Free The Witch's Grave by Phillip Depoy

Death,” I assured him. “It was ordered from a company called Revelation Statuary, in South Carolina. A reminder God’s harvest is continuous; today you’re here on a visit; tomorrow you’ll be back as a resident. Now if you could manage to be a little more alert and a little less arm-grabbing, we might not end up in a ditch. Like to spend the night here?”
    â€œChrist.” He put the stopper back in the bottle and scoured the area with his eyes. “Don’t tell me anything more about this cemetery, all right?”

    We rolled past the statue, the road all but vanished. Only an ancient memory of sunlight lit the higher rises of the yard. Bending gnarled branches made the way more treacherous, and at last I was forced to surrender, stopping the truck.
    â€œWhat are you doing?” Andrews locked his door.
    â€œThere’s no more road. I want to see the place where Hek passed by.” I opened my door, reached under my seat for the flashlight I always kept there. “I think it’s a short walk over that way.”
    â€œWhy don’t we come back tomorrow?”
    â€œBecause tomorrow,” I reminded him, “we visit the Deveroes.”
    He offered an unrepeatable remark, leaned against his door, sloshed out his side.
    The grass was tough despite the recent rain; my flashlight was no more successful illuminating our way than the truck’s headlights had been. Twilight in a cemetery will not be ruled. Artificial light is made for more defined darkness, not the vagaries of time between sunset and night.
    Blackberry brambles tore at our ankles. Fairy beggars, I had heard them called: they feel like thorns snagging the cuffs of your pants, but they could just as well be nature folk tugging, asking for a handout. Without the slightest genuine belief in such an idea, some old-timers still tossed a penny into a thorn thicket. Giving money to the fairies was not, they clearly advised, done for reward. The only benefit was that the fairies would consider leaving you alone. As much to impress Andrews as to indulge my heritage, I reached into my pocket and tossed a penny into the blackberry canes.
    â€œWhat was that?” He jumped.
    I explained; he drank; the wind picked up.
    We made our way up a small rise, pine filling the air.
    Night came on.
    A curtain dropped over the sky, it happened in an instant, and the flashlight bit into the blackness in front of us. The world was transformed. Every sound was amplified: crickets were deafening;
tree frogs tore the fabric of night; shaking limbs above us rattled thunder. Every sound in darkness is more important than a prayer.
    The occasional white tombstone leered as we shuffled past, but that part of our graveyard was populated chiefly by night noise, drying weeds, a canopy of bare oak. As swiftly as the sun had gone, the moon came up over the mountain. The landscape was dusted silver, separated from its previous mien by time, not distance—the exact amount of time it took for day to exhale its last breath and die past the western horizon.
    Moonlight ran like water over the slope; we waded through it to the top. Below us on the other side of the slope was a dark valley scar, a place where nothing grew. Rocks and dead clay, a gash across the face of the earth, lay splayed in lunar autumn.
    â€œChrist.” Andrews stared down at the desolate patch. “Why is it so bare down there?”
    â€œCombination of red Georgia dirt and erosion,” I answered, shining light across the crags. “Some places get ruined, never come back to life.”
    â€œNo wonder this spot was chosen for a graveyard.”
    â€œThis was all Newcomb land,” I said. “Jeribald sold most of it when he moved his family away.”
    â€œThe incest Newcombs? with The Newcomb Dwarf?” Andrews picked up his pace. “This keeps getting better. You don’t live in Blue Mountain; you live in Amityville.”
    â€œOn the