A Voice From The Tombs

    It was a rainy late October Kansas evening in the year of 1963. The meeting had gone better than Ray had expected, but had dragged on because of the after dinner speaker rambling about the impending embargo with Russia and how that would affect wheat prices on the winter market. After smoking a cigarette and visiting with the boys in the foyer of the grange hall, he stepped out into the wind; tilting his hat into it and pulling up the collar of his jean jacket, he walked across the gravel parking lot towards his truck.

    It was starting to ice, and he knew that things would only get worse, and in a hurry. He had to make it home at a decent hour to get the cows fed and evening chores taken care of. The monthly meeting had only served to set things back for a couple of hours, and to top it off, now he would have to dig down into the feed a little deeper because of the ice. Cattle always hesitate to eat icy stalks.

    His old truck spun a bit and roared to life. It was a good vehicle that had been on the family farm for years. A 1954 faded red International that his dad had bought brand new, the old workhorse still had what it took to get the job done. Ray knew that the engine would be blowing hot air by the time he had finished scraping the windows.

    He had driven a little over 10 miles down the gravel road when the engine sputtered for the first time since he could ever remember. At first, he thought that he had imagined it. Then, it missed again; then again.

    “What the hell?”

    Reaching for the choke knob, he started to ease it out, then the engine died. After coasting to a stop, Ray let things set for just a minute, pulled the choke to half, and stepped on the starter. The engine spun and caught, but it was struggling to stay lit. It was getting dark, but if he could make it to the top of the hill, there was a streetlight along the side of the wall of the Cairo country cemetery. The once-strong vehicle limped up the hill, belching black smoke and bucking its way along. Ray was glad when he reached the canopy of light so he could turn off the engine, before someone came along and saw the situation. He loved that old truck and wasn’t as much embarrassed for himself as he would have been for her.

    He lit a cigarette, bent down and unwrapped an old faded red rag that he had stuffed into the hole on the floor from around the base of the gearshift where the rubber sock had once been; pulled down his hat, and stepped into the wet sleeting night. He had no flashlight, but the streetlight helped him to see under the shadows of the hood. He was no mechanic, but he had an idea what might be wrong. Using the rag to remove the hot distributor cap, he could see the problem. The rotor arm was broken.

  “Must have got some moisture in there somehow.” He muttered.

    This was a freakish Autumn storm. The sleet had picked up, as he knew it would, but streaks of lightning were now flashing and popping around high in the clouds, which gave an eerie look to the falling ice and rain. The first thing that Ray thought of was to stay with the truck and ride the storm out, but with the traffic being so scarce along this particular road  at this time of night, he decided to take off for the warmth of home on foot other than to wait for help. His farmhouse was across the section ‘cattywampus’ from the cemetery about a mile. It shouldn't be a problem at all to walk it.

    Ray had always been sort of a skinny kid, and it paid off as he stepped over the low stone wall and shimmied his way through the hedge of sleeping lilac bushes, and out into the grave yard. The shortest route to his house was to cut through the yard, cross the draw on the other side, and over the neighboring pasture to home.

    The almost constant flashes of illumination from the lighting gave forth a strange pulsing effect as the stones, statuary and trees seemed to almost move and jump out at him as he crossed the cemetery in an ever quickening pace. The wind driving the pellets of ice and rain against the brim of his hat made a steady and rather loud noise. At first, he had only imagined that he had heard it; something somewhere outside of that immediate sound.

    Normally, crossing this cemetery at night would not have been a problem at all for Ray. He knew this place very well. His own mother was buried here and he had spent many Sunday afternoons here doing volunteer work with the local Grangers; but tonight was different. He found himself mentally measuring off the remaining distance to the back boundary wall as the lightning flashed and the howling wind whistled through the barren trees.

    There it was again. This time he knew heard it. A sound that made him stop in his tracks in ghastly dis-belief. It was an outlying voice calling in the night; calling out a name. A wave of fear gripped him and held him like a vice. He could not move. His breath came in quick shallow spasms. He strained to hear over the pounding of his heart in his ears as the sound of the wind, rain and sleet plummeting into the surrounding landscape.

    Frozen for what seemed an eternity, he stood gasping and trying to see in all directions against the strobe effect of the lightning playing through the heavy menacing clouds. He imagined that he saw distant movement. Panic stricken, his body jerked and made him loose his balance. As he slipped on the icy mud and fell to the ground, there in that helpless prone position, he heard it clearly for the first time; a demonic sounding voice, perhaps from the depths of hell itself; a deep; groaning, un-human utterance.

    “Mark!”

    “Oh my gawd!!” He heard himself cry as he struggled to gain his feet. He felt strength returning to his legs, only to find them useless as his feet spun against the icy buffalo grass, and falling forward, he slammed his face down onto a familiar tombstone; that of his mother. Lucille Baker, 1888 – 1959. Stunned, he arose against a dizzying canopy of stars under his eyelids.

    “Mark!”

    The sudden closeness of the voice snapped him back from his induced state. It was quickly advancing, coming towards him from the East, the direction that he had previously been heading. Although being knocked half senseless, Ray jumped to his feet to begin a blind and terror-filled run, stampeding without question back from whence he came. Suddenly, this friendly country cemetery which he knew and loved had become a dangerous obstacle course as he slammed head-on into trees, tripped over stones and water hydrants, and charged head-long through thorny rose bushes.

    “Mark!”

    “Mark!”

      Ever closer it came, advancing on him; longing to catch up to him. Oh, the terror! How he wished that he had stayed with the truck, locked inside from harm’s way.

    The truck! Yes! That was it!

    Now his senses were returning to  him. With this, he changed course and bolted towards the safety of his truck and the street lamp.

  “Mark!”  “Mark!”  came the hellish retort.

    With a new-found determination, Ray ran towards the light, quickly closing the distance, but fearfully losing ground to his aggressor. A blinding light smashed into him with a force never known. Ray found himself spinning down, down, down into the softness of the light.





    It was the flash and cannon-like report of a nearby lightning strike that brought Ray back from his outage. He lay with his left leg over a stone and his right foot under his rump. His head felt as though it had been throttled by a sledge hammer. Warm blood poured into his right eye from a tear in his scalp. He was badly stunned as he arose from his knees in the icy wetness. After leaning against the cold, stone monument that had halted his flight, Ray began his stagger through the lilacs just yards away from his pickup.

    “Mark!” came the sound from behind his path.

      Falling forward through the bushes, all ragged, torn, bruised and bloody; he slammed against his truck, and quickly began searching blindly through the bed for something, anything to fend off his attacker. With arms flaying wildly around the pickup's bed, his right hand bumped into something heavy and significant. He had found just what he was looking for ... a crowbar.

      Spinning about with a heroic flare and a rebel yell, he braced himself for a life and death struggle with his adversary who, at that very moment came charging through the bushes to meet him face to face.

      Ray, with his eyes straining to see, his sight jerking left to right, right to left.. seeing nothing. Nothing until he looked down.


    And there it stood.



    A hair-lipped bulldog.



    Looking directly into Ray’s eyes with a wonderment and questioning as to why he would run from him, the dog pursed his fat lips together and with impeded speech once again said,

    “Mark!”