Melissa waited until her mother was busy with a customer ordering fifty “Powerball” tickets, and then she took the opportunity to slip out the back door unnoticed. The lottery jackpot was up to about a zillion dollars and there’d been more people buying tickets than buying food. It was just about supper time, the time when the store got really busy with people stopping on their way home from work, and Melissa knew her mother would be pretty busy for awhile. There was plenty of time for her to sneak out and look for the lost cat. And who knows? Maybe there were some cute boys in town.
She made her way around to the back of the plaza and around the side of the store. The cat wouldn’t be wandering around in the parking lot-someone would have seen her by now-so she supposed it had either gone off into the woods or had been hit by a car.
She looked at the woods beside the plaza and decided that would be the best place to start. She wouldn’t actually go deep into the woods-she was really a city girl at heart. But she sure was anxious to get out of the boring store where she’d been cooped up all day. She followed the edge of the parking lot, looking into the woods as far as she could. A blue jay regarded her with interest, and she wondered if it were true what they said about jays, that they’d peck at your head if you came too close to their nests. The bird looked harmless enough, but she wasn’t about to find out first hand. She walked away.
The wood grew thick quickly, and before long she realized that her view was blocked by the heavy undergrowth and she found herself standing beside the iron railing that surrounded the cemetery. She’d seen this graveyard before, though she’d never been this close. The place gave her the creeps. Now, as she looked at the ancient, crusty headstones, she felt a sudden chill.
One headstone stood taller than the rest and seemed to stand over her like a statue, casting a long shadow across the ground. There was no doubt that the thing was old-older than she could imagine. Yet, unlike the other headstones, this one looked new and ageless. With a mixture of fear and fascination, she opened the iron gate and made her way inside the small graveyard. She walked around the edge of the cemetery, looking at the place as if it were another planet.
Unlike the cemetery where Grandpa was buried, this one didn’t have green grass or planted flowers. In fact, nothing seemed to grow near this place, as if the very ground were poisoned.
Frowning, she looked back at the largest headstone, the one that was so old, yet looked so new. Unlike the others, this stone was black and shiny, as if it had been polished like the side of a brand new car. While the other stones had funny, blue-green stuff on them, this one was perfectly clean.
Slowly, she walked around the thing, attracted by its strangeness. It had weird lettering on the front. The letters were hard to read. Some were normal, though worn with age. Other letters were different, things she had never seen before.
“I am watching you,” she read slowly
As soon as she read the words, she imagined the headstone actually was watching her, and she shivered violently. Sudden panic covered her like a blanket, blinding her with fear. She laughed nervously.
“This is like something out of a bad horror movie,” she said out loud, and then laughed again.
Then she turned away from the graveyard and a sudden, mindless panic gripped her, squeezing her heart, it seemed. She felt a horrible tightness in her chest and an overwhelming urge to escape. Without thinking, she ran as fast as she could, tripping over the gate, and then stumbling over branches and undergrowth as thorns bit at her legs. She ran with her head down, mute with terror and totally unaware of her surroundings. She imagined the thing-a nameless, horrible thing-watching her, chasing her….
Only after it was too late did she realize she had run off into the woods. By then she was already hopelessly lost.