"Ghosts in the Graveyard"
an excerpt from Avalon Summer
As the Fourth of July approaches, I thought this chapter from my novel, Avalon Summer, was appropriate. It’s the evening of the 4th, July, 1992, and Sarah is playing “ghosts in the graveyard” with the other kids at her grandparents’ party. She and her brother Jay are spending the summer in Michigan with their grandparents while their mother is off working as an actress on location, and their father is out of the picture after a messy divorce.
Sarah has made friends with a local boy, Alex, and Jay has buddied up with Alex’s older brothers, Jaime and Julian. Sarah is also intrigued by a set of wrought-iron gates which stand ominously alone in the local woods by her grandparents’ house. She’s been reading a book, The Gates to Illvelion, which show a similar set of gates on the front cover.
Both of these books, as well as all my titles, are available for sale right now at the Smashwords summer sale (yes, this is some shameless self-promotion, but it IS a sale, and people like sales, right?).
Enjoy this chapter from Avalon Summer! Hopefully it reminds you of your own childhood games and summer vacations!
Someone cried out: “Ghost in the graveyard, run, run, run!” A firecracker lit and screamed into the sky. Ice cream and strawberry pie melted on a paper plate. The grill had been turned off hours ago, but the smell of charred hot dogs and burgers still hung in the air.
Sarah ran as fast as her legs could carry her; she wasn’t safe yet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Julian Guerrera charging for her, his wolfish eyes hungry for a victim. She was heaving heavy gulps of air. Not enough. The ghost slammed a hard palm on her back, and she tripped, rolled in the grass, a heap.
“Ha!” cried the ghost, and Julian stood over her in triumph.
“You’re supposed to tag everybody, not just me.” Sarah stood up, wincing at the scratches on her knees.
“Everybody else is safe. You’re just slow.”
Sarah’s face grew hot and red, but in the dusky night, Julian couldn’t see.
“Fine.”
“You’re the new ghost.”
“I know.” Sarah started up the hill without looking back at the older boy.
They returned to the big oak tree in front of the house.
“He got you?” asked Alex.
Sarah nodded. Another firecracker whistled into the air and exploded into green showers.
“Start counting. I’m hungry to harvest more ghosts,” said Julian, grinning. The others—Jay and Jaime, Alex, Mrs. Fabrizio’s grandkids, Uncle Jim’s nephew Mark—all stood catching their breath by the tree. They closed their eyes and started the countdown.
“One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock...”
Julian turned quickly and growled at Sarah. “Don’t follow me.”
She didn’t want to. Sarah hated being “it” with Julian. No matter what the rules of the game might say, they were not a team. Sarah would find her own hiding place and hope the others might forget about her.
Even though it was dark, and the forest loomed all around them like some vast, encroaching gloom, Sarah wasn’t afraid. There was too much commotion, too much noise from the fireworks.
No matter where she looked or what sounds she could hear, Sarah felt safe. Even Julian and the other older kids weren’t going to bother her tonight; too many adults lingered at the edges of the house, under the awning, near the picnic tables, around the lawn.
The energy of the party electrified even the fireflies as they danced above the grass. Sarah felt that wonderful feeling of being home, of knowing that the world was warm and the summer was endless. It had been a long time since she’d felt that way; she could hardly remember feeling it at all in California.
Julian was gone before she knew it. She could hear the others getting close to counting midnight, so she fled to the far side of the house, away from the picnic tables and sparklers. She was near the edge of the forest now, near the sloping valley below her grandparents’ house and the creek that ran through it. The path that led into the woods wasn’t far.
Sarah remembered the rusted gates.
Only a few days into summer, she remembered pulling Alex along into the sun-drenched woods. She had backed away from the gates that day, her heart faltering. She hadn’t been ready.
But now, in the darkness of a sweltering summer night, she felt differently. Somewhere in that small patch of woods, the rusted gates waited to be opened. Sarah knew they would unlock the way to Avalon. Hadn’t the book said so?
The book. Gates to Illvelion by A.R. Rathmann.
When Sarah brought the book home from the Book Depot, she didn’t start reading it right away. She had stared at the cover, wondering. The iron gates were just like the ones she and Alex had found. It was as if the artist who drew the illustration had once looked at the same forest, the same clearing, the same rusted gates.
Sarah had stared at that cover for a long time, her eyes tracing every line, every detail. She lingered on the white unicorn, who seemed to be looking right back at her. She tried to search out the tree branches and undergrowth that would identify this forest clearing as her forest clearing. Seeking, gazing, she yearned for some clue, some sign.
At last, she had opened the book to the first chapter: “Faerie Night.”
The words made her shiver a bit, even in the hotness of her summertime bedroom. When her eyes finally began their journey across the pages, she had felt things at once strange and familiar.
