Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (26 page)

And, yes, I did have an overactive imagination. At least that’s what my mom was always telling me. Then again, I’ve lived on this island my whole damn life and I have never, ever experienced a night so devoid of sound, Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s, or otherwise.

“Where do you want to do this?” Tommy’s voice pierced the night air like a gunshot blast. I squealed and nearly lost control of my bladder. He laughed at me. “Jesus, Billy, you need to relax.”

“And you need to not talk so loud, or give me a warning or something.”

“How the hell am I supposed to give you a warning that I’m going to talk without talking?”

I heard now how ridiculous that sounded. “Fine. Just…keep it down, man. You’re talking loud enough to…” I let my voice trail off.

“Wake the dead?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Hey, we can only hope, right? C’mon, let’s set up by that tree.”

The Ghost Tree, he meant. I hated that tree and Tommy knew it. It just felt…spooky. It also felt alive, somehow. As if all the lost souls of this cemetery somehow congregated within it, took refuge in it.

Yeah, maybe I do have an overactive imagination.

Still, I kept my concerns to myself, although Tommy knew I wasn’t a happy camper. Tommy liked to push me out of my comfort zone. Make me talk to girls I didn’t want to talk to. Try things I would never have tried on my own…like Guiness Black Lager, blech. And now sit under the world’s most haunted Christmas tree. Tommy was a dick like that. Or cool like that. You pick.

Anyway, we did just that, hunkering down under the tree, with the truck parked somewhere behind us. The tree’s thick canopy blocked out the half moon and the smattering of stars. The tree effectively cocooned us. Hell, even its branches nearly hung to the ground. A cocoon of spookiness. It doesn’t matter if someone hung festive-as-fuck streamers on it. It was still spooky.

Or not. Yes, I needed to relax. To breathe. To chillax, as Tommy would say.

I did all of that, but still felt uneasy as hell.

“Damn, bro. You sound like you’re hyperventilating.”

“Don’t worry about me,” I said, breathing through my mouth. “Let’s just do this and get out of here.”

Now that my eyes were adjusting to the gloom, I could just make out Tommy’s pale, smiling face. Why he enjoyed pushing me, challenging me, or seeing me squirm was something I would never understand.

“Okay,” he said, “you pull up the ghost finder app, and I’ll pull up the ghost recorder.”

I did just that—and quickly. Anything that helped get us the hell out of here. I wasn’t very surprised to discover that my hands were shaking slightly.

Get a hold of yourself, Billy,
I thought to myself. Then I immediately forgave myself, too, since I was sitting under the tree from hell in the middle of a cemetery late at night. I had every right to be damn nervous.

Soon, we had our apps up and running. Tommy’s freckled face was aglow in the light of his own phone, looking very much like a disembodied ghost himself. “Okay, so far nothing,” said Tommy. “How the hell does the ghost finder find nothing in a graveyard?”

“Maybe there’re no ghosts here,” I said. Perhaps I was a little too quick to bash his new ghost finder app, an app that supposedly could sense the fluctuations in the magnetic field around the phone.

“Like hell,” said Tommy. “This is a fucking cemetery. It’s filled with ghosts.”

I didn’t doubt he was right, but having him utter it in a cemetery, while under the ghost tree, sent an ice-cold shiver down my spine. Then again, it could have just been a ghost, too.

I moved over and looked at Tommy’s iPhone cradled in his palm. His wasn’t as big as my Galaxy Note 4. In fact, no phone was as big as my Galaxy Note 4. Perhaps nowhere in the known universe was there a phone as big as my Galaxy Note 4. Anyway, his phone was easy enough to read in the near pitch darkness. On the screen was a greenish, circular radar, with a rotating arm. The radar could find ghosts within a diameter of twenty feet. Supposedly. So far, the screen was empty. I guess that was a good thing.

“Are there
any
ghosts here? Jesus H. Christ,” mumbled Tommy, and I cringed at the blatant question and the taking of the Lord’s name in vain. You see, I kinda wanted Jesus H. Christ on our side on a night like this. I would ask him, of course, what the “H” stood for.

