The Second Evil (2 page)

“She was kissing him?” Ronnie asked, leaning forward to hear Debra's soft, whispery voice.

“I guess you could call it that. I thought Mrs. Bartlett was going to have a cow.”

All three girls laughed.

Their laughter was cut short as the car approached the Fear Street cemetery. Behind a weather-beaten rail fence, the weed-choked graveyard sloped up from the street. Eerie wisps of gray mist rose up between the crooked tombstones.

“Corky's family should move,” Debra said, shuddering. “I mean, living so close to where Bobbi is buried. It's like a constant reminder.”

“Corky visits Bobbi's grave all the time,” Kimmy said, shaking her head.

“We've
got
to talk to her,” Ronnie said heatedly. “We've got to make her forget about Bobbi and the evil spirit—”

“The evil spirit isn't dead,” Debra said suddenly. “I can still feel it.”

“Debra, stop,” Kimmy said sharply.

“I know the evil spirit that killed Bobbi is still alive,” Debra insisted quietly.

“Don't say that!” Ronnie cried.

“You've got to stop reading those stupid books,” Kimmy said. “I can't believe you spend so much time with that stuff.”

“I want to learn all I can about the occult,” Debra replied. “Both of you should too. You were there that night. You were there in the cemetery and saw the evil spirit.”

“I saw Corky fight it. And I saw it go back down into its grave,” Kimmy replied impatiently, almost angrily. “Oh, I don't know
what
I saw. It was all a bad dream. I just want to forget about it. I don't want to read any of that occult mumbo jumbo, and I don't want to hear about it.”

Debra fingered the crystal she had begun wearing around her neck soon after Bobbi's funeral. “But I can feel—” she started.

“I want to get on with my life!”
Kimmy declared loudly. “I want—” She stopped in mid-sentence, her mouth open.

Ronnie and Debra followed Kimmy's gaze through the still-cloudy windshield. In the darkness of the cemetery they could see a solitary figure near the top of a small hill where the ground leveled out and some new graves stood.

Wisps of gray mist snaked along her feet. She had
one hand on the top of a gravestone, her head lowered as if talking to someone in the grave.

“It's Corky,” Debra whispered. “What's she doing there?”

“I
told
you,” Kimmy said, slowing the car to a a near-stop. “She visits Bobbi's grave all the time.”

“But she'll
freeze!”
Debra declared with a shiver. “Honk the horn.” She reached out to pound on the horn, but Kimmy pushed her hand away.

“No. Don't.”

“Why?” Debra insisted.

“I think it's bad luck to honk at a cemetery.”

“Now
who's the superstitious one?” Debra scoffed. She peered out into the darkness.

“Does she see us?” Ronnie asked.

“No. She's still staring at the grave,” Kimmy said. She rolled down her window. “I'll call to her.”

She stuck her head out the window and called Corky's name. The gusting wind blew the name back into her face.

“She didn't hear you,” Debra said, staring out at Corky's unmoving figure, frail and small surrounded by the rows of crooked gravestones.

Kimmy rolled up the window, her cheeks red, her expression troubled. She tossed back her black crimped hair and continued to watch Corky's dark figure among the gravestones.

“What do we do now?” Ronnie asked in a tiny voice.

Debra fingered her crystal as she stared out at Corky.

“I don't know,” Kimmy replied. “I don't know.”

*   *   *

Unaware that she was being watched, Corky Corcoran leaned against the cold granite of Bobbi's tombstone. Her face was wet with tears, silent tears that came without warning, without crying. Tears that spilled out like the words she spoke to her dead sister.

“I shouldn't come here all the time,” Corky said, bending low, one arm resting on top of the stone. “I know I shouldn't. Sometimes I feel as if I'm pulled here. Almost against my will.”

The wind howled through the bent trees that clung to the sloping hill. Corky didn't feel the cold.

“If only I could sleep,” she said. “If only I could fall asleep and not dream. I have such frightening dreams, Bobbi. Such vivid, frightening dreams. Nightmares. Of that awful night here in the cemetery. The night I fought the evil spirit.”

She sighed and wiped away the tears with her open hands. “I feel as if I'm still fighting the evil, Bobbi. I'm still fighting it even though I sent it down to its grave.”

Corky pressed her hot face against the cool granite. “Bobbi, can you hear me?” she asked suddenly.

As if in reply, the ground began to shake.

“Bobbi?” Corky cried, pulling herself upright in surprise.

The entire hill trembled, the white gravestones quaking and tilting.

“Bobbi?”

A crack formed in the dirt. Another crack zigzagged across the ground like a dark streak of lightning.

As Corky gaped in disbelief, the ground over Bobbi's grave split open. The crack grew wider.

Wider.

A bony hand reached up to the surface.

Bits of flesh clung to the arm that followed the hand. Another hand clawed through to the surface. A heavy stench filled the air, invading Corky's nostrils.

The bony hands grappled at the edge of the crack, pulling, straining, until a head appeared, then two shoulders.

“It's
you!”
Corky cried in horror as her dead sister pulled herself up from the grave.

“B
obbi?”

Corky uttered the name in a choked whisper. Her breath caught in her throat.

