Ashes to Ashes - Remembering Krem (Part 3/6)

Ashes to Ashes: Remembering Krem (Part 3)
Retold by LoreKeeper Casstiel of the Bridge of Souls on 27 December 2013

Regarding the events on 26 July 2008

In one of the burned structures Nergal spot a small unburnt bolt-hole.  One we found the seams under all the debris and plant matter we just had to find some hard implements to pry it up.  Inside was a half-burnt bible with no cover, a worn leather journal with dry yellowed pages, and a five-shot revolver.  Now here was something!  We hung onto these items and took a quick glance through the journal and its spidery cursive.  Hard to tell what was written, there was a lot to read there and in the poor lighting conditions it was better to wait.

To the West as we proceeded down the road we could see off to our left a railroad bridge over a ravine.  That was no doubt where the stories about the hanged girl came from.  The one who was raped or possessed and then driven into the arms of death.  Maybe she had been lynched.  But it was just a bridge and we had no intention of crossing all the way over there to check it out.  We wouldn’t be able to substantiate anything anyway.

Heading down the dirt road away from our parked car about a quarter mile was the church.  Perhaps with the curse on they wouldn’t dare disassemble the closest holy place.  It was the typical country fashion, steepled and white.  Weather and ruin had not been kind to it.  The ceiling had collapsed and water running under the building broke through the foundation.  The floor of the old church was perilously rotten, broken into a basement of sharp rocks.  We never did anything but look into the empty front door.  It was way too dangerous to go inside and the whole small structure sagged off-kilter.  A hole gaped in the lower back side below the basement line and scattered bricks down the hill-side.  Jutting out of the right corner stone of the church was a casket sized vault.  It legitimately looked like a coffin.  Later we figured out what it was.

The hill sloped down slightly past the church.  Directly behind the church and next to the curving road was a small cemetery.  53 headstones, all with German names and epitaphs.  Now I was getting a little creeped out.  The hair on the back of my neck prickled.  A lone grave stood on the far side of this little graveyard, on the lee of the decaying fence line.  It was by itself and outside the bounds of hallowed ground.  Oh my God the stories were true!  I waited for the gang to catch up with me, every nerve ending on edge as I stood stock still in the middle of the rutted road.

Once we were lined up like the gang from the Wizard of Oz we approached to headstone and illuminated its face without flashlights.  The headstone was also in German, Heio Janssen, 1890-1946, below that was the epitaph. My ex-wife had been told by friends of friends what was on the coffin, so her friends had been here.  She could speak German and while I couldn’t the words made me remember what it meant:

Das ist meine Wahl (This is my Choice)

Dies ist mein Heil (This is my Salvation)

I pulled out my cellphone to take a picture but the stupid thing froze and I had to reset it.  Nergal pulled out his phone and it started beeping at him.  I was getting kind of weirded out, it was too perfect, too much like the start of a horror movie and I was in denial.  After all, nothing happens in Beulah North Dakota, bad things only happen to dumb city folk.

Our hackles went up after that, heebie jeebies in full swing.  Despite this we managed a very brief glance over some of the other headstones.  Many of them had the year 1938 or 1939 on them… the last year mentioned… 30 or so of them!  Too much death and in a horrible way it tracked, Beulah celebrated its centennial in the summer of 2014.  When I crossed the boundary of the bone yard I stepped on a cold spot, like the air of the little depression of dried grass was somehow below a thermocline.  My chest felt tight and I became dizzy, my forehead broke out into perspiration and the heat of the start of a fever radiated out from me.  The others looked sick.  It was time to leave.

As we hurried back, flashlights sweeping as we jogged.  Kairos said he got a whiff of decay near the graves that made him want to vomit. Imagination and darkness were perhaps starting to work against us.  Nevertheless I felt like I was getting a cold and snot was running down the back of my throat, chest heaving.

In the distance to the east we could see some kind of farmstead, maybe a mile and a half away across the open wild prairie.  I don’t remember seeing it before but maybe it was because I was so distracted by the immediacy of the ghost town we found.  A wooden fence lined the barn area and I could hear the squealing of pigs that made me stop in my tracks and look to my friends to confirm they heard it to.  One of the creepiest sounds I ever heard was the squealing of pigs in the middle of the night.  Between the singing coyotes to the Northwest, the pig farm to the East and the bugs making racket it was a loud night,

We got back to the car, it slumped to one side.  All four tires were flat.  Loudon thought maybe we had drove over some sharp rocks.  Then we saw the slashes and puncture marks in the sides of the tires.  The darkness of night pressed in all around and I felt as if we were not alone.  Who or what had done this? 

We climbed in and locked the doors.  This was absurd.  We were really lost and trapped.  We sat back in the darkness of the car with the door locked and tried to dial out for help.  Naturally such an off-the-beaten path wouldn’t have any reception (and in the last 10 years cell phone towers have developed nicely, reducing these moments).  Once again, too perfect, it was almost funny.  The imagination and logic were painting a picture for me and they were starting to match.  But the acts of the supernatural at work here were still subtle enough to dismiss.  Nevertheless it never occurred to me that a man in the night had flattened them.

I sat back in the back seat, fear feeding off of the darkness.  Then we stopped our chatter without prompting.  Something had changed and it took a little while to figure out what it was… the insects had ceased their nightly noise.  In fact there seemed to be no noise coming from the outside, no noise but for our breathing in this small space.

Part of me still is not sure I saw what I did then.  We have come a long way, faced down monstrosities and been granted sights to understand the hidden ways of the world.  But then our sleeping souls were suppressed by a tiny bit of the Abyss and we doubted our senses.  It feels silly to talk about it because my rational mind didn’t want to believe it.  We were just here for cheap thrills.  I hadn’t counted on my whole view of reality breaking when it did.

The full moon came out from the clouds and illuminated the road and grove surrounded by the remnants of buildings.  In the dimness of the silver gray light the buildings appeared to be restored to a fuller shape.  We saw the town as it was and we gasped, holding our breathes as the white shapes of people drifted through the center of town.  The more you stared at these ghostly shapes the more their features formed in the empty spaces of the imagination.  We were witnessing our first manifestation.

A man appeared in the road, holsters at his sides, worn sun-crisped features and indistinguishable clothing.  He was so clearly a law man my imagination filled in the vest and badge for him.  Maybe that is how manifestations work. 

So we saw him there and he saw us, he wields around and pulled a shining revolver from one of his holsters.  He gunned down the shapes.  The shots were silent as the grave but we could hear the cries of children “He’s coming for us!” and on the heels of that “He'll murder us again!”  Perhaps the separation of the windshield helped isolate us from this supernatural display.  He chased after them and after a time the figures and cries vanished when the moon was blotted out again.