Terror in the Shadows vol. 13: Terror in the Shadows Anthology

209 pages

The Feast

“This is stupid,” Colton grumbled as he shoved his hands deeper into his slightly oversized leather jacket.
v “I’m so glad we bought the buzzkill,” Eli said.

Standing a foot above everyone else, it was easy for Colton to glower down at anyone. “You had to. I’m the only one with a car.”

Raelynn sighed dramatically as she flipped her long red hair over her shoulder. She pushed past the bickering men to loop her arm with Zoey’s.

“Oh, this is going to be such a fun night,” she cooed, sarcasm dripping from every word.

While Zoey shushed her, she still picked up her pace to keep stride with her best friend. She threw an apologetic smile back to Wyatt as they hurried up the gravel path. Once they were out of earshot, Wyatt shot a glare at his friends. He had to smack them both to get their attention since they were busy sniping at each other.

“Could you two chill out for one night?” Wyatt hissed under his breath. “It’s taken me months to get Zoey on this date.”

“This isn’t really a date,” Colton said.

Eli gave a sympathetic look. “Yeah, there are normally fewer people on a date. This is more of a group hangout.”

“Great. You guys agree on something.” He clapped his hands and checked to make sure that the girls were still too far away to hear. “Keep that energy but stop talking. Okay? Awesome.”

Gravel crunched under Wyatt’s heel as he spun around and started forward with determination. The girls had continued on without them, chatting amongst themselves and unconcerned by the guys falling behind. Moonlight pushed through the entwined branches of the old, gnarled trees, catching on some of the headstones and making them glow white. Scattered mausolea and elaborate statues cast long shadows over the cemetery’s well-tailored lawn. They followed the gravel path for a while before veering off to head deeper into a heavily wooded area, guided by the bright moonlight and the flashlights of their phones.

“Where exactly is this mausoleum?” Raelynn looked over her shoulder to ask.

“It’ll be somewhere in the back, right?” Eli said. “It was built just after the town was founded.”

Colton grumbled like he resented having to speak at all. “It’s in the middle. The cemetery was built out around it.”

Eli trained his flashlight onto Colton’s face, making the man scowl harder. “How do you know that?”

“I paid attention in history class.” Colton said dismissively.

Wyatt smacked Eli’s shoulder before he could reply with something snarky. In a small town, it was impossible not to know at least something about everyone even if you didn’t have much contact with them. Colton was barely two years older than the rest of them but he had been a star on the high school football team in a place where that meant something so he had always been in a very different social circle.

Then Colton had decided that he wanted to work in law enforcement. Eli’s father, the long-serving sheriff, had instantly taken Colton under his wing, guiding him right into the academy and back again as the town’s newest deputy. At this point, he was pretty much considered to be the Sheriff’s honorary son. Eli hated it. And Eli only knew one way to handle conflict—be as annoying as possible until the other person gives up and leaves. It’s amazing we’re still friends, Wyatt thought, as Eli opens his mouth again, forcing Wyatt to smack his arm again.

“Ow,” Eli hissed indignantly. “I’m trying to have a conversation.”

“Maybe tonight—while we’re on the outskirts of town, creeping through a cemetery, in the dark, finally with the girl I’ve been crushing on—isn’t the best time to insult our only ride.”

“He can’t leave us here,” Eli said, gesturing to the man pretending he couldn’t hear their conversation. “He promised dad that he wouldn’t. Remember? That’s the whole reason we got permission to do this?”

Wyatt shushed him and checked the girls hadn’t overheard. “It just seems cooler if they don’t know we’re allowed to be here.”

“Yeah. Never too early to start building your relationship on a foundation of lies,” Eli retorted.

Colton snorted but thankfully kept his opinions to himself.

“How much farther do you think?” Raelynn asked, only then noticing how far back the others were.

Zoey noticed too and the girls exchanged a meaningful glance. The type that carried an entire unspoken conversation. Oh, God. Please don’t think I’m a creep, Wyatt begged as he forced a smile.

“Not much. It’s right over here.”

Colton cleared his throat and, with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, jerked his chin over to the left. Everyone followed the motion to see a slender, windowless mausoleum. Moonlight sharpened the slight angle of the roof, illuminating one side while casting the other in darkness. Time had weathered away whatever decorations and writing had once been carved above the sealed door. A tall statue was placed about a foot away from the mausoleum. It was a woman, chipped and weathered, with one angelic wing still stretched out like an eagle in flight.

They all started toward it, reforming into one group as the newer, shinier headstones gradually gave way to those that had stood longer than the town itself. A random gust caught the tendrils of a weeping willow, making them reach toward the passing group, and something in the air shifted. Wyatt didn’t comment on it. None of them did. But he did notice that the closer they got, the slower everyone walked until they lingered for a moment on the edge of the clearing.

The rest of the cemetery had been set out in straight lines with trees and decorative statues working as marker points to divide up the years of use or family plots. The general pattern made the perfect ring of nothingness surrounding the mausoleum look strange. It sat in the middle of a circle of grass with only the angel statue to keep it company. Even the boughs of the surrounding trees had grown in symmetrical arches high over the stone roof.

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