Then again, we had come here to find ghosts. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. At the time, we were bored, having just spent hours playing the latest Halo on Xbox One. Now… well, now I regretted like crazy agreeing to come. But we were here, and we weren’t going anywhere until Tommy got his ghost fix.

So I kept my mouth shut and played along…all while silently hoping we would get the hell out of here in time to get drunk on judiciously spiked eggnog.

As I hoped like hell, something rustled in the undergrowth nearby. I think I peed myself a little.

“Relax, Billy,” said Tommy. “It’s just a squirrel or something—look!” He pointed to the screen, and I could see it too. A bluish blip had appeared within the greenish circle, in a direction that indicated it was to our left. “We’ve got our first ghost!”

“Yay,” I said, and I might have sounded less than enthusiastic. Still, I looked over to my left. There was nothing there, of course. Just a lot of darkness.

“Let’s talk to it,” said Tommy excitedly. “Let’s ask it some questions.”

Asking
it
questions was suddenly about the last thing I wanted to do. Then again, I was pretty sure these ghost radar apps were full of shit. Maybe. On a night like this, though, in these conditions, with Tommy’s face aglow and a bluish ghostly blip nearby, it was suddenly very easy to believe that the ghost radar was real and that we were in some serious shit.

Damn my overactive imagination.

With a heavy sense of foreboding and a strong need to empty my bladder, I started the recorder, using my own phone app. “What do you want to ask it?” I asked.

“Don’t talk to
me
,” said Tommy. “Talk to
him
.”

“How do you know it’s a him?”

“Well, it’s a blue dot…just feels like a boy, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” I said. I took in some air and, already regretting the words that were about to issue forth from my mouth, I asked: “Is there anyone, um, here with us?”

“Geez, Billy, could you sound more like a downer? Put some more
umph
into it.”

“I don’t think ghosts care if there’s
umph
in it or not.”

“They feed off our energy, man. They know when you don’t really want to talk to them.”

“Well, I don’t really want to talk to them.”

“You did earlier.”

“Earlier we weren’t in a cemetery. Earlier we were sitting in my bedroom.”

Tommy nodded. “Earlier your mom was making us cookies.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I like your mom,” said Tommy, then quickly added: “I mean, she’s a cool mom.”

I looked at him sideways. Truth was, my mom was still a knockout for her age. I always suspected my friends had crushes on her. “Yeah, she’s okay,” I said. I raised the recorder. “How about this: You ask it something, since you’re the expert.”

“Fine, give it to me. You hold mine.”

“That sounds gay, man.”

“Well, we’re not gay, so let it go. At least, I’m not gay.”

“I’m not either,” I said. “Not that there’s anything wrong with it.”

“Settle down, Seinfeld.”

We switched phones and Tommy went on to ask a series of lame questions, all of which were meant to establish whether or not someone or something was with us in the cemetery. We next played the recording back, listening closely to the silence between the questions…and got exactly nothing. No ghostly voices.
Nada
. In fact, even the blue blip disappeared.

“This sucks,” said Tommy. “It’s not like the TV shows. Man, they’re always getting voices and shit.”

“Well, too bad,” I said. “We tried. Hey, are you hungry?”

Tommy was always hungry, and he was always game for food. My question was, of course, well calculated to get our asses the hell out of the cemetery and over to the local McDonald’s. No luck. Tommy ignored me, his face aglow as he studied my cell phone screen.

“Hey, look at this,” he said. “It’s another app. Google is recommending it. Probably because you bought the ghost app.”

“What app is it recommending?” I asked.

“It’s called
Raise the Dead for Fun and Profit
.”

“Fun and profit?” I asked. “How the hell do you make a profit on raising the dead?”

“I don’t know, but let’s get it.”

“Oh, hell no,” I said, knowing I was going to have to act fast. Once Tommy had his mind set on something, there was no way in hell I or anyone would ever get him to back down. “Man, I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry?”

