He sent a 2000 word story that I think you'll find quit intriguing.
PRESENTING
THE TOMB
by
WALTER P. HONSINGER
Sadie, Godiva and I had
hitchhiked to New Orleans in the late winter of 1975. We’d just attended a
concert at The Warehouse and I’d somehow lost Godiva in the crowd. I left with
Sadie and we took a bus back toward the motel we were staying at. It was already
past midnight.
“I’m worried about Godiva, do
you think she’ll make it home okay?” I asked.
“She knows that you’re with
me, she took a cab back about an hour ago.”
“Then we’re heading back to
the motel too right?”
“We need to make one more stop
yet tonight,” Sadie said.
“Can’t we just go home!” I
pleaded.
“Please just one quick stop?”
she pleaded. “Just assume that you’ll live out your wildest fantasy.”
We got on a city bus and rode
it into the worst neighborhood I’d seen since leaving Detroit. The city was
filled with decrepit and collapsing frame houses covered in poison ivy. The bus
stopped and Sadie said that we had to get out.
“Here?” I said, “We’ll get
killed.”
“We’ll be okay as long as we
keep moving,” she said. We walked past
burned out houses and overgrown lots, me in my gas station outfit, her dressed
in her black satin dress. Surprisingly we found the street all but deserted but
I knew that eyes were watching us.
The area ahead of us was
devoid of street lights and we walked on to find huge granite and marble
columns appear before us in the darkness. Sadie grasped my hand and pulled me
into the hulks just as I heard voices behind us.
“I’m telling you that I saw a fine foxy bitch and some guy walking,” the
voice said.
“Where they at then?” another
voice boomed out. I looked back and in the light of the last street light I saw
a gang appear on the corner. Sadie pulled me further into the granite slabs. I
reached out to feel words carved into them. Graves. Above ground graves. Massive mausoleums and boxes carved out of
stone. Sadie had led me to a graveyard in
the middle of the worst ghetto in New Orleans at nearly one in the morning. She
led me through a maze of the above ground graves further and further back into
the cemetery.
“Where we going?” I asked.
“Try and keep quiet,” she
whispered back.
I looked back toward the light
and saw that the gang had grown, now at least twenty forms were outlined and at
least a few were walking into the darkness looking for us.
“They won’t come into the graveyard,”
Sadie whispered to me and I think she was right because two guys reemerged from
the darkness a few moments later. “Do you have your knife?” she asked.
“A Barlow knife won’t do any good against those clowns,” I said.
“Give it to me.” She led me
further into the graveyard and we found ourselves in what seemed like a tiny
courtyard. A flat slab of granite lay on the ground surrounded by above ground
tombs that hid us from sight. Sadie knelt and
produced my knife. She pushed my knife into a crevice in one of the granite
slabs and twisted it.
“I got it!” she said. She held
up a small sliver of something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“A chard of her tombstone,” she said.
“WHAT?” I said aloud.
“Shut up!” she whispered.
“I heard somethin’,” one of the gang members said. We
sat silent and waited for things to calm down. A moment later we heard shouting
and I saw that two of the guys were in a fight. I sat down on the slab to try
and figure out what we were going to do.
“Unlace me,” she said.
“What?”
“Unlace my dress.”
“Why?”
“Those guys will be out there
for the rest of the night which means that we’ll have to stay here.”
“And?”
“I’m not sleeping in my dress,
so yes unlace me!” I untied her dress and watched as she rolled it up on the
granite slab. “Give me your jeans,” she asked, “I need them for a pillow.”
“I’m not spending the night
sleeping on someone’s grave in the middle of New Orleans,” I said.
“Okay just go, explain that to
those guys and leave,” she said. I looked over toward the light and tried to
see if I had any options.
“You’re sure we’re safe here?”
“Absolutely!” I slid out of my jeans and handed them to
her. She lay down on the slab and I lay next to her. The moon broke out of the
clouds almost as soon as I lay down. It’s light shown on the tombstones like
tiny twinkling diamonds. The moon also shown strangely on Sadie, giving her
skin a phosphorescent glow.
“Should I ask whose grave I’m
lying on?”