As her dead sister rose up in front of her, Corky staggered back, bumping against Bobbi's gravestone, almost toppling backward over it.

“Bobbi, it's you!” she cried, dropping to her knees on the hard, frozen ground.

Her sister rose up, up, until she hovered over Corky. Then she glared down with sunken eyes. The skin on her face, green and peeling, sagged, ready to fall off. Her straight blond hair was caked with wet dirt and twigs.

“Ohh!” Corky uttered a low, horrified moan. Her entire body convulsed in a tremor of terror.

Her dead sister stared down at her as the winds swirled and the ground shook.

“What is it, Bobbi?” Corky managed to cry out. She stared up at the hideous, rotting figure of her sister, not wanting to see what had happened to her but unable to turn away.

“What is it, Bobbi? Why did you leave your grave? Do you want to tell me something?”

Corky was so horrified, so overcome by Bobbi's decaying form, she didn't know whether she had spoken the questions out loud or only thought them.

As she stared up at the sunken-eyed green face, Bobbi's mouth slowly began to open. The flaking, blackened lips parted as if about to speak. No sound emerged.

“Bobbi, what
is
it?” Corky demanded. “What do you want to tell me?”

The black lips opened wider.

The sunken eyes rolled back.

The winds swirled loudly.

Corky stared up expectantly, unable to get off her knees, gripped by horror.

The lips parted even wider, and a fat brown worm curled out from Bobbi's mouth.

“Nooooooo!”

Corky's shrill scream rose and swirled with the raging wind.

She covered her eyes and lowered her head, fighting the waves of nausea that rolled through her body.

When she looked back up a few seconds later, blinking hard, struggling to breathe, Bobbi was gone.

The ink black sky was clear. Pale moonlight filtered gently down.

The winds had stopped.

The cemetery was deserted. Silent.

The ground over her sister's grave wasn't split or cracked open.

It didn't happen, she realized.

It was another dream. Another nightmare about Bobbi.

I was asleep, Corky thought.

I was leaning against Bobbi's gravestone, and I fell asleep.

I'm always so tired these days. I never can fall asleep at night. I never sleep the night through because of the nightmares.

Yes. I was asleep.

She stared at the dark ground, solid, silent. I
must
have dreamed it, she thought. The ground trembling, the gravestones shaking and tilting. The bony hand reaching up through the crack in the earth. The grotesque figure of her sister, green and rotting, covered with dirt and insects.

All a hideous dream.

“What am I going to do?” she asked aloud. “What
can
I do to make these nightmares end?”

She turned back to the low gravestone, lowering her head to talk once again to Bobbi. “I'm not going to visit for a while,” she said softly, her voice muted by the heavy chill in the air. “At least I'm going to try to stay away.”

The wind picked up and gently stirred the trees. There seemed to be whispering all around.

“It's not that I want to forget you, Bobbi,” Corky continued with a loud sob. “It's just that—It's just that I'm still alive, and I have to—”

She stopped abruptly. “I'm sorry. I'm not making any sense. I have to go. It's late, and I'm cold.”

Bobbi is even colder, she thought. The grim thought made her shudder.

“Bobbi, I really—”

She stopped short and uttered a brief cry.

Something moved behind a tall marble monument. A squirrel?

No. It was too big to be a squirrel.

Staring into the darkness, surrounded by the ceaseless whispers, Corky saw a dark form hunkered down behind the monument. A hand moved, then was quickly pulled back. A head, the face hidden in shadow, poked out, then disappeared just as quickly.

Someone is here, Corky realized.

Someone is watching me.

The whispers grew louder as once again the wind swirled around her.

Before she realized it, she had pushed herself away from Bobbi's gravestone and was running down the sloping hill. Panting loudly, she made her way through the crooked rows of stones, her sneakers slipping on the wet grass, on the flat, dead brown leaves. Tall wet weeds swished against the legs of her jeans.

Without slowing, she glanced back.

And saw that he was following her.

It was a man, or maybe a boy. He had the dark hood of his sweatshirt pulled up over his head.

He was running fast, breathing hard, his breath steaming up over the dark hood.

She could see only a triangle of his face. Saw part of his nose and eyes. Hard, determined eyes. Angry eyes. Gray eyes, so pale they were almost colorless.

Pale gray ghostlike eyes.

Somebody—help me! Corky wanted to cry out, but she could only pant in terror as she fled.

His shoes pounded the ground. So close behind her.

Or was that the pounding of her heart?

Who was he? Why was he spying on her? Why was he chasing her?

The questions made her dizzy as she ran, gasping in mouthfuls of the heavy, cold air. Ran through the darkness. Ran toward the street. Fear Street.

Her house was only a block away.

Would she make it?

She was nearly to the street.

Running hard. Her right side aching.

The footsteps pounding behind her.

“Ow!”

She cried out as her leg hit a low tombstone.

As the pain shot up her leg, she fell and toppled forward, her arms and legs sprawling out as she dropped facedown into a pile of wet leaves.

“C
orky!”

At first she didn't recognize the voice.

“Corky!”

She raised her head, scrambled to her feet, frantically brushing at the wet leaves clinging to the front of her coat.

“Hey, Corky!”

The voice came from the street. From the little blue car just beyond the curb.