Ella slammed down on the brakes and made a hard right into the Mobil gas station parking lot. The sun was just starting to set and it cast an eerie glow around the sparsely filled lot. She maneuvered the jeep into the corner spot and switched it into park.
"Well, we're here. I'm grabbing us some coffee before we head to the cemetery. We've gotta stay vigilant for the next... uh 10ish hours. Twelve maybe?" Ella guessed.
"It's okay, we know math isn't your strong point," Joked Nell, "It's 11 hours and if you want us to stay 'vigilant' for that long you're gonna need a bit more than a thermos of coffee."
"Yeah, try a few grams of cocaine." Mac laughed as he opened the side door. "I'm going in and getting some more snacks, you guys want anything?"
"I think I'll come in too. I'm using the bathroom before I'm stuck with trees." Scott replied.
Nell rolled her eyes, "I'll look at snacks with you."
They all sauntered towards the door of the convenience store. Mac reached it first and held it open for the rest of them. Scott headed up to the register to ask for the bathroom key and Nell and Mac made straight for candy aisle. Ella walked over to the coffee station and paused, trying to decide between the dark roast and the house blend.
Over by the snack food, Mac was glancing back and forth between the pretzels and the candy bars. Nell glanced at Ella in the far corner, then looked back at Mac, "You think this is really going to work? I mean staying in that cemetery all night, that's a lot of commitment. What's Ella gonna do when she doesn't find anything?" She said.
Mac looked at her, perplexed. "You don't know that she won't find something. Plus what is there to lose really, it's one night and even if we don't find anything it will be fun to try."
"Yeah I guess, it's just Ella always thinks things will go a certain way and I'm not so sure this time. When she wants something to work she just gets tunnel vision and can't see the flaws with her plan. Eleven hours is a long time and there's no way to get out. Our parents don't know where we are, and then there's the whole trespassing thing." She added.
"Well yeah, but we both know she would have come here by herself if we didn't go with her. It's like you said, she can't let things go. At least it's better with all of us here." He countered.
Nell was on the verge of agreeing when she noticed the cashier staring at them like they had insulted him. She caught his eye and he quickly glanced away.
She kept her gaze fixed warily, "Let's just get these trail mixes and head back to the car. They have M&Ms and pretzels, so you can stop trying to decide." She said, still feeling a bit bothered.
* * * *
By the time Ella had settled on the dark roast, Mac and Nell were already out the door. She grabbed a few sugar packets for her friends who had less of a palette for the strong stuff and made her way to the front.
Walking toward the register she realized that she was the only one in the store, aside from Scott who was nowhere in sight. The man at the register was already watching her with a slight smile on his face as she stepped up toward the counter.
"That all for you darlin'?" he said as he punched her order into the register. One of his eyes was squinted shut and scarred over, probably from some ancient injury. He wore a plain gray shirt that nearly matched the color of his hair, which though fine and thinning was not yet balding. She noticed that despite his age he still had the physical structure of a day laborer. Old habits die hard, she guessed.
Ella set the thermos on the counter. "Yep, that's it." She smiled as she pulled three dollars from her pocket and handed them to him. He counted out the change and Ella thanked him, grabbing the coins and the thermos and heading for the door.
"Have a nice night, dear." He called after her as she opened the door.
"You too." She shouted over her shoulder, stepping outside and back towards the car.
Just then, Scott stepped out of the bathroom and looked around, quickly realizing that his friends were nowhere to be seen. 'They're so impatient.' He thought. He walked back up through the chip aisle, trying to decide if he needed anything else. Nothing appealed to him much, so he continued walking to the counter.
"Thanks." He muttered as he slid the key towards the man behind the counter. The man's hand quickly snapped towards Scott's wrist and pinned it to the table. Scott looked up at the cashier, shocked, as he tried to pull his hand away.
The man stared at him with an intense expression leaning over the counter both to put more pressure on Scott's arm and to get uncomfortably close to his face. "Listen kid," the man whispered, "You tell those friends of yours to head back where you came from. Nothing good comes from that place."
He leaned back, letting up on Scott's arm and Scott immediately made for the door.
"Have a nice night." The man jeered as Scott slammed the door behind him.
He ran and hopped in the car, shutting the door with a bit too much enthusiasm for the others not to notice. They all turned, seeing his concerned expression.
"You okay there?" Nell asked.
"Yeah, yeah I'm fine." Scott said, rather unconvincingly.
"That guy was kinda creepy, right? He didn't say anything to you, did he?" Ella persisted.
