INGRAVED

IT WAS AS THOUGH HE WERE INVITED BY THE HAUNTING ECHO OFF THRU THE FOGGED EVE, "Hoohoot hoohoot." Along the road were hand etched headstones. Engraved with the likeness of a carcass. A carcass of the previous person who was now reduced to nothing except a pile of slimed flesh reminiscent of things already long buried. Flesh which would soon resemble a layer of ash. Flesh once subtle with life giving juices. The fluid of life that runs dry with time. Flesh leaks fluid and eventually sags into self until there is nothing. Nothing but dust. Dust is to dust, and ever shall be. As the fog crept thick about them, mother and children huddled tightly awaiting notice of the man's return. He had stepped out of and away from the car suggesting that he would seek help for the stalled engine. He stepped away just before the first low "Hoohoot... hoohoot" pierced the heavy fog. Owls were common in the rural preserve, as such the sound never startled him. The overgrowth of plants hung low, never shorn for keeping what was inside them. This night nothing of substance was visible, including the man in his departure. Nothing except the occasional emergence of an outline of a headstone. He had stopped the car and stepped away. He'd not raised the hood or set a blinking caution light. He'd simply stepped away.

As one is always prone to do... in any inconvenient situation, a child, the daughter, had asked to use the bathroom. the bathroom that did not exist out here. There never are bathrooms, not even a port-a-potty at the edge of the road of a cemetery. But he stopped. With only a few blocks until they would arrive home, the man had reasoned that it was better to stop the car for "her comfort." He pulled off the road and stopped even in the heavy fog, nothing visible beyond the handle on the outside of the car door; stopped without knowing exactly where along the roadway. They were stopped in time for a child who, with pressure at her bladder, sought early release. The car stopped and she lept out through the back door, squatted in the grass outside her door and within minutes, was back inside out of the cool dampness of the late night's cover. The man, confident that he had made the right decision, pasted a smile upon his face as a sign of gratification. He had done well and was pleased with himself. He turned around in his seat to restart the engine only to result in a sharp "skreeeel" of metal grazing metal. Again and again he twisted the key in the ignition only to get the same result. He himself, could not believe that only minutes ago with the engine running warm and this brief pause in action... there was no previous problem, the engine would not turn over. The car sat dead. He had opened the door, stepped out into the mud at his end of the car and walked to the front of the car as if to raise the hood. The light of the now full moon shown brightly into the fog and cast now visible glints of stones. Marble statuettes which ejected from the moist earth were visible as were the shadows which danced about them. Dead silence hung in the air around them. Dead except for the sucking of mud and an interspersed barking of a distant dog which broke through the sound barrier in this parking space. It was well after midnight. No cars traveled this section of the roadway in the late hours. No additional vehicles approached on this section of Steger Road. This hour of night was rarely traveled here because of the cemetery. It was said to be haunted, It aroused the towns interest as it did the entire local suburban area; the shadows which crept about on a full moon's night. The shadows that came to life in a visible state in the heavy fog that frequented the the small cemetery and the length of Steger Road. Western Avenue to the edge of Stunkel Road overlaid heavy in fog or dark mist on nights usually after 12:00 pm. The air hung heavy not in pollution, but in mysticism of things that had happened and gone unexplained. Things that crept through windows of houses in the area and of things that moved or came missing without incident of entry, fingerprint or awareness. It was the weird things of the night that reached out and called out, caused weird behavior and strange resolve in this area... in the fogged night of this area. In the night no one knew just what caused change.

