Apple Creek lies hidden under a shroud of mist. A handful of stars burns fierce and bright above, and Pete runs us faster in their twinkling light.
We run along the creek bank for a time, through a patch of rubbery jewelweed that glistens in the faint starlight and on past a stand of sycamores. One of their roots reaches up and snatches at my toe and I stumble, throwing my hands out wildly to grab hold of something, anything. My fingers close on empty dark, and I’m pitching over the bank toward that soft cloud that hangs over Apple Creek when Frankie snatches my shirttail and drags me back.
I don’t have breath enough to thank him. Pete moves us on, faster.
Where is he taking us? And what sort of test have they got planned for Frankie?
The Sucker Hole’s stony towers rise before us, then sink slowly away behind.
Still Pete leads us on.
Beyond the creek, Knee-Deep Meadow opens up, vast and white under the fog. For a moment the curtain parts, as if a breath from the stars has blown it back, and through the hole we can see the valley’s far wall. A single orange light burns in that dark: a house across the way. It’s visible only a moment before the fog rolls back and hides it from our sight.
Madliner House. As we run, I wonder who among them is awake this hour of the night.
I don’t have long to think about it. Our trail turns suddenly, diving away from the creek toward a black hill that rises, silent and solemn, on our left. Starlight gleams on its bare face, the sparkle of Pennsylvania granite. We are running now between the toes of the Appalachians. Trees close in. Our trail hugs that rocky hill close. With the stars hidden, the darkness returns, so thick now that even Pete has to slow down.
Wet branches slap my arms and chest and once something crashes through the undergrowth to our left—something big.
A thought comes to me. A gnawing, anxious idea as to where Pete is leading us. The hairs on my arms rise on end. I remember Will’s gleeful grin and my heart sinks.
Ahead our trail bends once more. A clearing. An open space between the hills. Pete slows his pace.
I know where we are now, and I shudder.
My brothers have brought us to the Ticking Tomb.
His name was Hiltch. Jacob Bartholomew Hiltch. And he was born to fight. First the Lenape when their war parties came down out of Pennsylvania’s eternal blue forests to burn settlements along the Susquehanna, almost within sight of Philadelphia. Then the British, as a soldier with General Washington’s Continentals. Along a dark Appalachian trail, a British musket ball did what the Lenape tomahawks could not, and Hiltch was laid to rest in a graveyard not far from Apple Creek. He was buried in his Continental uniform, with his watch, a gift from his wife.
Hiltch sleeps in his musty grave, and you do not fear him.
You fear his wife.
Hiltch had little enough peace during life that she keeps watch over him now that he’s dead. Disturb his rest, stretch out over his grave and lie down flat before his weathered marker, and you’ll hear her gift to him, that old watch, ticking six feet underneath you. Ticking—and calling her.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Then you see her. Hiltch’s wife. Hiltch’s widow. Dead, but not too much. She’s here to kill you.
Your only chance is to get out of that graveyard, over the stone wall or through the iron gate before her icy fingers close around your neck and throttle you.
At least, that’s the story as Sam Williamson tells it. Old Sam, who saw her once when he was young, when he and friends came to the graveyard up Apple Creek one night years ago. Sam stretched out over Hiltch’s grave that night. It was Sam who disturbed Hiltch’s rest and summoned the woman in white. He told us the story around the fireside a few winters back. Pete laughed then. Will said he did not believe it.
But I believed the whiskered old man then. And I believe him now.
We come out of the trees and I see the graveyard lying before us, its leaning headstones poking out of soggy soil like the stony skeleton of some half-buried creature. A wandering stone wall rings them in. Fog washes against it like waves against a shore. There is only one way in: a wrought iron gate that hangs crookedly on its hinges.
Pete aims straight for it.
At Pete’s touch, that gate opens without a sound.
He looks to each of us, as if waiting for someone to say they are too afraid to follow him in. When no one speaks, he turns and steps into the yard.
Will goes next.
Then Frankie.
Then me.
That stone wall closes us in among the forest of tombstones. We follow Pete over moldy earth as he threads his way between them. In dim starlight, I read the names on a few: John Trumble, Samson Babb, Thomas Hoopes. Others are so worn from centuries of rain and wind and ice that the names have washed away.
You can’t help but feel you’re trespassing when you walk through a cemetery at night. It’s like you’ve gone into a stranger’s home, unwelcomed. That guilt gnaws at me as we follow Pete deeper into the yard. And with it something else: the feeling that we are being watched.
I throw a few quick glances between the stones. Nothing. Old leaves crunch under my feet, and the noise throws my heart into my throat. It takes everything within me not to bolt for the gate then.
Hiltch’s grave is in the far corner.
His stone is shorter than the others. Name’s barely visible under the dirt and grime. We form a half circle about the grave and for a long time, no one speaks.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Frankie?” Pete asks.
A chill runs down my spine. Frankie shakes his head.
“Then this should be easy,” Pete says. He points to the gravestone. “This here’s the grave of Jacob Bartholomew Hiltch. He was killed by a musket ball in the Revolution that went clean through him. Long time ago and not far from here. He was buried with his pocket watch, a gift from his wife. If you lie down over this grave, you can still hear it ticking.”
Frankie’s eyes dart to mine. He understands now.
“Now, I mentioned Hiltch’s wife,” Pete continues. “She’s a haint. She guards this tomb. She is summoned whenever anybody lies down over her dead husband’s grave. If she comes, she’ll kill us unless we’re able to get clear of this graveyard in time. This is your test: lie across Hiltch’s grave for one whole minute, and we’ll know you’re tough inside and out. Do that, and you can come with us to find that wrecked fighter jet.”
Fog curls about the tombstones.
Frankie is silent.
My heart pounds inside my chest. A whole minute! I couldn’t do it. Not for a million dollars. Not for ten million dollars.
Frankie’s draws a deep breath. “Start counting,” he says. He lies down over the grave, flat on his stomach, and turns his head to one side.
Pete looks to Will. Even in the dark I can tell he’s impressed. Will scowls.
“All right, Frankie. One whole minute. Starting now.” Pete raises his watch and starts the count.
We wait.
My blood feels like ice water in my veins. My cousin lies before us, his little body beneath a thin veil of fog. The graveyard is so dark, and I turn to the sky, trying to find one of those bright stars for just a little light, but the fog is too thick and the stars are hidden.
“Ten seconds,” Pete says quietly.
That feeling of being watched lays hold of me again and I turn to the gate, and I see now that headstones block our way back to it: thick and black, jutting out of the mist at crooked angles. And there’s something else: the gate is closed.
My heart skips a beat.
The gate is closed!
Did Pete close it when we came in? Impossible. Pete went in first. I came in last, and I didn’t shut the gate.
“Pete, the gate’s shut.”
Will snaps his head up. “Fool! What’d you close the gate for?”
“I didn’t!”
“Twenty seconds,” Pete says, softly.
At our feet, Frankie is still as stone. He looks dead.
The hairs on the back of my neck rise and it’s colder now, so much colder than it should be for a June night.
Did someone else shut the gate? I sweep the yard, but it’s just tombstones and shadows and— “I hear it!”