1
Autumn found its way to the middle of the United States, spreading glorious color across the trees and sky, landing in little tatters on the fading grass. Pumpkin spice scents filled the air and chunky sweaters abounded. Some sang that Christmas was the most wonderful time of the year, but Esmie Laurent—she could never stand the grandiose Esmerelda her mother insisted was her birthright, handed down from great-grandmother to great-granddaughter in their family for generations—swore autumn truly won the title.
Of course, she could usuallyseethe glorious colors and cheerful sweaters andsmellthe pumpkin spice. Right now, with the dark of near midnight all around her and a skittish flirt of moonlight diving in and out from behind quick-moving clouds, all she saw were shadows, and all she smelled was night, dirt, and rotting leaves.
Tavia would kill her when she found out, but Esmie had to do her research. The paper was due on Friday, and their schedules didn’t line up for a tandem research trip to the cemetery until Monday. This couldn’t wait.
The Springfield National Cemetery in Springfield, Missouri, was supposedly beautiful in the daylight, but Esmie was here for a slightly darker purpose. Her major in grad school at Missouri Southern University was forensic science, and her attention had been snared by a story she heard about a bunch of local grave disturbances. Just some knocked-over tombstones, but still, worth a paper for one of her many classes.
Unfortunately, Esmie thought the vandalism might be at a different cemetery altogether, but Tavia was sure it was the big one, so here she was, sneaking over the wall at night in hopes of getting some pictures of the section where the knocked-over tombstones had been. Some names and dates. Maybe even some good goodbye quotes off the vandalized stones. Anything. She was just a teaching assistant, scrambling to make ends meet until she could get her degree and become a crime scene investigator, so she needed to nail this paper. That’s all that mattered.
If she could just get a few pictu?—
Was that… a horse? Jesus, if itwasa horse, it was one pissed off, angry horse. It was practically screaming. It sounded close, too. Well, not really close, but closer than “out of town”, where one would presumably find horses.
Did people have horses this far inside Springfield? Surely not. Highway 65 was just on the other side of the cemetery, wasn’t it? She was terrible with directions.
Something about the sound set her nerves to singing, and she looked around with more than just interest. The cemetery was big—bigger than she could see the perimeter of in the dark—and walled all the way around except for the gates. Shadows danced and swayed in the constantly moving moonlight from the chasing clouds, the tombstones first lurching forward then drawing back at the corners of her vision.
Suddenly, she didn’t want to be here anymore. Maybe she should’ve listened to her metaphorical Tavia and waited for her friend, even at the expense of her grade.
No. She squared her shoulders and stood as tall as her five foot two-inch frame allowed. She needed to keep her grades up. No one wanted a teaching assistant who was failing a class, and she couldn’t afford to lose that assistantship. She couldn’t afford grad school without it.
The horse screamed again, now joined by another. No, by more than one. She couldn’t even tell how many. The strident calls in the night seemed to shriek off the cemetery walls, and she winced, her resolve trying to crumble at the eerie sound. What the hell were they doing to those poor animals?
Hoofbeats. Loud, ringing hoofbeats in the dark. Metal striking stones. Fast hoofbeats, louder and louder as they neared. Someone rode closer in the night. Someone…inthe cemetery? Was that possible?
She saw lights flickering. Lightning bugs? No. Lightning bugs were green. These winking lights were orange and yellow. And getting closer with the ever-nearing sound of those galloping hoofbeats.
Horses, riding fast in the night, riding hellbent for leather right toward her in a midnight cemetery, and, weirdly, she felt flung back in time. Everything about this felt… old. Who in this day and age could say they’d been chased through a cemetery by screaming horses and twinkling fairy lights?
But putting it so baldly set the wavering fear inside her alight, and she realized how scared she actually was. Her jaw clenched, and her breath caught in her throat. Every thought flew from her head on a simple and emphatic, “Fuck it!”
Esmie turned and ran. She wanted no part of whatever was happening.
If she could just get to the gates. If she could beseen,even if by a cop. She’d take the trespassing ticket for being in the cemetery after hours. Just get her the hell out of this weird-ass place.
Hoofbeats thudded louder behind her, metal clashing on the gravel cemetery paths, and she risked a look back. The flickering lights in the dark drew closer, but she still couldn’t make them out. Nor could she fully make out the horses. They were shifting shadows lit by uncertain moonlight, their riders indistinct—there one moment but gone the next. She couldn’t even tell how many there were.
She ran faster, her breath hot in her throat. Where were the damn gates?
Louder and louder, and the horses screamed again, and Jesus, they sounded right at her back. She let out a breathless little scream of her own, her hands flying to her ears, and dodged away down another path. She had no idea where she was going, but she wanted away from those screaming, galloping horses. Maybe they’d just run on by?—
No. They followed her, flying low and swift around the turn, close enough now she could hear the saddles creaking, the horses blowing as they galloped, the thunder of their hooves and the patter of churned dirt falling behind. She didn’t want to look. She wouldn’t look.
Her head turned of its own accord. The orangey yellow wasn’t fireflies. They were firelights. The eyes and mouths of… jack o’lanterns? What the hell? They were jack o’lanterns sat high on the shoulders of the riders, and she almost stopped running on a surge of relief so great it hurt, because this was obviously nothing but a giant prank.
But as she slowed, the barest hint of a smile cracking her sweaty face, the horses screamed again, and low, evil, hollow laughter filled the cemetery, bouncing off the tombstones likerotten skulls dropped into an empty well. The burgeoning smile fell off her face, and she ran again, running for her life this time.
No living thing laughed like that. No living thing chased her this horrible night.
Another laugh joined in, as awful as the first, as dry and chuffing as a cough in a coffin. A third, this one slightly higher pitched, like a branch scraping up and down an exposed rib cage. Terrified tears rose in her eyes and streaked back across her cheeks, soaking into her stocking cap. Why was she crying? She wasn’t sad. She was fucking scared to death.
The horses screamed. That awful, dead laughter mocked her. And still, her traitor head turned back to see what followed her.
Riders. Three of them. Enormous black horses, their shapes now close enough that the moonlight limned them instead of dispersing them in shadow. Tattered capes flew and flapped like a startled murder of crows. And those wicked jack o’lanterns high above.
Laughing low and hollow again, one of the terrible riders raised a gloved hand to its jack o’lantern and plucked it from off its shoulders. Holding it high, it laughed again, mirthless and mocking.