“There!” said Tommy excitedly.

“There, what?” I asked, mildly horrified.

“I just downloaded the app.”

I reached for my phone. “Jesus, Tommy…I don’t have any money—”

Tommy pushed me away. “Relax, it was free.”

And he kept holding me away as he read up on the app. As he did so, he started laughing. “You’re not going to believe this, Billy.”

“That you’re a douchebag. I believe it.”

He unleashed a wicked charlie horse on my upper arm that finally got me to retract my hand. “Hey!”

“That’s for calling me a douchebag. Punch for a name. You know how it goes.”

He was right, of course. That was our thing. If any of us called the other a name, the other got a free punch.

“Anyway,” he said. “It says here that this app is guaranteed to raise the dead.”

“Guaranteed how? The app was free.”

“Whatever,” said Tommy, now mostly ignoring me. “The instructions are pretty basic.”

“What are they?” I asked, still nursing my sore shoulder. Tommy had a punch like a Mack truck. Mostly, I regretted like hell for asking Tommy what the instructions were.
Stupid curiosity.

“Find a graveyard, sit comfortably, and then press play.”

I didn’t like how this was adding up, and was just about to grab the phone back, when Tommy, anticipating my move, held it away from me…and at the same time, pressed
play
.

Almost immediately, a voice speaking in another language issued out.

“What’s he saying?” asked Tommy.

“How the hell would I know?”

“Sounds like gibberish.”

“No,” I said, “it sounds like an incantation.”

“What the hell is an incantation?”

“It’s a spell, dumbass.”

“Like a witch’s spell?”

“Yeah,” I said, “except I can’t understand what he’s saying.”

“Sounds trippy,” said Tommy.

“Maybe we should turn it off.”

“Why? He’s just getting started.”

Truth was, I was getting very, very creeped out. A shiver had started working through me, a shiver that I was having a hard time controlling. In fact, if I wasn’t careful, my teeth were going to start chattering soon. And it wasn’t even that cold out for December.

“I’m being serious, Tommy.”

“Uh oh. Billy’s getting serious. I’d better turn it off or he might throw a hissy fit.”

“Or, more likely, he’s going to kick your ass.”

“I’d like to see you try it.”

Tommy and I were always challenging each other. Of course, never once had we actually come to blows, but we’d been close. “Just turn it off.”

“Why don’t you make me?”

It was at that moment I saw red.

Maybe it was the cemetery setting, or the fact that I was already on edge, or the creepy monotone that was even now emanating from my phone, but I’d suddenly had enough of Billy and his jabs and, well, his stupid face.

With a growl and a few choice curse words, I lunged at him…surprising the hell out of him—and me—in the process.

I grabbed him around the neck as he swung wildly at me, and soon we were rolling around on the grass and dirt under the Ghost Tree, just two clowns with too much energy and time and testosterone.

One of his elbows got me on the lip and I instantly tasted blood, which I spat out.

And as we continued rolling around, now further away from the big tree and closer to the actual burial plots, as both of us spent some time with our heads pressed against the thick grass, Tommy quit muttering curses at me and said, “Do you hear that?”

“I hear your stupid face talking,” I said. No, not the cleverest comeback I’d ever muttered. Then again, I had Tommy’s hand presently clawing at my face.

“I’m serious, man. I hear something.”

“I don’t hear any—”

I stopped fighting Tommy. I stopped and sat up and cocked my head, listening hard. Yes, I heard it, too.

Digging.

Now we both had our ears pressed to the ground.

“What is it?” asked Tommy, and for the first time tonight the cockiness was gone from his voice.

“Shh,” I admonished.

I pressed my ear harder. Jesus, it sounded like something was coming up through the ground directly beneath us, scratching desperately. I lifted my head, confused.

“Moles?” asked Tommy.

“I don’t know,” I said.

It was at that moment that I realized that the creepy voice was still intoning from my phone. A phone that Tommy was still holding. “Give me,” I said and grabbed it from him. I promptly shut the app off, and the voice stopped.