It was
Wednesday on a
mid-August day around ten in the morning, and Sarah
was stuck in the station wagon with her not so entertaining family. Her
sister
Ashley was preoccupied with her Nintendo DS game. Her mother was
in the
passenger seat sleeping which was a lot better than her complaining
about how
hot it was outside. Her father was driving, very optimistic of what the
move
might bring to his family. Sarah was tired of the car ride to Wiley
and was annoyed because her cell phone lost service so
she could
not even text Zach, her boyfriend, any longer.
"We are here," exclaimed her father, Ray.
Her mother woke up instantly and looked annoyed and slightly perturbed with her father. The view from the window of Wiley was rather drab. The city limit sign revealed that its population was only 3200 people. The trees, landscape, and houses all appeared like every other town they had driven through in the last hour but something she could not put her finger on seemed rather eerie. They passed a hospital, an old white church, a few antique shops, a couple of local restaurants she had never heard of, the high school, and the town cemetery. Their station wagon pulled up to Mr. Sander's real estate's office, which was right next to the cemetery.
"Get out, everybody- it's time to find a new home hopefully," her father said with utter delight. Everyone got out of the car and followed him into Mr. Sanders office. Sarah noticed the smell of Old Spice cologne and pipe smoke.
Mr. Sanders was a plump man with a sly smile. He wore a wrinkled suit and had a gold tooth that reflected the light when he spoke. Sarah chose to tune out his voice as he was telling them the agenda of the day because she frankly did not care. She looked out of his office window not expecting to see anything unusual.
All of a sudden something very strange caught Sarah's eye. In the far corner of the cemetery she noticed yellow construction tape. She had always been a curious person so she decided to go see what exactly it contained.
"Mother, I'll be right back. I'm going to go outside for a bit," she whispered in her mother's ear.
"Sure, honey, do whatever you want," aloofly replied Susan Johnson, not really paying attention to what her daughter said.
Sarah exited the office building and began roaming toward the yellow caution tape. She cut through the cemetery and noticed that some of the gravestones she saw dated back to the early 1900s and many were so old that the writing had eroded. A cold wind brought chills to her entire body.
She reached the yellow tape and saw that it surrounded a larger tomb from the 1970s. It had a statue of a mother holding a child as the gravestone and its base contained a small door. The tombstone read, " Here lie those who were laid in this tomb in a time of strife when the great disease took young and old alike."
Intrigued by the message, she crossed the caution tape and approached the door wondering if she could push it open. The door opened easily and much to her dismay a small skeleton was propped against the wall. It appeared to have broken bones and its jaw was set in a position that appeared to be crying for help.
Sarah's eyes wandered to above the skeleton. It was here on the tomb wall that she saw some words written in what appeared to be dried blood, "The people of this town are not what they seem, for I was only visiting and they locked me away in this tomb due to their superstitions of the disease going around. I had passed out simply from heat exhaustion from playing with my cousin. I am Ella May and I was here buried alive. May the people of this town who did this to me rot in hell."
"Girl!" cried an unfriendly unfamiliar voice harshly.
Sarah was so startled that as she exited the tomb she backed over the man yelling at her. It was Mr. Sanders.
"What are you doing here? This is trespassing and you can get in a lot of trouble for this!" he exclaimed.
"I'm sorry," Sarah stuttered, "but what is this? Was this poor girl really buried alive and why would people do this to her?"
Mr. Sanders looked at her with an astonished face and said, "You do not need to worry about this nor repeat what you saw to your father. You should really mind your own business you know." He dusted himself off and appeared to be very irate at her.
He continued but changed his tone to a friendlier one, "After all, the writing in the tomb was made by a couple of teenage pranksters a few days ago. The police only had to investigate because it is their protocol. Do not let your imagination get the best of you, girl. Your parents are waiting on you so let's get back. You would not want to get stuck in a grave or anything now would you?" He snickered. "Just kidding," he casually laughed but there was something fishy about his story.
"What about the small skeleton with broken bones underneath the writing? How did the police explain that?" she asked.
But Mr. Sanders ignored her question and continued walking. She was afraid to tell her parents about what she had seen because she thought she might get in trouble for snooping around like Mr. Sanders had threatened. She decided that she would tell Ashley though. She knew that Mr. Sanders was covering up something that had happened in Wiley. He was lying through his teeth when he said that it was teenagers who had written on the tomb's wall. There was definitely something wrong with Wiley, something spooky that made it not a place to call home.
Bibliography: "Buried Alive". 1877. British Medical Journal. Volume 2. p. 819. Web source: snopes.com
Image: Cemetery by Old Roswell Cemetery from Roswell, GA
Author's
Note:
I based this story upon an instance
that
actually occurred in mid-1800s. A young girl had been pronounced dead
by
the
local doctor and it was feared that she had the epidemic disease of
diphtheria.
The family decided to put her in the family tomb in order to prevent
further
spread of the disease. Years later, when the family opened to the
tomb to
put another deceased member in, they found a small skeleton by the
door. From
the skeleton it was evident that the girl had actually broken her bones
trying to
free herself from the tomb. The doctor was imprisoned for falsely
identifying
her as dead.
In my story, I made it more recent so it would be more relevant to the time that the Johnson's are moving to Wiley. I also chose to leave out the disease of diphtheria because I have not heard of it being a problem since I have been alive. There were many other situations of being buried alive but I thought this one fit into my story the best.
The
set
up of Mr. Sanders the real estate
agent is
actually based on a personal experience. I knew that this would be an
appropriate way to start off this story because it reminded me of when
I moved
to a new town. When I was
younger, we moved from
Illinois to Oklahoma due to my mother's job.
I will not mention the name of the town that we first looked at but I
definitely did not want to live there. I just remember the older man
who was
the real estate agent who showed us around smoked a pipe smoke.