Page 21 of Christmas Spirits

Noticing my dismay, Arianna clamped her mouth shut, a sign that she wasn’t going to push on it further. And I was thankful. I didn’t think I could tell her what had happened that night if I tried.

All I knew for sure was that I would never try to channel a spirit again.

My gaze drifted back to the scenery passing by my window. The minutes passed, and silence settled in between us as we continued to drive.

A faint buzzing and clicking sounded, and I peeked over to see a CD sliding into the disk slot on the dashboard and Arianna fiddling with the dials again. Suddenly, drums pounded at such a loud volume and with such speed, I felt the rapid beats in my chest. A man’s low rumbling scream came next. It didn’t even sound like words, just one long animal’s growl.

I flinched. This was music? I couldn’t see the allure.

Did that mean I was officially getting old?

That was a hard reality to come to terms with.

Studying my reaction, Arianna grinned shyly. “So?” she asked. “What do you think?”

I tried with all my might to keep my dislike off my face. How was I going to say the music was terrible without admitting she’d been right?

I paused. “It… It grows on you, I guess.”

Then, both knowing I was full of it, we burst into a fit of laughter.

Westwood Cemetery was right off the town’s exit and much smaller than the one where Sean had performed the demon cure in Fairport. But smaller was better since we had to search all the tombstones for the name Marc Anders.

We carried the shovels and flashlights Arianna had brought through the rows and rows of gravesites, fighting against the icy breeze and frigid temperatures. Here, a light powder of snow coated the ground, giving the cemetery a peaceful and morbid beauty.

After about thirty minutes of scanning the names on each stone, my face hurt from the cold and I was beginning to lose feeling in my fingers.

“Here!” Arianna shouted and waved her arm from a few rows away. “I think I found him.”

I hurried over as fast as my half-frozen body would allow. The grave she was standing over was marked by a footstone, no bigger than a cereal box. She crouched low and ran a gloved hand over it to brush more of the snow away. The nameMarc R. Andersstared back at us, along with a death year matching the online description we’d found.

The reality of what we were about to do smacked into me and my stomach twisted. Was I really about to dig up a person’s dead body in the middle of the night? This was the exact opposite of a crazy-free, no-supernatural holiday. But, with a poltergeist after me and threatening to hurt my family, I guessed we were far past that now.

I needed to focus on making it to Christmas alive, instead.

Arianna rose again, turned my way, and said, “Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”

She seemed way too comfortable with what we were about to do, but I nodded, trying to mimic her certainty, and pushed my shovel into the hard soil. She copied, using the heel of her sneaker to force the blade down further.

As we worked, we made sure to keep any excavated dirt in a pile close by, so when it came to filling the hole again, it’d be a quick and easy process. Tirelessly, we dug. Since I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done physical labor to this extent, my muscles screamed in protest. My back ached and my arms cramped, but at least I wasn’t cold anymore. I was even beginning to sweat.

We kept at it for what felt like forever. Until the next spike of my shovel hit something solid and then gave way with acrack. Arianna and I exchanged knowing looks.

Finally. We’d reached him.

“We only got about four feet down,” I said, surprised it hadn’t been buried the full six feet like it was supposed to be.

She shrugged. “Could be one of two things. Either he was buried in haste, or someone else exhumed his body before us. Let’s hope it’s the former.”

“Why?”

“If he’s missing body parts it hurts our chance of fully banishing him from this plane.”

Oh God… Body parts… Just thinking about that made nausea stir.

I watched as Arianna used her shovel to scrape the thin layer of dirt off the top of the casket, and asked, “How do you know so much about this? About poltergeists and banning evil spirits?”

She gestured for me to step to the side, ignoring my question for the moment. “As you saw from your first hit, the casket’s weak from age and decay. You don’t want to be standing on it or it may collapse.”

---