reply to post by Skid Mark
I don’t know why I went with him. I guess that I was bored and wanted to see him make an ass of himself. We wove our way through the deserted
streets to a cemetery a few blocks away. The fence was easy to jump. Bobby led the way through the graves. He stopped, took a flashlight from his
back pack, and focused the beam on a grave stone. The death date was for a few months ago. The name read, “Ted Heckler”.
“We need the grave of a murderer to do this,” Bobby said, “Ted here killed his wife and three kids before blowing his brains out. Isn’t that
right, Ted?”
“Man, knock it off. Have some respect.”
“Whatever. Hold this.” He gave me the flashlight and put the back pack on the ground. Then, he started rooting through it and pulling things
out. He arranged black candles around the grave and lit them. Then, he placed a coffee can on the grave, poured something that looked like lawn
waste into it, and threw in a couple of lit matches. The stuff started smoldering and foul smoke drifted into the air. It smelled like burning #.
“Now for the booze. It helps if you have a good buzz on.” He upended the bottle and drank down a couple of inches before handing it over. We
passed it back and forth a few more times before he was ready. “You need to be quiet. I need to concentrate.”
“What ever. Just give me that bottle.”
He gave it to me. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, stretched his arms out at his sides, and started to chant. It sounded like a
combination of non-sense and baby talk. It reminded me of a tent revival that I’d made the mistake of letting someone drag me to a few years ago.
There were grunts and animal noises mixed in with the chants. At one point, it sounded like he was trying to throw up his anus. It made me uneasy
and I backed away from him.
He fell to his knees five minutes later and fell silent. The flickering candles made his face look like a skull. He looked around like he didn’t
know where he was.
“What the-” That was all he was able to say. An ice-cold wind came out of nowhere. It carried with it the stench of decay. The candles blew
out. We were left in the dark. I heard strange clicking noises. Bobby started to scream. I found the flashlight and turned it on. Something black
covered Bobby from the waist down. It was working its way up his body. He had a knife in his hand. It looked like the one my dad used to-
The black stuff was covering his face now. That’s when I realized that it was bugs. Millions of them. The ground around Bobby was a shifting
mass of bugs. They were the size of quarters and had large jaws. They looked like a cross between a beetle and a cockroach. He brought the knife up
to his throat and brought it across with a savage slash. His screams ended in a gurgle. I expected to see his blood spray out but none did. The
bugs went into a feeding frenzy. He fell to the ground, on his side. I stood frozen. I somehow managed to shine the light on the body. My hands
were shaking so much. When the beam hit them, the bugs exploded into puffs of pus-yellow smoke. The rest of them scattered into the surrounding
darkness, revealing what was left of the body. He’d been stripped to the bone.
I heard clicking sounds to the left and right. They were trying to surround me. I turned and ran, shining the flashlight in wild arcs. The bugs
clittered over headstones behind me. My foot caught on a stone. I went flat on my face. The flashlight jolted out of my hand. I scrambled to my
feet and grabbed the flashlight. It had been damaged in the fall. The bugs were closer. I tossed the flashlight over my shoulder. The fence loomed
closer. Ten feet. Five. I vaulted it.