The Tent, 1971, pt. 3

The grim reaper by Cyph1n

Of course, we had to go back.

The next time we slept out there was a full moon, which made it just about perfect.

Atmosphere.

Besides, we figured that would be a good night for an orgy (or or-gee, as Wimp pronounced it).

We followed the same path as before, but this time we took a good look around before crossing the tracks; we didn’t want to get pinched by the CN cop again (this time he would turn us over to the local constabulary).The light from the full moon enabled us to look up and down the tracks in both directions; not a creature was stirring, anywhere.

Rickie was about to go charging across, when I grabbed his arm: “Don’t go across, go under.”

“What?”

“We go down on this side of the bridge, go under the bridge and then come up on the other side. We’ll be a lot less visible that way.”

“Go under the bridge?”

“That’s what I just said, eh?”

“I ain’t goin down there – there’s all kinds of winos and perverts that sleep down there.”

“You’re about to go out in the woods where there’s floaters and maybe some kind of orgy…”

“Floaters are bullshit, but winos are for real and I don’t want to have anything to do with those suckers.”

In the end, I won and it was amusing to see Rickie hanging back for once. Luckily for us, we didn’t encounter any winos, as I knew they could be mean suckers and not to be messed with.

On the other side, the junk and the bottles, even the stained mattresses where still there, but somehow…perhaps because of the intense glare of the silvery moonlight and the equally strong shadows, they seemed creepier, like something more than mere screwing and drinking was going on, something wrong…Or maybe the full moon just made me think about werewolves and other beasties.

Howwwwwwww-wwwoooooooooooooooo!

The sudden clamor almost caused me to have an accident in my pants. Wimp was the guilty party and before I could react, Stash had cuffed him, spitting “Be quiet you idiot.”

“It was just a joke, eh?”

“Do you want to bring the cops or…”

He left the rest unsaid; at any rate, Rickie and I had already separated them. The last thing we needed was a fist fight whilst creeping around in the woods.

After everything had calmed down, Rickie decided it was his turn to stoke the pot: “I don’t see no or-gee.”

“Let’s look around,” I said.

“What for? Oh, that’s right, you think the woods are full of floaters.”

“You want to go back to the tent?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Good, for a second there, I thought maybe you were afraid, or something.”

We followed a trail further into the woods and along the top of the Hog’s Back ridge, the creek below twisting around its base; directly across from our vantage point, on the other side of the valley, we could make out the tomb stones in St. Mary’s cemetery.

Suddenly, Stash grabbed my arm: “There’s people moving around in there.”

Squinting my eyes, I was able to make out a number of furtive shadows flitting through the monuments; I also realized that if I could see them, they could see us. We were standing atop the ridge, bathed in brilliant moonlight; we were as visible as if we were on a stage in a theatre.  “Hurry you guys, take cover,” I whispered, hoping for once that Rickie would refrain from answering in his normal – loud – speaking voice.

We lay down in the grass on the side of the path furthest away from the boneyard; by resting our heads on the top of our hands, we could see across to the other side.

“That ain’t no funeral,” Wimp whispered.

“Well Stash, maybe you’ll get to see your or-gee after all,” I said.

“In a cemetery?”  Rickie was shocked for once, but at least he kept his voice down.

We watched in expectant silence – but, as the minutes past, I began to feel uneasy. What were those people doing over there? And then I remembered rumours I’d heard, about certain things that liked to feast on dead bodies; they were known for having red eyes, eyes that I had seen myself and as I looked more closely, I could see lights moving around the graveyard, lights like pink fireflies, like pairs of reddish-eyes.

Which was a dead giveaway.

 “Get back, in among the trees, now,” I hissed, praying that Rickie wasn’t going to pick this particular moment to start asking a lot of stupid. Amazingly, everyone did as I said and we were soon hidden in pools of shadow. I had time to take one quick glance over at the cemetery and saw all the pinkish fire lights converging on one spot.

As if they were trying to get their heads together.

“What is it?” Stash whispered anxiously; it seemed like my fear had communicated itself without any explanation. My answer was simply: “Watch.”

And then we saw them, a flock of human heads, seven in total, four men, three women, bobbing through the air, one hundred feet above the waters of the creek below. We could see their faces clearly in the serious moonlight, their red eyes, their hair trailing behind them; one of them looked like the man I had seen at the Silo the previous summer, but I couldn’t be sure. In fact, I buried my face into the grass, pushing Stash’s face down as well, in case they could see our heads, white blobs in the shadows.

We heard the air displaced as they passed overhead, but we could also hear them, a faint, almost murmured:

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN…………………………………………..

We lay frozen in place for several minutes, until finally Rickie spoke, his voice shaking, “What the hell was that?”

“You know what it was,” I said, a trifle smugly; Rickie had always said that Floaters were “bs” and I couldn’t resist rubbing it in, in spite of our obvious danger.

“We’ve got to get out of here now,” Stash said, getting to his feet. “And Wimp, no more howling, eh?”

I insisted we walk out, in order not to make noise and attract attention, although we moved fast enough to be almost jogging. When we arrived back at the tracks, we searched the area for Flying Heads, not CN cops; we even made our way home via brightly lit Kerr Street, with the idea the street lights would provide us with some spiritual protection.

Naturally, because we would have welcomed their attention, we didn’t see a single cop.

In the tent, we lay on our sleeping bags, lost in our own thoughts and fears; finally Rickie said “I wouldn’t have half-minded getting picked up the cops, y’know – we could have told them about it.”

“You think they would have believed it? Hell, you didn’t believe it.”

“I know, I know.” Rickie sounded miserable. “It’s just that they’re up to no good, eh? Somebody’s gonna get hurt tonight – maybe even killed.”

“Probably,” Stash agreed, “but as long as it’s not us who’s dying…” Stash was ever the pragmatist.

‘I just wish I knew what they were up to, that’s all.” Rickie just didn’t want to let it go.

In the end, we agreed we’d check the two local rags the next day to see if they had any news about any attacks or about any vandalism at St Mary’s. – and, if we found anything, we’d consider our next move.

But there was nothing.

Nothing in print, anyway.