The mother's mind dashed almost frantic with recall of local news... the small blue house up the road and the tales of how it repeatedly burned to the ground only to be rebuilt. It had burned three times since they had moved into the neighborhood. Each time there was no explanation. The fire department and neighbors could not resolve an investigatory explanation. Some claimed the owner burned it down doing drugs. There were no electrical hazards, no children at the house to play dangerously and no disgruntled neighbors to torch it. The white house next to it sat unchanging and unvisited throughout the eighteen months that she had lived in the community. No one ventured to buy or own it otherwise. It sat empty as always. These were only a block up the road from the cemetery. There was nothing else in either direction for an equally distanced half mile. At the end of that one half mile was new development. The Colonial Ridge Apartment complex where she and her small family lived and one other across the street where several coworkers and classmates from secondary school lived their now adult lives. Between the apartments and the cemetery a woman had been killed by her disgruntled husband during a marital spat. She was reported dead and gone but that had been the area news several months ago. As these things rattled thru the mother's mind, she peered into the thickness surrounding her. Crawling flesh, yet warm and taut to her frame, repelled the intensity of this dead space. Invariant shadows brushed against the window. One dark space lingered and she reached up to touch the spot remarking at the coolness of the glass pane between herself and the black thing. Black only a few shades more than the fog itself. Black and shapeless like the fog that melded into and around its shapeless figure. If the man did not return soon, she would lose her composure before her children. It was an unnatural atmosphere in the insecurity of the car's frame. The dark spot blew across the window and somewhere into the invisible distance. Her little boy faded in and out of sleep as the daughter sat wide eyed in the back seat. Wide eyed and in disbelief that she had just bared herself in the terror beyond her window. The man lingered yet outside in the nothingness with the shadows. After an hour, he returned. The fog had begun to lift and stars were beginning to peer from the heavens above. Those ingrained within the auto had slipped into and out of a lull of consciousness half dazed from trying to see what there was not to see deep in the fog. They had imagined everything and said little. The had seen and not seen, been caressed and passed through by what had not been there. After a while, she could see the man approaching from the Western Avenue direction. He was only ten feet from the car when one of the spots that remained behind in the fading cover brushed into of through him. She could not tell if he was hit or not hit, but she saw the darkness go against and then to the other side of him. He looked unchanged.

With one big hand, he reached out for the car door, opening it and climbing back inside; his large plaid shirt moistened from the humidity of the outdoors and hair holding droplets of water from the midnight dew. It was as if he'd walked under a rain cloud. It had not rained. He smelled of perspiration and some strange indeterminable odor. Not of the fresh outdoor forest, but a stale to pungent just sort of mildew scent. His face was unchanged except for the erased smile of self gratification that had been pasted on when he left. He turned the key in the ignition and the engine started. Two minutes later they were home. In the light of the entry door she could see a strange gray tint laying upon his skin. He was shadowed in color and, now watching her husband and his movements; she could see he was shadowed of personality as well. He was a different man than what had left the car what felt like hours ago. His face was now a graven image of the smiling "empty headed" man she was accustomed to. "Empty headed" as his own explanation for the sensation of having "nothing in his mind." They constant argument was that he "could not have NOTHING going through his mind" Nothing in one's mind is virtually impossible. There is always a minute portion of the brain functioning whether consciously or subconsciously. Looking at this body... replica of a man before her now, she could believe there was nothing going on in his head. He plodded into and through the apartment as though he could not judge the distance between the floor and his foot. He brushed the walls of the hallway as though he had never been there before and bumped into doors and door ways as though they were invisible. Still standing in the doorway, she watched this episode unravel before her wondering what he had encountered in the fog. The car had started almost by itself. Just the twist of the key in the ignition... no additive to the engine or its parts, no sparks to the battery or the wiring. It was almost as though something had willed them to stop. For some it was a final resting place. they had been lucky to get out of the density of the situation. She neared him and reached out a steady hand to touch her husband asking, "Hun... honey, are you okay after all that. Are you.." He cut in on her concern. "I thought I heard something. I went to see what it was... an owl.. or something. I went to see what it was and", he extended his had drawn from the pocket of his over sized corduroy pants, "This fell on me." In his had was an ugly gremlin of a bat winged beast. It resembled a bat but was not. It was not making a sound but widened it's already enlarged eyes to the extent that they should have popped out of it's head. Then suddenly, "Hoot hoo hoot" uttered under breath from it's mouth, it's chest heaving, armed wings flutter flailing before opening his tooth riddled mouth in effort at sinking it's teeth into the man's hand. She noticed a trickle of blood at the spot where her husband had claimed the thing had fallen onto him. "What is it!?" she half shrieked at him trying to knock the creature off his hand. He looked back at her with a still glum expression shaking his head side to side. "All it says is Hoot hoo hoot." Then pausing before closing his explanation, "All he does is hoot and toot his teeth at me. I don't know what it is. It's not an owl." He put it back into his pocket.

THE END