Bloody Bones
Jon Coley
For the real Gabby and Winston.
May your bones never be too broken.
Disclaimer:
This book is a work of fiction. Anything real or imagined related to people in the real world is purely coincidental. I mean, who really rides e-bikes to haunted houses?Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
AcceptanceChapter One
Sneaking Out
Winston threw the pennies up into the warm Alabama night. They arced and landed lightly on Gabby’s second story window.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered to himself. He didn’t like sneaking around like this, but Gabby had insisted that it would be best to have their adventure at night. She always had a way of getting him to do stuff that he would never consider otherwise. This time her argument truly was hard to disagree with, though. Night vision video was always way spookier than anything you could shoot in the day time. The brief respite from the “disrespectful” heat of the day was a bonus too. Still, it was creepy having to sneak out at night on his brother’s electric bicycle. They could both get into sooooo much trouble.
Being young teens, they were old enough to go pretty much wherever they wanted during the day in the summer time. They lived in a small Alabama town where everybody knew everybody after all. But sneaking out at night was totally out of the question. How was it that Gabby could always get him to do the stupidest things? Your best friend shouldn’t cause you so much trouble. He figured that was something he needed to think about pretty soon.
“Hey!” a whisper came down from above. Winston looked up to see his best friend, already fully dressed, sticking her head out of her bedroom window.
“Finally,” he whisper-yelled up to her, “Should I meet you round front?”
“Nah, you know I got this. Wait there.”
With that, his young friend climbed through her second story window, and out onto the roof. Then she scuttled down the gutter spout a few feet, and jumped safely onto the grass.
“You should’ve filmed that, you know?”
“I think we’re getting into enough trouble already, Gabs.”
“Fine. Did you bring the bike?”
Winston nodded, “Yup. Got a full charge too.”
“Well, let’s go! This. Is. Gonna. Be. Awesome!”
Winston and Gabby sneaked around the front of her house and got on the electric bike. They only needed to go a few miles away, but it was the middle of the night in a sleepy rural Alabama town. The bike was quiet, and it could go much faster than their regular bicycles with a fraction of the effort. That was why it was the perfect mode of transportation for their mission. They had planned this adventure on the night of the full moon, so they could see without using flashlights too.
Until one experiences summer in the Deep South, their is no way to explain the oppression. The morning firmament disappears mere moments after sunrise. The humidity compounds the heat as the high air pressure insures everyone will feel it for days at a time. Once upon a time, this oppression even influenced the way people built their houses, all of them standing on stubby stone stilts with transom windows and covered front porches. All that was just to survive the long, torturous summers. At night, however, it is different. The heat, if only ever so slightly, abates, and the ever present humidity settles to the ground. Sound does not seem to travel very easily through it for some reason. The overall effect truly is what people call “the dead of night.” That is what Gabby and Winston were driving through with a naively macabre sense of anticipation.
Truth be told, Winston was just as excited about their plan as Gabby was. All his life he was fascinated by it, the place. After he accidentally got Gabby interested in it too, well, it was like he had started a wild fire in her brain. They had done so much research, so much hunting. Now it was finally time to see the whole thing through. None of the other kids in school would ever dare try what they were about to do.
Off they went, staying on the road when they could, but keeping ready to hide in the ditches if they saw any car lights in the distance. Fortunately for them, that never actually happened. No one else in their right mind would be going anywhere near this destination in the dead of the night.
Chapter 2
Setting Up
They hid the e-bike behind a massive ancient oak tree about half way between the road and the imposing gate of the old Weimer Estate. The once manicured lawn had long since become a ragged field, tall blonde grasses swaying in the all too rare summer winds. Gabby and Winston walked about a hundred yards from the road to the gate. There was a crumbling rock wall surrounding the property with a foreboding ornamental iron entrance. The initials W.E. were inscribed with bronze atop the gate bars. Another dozen or so yards beyond the gate, an old lone grave, complete with an iron cage around the monument and coffin space, lay in full view. It was obviously meant to serve as a warning to anyone foolish enough to trespass.
The two youths left the gate and skulked along the wall until they came to some cover. Several shrubs and a few copses of trees had come up in the past few years, and this made the perfect place for them to bivouac. They sat down facing each other and Winston got out his phone, his prize possession. After opening the video app, he switched the settings to night vision. He held the phone up, getting Gabby’s face into full view. A pale green ghostly image of his friend appeared on his screen. It was time for the interview.
“Okay, this is my friend. She’s a bit of an expert on the old Weimer Estate. So can you give us a brief history of this place?”
“Sure. The house is over a hundred fifty years old. It’s one of the first houses in town according to my research. It belonged to a wealthy recluse, named Weimer, of course. He lived here for decades and died in the house. Per his instructions, he was buried on the estate grounds, and his grave is just on the other side of the wall here.”
