took turns looking at each other, mentally pressuring one another to go and clear out the weed to see if Jamie was really there. Finally, Michael couldn’t handle the suspense; he took a few steps and cleared the weed so that the gravestone was in full view.

A muffled gasp was heard when they all read what was engraved on the stone:

THE END