Scary Stories (2)

Lone Stones

Out in the woods, you’ve seen them, there are stones. Nothing grows about them, grass stays short, and the birds keep quiet and don’t fly over. Even though the trees bend away, no sun shines on them, and they're always cold as ice, late in the night you can see a mist slipping off them and across the grass. You know what those rocks are John (me)?

I was young, younger than you, when a friend and I got the bright idea to go out on Samhain and sit across from the rock, as far away as we could get while keeping it in eye, just to scare ourselves silly. I told Ol’ Ruth (John’s great grandmother) about it and she went white, told us to stay inside and play apples like the other kids, and she told Dad who decided it’d be best to just lock me away for the night. Now, my friend, he decided to go without me since he was smart enough not to tell his own fing Granny about it.

That night I woke up to something banging on the window, I figured it was just a storm, as my brother and I lived on the second story, when I looked over and saw my brother gone white and shaking himself out of the bed, his eyes locked on the window across the room. I looked over and, I’ll kill you if you call me a liar, there was my friend's face outside. But it was all wrong, you see. He looked cold and wet, his skin seemed to be folding in all the wrong places and even though I could see his mouth moving, not a noise was being made other than his hands slapping against the panes.

Even though I couldn’t hear him, I knew what he wanted, he wanted me to open that damn window. I ain’t a fool, and neither was my brother, but we weren’t brave either so the two of us just sat there still while my friend got more and more frantic, his face getting more and more warped until it was twisted like a demon, his eyebrows all pulled up and his lips curled back to show his teeth, then he was gone as fast as he showed up.

My father came up the stairs and asked what the hell was going on, if I was trying to get out the window and we told him what we saw. The old man got a good laugh out of it, but when we told it to Ruth the next day she sat me down. “Those rocks,” she said, “are put there as meeting stones for the dead. Not the good dead either, but dead things that aren’t humans. Dead things that never got the chance to live, so twisted and broken were they that no body can carry them for long, so they’re forced to live in that stone, and mark me dead if they don’t find Tom’s body limp as a sack on that stone before nightfall.” That’s where they found him, stretched over that old stone and twisted like a wreck. That’s why you and your Sis stay away from them stones, John (me), stay away from those stones.