Spook and Scares

Taps in the Night

****Just to let y'all know. The first two stories in this 'Taps in the Night' and 'The Hunt' might seem familiar to some readers because they were entries I wrote for a writing competition last year. ****

Taps in the night

With quaking knees, shaking hands and a troubled mind, Elliot took in the sight before him. Upon first glance there was nothing here in the evening light that should terrify a person.

When eyes first gazed around this place they saw simply the ruins of an old stone church--now nothing but crumbling walls and broken pews that gave no hint as to how grand they may have once been. Dotted here and there upon the landscape of rocks, sand and sagebrush, were old stone grave markers--the names and dates so crudely scratched into their surface that it was now nearly impossible to identify the remains that lay beneath them.

Alabaster rocks, white and glittering in the setting sunlight stretched out as far as the eye could see to the west. Truly there was beauty here--an eerie, quiet type of beauty that could be appreciated in passing.

But Elliot was not here simply in passing. For he had made a very foolish decision--yet the only logical decision that his fourteen year old mind had seen fit to make.

When the other boys on the schoolyard dared you to do something, you simply had to do it. Especially if there were girls present to witness your cowardice should you say no. Elliot had never had many friends--he found himself an outcast because of his love of the written word. Oftentimes he could be found sitting beside the river beneath the trees simply reading instead of roughhousing with the other boys. If he could do this--if he could earn their respect--then the other boys might just stop laughing and jeering at his expense every day.

And so here Elliot was. A few boys had ridden him out here on the wagon and then left him to spend the night among the ruins, rocks and grave markers. They would come collect him in the morning and if he managed to stay the entire night without running for home, Sarah Beth Landon had agreed to share her first kiss with him behind the school house.

Elliot swallowed hard. It wouldn't be so bad and would be well worth the prize he'd receive the next day! Respect from the other boys and a kiss from a pretty girl. He could do this. After all, this place was only stone and dirt and the dead souls buried beneath the ground could do him no harm--they were little more than dust after all this time. Yes, there were stories, legends and myths about terrible things that could occur here--things that were less than human that called this place home...

Elliot refused to believe all of that. If he believed that then the fear would overwhelm him. This was nothing but an old cemetery and a collapsing church--nothing more and nothing less.

Elliot found a section of broken pew beside a crumbling wall and sat himself down upon it. He lit the kerosene lamp he had brought along to combat the encroaching darkness and opened the book in his lap.

It was a favorite book of his and one that Elliot greatly loved losing himself inside of. He quickly forgot about his eerie surroundings and became completely immersed in the tales on those pages. It wasn't until his stomach rumbled uncomfortably that he looked up from the written words and realized that hours had passed.

Darkness now surrounded the church ruins--pushing in on all sides and seeming to be taunting him and his smallness as he sat in the vast wide open prairie land among the graves of the dead.

Elliot forced his mind from his own surroundings and grabbed up the sack full of biscuits and jerked beef that he had swiped from his family's cellar before rushing off to meet the boys from school.

Munching on them and sipping on the canteen of water strapped to his belt, Elliot gazed around him. The moon was an odd one tonight--glowing orange in the pitch black expanse of sky.