"Just that ... for us to have a nice night." He gulped.
"Umm...okay then." Ella conceded, turning the key in the ignition. "Let's go catch ourselves a ghost."
* * * *
The jeep slowly rolled to a stop on the curb of a suburban street. Ella looked around to make sure she'd gotten close enough to the sidewalk to avoid a ticket.
"You sure we can just park it here? Is it safe?" asked Nell.
"This street is full of parked cars and it's not like we have anything worth stealing. If I was gonna steal a car I'd go for that one," she points at a new blue Ford, "or that one," a silver Chrysler.
"Aw, don't be so negative, Ella. Maybe the car thief has a thing for rusty doors and half-cracked engines." Mac smirked.
"Ugh, whatever. Let's just get going so they don't close the gates before we get in." Ella advised, "Stan is pretty punctual."
"Stan?" Scott questioned as they all hopped out of the car and grabbed their things. Ella grabbed her thermos out of the front seat and locked the door.
"Oh right," Ella replied as they started toward the cemetery, "It was just Nell and I that met him last time. Remember, we went back because we thought there was something on that one picture. As you know, the camera battery drained so we couldn't take anymore, but when we were leaving to meet back up with you guys we met Stan. He almost locked us in. He's the guy that lives at the house in the corner of the cemetery. That's how I know they close the gates at eight."
"Well that's...uh...creepy." Scott replied.
"Yeah but wait till you hear this, after he opened the gate again to let us out, he started asking us what we were doing in there. I said we heard about the ghost lights and wanted to see if we could get a picture of them. Nell asked him if he'd seen them and he kinda stared off with this dazed look. When he turned back to us you could see the emotion in the whites of his eyes and he said, 'Yeah, I've heard the stories. I never seen them ghost lights, or any ghosts either, but then I only moved here back in August.'
"I thought it would be interesting to hear from someone who lived half in the cemetery so I asked him 'Have you had anything happen that you'd say might be ghosts? This place is supposed to be really haunted.' He looked at me with this serious expression and said, 'Now listen, I'll say I ain't seen a ghost in here, but I can't say I never heard one. I hear 'em at night... sometimes... when I can't sleep. I ain't scared 'cause I know they gotta stay in the cemetery, why else would they be here, but I know that they're out there.' And that's when I figured that we had to come at night." Ella mused.
"Woah, woah wait a second." Scott fumed, "You're saying that the actual guy who actually lives here actually told you that he hears ghosts at night?"
"Uh, yeah. Weren't you listening?" Ella scoffed.
"And you didn't think you'd mention this before we went in?" Scott said with the tone of a deadly accusation.
"Wait, you knew this place was haunted," she shot back, "I told you there were first-hand witness stories. All the ghost funeral sightings, the voices from the mausoleum, there's supposed to be a damn gate to hell around here somewhere and now you're scared? Because some guy who's been living here for months says he 'sometimes' hears noises at night? Are you insane? I thought you actually wanted to find a ghost." Ella argued.
"I did...before...I think..." Scott muttered. "I don't know."
At this point they had all stopped walking just outside the gates. 'GREENWOOD' was spelled out in sprawling metal lettering across an archway. The word spanned the gap between two tall black fences that the open gates left agape. In smaller letters underneath, 'CEMETERY' appeared in the same metal script. A tall vertical-barred fence surrounded the rest of the cemetery, with the exception it made for the house on the corner which sat perfectly in the fence's break, its drive and doorway outside the graveyard and its back portion inside.
"Well, tough tits." Ella remarked to Scott, "You're coming in now, unless you wanna sleep in the car alone." She turned to face the entrance and started walking. She only made it a step before Scott caught her shoulder.
"Wait Ella, I gotta tell you something." Scott hesitated.
"What?" She demanded.
"It's about the gas station," he continued, "and, uh, that rule about creepy old guys. That guy at the register, he told me we shouldn't go in here."
"Really, Scott? You're going to lie to try and get out now? I'm sorry but we came here and I'm going in." She declared.
"Yeah sorry Scott, that's kinda pathetic. It's one night...we're going in." Mac added. He and Ella walked into the cemetery. Nell just looked at Scott and shrugged.
"We agreed." She conceded and headed through the gates.
Scott looked around the empty street then into fields and hills of gray stones, the dim orange and yellow lights of the setting sun in the background.
"It's only one night." He mumbled to himself, "That guy lives here and he's fine...I'll be fine." Temporarily reassured, he called after his friends to wait up and ran through the archway, his steps pounding hard against the rough pavement.