Gabby pointed behind herself as she spoke, her ghostly green arm glowing in the camera screen.
“So what do we know about this Weimer person?”
“Not much. He was an independently wealthy life long bachelor who kept mostly to himself. Not what you’d call a people person. There were stories in the old gossip rags about some lavish parties he liked to throw for his guests, who were always eccentric out-of-towners. Can’t even tell you much about how he looked, other than that one of his front teeth was gold with a diamond mounted in it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, don’t really know for sure. It was just a story one of the women told about him in the old local society gossip columns. They just happened to mention his wicked looking smile and what not.”
“Freaky.”
“Yeah, but what’s really freaky is that this old house is still standing. There have been several attempts to condemn the building, all of which failed miserably. Lawyers would show up with cease and desist orders out of nowhere. Once, back in the 1960’s, they tried to tear down this old stone wall. All their equipment kept breaking down until they just gave up. So the town council finally just decided to leave the place alone, no matter how decrepit and creepy looking it got.”
“And now we’re here. Why won’t you tell our viewers the plan.”
Gabby grinned broadly while patting her backpack, “Oh, I’ve brought some of my climbing gear, and we’re gonna scale this wall. Once we’re on the other side, we’ll take a good look at that weird grave of Mr. Weimer’s. Then we’re heading into the house itself. As far as I know, we’ll be the first people to set foot in their in seventy-five years!”
“And we’ll have the first vids ever too,” Winston chimed in.”
“That’s right. So let’s get started and have some fun.”
Winston stopped the recording, and the two of them began unpacking Gabby’s bag. Inside it was some of her older brother’s pilfered rappelling gear. They picked an inconspicuous spot on the wall that couldn’t too easily be seen from the road and began setting up. Being young and healthy teens, they were able to get over the old wall in no time with little trouble, save a few scrapes and scratches, a small price to pay for adventure. The rest of the night would not go so well.
*
Geoffrey sat down in front of the massive chunk of marble. He hadn’t done the work of his trade in months. True, he loved the vocation, but it was near impossible for him to do since the accident. He had lost several fingers on both hands. Luckily he had saved up enough money to pay his bills for a good while, and it was now just himself and his busybody wife left to care for, since his children were now grown. The melancholy was overwhelming at times, though. What was he supposed to do with his life now? He was too old to start over. The mental pressure and sadness increased upon him every day. Then that Weimer fellow showed up.
He was such a strange man. For some reason, he had sought Geoffrey out specifically. Geoffrey told him that he couldn’t work on monuments anymore, but the man was so persistent. He reluctantly agreed to meet Weimer, though the predicament left him feeling deeply uneasy. The man insisted on shaking hands! It was the first time he had done that in months too. Weimer squeezed Geoffrey’s stubs with a firm grasp and he smiled. Oh, what a wicked smile that man had! His one gold tooth with a shining diamond sparkling in the candle light.
Weimer still requested his work, even though it would be near impossible to get it done within a reasonable timeframe. Geoffrey was going to decline, but the money was just too bloody good. It would be enough for him to retire, which he had never expected to ever do. There was no deadline either, not really. He offered half the money immediately. Had the sum with him! It was more money than Geoffrey had ever seen in one place. The contract stipulated that he be the only one to work on the stone, and that it be this stone specifically.
Geoffrey looked down at the great stone that had taken his fingers and crushed them into nothing. Images of the bloody pulp and gore still flashed in his mind. Oh well, he still had his thumbs, though, and a couple of mangled fingers on each hand. This was going to be so difficult, torturous even, but he would create the perfect monument one last time. He would, once again, pick up hammer and chisel. Such a macabre work to do, though. Weimer had exact specifications. There were poetic verses to engrave along the sides, decorative and complex. They were in a foreign language, probably old German. But the most disturbing feature was the date. It had his birth, his dash, and the date of his death. Did the man know when he was going to die? Surely not!
Geoffrey shook his head. Rich folk were so crazy! Too much time on their hands, something he certainly never had. Nevertheless, Geoffrey was going to get this done one way or another. He would carve this monument to perfection, take the man’s money, and let him worry about shipping it to America. He placed the chisel onto the great marble slab. Awkwardly, he picked up the hammer with his thumb and two fingers. He took a deep breath and struck. Of course he missed the center and the steel of the hammer glanced off his other mangled hand. Pain shot up both arms, and he dropped his tools. Tears came to his eyes, blurring his vision. After a few moments, Geoffrey gingerly picked up his old tools again. It was going to be a long, long winter. As he prepared to strike again, he couldn’t help but feel that he’d made a deal with the devil himself.
