The Headstones
“Where did they come from?” she asked.
He stood wondering, his brow knitted in confusion.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
Dumbfounded, they stood in their backyard, gazing at the four headstones that had suddenly appeared there. The headstones were set in a row and they looked very old, jutting out of the ground at crooked angles, their inscriptions worn smooth and mostly unreadable. The soil around the headstones was undisturbed. It was as though they had always been there. No fresh graves had been dug. That was barely a comforting thought.
A cold breeze blew at their backs. Windswept leaves skirted their ankles. Mary shivered, hugging herself tighter.
“So strange,” she said.
They had just purchased the old, abandoned farmhouse a week ago, but had never seen these headstones in their yard before this cold afternoon in March.
Where did they come from, he wondered. The more he thought about it though, the farther away a reasonable answer seemed. Strange indeed.
Dave bent down, peering closer, trying to make out the vague inscription carved into one of the headstones.
“Harrah,” he said. “Wife of… something Hanson? Died February ninth, eighteen… fifty… eight, I think.”
There was more text beneath the date but he couldn’t read it. He licked the fingertips of his right hand and rubbed the rough stone there. He leaped back suddenly, crying out in pain. He fell back on his rump, wincing, shaking his hand wildly.
“Dave, are you okay?” Mary asked.
He shook his head. His fingertips burned as if he had held them to an open flame.
“Let me see,” she said, crouching down. Immediately the stench of blood and burned flesh assaulted her nostrils.
Clenching his teeth, he held out his hand to her, palm up.
“Oh my God,” she muttered. Mary grimaced at the horror.
All four fingertips were bleeding heavily, several layers of skin gone.
The pain was excruciating. His hand hurt. Fingers throbbed. He looked up to the sky. Against the somber gray dome of March, the tree limbs extended overhead like a dark, twisted skeletal web. In the haziness of pain, they seemed to be descending upon him, getting closer, closer…
Mary glanced down. A red liquid was oozing up from the cold hard ground, spilling over the brown blades of dead grass.
“D– Dave, get up.” Her voice was a frail whisper. A little louder. “Dave–”
The loud bang of the screen door twisted their heads around. They stared toward the house, eyes gaping…
A man, a woman and two small children stood on the back porch. They were all pale, gaunt figures dressed in the tattered garments of old time settlers.
“Our land,” the man rasped.
“Trespassers,” shrieked the haggard woman.
“Kill them,” shouted the children.
In a flash, the man was looming over them, gripping a large sickle.
Terror froze them in place. Seconds before his own death, Dave saw his wife’s severed head somersaulting through the chilled March air and thought: we should never have moved here.
