Midnight Grinding Read Online Free Page B

close as you live to this place.” They all peered into the three-acre woods that separated the churchyard from the new subdivision that had been built to either side of Pear Tree Road. Through a gap in the pine grove, Deanna could see her parents’ split-level house, the one they had moved into only two months ago.
    “What do you mean?” asked the girl, clutching her book bag tightly. “Who are you talking about?”
    A devilish grin crossed Butch Spence’s freckled face. “The babies, that’s who. They crawl up from their graves at night, you know. Old Man Caruthers, the caretaker, he’s heard them out here before…giggling and crying, crawling among the tombstones, trying to find their mothers. And on dark, stormy nights they hop the fence over yonder and crawl through the woods…to your house!”
    It began to rain. “Stop it!” yelled Deanna. “You’re scaring me!”
    “Listen!” said Jimmy Thompson. “Did you hear that?”
    The sound of something stirring in the high weeds on the far side of the fence reached their ears. “It’s them!” yelled Butch in bogus panic. “It’s the dead babies! They’re in the woods already, Deanna, and they’re heading straight for your house!”
    “Stop it!” sobbed the girl. “Do you hear me? Just stop it!”
    The Waller twins squealed and giggled with a mixture of fear and delight. The sounds in the forest grew louder. It sounded as though something was in the thicket, crawling on hands and knees.
    “Mama!” wailed an infantile voice from out of the high weeds. “Dadda!”
    “Gaah, gaah! Goo, goo!” cooed another from the same vicinity beyond the bordering fence.
    “Run, Deanna, run!” called Butch, stifling the laughter that would come later when the grand deception was over and done with. Then his buddies, Hank and Jason—who had beat them there on their bikes by five minutes—would come out of the woods and they would all enjoy a big bellylaugh at the new girl’s expense.
    And the seven-year-old girl did run…through the open gate, across the graveyard, and past the old church to Pear Tree Road. By the time she reached home, the heavens had opened and delivered a drenching downpour. She met her mother at the doorstep, soaked to the skin and crying, the laughter of her playmates cruelly ringing in her ears.
    She had seen one once before…a dead baby.
    That disturbing experience had taken place at the funeral of Grandpa Hudson a couple of years before. Deanna had gone to the bathroom and, upon returning, lost her way among the many mourning rooms, the places where the deceased were displayed before the casket was moved to the chapel for the final service. She had entered an empty room very similar to the one her grandfather was in and, at first, she had the sinking feeling that her family had up and left her. Then she saw the difference in the flower arrangements and in the coffin that sat upon the shrouded pedestal at the head of the room.
    The casket was very small, not over two feet in length. And it was the prettiest shade of baby blue that Deanna had ever seen. Although she was frightened, her curiosity was much stronger than her fear and she had climbed upon one of the folding metal chairs to get a better look. She nearly lost her footing and fell off when she saw what lay in the open box.
    It was a baby boy, about the same age that her little brother Timothy was now. It was dressed in a blue jumper, its head covered by a knitted cap of the same pastel hue. Tiny hands clutched a blue rattle in the shape of a sad-eyed puppy dog. It was the round, little face that scared Deanna the most; a face devoid of color, despite a touch of undertaker’s rouge at each chubby cheek. A face that was coldly deceptive in its peaceful slumber, an endless sleep that would never be disturbed by a middle-of-the-night hunger for warm milk or the discomfort of a wet diaper.
    As Deanna climbed off the chair and started for the door, she had heard—or thought she had