The book began on a dark summer night, warm and filled with fireflies. Lord Agravaine and his daughter had come to find the fairies on the border of their realm, along the edges of the vast, ancient forest. The fairies and wild folk always lived along the edges of things. It was on that dark night that Lord Agravaine was stolen away, into the wonder-world of Illvelion, and his daughter was left bereaved and resolved to find her father once more. Thus the adventure began.
Sarah made sure not to read too much or too quickly. She wanted the book to last. There was excitement in her reading, yet a kind of dread too, as if something lay within the story that she wasn’t quite ready to face. But Sarah had read enough to know that the key nestled in her pocket was the iron key that would open the gates.
That had been a week ago. Now Sarah stood upon the edge of her grandparents’ forest and couldn’t help but remember the words of the book.
Fireworks exploded. Laughter and happy screams echoed down into the darkened valley. Sarah heard them, but that world seemed so far away. Instead, she kept her gaze fixed upon the forest.
Was she waiting for the fairies to appear? Would they steal her away just as they had done Lord Agravaine?
If she crossed the threshold into the forest, would she arouse the attention of the nine queens? Or perhaps something worse.
Somehow, Sarah’s own stories and make-believe were mingled with the tale told in the paperback book, and all of it started to feel possible, as if A.R. Rathmann, and the bookshop clerk, and whoever put those rusted gates into the clearing all knew that something was real within that forest. Something magical.
She stepped closer to the borders of the dark wood. She felt the tree branches quiver when suddenly a strong breeze swept through them. She saw strange shadows in the gloom.
And then a tall figure moved, a shadow come to life.
Sarah’s stomach leaped into her throat. She didn’t dare move. Whatever it was in the forest was moving toward her, as surely as the moon rises high on a summer’s night. The figure was tall, taller than a mortal man, but slim, like a sapling sprung from the earth.
Sarah wanted to run—she knew that she should—but fear kept her frozen. Slowly the figure moved, like seaweed in water, but there was no mistaking its movement toward her.
The fairies? A ghost? Or worse?
Sarah wanted to cry and yell for help, but she couldn’t. She was rooted to the spot and at the mercy of the figure stalking slowly through the trees.
The fireworks screamed above her, exploding into rain-fire of green and blue. Cheers and shouts went up from the people on the hill.
Then a child cried, “Ghosts in the graveyard! Run, run, run!” and the figure in the woods stopped, seized with its own fear. Like a startled deer or rabbit, it fled back into the heart of the forest. Sarah saw it run with long leaps and bounds, a man on stilts or a denizen of Faerie. She thought she saw a glint of silver flash from its body as it ran.
Up above, the children scattered and screamed as the ghost chased them back to the oak tree in front of the house. Sarah ran after the noise, glad to be in the warmth of the summer lanterns again. She smiled at the white-hot light of sparklers and the face of Alex as he stood safe next to the big oak. Already the thing she’d seen upon the edge of the woods was fading from her mind. Only imagination, nothing more.
Julian’s eyes caught her as she came near. “The loser returns,” he sneered.
“Where’d you hide?” Jay asked. “We looked everywhere.”
Sarah told them she had gone down into the valley. “I didn’t really hide. Just stood near the woods.”
“That’s brave!” one of Mrs. Fabrizio’s grandchildren said.
Sarah didn’t answer.
“I looked down there,” said Jay. “I didn’t see you.”
“I was pretty far down,” answered Sarah. “Right near the trees.”
“Play again?” Jaime asked.
“Naw, I’m done,” said Julian. “Kiddie stuff anyway.” He slouched away from the others and headed off to make mischief. Jay and Jaime soon followed.
“Sore loser,” said Alex softly when the older brothers had gone. “He couldn’t catch anybody.”
“He caught me,” Sarah reminded.
“But you didn’t really play either, did you?”
“Alex—”
“Yeah?”
“I saw something—”
“What do you mean?”
Sarah couldn’t say. What would she say, after all? That she’d seen a fairy in the woods and he’d almost stolen her away? No.
“What did you see?” Alex asked again.
“Nothing. Just the forest. Gave me the creeps.”
“You’re getting braver. You wouldn’t have gone near the forest at night when summer began.”
Sarah realized Alex was right. What had changed? she wondered.
“Well,” Sarah began, “I won’t go near it again at night. Not alone, anyway.”
“It’s just a bunch of trees. Same at night as in the day. Maybe more raccoons.” Alex smiled, his dark eyes glinting in the house lamps.
Sarah smiled too, but it was slight and forced. As much as she tried to pretend it was her imagination, she knew that the thing in the forest was more than a raccoon. And it was that thought which made her shiver again: the thought of what lay beyond the trees and the rusted gates and the border of her world.
That’s it for now! If you are here in the United States, have a safe and happy holiday weekend, and for everyone else, have a safe and happy normal weekend! Maybe try a game of ghosts in the graveyard if you can.
Thanks for reading! Please consider buying my books HERE, or my short stories HERE.
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