“It’s Maria Labonne’s, she was
an infamous Priestess here.”
“Perfect not only do we desecrate a grave but
it’s some Voodoo chick. You said that if I came with you tonight that I could
live out my wildest fantasy.”
“Yes, I did.”
“This ain’t it.”
“Maybe it will be.”
I awoke shortly after dawn and stared out at
the sight before me. Ancient crumbling crypts and stained above ground tombs
lay all around. Sadie and I lay on a
flat gray marble slab. I’d felt unusually tense and didn’t want to stay the
night before, but we’d had a wild night.
I’d awoken after having a
dream right out of a Tarzan movie. In my dream drums pounded out in a beat and
African women danced and sang in some ancient ritual. I was awake now, but the drumbeat still pounded in my
brain.
Well, it was morning and I felt bad.
She’d done everything she could and I’d been callous toward her. I’d been
worried that we’d be attacked, or that we’d get eaten alive by bugs or that
we’d freeze on the cold marble tomb. But now it was morning and everything had
gone perfectly and I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I slid over to my side and pulled Sadie close to me again.
She moaned slightly and turned her head enough so that I could see I was wrong
on one count, she had a splotch of blood on her forehead where she’d obviously
swat a mosquito. Maybe she’d have had more problems but her dress had protected
her. Her dress? Yes, she now wore her
black dress which made no sense since I would have had to retie it in back as it laces like a corset and
she can’t do it herself. I tried to think of earlier in the night because
making love in her black dress is a total taboo and I was sure she hadn’t worn
it. She turned her head fully toward me, kissed me and slowly opened her eyes.
“AHHHH!!!” she said pulling
back.
“IIIIIII!” I said doing the
same. She stared at me like I was a Vampire or something. I sat blinking my eyes
trying to decide if I was seeing
correctly. Someone had dipped their thumb in blood and written a cross on her
forehead. My heart pounded so loudly that it hurt my ears. The drums that I’d
dreamt about began pounding in my brain again. She wiped one finger across her
forehead and saw the blood on her finger.
“Ethan don’t panic,” she said, but she was too late. Between the dress
and the bloody cross, I was gone. I
turned the other way and saw new horrors. All the tombs around us were covered
small red crosses drawn in crayon, magic marker and nail polish. Some of the
crosses were upright, but several were
pointed down. The two crosses closest to us were made in large swatches of
dripping blood.
I felt burning hot now and
realized it was the sun upon me. I glanced up at it and saw it stark against a
giant metal cross that sat overtop the graveyard. I closed my eyes for a moment
and when I reopened them the sun was perfectly
centered on the cross. Its light burned
me like a torch. I closed my eyes again and when I opened them, the cross appeared to be molten, dripping
metal.
To avoid the sun's burning rays I turned onto my stomach and
I looked at the ground. I saw what appeared at first to be a bundle of white
and red cotton balls sitting on the ground. The bundle
made no sense until I spotted something sitting next to it, a chicken’s head. The
mass of red and white was what was left of a chicken that had been alive less
than an hour or two ago.
“Don’t get scared,” Sadie
said. I turned toward her and watched her creeping toward me on all fours,
catlike, her black dress pulled up past her hips. I remembered now that she had
worn her dress last night during our previous
session.
“What the Hell did you lead me
into?”
I’d had enough; I needed to
clear out of this city and fast. I pulled my jeans, shirt and boots on and
began weaving my way out of the cemetery.
“Ethan calm down…wait!” she’d
called. I wasn’t waiting for anything. I could still hear the drums from my
dream pounding in my head and it was only outdone by the pounding of my heart.
I made it to the bus stop
without coming upon any of the local people. Sadie walked up just as it
arrived.
“Will you stop!” she said. I
said nothing to her I just climbed aboard and walked to the back of the
deserted bus. Sadie sat in the seat across from me.
Yesterday Sadie, Godiva and I
had walked the streets of New Orleans and no one seemed to give us any mind.
Now as each person stepped onto the bus
they looked at us like we were demons or something. Several women made the sign
of the cross when they saw us and two African American women raised three
fingers into a crow’s foot and pointed them at us chanting something.
