Page 62 - Cha Cha Cha PDF.pdf

GRAVE WALKERS
Amanda Hoeksema
“I’ll never get used to it,” gruffed a voice as cracked and worn as the hands cupping around his mouth. A scratch, a light, an inhale. “I’ll never get used to the waitin’.” The man’s words entangled with the smoke from his lips.
The boy shifted his weight against the brimstone, sniffed, and spoke, “Nah, not for me.” His thumbs slid through his belt loops. “Like the time to think.”
“You say that as if you’ve got great thoughts roaming ‘round in that head of yours.”
“How you know I don’t?”
“Boys with good thoughts don’t run with a group like us.”
“Really now?”
“They don’t stand waitin’ in graveyards in the middle of the night, waitin’ to kill a man.”
“Call me a dreamer, then.”
“Nothin’ more useless than a dreamer.” The man slowly stole a long drag with his eyes shifted down, allowing the smoke to escape through his nose.
The boy scoffed but had nothing else to say. He shifted his weight again. Sniffed.
The silence between them was stirred only by the creaking of the moon above their heads and the groaning of
the wind. Headstones jutted from the ground like gnarled and mossy teeth. They protruded at odd angles, reshaping the ground into mounds of knotted ropes. Low hanging clouds rolled over the uneven surface, crawled up their legs, and bunched thick like wet cotton at their ankles, shifting slightly when they moved their feet. Above the mausoleums, the black gate encircling the yard, and the shuddering headstones stood the shadows of dark-windowed buildings. Plumes of black smoke oozed