Read Online Deep South by Nevada Barr - Free Book Online

afraid. Not of the dead, or of the undead for that matter, but of having wandered into Rod Serling country, a twilight zone in the nineteenth century from which there was no way out. Unpleasant tingling started at the nape of her neck and crept up the back of her head hair by hair. It was time to get some sleep. She was so tired she was scaring herself.
    A sharp "fucking bell!" from the shadows beyond the clearing brought her back into the twentieth century. "Fuck" might be a good Anglo-Saxon word dating from the Middle Ages, but to Anna it rang with indifferent modern malice. She tucked more deeply into the shelter of the church and waited.
    A moment passed, filled with the promising sound of stumbling feet, then Anna's patience was rewarded. Two high-school-ago boys, emerged from the darkness on the far side of the graveyard.
    Single file, unsteady on their feet, they threaded through the tombstones. It was too dark to make out their faces, but they were tallishfive-foot-ten to six feet. One had the wide shoulders and thick neck of an athlete. The other was the body type Anna remembered from her high school days: all neck and wrist and Adam's apple.
    Both wore tuxedos. The skinny boy bad lost his J'acket and his white shirt glowed in the moonlight. Neither wore a tie.
    Quiet as the tomb, Anna waited till they'd come through the gate and walked within a yard or two of her lair.
    "Good evening, gentlemen," she said pleasantly.
    The geeky lad in the lead screamed, "Jesus Christ," and fell to his knees. The boy behind tripped over him in his stampede.
    Anna laughed. A little low comedy almost made up for her interrupted sleep. She stepped out of the shadows where they could see her.
    Proving she was not an apparition but flesh and blood did not calm them as she'd expected it to.
    The larger boy hauled his fallen comrade to his feet with an unsympathetic jerk on the latter's cummerbund. In the feeble light, she could see nothing but great dark holes where the eyes were and a black gash of mouth as they gaped at her. "What brings you boys out so late?" she asked. "Go, go, go," the bigger boy cried, and shoved the other before him. In an instant, they were sprinting down the path toward the road behind the church.
    Anna had no intention of giving chase. They could outrun her without half trying. As she listened to their noisy retreat, she felt some genuine alarm for the first time that night. Over the years she'd interrupted a lot of kids in the midst of some sort of feral fun. Little kids ran.
    Teenagers seldom did. Unless they had really done something wrong.
    "Damn," Annamuttered. Tw o choices: go back to the house and find a working flashlight or wait till morning to see what damage had been done.
    She'd pretty much talked herself into the efficacy of waiting till sunrise when she heard the crying.
    Thoughts of bed were banished. The crying subsided to a low moan followed by pitiful retching. Anna took the ghostly path through the cemetery, retracing the footsteps of the boys. The sound of the dry heaves remained constant, making her progress toward the source sure, but it tickled her gag reflex and she had to keep swallowing lest the vomiting prove contagious.
    The iounded headstones of the moonlit clearing behind her, she reached the near-perfect darkness of the woods. A tapered stone marker disappeared into the trees above. At her feet was an unusual burial stone, a wide flat slab, large enough to sleep on comfortably and raised up on four sturdy blocks so it formed an elevated dais.
    Ahead was a walled enclosure, ramparts of brick roughly capped with concrete and about chest-high. This mortality exclosure was deep in the trees, shrouded in darkness and veiled with Spanish moss. Thin choking sounds emanated from within.
    Picking her way over roots and an occasional shard of shattered stone, Anna eased toward the pale line of concrete topping the bricks. The puking came to a stop. By ones and twos and tens of thousands, frogs