• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

They came to a headstone, all tangled about with weeds and creepers, and moved from it to the next and the next, slowly approaching an area of darkness from which slight sounds of movement could be heard.

Swinburne forgot his tiredness and discomfort. He was now eager to witness whatever sepulchral events were occurring ahead. He began to shake and twitch with excitement.

Willy crawled on and poked his head over the top of a granite slab. He quickly ducked back, turned, and gestured for Swinburne to join him.

On his hands and knees, the poet quietly moved to his friend's side and peeked over the stone. Through the falling rain, he could see vague shapes moving.

He lowered his head and put his mouth next to Willy's ear to whisper, "We have to get closer!"

The boy nodded and pointed to a mausoleum that loomed out of the darkness to their right.

"We can go around that," he breathed.

Staying as low as possible, they sneaked across the uneven ground, through dripping bushes and patches of mud, past tilted crosses and stone angels whose shadowy eyes seemed to weep, until they reached the base of the bulky monument. Sheltered from view, but also from the glimmering light of the distant gas lamp, they fumbled their way through blackness. At the far corner, they stopped.

"We'll count them," whispered Swinburne, "then go back the way we've come. We'll hotfoot it to the tavern on the corner of Commercial Road and rouse some men. If we're lucky, we can get a mob to come back with us and catch the scoundrels in the act!"

He and Willy looked around the edge of the mausoleum.

There were seven figures, some bending, some crouching in the rain. They were all cloaked and hooded. Strange noises reached Swinburne's ears: snuffles and crunches, cracking and ripping.

One of the men stood, and it seemed to Swinburne that he was quite short in stature. He held a stick in his hand, which he raised to his hood.

A chill wave of revulsion suddenly numbed the poet.

It wasn't a stick. It was an arm, with a hand flapping at its end.

The figure pulled it away from its hood, tearing off a strip of polluted, wormy flesh.

Swinburne collapsed back into the shadow of the tomb, dragging the boy with him.

"Jesus Christ!" he moaned. "They aren't robbing the graves-they're eating the corpses!"

He could feel Willy Cornish trembling uncontrollably at his side.

"I want to go home," sobbed the youngster.

Swinburne hugged him close. "Go!" he whispered. "Get out of here as fast as you can, Willy. Go quietly, stay in the shadows, get over the wall, and run. Hurry to the tavern and tell what you've seen. Go now!"

The youngster wiped his nose on his wet sleeve, sniffed, and wriggled away.

Swinburne peered around the corner again. Two of the figures were drag ging a coffin out of the waterlogged earth, its rotten wood splitting, the sides falling away, the lid collapsing. The other five men, their hooded cloaks wrapped tightly around them, shambled closer, gathered around the coffin, and bent over its putrid contents. They pushed the pieces of lid aside and reached in. Swinburne heard bones breaking. He tasted bile in the back of his throat.

What happened next occurred so suddenly that Swinburne found himself acting without knowing what he was doing.

Something-maybe the snap of a twig or a careless movement-attracted the cannibalistic grave robbers. As one, their heads turned, and Swinburne knew straightaway that Willy Cornish had been spotted.

The poet rose to his feet and stepped away from the mausoleum.

"Hey!" he shouted.

Seven hoods swung in his direction and seven sets of seething red eyes fixed on him. One of the figures took two steps forward and the dim lamplight angled across its face, revealing a wrinkled snout and white canines.

Loups-gdrous!

For the first time in his life, Swinburne experienced fear. He turned and started to run but went pelting into a gravestone, stumbled, lost his balance, and fell. His legs kicked franticly as he tried to crawl into the shadows but when claws