Haze would come when in the military one was tested to no show fear.
When we were children it was called The Initiation, then PacMan arrived and kites were relegated as debris-in-dad's-garage.
The new generations gets its adrenaline rush from electronics, we got it by experiencing the real thing, like a cold hand from a freshly dug tomb grabbing your ankle and pulling hard....
To become a member of the “7-Eleven Outlaws Gang” of Calm Point you must be no higher than 11 years old no lower than 7. Seven wasn’t our idea but that of my aunt which was not happy having Elliot (7) hanging in the house, making himself a nuisance and driving my aunt up the walls.
The solution? We should take him with us or else.
Peter, the son of our Church Minister was to be initiated that summer into our Gang.
The initiation was a simple one, which no girl will ever attempt, and it was to hammer a two feet wood stake, sharpened at one end, into the ground in front of fresh grave in the local Churchyard at midnight. Well ten o’clock which was plenty dark by then. Anyway, going to the cemetery was no fun, and going alone wasn’t better as it was placed two hundred yards out of town surrounded by a low and decrepit stonewall.
No lights worth to mention but a solitary yellow with dirt bulb giving an eerie amber to the rusted wrought iron doors that would send a chilling cold finger down the spine when anybody pushed them open, and we are talking when you heard it a noon. At midnight (well, ten o’clock) it sounds like thousand witches cackling crawling on your skin.
But, entering the Death’s Village as a pack meant not giving to your peers any signal of be ready to decorate your underwear at the first signal of a zombie whistling your way.
For the Membership Candidate that wood stake will be burning his fingers to get going into the ground and ten get the hell of there like the Road Runner.
We had painted the stake with blue and red colours as to identify it later and decided to go to Sammy’s house, which was in the town border and nearer of the cemetery, but not as near as to hear the corpses turning in their sleep as Indian Joe, Sammy’s father told us once.
We were all there but Elliot, who wasn’t allowed to be out after eight and by nine, in bed, and “don’t you give me that look or it will be painful to seat tomorrow” aunt will say.
Elliot didn’t like to sleep in the dark and always demanded either for the door to be left open or for the funny light on the shelf above the bed on. Even then he could see the shadows of big monsters or sneaking little ones crawling around the walls, or, God forbid! the hungry ones under his bed.
But all changed when he got, as his seven years birthday present, a black helmet portraying the likes of that scary Star Wars Lord of the Dark Force DARTH VADER!!!
How he got to see the film is anybody’s guess, maybe he just sneaked inside, as always he seems to be doing.
With the Darth Vader mask, Elliot needed no more a light to go to sleep or go outside into the threatening darkness. Elliot wasn’t afraid no more.
Unknown to us was the fact that the cemetery caretaker, Old Man Jefferson and Sammy’s grandfather were stashing some moonshine on the side of an open grave that he finish digging that afternoon all because Sheriff Amos was in the war pat again. He was there,
down in the grave, sitting and waiting for Indian Joe under the protective earth walls and taking a belt or two from one of the jugs from time to time.
He felt warm and happy and started to humming to himself but remembering Sheriff Amos cut it short with a chortle.
In an alcohol induced stupor he never heard or was aware of Peter going by like he was walking on eggs.
Also we didn’t knew that Elliot had got wind of Peter’s initiation but didn’t knew we were at Sammy’s house, so, wearing his Darth Vader mask he marched onto the cemetery, his vision not so clear through the small openings of the mask, cautiously selecting where he was going trying to reach the big old tree in the middle of the churchyard without falling.
We weren’t sure that Peter wouldn’t chicken out and just throw the stake as far as he could and run back to us with a fairy tale, so, everybody followed him from a safe distance trying not to make any sound as we navigated between mausoleums and tombstones in the general direction of the old big tree.
We saw the bulk of Peter’s, three number too big, knitted-pullover (his lucky charm) about hundred yards away in the dark stopping in front of a newly covered grave, bulging with dirt, flowers and wreaths.
From the cautiously movements of approach, suddenly he got busy looking around nervously. Squatting in front of the grave he buried the stake’s sharp end deep on the ground and started to hammer it with one of the round stones decorating the freshly occupied earth dwelling as fast and hard he could because his diminishing courage was demanding that his legs started pumping away fast.
All was well done and the stake went down halfway its length and Peter raised himself ready to go. Turning fast and moving his right leg forward he felt he was been pull down by the hem of his pullover from the grave, probably by a disturbed big zombie wakened by Peter’s pounding.
We saw at the same time that his pullover was pulled down with our eyes big as they could get and thought that “they” got Peter, we just need the word and we were out of there…as fast as all devils and monsters could push out of there, burning the rubber off from our snickers.
At that moment, having been gripped by all the terror he could get, and then some, Peter let a long pitched scream of pure terror, like the painful howling of a pig that trying to jump over didn’t totally cleared the barber wire, not realizing that he had nailed down his own pullover to the ground with the wooden stake.
It startled Elliot who was by now reaching the old tree and trying to see were the danger was coming from, stumbled over one of the big root protruding from the ground falling down with the mask just about the edge of the open grave where Old Man Jefferson was working on his last hangover.
Disturbed by the scream, Sammy’s grandfather wanted to see what was all about the racked over him, when, raising his head to edge level he came face to face with the mask of Darth Vader improving his state from drunken stupor to sudden sobriety and PANIC!!! PANIC!!! PANIC!!!
Throwing himself down with a bellow worthy of an enraged bull he began hollering incantations, feeling a sudden urge to escape from that hole and with a mighty jump for his age, he was out of there like a Jack from the Box and up and running.
Trapped out there, Peter, hysterically hollering, discarded his grabbed by the zombie pullover and ran like you don’t believed, almost hitting his face with the knees.
Elliot, now up, saw something popping out from the open grave and wasn’t going to stay put and be on the way of the oncoming “corpse” so he decide also to run, to his left, in our direction!
We didn’t know that the little shining monster running toward us was Elliot, nor we knew who the “corpse” wearing the long and flagging coat just out of its hole was, but it was all we need to start burning rubber from our snickers, in all directions, out of there, fast! Hearing the cavernous yet muffled voice coming from the shining black head with long whining about we stopping,
good look to that leprechaun!, we rant even faster.
Didn’t entered back to the house, just popped in at full throttle to the amazement of the sipping cherry ladies and cigar-smoking gents.
Elliot and his idiotic mask followed suit half a minute after like all demons where on his tail.
My aunt wasn’t amused and we got blamed for Elliot’s moronic idea.
This was so amazing. I loved it. I felt as if I was there running with those boys. You need to continue and write a series on these misadventures. I loved that you used Darth Vader's mask in this story, it's such a visual.
Love the pic and the story, my friend. And you've now unleashed a few very vivid 'kid and cemetery visit' memories in my old head. Those were the days!
This second book in Edie's 'Puddle' series is filled with wonderful catchy rhyming poems that have positive nostalgic messages. Her whimsical illustrations carry the poems along on ripples of warm vibrant colours.