We were almost at our hotel
when Sadie pulled me out of the bus. An Old Catholic Church stood before us and I turned to go back to our room.
“We need to go to the church!” she said.
“I need to get the Hell out of
this town, the sooner, the better,” I
said.
“Fine but you need to go into
the church first!” she said.
“What, have sex on the altar
and desecrate it like we did to that woman’s tomb?” I said.
I broke from her and ran to
our hotel. I must have looked a sight because everyone glared at me when I
walked in. Godiva opened the door when I pounded on it.
“Oh thank God it’s you, I was
worried, where’s Sadie….what happened to you!” she said repelling backward. She
covered her face with her hands.
“Why is everyone looking at me
like I’m a zombie or something?” I asked.
“Go and look in the mirror,”
she said. I walked into the bathroom and turned toward the mirror before
gasping out in horror myself. A bloody cross lay on my face too, but mine extended from my hair down to my
Adam’s apple and across, ear to ear.
“What happened to you two?”
“What do you want me to say;
we spent a night having sex on some priestess’s grave. A total act of
debauchery in a church cemetery. Sadie can explain the rest ‘cause I don’t
know. All I do know is that I’m done and heading home,” I said.
I found my pack and slid it
over my shoulder. I found a wet washcloth in the sink.
“No Ethan don’t!” she screamed
as I used it to wash my face.
“You in on this too?” I asked
as I turned the door handle.
After I had made it out onto the street, I asked around to find out where the bus station lay. An
old man gave me directions and I had no problem finding it. I was about to walk
in when Sadie appeared out of nowhere and grabbed my arm.
“Will you please calm down!”
she asked. I said nothing I just sat staring at the ground. Godiva came up and we
sat down on a bench.
“Do you want to talk about
this?” she asked. I really didn’t want to
talk about anything.
“Please say something?” Sadie
asked.
“Things like faith and rules
and…things mean something to me,” I said.
“And us,” Godiva said. I
turned to look at her and felt my heart squeeze in my chest. I just felt empty
and hollow and….almost dead.
“And me,” Sadie said. “I
didn’t plan anything that happened last night and I’m not really sure what did
happen.”
“What happened was, gee let me
guess, oh I don’t know if it was a black mass we participated in, a total
demonization of a woman’s grave, some kind of voodoo ritual or just some
satanic cultish thing. All I know is that I woke up surrounded by hand painted
crosses, my forehead smeared with blood, oh and a dead, mutilated chicken at my
side. Oh and then you wanted me to go to
a church and, what have sex on the altar?”
“Ethan, I understand you were frightened, but that’s not my fault. I wanted
you to come into the church so you could wash the blood off with holy water.”
“That’s what I was trying to
tell you in our room,” Godiva said. “Only holy water can take away the blood.”
“So what do I do?”
“We rinse the washcloth you used in holy water and we rinse
your face off with it too,” Sadie said.
“I still don’t feel right about the blood, the
chicken, and the voodoo.”
“If it matters to you, it
wasn’t what you think,” Godiva said. “Whoever anointed you with blood did it to
protect you. It wasn’t Voodoo it was
Santeria.”
“Oh, I feel better now. I
don’t want to stay here another minute, I want to be gone. I want to climb on
board a bus and head home now!”
“We have one more day here and
then we all go back together,” Godiva
said. “You don’t want to spend one more night with us?”
One more night in New Orleans,
what would take bring? Would we sacrifice a virgin or behead goats or
something. One more night.
“Yes, I’ll stay,” I said.
~The End~
Walt
is an avid hunter, angler, and gatherer who has journeyed to the remotest
regions of the country. He began traveling around the country at the age of
fourteen, often hitchhiking to his destinations.
Walt’s
travels, encounters, and memories are often the inspiration for his writing.
His novels THE BEACHCOMBER and THE CABIN relate to portions of his life.
Walt
lives in Lancaster, PA with his wife and two children. He still loves to travel
and spends his free time hunting, fishing, and writing.
All books are available at Amazon
*****
Thanks, Walt, loved it!
Happy Halloween!
Well folks, would you have stayed
or gone home?
*****
it's not too late!
There are some doozies!
