Congratulations

Hugh Neeld
Jacksonville, Texas

1st Place

2007 Halloween Fiction Contest

Here's why ...

Racing with the Moon
By Hugh Neeld

His name was Charles McMannis. He was dead.

With the flippancy and lack of respect common to teen-age males, we called him Dead Charlie. He was buried in a mausoleum in Rhome, twenty miles north of Fort Worth, and I hadn’t thought of him in decades.

I was moving boxes in the attic to make more room to store things my wife and I no longer used. As I moved one box to a taller stack, a picture fluttered to the floor. I wiped dust from the photo with my shirtsleeve and sat on the floor to examine it, welcoming the excuse to rest.

White lines covered the yellowed photograph like a spider web. All the corners were dog-eared. Nine teen-age boys stood on a grassy lawn in front of an eight foot hedge with nothing else to identify the location. Shadow angles indicated early morning or late afternoon.

I didn’t remember the picture, the place or the occasion, but I recognized my high school buddies. I stood in the back row, John and Fritz on my left, Frank and Bill on my right. Tommy, Bud, Shelby and Don sat on the ground in front.

I couldn’t read the faded time stamp on the back, but I guessed it to be 1944-45. It stirred a lot of dormant memories, one of which was about Dead Charlie.

* * * * * * *

Charles McMannis’ gray concrete vault was no larger than a casket on a low table. A brass plaque, mounted on top of the crypt with a bolt at each corner, proclaimed:

Charles Ian McMannis

December 1 1895 – January 12 1931

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul

Rust stains ran down the sides of the vault. Over the years, three of the bolts had rusted through, the plaque held in place by a single bolt. When rotated on that bolt, it revealed a rectangular opening in the concrete. The glass casket top, long since broken, allowed a view of the remains of Dead Charlie. When word spread, the Rhome cemetery became an irresistible magnet for Fort Worth teenagers.

Fritz was the first of my friends to learn about Dead Charlie. He basked in glory for several days after leading a small expedition to Rhome Cemetery. After that, the haunted house on Old Cleburne Road, and other late-night destinations became bland. Graveyards at night were spooky and great places to scare girls.

John, Frank, Don and I, along with our girlfriends, spent a hot summer evening at a picnic area overlooking Lake Worth. We roasted hot dogs, drank beer, told ghost stories and swapped lies. We’d eaten all the dogs, drunk the beer and begun to repeat stories already told. The fire was reduced to embers. Frank got unsteadily to his feet and announced, “I’m going to see Dead Charlie. Anyone else coming?”

Everyone hurriedly put out the fire, threw blankets, quilts and picnic utensils into the trunks and piled into the two cars we’d come in. No one chickened out. Excitedly, we headed for Rhome.

It was almost midnight. The moon was large and bright, when visible through breaks in the clouds, as we raced north. Vaughn Monroe sang on the radio:

Racing with the moon

High up in the midnight blue

And then all too soon

It’s lost from view

He described the scene perfectly.

A wrought iron gate closed the cemetery drive. We parked the cars beneath the trees outside the entrance and crawled through a narrow opening in the surrounding hedge.

A few cottonwoods, sycamores and cedars dotted the graveyard, but evergreens lined the roads and pathways, casting weird shadows in the moonlight. Leaves and branches whispered when stirred by a slight breeze; the whine of automobile tires on the highway a quarter mile away the only other sound. The scent of cedar hung heavy in the air.

Though I’d done it several times before, wandering through a graveyard at midnight to see a skeleton excited me. My pulse thumped in my temples. Don ran ahead, hid in the shadows, and jumped out to startle stragglers. I poked him on the arm hard. Frank gave him a swift kick in the butt. The girls screeched and giggled. John walked backwards leading the way. He turned on the flashlight pointed upwards beneath his chin. His eyes and the hollow of his cheeks, lost in shadow, created a ghostly illusion.

“Hush,” I warned, pointing toward the road. A passing car had slowed as if to examine our cars. Everyone stepped back into the shadows and stood silently. I held my breath; the prospect of being caught trespassing increased the tension. The car didn’t stop and when it moved on, we did the same.

When we reached Dead Charlie’s tomb, Frank, the chief instigator, swiveled the plaque out of the way with a flourish: “Ta Dah!”

John took up position and paused briefly for dramatic effect.

“Let there be light,” he pronounced, turning on the flashlight. The light was a dim yellow and quickly faded to black. The batteries were dead.

Like a well-rehearsed choir, eight voices emitted a disappointed groan. Frank and Don pummeled John.

“Stupid,” Frank called him. “I told you not to waste batteries shining the light on your ugly face.”

The moonlight wasn’t bright enough to see inside the grave and I sensed an opportunity to play hero. I leapt forward, whipped out my Zippo lighter, stuck my arm through the opening and turned the wheel. Old faithful lit on the first attempt.

The opening wasn’t large enough for everyone to view Dead Charlie at the same time, so I lit the interior while the others took turns looking two at a time. We could see the upper half of the skeleton by the flickering light. Bits of black cloth clung to the bones. Around the skull was long, red hair sprinkled with broken pieces of glass. Excited but revolted, my body was pumping adrenaline.

Engrossed in my duties, I felt an inflated sense of importance, until Don put his foot in the small of my back and gave me a push. I burned my hand and dropped my Zippo into the casket. Jerking my hand out, I scraped the concrete, drawing blood. The girls squealed, John and Frank laughed loudly. I swore.

“Just reach in and pick it up,” Frank teased.

“Unless you’re chicken,” John threw in.

“Let’s get out of here,” Don yelped, pointing towards two flashlights approaching from the back side of the cemetery.

It wasn’t what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t leave with the “chicken” accusation ringing in my ears. I clinched my teeth and plunged my arm into the casket to grope for the lighter and grasped the first solid object I felt. As I brought it out, moonlight broke through the clouds. I held one of Dead Charlie’s finger bones.

I gagged and dropped the offending object. Frank yelled, John guffawed, the girls screamed and Don ran for the cars. Herding the girls, the rest of us followed at top speed, stealth no longer a consideration. Whoever was behind the approaching flashlights reversed course and departed just as quickly.

Dirty and scratched from diving through the hole in the hedge, we jumped into our cars. Frank’s car was already out of sight by the time I made it to the highway after two wrong turns.

Conversation was breathless but subdued as we raced the moon back to Fort Worth. On the radio, Burl Ives sang:

As the riders loped on by him, he heard one call his name

If you want to save your soul from hell a riding on our range

Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride

Trying to catch the devil’s herd… across these endless skies

Yippee-i-Yay

Yippee-i-yo

Ghost riders in the sky

His point was well taken.

END